Whatever happened to...

That's right!
He's the kid from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Short Round. Why the sudden curiousity about this kid? I was reminiscing about the LB company trip to Ho Chi Minh with an ex-colleague turned current colleague and one of funniest memories that came up was this little kid who sold fake copies of Lonely Planet by the roadside. This was two years ago, and the kid looked and sounded exactly like Shortie here.

I must try to get hold of a picture of the little guy, and you'll see why. Goddess of Bliss, I'm sure you have a picture of him? Anyway, our little pavement bookseller was all of 7 years old (or was he 11?), but he spoke like someone twice his age. He even left his stall (his parents had another stall a few feet away) and took us (a group of adults, mostly girls gushing over how cute he was) to a place about 20-30 minutes away. Talk about being streetwise!

He was such a chatterbox, telling us about the 'American school' he went to (which explained his accent), his family and his friends. We treated him to supper and brought him back to his parents safe and sound. I wanted to buy a Lonely Planet from him, and boy, was this kid smart. He let me bargain down from USD10 to USD6. But a request to have pictures taken with him cost another USD2.

I wonder how that little boy is doing now.
Got him to autograph the copy of Vietnam Lonely Planet I bought from him. He actually wrote his email address in it for me (yes, he's got email). Think I'll pop him a note soon. Just for fun.

As for Indy's Short Round, what became of him? Well, Short Round isn't quite short anymore, and he's now a stunt choreographer, with movies like The One (Jet Li) and X-Men under his belt. His name is Jonathan Ke Huy Quan, and he's also a good 7 years older than I am, which makes him 36 years old. He was 13 when he acted as Indy's cute little Chinese sidekick. Like the little bookseller, this dude is actually Vietnamese. And yes, say we "Chinese and Vietnamese look the same anyway", why don't you?