128 Circle Actor Duan Weiming, Aka Ah Cai, Makes $5K A Month As A Butler

Duan Weiming, by his own admission, is very direct and blunt, so much so that he may sometimes come across as a tad rude. When Weiyu Films first approached him about 128 Circle, Weiming wasn’t keen to be part of the project, not knowing that he had previously worked with them on Code of Law , and Zero Calling.

“I have a short-term memory,” Weiming says, in Mandarin. Also, “the person who called didn’t say she was from Weiyu Films.” He apparently hung up on her because he wasn’t pleased with the remuneration offer. For the record, his going rate is $1,500 per day, but there’s room for negotiation if he knows the other party; Weiming doesn’t do favours for strangers.

Soon after, Weiyu Films contacted Weiming again. A meeting was set up. It didn’t dawn on him that he’d been to their office before until he saw Lee Thean-Jeen, the EP of Code of Law and Zero Calling. “Why didn't you call me directly?” he said to Lee, whom he regards as “an outstanding producer”. And the rest is history. (Yes, he also apologised to Lee's colleague who put up with his curtness.)

Even though he’s done Ch 5 dramas before and 128 Circle is a multi-lingual show where he got to speak Mandarin, Weiming still finds acting in English a daunting task. “I told Thean-Jeen, ‘My English no good, you know?’” he recalls. “Thean-Jeen said, ‘I like you because your English is no good; if I wanted someone who speaks good English, I wouldn’t have asked for you.” That was all the pep talk he needed from Lee.

Portraying Larry the kopi stall owner required Weiming to know a thing or two about brewing tradition coffee. While he’s familiar with the process from his Neighbours days as Ah Cai, he still needed to study up on the subject. Besides hands-on training, he also did some independent research by observing “a coffee shop in Boon Lay for three days”.

Is Weiming into coffee himself? Not really. He says, “Too much coffee causes constipation and if I drink it at night, it keeps me up,” He prefers yuanyang, the popular Hongkong beverage which mixes coffee, tea and milk. (No sugar for him, thank you very much.)

“Acting’s a tremendous drug,” the late Peter Fonda said. “When you do it well, it’s such a great feeling that you want to do it again — it’s hard to walk away from it.” And it’s true to some extent for Weiming, who still finds acting fun. Except this time there’s no pressure, he says. "Of all the jobs I’ve done, acting is the most relaxing! ”

On the set of 128 Circle, Weiming, who also goes by Joe, enjoyed being part of a TV family, especially when he got to swap ideas on acting methods with his younger cast-mates. Over the years, he believes that his life experiences allowed him to deliver performances that are more honest. (Just ask Peter Yu). Says Weiming: “I’ve been through so many ups and downs in my life that I can easily channel those emotions into my roles.”

He throws in an anecdote to illustrate his point: he once declined a niang niang qiang (or sissy) character because he didn’t know how to play one. But ask him to portray a 16-year-old delinquent on the youth-gone-wild drama On The Fringe — when he was 29, the oldest guy in the main cast — it was a walk in the park because he’s “been there, done that”.

For the past seven-and-a-half years, Wei Ming has been in the employ of a wealthy Chinese businessman as a butler and personal driver. He declines to reveal too much about his employer, but would only say that he stays on Sentosa and he’s “gao fu shuai” (tall, rich, and handsome in Mandarin), generous, and understanding. Weiming reportedly draws a $5,000 salary. So how does he fit the extracurricular activities into his day-job?

It isn’t easy, that’s for sure. During the making of Zero Calling, due to a scheduling hiccup, he had to rush between jobs, and there were times he would catch up on his sleep in the car after dropping off his boss. As much as Weiming loves acting, he loves his steady job even more. On 128 Circle, he struck a deal with his employer: he took a few days off and whenever he wasn’t needed on set during the 20-day shoot, he was back attending to his household chores.

Just out of curiosity, how did Weiming get the butler job? “I answered an ad in the papers,” he says, matter-of-factly. And that was it, really. No drama, no secret initiation, no nothing.

‘No drama’ are hardly the words one would use to describe Weiming's life outside showbiz, which is almost as stormy as Peter Yu’s. Like the Fried Rice Paradise actor, he has an estranged daughter who didn’t speak to him for years since his divorce. Last year, the daughter, now 32, reconciled with Weiming. “She invited me to a meal to meet her husband,” says he. “That was the happiest day of my life — it’s better than winning the lottery!”

There was this one time, Weiming reached out to an underworld figure for a loan — amounting to “hundreds of thousands of dollars” — when his karaoke business flopped. “They are the ones you go when you can’t borrow from banks,” he says. Years later, he modelled a character on that gang leader on the gambling-themed Christopher Lee-starring drama Show Hand.

Another fascinating nugget: In 1997, with only $2,000 in his pocket, he packed his bags for Europe where he spent six years as a tzi char cook. “The food isn’t very tasty,” he says, “but the Westerners don’t know the difference.”

Has he thought about writing a memoir? He did but give up on it because he can’t talk and write at the same time. “I can’t multi-task,” he says, with a sigh. “But I can talk forever.” So what he needs now is a collaborator, right? Any budding biographers reading this?

128 Circle is now streaming on Toggle. It's also airing Mondays, Ch 5, 9.30pm. Code of Law and Zero Calling are both available on Toggle.