‘I wanted to call him daddy’: Fans bump into Fei Xiang on London Tube

It’s not every day that you meet a celebrity and it’s an even luckier coincidence when you meet one while travelling on public transport during an overseas trip.

A netizen and her husband bumped into veteran singer-actor Fei Xiang after getting on the  London Tube at the Holloway Road station on Feb 15.

“I asked my husband, ‘Is that man Fei Xiang?'” she recounted their experience in a Xiaohongshu post on Feb 16. When they were both quite sure that it was him, they moved closer to where the 63-year-old Chinese-American was sitting.

The netizen shared that this was her first time meeting a celebrity and she was very nervous about speaking with him, so her husband decided to sit beside him.

“Excuse me, are you Fei Xiang?” her husband asked him, who confirmed gently that he was.

When Fei Xiang, also known as Kris Phillips, heard that they were in London for a vacation, he chatted with them casually, asking where they are from and how long they would be staying in London.

“His voice was so gentle and attractive, and sounded exactly like he did in his movies. I was really engrossed in his voice and wanted to call him daddy. I held myself back,” she wrote.

When they asked if he is mostly based in London now, Fei Xiang replied that he has been in England for over 20 years and prefers London as compared to New York, which he rarely returns to.

In an interview with AsiaOne last year for his movie Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms, Fei Xiang said he has two cats in his London home and he enjoys a “very quiet, boring life reading books, and time passes quite easily”.

Fei Xiang alighted from the train shortly, telling them that he was going for a meeting and gave his seat to the netizen, who politely declined initially because she wanted to see him get off first.

“He patted my shoulders and pushed me gently to sit down, ahhhhh!” she wrote.

The netizen added that while they did not request for a photo with him because they were afraid of being rejected, it was a “blissful” experience.