Claire Eldridge

Intro Claire Elizabeth Eldridge is a British martial artist and the youngest of three in a wealthy family in Hammersmith, West London, Claire left the UK for Hong Kong, then a colony of the British Empire, at the age of 8 in 1972 having grown bored of the privileged and comfortable lifestyle of the West. Like many Westerners, Claire was first exposed to the world of martial arts through various kung-fu movies of the Hong Kong cinema, most notably Bruce Lee. If kung-fu movies sparked Claire's love for martial arts, then meeting her eventual tutor and mentor, Master Zhao, only exacerbated that passion and willingness to learn. From then on spurred a lifetime of constant training, studying and practicing of self-discipline. In addition to being a master of Chinese martial arts - including but not limited to Northern Shaolin Kung-Fu, Wing Chun and Dim Mak - Claire is also a master swordswoman, typically carrying a Dao sword with her on her travels. An incredibly polite, courteous, kind-hearted but fairly reserved and academically inclined individual as well as an avid bookworm, over the following years, Claire would study not just every martial art that Hong Kong had to offer but also the Chinese language as well as Chinese culture and history. As of today, she is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese. All was going well until one day in January 1986, at 22 years of age, when the university campus she was studying at became the target of a horrific shooting at the hands of various Triad gangs plaguing Hong Kong, in which Claire herself would end up badly wounded. Although she would ultimately survive the massacre, most of her friends and colleagues did not. By the summer of 1987, 23-year-old Claire would embark on a perilous and treacherous journey, where she would need to rely on everything she has learned from Master Zhao up to this point in order to find and destroy every single Triad gang in not just Hong Kong, but in China also.