Buzzy Netflix Drama Train Dreams Taps Wushu Champ-Turned-Actor Whose Silence Steals The Scene
Wushu world champion and stunt veteran Alfred Hsing talks about his brief but indelible role in Netflix’s Train Dreams and why he hopes to bring his next project to Singapore.
06 Dec 2025 at 10:00
[SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from Netflix’s Train Dreams.]
There’s a saying in show biz: there are no small roles — just small actors. Case in point: Alfred Hsing in Netflix’s Train Dreams.
Clint Bentley’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s award-winning novella — already singled out as a contender in the Oscars sweepstakes — trails the life of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a woodsman and railroad hand at the dawn of the 20th century.
Featuring a world-weary voice-over by Will Patton (Minari), the film is narratively spare but emotionally loaded, spanning eight decades of American tumult, filtered through the Terrence Malick-like poetic haze.
Hsing plays Fusheng, a Chinese coolie working alongside Robert. He arrives like a whisper — part man, part memory. Just as the viewer begins to notice him, he’s whisked away in a swift, savage death.
The moment is seared into Robert’s brain. He’s baffled by the senselessness of it, circling for the rest of the film around the question of whether he could’ve stopped it.
Fusheng’s gone but continues to wander the earth. His absence becomes a presence — a lingering reminder of guilt that latches onto Robert’s life.
“I didn’t want to be a ghost that goes, ‘Boo, I’m back,’” Hsing tells 8days.sg over Zoom from Los Angeles. “I wanted to be half reflection, half human — like when you look in the mirror and confront yourself.”
Into the woods: Hsing jokes that he felt at home doing the film’s wood-cutting work. “I’m good with my hands,” he says. “As a stunt performer I’ve worked with all kinds of weapons, so the sawing and hammering felt familiar — though I don’t have the skills of real loggers.”
Born in San Jose, California, to Taiwanese immigrants, Hsing is a world champion in wushu and a veteran of the stunt world (The Book of Boba Fett, Everything Everywhere All at Once). But Train Dreams forced him to flex a rarely used muscle.
“Acting through stillness is harder than throwing punches,” he admits. “Doing very little and communicating a lot.”
“I was very still,” he continues. “I tried to perform in my eyes. I wanted to be 50% a blank slate, and 50% myself. I wasn’t there to scare him. I wasn’t there to let him off the hook either.”
His first day on set? The film’s most intense scene with Edgerton — shot out of sequence, with Hsing thrown straight into the emotional deep end. Yet years of discipline kept him steady.
“In martial arts, I trained with the best,” he says. “I never thought, ‘These people are better than me.’ I respected them, but I respected myself too.” That mindset carried over. “I knew I could do it,” he says. “Deep down, I felt good.”
The environment helped, too. Filming in Washington’s forests, surrounded by ancient trees, grounded him. “It was serene,” he says. “The first night, the fire crackling, real forest, fresh air. I felt connected to nature — and to the story.”
He adds: “It would not have the same performances and connectedness, if it were shot in a virtual screen studio.”
In a galaxy far, far, away: Hsing as the first-ever unmasked Pike in The Book of Boba Fettepisode ‘The Tribes of Tattooine’— a moment Jon Favreau personally stepped in to direct on set. “Jon Favreau happened to be on set and ended up directing me through that moment,” he says. “He told me, ‘This is going to be a cool trailer shot,’ when I pull off the mask and the camera pushes in. It was surreal because I’m a fan of his work.”
While Fusheng has lived a short life, Hsing made sure to honour his legacy by building a rich backstory.
He approached the character with the intent to humanise him fully — someone with humour, swagger, hardship, and hope — so that audiences would feel the weight of his loss.
Even in his death scene, when Fusheng is dragged by a mob and thrown from a bridge, Hsing wanted truth, not theatrics. “I wasn’t giving the stunt guys an easy time,” he says, proudly. “They had to use real strength to drag me. I wanted the struggle to feel honest.”
Were there concerns that Hsing was playing into the ‘Silent Asian’ stereotype?
Hsing pauses, reflective. “The silence fits the story,” he says. “Fusheng and Robert don’t share the same language, and even so Robert isn’t talkative. Sometimes two men working side by side don’t need words.”
He did consider giving Fusheng one final line of dialogue in the one critical scene. But silence won. “If I spoke, it would break the spell,” he says. “My father once told me he dreamed of his own dad after he passed — and his dad didn’t say anything, just looked at him. That dreamlike silence hit me deeply.”
That quietness also echoes across history.
He pointed to the famous Golden Spike photograph — a landmark moment in American railroad lore — where none of the thousands of Chinese labourers who helped build the line were included. To him, the absence speaks loudly about erasure and the quiet desire generations have carried simply to be acknowledged.
Role call: Hsing with his Train Dreams cast-mates — (from left) Clifton Collins Jr, Felicity Jones, William H Macy, Kerry Condon, and Joel Edgerton — at the film’s premiere at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on Nov 6, 2025.
That was why he christened his character Fusheng — chosen after discussions with the director — to honour the many labourers who came from Fujian or Guangzhou in the 1800s. He wanted Fusheng to stand for those men whose stories rarely made it into the record.
That lack of recognition is another reason why this role mattered to him. “I’m someone who grew up cross-culturally,” he says. “I spent years in China and across Asia — maybe five, six, seven years back and forth — and I also grew up in California, bilingual, moving between both worlds. Because of that, I feel I can, in some way, be a decent example or representative.
“Playing Fusheng and shining a bit of light on that part of history meant something. Hopefully the film does well, and even if my role is small, people will acknowledge what happened. It’s such a powerful thread for the main protagonist, and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves.”
Beyond acting, Hsing’s designing fight sequences for Avatar Studios for the highly-anticipated Avatar the Last Airbender animated series, and developing his own action film set in Taipei and Singapore.
And if the planets aligned perfectly, he would love to shoot parts of the movie on this Little Red Dot because “the main characters are actually living [there]”. Plus, it’s been a while since he was here — back in 2013, working on the stunts for the Zhang Ziyi-Wang Leehom-fronted rom-com My Lucky Star.
But right now, he’s basking in the afterglow of Train Dreams’ raves and its Oscars prospects. Did he ever know he was going to be part of something special?
“You feel it,” he says. “On Everything Everywhere All at Once, I had that tingle. I felt something similar with Train Dreams. The second time I watched it, I just teared up. The emotions took over me.”
He enthuses: “It’s a project that you can only dream to be a part of.”
Train Dreams (M18) is now Netflix. Follow Hsing on Instagram: @alfredrocks
Photos: Diana Ragland (main), Netflix, Disney+, Gonzalo Marroquin/Getty Images for Netflix (red carpet)
This is great for Alfred. He’s a local champ that’s done good. 