Wuxia-Made Hong Kong

A Socio-Political History of Martial Arts Cinema from 1949-1976

by

Kin Tak Raymond Tsang

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Cinema Studies

New York University

May, 2022

________________________________
Zhen Zhang
© Kin Tak Raymond Tsang
All Rights Reserved, 2022.
 DEDICATION

For my parents, Hung and Irene, who, as working-class people in Hong Kong, taught me

the joys and sufferings in everyday life. For my brother, who takes care of my parents and

continues to pursue his dreams during the most difficult times. For my wife, Siwei, whose

endless love and support helped me make it through the sleepless evenings.

iv
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my advisor, Zhang Zhen, who

gave me the freedom and opportunity to do this project on martial arts films. Her commitment to

Chinese documentary films and human rights inspired me to reflect upon and explore the issues

of justice. In her classes and daily life, I came to learn not only film knowledge but also the role

of parents. My gratitude to her is more than her being an advisor, but a mentor, a mother, and a

friend. My thanks also go to my committee members Prof. Dana Polan, Prof. Qian Ying, Prof.

Rebecca Karl, and Prof. Shen Shuang. Each of them appeared in my academic trajectory and

helped me during my most difficult times. Their unconditional help is much better than the wuxia

heroes in my dissertation.

I am also everlastingly grateful to Po Fung, who helped give me the copies of the late

Wong Fei-hung series and the original novel. Without his help, it would be so hard to find these

resources. I am also thankful to my friend, Tom Cunliffe, who is always the first reviewer to

check my chapters and give me insightful comments. I would like to thank my parents Hung and

Irene, who are the reasons why I pursued my Ph.D. Their everyday suffering, joy, pleasure,

weakness, and hardship as working-class workers are my main motivation to pursue my further

studies. I am grateful to my brother, Benjamin, for his caring of my parents and his joy in the

house. He is sharing the same hope with me that in this cruel world justice should be brought to

the underrepresented. Throughout my Ph.D. years, my parents-in-law also supported me a lot. I

am deeply grieved that my mother-in-law did not live to see my graduation and dissertation

completed. Despite her consistent asking, she was the one who was concerned about my study

and teaching. Finally, I am thankful to my wife, Siwei, who is the reason why I am still alive.

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 ABSTRACT

This dissertation attempts to rewrite the history of Hong Kong martial arts cinema with a
political lens. I take this genre as a discourse of security for martial arts filmmakers to mediate
geo-political and cultural histories connecting to the Cold War in East Asia, colonial power and
popular texts. Martial arts films, or wuxia films, produced by directors and companies, who were
often conservative or bourgeois liberals, implicated their political desires in relation to
nationalism, authoritarianism, elitism, individualism, and Cold War tropes like the fear of
nuclear holocaust and Communist infiltration. My research question is why and how there were
so many martial arts films churned out in colonial Hong Kong between the 1950s and 1970s. In
this examination of the complex political nature of martial arts cinema under the British rule of
Hong Kong during the early Cold War, I interrogate the wuxia genre beyond the formal styles,
nationalist and modernity frameworks. I interweave political ideologies, intellectual trends,
social movements, martial art schools, politics of adaptations, and myths of triad society to
demonstrate how the wuxia genre became politically reactionary rather than radical. Dismissing
class struggles, radical nationalism and social revolution, promoting ethno-nationalism,
authoritarianism and elitism and imbricated in the existing conservative tradition and the current
Cold War hegemony, wuxia films produced their own myriad ideological messages. The genre
and its rise not only constitute the dominant ideology of Hong Kong, but struck a chord with the
defeat of Communist movements and counter-culture movements in overseas markets like
Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, Taiwan, and United States.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION...........................................................................................................................iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...............................................................................................................v

ABSTRACT ..............................................................................................................................vi

LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... x

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 1 - Rethinking the Relationship between Martial Arts Films, the Colonial

Government and the Cold War .................................................................................................. 24

From wuxia to wu/xia ............................................................................................................ 26

From Jianghu to the law outside the Law .............................................................................. 35

Patronizing Humbug ............................................................................................................. 43

The Making of Melodrama and Chinese Martial Arts ............................................................ 53

Cold War – Reinforcement of the Colonial Power ................................................................. 61

Popular Culture in the Extended Civil War ............................................................................ 72

CHAPTER 2 - Community’s Order Comes First - The Case of Wu Pang’s Wong Fei-hung series

(1949-1961) .............................................................................................................................. 83

Brief History of Hung Ga Martial Artists from the Late Qing to the Early Republican Era .... 88

Modern Nationalism and Ethnonationalism ........................................................................... 96

Revisiting Vernacular Modernism ....................................................................................... 108

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 Community’s Order before Politics ..................................................................................... 120

Philanthropist - Master of Shaming ..................................................................................... 134

Realism and Community Making ........................................................................................ 142

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 150

CHAPTER 3 - Apocalyptic Martial Arts World - Adapting the Fears and Anxieties in the Cold

War (1961-1965)..................................................................................................................... 157

Introduction......................................................................................................................... 157

E’Mei Studio, Jin Yong and Sin Hok Gang Luen and Luo Bin ............................................ 160

Nuclear Arms Race – Wuxia and Sci-fi Concerns ................................................................ 176

Adaptation as a Worldview ................................................................................................. 187

The Making of the Wuxia Family in The Mandarin Swords ................................................. 195

Restoration of Martial Arts World Order in the Buddha’s Palm series ................................. 209

Mass Madness in The Six-fingered Lord of the Lute (1965) ................................................. 225

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 239

CHAPTER 4 - Culture Wars Continued – The Politics of Chang Cheh’s Yanggang Heroes .... 241

Origins of Yanggang ........................................................................................................... 244

The Rise of Shaw Brothers and the Cultural Revolution ...................................................... 259

Contested Historiography and Temporalities – The Assassin (1967) .................................... 270

Working Class and Spaces - Boxer from Shantung .............................................................. 285

Queerness as Enemies – Shaolin Martial Arts ..................................................................... 300

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 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 314

Conclusion: The Local Turn and the Bruce Lee Dialectic ........................................................ 318

The Making of Hong Kong Identity..................................................................................... 320

Bruce Lee’s Philosophical Dialectic .................................................................................... 332

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 344

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1 The term wuxia was used in this advertisement of Wong Fei Hung: The 23
Eight Bandits (1968)
Fig. 2 The advertisement in the Tien Kwong Morning News dated on Jan 26, 95
1934
Fig. 3 The blurbs in Lam Sai Wing’s Tiger-Crane Paired Fist 95

Fig. 4 Cantonese Opera Salvation Service Corps 119

Fig. 5 Kwan carried five kids in a fundraising performance 119

Fig. 6 Kwan (3rd left in the front row) as a war-relief leader in a military hospital 119

Fig. 7 Film publicity in Wah Kiu Yat Po 133

Fig. 8 The ending of In the Face of Demolition and Wong Fei-Hung Seizes the 133
Bride at Xiguan
Fig. 9 A voice over of a lady introducing rituals of Dragon’s Mother Temple in 152
How Wong Fei-hung Saved the Dragon’s Mother Temple (1956)
Fig. 10 Wong Fei-hung performs “shadowless kick” in front of his disciples in 153
The Story of Wong Fei Hung Part 2
Fig. 11 “Moony Hand and Foot” (Yue ying shou jiao) of the Tiger Crane Paired 153
Form Fist routine
Fig. 12 The last scene in The Story of Wong Fei-hung, Part 4: The Death of Leung 154
Foon
Fig. 13 Lau Cham’s pole fight in How Wong Fei-hung Defeated Three Bullies 155
with a Rod (1953)
Fig. 14 Chan Hon-chung performs the Tiger and Crane Fist in The Story of Wong 156
Fei-hung Part 1
Fig. 15 The logo of the E'Mei Film Company 173

Fig. 16 “Hong Kong Autonomy, Nothing Good and Harmful” Editorial, Ming Pao 173
on Mar 6, 1963

x
Fig. 17 “Agree to Change the name of Hong Kong” Editorial, Ming Pao on Jan 174
4th, 1964

Fig. 18 Film Poster of The Mandarin Swords in 1961 174

Fig. 19 The film program of The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute 175

Fig. 20 Film synopsis and the advertisement of the film as a nuclear bomb 175

Fig. 21 Three theme songs in the film were released as an album 175

Fig. 22 Film program of The Six Fingered Lord of the Lute 184

Fig 23 “The Theory of Mutually Assured Destruction is Beneficial to Mankind” 184

Editorial in Ming Pao, Sep 3, 1963
Fig. 24 “On Mutually Assured Destruction and Half Assured Destruction” by San 185
Su in Ming Pao, Sep 4, 1963
Fig. 25 Stills from Siu Sang’s Moslem Sacred Fire Decree (1965) 185

Fig. 26 Yin Tian-chou and Du Juan-er in Siu Sang’s Moslem Sacred Fire Decree 186
(1965)
Fig. 27 The ending scene of The Mandarin Swords 206

Fig. 28 A scene from Yu Yan-fu’s There Will be Followers 206

Fig. 29 Xiao Ban-Tian says “I am forced to be a eunuch.” 207

Fig. 30 The hero Yuan Guan-nan and heroine Xiao Zhong-hui perform duet 207

Fig. 31 A shallow focus is used to accentuate the star quality; a top shot is used to 207
show the last fight.
Fig. 32 A big fan is used on the set to show the effect of the Mandarin swords. 208

Fig. 33 An advertisement for Buddha’s Palm serialized in Ming Pao 221

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Fig. 34 The first publication of Buddha's Palm in Ming Pao on November 29, 222
1962

Fig. 35 Hopping vampires are trained to fight in Ling Yun's The White-bone 222
Swords Part II (1962)
Fig. 36 Heroine Hu Xiang-feng goes to fight a group of skeletons before getting 223
the magical herbal grass in The White Bone Swords (1963)
Fig. 37 Monsters in The Buddha's Palm series 223

Fig. 38 The magical power of the “Two Flyings”: Directionless Flying rings” and 223
“Nine Ropes Flying Bells”
Fig. 39 Grandmaster Gu Han-yun’s lecture in The Buddha Palm series. 224

Fig. 40 The villain “Iron Face” Luo in The Furious Buddha’s Palm 224

Fig. 41 A medium-closeup of the hands playing lute and a back shot of the evil 235
lord of lute shows the mystery of the villain.
Fig. 42 Split screen creates the psychology of paranoia of the hero Lü Teng-kong 235

Fig. 43 The mise-en-scène of The Six Fingered Lord of the Lute 236

Fig. 44 A meticulous non-diegetic montage of symbolic apocalypse, a political 237

commentary and a sign of cat and mouse game.
Fig. 45 The "political slogan” in Ghost Slave's cave 238

Fig. 46 An expansive wide shot shows Ghost Slave roaming alone on the 238
mountains by the sea.
Fig. 47 Nie Zheng and his final fight are blocked by columns or bamboo curtain 283

Fig. 48 Wooden door blinds, big columns and silkscreen blinds are recurring 283
motifs of the grandness of History in the film
Fig. 49 This act of non-diegetic performance of slashing his eyes is to be 284
seen/known in History
Fig. 50 The opening titles of Boxer from Shantung 298

xii
Fig. 51 The dialectic use of high angle and low angle in Boxer from Shantung 298

Fig. 52 With the imagery of stairs, the dialectic use of high-low angle captures 299
Ma’s rise and fall
Fig. 53 The red and black and white screens show the death agony of one of the 317
queer Manchurian martial artists Yu Bi
Fig. 54 Queer Manchurian martial artists Yu Bi (left) and Ba Gang (right) are 317
emotionless in front of prostitutes
Fig. 55 After the death of Yu Bi and Ba Gang, two heroes leave happily with their 317
girlfriends. The gender normalcy is reaffirmed

xiii
 INTRODUCTION

The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, one of the biggest protests and

demonstrations in Hong Kong history, started from March 2019 and lasted until July 2021. In

response to the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill on extradition, pro-democracy protestors and

legislators feared that the bill amendment would erode the “one country two systems” principle

and further restrict the already limited freedom of speech, press, and demonstration. The

protestors began with a sit-in at the government headquarters, followed by a series of local

demonstrations. Even though the Hong Kong government suspended the bill, many spontaneous

protests pushed for its complete withdrawal. Scuffles between the protestors and the police and

between different political values and beliefs continued in the street. Leaderless and spontaneous,

protestors disturbed local businesses that were affiliated with mainland Chinese capital and the

pro-Beijing parties. More violent action from both sides broke out: the police used rubber-bullets

to shoot unarmed protestors and journalists, the sieges of two universities, fights between

civilians broke out, the storming of the legislative Council, and the suicides of many young

people. Due to the introduction of a national security bill for Hong Kong in May 2020, more

activists and young protestors were arrested and prosecuted. Although no one was killed by the

police force, disillusionment, despair and paranoia continue to haunt Hong Kong while law and

order is maintained.

While it is a complicated topic that is beyond the scope of this dissertation, what

interested me is the language of the protests in Hong Kong. The political slogans in Hong Kong

protests are flooded with melodramatic rhetoric. Slogans like “Hong Kong people, REVENGE”

1
(xianggang ren baochou) and “Dirty cops, may your whole family die” (hei jing si quanjia) were

inspired by the vocabulary of the popular genre of wuxia. Wuxia is derived from the Chinese

words wu denoting martial qualities and xia denoting chivalry and unconditional righteousness.

The rhetoric in wuxia stories often refers to heroic deeds. In the recent protests, people who

committed suicide for the protests or fought against the police force were called yi shi (a

righteous man), yong wu (the valiant one), or xia shi (a chivalrous man). Radical protestors

adopted the slogan of “Be Water”, which is a strategy by Bruce Lee’s martial arts and

philosophy and refers to move quckily and adapt to fluid siutation to confuse the police. Because

of this, the Hong Kong Be Water Act of 2019 was introduced by Republican senators like Josh

Hawley, Rick Scott, and John Cornyn in the United States in order to call for sanctions and the

freezing of assets of Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese officials who were involved in the

suppression of protestors. In many protest propagandas, protestors drew references to Marvel

Comic heroes, and considered themselves as having an “endgame” with the Beijing puppet

government in Hong Kong. Some even claimed that it was like they were playing the video game

Grand Theft Auto with only one life (Engelbrecht and Marcolini 2019). Militant protestors in the

surrounded universities made use of bricks, stones, and even arrows and catapults to attack the

police force, but to little avail.

Popular culture references used in political movements are not new in Hong Kong. From

the June Fourth Vigil (1991), which adpated the theme song from Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a

Time in China (1991) with revised lyrics to protest the ‘June Fourth crackdown’, to the Umbrella

Movement (2014), that used a popular tune from the local band Beyond’s “Under a Vast Sky”

(hai kuo tian kong) to register the dream of democracy and universal suffrage, popular culture

was part and parcel of the political expression of Hong Kong protests. Despite its political use,

2
popular culture in Hong Kong, as a mode of expression, is separated from radical politics.

Through different practices of articulation (as what Cultural Studies scholar would argue),

people may produce different meanings and awry readings in their consumption of popular

culture. For example, working-class people in Hong Kong, India, or in the ghettoo in the United

Statese may feel empowered in watching Bruce Lee’s films (Vitali 2005). They learn much

about nationalism and disciplinary bodies. Despite that, the foundation of popular culture, which

is the monopoly on the everyday lives by commodity and consumer culture, would overwrite the

fatansy of empowerment. Popular culture, in the case of Hong Kong, replaces other cultural

practices like strong working-class culture, unions, labor culture or democratic economy. Popular

culture became an expression of an apolitical worldview on the one hand, and empowerment on

the other. During the 1960s and 1970s, Hong Kong-made wuxia films were exported to overseas

Chinatowns, resonated with African Americans in the ghetto, and became a Chinese national

image in the Third World (van Staden 2017; Prashad 2001). Chang Cheh’s movies and films

featuring Bruce Lee became a fad (Desser 2000). The images of the Chinese were no longer

creepy stereotypes like Fu Manchu but became strong masculine men. Chinese martial arts

including Hung Ga, Wing Chun, shadow boxing and other Shaolin Kungfu styles became a

worldwide fashion.

However, my question is if wuxia movies were so nationalistic or anti-colonial, why were

they so popular in such a British colony? If it is an anti-colonial genre, why could they be made

in this “watchtower” and intelligence center of the Cold War? Is the action in wuxia films

embodying universal and ideologically free language? In this dissertation, I take the genre as a

prominent part of Hong Kong popular culture, and lay bare the political foundation on which the

3
genre flowered in the colony. I argue that wuxia is more than a film genre and is also a discourse

of security, that was conditioned and cultivated by the colonial government and the Cold War.

To understand why and how this genre is a discourse of security, the foundations of the

entire genre must be rethought. Instead of disrupting the existing law and order, wuxia heroes

seek to justify and uphold a particular political, social, and economic order. In this attempt, with

their magical or super-human power, they distort that part of the social and historical

contradictions – the systemic and structural power network like fedaulism, patriarchy, racism,

bureaucracy, capitalism, colonialism, orthe Cold War, likely to oppose their main

presuppositions. In other words, an individual or small group of villains is culapable rather than

the structure of the social system. Although the colonial government and the Cold War powers

did not directly dictate what a wuxia hero should be, the wuxia hero, in mainstream cinema,

created a false consciousness among the group (like the working-class people) it represents and

in doing so empowers the group that it dominates. For instance, even though Chang Cheh’s

movies represented and empowered a lot of working-class people, the filmmaker himself

supported modern capitalism and capitalists and presented them as humane and compassionate

(Chang 1989:33). Bruce Lee himself was educated in an elite school in Hong Kong and the Unite

Statese, while many of his fans were uneducated. The wuxia genre drew its ideas from many

sources like science, religion, culture, history, etc, which was sanctioned or conditioned by the

colonial government and the Cold War. The colonial government was run by members of an

alien power and its local collaborators. They were in predominant control of and had access to

capital to suit the interests of the ruling power. The Cold War powers like the U.S. and the U.K.

reinforced the existing colonial power and endorsed a new set of antitheses in the colonized

society in the name of security. However, I do not mean that the wuxia genre was molded by the

4
government and the Cold War power. Wuxia heroes in films never say how great the U.S. is or

how good the laissez-faire system is. Instead, it is a constant reshaping and shifting process, out

of which the popular text and the colonial and Cold War power interact, negotiate, and are

imbricated with each other.

I am arguing that the wuxia genre, the colonial government, and the capitalist free world

powers in the Cold War share the same concentric field to implement and reinforce their cultural

domination during the Cold War. The law and order the heroes uphold would never hurt the

interest of the ruling classes. The security the wuxia genre proposed reinforced the existing

division of labor and social classes. It means a worker is forever a worker even if he or she has

magical powers in a wuxia film. Because of the mediation of the discourse of security,

nationalism in Hong Kong could go hand in hand with colonialism. Contrary to the Third World

independent movements, Chinese nationalism was upheld by the colonial government. The

dominant part of nationalism in Hong Kong became a reactionary culture and abstract

philosophy, anchored upon neo-Confucianism. It is no accident that the wuxia genre was full of

Confucian lessons and Han-centeric nationalism. Conservative and reactionary nationalism

would never threaten the existing government or its capitalist Cold War alliance. Cultural

nationalism could not help Hong Kong to decolonize; it would only postpone, delay, and cancel

any possibility to think reflexively about the relations between the colonizer and the colonized.

The wuxia genre, the colonial government, and the capistlist Cold War power formed a

concentric field, using existing cultural fantasies (wuxia fictions, plays, and films), to co-opt the

Chinese bourgeois, elites and capitalists (writers, filmmakers, studio companies, right-wing

unions, media owners, publishers, etc), while forging the national subjectivity in an abstract

sense (cultural China), and challenging the global and regional power dynamic toward the

5
obstruction and suppression of social revolution and communist movements. This trinity could

help channel the energies into economic development and modernization, while stifling real

possibilities of decolonization and genuine social revolution.

Wuxia, as an ideology, helped make and shape post-colonial Hong Kong. This popular

genre had a huge impact on shaping the ideology and the status-quo in Hong Kong, and as such

it is an important site to investigate the socio-political history of Hong Kong. Ironically, the

protestors in the anti-extradition movement shared with the establishment the same wuxia

rhetoric, one that emphasized the law and order secured by wuxia heroes. Both camps in the

movement used similar rhetoric to point their fingers at each other, accusing the other party for

disruption of the community’s law and order. Protestors accused the police of doing a bad job to

maintain law and order, as they themselves were criticized by civilians for disrupting the

community’s order. Protestors accused policemen of being sexual perverts and rapists, while the

establishment camp criticized mischievous protestors for having promiscuous sex. Sexual abuse

and breaking up the order of the community were two common crimes in many wuxia films. The

conflict between protestors and the establishment shares the elitist point of view. Protestors

dismiss police officers as lowly educated, while police officers and officials display contempt for

protestors’ irrationalism and immaturity. Another common wuxia rhetoric - the traitor, which

was inherited from the Second World War and wuxia fictions and films, was also used by both

camps. Pro-Beijing legislators and officers were considered traitors, selling out Hong Kong to

Beijing. A similar rhetoric like Han-traitor (hanjian) was applied to the protestors, who sought

help from conservative parties in the United States and Britain. The common perception of Hong

Kong shared by both the establishment and the protestors is that it is a city of stability and

prosperity (wending fanrong), and that the rule of law (fazhi) represents the core values of Hong

6
Kong. The protestors criticized capitalism not because of its exploitative system but because pro-

Beijing capital was disrupting the local community. Some protestors even claimed that the

United States is the true protector of Hong Kong and its system of capitalism, although in my

view it is clear that the United States supported Hong Kong’s autonomy only for its own interests

and trade agreements. Both sides in Hong Kong thought that capitalism should be secured in

good hands as the Hong Kong Basic Law ensured that Hong Kong will retain its capitalistic

economic system, legal system, and freedoms, as a special administrative region of China for

fifty years until 2046. These are the fundamental values propagated by wuxia films, which makes

the genre the backbone of the Hong Kong ideology, supporting the existing law and order,

celebrating heroic deeds and moral values, and yet curtailing any possibilities of rocking the

boat, which along with the junk boat was the symbol of Hong Kong. It is high time to consider

the material foundation of that ideology. To rock the boat is to see its materiality. During the

Covid-19 pandemic, what concerns me is not Hong Kong identity and its politics, but a large

group of working-class people who are never well-equipped and can never work from home.

Without considering the materiality (construction workers, delivery drivers, postmen, street

peddlers, nurses, firemen, homecare workers, migrant workers, et cetera), any academic

discussion of justice and heroes is meaningless.

Even though wuxia films have gained more academic attention in recent decades, the

political relationship between the genre and the colonial government and the Cold War context

was often ignored. Many Chinese-language books like Jia Leilei’s and Chen Mo’s cover the

hundred-year history of martial arts films. They are structured by different periodizations, such

as the golden age of martial arts cinema in Hong Kong featuring directors like Chang Cheh and

7
King Hu in the late 1960s. These film historians transposed onto the “star directors” of this

golden age the exceptional quality and consistant standard that film theory ascribes to the auteur.

These auteurs and wuxia films were born out of nowhere and were exclusively those that have

strong transnational circulation and influences from Hollywood. This narration of the genre’s

development assumes that there is only one standard form of production value and aesthetic as if

the previous Cantonese wuxia films of the late 1950s and early-mid 1960s, due to their repetition

of themes, motifs and limited budgets, could be dismissed as inferior and meaningless or seen as

simply paving the way to the golden period of the late 1960s. With this totalizing periodization,

scholars often ignore the fact that during the golden period of wuxia films like The Burning of

the Red Lotus Temple series (1928-1931) or the “New Wuxia Century” (1965-76) led by Chang

Cheh and launched by the Shaw Brothers studio could take place only on the basis of the

restructuring and consolidation of capital and the eradication of leftist riots both in mainland

China and Hong Kong. For instance, the first golden age of the wuxia films in the late 1920s in

Shanghai, the Kuomintang’s forceful unification of the country in 1926-1927 and the massacre

of its communist allies helped maintain the circulation of national capital. While Chang Cheh’s

One Armed Swordsman was breaking box office records in theaters, the leftist riots in 1967 in

Hong Kong were suppressed in the streets. Around the same time, various Southeast Asian

countries that were the main markets for Hong Kong films like Indonesia, Malaysia and

Singapore experienced similar suppression of leftist uprisings or political movements. During

Operation Coldstore in Singapore, many dissident students and people allegedly affiliated with

communists were arrested and detained without trial in 1963. The violent anti-communist purge

and the ultra-right-wing government rose to power in Indonesia in 1965. The Second Malayan

Emergency was launched between the Malayan Communist Party and Malaysian federal security

8
forces from 1968 to 1989. In short, the periodization and classification of wuxia films in these

monographs hides the material basis and conflicts on which the rise of wuxia films was founded.

Generally, film scholars approach wuxia or martial arts cinema in two ways, mainly

focusing on analysing the form and the content of the films. Issues of the body and the aesthetics

of a “cinema of attractions” have been raised by Western critics. Stuart Kaminsky compared

kung fu films with the musical (Kaminsky 1984). David Bordwell’s notion of “burst-pause-

burst” (Bordwell 2001), and Leon Hunt’s concepts of archival authenticity, cinematic

authenticity, and corporeal authenticity (Hunt 2003), drew attention to the attraction of the bodily

movement and feeling of dynamism created by film techniques. Bordwell defines Hong Kong

action movies as registering the essence of cinema because the filmic forms display the

concreteness and readability of physical action. Hunt takes the genre as a bodily genre,

exhibiting “extraordinary, expressive, spectacular, sometimes even grotesque” bodies (2).

However, this type of aesthetic analysis has displaced attention to the narrative. In most wuxia

films, heroes always have their reasons and moral messages to justify their violent actions. The

violence is not senseless fighting and killing. Formal analysis risks separating the form from the

content or over-emphasizing the body over the mind. Because of this separation, film critics

could not illustrate why the director Wu Pang, who created the Wong Fei-hung series, was

particularly fond of using a lot of long shots and long takes to capture Guangdong folk culture

and martial arts. The film form is inseparable from the message the directors attempted to

convey. Also, the generalization of the aesthetic seems to ignore the distinctive styles among

different action choreographers and stunt coordinators.

In terms of content, film scholars focus on wuxia’s national sentiment and anxiety. In his

monograph Chinese Wuxia Tradition, Stephen Teo argues that “the wuxia film was and is

9
regarded as a national form, fulfilling a nationalist desire for self-strengthening at a time when

China was weak” (Teo 2009:8). He continues to say that martial arts cinema “engenders a sense

of abstract nationalism in Chinese audiences who do not live in China itself. It gives to these

diasporic audiences the possibility for identification with a China that exists only in the

imagination and is effectively an imagined nationalism” (65). I agree with him that the genre

“transmutes history and engenders historicism” (6), but under what circumstance do we talk

about this aspect of “abstractness” of nationalism? Hong Kong was not a political vaccum. How

and under what power formation could diasporic audiences be led to identify with “abstract”

nationalism rather than “a China that exists” in reality? The abstractness is exactly the result or

effect of the colonial structure and the Cold War mechanism that forestalls any radical

potentiality. When censors censored the films, what came to their mind was the affinity to

contemporary times, places, and characters that may incite identification with contemporary

Hong Kong, or with “China” as an existing geopolitical entity on either side of the Cold War

divide. Also, which political aspects and subjects of nationalism are contained in the wuxia

genre? Teo does not discuss the leftist wuxia films, which, although sharing similar tropes and

motifs with the mainstream wuxia films, had different approaches to nationalism. Leftist wuxia

films, as I will illustrate in Chapter 1, take ordinary workers and collectivity as the agent of

nationalism, while mainstream wuxia films like those by Chang Cheh focus on individual heroes,

and ethnonational values like Confucianism. Teo brings up multiple strands of theories and

approaches that shape the genre, such as historicism, orientalism, nationalism, and

transnationalism (8). However, the issue of colonialial capitalism is overlooked. Since he has

neglected colonialism and its complex relationship to historicism, he could not accurately

10
historicize the nationalism “that is not tied to Mainland China or Taiwan from the vantage point

of Hong Kong” (66).

Siu-Leung Li questions this rigid notion of nationalism and uses a post-colonial

framework to lay bare the ambivalent foundation of the national identity of the wuxia genre.

Following Kwai-cheung Lo’s concept of void China, which sees Bruce Lee’s body as an

interpretative space, revealing the hollowness of Hong Kong identity (Lo 1996), Li argues that

“the Kungfu imaginary is imbued with an underlying self-dismantling operation that denies its

own effectiveness in modern life” (Li 2001:516). The cultural construct of the Chineseness and

the over-the-top fantasy of the martial arts in kungfu films, for Li, presents Hong Kong as a

defusing hybrid other within the monolithic and dominant centralizing Chinese ideology (516).

While he questions the foundation of the Chinese-ness in action films, he has to first assume a

monolithic Chinese ideology or nationalist framework before considering Hong Kong kungfu

film as a hybrid other. Yet, is Chinese ideology or the national framework that monolithic? What

if the assumption of a monolithic nationalism is a collaborative product with the colonial

government? Li could not explain why the wuxia genre, set in a premodern time and place, could

help Hong Kong Chinese reclaim the imaginary and physical power that contributes to the

formation of a local/ national subjectivity in the modern world, unless he takes into account the

role of the colonial power and the capitalistic Cold War powers who contributed to the formation

of the reactionary Chinese national ideology. That ideology on the one hand empowers diasporic

Chinese with a cultural essence and tradition like Confucianism, and on the other hand curtails

any radical and social revolutions. The postcolonial framework, deconstructing the national

framework yet assuming a singular national ideology, cannot understand that the same hybridity

could manifest in socialist films in Communist China. In terms of aesthetics, the hybridity

11
exhibited in socialist films, like using Hollywood narration, Classical Hollywood continuity

editing, and even a Japanese cinematographer, is no less than those in Hong Kong kungfu films.

Man-Fung Yip combines these two approaches and attempts to analyze the film form and

map Hong Kong modernity onto martial arts films. He parallels the rise of Hong Kong’s

economic status in the late 1960s with the hardworking, disciplinary bodies in martial arts films

and the rapid editing style, especially in the films produced by the Shaw Brothers studio. Yip

states,

It is my contention that Hong Kong martial arts films of the period, marked by new aesthetic

strategies and thematic concerns as well as by new transnational formations and practices, are best

conceptualized as a mass cultural expression of Hong Kong’s colonial, urban-industrial modernity

– of its experiential qualities, its social and ideological contradictions, as well as its heightened

circulation of capital, goods, people, information, and technologies.

(Yip 2017:2)

I agree with how he connects the aesthetic to the material, socio-cultural basis, but his notion of

film form and film modernity is too limited to investigate the colonial modernity within the

background of the Cold War. His selection of the Mandarin wuxia films, produced mainly by the

Shaw Brothers, which was one of the largest studios in Cold War Asia, is limited to those

featuring sensational and visceral styles stressing impact, speed, and other sensory stimulations.

His whole argument is based upon an assumption that the Mandarin wuxia films and the social

experience in the late 1960s were the epitomes of capitalistic modernity. The specular

relationship between the film texts and the socio-cultural experiences manifests a historical

fallacy. It is as if Hong Kong’s modernity and capitalism started in the late 1960s. Yip cannot

12
justify why the wuxia genre could be the cultural representation of the colonial and urban-

industrial modernity, but not other film genres like crime, musical, youth film, sci-fi, and

sexploitation, defined by the heightened sense of individualism, competition and conquest, and

ascetic discipline. What about Wu Pang’s Wong Fei-hung series in the 1950s? Although Wu

used a lot of wide shots and long takes to capture martial arts movements, in his autobiography

he claims that he modernized the genre by bringing realist action to the screen. Yip limits the

notion of modernity to a cluster of films and film forms which were made and circulated under a

specific geopolitical circumstance.

Also, Yip echoes Teo’s concept of abstract nationalism and says,

The cultural nationalist mode of Hong Kong films (and other forms of mass culture) was not so

much politically motivated as driven by commercial considerations. Given the experience of exile

and diaspora shared by Chinese migrants, including those who fled to Hong Kong in the postwar

era, it comes as hardly a surprise that an abstract, depoliticized “cultural China” would appeal to

them, who saw in it an opportunity to affirm their Chineseness by identifying with an imaginary

cultural ideal without committing themselves to a particular state or ideology.

(Yip 11)

Ironically, the separation of the political and the commercial results in keeping the

capitalistic subjectivity in those martial arts films he analyzes away from any ideology. The

separation is exactly the result of the colonial governance and the Cold War consensus that

“cultural China” was in no way political but only cultural. The Confucian values, the Qing

officers, and the Buddhist monks in martial arts films are not politically charged. Yip’s specular

analysis produces a reductionist allegorical reading, that puts the colonial reality and the Cold

War in a bracket.

13
 Many other film scholars take the wuxia genre as a kind of Third World allegory and

concentrate on their consumption and articulation in the black community. Stuart Kaminsky

(1984) sees the parallels between African Americans’ oppressed position and Bruce Lee’s

characters in the films. Vijay Prashad analyses how Enter the Dragon resonates with the

Vietnamese guerillas (Prashad 2001:127). Bruce Lee’s signature martial arts style Jeet Kune Do

inspired many young people in the Third World, because it was all about the simplicity,

directness and non-classical instruction of kungfu, which was otherwise bounded by different

habits of hierarchy and rigid training (132). “Bruce, in the context of the Red Guards and of the

North Vietnamese army, appeared on the screen to young Asian Americans as ‘the brother who

showed America that Asian people can kick some ass’” Prashad states (140). In the context of

the ghetto in the United States, however, as Sheng-mei Ma (2000) points out in his analysis of

the yellow kungfu and black jokes in recent kungfu films, the Afro-Asia connection at best

expresses the needs of a consumerist yet multicultural society. They direct attention away from

political and socio-economic conditions (Ma 2000:241). The circulation and consumption of

Hong Kong martial arts films in the Third World has to fulfill one basic presupposition. The anti-

establishment sentiments in yellow kungfu or black jokes have to be defanged. They can only

arise in the process of normalization and co-option.

Can the wuxia genre be considered as a Third World national allegory, as expounded by

Frederick Jameson? He proposes that reading national allegory in the Third World is a way of

reading politically and closing the public-private split. “All third-world texts are necessarily, I

want to argue, allegorical, and in a very specific way: they are to be read as what I will call

national allegories, even when…their forms develop out of predominantly western machineries

of representation” (Jameson 1986:69). He continues to analyze how even the Third World texts,

14
which are seemingly private and invested with a properly libidinal dynamic, necessarily project a

political dimension in the form of national allegory. On the surface the wuxia genre justifies what

Jameson suggests. The wuxia films and novels are always national allegories. Heroes are fighting

against Manchurians, Japanese imperialists, collaborators, and bandits. The wuxia genre is

always about nationalist sentiment, registering the national pride and shame in the face of

modernity, like the notorious name of “sick men of Asia.” However, national allegory in the

third world, including Hong Kong may not necessarily oppose first world cultural imperialism

(68). Ironically, the matter of life-and-death in the texts is national but it is always conditioned

by the colonial governance and the Cold War power, which Jameson does not pay attention to.

Also, the “national” in the national allegory is problematic during the Cold War because the Cold

War in Chinese contexts means the continuation of the civil war between the Nationalist Party

and the Communist Party. Both of them in some way or another fought imperialists and had

different interpretations and historical subjectivities of their own nationalism. The fact that the

colonial Asiatic mode of production was supported by the colonial-Orientalists problematizes

Jameson’s concept of national allegory. In the next chapter, we will see how colonial officers

and censors in Hong Kong wanted to keep the time, place, and characters distant, abstract, and

familial in order to prevent any radical identification with political sensibilities.

Despite his over-generalization of the Third World texts, Jameson’s point about the

political reading of allegory helps me see a popular genre like wuxia from a different perspective.

If we take the wuxia genre as an allegory, it is never a one-dimensional process or a specular

reflection of its material basis. It must be “deciphered by interpretive mechanisms that

necessarily entail a whole social and historical critique of our current first-world situation”

15
(Jameson 79). I practice this type of reading of popular texts as suggestd by Jameson by situating

wuxia films within the colonial reality and the Cold War geopolitical conditions.

Reviewing and complicating all the above studies, I interrogate the wuxia genre from a

political perspective. My focus is not placed just on the wuxia genre itself, but also on the

discourse of wuxia. I argue that wuxia sensation in Hong Kong was a product of the apparatus of

security. From personal to social and geopolitical, the ideology of security was conditioned and

reinforced by the Hong Kong colonial state and the Cold War. My argument attempts to close

the text-politics split and rewrite and rethink the production of wuxia films within a politico-

cultural framework of history. My intervention is threefold. First, through rewriting the history of

Hong Kong martial arts cinema, my project questions the assumption that action cinema is

“universal” or that action aesthetics entail no language barrier which viewers from different

cultural backgrounds can enjoy all over the world. Chang Cheh, the key director in making

martial arts films in the late 1960s, once argued that action films were an important cinema

export, because “the physical movements are universally understood, unencumbered by language

or geographical restrictions” (Chang 2002: 126). Scholars like Kwai-Cheung Lo and Man-Fung

Yip also illustrated how the “universal body language could overcome cultural and linguistic

barriers” (Lo 2005: 151), and martial arts films “transcend all sorts of boundaries – geographical,

political, and cultural” (Yip 2017: 150). In fact, I show that the genre is full of localized political

messages. My project is to interrogate the universality of actions films, of which the martial arts

genre is one type, through political readings.

Second, this dissertation positions the film text within the nexus of the colonial power

and the Cold War. Therefore, my textual analysis will show how the colonial and the Cold War

16
hegemony left an indelible imprint on the local popular genres and how popular culture and

political power reinforce each other. The making of righteousness in martial arts cinema is a

nodal point to see the inflection and reproduction of colonial and Cold War powers in popular

culture. Popular culture, therefore, was a historical and colonial construct that was far from being

ideologically free. The justice that the wuxia heroes upheld in the films, are constantly

conditioned by and conditioning the colonial reality and the Cold War. The relation of the film

texts to their outside is not necessarily causal, specular or analogical, but decentered

reinforcement.

Third, emphasizing the political history of martial arts films does not mean directors and

producers were necessarily politically conscious. On the contrary, many of them were politically

unconscious, to borrow the term from Jameson’s Political Unconscious. My political rewriting

and re-reading pertain to not only the themes and motifs of the wuxia film texts, but to the social

ecology of the wuxia culture. I thus engage in detailed historical studies of various neglected

historical and political issues, ranging from the history of film censorship, the history of martial

arts clubs, the film adaptation of martial arts fictions, the influence of Peking opera, the myths

about secret societies, the biographies of martial arts film directors, and the transnational

distribution networks in Southeast Asia. Situating the complex political nature of martial arts

cinema under the British rule of Hong Kong during the Cold War, I examine the genre beyond

the films’ formal styles, their nationalist themes, and the social framework of Hong Kong’s

modernity that contextualized their production. Rather, I show how issues such as class

struggles, radical nationalism, and social revolution were constanted repressed in their films and

how the films promote an ideology of Han ethno-nationalism, authoritarianism, and elitism, all

of which betrays the influence of a conservative tradition in Hong Kong under the Cold War

17
hegemony. I propose that martial arts films should be understood as a site to look at how power

was imbricated between the producers, filmmakers, studios, the colonial government, and the

United States in producing stories of justice, security and heroes. The reactionary nature of the

genre struck a chord with directors who were elite and cultural nationalists. The global

circulation of martial arts films was secured by the collaboration between film studio bosses and

“Free World” authorities.

But why wuxia films, and not kungfu films? Most 1950s Wong Fei-hung films are now

considered as kungfu films. The chapter “The Rise of Kungfu” in Stephen Teo’s monograph

starts with the Wong Fei-hung series. He argues, “the kungfu film is a part of the tradition of

wuxia but it is the latter which is the primary subject and the key to the martial arts cinema” (Teo

2009: 6). His note takes wuxia and kungfu as distinctive and mutually connected genres. A

teleological development of two genres is cleared stated: wuxia is the tradition while kungfu is

its derivatives. However, his understanding of wuxia and kungfu is not based on an historical

account of the terms, and is limited mostly to an aesthetic and stylistic account. Drawing the

aesthetic distinction between wuxia and kungfu films, Teo presents a generalized picture: wuxia

films used swords, while kung fu films used punches and kicks; wuxia films celebrate fighting

style from the Wudang school, while kungfu from the Shaolin school; wuxia films are more

fantasies set in ancient China, while kungfu films are set in the contemporary modern world (Teo

4).

There are three reasons for my choice of using the term wuxia. First, historically, wuxia

designates many films featuring hand combat. Kwan Tak-hing, who played Wong Fei-hung was

called a wuxia star in the film’s publicity materials. The term wuxia was also used to describe

18
Bruce Lee in the early 1970s. In the news report about his death, a reporter praised him as “the

international well-known wuxia star” (guoji wuxia juxing). Second, the term “Kungfu” was more

a medical term than a physical culture in the late nineteenth century. Kungfu was a term used in

Southern China to describe disciplinary and medical practices for longevity and good health

(Judkins 2014). The term was spread in western media as early as 1900 (Davies 1900). The term

kungfu was widely spread in the United States’ physical culture before Bruce Lee’s

popularization of the term. It was an expedient use by many Chinese martial artists who used the

term to refer to Chinese boxing in the 1960s. It got more circulation when Bruce Lee wrote

articles on and published a book about Chinese martial arts and used the term Gung Fu. Kungfu,

then, became a term to designate Chinese martial arts and the name of a genre. But wuxia or at

least its variants like xia (knight-errant), youxia (wandering, roving xia), ruxia (Confucian-xia),

or jianxia (sword-xia) has been used in Chinese literature, opera, and history for centuries. There

are historical and official records about xia or the knight-errant since Shiji, or the Records of the

Grand Historian, which is a monumental history book written around 94 BC by the Western Han

Dynasty historian Sima Qian. Xia have long featured in literary and philosophical traditions. The

term wuxia was coined by the Japanese as a neologism in the late Meiji period at the turn of the

twentieth century. Originally, it was bukyo, deriving from the words bu denoting samurai and

kyo denoting manly character and gallantry. The term was used in militarism adventure stories to

denote heroism and gallantry. In the late nineteenth century, Chinese students and scholars

translated that into wuxia. Therefore, it was a product of translation in the face of Japanese

imperialism and colonialism. More importantly, wuxia can help me reconsider the political

nature of the national. When nationalism or the national framework is often criticized as

monolithic or hegemonic by scholars of postcolonial studies, the wuxia genre, as a token of

19
national cinema, is a site to investigate what type of political nature of the national it upholds,

which heroes it glorifies, and in what way wu (martial quality or violence) and xia (justice,

heroism, and chivalry) collaborate. Wuxia, therefore, is my point of departure to interrogate the

genre and its power dynamic with the colonial government and the Cold War.

Following my choice of using the term wuxia, I set my theoretical framework in Chapter

1 to rethink the relationship between martial arts films, the colonial government, and the Cold

War. I propose two basic grammars in the wuxia discourse that resonated with the colonial

government and the Cold War; the concept of “wu/xia” and the discourse of “law outside the

Law.” Wu/xia is a process to generate moral and cultural value to justify the use of violence, so

bodily violence is always morally and culturally justified. The discourse of “law outside the

Law” signals a process of distancing, separating, and delaying of time and place from the central

authority, the system, and the Law. The law is a proxy of the Law, and both of them are mutually

dependent. It is also a technique of narration, creating the unofficial, anecdotal wuxia heroes, an

agent, a safe proxy, or a middleman to control, regulate, and produce knowledge and culture for

viewers. These are the keys to understanding the mechanism of the construction of heroes under

the censorship of film in colonial Hong Kong and the Cold War regulations against Communist

infiltration in Hong Kong.

To understand the mechanism of security in maintaining a community’s order in the

wuxia genre, no better example would be Wu Pang’s Wong Fei-hung series (1949-1961). As a

father figure, Wong Fei-hung is a philanthropist-master type of hero. The series has the coherent

theme and form centered on the stability of the community. Studying the history of southern

martial arts, and the role of the Cantonese-speaking film industry in Chapter 2, I suggest that the

20
discourse of nationalism was divided into two in both sectors. One of them is ethno-nationalism,

defined by Confucian values and Han-centered culture. Another is liberal-bourgeois nationalism,

represented by the May Fourth intellectuals and scholars. They promoted ideas like anti-

superstition and anti-feudalism, and anti-imperialism. Wu Pang rode over these two conflicting

nationalist discourses and invented a community that is abstracted from any radical politics.

Being a community leader, Wong Fei-hung, who is a philanthropist and a martial arts master

prone to collaboration or even to collusion with whatever government is in power, maintained

the community’s law and order. The security of community also informed the film form. It

provided audiences with an “authentic” Guangdong culture in a community, which was

established abstractly at the expense of concrete common people.

In Chapter 3, we will see how the security of the community, in terms of form and

content, could be questioned and challenged. In the early 1960s, a new sub-genre wuxia theme

emerged (1961-1965) which focused on apocalyptic martial arts worlds, where no master-

disciple relationship was guaranteed. Heroes are on a quest for a destructive weapon in the

martial arts world, indirectly expressing and responding to the horror and anxieties about the

possibility of nuclear annihilation and the Communist influence. Many of them were adapted

from Taiwanese martial arts novels, and were set in abstract times and places. In this chapter, I

will show that the politics of adaptation is a way of creating further distance from and reducing

Cold War anxieties and fears. To better understand this process of distancing and reducing, we

will analyse three films, or film series, in detail. These are The Mandarin Swords (1961), the

Buddha’s Palm series (1964, 1965, 1968), and the Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute (1965). Each of

them used different methods to contain the destructive weapons, from using Confucian lessons,

21
rebuilding a civilizing order to portraying the mass madness under the shadow of China’s first

atomic bomb test.

In the mid-1960s, the broken family and the dying hierarchy in the martial arts world

paved the way for Chang Cheh’s yanggang heroes, defined by their ultra-masculine and martial

qualities. Taken as an aesthetic term, yanggang is more a political term than an aesthetic one. In

Chapter 4, I will argue that the advent of the yanggang hero is a contemporary example of

“conservative revolution” that marks the continued culture wars in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Chang Cheh, as a secretary for the Cultural Bureau of the Nationalist Party in pre-civil war

Shanghai, continued this culture battle in Hong Kong in response to the Cultural Revolution in

mainland China. I will analyze his three films The Assassin (1967), The Boxer from Shandong

(1972), and Shaolin Martial Arts (1974) to demonstrate how Chang Cheh, the Shaw Brothers

studio, and the colonial government collaborated with each other to promote an ideal art form

that could channel out young peoples’ radical desires, preserve a Chinese cultural essence in the

face of westernization, and transcend materialist culture, while concurrently glorifying colonial

laissez-faire policies.

22
Fig. 1 - The term wuxia was used in this advertisement of Wong Fei Hung: The Eight Bandits (1968)

23
 CHAPTER 1 - Rethinking the Relationship between Martial Arts Films, the Colonial

Government and the Cold War

Politically reading films in the wuxia genre will reveal the historical contradictions in

films and the reality in colonial Hong Kong. This approach is by no means a strict binary.

Rather, in the force field of colonialism and the Cold War, the making of heroes in Hong Kong

was created, shaped, and defined in reference to, if not in contrast to, any undesirable images of

heroes. To rethink martial arts films politically, I suggest two concepts to help re-evaluate and

theorize the wuxia genre and the geopolitical contexts from which it emerged. They are wu/xia

(violence/ justice) and “the law outside the Law”. The former means the mutual dependence

between violence and the moral justification of it, while the latter is about creating a utopian

space distanced from the sovereign law or the ruling power. These two basic “grammars,” I

argue, were fundamental to the wuxia discourse. They were shared by both the colonial

government and the capitalistic Cold War powers. What the film texts and the contexts shared

were not only these “grammars” but the conditions of security that determined the application of

those grammars. Heroes in the films attempt to maintain law and order in the fictional world; the

colonial government censored films and regulated popular culture in order to produce a safe

environment; the Cold War power like the United States and the United Kingdom endorsed

strategies of containment to promote their Free World and Free Asia ideology in the name of

security.

In other words, what interests me is not the wuxia genre itself, but the discourse of wuxia.

I argue that it was a product of the apparatus of security, defined as part of the government

system in Hong Kong conditioned by the colonial state and the Cold War. The term “security” is

24
based upon Michel Foucault’s study of governmentality. As a form of governmentality, security

is not like the power of law and discipline:

…the law prohibits and discipline prescribes, and the essential function of security, without

prohibiting or prescribing, but possibly making use of some instruments of prescription and

probation, is to respond to a reality in such a way that this response cancels out the reality to

which it responds – nullifies it, or limits, checks, or regulates it. I think this regulation within the

elements of reality is fundamental in apparatuses of security.

(Foucault 2007: 47)

For Foucault, governmentality emerging in the eighteenth-century in the West was a positive

means for maintaining the function of government, associated with the willing participation of

the governed. It has a long history and has drawn support from the Christian pastorate,

diplomatic-military institutions and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century police. The fundamental

objective of governmentality is to ensure the mechanism of security as a natural phenomenon in

society. The power was not limited to a particular state, but the active consent and willingness of

individuals to participate in their own governance. Different from sovereign law and disciplinary

power, governmentality is, therefore, flexible and is instantiated by events, practices, and cases.

From the perspective of governmentality, Hong Kong is a suitable case to study.

Enjoying the policy of laissez-faire, Hong Kong is often celebrated as the model of the free

market with limited interference from the colonial state. However, in this chapter, I will show

that the apparatus of security, including ordinance, law, and censorship, employed different

forms of power to maintain law and order. Martial arts films promoted disciplinary power, the

25
censorship of films encouraged liberal use of power, and the Cold War regulated the overseas

markets and gathered intelligence information.

In the following, I will explain the terms “wu/xia” and “the law outside the Law” and

how they may be useful to investigate the discourse of wuxia in the colonial state. The colonial

government did not just “liberally” censor films, but it also sanctioned and secured a Chinese

culture and audience in Hong Kong. The capitalist side of the Cold War also applied similar

technology of government power to contain Communist China and overseas film markets. At the

end of this chapter, I will compare mainstream wuxia films to those more marginalized ones

produced and directed by Hong Kong leftist filmmakers and studios in the mid to late 1960s.

This comparison will reveal how the leftist wuxia films are important references made in a

differet ideological key to the mainstream wuxia films, and will help us understand why the

dominant wuxia genre was conservative and patriarchal under the colonial state during the Cold

War.

From wuxia to wu/xia

What is the wuxia genre in distinction from wu/xia? Wuxia is derived from the Chinese words wu

that denotes violence, martial qualities, and xia that denotes secular justice, chivalry and qualities

of heroism.1 It was originally coined by the Japanese as a neologism in the late Meiji period of

the late nineteenth century. Chinese writers and scholars translated them into Chinese and

retrospectively traced the history of wuxia to Chinese literature. Before moving on to my

1
The term xia is often used to translate foreign superhero movies like Batman (bianfu xia/ bat-xia), Iron Man (tiejia
qi xia/ iron-strange xia) and Spiderman (zhizhu xia/ spider-xia). It is used to describe people who are chivalric and
righteous. Xia is never used to define superman or almighty power. Xia is a secular moral code, which requires the
technique of training and efforts in order to maintain public order.

26
rethinking of wuxia as wu/xia, I start by analysing a common Chinese phrase that often describes

wuxia heroes: “seeing injustice on the road; drawing a knife to help” (lu jian buping,

badaoxiangzhu). In wuxia novels or everyday sayings, the phrase aptly captures the situation

where heroes come to help someone in need unconditionally.

First, the phrase means the heroes are on the road. Heroes in this sense are roving. The

phrase hints at an individual hero rather than a collective. In terms of action, it is immediate. The

just decision is made immediately. The hero jumps into action without calculating. It is because

the narrative of the story renders the violence or injustice to be objective. The hero can see a

crime, but not an invisible structural problem. It is not about bureaucracy, systematic racism, or

anything unseen. Also, justice is always defined by its negativity. When there is injustice on the

road, the subjectivity of the heroes is created and justice is served. The subjectivity of the hero is

not pro-actively made but always a defensive one. What does justice stand for in this phrase?

The absent hero? The weapon? The eyes? Or, who is the villain? Is it the road itself? Or the

injustice itself? These questions would help us generate more in-depth explorations of the wuxia

discourse. For now, what interests me is the weapon and the justification of using it in the face of

injustice.

Contemporary wuxia fiction authors and filmmakers who specialized in making wuxia

films have emphasized the importance of connecting violence with certain moral principles. Yu-

Sheng Leung, a new school martial arts fiction writer in the 1950s, mentioned that xia is the soul

while wu is the form; xia is the ends while wu is the means (Chen 2010: 1). Wu Pang, the film

director of the Wong Fei-hung series in the 1950s, writes in his autobiography that “Filmmakers

have their responsibility to promote and celebrate the spirit of militarism (shangwu jingshen) that

includes the protection of the weak, and chivalry and righteousness” (Wu 1995: preface). Chang

27
Cheh and King Hu, the two masters of martial arts films in the 1960s, insisted that their movies

were not violence for violence’s sake (Chang 1968:34; Leung 2007: 109). They assumed that the

violence used in martial arts films is indispensable from virtues and moral principles, which

often are Confucian values. The assumption is that the way to manifest righteousness is through

wu. Wu becomes a representation of xia. Therefore, the means-and-ends relationship is

established. In his study of wuxia fictions in Chinese literature, Chen Ping-Yuan understands the

wuxia stories as a literati’s dream, expressing their psychological needs (Chen 2010: 8). From

historians, poets, and playwrights to novelists, wuxia heroes are their ideal models to express

their unfulfilled dreams and heroism. However, in the history of wuxia literature, xia and wu

were not mutually dependent.

In its classical definition, xia in Chinese history and literature denotes an action rather

than a reaction. It is always proactive rather than a reaction to injustice. Xia does not necessarily

entail violence and martial arts. A political philosopher Han Fei (280 – 233 BC) puts xia as one

of the “five pests of society”: “xia yi wu fan jin”/ “transgressing the law of the land for using

wu.” Here, wu denotes the characteristic of aggressiveness and emulation, and the impulse of

helping the weak, rather than the means of violence. In The Records of the Grand Historian (or

Shiji), written by the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) official Sima Qian, xia was recorded in a

chapter “Biographies of the Knight-Errant” (Youxia Liezhuan) as members of a plebeian class in

reality. According to Sima Qian, xia is understudied by scholars and ministers, but they have

virtues like bravery, courage, humbleness, sacrifice, and are men of their word. They have no

swords, know no martial arts, lead a poor and marginal life, but they can offer unconditional help

to someone who is needy. Only assassins know martial arts and have mastered swordplay as

28
Sima Qian recorded in another chapter entitled “cike liezhuan”/ “Biographies of the Assassins.”

Echoing Sima Qian, Qian Mu (1895-1990), a modern Chinese historian and philosopher

explains, “Xia supports and patronizes swordsmen, but a swordsman who is supported and

patronized is not a xia” (Lin 1981: 7). The historical records of xia had ceased to exist in official

records since the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), while the stories of xia started to emerge in

the popular imaginary and in literary forms like folksongs, lyrics, poetry, essays, and novels.2

What I want to point out is that xia was about the virtue itself in its classical definition. Justice

lies in the xia’s promise, character, speech, and action rather than the sword or knife.

What is wu/xia? I argue that when the term wuxia was coined in the late Qing dynasty

adapted from the Japanese term, it became wu/xia. In the late Meiji period, the Japanese term

bukyo was used in the titles of a series of militaristic adventure stories to denote militaristic

virtues of heroism. Bu means samurai, while kyo denotes manly character. In Japanese kendo and

judo, physical training came to be subordinate to spiritual education. According to Yasuhiro

Sakaue, the aim of kendo, which relies on bushido, was “to clarify how to select life or death

when facing justice, to clarify what bushido is, to train in honour the virtue of the spiritual sword

and to be prepared to die for duty, and to train one’s spirit neither to seek to kill another nor to

prevent oneself from being killed” (Sakaue 2018: 16). Suffice it to say, kendo was one of the

notorious martial arts that allegedly contributed to Japanese imperialism. The do in kendo and

judo was all about spiritual and moral justification in using violence and weapons. It is not new

to use moral principles to justify violent acts. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

2
In the Tang dynasty (618-907), the images of xia and assassins converged. In the literary form of xia, utilising
swords has a moral meaning for the writers. In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Some xia characters in huaben
literature are timid, feeble-minded and dim-witted. In the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), heroes like Huang Tian-ba
live for power and fame, and work well with officials to uphold justice in gongan literature.

29
once said that “Justice without force is impotent.” What was new about wu/xia is that it is a

product of modernity and a reaction to Japanese imperialism. Much of the Chinese literature by

that time went by the name of xiayi (heroic chivalry) or youxia (roving xia). The linguistic shift

to wuxia was the hope that China could follow the modernization and militarism taking place in

Meiji Japan. The justice then lies no longer in virtue itself, but in the “knife,” the weapon or the

technology to achieve justice.

In the Republican era (1911-1949), modern wuxia fictions “gradually paid much more

attention to fighting skills and their details” (Chen 2010: 65). Because of the mass consumption

and production of wuxia fiction, more spectacular martial arts, emotional and sensational content

such as love triangles, and erotic and exotic characters began to be included in wuxia fictions.

Meanwhile, there were also religious messages and the moral content of the martial arts world to

offset them (Chen 2010: 61). Cinema, therefore, became a site to invest the genre with these

unlimited imaginative and spectacular attractions. Special effects, magic palms, wirework,

animation, erotic and exotic characters go hand in hand with moral lessons.

Owing to the abundant use of film forms and spectacular bodily movement, western

scholars like Stuart Kaminsky compared the kungfu films to the film genre musicals. Kaminsky

was the first to compare Bruce Lee to Fred Astaire. He thinks that kungfu films are violent myths

focusing on the choreography of battles while the dance musicals are full of solo numbers,

chorus number and dancing duos. Lee uses his staff, fists and nunchakus, while Astaire uses his

hats and cane. Lee is a ghetto figure while Astaire is a middle-class figure (Kaminsky 1984: 74).

Bérénice Reynaud even thinks that wuxia films invert “the terms of Laura Mulvey’s ground

breaking analysis…in the wuxia pian, exhibitionism is the privilege of the male, and it is the

fetishized spectacle of his body that ‘stops the narration’” (Bérénice 2003: 20). The filmic form

30
and bodies then became the site to study this cinema of attractions. Despite their interesting

analysis, what they miss is what my concept wu/xia proposes: the reinforcement between

violence and justice, or the form and content. They cannot be separated when trying to

understand the wuxia genre. One cannot write a history of martial arts films full of spectacular

bodies without considering their content, when filmmakers justify the use of violence in their

films by stating they have moral lessons. Although the fact that many martial arts films trade in

special effects and spectacular bodily movements is evident in Chinese film history, filmmakers

still need to justify their use of violence. Martial arts films that were criticized for being

“coarsely made and roughly produced”3 does not equal to them being senseless or commercial

trash as critics often argue. Counterintuitively, martial arts films are didactic.

In wu/xia, weapons are always moralized. Secret devices, poisons, drugs, mechanical

tricks and dungeons are used by an evil power while old swords and inner power represent the

righteousness of the heroes. Wu is often misunderstood as the combination of two Chinese

characters: zhi/stop and ge/ dagger-axe, which appear in a saying, “zhi ge wei wu”/ “stopping the

dagger-axe is wu”. It is a warning lesson that to stop violence is the aim of using violence. Chang

Cheh defends his use of cinematic violence in the same way:

Good wuxia films should first and foremost express the spirit of esteeming martial

qualities and knightly aspirations. They cannot have wu without xia (strictly speaking, zhi

ge wei wu. “Wu” is not making chaos but stopping chaos, so xia is not really violent). The

heroes that directors and editors promote should have the spirit of chivalry and rich

characters.

3
The term “coarsely made and roughly produced” or “cui zhi lan zao” is often used to describe the production value
of Cantonese films in the 1940s to 1950s. Some films were hastily made (within a week) in order to cash in star
images. Wuxia and opera singing films were two of the genres that were often hastily made.

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 (Chang 1968: 35)

However, this common saying is mistaken. The Chinese character wu is a compound ideograph

combing two pictographic characters zhi and ge. Zhi denotes foot rather than an impediment,

while ge means dagger-axe. Wu refers to military action rather than stopping a fight. The fact

that Chang Cheh misunderstood the word showcases the connection, the conflict, and the

interplay between wu and xia that most wuxia film directors uphold.

The moral lessons in the configuration of wu/xia is not limited to the wuxia genre. It can

be found in Hollywood westerns and spaghetti westerns. In A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a hero

with no name comes to a town at the US-Mexico border, sees the injustice, takes his gun, and

helps a poor family. Can a western hero be a wuxia hero? What is the balance between wu/xia?

American film critic Stephen Prince also talked about the relationship between violence and its

meaning. He argues that Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1968), especially the slow-motion

aesthetic in it, intends to wake up the audience to the violence that surrounds them in their

everyday lives and to darkern the genre of the western, but on the contrary, to many audience at

the time the film beautifies and glorifies violence. “Thus this aesthetic, when it becomes the

chief means for representing violent death, as it all too often has been, is an insufficient means

for proving the meaning and consequences of violence, should those be a filmmaker’s concern?”

(Prince 1998: 200). So what is the difference? The wu/xia is always calibrated by the existing

dominant values, which are conditioned by the definite power relationship between a film

industry, a specific government, and the Cold War. In the case of Chinese martial arts films in

Hong Kong, it is all about culturalization, defined by imbricated power dynamics. The difference

is not about that of weapons (gun vs sword), but the geopolitical and cultural dynamics that

articulate local, colonial, and Cold War power and relations. The heroes in Wuxia films do not

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“civilize” the west and frontier-ship, but they must impart certain cultural lessons to “civilize”

China. The thin difference between the Western and wuxia is more the value conditioned by

different geo-socio-political culture. Both genres impart lessons of civilization and culture.

Rather than merely being the Eastern culture, the “culture” itself in wuxia film was the

negotiated site and the field of struggle between the Chinese Communist Party and the

Nationalist Party, as well as being moulded by the colonial governence and the Cold War

containment culture.

For example, one of the dominant values in most wuxia films would be individual

heroism. Unlike Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), which celebrates the solidarity

between samurai and poor villagers, most wuxia films, even if they have collective heroes,

forsake the working masses. Chang Cheh’s The Savage 5 (1974) is about five heroes, but he still

focuses on individuality rather than collectivity. A columnist Cai Jie in The Kung Sheung Daily

News aptly described this nature of wuxia films and the representation of people,

Chang Cheh’s The Savage 5 is still detached from the qunzhong/masses and focuses on the

characters of the five protagonists. Each of them have a very unique depiction…In the film, we

can see their close-up and extreme close-up, and their friendship; but villagers are framed in mid-

shot and wide shot. These are taken as a unit, simplifying the villagers. The Savage 5 is only about

the struggle between five heroes and a group of bandits…The reason for fighting bandits is only

for the heroes’ threatened self-righteousness. They are eager to kill them but always forget the

sacrifice of villagers…Chang Cheh’s representation of the villagers is too shallow, and Chang was

used to focusing mainly on his male leads at the expense of other elements.

(Cai 1974)

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The absence of the masses is the product of the overlapping connections between the film

industry, the colonial government, and the Cold War. The theme of individualism was not just

the adaptation of Hollywood Westerns. Chang Cheh was not only a director but a Kuomintang

officer who worked with a prominent anti-Communist literature figure Zhang Dao-fan, and had a

close relationship with Chiang Kai Shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo. The Shaw Brothers Studio

Chang worked with had a strong partnership with the colonial governments in Hong Kong and

Singapore-Malaysia. These wuxia heroes’ actions were justified by morals sanctioned by

different Free Worlds in order to circulate between anti-Communist states.

Going back to the common saying “seeing injustice on the road; drawing a knife to help,”

we can have a newer understanding. The first part of the sentence is the cause, while the latter is

the effect. Someone is seeing injustice, and then acts. However, in the film industry, because

spectacles are emphasized, justice lies in the use of spectacular weapons. The cause-and-effect

relation is inverted. The weapon then becomes the cause while the “seeing the injustice on the

road” is the effect. Because of this, the cultural and civilizing reasons are reinforced to justify the

violent act. In short, wu/xia is a product of modernity, enforcing law and order by producing

knowledge and culture. It is a process of involving the body within multiple power relations in

order to invest it, mark it, torture it, and force it to perform cultural lessons. The lacuna in the

sentences like the absent subject of the heroes, the number of the heroes, the way to draw the

“sword”, the objective violence, and the relationship between the villains and victims, will be

filled up by different political and cultural ideals: a lone-wolf or a collective hero; a man or a

woman; a local bandit or a foreigner; the villain is brainwashing villagers or collaborating with

foreigners; the victims can help themselves or are waiting for help. All of these scenarios are

34
determined by specific dominant socio-cultural relations in the film industry, the colonial

government, and the Cold War power.

From Jianghu to the law outside the Law

What is Jianghu? Jiang denotes river while hu means lake. Jianghu denotes the martial arts

world or secret society. It can also be an analogy to a competitive society or business world. In

the Tang dynasty (618-907), jianghu was a place distanced from the secular world, in which civil

servants or hermits escaped from the court. In the Song dynasty (960-1279), it was associated

with secret societies where clans of bandits lived and did illegal business. From the Ming

dynasty (1368-1644) to the early Republican Era (1911-49), jianghu was often used in the title of

novels, referring to the cruel and bloody martial arts world. According to Chen Ping-yuan, wuxia

fiction in the Republican Era shifted the focus from heroes in the government court to the

jianghu (Chen 2010: 62). Fictions like Jianghu qixia zhuan (Legend of the Strange Swordsmen)

(1922) and Shu shan jianxia pingzhuan (The Swordsmen of Shu Mountain) (1932) were about

legendary heroes roving in the jianghu and opposing the Qing court. The jianghu is distanced

away from the court, but it is not an oppositional territory (Chen 2010: 117). The jianghu is more

like a shelter for heroes rather than a revolutionary base camp for overthrowing the regime.

Here, we can see two conflicting definitions of jianghu. It is taken as a secret society,

occupying an oppositional space against the court, the state, and the establishment. It is also a

utopian space where magical heroes can get justice done. The foundation of these conflicting

definitions is revealed when we draw reference to the original story of Utopia by Thomas More.

His idea of Utopia is where freedom of religion, security of ports and bays, and a planned

economy are guaranteed. Utopia becomes an island when Utopus conquered the country and

35
changed the name from Abraxa to Utopia. King Utopus civilized Abraxa and “brought its rude

and uncouth inhabitants to such a high level of culture and humanity that they now excel in that

regard almost every other people” (More 1992: 31). The violence in the process of civilization is

justified as Utopia is built and developed. Utopia is a free yet isolated island city. It has good law

and order and controls thinking, action, and daily life. The mythic power of the jianghu is based

upon the limitation to the violent foundation of Utopia. The inaccessibility to the violent

foundation ensures the stability and prosperity of Utopia. Therefore, jianghu is not necessarily

oppositional to the establishment. On the contrary, jianghu and the establishment are mutually

dependent. The secret society disturbs law and order in a society, but it is always regulated,

marked, controlled and contained by and even collaborates with the government. Historically,

many secret society members were lackeys in the Nationalist government in Shanghai, traitors

during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945), and collaborators with

the Hong Kong Police to “maintain” law and order and do the dirty work. It is into this situation

that my concept of “the law outside the Law” intervenes.

What is new about the “law outside the Law”? The “Law” denotes the emperor, the

colonizer, the ruling government, or center, whereas the law belongs to the community, secret

societies, folk traditions, popular culture, guardians of family, private issues like sex, or the

periphery. As Chen Ping-yuan says about heroes in wuxia fiction, “they are not politicians who

are good at thinking of a new world. They do not care about the relationship between ‘inequality’

and the entire social system…To say the least, the concerns of the knight-errant are not the same

as those of politicians” (Chen 2010: 124). The “law outside the Law” can be understood as a

concept of temporal and spatial relations. It is no longer about whether jianghu is oppositional or

not. The law is an alternative time and space distant from the official Law, the authority, and the

36
central power. The “law” and “the Law” are often in conflict, but are also imbricated with each

other and can mutally support each other. The law may be an alternative to the Law, but

revolution or radical resistance is never guaranteed. Recently, scholars like Victor Fan used the

concept “fa wai zhi quan” or “extraterritoriality” to describe how Hong Kong had enjoyed this

privilege as a liminal space since the colonial period. “Extraterritoriality” means the right to

exercise one’s law outside the nation state’s sovereign terrain. However, in the post-colonial

period, under the national policy, Fan argues that Hong Kong people may be reduced as a bare

life under the sovereignty of China, which also occupies the liminal space to instantiate

sovereign authority. He explains that this liminal space or the extraterritoriality itself is reinstated

in post-colonial Hong Kong:

It is because this liminal space between law and lawlessness, humanity and animality is

deliberately set up, under state surveillance, in order that sovereign authority can be instantiated

not as the law of the land, but as a land where the law can be freely reconfigured, reinterpreted,

reinstated, annulled, or dissolved as a means to manage, discipline, educate and execute those

homines sacri that occupy this space.

(Fan 2015: 400)

To me, the privilege of “extraterritoriality” or its disappearance is not a matter of lingering

post/colonial power. The power of law is more like a tacit recognition and consent between the

colonizer and the colonized than an absolute sovereign law. This consent is conditioned by the

population, the colonial state, and the Cold War. Rather than an absolute sovereign law, it is the

power of the apparatus of security, which distances and regulates everything from entering the

central power, the official realm of political power. “The law outside the Law” is a better concept

to describe this distancing process; it corresponds to the indirect rule, by which elite Chinese,

37
through careful guidance and managerialism, could govern their fellow citizens. Colonized

Chinese in Hong Kong may not be familiar with “God Save the Queen.” Neither did they know

much about the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China. In order to be transparent or

to implement its laissez-faire policy, the law takes supplements, replaces, or collaborates with the

Law. It is no coincidence that by the time Hong Kong was in the lead-up to the 1997 handover,

Deng Xiao-ping, the paramount leader of China, promised the stability and prosperity of Hong

Kong after 1997 and said, “horse racing will continue, and dancing parties will go on.” The “law

outside the Law” is similar to depoliticization, displacing the political with entertainment. But

more than that, it is also a matter of narrative techniques in cinema.

In Jackie Chan’s Project A II (1987), a Hong Kong policeman, played by Jackie Chan,

answers an invitation by two revolutionaries in the late Qing’s Hong Kong:

A Revolutionary: Are you still mad at us for framing you? Doing great things cares no small

things. We are ready to sacrifice ourselves for revolution.

Dragon Ma: That’s the reason why I cannot join you. I care too much about the small things. No

matter how great the objective is, I cannot do it by hook or by crook. I cannot do things

illegally. Actually, I admire you so much. You two are doing big things. I understand that

in order to fight against Manchuria, thousands of thousands of men have to sacrifice

themselves for the nation. However, I dare not to ask the people to do that, because I

don’t know what will be the result after so many people fighting. That’s why I like being

a police officer. Every life is treasurable. I can ensure everybody lives well. A country is

made up of individuals. If we didn’t enjoy our living, how could we love our country?

Action films always focus on seeable violence, the rank and file of the police force, vigilante,

and unofficial history. In Project A II, what the policeman cares about is not revolution but the

38
community’s order. He aims not at overthrowing the system but suppressing any objective crime

and violence. Individual prosperity is more important as the country is made up of every

individual. In short, the “law outside the Law” helps to remove or disallow any radical

subjectivity to develop into a threat to the existing law and order. This cinematic narration is also

how the people in Hong Kong understand their history. Although Hong Kong cinema produced a

lot of costume period pictures and wuxia films, rarely did they portray any official history and

official figures. Hong Kong did not produce any movies about strong emperors like Qin Shi

Huang (259 BC - 210 BC) or the Emperor Gaozu of Han (256-195 BC), who are considered as

the founders of the Han-nation. Li Han Hsiang’s Yang Kwei-Fei (1962) is about Yang Kwei-fei,

the consort of the emperor rather than the emperor Xuanzong of Tang. Even though Li directed a

number of classic costume pictures about the dying Qing dynasty like Reign Behind a Curtain

(1983), Burning of the Imperial Palace (1983), and The Last Emperor (1986), the Qing emperors

played by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung are always weak, controlled by the Empress. In action-

crime films like Project A (1983), the time and space are set in late Qing or in Police Story

(1985), the lead character is at the margin of the police force. Wuxia films or fictions are largely

distanced from reality, and set in abstract time and place. The historiography in wuxia films is

largely unofficial and anecdotal; the heroes like assassins, bodyguards, prostitutes, vigilantes,

and private detectives are marginal in power relations to central and official figures like a

specific emperor, queen, British colonizer, or imperial Japanese; the time and place are always

ancient or abstracted from the historical present. Even when kungfu films are set in Republican

Shanghai like Fist of Fury (1972), the hero Chen Zhen, played by Bruce Lee, is a fictional figure

and never speaks any political slogans like “Down with Japanese imperialism” that were

common in that historical time.

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 While wu/xia is about confusing justice and force, the “law outside the Law” refers to the

distancing and delaying of the law enforcement. It doesn’t mean that the lawman never comes or

the police force is always corrupted, but it refers to the postponement, delay and inaccessibility

to the political center, the central authority, the ruling figures, or the impossibility of immediacy

of legal rederess. The law is a proxy, or a gatekeeper of the Law. The parable “Before the Law”

from Franz Kafka can help us go deeper into the concept of the “law outside the Law.”

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. A man from the country asks to gain entry into the law

but is denied by the gatekeeper. When asked if he could be allowed to come in later on, “It is

possible, but not now,” replies the gatekeeper. While he thinks that the law should always be

accessible for everyone, the gatekeeper tells him that there are more powerful gatekeepers like

him and more rooms before the law. He then waits for days and years. He begs and bribes the

gatekeeper while the gatekeeper interrogates him for more information, accepts his bribes, and

yet denies his entry. When he gets old and weak and asks the final question “so how is it that in

these many years no one except me has requested entry,” the gatekeeper replies, “here no one

else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

This parable manifests the gist of the “law outside the Law” in which the Law is always a

non-arrival and the man from the country has to imagine the relationship between the gatekeeper

and the Law. The law is always present, while the Law is always mysterious. He can only

approach the gatekeeper, who is working for the Law. He needs to regulate his life, hope and

wait until his last breath. He is rendered an obedient subject, submissive to and contemplative of

absolute sovereign law. This parable shows the mechanism of how wuxia narratives work. The

wuxia heroes are like the gatekeeper, who controls, disciplines, interrogates, and regulates the

40
man from the countryside. The gatekeeper is the only one to project the illusion between the

force and the law, the Law and the law, and the Law and the man from the country.

Walter Benjamin and Jacque Derrida have analyzed their notion of justice through this

parable. Derrida, following Michel de Montaigne’s and Blaise Pascal’s study of the making of

law and justice, questions the mystical foundation and naturalness of law. “One cannot speak

directly about justice, thematize or objectivize justice” (Derrida 1992:10). Justice is not

deconstructible while the law is deconstructable (14). He argues that justice is different from law

and we should hold to the fact that the immanence of justice is always being “perhaps” and “to

come” instead of saying affirmatively “this or that is justice” or “I am justice.” He is trying to

avoid the concept of justice being hijacked for the purpose of retroactively accounting for justice.

In other words, he thinks that deconstruction itself is justice, which haunts and decenters the

authority, the mystical foundation, and the absolute Law. However, his argument is too difficult

to bring any actual justice to the human world. In what way can ordinary people like the man

from the country question and reveal the foundation of the Law? Ironically, Derrida asks for an

urgency of justice, which requires no knowledge and calculation, different from Kantian and

messianic advent. However, to him, justice is something to haunt and trouble the common

practices and ruling foundation. Justice is a ghostly presence, troubling the mystical foundation

without calculation and rules.

Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” which Derrida draws references from provides

another aspect to this parable. He distinguishes mythical violence and divine violence. “If

mythical violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying” (Benjamin 1986:297).

Mythical violence is a projection of fantasy by human beings, showing the existence of God in

front of human beings. This violence does not mean any just means and just ends. Divine

41
violence is about destroying all idolatry and fetishism. The violence erases the guilt of idolatry.

Divine violence unmakes signs, which can no longer determine the reality and cease to be idols

altogether. In short, Benjamin is trying to unveil the system, as a representation that

acknowledges the impossibility of its own function. From the ruin of the reality we currently

inhabit, we may seek help from the idols to destroy the idols and representations. Justice is an

alternative to a false choice between truth (as truth is a phantasm) and the idolatry of the

phantasmagoria. It is a disruption to the sign system.

What can we learn from Benjamin and Derrida and how they are related to the “law

outside the Law”? Wuxia heroes are themselves using mythical violence. They tend to create

different Gods and idols. Many wuxia heroes in novels or films believe in a saying “We are

acting in the name of Heaven” (or ti tian xing dao). Wuxia heroes are like the gatekeeper in the

parable. In the face of the gatekeeper, the man from the country begs him and spends his life

waiting for justice. The gatekeeper reinforces the existing power relation, and he is the one to

clear anything ideologically undesirable before the law. To disrupt the value system and to

trouble the ruling authority means social revolution. Wuxia heroes always distort the reality and

maintain the illusion of the law. In other words, a wuxia hero may be helpful and ethical to draw

a knife to help the poor but he is at the same time a gatekeeper or a guardian of illusion denying

the poor’s entry into the system, the center, the root cause, or the Law.

Core to the wuxia narrative are these two concepts – wu/xia and the “law outside the

Law.” Both concepts are overlapping. They are not necessarily top down from the colonial

government or the Cold War powers. It is more a consensus shared and supported by the colonial

government and the capitalist Cold War countries in the name of security. The relationship

between these concepts and their application was always conditioned by historical factors like

42
directors, studios, Cold War institutions, government censorship and the geo-political

environemnt. These two concepts, generic and political, do not exercise the sovereign and

disciplinary power, but the mechanism of security, which is flexible and is instantiated by events,

practices, and cases.

Patronizing Humbug

In this section, I focus on how my concepts wu/xia and the “law outside the Law” are implied in

the colonial censorship of film. I will also discuss in particular the censorship of a sex scene in

the martial arts film Death Valley (1968) because the censors’ attitudes reflected their

patronizing and colonial governance. Research on the censorship of Hong Kong cinema has

predominantly paid much attention to the censorship of politics in the context of the Cold War

(Du 2017; Ng 2008; Yau 2015). Their arguments have several assumptions. First, colonial

censorship of films is primarily related to politics. Second, many of them, such as Kenny Ng’s

discussion of “strict official surveillance to quarantine the visuality of politics,” assumes that

colonial censorship always cuts off any negotiation. But these researchers have overlooked less

direct and overtly political aspects of films such as narration (ancient or contemporary), political

portraits like Sun Yat-Sen’s or Chairman Mao’s, and generic elements like crime, sex, and

violence in wuxia films. What was the colonial rationale and rubric to censor a film before we

talk about the Cold War politics? I argue that colonial censorship of film is first and foremost

colonial, and matters like perspective of narration and generic elements are part of colonial

politics. By that, “colonial” means the control of and access to a particular “culture” by an alien

power. The control is organized and regulated by members of the alien power and local elite. The

control could be more a “liberal” and cultural regulation than an outright political ban. In my

43
archival research, colonial censorship of film always is invisible. In many of the archival

documents, what they cared about most is “taste” and the oriental perspective. Colonial

censorship of film replaces politics with “taste,” displaces colonialism and imperialism with

paternal governance, and regulates the cultural hierarchy such as superior westerners and inferior

Chinese, all in the name of security.

Before seeing how the Hong Kong colonial government interpreted censorship of film as

a problem of taste, we need to recognize that censorship of film itself was born out of an illegal

foundation. Even though Hong Kong was proud to be a model city for the rule of law, the

censorship of film was not legal until 1988. After the surrender of Japanese imperialists in

August 1945, D. J. Sloss of the Civil Information Department asked the Colonial Secretary to

resume censorship of films and to establish it on a new basis. Censorship of films was regulated

by the Places of Public Entertainment Ordinance until 1988. The ordinance did not have any

legal authority. The governor, with and by the advice and consent of the Legislative Council,

may make laws for the peace, order, and good governance of the Colony. The governor could

make any illegal action in the name of security. The Film Censorship Regulations were created

in 1953, which consisted of a panel of censors and the Board of Review. Unlike the Hays Code

in the United States, which was the set of industry moral guidelines among the members of the

Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, censors in Hong Kong were government

officers, the relatives of officers, woman inspectors of middle schools, members of the Chinese

Chamber of Commerce and other local elites. Not until 1973 were the principles of film

censorship written in the Film Censorship Standards and made public. However, this censorship

guideline was not a legal document. In 1987, Asian Wall Street Journal reported this scandal.

44
“The Hong Kong Government was well aware as early as 1972 that the censorship of films might

be illegal because the principles of censorship were stated in internal guidelines and not in the

regulations made under the Places of Public Entertainment Ordinance (Cap.172)” (Saw

2013:41). Because of it, the Hong Kong Government decided to pass the “Film Censorship Bill

1987” in the legislative council and set up a three-tier rating system under the Film Censorship

Ordinance (Cap. 392), constituting the legal basis for film censorship in 1988. In short, film

censorship up to this point was not a legal issue. Instead of the rule of law, their censorship

policy was more like paternal governance that led to their concern of “taste”.

Behind the concern with taste is a political and economic calculation. A “Question and

Answer” was given in Parliament of the United Kingdom on 2nd May 1946, on the subject of

censorship boards in Colonies. Skeffington-Lodge, a member of Parliament for Bedford from

1945 to 1950, asked “Will the right hon, Gentleman use his influence with the censorship boards

so that they may exclude the showing of cheap jack nonsense in the shape of American films

which will do a great deal of harm to the natives of these Colonies?” (“Extract from Official

Report” 40). Apparently, they cared about what the natives watched in the colonies. Hong Kong

was flooded with Hollywood films, which were considered low-brow and low in educational

quality. However, this cultural superiority was actually a battle between British films and

Hollywood films. The British Cinematograph Films Ordinance was enacted in 1947 to increase

the showing of British films in the Colony and restrict advance booking, so as to prevent British

films being pushed off the market by foreign film companies using the block-booking system. At

the time, the colonial market in the postwar period was effectively cornered by distributors of

American films, who were operating a system of advance block-bookings. The Ordinance was

repealed in the 1970s.

45
 In viewing the increasing numbers of Chinese Communist films in Hong Kong, Sir R.

Stevenson, an ambassador in Nanking Embassy, sent a secret telegram from Nanking to the

Foreign Office in July 1949. His way of censoring the films explains much of the film censorship

in Hong Kong:

…any comprehensive ban on Chinese Communist films as such would have unfortunate political

repercussions and thus defeat its own object. One of our principal charges against the Communist

systems being their denial of freedoms of publication it would seem to be a mistake to expose

ourselves to effective counter charges for similar prohibitions. It would seem to me that [gps.

Undec.? while maintaining our] principles of liberality in these matters we should remain in a

position to exercise reasonable control through discreet exercise of normal censorship. If these

films are imported through commercial channels it might be reasonable to hope that the

distributors in view of probable circulation losses may hesitate to handle too many films of a type

likely from their past experience to be refused exhibition…but I would in any case advocate

extreme caution in any policy of wholesale banning of Chinese films in view of preponderance of

Chinese audience in Hong Kong…it may be practically impossible and potentially explosive to

mutual relations between Hong Kong and future China to try and sustain any embargo on films

when the Chinese Communists are in control of Canton area…

(“From Nanking to Foreign Office” 30; my emphasis)

Secretary of State for the Colonies agreed with the policy and refused to resort to using any

emergency regulations to ban political films. What interests me in the telegram is how principles

of liberality were associated with the colonial government, in addition to terms such as

“commercial channels” and “the normal censorship.” The “taste” here is again colonial, setting

the cultural hierarchy between Communist films and the British colony. British Hong Kong

maintained the principles of liberality while Communist China was often charged with

46
authoritarian denial of freedom of publication. The “impartiality” of the government was

apparently constructed in Hong Kong. This constructed image of impartiality was false when we

see how the colonial government worked with the Republic of China (Taiwan), Malaysia,

Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, which were close alliances in the Cold War (this will be

discussed in the following Cold War section). Many films were either censored or banned out of

the diplomatic concerns between British Hong Kong and Communist China or public

acceptance. Films were recut or delayed in their public release in Hong Kong: Eddie Davis’s

That Lady from Peking (1975) (released in 1976), Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (1971)

(released in 1980), Jean Yanne’s Les Chinois à Paris (1974) (released in 1991), and

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo (1972) (released in 1996) are several examples of films

that were delayed a release.

How was “taste” related to wu/xia and the “law outside the Law”? The principles of the

liberality of censors or governors worked like paternal guidance by generating suitable taste,

culture, and aesthetic suitable for the colonized. Elite officials, gatekeepers, governors, and

politicians (including elite Chinese), through their paternal “benevolence”, defined, regulated,

adapted, and imposed what they considered to be suitable, safe, superior or inferior culture that

the colonized should develop. Then, they distanced the culture from any social restructuring,

radicalism, or politicization, and neogitated any undesirable threat to the society, the diplomatic

relationship with China, or the colonial interest. In 1973, the Commissioner for Television and

Films, Nigel Watt, reformed the regulations and announced the new Film Censorship Standard.

In view of many Mandarin motion pictures that were full of violence like Chang Cheh’s wuxia

films, Watt’s reply in a newspaper interview showed these concerns:

47
 I would say we particularly took these films into consideration. We try and apply the same

standards to these films, although they are made very differently. We are now banning films which

show nothing but violence from beginning to end. From the pure technique of cinema production,

we do get films from overseas which are made with great finesse – but if there were parts which

we thought had unnecessary violence, then such scenes would be cut. Often, our local films lack

good stories and this is where they fall down – not from the point of view of censorship but from

the point of view of sometimes ecstatic [aesthetic] standards. What we need here are also more

and better scriptwriters.

(Bugay 1973; my emphasis)

The double standard in censorship of Chinese and Western films shows how “films from

overseas” could find the right balance between commercialism and art, while local Chinese films

were too commercial to be appreciated. Like Watt, Chang Cheh himself was concerned with the

aesthetics of wuxia films. Chang always defended his films as full of Confucian values and

meanings rather than “violence for violence’s sake.” In the General Principles adopted by the

Film Censorship Board of Review in the early 1960s, several categories of films were defined:

politics, sectional interests, racialism, sex, naturism, violence and crime, shock film, newsreel

and documentaries, trailers, TV films in Rediffusion T.V., and privately shown films. They are

not cinematic genres, but classifications to identify the problems that may arouse social concern.

For example, in the category of “violence and crime,” any excessive amount of calculated and

realistic violence is undesirable, while a violent film about events in a much earlier age or in

conditions entirely alien to Hong Kong’s may be accepted by the Board since colonial officals

believed that this type of setting could bee regarded by the youth as artificial. It is no coincidence

that wuxia films are often set in an abstracted time in the past and faraway place to avoid any

direct contemporary references. Even in kungfu films, which are often set in more contemporary

48
times, anything that hints at or alludes to historical figures and radical events are undesirable by

the censorship board. In short, cultural taste is a front for distancing viewers away from inciting

identification as aesthetic consideration.

However, the paternalistic attitude was challenged by the Board of Review when they

reviewed the martial arts film Death Valley (1968). In this film there are some sex scenes.

Censors’ opinion was divided into two groups. Censors who agreed to cut the scenes explained

that the scenes were against Chinese culture and decency. Paul K.C. Tsui, an acting Secretary for

Chinese Affairs and Chairman of Board of Review, decided to cut some scenes from this film.

His reasoning was that “I maintain that the prevailing Chinese concept of ‘decency,’ if not of

‘human dignity and welfare,’ is still to keep acts of sexual relationship, particularly copulative

acts private, therefore not a fit subject for public exhibition. I also held the view that so long that

we have in force a film censorship law which implies, amongst other things, a guardianship of

public morality, the Board must accept such a responsibility in the best way” (Tsui 1968). He

wrote that they had considered that this was more a question of taste than morals. Both Wong

Yee-wah, a representative of the director of Education, and E. C. Eates, Commissioner of Police,

agreed to excise some objectionable scenes, and said that there should be “no portrayal of

copulation and very great caution before allowing sexual aberrations,” and “we are exposing

Chinese audiences to sexual exhibitionism which has recently become acceptable in the West but

may still be offensive by Chinese standards.” (Eates 1968)

Alastair Trevor Clark, the Director of Social Welfare and the member of the Board of

Review, had a different view and wrote at length to criticize the approach that the Board took.

He argued that the world is changing and the standard of the youth movement around the world

has brought people new standards. The preventive guardian approach no longer works.

49
 To what extent should we deliberately try to protect the people of Hong Kong against inevitable

human and historical trends by keeping them ignorant…And what is our purpose in moral

censorship – to maintain Hong Kong as a Chinese city in all respects, or to resist changes in moral

attitudes?...My personal opinion, for what little it is worth, is that artificial sanitary cordons do

not work, except in the very short term against brief epidemics; and that it is not so much a case of

being able to turn the clock back physically as of recognizing that in the long run natural behavior

will continue while ephemeral fashions and prejudices will always be evaded.

(Clark 1968; my emphasis)

For Clark, the duty of film censorship should not make Chinese people ignorant of the outside

world. He thought that sex is always a universal theme in arts. If Hong Kong Chinese kept their

own culture intact, moral attitudes may not change. It is interesting to see how he criticized the

censors and how different his views on sex and Chinese people were to theirs:

In fact the more it is accepted from the start of a child’s socialization as a natural function that

takes its place with everything else and no more than its due place, the less likely deviation is

going to be. In short, let us not make things worse by assuming that emotional immaturity is the

same desirable thing as virginal innocence; the former is dangerous to preserve, the latter must

depend on instilled mores if it is to persist – and it can only be instilled by firm personal

instruction, which will then rarely be overborne by mass pressures…and I may have entirely

misunderstood SCA’s note of 22 August 1968, and his oral opinions, but I find it difficult to

envisage it as our proper duty to act as those parents who wish to conceal from their offspring the

fact that sex exists…But we should beware of the attitude that of course because we are

sophisticated we will not be corrupted, but we must protect the less fortunate; this is patronizing

humbug.

(Clark 1968; my emphasis)

50
Among the censors, he is among the few to criticize this “patronizing humbug” type attitude.

This attitude places native inhabitants in the position of not yet being ready to govern themselves

politically, socially and culturally. Clark strongly believed that censors should let the colonized

Chinese understand universal artistic values, cultural standards, and the “cosmopolitan” views

contained in contemporary films.

Even though these two groups held different perspectives in their role as censors, they

shared the same colonialist discourse. While Clark thinks that “children” should abandon their

parents, grow up, and know more about the world by themselves, Paul Tsui and others think that

“children” should be allowed to see films suitable for their own culture. Both parties shared the

same cultural hierarchy that Western culture and films are universal. While Clark thought that it

was necessary to let the Chinese know the new trends, Tsui and others argued that Chinese

audiences should keep their culture and decency intact. In this colonialist discourse, the West

denotes a universal, cosmopolitan, and elite culture, while the Chinese denotes a particular,

parochial and even low-brow culture. Clark held the assumption that the censors should

enlighten the colonized. However, Clark is no better than Tsui and the others. In his statement,

he cites how sex is a universal theme in Western paintings and films as if the West was a grown

up, and the Chinese were always like stray children.

Also, the sex scene in Death Valley was apparently a gimmick. It was a marketing

strategy for Shaw Brothers studio to cash in on the popularity of wuxia films in the late 1960s. In

a publicity report in Shaw Brothers’ film magazine Hong Kong Movie News, Death Valley was

said to be inspired by Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (“Duan Hun Gu” 1968).4 The film

4
In her report in Far Eastern Economic Review, Elizabeth Yung criticized the situation of swordplay movies
featuring blood and sex flooding the local industry. Death Valley was one of them and it may be also inspired by
Terry Bourke’s Sampan (1968) (Yung 1969:166).

51
itself was a common commercial martial arts film. The sex scene in Death Valley include

reflection of the couple in a mirror and it was too brief to be compared with Bonnie and Clyde. If

Clark’s enlightenment was based upon this trivial sex gimmick, his criticism was not genuine.

Because Death Valley itself was only a sex-ploitation martial art films that aimed not at

subverting the patriarchal system, his criticism was not politically founded.

Therefore, it would be an error to interpret Clark’s notes as an unconditional endorsement

of an enlightenment project of local knowledge and aesthetics. The remarks made by Clark and

others are only two sides of the same coin. They were equally complicit with colonial

governance. All issues of taste and aesthetics must satisfy at least one condition: under the

tutelage of colonizers, whether Chinese or non-Chinese, what must be preserved is the

“constituted authority” of censorship. The colonizer’s key duty is to determine and control when,

how and why natives would achieve certain standards, security and autonomy. “Because Hong

Kong is not yet ready,” answered Nigel Watt, the chief censor, to a question of why Bernardo

Bertolucci’s Last Tango In Paris (1972) was banned twice in Hong Kong (Bugay 1973).

The slight difference between Clark and others can be explained by the perspectives of

the Anglicists and the Orientalists. In Cinema at the End of Empire, Priya Jaikumar investigates

late colonial Indian films and discussed how the British State invented administrative and

educational machinery to discipline imperial officials and colonial subjects. She quotes Thomas

Babington Macaulay’s educational policies that tried to produce a class of persons of “Indian in

blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect” (Jaikumar 2006:8).

It was a time when Britain’s modernization of its imperial practice played an important role in

facilitating the formation of liberal democratic institutions and imperial administration. However,

in the case of Hong Kong, colonizers avoided making Chinese Englishman, but intended to

52
create generations of elite natives who possessed a “nationality” of which natives can be proud.

Macaulay’s Indian Englishman was supported by Anglicists, who advocated English education

with Western values and beliefs because native customs and culture were seen as inferior and

outdated. Orientalists, like many Hong Kong governors, possessed “Oriental knowledge” and

were sympathetic to the natives. From this perspective, Clark is more like the Anglicist, while

the others the Orientalists. These two camps worked hand in hand in Hong Kong’s colonial

governance. While oriental knowledge can be used to administer a diffuse network of

hierarchical relationships between the colonial officers and the colonized, the colonial

government relies on an indirect rule and various local functionaries rather than on direct

exploitation and domination.

The Making of Melodrama and Chinese Martial Arts

We now move from the paternalistic coloniality camouflaged as cultural taste in the

colonial censorship of film to colonial perspectives on film genre and popular culture. Suffice it

to say, wuxia films are melodramatic, with themes like searching for biological parents, avenging

the death of masters, and spectacular visual effects. How did the colonial government view

melodrama? If melodrama is a cultural form developed in response to modernity (Brooks, 1976),

what kind of modernity in colonial Hong Kong fostered this cultural form? I will focus on the

government’s general attitude towards melodrama and Chinese martial arts culture in particular.

Before moving on to the colonial view on melodrama, what did the colonial government think

about popular entertainment in general? We can begin by looking at Eddie Davis’s A Girl from

Peking (aka That Lady from Peking, 1975) as a case study.

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 It was a joint Australian-American venture with Goldsworthy Production and

Commonwealth United Limited. It is about how a defected Russian spy escapes from China and

gives his diary to an American journalist. The journalist is then chased after by a lady spy from

Beijing. In 1969, when the Australian crew came to Hong Kong on location and got permission

from the Hong Kong government to shoot on location in some streets and in a hotel, leftist

organizations from various sectors like workers, musicians, peasants, and merchants held an

assembly and accused the government of collaborating with Australia and the U.S. to make an

“anti-China” (fan hua) picture (Editor 1969). The film was nothing more than an Orientalist and

exotic story of romance and espionage. What interests me here is how the colonial government

responded to the criticism from the leftists’ protest. In a reply to the question from Wen Wei Po,

a leftist newspaper in Hong Kong, the government said, “As newspaper reports have already

made clear the film is a light-hearted piece of nonsense, which nobody could possibly take

seriously.” (HKRS70-6-584-2_Films - Film Industry - ENCL , 1965 - 1974) To the colonial

government, commercial films that are light-hearted pieces of nonsense are not political films

and nobody should take popular entertainment seriously. The assumption is that popular

entertainment is politically free and separated from political engagement. Film as commodity is

free of ideology, as if the politics means nothing more than political slogan, songs, political

figures and chants.

In their view, martial arts films were one of the popular entertainments that people should

not take seriously. The colonial government’s racist attitude towards certain cinematic genres

revealed the fact that taste is not ideologically free. As I have mentioned before “taste” was

always their concern. The censors and other officers may not valorize martial arts films, but

when martial arts films, especially after the “kungfu fever” in the United States in the early to

54
mid-1970s, got more recognition from the West, they discovered the economic value from these

pictures, despite their contempt for this “lower” genre. Ron Oliphant, the Secretary for Films and

Television, in view of the market value of martial arts films, said,

In places like Africa or the Middle East, there will now always be an awareness that films are

available from Hong Kong…These countries are backward, and it’s going to be a long time before

they get sophisticated television programmes. What sort of films do they want? It’s no point

sending them these wordy, albeit fine, films which the rest of us see. They want good action

stories and that’s what we are sending them…They became so popular because they are straight-

forward and easy story action films…I think it is inevitable that the craze will die down for kung-

fu films. However, what is left behind is quite an important residual market in some of the lesser-

developed countries.

(“Bright Future for HK’s Film Industry" 1973)

This cleaerly shows the contempt of the Secretary toward kung fu films in this quotation. Placing

Hong Kong’s entertainment as suitable for Africa and the Middle East, the colonial government

assumed that film sensibility went in line with the development of modernity. Given their

backward culture and civilization, people from the third world could not appreciate “wordy

films,” which were for us, the civilized. It is as if Hong Kong can be the head of producing

entertainment for the Third World countries. In these new economic markets, people are not

smart enough to receive films with words and dialogues. Action films, produced by Chinese in

Hong Kong, can entertain people from the Third World. In the cultural hierarchy, the superior

taste is art cinema, that is not straight-forward and easy, and, therefore, not suitable for the Third

World. The wordy pictures are what “we” see. The “we” is not necessarily referring to the White

55
colonizers, but people with sophisticated minds that can include people from developed

countries.

The following case is not only about racial discrimination, but colonial discourse shared

by colonizers including elite Chinese. In a memo regarding the nudity and obscenity in Lewis

Gilbert’s The Adventurers (1970), F. K. Li, a Chinese Deputy Secretary for Home Affairs, wrote

about the Chinese reception of nudity:

The attitudes of Chinese and Western filmgoers are bound to be different in the same way as

differences between people of different race, colour, creed, class, nationality or sectional interest.

All Chinese films and operas have a common theme; this is, “evil has an evil recompense” (e you

e bao) and the Chinese audience expects this……there is always the danger that the Chinese

audience may not grasp the theme fully in an English film; furthermore, I have heard comments

amongst local community leaders that violence scenes in western films are partly responsible for

the increasing youth crimes in Hong Kong.

(Li 1970)

On the surface, people of different race, class, and values are respected. In the General Principles

adopted by the Film Censorship Board of Review, one of the principles is “what may seem

relatively harmless by Western standards can be objectionable to Chinese audiences, and vice

versa” (“Film Censorship: General Principles” 1965). However, the racial stereotype is

reinforced. It is assumed that Chinese audiences are different; they are not part of Western

culture and civilization. Chinese may not be dangerous but they are different from the white-

race. Chinese reception of popular entertainment was in favor of melodrama where “evil has an

evil recompense.” As an elite Chinese, Li defined, regulated, and produced knowledge of what

the Hong Kong Chinese audience is on the one hand and what Chinese popular entertainment

56
should be on the other. Chinese are receptive of melodrama in opera and film. Without a doubt,

Li was not a cinema studies student and had not read literary crtitic Peter Brooks’ works on

melodrama. Brooks argued that melodrama was born in the French Revolution. Melodrama was

so expressive that it followed the morality of revolution, “Melodrama is the genre, and the

speech, of revolutionary moralism: the way it states, enacts, and imposes its moral messages, in

clear, unambiguous words and signs” (Brooks 1994:16). The bodiliness in melodrama was

embedded in this revolutionary morality. It shows the hardship of sans-culottes, the sonorous

cliché of Jacobin rhetoric, the denunciation of ancient regime rulers for sexual immortality as

well as tyranny, and the innocence of bodies. So the expressive body has a new meaning when

melodrama was born. They are inseparable. Also, to Ron Oliphant and F. K Li, melodrama is

divided into an “East” and “West” binary. Melodrama is a reflective discourse on the experience

of modernity. However, to the censors some elements of melodrama were not favorable, for

instance, the genre’s explicit bodiliness. Although Li was not saying discussing the origins of

melodrama, his note implicitly argues for the essential relationship between Chinese audiences

and melodramatic expression. It is as if Chinese films and operas are always melodramatic.

However, the Chinese melodrama should be separated from sexually explicit and violent bodies.

To censors and other officers in Hong Kong, Chinese melodrama cannot contain sexually

explicit images like those in the West do, because Chinese culture was different. That is why the

origin of melodrama was ignored. Second, the phrase “evil has an evil recompense” is such a

melodramatic consciousness that presents morality as a veneer on a real contradiction. It is like a

night shelter or preventive charity given by the bourgeois to the poor. That judgement from Li

was just a case of amnesia, forgetting the fact that mixed cultural sensibilities in melodrama

57
crossing the traditional and the modern were from the West. To them, “evil has an evil

recompense” sounds more suitable for the Chinese than the French.

While the Chinese were not yet ready to watch The Adventurers, the physical been part

and parcel of Chinese martial arts culture and wuxia films. What the colonial government did

was not to curtail Chinese martial arts, but on the contrary, celebrated and encouraged Chinese

culture, and even promoted martial arts schools. The operations and establishment of martial arts

schools interested the Hong Kong Government. The Triad Society Bureau conducted a police

survey in July 1972. It included the number and address of the schools, the number of teachers

and students, the number and type of training weapons used, the different methods used to

practice in public areas, and the desirability and practicability of police control of these institutes.

In 1973, an inter-departmental Committee on services for youth was formed. It investigated

martial arts and their history, under what kind of ordinance these martial arts schools registered,

and suggested the need for police control. There were 289 boxing institutes in Hong Kong of

which 269 were of Chinese origin. Based upon all these surveys, the Working Party on Martial

Arts Schools was formed in 1974 to examine the problems of martial arts, and suggested what

should be encouraged in martial arts culture.

In the meetings of the “Working Party on Martial Arts,” we can see martial arts culture

grew out of the cultural hierarchy of body and mind in China’s feudal dynasties rather than a

historical encounter such as British imperialism. Different officials discussed and defined the

psychological, social and cultural needs that martial arts activities could fulfill. Members of this

Party were clearly aware of the history of vigorous martial arts and Chinese culture. They

discussed the reasons why Chinese martial arts were so popular. In Chinese tradition, “the

conservative cast of mind in China placed scholarship, academic knowledge, philosophy and

58
morals on a respected highbrow plane, but martial arts and soldiering did not share the same

respect” (Leung 1974). Because of the scholastic tradition, Chinese were described as the

“sickmen of Asia” towards the end of the Manchu dynasty. This saying was shared among many

novelists and filmmakers as the reason why they wrote martial arts fiction and martial arts film.

For example, Zhu Yu-zhai, the author of Unofficial Biography of Wong Fei-hung (Huang fei-

hong biechuan) that was later adapted into a film in 1949, wrote: “In the period of autocratic rule

(zhuanzhi shidai), my country promoted scholastic quality and dismissed martial values. Our

ancestors’ martial and militaristic habits and customs were gradually eliminated. This is why we

have the label of the ‘sickman of Asia.’ Anyone with ideals who felt ashamed at this would then

promote martial arts in order to train our national body and spirit. They are the foundation of our

national strength” (Zhu 2012:170). According to martial arts director Chang Cheh, China had

lost its militaristic culture since the Song dynasty (960 - 1279) and Qing dynasty (1644-1911),

which banned civil use of weapons and martial arts (Chang 1988:136). The reason why they

shared these views is because the nationalism both Zhu and Chang upheld was safe and cultural

in essence. Even though they mentioned militarism or Han-nationalism in their works, the

nationalism remained cultural and abstracted from attacking the colonial reality.

The Working Party aimed at countering and reducing the potential threat martial arts

culture may bring to society. They thought that the social and psychological factors exercising

influence today in Hong Kong society had changed considerably:

Youth today in Hong Kong is [are] able to assert in a very large measure many of the youth’s

psychological and physical needs. However, kung-fu with its emphasis on strength and agility still

has a very strong appeal to our young population. The student of Chinese boxing or karate may

not be inclined necessarily to be pugilistic in social behavior but he is at least more confident and

59
 self-reliant and not readily brow-beaten by a bully. Indeed, it helps personal courage and character

building and many responsible parents believe that it helps good upbringing. A child should grow

up to think and act like a man and he cannot do so unless he is reasonably confident about his own

personal health, physique and strength.

(Leung 1974)

Chinese martial arts should be promoted, as they can build up confidence for young people.

Chinese martial arts are something for building self-esteem and self-confidence. The reasons to

control martial arts schools lie in the fact that many illegal organizations, like the triad society,

may use martial arts schools as a front to carry out illegal activities. Martial arts are understood

as neutral in nature, but as “many other good things, kung-fu can be abused for reprehensible

purposes” (Leung 1974). The knowledge of Chinese martial arts is thus produced. The shameful

history of Chinese martial arts like the Chinese spirit possession during the Boxer Rebellion

(1900) was discarded. Martial arts were now for maintaining personal good health and

developing self-esteem. Common to many colonial policies, the Working Party used a divisive

tactic to define what good and bad Chinese culture is. A good Chinese tradition is for developing

good cultural taste and good confidence, while a bad tradition is for provoking rebellious and

aggressive acts. Although martial arts practices and schools may arouse social concerns, the

officers thought that martial arts are good in the first place and only some of them are abused for

criminal purposes.

The best way to promote and monitor Chinese martial arts was to make it a sport. In

November 1974, Mr. D. C. Bray, the Colonial Secretariat, after reading the report by the

Working Party, thought that it had included too many proposals to set up registrations and

elimination of criminal elements, but it lacked some concrete suggestions of encouragement and

60
promotion of martial arts after registration. When the report was made in December 1974, a

section of “Promotion of Martial Arts” was added. In this section, the youth movement amongst

those who practice martial arts deserves every encouragement only when controlled legislation

and registration were ready to eliminate the criminal elements. The government should take

positive action to promote genuine martial arts. Different martial arts schools were suggested to

form a new association composed of suitable leaders, accompanied with the Government to be

represented in the federal association. The main aim of the federal association should be “to

promote ideals of chivalry and self-discipline amongst the practitioners of martial arts” (Bristow

1975). The martial arts courses across different schools were standardized and registered. Some

Chinese martial arts were even introduced into the Royal Hong Kong Police Force like Wing

Chun.

The apparatuses of security in colonial Hong Kong not only maintained the law and order

but also produced the “taste” in censorship of film and knowledge of “genuine” Chinese culture

and aesthetics. The role of the colonial government should not be defined only by its negativity.

Yet, when it permitted and encouraged some standard in the name of taste and security, it is not

ideologically free. The illusion was reinforced by the Free World alliances during the Cold War.

In the following sections, we can see how the Cold War power reinforced and continued the

colonial discourse through different apparatuses of security.

Cold War – Reinforcement of the Colonial Power

Research on Hong Kong cinema during the Cold War has primarily paid much attention

to the dictohomy of leftist and rightist film industries (Huang and Li 2009), the specificities of

61
Hong Kong cinema free of ideological burden (Mak 2018), and the Cold War trauma in action

cinema (Yip 2017). Despite their valuable archival research and their analysis of the Southeast

Asian film circuit during the Cold War, some historical fallacies are evident.

For instance, after comparing the Peoples’ Republic of China, the Republic of China, and

Hong Kong, Mak Yan-yan concludes that Hong Kong was the most open place enjoying the

freedom of speech, being politically neutral to embrace leftist and rightist points of view under

the British rule (12). However, her methodology stems from an orientation of wanting to go back

to the colonial era on the one hand but detached from the “China elements” on the other. To her,

“China elements” means a monolithic national framework to understand Chinese language

cinema (34). The ambiguities are also shown in saying how Hong Kong filmmakers lost the

Chinese market after the United States had put an embargo on China in the early 1950s. Mak

states in her book, “If it were not for the British Hong Kong government developing overseas

markets for Hong Kong filmmakers, the Hong Kong film industry may have declined” (50). It is

a typical reverse causation, assuming the effect as the cause. The assumption she makes is that

Hong Kong was like an empty container free of existing power relations, and filled up with Cold

War power struggles. She simply attributes the rise of Hong Kong cinema to the effort of

colonial government, as if it was a philanthropist organization rather than a colonial power. In

short, the existing colonial power in her analysis is seen as neutral, even though she tries to

analyze colonial film-making like educational documentaries in Malaysia-Singapore and

commercial films in Hong Kong.

In terms of Cold War tropes, Yip Man-fung observes an interesting common theme of

impaired heroes among Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong action films during the Cold War:

the blind swordsman Zatoichi in Japan; the one-armed swordsman in Hong Kong and the one-

62
legged man in South Korea. He attributes them to atomic bombs, postwar economic booms and

disillusionment among the younger generation in Japan, as well as to the 1967 leftist riots and

capitalist ethics of competition in Hong Kong, and the shameful history of Japanese colonization,

the Korean War, Korean division and nationalism in South Korea. Therefore, impaired heroes in

action films reflected these anxieties during the Cold War. While it is interesting to see the

comparison, the specular relation between film and history is too direct and simple. He neglects

the Cold War background out of which those studios produced, distributed and circulated these

images and heroes. The political nature of the studios would inform certain themes, aesthetics

and images of heroes.

In this section, I will take the Cold War as the most important background against which

colonial discourses continued. The Cold War rescued the dying British empire after the Second

World War. It also extended the existing colonial relations in Hong Kong. The apparatus of

security was reinforced. Also, I argue that the relationship between films and the Cold War

power was never direct. Yip’s specular framework may not be able to explain the subtle

differences between Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury (1972) and Cheung Sing-yim and Lee Kai-ming’s

Ying Ku (1967), which are both anti-Japanese imperialism action films, and why Fist of Fury

gained much more worldwide popularity than Ying Ku, if he did not consider the political nature

of each of the studios that produced them. Ying Ku was produced by the Great Wall Movie

Enterprise Limited, which was a leftist film studio, while Fist of Fury was produced by Golden

Harvest, which was a rightist film studio. It is because during the Cold War, the political nature

of the studios from both camps manifest their different aesthetic concerns, images of heroes,

distribution networks and financial supports. Colonizers had no responsibility or moral

obligation to develop the Hong Kong film industry. Without understanding the fact that Hong

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Kong was a colony, we cannot explain how the Cold War powers articulated the existing local

power relationship and colonial discourse to make an illusion of the Free Market and the Free

World. Again, the concepts wu/xia and the “law outside the Law” are keys to exposing the Cold

War apparatuses of security. Like Toto, I am pulling back the curtain, exposing the “Wizard” or

the United States operating the machinery of security, recruiting a local assistant (colonial

government) to maintain the illusion of law and order.

What is the role of Hong Kong during the Cold War? Why did the U.K. keep Hong Kong

as a colony and why did Communist China not liberate Hong Kong? Before the Chinese

Communists liberated China in 1949, a series of independent movements and decolonization had

started. India was an independent country in 1947, Pakistan in 1947 after the violent Partition,

and Palestine and Burma in 1948. To London, the retention of Hong Kong was a cultural and

economic strategy rather than a military one. Hong Kong had been an entrepôt, channeling

different goods, coolies, and capital between Asian markets for the last hundred years. When a

large number of refugees came to Hong Kong during the Chinese civil war and the establishment

of the People’s Republic of China, they provided the colony with capitalists and a large

workforce. The changes in the volume of output, the variety of products, and the scope of the

market had changed and constituted the industrial development in Hong Kong. Hong Kong also

played an important role for fighting the Communist insurgency in Malaya. It gathered

intelligence and controlled communication in the China seas. Also, amid the decolonization

movements, the retention of Hong Kong was a symbolic move to sustain the prestige and

security of the British empire in the Far East. Therefore, Hong Kong was a unique site to have a

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defensive strategy of containment. The British government on the one hand practiced the strategy

of containment, and avoided provoking Beijing on the other.

To the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong was an outpost to break the blockade and

embargo. “Long term planning and full utilization” (changqi dasuan choongfen liyong) was their

policy towards Hong Kong. Hong Kong became a site for exchanging foreign currency and for

allying Chinese in Southeast Asian countries. Hong Kong could be a political leverage to split

the Anglo-American alliance. As long as Hong Kong was not a main anti-Communist base, the

PRC government would tolerate the colonial interest in Hong Kong. Therefore, “Both London

and Beijing were particularly sensitive to the possible use by Washington of Hong Kong as a

base for subversion against the mainland”(Mark 2004:30). The Hong Kong government knew

that the Chinese Communists’ policy had taken Hong Kong as a “white area,” an area not yet

controlled by the Communist government. Clandestine subversion might infringe both China’s

and Britain’s economic and diplomatic interests (“Ad Hoc Committee” 13-14).

Because of the series of decolonization movements in Africa and Asia, and the Suez

Crisis of 1956, the U.K. needed the support of the U.S. to defend Hong Kong. During the Korean

War, the United Nations and the U.S. imposed a total trade embargo on China in 1951. To

develop the global containment of communism, the U.S. used the existing colonies and the ex-

colonies to support anti-Communism. Hong Kong served no greater military interest than a site

for intelligence gathering and China watching. British colonies like Hong Kong and Japanese ex-

colonies like Taiwan were used to house the CIA stations (Mark 2004:37). The intricate

relationship between the U.S., the U.K., the Soviet Union, China, and Hong Kong can be

summed up in this sentence: “If the British government had Hong Kong in mind in dealing with

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the PRC, the US administration was certainly more concerned about American domestic politics

and the global struggle with the Soviet Union than about the fate of the Colony” (Mark 2004:38).

According to William Pietz, colonial discourse continued to exist and to support the Cold

War geopolitics. Colonialist discourse has been appropriated and translated ideologically by

different intellectuals and cultural institutions to articulate with the Cold War interests. They

used the binary opposition between science and magic, rational and irrational, civilized and

savage to understand totalitarianism. The reasons why Nazism and Fascism had happened lie in

Europeans’ relapse into a state of traditional Oriental despotism and into the savagery of “pre-

historic” primitives. Communist China, in contrast to the “principle of liberality” that I

mentioned in the previous section, was “nothing other than traditional Oriental despotism plus

modern police technology” (Pietz 1988: 58). In Hong Kong, one could find the leftist-rightist

divide between both camps from newspapers, publishing presses, bookstores, schools, hospitals,

film studios, and even to soccer teams. The Cold War experiences were complicated, as it not

only extended the colonial discourse, but it was also imbricated in the civil war between the

People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (which will be discussed in the last

section).

In terms of the film industry, leftist film companies included Southern Company

(Nanguo, 1950-1951), The Fifties (Wu shi niandai, 1951-1952), and Dragon-Horse (long ma,

1951-1960). The most prominent leftist studios were Great Wall Movie Enterprise, Feng Huang

Motion Picture, and Sun Luen Film Company (1952-1982), which were managed by the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by Zhou En-lai. At the “Hong Kong Film Industry Working

Conference” held in Beijing in 1964, Liao Chengzhi, head of the Overseas Chinese Commission

of CCP, officially classified the Hong Kong film industry as “the side flank of the socialist-

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revolutionary and proletarian-revolutionary film industry of the motherland” (Liao 2011:190).

To the PRC, Hong Kong leftist films played a different role from that of the mainland, and in

terms of political nature, they were viewed as revolutionary bourgeois cinema or the cinema of

the New Democratic Revolution, with anti-imperialism, anti-feudalism, the alliance between

workers, petty-bourgeois, and patriotic capitalists as their major political objectives. The target

audiences of Hong Kong leftist cinema should be overseas Chinese in Asia and Africa (190).

The Nationalist camp consolidated existing supporters and recruited “free” filmmakers to

join and recognize the Republic of China as their mother country. The Hong Kong and Kowloon

Union of Free Workers in the Film Industry was founded in 1953, renamed as Hong Kong and

Kowloon Cinema and Theatrical Enterprise Free General Association in 1957, or commonly

known as the Free General Association. All films must first be censored in the General

Association before being distributed in Taiwan. The Nationalist government in Taiwan had

ordinances like the Measures for Handling of National Films in the Period of Civil War (kan

luan shiqi guo pian chuli banfa), and Measures for Censoring Communist Artists (fu fei ying

renshencha banfa). Artists and filmmakers, who had worked for leftist studios or any affiliated

institutions, must write a public confession letter before defecting to the Free General

Association. Among the members and studios were Motion Picture and General Investment (MP

& GI, 1956-1965), the Shaw Brothers Studio, and later Golden Harvest, which produced many

well-known martial arts pictures.

However, this comparison is by no means fair to the leftist cinema. The film studios from

the two camps were unequal in terms of their political power. The founders of MP & GI and the

Shaw Brothers had a close relationship with the colonizers5 and dominated overseas distribution

5
Loke Wan Tho, a western-educated businessman and the founder of the MP & GI, based in Singapore and
Malaya, invested in banking, rubber fields, mines, real estate, hotels, food, aviation industry, and the entertainment

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networks. The circulation of rightist films controlled the markets in Singapore and Malaysia.

Even films produced by leftist studios were distributed by rightist distributors in Southeast Asia

(Chu 2009:254).6 The Hong Kong government favored anti-Communist films (Jarvie 1977:33).

In the case of Li Li-hua, her defection from the leftist studio to the General Association was a

result of the collaborated threat and persuasion by the government, the Catholic Church, and the

Nationalist government from Taiwan. The PRC flags, national anthem and, leaders were banned

from being shown on screen, while the ROC propaganda like Today’s Formosa (Jinri bao dao),

Voice of Free Alliance (Ziyou zhenxian zhi sheng) were allowed to screen in Hong Kong (Zhou

2009:27). Audiences and censors and other conservative and rightist parties made leftist films

less and less welcome.

The economic domination was accompanied by a series of judicial restrictions and

political prosecutions and deportations. In accordance with the rule of law, the colonial

government started to push through a series of laws and ordinances after the People’s Republic

of China was founded. These ordinances included the Registration of Person Ordinance (1949)

that examined the population; the Societies Ordinance (1949) and Sedition Ordinance (amended

in 1950) that curtailed the freedom of assembly and the rights to form unions; the Public Order

Ordinance (1948), the 1922 Emergency Regulation Ordinance (re-enacted in 1949), the

Expulsion of Undesirable Ordinance (1949), the Deportation of Aliens Ordinance (1950), and the

Representation of Foreign Powers Ordinance (1949) that limited the freedom of demonstration

business. His movie empire was also partly invested in by British capital like Rank Organization (Mak 2018: 17).
He also donated money to the British Armed Force during the Second World War (63). Loke’s Cathay Film Service
Ltd. made propaganda for the Singapore government while the Shaw Brothers helped make propaganda too for
Singapore (81).
6
According to Chu Hak, a scriptwriter in the Great Wall studio, the Shaw Brothers had a long-term contract with
Great Wall. The deal included buying ten films a year from Great Wall and 120,000 HK dollars for each film. The
cost of each film was then covered and the films could be distributed in Singapore and Malaysia. For more, see (Chu
2009: 254).

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and expression. The most controversial news was the deportation of ten leftist filmmakers and

script-writers. Shen Ji, among many other leftist artists, helped organize a labor strike at Li Zu-

Yong’s studio Yung Hwa Motion Picture Industries Limited, which was a failing studio. The

Hong Kong government took this opportunity to deport ten leftist filmmakers. In the following

years, other measures were used: plainclothes police officers would stalk leftist filmmakers

during critical times like riots or labor strikes; the government banned the sale of film negatives

or banned the running of their studios if they were found to shoot anything about the

Communist’s liberated area (jie fang qu) (Zhou 2009:29; Gu 1989:113–16). During the 1967

leftist riots, the police searched the Sil-Metropole Organization Ltd, known as Yin Du, a leftist

cinema theater and a distributing company. They arrested Sun Luen’s board member Liao Yi-

yuan, and director Ren Yi-zhi. The couple Fu Qi and Shi Hui, two stars working at leftist studios,

were arrested and deported (Yindu 2010:254).

However, the containment was not limited to Hong Kong. For example, the United States

Information Service, working like a parasite on a host colony or ex-colony, “provided marketing

support to pro-Taiwan studios and to highlight Free World unity, organized tours of Hollywood

celebrities to the region and Hong Kong stars to the US, Japan, and Southeast Asia” (Fu

2018:27). USIS provided a lot of information for other USIS posts in Southeast Asia and

provided guidance on official propaganda to further US national interests (Mark 2004:37).

To unite the power of the Free World, Southeast Asia was a key battlefield in terms of

military and cultural propaganda. Singapore and Malaysia became the main markets for Hong

Kong cinema after the trade embargo on China. The colonial government in Malaya launched the

Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) was launched to counter the Malayan National Liberation

Army using scorched earth policies in the jungle. One of the infamous cases was the Batang Kali

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massacre. Innocent villagers were subjected to frequent questioning, detention, and punishment

(Lau 2016:79). Similar cultural institutions were established in Singapore and Malaysia. In

Singapore, there were the Regional Office of the British Information Service and the Foreign

Office Information Research Department; in Malaya, there were the Department of Information

Services in Federation of Malaya, and the Malayan Film Unit (1946-1963). The latter was

funded by the U.K., and produced anti-Communist propaganda to promote the benevolent

images of the British colonizers. Even after independence, the Unit became a quasi-national

cinema institution.7 These colonial propaganda institutions and their attendant discourses were

extended even after the independence of Malaysia (1957) and Singapore (1965). It was no

accident that many associations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and film

festivals like the Southeast Asian Film Festival (1954), which was later renamed as Asia-Pacific

Film Festival in 1957, were based in Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian Film Festival was

another good example of extending the colonial and even imperial discourse. The festival was

founded by Masaichi Nagata, who got support from the military government to establish Daiei

studio during the Second World War. Even though he was a Class A war criminal, his strong

commitment to anti-Communism gained him a place in Asia-Pacific Film Festival during the

Cold War.

I have provided this context to illustrate how wu/xia and the “law outside the Law”

functioned under the Cold War framework. First, the existing colonial power in Hong Kong was

extended and reinforced by the Cold War context. The law, or British Hong Kong, would appear

to regulate and monitor the leftist-rightist camps in Hong Kong. In helping the Law, the law

7
For more on the Malayan Film Unit, see (Mak 2018:75).

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needed to clear the proximity and deter any undesirable subjects from breaking the “fourth wall”

which might shatter the illusion of the Free World. Therefore, monitoring Chinese Communists

was the top priority. In an inward telegram sent from Governor Alexander Grantham to the

Secretary of State for the Colonies in July 1949, Grantham had suggested a double standard in

censorship of Chinese Communists films:

Soviet films are being shown in the Colony and enjoy fairly wide popularity. They fulfill

censorship requirements by not attacking the British Commonwealth or friends but, to the extreme

limits, boost Russia. Chinese communist films may be more dangerous and insidious since they

portray Chinese and not white-race.

(Grantham 32)

For Grantham, Soviet films may be popular but they may not have a disturbing effect in Hong

Kong. Chinese communist films, on the contrary, portraying Chinese stories and Chinese history,

were more dangerous. Chinese audiences were more impressionable to these films. The double

standard, like the one I discussed in the colonial censorship of sex and violence in Chinese and

Western films, meant to define Chinese audience as well as to clear the “floor” so that capitalists,

industrialists, and free’ filmmakers could dance and write whatever they wanted to. Jin Yong or

Louis Cha, a martial arts novelist, script-writer, politician, publishing press and newspaper Ming

Pao founder, and a recipient of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), once said

to an English journalist, “the best thing about capitalist society, I think, is there is always an

opportunity open, and its open to everybody.” Even though there were no free elections, and

there were colonial ordinances and laws which were still in use in Hong Kong, the majority of

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the population in postcolonial Hong Kong still lose themselves in the illusion that British Hong

Kong was “free” and “democratic.”

Popular Culture in the Extended Civil War

The Cold War not just extended the colonial discourse but also the civil war between

Communist China and Nationalist China. Popular culture was caught up in this internal division.

It became a “major battleground of the unfinished civil war between New China and the

Nationalist regime” (Fu 2018:2), if not an imbricated result of colonial regulation and monopoly.

Both leftist and rightist studios produced wuxia pictures. However, why are the wuxia films that

are considered classics always rightist and conservative wuxia films? Why were the wuxia films

often produced by rightist studios popular, but not those produced by the leftist studios? Before

moving to the canon of wuxia films in the next chapter, I would like to reveal the foundation of

the canonization of wuxia pictures and the differenct issues leftist wuxia films emphasized.

Although my whole dissertation focuses on the mainstream wuxia films, the lacuna of the leftist

wuxia films must be identified rather than merely mentioned in passing.8

During the late 1950s and early 60s, the People’s Republic of China’s cultural policy had

often used folk culture to secure the recognition of its national status in the world. Peking opera

troupes and acrobatic groups were delegated to Latin America.9 Instead of hardline propaganda,

8
In many studies of wuxia pictures, leftist wuxia pictures were merely mentioned in passing (Teo 2009:91–92).
However, they were more than entertainment and usually had higher aesthetic values and social meaning.
9
In 1956, Chu Tu-nan, head of delegation in Chinese folk arts, visited Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil. In
1959, Zhou Er-fu, a committee member of Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign countries, led acrobatic
teams and visited four countries in Latin America. Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People’s Republic of China,
paid extra attention to these two visits and censored out all political programs in the cultural activities. The visits

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these visits aimed to present a vibrant national culture and earn a better reputation among the

Great powers. Nevertheless, these cultural activities mostly satisfied the exotic needs of

foreigners. In 1962, a confidential letter sent by Edward Willan, the Colonial Secretariat in Hong

Kong, to J. D. Higham of Colonial Office in London, reports that these cultural activities in

Hong Kong were on the “cultural offensive.” He wrote that they were meant to “enhance their

prestige and standing in the eyes of the Chinese population of the Colony…and to do something

to retrieve the damage done to their reputation by reports of economic difficulties and by the

refugee influx of last May” (Willan 1962). Artists include opera groups, Chinese folk artists,

acrobatic groups, vocalist troupes, and western-style music bands. These forms of activities

could help China bring in useful foreign exchange. He demanded a stricter control on the number

of visits to be endorsed, even though the Commissioner of Police had laid down various

restrictions already. More importantly, the Communist cultural activities in Hong Kong should

not “secure a monopoly of popular culture” (Willan 1962).

Interestingly, the monopoly of popular culture always got into conflict with the

“principles of liberality”, the term Sir Stevenson used in his telegram discussed in the previous

section. Regarding the monopoly on popular culture, the Foreign Office sent a letter to J. D.

Higham:

The need to limit and control presentations which have an obvious political content and a direct

political impact (e.g. modern China drama) is of course acknowledged…But within these

limitations we would be inclined not to take up too rigid a position, reminiscent of the most severe

“cold war” measures, and to maintain a certain flexibility with regard to the presentation of

were meant more for befriending and uniting other countries and artists than ideologically inculcating Communist
ideas.

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 traditional cultural activities for which there must be in Hong Kong a considerable nostalgic

demand of a genuine non-political native…we would, however, like you to consider whether the

somewhat wider considerations to which we have drawn attention might not justify some

softening of your policy in regard to those cultural activities that have no obvious political

significance.

(Higham letter to E.G. Willan; my emphasis)

As long as Chinese popular folk culture was limited to those “traditional cultural activities,” they

were safe and spooke to the nostalgic demands of Hong Kong Chinese. On the contrary, modern

China dramas (yang bang xi) were different from these nostalgic cultural activities. They had

obvious political content and a direct political impact. What they assume is that the more realist,

the easier to arouse social unrest and bring political impact. They thought that movies that set the

story in the past would be safer territory that would not arouse social unrest.

However, even films set in an abstract time and place may be censored and banned. In

deciding the ban on The Red Detachment of Women (1965), R. S. Barry, the Secretary for the

Panel of Censors, decided to ban the exhibitions of the film, because it “will most likely lead to

disorder…to provoke unrest among the mixed audiences” (Barry 1965). The distributors applied

an appeal to the Board of Review. After leftist newspapers had mounted a campaign against the

Hong Kong Censor’s Office, the Board of Review held a meeting and decided to uphold the ban.

J. C. McDouall, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and the Chairman for Film Censorship Board

of Review, sent the result back to the Panel of Censors:

For your own and the censor's information, the Board was at first in two minds about this film. We

did not feel that it was the kind of film which would be likely to cause a breach of the peace in

Hong Kong, or to be in any other way markedly objectionable for the kinds of reasons set out in

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 the original 1963 "Guide" or in the draft 1965 re-write of that "Guide". Perhaps this point may be

clearer if it is appreciated that, had the film been descriptive of events which had been happening

at the present time or in the very recent past, then the Board might well have taken a very different

view. As it was, the film was about fighting and clashes of ideologies of a good many years ago;

and, certainly according to CPG propaganda, there is no such thing going on in China at present.

(McDouall 1965, Memo on The Red Detachment of Women)

Even though the Board of Review thought that the film was “without any serious danger of a

breach of the peace or of young people being incited to go back to school or home and start

forming subversive cells” (McDouall, Memo on A Glorious Festival 1965), the film was banned

as socialist films were potentially dangerous. Especially when the Red Detachment of Women

had won the Bandung award at the third Asia-Africa Film Festival in Indonesia and was well

received in Burma in 1964, it could easily arouse in Hong Kong a sense of urgency. Despite that

constant censoring and restriction, a consent was made in both leftist and rightist studios that

movies should stay away from articulating overt and confrontational criticisms of the colonial

government in a contemporary setting. Wuxia then was a good genre to invest in. It contains

cultural lessons and stories could be set in environments bearing little similarity to contemporary

Hong Kong society.

In Hong Kong, both leftist and rightist studios made martial arts films during the Cold

War. Usually, wuxia pictures from both camps set their stories in an abstract time and place.

Also, studios from both camps considered wuxia pictures as a genre with huge commercial

potential. In his article on the Cold War and Hong Kong cinema, Li Pei-de argues that “leftist”

and “rightist” were only political labels, signifying nothing artistic (Li 2009: 91) and both these

political sides produced many commercial films. He shows how even the leftist filmmakers and

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artists did not acknowledge the political differences between “leftist” and “rightist” cinemas (Li

2009: 92). Tony Rayns even suggests an “aesthetic of evasion” in pro-Communist films in Hong

Kong.

The development of pro-Communist filmmaking in Hong Kong could be seen as an extended

shaggy-dog story without its punchline. Communist ideology had to be coded in the films: in the

emblematic names of characters, for instance, or the use of choral songs on soundtracks. The

results were often socially committed films that seemed hopelessly out of touch with social

realities, sometimes to the extent of being set in some nebulous city of the mind somewhere

between Hong Kong and Shanghai.

(Rayns 1990:56)

However, I think that the coded metaphor was not limited to names and songs, but some subtle

techniques in narration, characters development, gender division, and political messages. Even

though leftist studios were part of the film industry in Hong Kong, their products were not

“cheaply made and hastily produced.” On the contrary, they were of high quality. Many films

and theme music from the leftist studios were often adapted or exploited by rightist studios. A

famous example is Wang Wei-yi’s The House of 72 Tenants (1963), which was about the

working-class solidarity in a tenement. It was remade into Chor Yuen’s The House of 72 Tenants

(1973) by the Shaw Brothers. The remake became one of the classic films that helped resurrect

the dormant Cantonese film industry in the Mandarin-dominated market circa 1973. Or the

theme music for films like “Fisherman’s Song of the East China Sea” (dong hai yu ge), “Daring

General” (chuangjiang ling) and “Small Swords Society” (xiao dao hui) were originally

composed by composers in Communist China during the Great Leap Forward Movement (1958-

1962). They glorify fisherman in the sea, an anti-imperialist and feudalist secret society and a

76
historical daring peasant leader Li Zi-cheng respectively. Because of their high production

values, the theme music of these films made at leftist studios became the canned music often

used in many mainstream wuxia movies.

Even though leftist and rightist studios produced wuxia pictures, their interpretations of

heroes and aesthetics were different. One thing that stands out in the leftist wuxia films from

their rightist counterparts was their repreated emphasis on “lao bai xing,” a concept or category

of the people or the masses. In Fu Chi and Chan Ching-po’s The Golden Eagle (1964), Cheung

Sing-yim’s The Jade Bow (1966), Cheung Sing-yim and Lee Kai-Ming’s Ying Ku (1967), and

Hu Siao-fung’s Flying Dragon Heroes (1967), heroes are righteous because they do righteous

things in the interests of the “lao bai xing.” Bulgud, a hero in The Golden Eagle, escapes from

his hometown and disguises himself as an ordinary Mongolian shepherd after offending a

Mandarin. He feels so ashamed, because he hides in a different town and hears how his

Mongolian fellows praise him by saying that “all he did is for the lao bai xing.” The Golden

Eagle was not only the first Hong Kong martial arts film produced in Hong Kong and Mongolia,

but also the first to break the one million-box office record in Hong Kong film history, and the

first martial arts film featuring Mongolian wrestling and a half-naked hero. It came three years

earlier than Chang Cheh’s wuxia hero in One Armed Swordsman (1967), which Chang often

claimed to be the film with the first masculine hero who shows his naked chest and to break the

one million-box office record. Suffice it to say, lao bai xing was a compromised term, because in

Hong Kong, political parties were prohibited. In socialist cinema lao bai xing always has its

political significance aligned with Communist or liberation army. In Ying Ku, an anti-Japanese

imperialism film, a female bandit is educated by the leader of a mysterious peasant army that,

“we specialize in killing Japanese imperialists for lao bai xing.” Anyone familiar with the anti-

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Japanese imperialist films in Communist China would know that they are the Eighth Route Army

(ba lu jun). The change is not just the rhetoric, but the conclusion of the film. The collective at

the end is led by no political parties. Lao bai xing is separated from any political party. Even

though a collective is formed in many films like the end of Flying Dragon Heroes, there are no

political parties to lead any mass line. The heroes ally with ordinary villagers by saying

“everyone here has their own hatred, Feng Zhu and Shi Ying’s parents were murdered. Their

family was broken because they were forced to pay the rent.” What I’m illustrating is how the

lao bai xing were usually aligned with the Chinese Communist party in Chinese cinema. They go

hand in hand and learn from each other to fight Japanese imperialists, but in Hong Kong lao bai

xing lost its political connotation. The oppressed share their hatred of their landlord-warlord but

the collective could not be mobilized to transcend into any political movement.

The emphasis on lao bai xing is related to Communist historiography. Although lao bai

xing does not necessarily denote the proletarian, it is viewed as the agent of history. Lao bai xing

rather than the traditional culture is the core motor of history. In mainstream wuxia films, like the

Wong Fei-hung series, Confucian lessons and culture are the lessons to the villains and audience.

Confucian values are often the substitute for the meaning of xia and became the justification for

violence. Loyalty to the emperor (zhong), brotherhood (yi), filial piety (xiao) are not just the core

values in most mainstream martial arts films, but the core of the Han-centered ethno-nationalism.

Because of these different perspectives on culture and history, their illustration of the Qing

dynasty was different. The Qing dynasty, as a non-Han dynasty, was often described as a

totalitarian dynasty in many period-costume pictures. While Chang Cheh may make an analogy

between the Qing emperors and the Communist dictators (this will be discussed in Chapter 4),

leftist directors focus on the tyrannical rule in the Qing dynasty. In mainstream wuxia films,

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many heroes’ ethnicity is Han Chinese, and their enemies are usually ethnic like Miao,

Mongolian, Tibetan, or Manchurian. In The Golden Eagle, the heroes are Mongolians, which

cannot be seen in mainstream cinema. In the film, Mongolian culture like the ovoo festival or ao

bao hui is well introduced rather than dismissed. In leftist wuxia films, the Mandarins are not

brainwashing and manipulating Mongolian villagers, but are tyrannical and unloving officers

exploiting the harvest of ordinary villagers.

Gender division is also totally different in leftist wuxia films. Although there are female

casts in mainstream wuxia films like Cheng Pei-Pei and Xu Feng, heroines in leftist wuxia films

are different in that they need not go out of the way to emphasize their femininity, sex appeal, or

pregnancy in films. They can be more pro-active than the male heroes. In Golden Eagle,

Shandan, the heroine, plays tricks on her suitor. In the showdown, she lassos the evil Mandarin

and shows her female power, while hero Bulgud wrestles with the villain. The ending then is

different from most mainstream wuxia films. Both of them join their comrades rather than

getting married. In most wuxia films, heroes end up walking alone, getting married, or reuniting

a family. In Golden Eagle, both of their families are broken. Shandan’s mother and Bulgud’s

father are killed by an evil Qing Lord. The familial relationship focuses on non-biological

relationships in leftist wuxia films. For example, Bulgud, as an adopted son, does not avenge his

father’s death but his brothers and fellow Mongolian villagers. In The Jade Bow, the hero Jin

Shi-yi is caught in a love triangle choosing two different heroines: the softhearted Gu Zhi-hua,

and the aggressive Li Sheng-nan. The biological is always evil in the film. Gu’s father is

obsessed with killing heroes and being the number one killer, while Li’s uncle is obsessed with

taking revenge. Both Gu’s father and Li’s uncle are killed at the end. Rather than a marriage or a

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reunion, the ending concludes with the sacrifice of Li, while Gu and Jin join the anti-Qing

society.

Sex and violence and their special effects were never gimmicks in leftist wuxia films.

Usually, the camera in mainstream wuxia films makes a close-up shot of the naked breast of a

female stand-in or the body of the heroes. Although there are closeups of stars’ faces in leftist

wuxia pictures, their closeup shots are intended to generate nothing more than moral and

emotional content. One thing that is quite different between the rightist and leftist wuxia film

stars is that Shaw Brothers often trained and employed stars who were Triad gang members. For

example, Wang Yu, the masculine hero of many Chang Cheh films, was from the United

Bamboo Gang, one of the largest of Taiwan’s three main criminal Triad groups. Chan Wai-Man,

another star in wuxia movies, was from 14K, one of the largest Hong Kong Triad groups. These

two Triad groups had historic ties to the Nationalist Party. In terms of stunts and spectacular

swordplay, the leftist studio never overused them. The use of stunts is never hurt the balance of

narrative. In The Jade Bow, Tang Jia and Lau Kar Leung, who were already famous action

choreographers in Cantonese wuxia films, invented wirework in two particular scenes to show

the flying of a heroine and an upside-down martial artist in a mid-air collision. They also broke

the cinematic language to show group fights and solo fights in a more realist way than the more

theatrical style of earlier martial arts films. People at the Shaw Brother Studio were interested in

these action choreographies, and immediately hired them. Since then Tang Jia and Lau Kar-

Leung worked at the Shaw studio and collaborated with Chang Cheh until 1976. The cinematic

language of wires and multiple moves of fights (tao lu) in one single take was exploited to the

extreme at the Shaw studio.

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 One last comparison will be between Ying Ku and Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury. Both of them

criticized Japanese imperialism but in very different ways. This difference may suggest why Fist

of Fury could gain worldwide popularity, even in Japan, while Ying Ku remains unknown to

local audiences. The difference lies not in their different star images. While Chen Si-si was a

well-known actress who appeared in films by the leftist studio Great Wall, Bruce Lee was an up-

and-coming new star, who had charismatic acting and knew martial arts. The fundamental

difference is how they attack Japanese imperialists. Both Huang Ying-ku (Chen Si-si), and Chen

Zhen (Bruce Lee) are fictional characters. In the film, we know that Ying-ku had been a victim

of wang lang xi (a maiden who was forced to marry into a childless family in the hope of waiting

for her husband to be born). She runs away from the feudal family and becomes a bandit. During

the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, she meets and learns from a peasant leader

and discovers that her hatred should not be a personal one, but a collective one. She transforms

herself from a bandit into an anti-Japanese imperialist heroine and teaches her partner the

meaning of organization. On the contrary, we can’t see any background of Chen Zhen in Fist of

Fury, nor any transformation of him. He is ashamed of hiding himself while his fellow

colleagues and classmates are attacked by police and Japanese martial artists. While Huang

Ying-ku changes from a Robin Hood style bandit into a national fighter, Chen Zhen changes

from a lone hero into a criminal. He is sacrificed in the last freeze-frame of the film. Ying-ku

learns that there are no Gods above us. If there is God, people are Gods. The agency is always

the collective of people. Chen Zhen is the only hero and caught up in a romance. His partner is

nothing more important than a supporting role. Women are shown to be very submissive in Fist

of Fury or even used as a sexploitation element. A nude geisha dances in front of the Chinese

interpreter, Russian boxer and Japanese martial artist. In Ying Ku, Huang Ying-ku not only leads

81
her bandit group, but lectures her partner, and asks him to correct himself. In terms of politics,

Ying Ku portrays no historical figures and no portraits of Mao are shown, while in Fist of Fury

we see the portrait of Huo Yuan-jia, the historical martial artist who founded the Jingwu Athletic

Association in modern China, Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China, and Kanō Jigorō,

who is the founder of Japanese Judo and an educator.

The comparison aims to show that even if wuxia is a sign of nationalism, it can have

totally different narrations, aesthetics, characterizations, and social meanings by their specific

political interpretations. In this chapter, I have reconsidered the relationship between wuxia

films, the colonial government, and the Cold War by revealing their collaborative relationship,

distribution and how they relay their power to maintain law and order. In the name of security,

nationalism should be limited to traditional culture, that was enjoyed and celebrated by the

Chinese in the Free World. Wu/xia and the “law outside the Law” are the two basic grammars

that were shared by wuxia films, the colonial government, and the Cold War. These two

grammars were applied into and regulated the three contradictions from wuxia pictures (hero and

enemy), the colonial government (the colonizer and the colonized), to the Cold War (Free World/

capitalist bloc, and totalitarian dictatorship/socialist bloc). These contradictions bring us to the

year 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was founded and the first installment of the

Wong Fei-hung series was released a week after New China was born. While the People’s

Republic of China continued the Republic of China’s ban on wuxia pictures for their

superstitious and feudal elements (fengjian mixin), Hong Kong for the same reason saw the

flourishing of wuxia stories.

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 CHAPTER 2 - Community’s Order Comes First - The Case of Wu Pang’s Wong Fei-hung

series (1949-1961)

On October 8, 1949, a week after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the

first installment of the Wong Fei-hung series, Huang fei-hong bian feng mie zhu10 (The Story of

Wong Fei-hung or Wong Fei-hung’s Whip that Smacks the Candle), was released in Hong Kong.

It opens with a seven-minute sequence of a lion dance in a studio reminiscent of a crowded street

in late Qing dynasty (1644-1911) Guangdong. The scene is about how a legendary Hung Ga

martial artist, Wong Fei-hung (played by Kwan Tak-hing) meets an aggressive young man

Leung Foon (played by Tso Tat-Wah), who becomes his disciple. In the next scene, a medium-

wide shot of an ancestral hall sees different portraits of Hung Ga martial artists hung up.

Surrounded by his disciples, Wong Fei-hung sits solemnly and gives lectures to his new disciple

Leung Foon:

From now on, you should respect teachers and behave in a good way (zunshi zhongdao). You

should never forget the aims of learning martial arts. The main purpose is to contribute to your

country. The minor is to maintain order by eradicating bandits (chubao anliang). You should work

hard on your martial skill. Once you have a healthy body, you can contribute a great deal to

society. Do remember: never get involved with conflicts and cause any troubles.

The camera pans on the portraits of the legendary Hung Ga martial masters who are rebels

against the Qing dynasty from different generations: Abbot Jee Shim, Luk A-choi, and Wong

10
The English titles of the Wong Fei-hung series I use are based on the filmography of the Hong Kong Film
Archive.

83
Kei-ying. Wong Fei-hung’s voice-over introduces the lineage of Hung Ga masters one by one

and asks Leung Foon to remember their names.

Unlike previous martial arts films, the series succeeded in setting the trend of a hero

being a Confucian father figure lecturing his disciples and enemies with his Confucian messages

and showcasing realist martial arts performances. We often find non-diegetic sequences of Hung

Ga routines or local cultural activities like Dragon Boat music performances inserted into the

narratives. Wong Fei-hung in the series is depicted as a Confucian martial artist. In the series,

Wong Fei-hung eradicates bandits, gangsters, traffickers, and even monsters, lectures disciples,

rescues ordinary villagers and fishermen, and settles disputes between villagers and the landed

gentry.

Given the success of the first two installments, Wen Boling, a Chinese Singaporean

investor of the series, asked the director Wu Pang to finish two more installments as sequels. In

the 1950s, the series attracted different overseas investors and Wu Pang continued to shoot films

based on the Wong Fei-Hung stories. Actors were asked to play the same roles. Kwan Tak-Hing

played Wong Fei Hung; Tso Tat-Wah played Leung Foon; Sek Kin played the villains. Wu Pang

made a total of fifty-nine episodes of the series that spanned from the 1950s to 70s. More than a

hundred films were produced featuring the character Wong Fei-hung, in which eighty-seven

films starred Kwan Tak-hing as the eponymous hero of the series.

In his autobiography, Wu Pang explains his objectives of shooting the Wong Fei-hung

series: “We, as filmmakers, are responsible for promoting the spirit of militarism (shang wu

jingshen) that includes protection of the weak, chivalry and justice.” Hong Kong film historian

Yu Mo-wan praises his works as an exemplar of “promoting the traditional Chinese ethos,

84
especially of Confucian values, including li (proper rite), yi (righteousness), ren (tolerance), shu

(forgiveness), renai (benevolence) and heping (peace)” (Wu 1995: Preface).

Questioning this perspective on the coherent set of values and attitudes in the series,

Hector Rodriguez argues that the Wong Fei-hung series provided a forum “whereby their

historical protagonists gradually accrued a complex network of more or less heterogeneous uses

and interpretations” (Rodriguez 1997:1). He thinks that the films in this series are “Confucian

cultural nationalist” texts that may interest the paternal colonizers and capitalists on the one

hand, and morally enhance cinema audiences along Confucian lines on the other (24). In other

words, instead of simply assigning a conservative label, namely Confucianist, on Wong Fei-

hung, he finds that the series are full of both traditional and progressive ideas that benefit those

who are in power and those who oppose those in power (1). Stephen Teo responded to

Rodriguez, stating that the ambiguity of the series’ value was “reflective of a Chinese-ness still

in its formative stage” (Teo 2009:66). For him, Wong Fei-hung is a Confucian hero and even the

“prototypical personification of nationalistic xia” (65). It means that the series is a sign of

transcendent cultural identity, working as an empty signifier of Chinese cosmopolitanism (67).

However, Rodriguez and Teo neglect an important dimension in the series that can

condition both progressive and traditional ideas. That is the community’s order and security. The

community in the film means a street district, a block, a borough, or neighbors. Also, the series

creates a sense of community among viewers, relating viewers to each other in a familiar way.

Even though Wong Fei-hung in the series may visit different villages or counties, we cannot see

the differences among the communities. Often relying on mutual aid and voluntary organization,

Wong Fei-hung in the series is always the community’s leader. However, we can’t see any “mass

mobilization” led by Confucian values mentioned by Rodriguez in the film (24). He argues how

85
the Wong Fei-hung series was rooted in the socio-cultural condition where the paternalistic

practice of colonial government coexisted with both a Confucian vision of subaltern justice and

modern mass mobilization. However, the subaltern in the film is always marginalized by the

heroic deeds of Wong Fei-hung. He does not lead the subaltern but educate them. Nor can we see

any progressive ideas like anti-arranged marriage, which could be put into radical practice to

overthrow feudal society. In this chapter, I argue that the focus of the series is the community’s

order itself. Wong Fei-hung is the agent of security in the community. That’s why he opposes

superstition in one episode but supports religious festivals in another. His mission is to ensure the

stability of the community rather than being a radical nationalist hero. Politics always comes

after the community’s order. Wu Pang’s creation of the community, intersecting and embodying

both modern and traditional Chinese values, not only provided a safe place but also an abstract

time and place. Any Guangdong referents appear only in film titles or names of places.

Incoherent and anachronistic costumes, props, makeup, and studio sets spanning from the Qing

dynasty to the early Republican era (1911-1949) never hurt the thematic coherence of security in

this film series.

In the following sections, I will first explore the history of southern Chinese martial arts

from the late Qing to the early Republican period. Many martial artists were either lawmen or

local militia leaders. Wong Fei-hung, the original historical figure, was one of the leaders of the

local militia. Their primary tasks included protection of their community or of private properties

of the rich. Martial arts became “national” in the Republican Era when they were caught in a

dilemma between two competing discourses of the May Fourth movement and ethno-

nationalism. The former accentuates modern values and scientism, while the latter emphasizes

86
Han-centered nationalism. I then investigate similar tensions and dilemmas in the Cantonese-

speaking film industry, out of which the Wong Fei-hung series was born.

In later sections, I will analyze the cinematic construction of the community’s order in

the series in three ways. First, I will lay out the origins of the community’s order like the

adaptation of the original story, and its references to the historical baojia (neighhood or

community) system, the guild and the local militia. Second, I will explain that what governs this

community is the order of the master-disciple relationship, a pre-modern type of apprenticeship.

Villagers, enemies, and landed gentry become like Wong’s disciples. His lectures to them, often

tainted with techniques of moral shaming, help transform the community. Wong Fei-hung is not

like a Confucianist but a modern philanthropist who collaborates with different officials and

authorities. Like many philanthropists in early twentieth century Hong Kong, Wong Fei-hung in

the films does not build his social power in civil society, an arena separated from and in

opposition to the ruling government. Law Wing-sang describes how charity institutions became a

site as a scaffold for Chinese elites’ exercise of social power in the early twentieth century (Law

2009:27). The community’s order is maintained by the leaders who were prone to collaboration

or even collusion with whatever government was in power (28). Like his character, the actor

Kwan Tak-hing himself is a famous philanthropist patriot but also a recipient of an honorary

Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1982 for his charitable

work and contribution to the film industry. The community’s order is the building block of

post/colonial modernity. Lastly, I will show how the film form registers the community’s order.

The uses of long takes and wide shots of Cantonese opera and singing and Hung Ga

performances articulate many early cinema experiences – a mixture of narrative and the cinema

of attractions, but at the same time, they were determined by the security of the community.

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 My focus will be on the series from 1949 to 1961. This period was considered the first

wave of the Wong Fei-hung series with coherent thematic concerns and filmic styles. Most of

them were directed by Wu Pang. After 1961, Kwan Tak-hing settled in the United States and the

series stopped. The second wave of the series started in 1967, and Wu Pang called Kwan Tak

Hing and directed only one of the films Wong Fei Hung Against the Ruffians (1967). Wu’s

scriptwriter Wong Fung took up the job and became the director of the series. However, the style

and thematic concerns changed drastically. Catching up on the new trends in the film industry,

Wong Fung added more editing styles, foreign challengers and locations than the earlier series

would not have. However, the wave could not survive beyond 1970. This signifies that the old

sense of community’s order and its collectivity died out and gave way to new heroes represented

by Chang Cheh’s masculine heroes and King Hu’s female warriors.

Brief History of Hung Ga Martial Artists from the Late Qing to the Early
Republican Era

In this section, I will introduce Wong Fei Hung and his disciples, and their roles of

maintaining order in the local militia or local community. Many Hung Ga martial artists worked

for the Qing government and the warlords during the Republican era. The thematic emphasis on

community’s order in the Wong Fei Hung series has its origin in the notorious history of martial

artists suppressing bandits and Communists. I will focus on the real Wong Fei-Hung in the late

nineteenth century and Lam Sai-Wing, who is Wong’s disciple. The latter is a very important

figure involved in promoting and teaching Hung Ga in the early Republican era. Lam’s disciples

like Zhu Yu-Zhai helped popularize Hung Ga with the stories of Wong Fei-hung in novels and

films.

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 To understand the entire historical development of Chinese martial arts is beyond the

scope of this chapter. In recent years, several publications in Chinese and English started to

investigate the history of Chinese martial arts with a sociological framework.11 The southern

Chinese martial arts originated from areas such as the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong

province and Fujian Province. Hung Ga is one of them. They share similar origins and mythos.

Chinese martial arts did not have a standardized and universal curriculum even though civil

examinations had included military fighting (wuju) since the Tang dynasty (618 - 907). The

southern Chinese martial arts include different styles of hand-combat, footwork, routines, and

weapons characterized by different regions and families’ interpretations. Until relatively

recently, Chinese martial arts did not have a well-documented history since most of the teachings

were handed down by oral instruction and through a specific family line (such as those who

share the same surname) or through personal master-disciple relationships (Judkins, Benjamin

N., Nielson 2015:88).

In the mid nineteenth century, China witnessed serious social unrest and conflicts, such

as the first Opium war (1839-1842), the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), the Second Opium War

(1856-1860), the Red Turban Rebellion (1854-1856) led by the Tiandihui or the Heaven and

Earth Society, a group of Guangdong secret societies, and other secret societies’ rebellions in

Shanghai and Guangxi. According to Judkins and Nielson, the rise of the southern Chinese

martial arts “had nothing to do with imperialism,” because the pressing dilemma Chinese faced

was much more local such as banditry and local militia (2015:69). Emerging as manufacturing

and commercial cities, Foshan and Guangzhou became the centers of trade and commerce and of

martial arts. After the defeat of the Taiping Rebellion and various local uprisings, the Qing

11
See (Mak 2016; Morris 2004; Judkins and Neilson 2015).

89
government turned towards a “local, gentry-led, militia system” (37). Local gentry assembled

and trained militias to prevent and guard against banditry, piracy and secret societies. Also,

private security guards were hired to protect both merchants and residences. In other words, the

development of the southern Chinese martial arts coincided with the development of

Guangdong’s economy in the late Qing preiod. A considerable demand for “bone-setters”12 was

also created, as many industries in Foshan and Guangzhou did not have worker safety. Some

martial artists were both herbal doctors and travelling salesmen hawking patent medicines in the

streets (75).

Wong Fei-hung (1847-1925) was one of them. He practiced Gung Ga, one of the

southern Chinese martial arts, with his father Wong Kei-ying. He and his father traveled around

different cities, hawked patent medicine, and did martial arts performance in the street. He and

other hand combat teachers like Chan Heung, the founder of the Choi Li Fut martial arts systems,

worked as soldiers or drill instructors in the late nineteenth century. Like his father Wong Kei-

ying, who worked as a martial arts coach for a General who guarded Canton (zhen yue jiangjun),

Wong Fei-hung served as a martial arts coach from 1882 to 1886 for Provincial military

commander Wu Quan-mei, and the Black Flag Army commander Liu Yong-fu (Zhu 1933:1;

Sansan 2014:52; Judkins, Benjamin N., Nielson 2015:70). He was the chief coach in the local

militia (min tuan zong jiaolian). He also fought in the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895) in

Taiwan. Later in his life, Wong opened a medical clinic called Po Chi Lam, which is a signature

indoor setting in the Wong Fei-hung series. In 1924, Po Chi Lam was burned down because of

the Canton Merchants’ Corps uprising, a contest between the Canton Merchants’ Volunteer

12
Bone-setters, or commonly known as dit da, is a traditional Chinese method of bone-setting used to treat injuries
such as bone fractures or bruises. Each bone-setter has their own ways to treat the injuries. The medicine they used
may be passed down along their familial line. Some of their practices were mixed with superstitious and premodern
medicine, like ashes of incense.

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Corps and the Nationalist army in Guangzhou. A year later, Wong died and the father of the

Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen died too.

In the early Republican era, the popularity of Hung Ga was attributed to Wong’s disciple

Lam Sai-Wing (1861-1943). He was born to a martial art family. He met Wong Fei-hung when

he was about forty years old. In 1921, his performance of “Tiger Crane Paired Form Fist” (hu he

shuang xing quan) for an orphanage in Guangdong won praise from Sun Yat-sen. Sun awarded

him with a silver presidential medal of Mr. Tiger-Crane (Sansan 2014:59). Like his master, Lam

also worked for the government and had close relationships with warlords. Lee Fok-lam was one

of them. Lee was a bandit and wanted by the Qing government. He escaped to Southeast Asia,

met Sun Yat-sen, and joined Tongmenhui (one of the secret societies in the late Qing) in 1907.

He was a powerful warlord in Guangdong and an opportunistic politician (He 2011:1) and

founded a military government. His military group was called the Fok Army (fu jun). His role in

the Republic of China was to suppress bandits and pirates, including Chen Qiongming, who was

considered a separatist and a federalist in the Kuomintang (KMT or the Nationalist Party of

China). The battalion commander of the Fok Army Wu Jin was Lam’s disciple. Wu Jin invited

Lam Sai-wing to be one of the coaches in the Fok Army (Zhu 1933:105). Many leaders like

Zhang Yuan in the army were trained by Lam (141). The Fok Army was later joined by different

civilian militia groups and formed part of the forces in the Northern Expedition, a military

campaign led by the KMT against the warlords (1926-1927). These civilian militia groups were

banned from joining forces with the peasants’ association (He 2011:51). These local militia were

later used by the KMT to suppress Communists, who were considered as bandits. From 1926 to

1936, under the leadership of Chen Jitang in Guangzhou, who was the key person of

modernizing Guangdong and of suppressing the Communists’ uprising, Lam also worked as an

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instructor for the National Revolution Army First Army Headquarters and served as martial arts

teacher to Chen Jitang’s family (Chao 2018:30).

In around 1928, Lam arrived in Hong Kong with his nephew Lam Cho. In this period, he

recorded and published the routines of Hung Ga. He recorded them in a portrait studio. From

1923 to 1951, three main routines of Hung Ga, Iron Wire Fist, Tiger Crane Paired Form Fist

and Taming the Tiger Fist were published. In the book blurbs, military celebrities, figures of

local militia and commanders like Wu Jin offered their compliments. Zhu Yu-Zhai, the disciple

of Lam Sai-wing, is another important Hung Ga artist who documented the arts. He interviewed

different martial artists and published a series of novels that featured Hung Ga legendary and

historical figures like the ones mentioned in the opening scene of the Wong Fei Hung series. One

of the publications was The Unofficial Biography of Wong Fei-hung (Huang fei-hong

biezhuang), which the film series was based upon. It was published in 1934. It was reprinted as a

series in Hong Kong newspaper The Kung Sheung Daily News in 1949. Because of this, a

musician and script-writer Ng Yat-Siu, who was also the disciple of Lam Sai-wing, discovered

the story and recommended it to the director Wu Pang.

During the Second Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), many southern Chinese martial arts

artists used their martial arts skill to form a self-defense team to protect their villages and

communities. For example, Chan Yi-lin formed a Choi Li Fut team of “Anti-Japan Big Knife” in

Foshan. Lin Cho, the nephew and disciple of Lam Sai-wing, helped form a self-defense group to

maintain community order during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong (1941-1945).

In 1949, a massive number of Chinese immigrants across the country came to Hong

Kong. They were intellectuals, businessmen, anti-communist officials, secret societies, Peking

opera artists, and martial artists. Since many martial artists have either worked in the KMT

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military or government’s office or have been labeled as gentry, capitalist class or anti-

communists, they had to escape from Communist China to Hong Kong, Taiwan and other

overseas Chinese communities. For example, Ip Man, a Wing Chun grandmaster, fled to Macau

and then Hong Kong in 1949, because he had worked as a policeman in the KMT government

and had an affiliation with Foshan Zhong Yi Association, a violent anti-communist reactionary

group. Many other martial artists worked as policemen, private security bodyguards, martial art

instructors, philanthropists, medical doctors, street performers, gangsters and stuntmen in the

film industry.13 Lau Cham, another disciple of Lam Sai-wing worked in the Wong Fei-hung

series to play the role of his own master. In short, martial artists, flooding to Hong Kong, used

their martial arts as a means to survive. No matter whether they were on-screen or off-screen,

martial arts were used to help maintain the community’s law and order in Hong Kong.

Form the late Qing dynasty to the early Republican period, most martial artists were used

to maintain law and order.14 They had a strong sense of community, defined by business groups,

the neighborhoods where they lived, and military-controlled sites. Their main role was to police

the community’s order and to train the community members with physical abilities. At the turn

of the twentieth century, martial artists were not “yet” national heroes. Martial arts were not yet

national arts (or guo shu). Many warlords and their affiliated institutions these martial artists

worked with were reactionary in terms of politics. In the Republican period, martial arts became

13
The Wing Chung grandmaster Ip Man trained a couple of police officers when he was in Hong Kong. Tang Sang
was the Chief Inspector of the district’s detective (Judkins, Benjamin N., Nielson 2018:257). Chinese martial arts
were also subjects police cadets could learn in training. The Hong Kong Police Wushu Society was established in
1996 to teach police officers different southern Chinese martial arts.
14
Given the inefficient mail and police systems, even in northern parts of China like Shanxi, Hebei and Tianjin,
martial artists were recruited as security guards to escort caravans in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties
(1644-1911). Xingyi quan/ xing-yi fist allegedly founded by Chinese Muslims in Shanxi was one of the martial arts
those security guards were trained in.

93
a national pastime as well as institution. In the face of imperialism and colonialism, they were

one of the sites to connect between bodies and nationalist sentiments.

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 Fig. 2 The advertisement in the Tien Kwong Morning News dated on Jan 26, 193415

Fig. 3 The blurbs in Lam Sai Wing’s Tiger-Crane Paired Fist. On the left, Wu Jin, the battalion commander of the
Fok Army and Lam Sai-Wing’s disciple wrote a blurb for the publication. On the right, other blurbs written by
military figures and local militia.

15
While Po Fung and Wong Chung-ming claim that the publication date of The Unofficial Biography of Wong Fei-
hung is unknown or in 1933 (Po 2012: 156; Wong 2014: 250), I found there were two news reports of its
publication. One is from the Kung Sheung Daily News, another from the Tien Kwong Morning News. They clearly
stated the date of publication is on January 26, 1934.

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Modern Nationalism and Ethnonationalism

At the turn of the century, China witnessed its own defeat and weakness from the

humiliating loss in wars and campaigns like the First Sino-Japanese war and the failure of a

series of Western Affairs movements (yang wu yun dong, 1861-1895). Since the Boxer Rebellion

(1899-1901), an anti-Christian and anti-foreign uprising supported by Empress Dowager Cixi,

the image of superstitious Chinese martial arts was notoriously connected to national weakness.

The boxer fighters were convinced they were invulnerable to foreign weapons by evoking spirit

and magical power. This rebellion finally led to the Eight-nation alliance’s invasion of China,

which defeated China and captured Beijing. The image of the “sick men of Asia” was highly

prevalent in intellectuals’ debates. These debates included how not only were Chinese taking

opium, but also how China as a nation was so weak in front of Western advanced technology and

the military. Culture and militarism then became sites for intellectuals to invest their ideals of

nationhood. Since the late Qing, reformists and intellectuals engaged in issues like national

survival, youth and militarism. Liang Qi-chao, a late Qing scholar and reformist, wrote the

famous article, “Shaonian Zhongguo Shuo” (Young China) in 1900. It established a rhetoric of

modernity that demarcates the opposition between the young and the old. While the young

people in China signified adventure, the new, hope, and the future, the old signified a

conservative mindset, uselessness, hopelessness and the past. In 1905, his book Bushido in China

or Zhongguo zhi Wushidao emphasized the importance of the relationship between the nation

and militarism, and he recommended the youth to read it.

During the late Qing and the early Republic, Chinese marital arts experienced a phrase of

intensive modernization with competing models and methods including Ma Liang’s “New

Martial Arts” (Xin Wushu) under the Beiyang regime, the Jingwu Athletic Association, Zhang

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Zhijiang’s Central Goshu Institute, and the modernization of the Southern Chinese martial arts.

The most outstanding one is the Jingwu Athletic Association. Modelled from the YMCA, it was

the first national-scale martial arts school across the country, emphasizing a scientific method of

teaching and learning, standardized military training and youth programs. It became a model that

repressed any feudalistic practice and superstitious thoughts that were commonly found in

southern martial arts. Below, I will demonstrate how martial arts became national but at the same

time was caught between competing models of nationalism. The Wong Fei-hung film series

registered this tension, out of which Wu Pang, the director of the series, intervened by repeatedly

establishing the community’s order in the stories of these films.

In the late 1900s, many young revolutionaries who studied abroad tried to establish

martial arts schools in China to promote national martial arts.16 A group of young reformers,

journalists and businessmen established a new martial arts organization, Shanghai Jingwu

Calisthenics School. Many of them were in their twenties when they established the Jingwu

Association. Some of them were also members of Tongmenhui. Their businesses included the

Watson soft drink factory, the Hexing Photo Studio, the Central Printing Company, and the

Yufan Iron Mine. Modern teaching methods included standardized curriculum and school

uniforms. They taught only northern arts in all of its fifty-three branches because the southern

Chinese martial arts were deemed as backward and superstitious. Their branches included

Guangdong, Shanghai, Fujian, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The Jingwu Association was the first

16
For example, Xiang Kai-ran, a young student who studied in Japan and returned to his hometown Chang Sha,
Hunan to establish The Society for National Arts (Guo Ji Xuehui) in 1911. Given the unstable political climate,
Xiang quit and became a novelist in the 1920s and his work The Tale of the Extraordinary Swordsman (Jianghu qi
xia chuan) sparked a a very popular series of film adaptations called The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple (Huoshao
Honglian si) in the late 1920s.

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national martial arts brand. Mass education of martial arts aimed at breaking the secrecy of

esoteric martial arts, which were circulated locally and regionally. Boys and girls were allowed

to study. The relationship of teacher-student replaced that of master-disciple. Students learnt not

only different martial arts skills but sports, calligraphy, instruments to play in military bands,

photography, and filmmaking. Actors in the Wong Fei-hung series like Sek Kin and Tso Tat-wah

were students of Sun Yu-feng, who was one of the instructors at Shanghai’s Jingwu Athletic

Association. Sek Kin was among the first generation of students at the school to be certified as

an instructor.

These young founders were familiar with modern technology. Chen Gong-zhe, one of the

founders, was a cinephile and a photographer. They used different media to propagate their

“national arts.” In the 1910s and 1920s, various publications, taking issues with the image of

superstitious and weak China, printed the legends of the Jingwu Association and explained

Chinese martial arts with scientific ideas. For example, the stories of Huo Yuan-jia, one of the

founders of the Jingwu Association who was poisoned by a Japanese physician, were printed in

The Youth Magazine (or Qingnian zazhi) in January 1916. A new nation needed young and

healthy bodies. They were part of the New Culture Movement, which criticized traditional

Chinese culture and promoted modernization and individual freedom against patriarchal family

and Confucian culture. Modern mass education should replace martial arts secrecy and magical

martial arts. The Youth Magazine was later transformed into the influential magazine New Youth

or La Jeunesse which inspired the May Fourth Movement (1919). Guo Wei-yi, one of the

founders of the Association, mentioned Chen Gong-zhe in an advertisement:

Phonographs and moving pictures are two recent technological inventions. The former can save

sound, the latter one images. Having these technologies, we will no longer have the old regrets

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 that something or someone great in the past could not be seen. Moving pictures are so popular in

our country. Many of them were produced by European and American merchants. Few Chinese

are making them. Chen Gong-zhe from our Association, found a great way of innovation in

photography. Last autumn, he told me, ‘There is a new invention in foreign countries. Moving

pictures can help spread the arts fastest. I can capture the boxing skills from our Association in the

films. We have a responsibility to promote athletics.’ Three months later, the films were finished.

Five thousand feet of film. The historical figures from our Association, boxing techniques,

weapons, boxing assembly, combative arts form in military, different sports, military shows and

parades are all included in the films. I am so proud to have such films about boxing produced by

Chinese. They will definitely contribute so much to the future development of boxing skills.

(Sansan 2014:446)

Despite their close relationship to the New Culture Movement and using modernized technology

to popularize martial arts, Chinese martial arts were still labelled as a superstitious and

feudalistic practice under the shadow of the Boxer movement. Lu Xun, one of the key writers in

the May Fourth Movement, criticized the so called New Martial arts led by Ma Liang in the

Beiyang government as merely a reincarnation of the Boxer Movement (Lu 1918:515).

Educators and senators were obsessed with the Chinese martial arts which could alone compete

with foreign militaries. Chen Tie-sheng, one of the founders of the Association, refuted Lu’s

claims and stated that martial arts are not “spiritism” (gui dao zhuyi) but “humanism” (ren dao

zhuyi).17 Even though they had arguments, both of them were hostile to Boxers and traditional

martial arts values.

In 1930, Tang Hao, a martial artist who was employed by Zhang Zhi-jiang in the

National Arts Research Academy (the Guoshu Yanjiuguan), published the book Studies on

17
For more, see (Lu 1918; Lu 1919; T. Chen 1919)

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Wudang and Shaolin (Wudang shaolin kao). He cast away the popular imagination of the mythic

origins of Chinese martial arts: Wudang and Shaolin, the two mythic schools of Daoist and

Buddhist monastery respectively. He cleared misunderstandings about Bodhidharma and Zhang

San-feng who were imagined in popular fictions as the grandmasters of Buddhist “external

exercise” and Daoist “internal exercise” respectively. Zhang Zhi-jiang appreciated it and wrote

in the preface:

All of us know that Wudang and Shaolin were two major schools in martial arts history. However,

all of us also know that numerous ridiculous myths of them create unnecessary conflicts.

(Tang 2008:Preface)

Guoshu Research Academy was established directly under the KMT control in 1928 Nanjing. A

new name “guoshu,” meaning “national craft” or “national arts,” was adopted by the Nanjing

government. The Central Guoshu Academy accepts only male students. Students took classes

and examinations in military drills, bayonet combat, military studies and party education

(Judkins and Nielson 2018:153). The political implications were evident. The Academy

expanded into different county levels in order to train and unify students into a single fighting

body. It set up different branches and banned other new martial arts associations and martial

clubs in order to monopolize the markets. Even though there was a successful branch, the

Guangzhou Guoshu Institute established by Gu Ru-zhang in 1929, the influence of the Guoshu

Institute was not as profound as the Jingwu Athletic Association.18 What the Guoshu movement

18
The term “guoji” (national skill) or “guoshu” (national arts) was used to label all kinds of Chinese martial arts in
the Jingwu Athletic Association from wrestling to Choi Li Fut. For example, Tong Zhong-Yi was a Manchurian
instructor in the Imperial army in the late Qing dynasty and an instructor of calisthenics at the Association (‘Cha
Quan Shuaijiao Wude Jian You’ 1974). Many graduates and instructors from the Association were sought after. The
Chi Tat Calisthenics School targeted students at the University of Hong Kong and recruited instructors from the
Association who could teach Choi Li Fut and western boxing (Ma 1974).

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contributed is the term “guoshu.” Many martial clubs chose the new, government-approved term

“guoshu” to refer their “martial arts.”

In short, martial arts became “national” through adoption of modernized technology,

instructions and institutions. Following the principles of the New Culture Movement and by the

Nanjing government, martial arts were part of “culture” representing the national rather than the

local, the scientific rather than the superstitious, and the modern rather than the traditional.

However, what about the southern Chinese martial arts, which, as I have mentioned in the last

section, were nothing more patriotic than policing the local community’s order or working for

merchants and the Qing government?

Ever since the founding of the Jingwu Athletic Association that had established the

southern-northern martial arts hierarchy, martial arts in the south, especially in Guangdong were

largely ignored or dismissed as superstitious or unscientific. Because of this, Lam Sai-wing, the

disciple of Wong Fei-hung, made extensive use of photography and books to document, publish

and transmit the Hung Ga routines. Following the Jingwu’s example,19 he established the Nam

Mou Athletic Association (Nan wu ti yu hui) in Hong Kong. The organization is called an

“athletic association” so as to include new Western concepts of “sport” and “physical education”

in theory and practice (Chao 2018:35). Despite that, the enormous effort for these southern

Chinese martial artists to be “national” was made not only to be scientific and institutionalized,

but to be ethno-nationalistic. What concerned the southern Chinese martial artists was not

standardizing the national arts or making them scientific or democratic, but infusing the history

19
Lee Fok-lam, the warlord in Guangzhou Lam Sai-wing worked with, was inspired by the Jingwu’s example and
encouraged to recruit martial artists from Shanghai to establish the branches in Guangzhou in 1918.

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of the art into an anti-Manchurian, if not racist, narrative of opposing the Qing dynasty and

restoring the Ming dynasty.

This mytho-narrative is shared by the Hung Ga, the triad society like Hongmen, and the

Cantonese opera troupe. The origin of Hung Ga is often owed to the rebellion movement in the

early Qing. Because of his revolutionary background, Hong Xi-guan (est. 1734-1808) escaped to

a Fujian monastery where he learnt martial arts from Abbot Jee Shim. “Hung Ga” refers to his

family surname. “Hung” is also the era name of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty Zhu Yuan-

zhang. It denotes a sense of anti-Manchuism and the pride of Han Chinese. Abbot Jee Shim was

also an anti-Manchu revolutionary and was considered as one of the Five Tigers of Shaolin

monks (shaolin wu fu), who were allegedly the founders of the secret society Hongmen. After

the Shaolin temple was suppressed by the Qing’s army, the abbot hid on the “red boats” (the

vehicles used by travelling troupes) of the Cantonese opera companies. He taught martial arts to

the opera singers. One day he returned to Fujian and taught Hong Xi-guan and his wife martial

arts. Luk A-choi was then the disciple of Hong Xi-guan. The style was handed down to Wong

Tai (1782-1867) and he to Wong Kei-ying (1815-1886), the father of Wong Fei-hung.20 Wong

Fei-hung learnt from his father. Even though Wong Fei-hung and his father, in fiction and in

reality, served the Qing’s Army, the efforts to legitimatizing the national values of the southern

Chinese martial arts were based upon the revolutionary story of anti-Manchuism.

These two competing discourses of nationalism – one is liberal-bourgeois nationalism,

another ethno-nationalism – were evident in social and student movements in the early

Republican Era. Social campaigns like anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism forced the Chinese

20
According to the novelist Zhu Yu-zhai, the Ten Tigers includes Wong Ching-ho, Chau Tai, Iron Bridge Three,
Lai Yan-chiu, Wong Yan-lam, So the Black Tiger, Beggar So, Wong Kei-ying, Wong Fei-hung and Chan the Iron
Finger. In Ngo Sze Shan Yan’s (I am Foshanese) account, Tam Chai-kwan replaced Wong Fei-hung (Po and Lau
2012:180–81).

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subjectivity into a dilemma that either side would easily fall into a trap of the binary opposition

between “traditional China” and modern “westernized China” respectively. The national subject

is divided into incompatible halves. While supporting modernity and westernization may betray

the self-negation of subjectivity, upholding traditional values and beliefs may fall into the feudal

pasts that modern subjectivity tried to cast away in the first place. The dilemma can be seen in

Zhu Yu-Zhai’s novel The Unofficial Biography of Wong Fei-hung, which was published in the

mid-1930s.

In his concluding remark, Zhu writes,

What is national art? In the past, it was called fist skill (quanji), and now it is called national art.

They have different names, but the arts are the same. It matters so much to the nation’s strength

and weakness, and the state’s rise and fall. Our nation-state should take it as the artistic treasure.

Despite being the art treasure, martial arts are rarely documented. Even in unofficial histories,

there are very few documented. If someone wanted to know their origins, few of them are

available.

(Zhu 1933:170)

Zhu Yu-zhai’s effort to documenting and promoting the martial arts is indisputable. However, in

most of the episodes in the book, Zhu is caught in a dilemma of how to promote and present

traditional martial arts. On the one hand, martial arts are important to a strong nation-state. On

the other hand, martial arts, given many traditional practices, can easily provoke conflicts and

cause life-and-death issues. In later episodes, Wong Fei-hung becomes dispirited. Wong would

not accept more disciples, because, as explained by Zhu, many aggressive men wanted to

provoke challenges between martial arts schools, and “the old bad practice is never changed.

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Wong then closed his doors and never spoke about his martial arts skill” (170).21 In an episode,

Wong even says that martial arts is an art of killing and refuses to engage in any conflicts (164),

while in another, the author encourages everyone to learn martial arts so that national militarism

(shangwu) can be developed.

These competing discourses of nationalism are the kernel of the founding of the Republic

of China and the KMT’s ideology. The founding of the Republic of China began with the

revolutionaries convincing the Hongmen, the secret society, that republicanism is about

overthrowing the Qing dynasty and restoring the Han Chinese. The articulation of this ethno-

nationalistic idea, extracted from their multi-faceted ethos, which included Confucianism,

brotherhood and anti-imperialism, was implicated in the discourse of the modern nation-state,

because anti-Manchuism is a way “to stitch together a national history of the simultaneously

necessary primordiality and modernity of the nation” (Duara 1995:145). It is not surprising that

the KMT, after it secured its government in Nanjing after the massacre of Communists in 1927,

styled their political agenda as anti-feudal and anti-conservative on the one hand, but facilitated a

fascist agenda that Confucianism is an ancient national spirit that could help modernize industrial

and structural development. That is why the wuxia series The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple

was banned in the early 1930s for its superstition and feudalistic thoughts, while the KMT

initiated the Confucianism-oriented New Life Movement in the 1930s in order to revitalize

traditional Chinese culture and adapt Confucianism into Sun Yat-sen’s “Three Principles of the

People.”

21
Zhu Yu-zhai in another book Lingnan wushu chong also criticized other problems traditional martial arts may
have. For example, Zhu criticizes how villagers in Nanhai County are superstitious in religious festivals and invite
Wong Fei-hung to perform lion-dancing (Zhu 1971:49).

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 What does this Janus-face of nationalism have to do with colonial Hong Kong and the

Wong Fei-hung series? This self-contradictory discourse of nationalism was regulated by the

colonial government as a way of governance. Because both liberal-bourgeois nationalism and

ethno-nationalism were no threat to the colonial reality. Reiterating the stories of anti-

Manchuism seemed to be anachronistic, because modern Chinese were no longer under

Manchurian rule. Secret societies, martial arts schools, films, fictions, radio dramas, and TV

dramas continued to circulate the anti-Manchuism stories, because the Manchurian could never

be allegorized as the British government. Instead, given the Cold War and anti-Communist

narratives, Manchuria denoted Communist China (which will be discussed further in Chapter 4).

That is why the opening scene of the Wong Fei-hung series could show all the Qing rebels, and

allegedly the mythic figures of the Hongmen.

However, it is more than the matter of censorship. In reality, many Hongmen members

and leaders settled in Hong Kong and Taiwan after 1949. They were either KMT lieutenant-

Generals like Kot Siu-wong, or worked for the KMT military intelligence like Heung Chin/

Xiang Qian. In the 1956 Hong Kong riots, known as the Double Ten riots, there were escalating

tensions between pro-KMT and pro-Communist factions in Hong Kong. By coincidence, the

year 1956 was the record year of the Wong Fei-hung series releases, during which twenty-five

films featuring Wong Fei-hung were released. In this riot, many Hongmen members were in the

pro-Nationalist factions, waving the flag of the Republic of China. The riot claimed at least 60

lives. After the riot, the Hong Kong government started to compile information and the history of

the Hongmen/the Triad.

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 Accordingly, W. P. Morgan, a sub-Inspector in the Hong Kong Police Force, started to

write a book on the issues in 1958, and it was first published in 1960. In the book, he introduces

the historiography of the Triad and Hong Kong:

The original Triad ideals could possibly form the basis for a worthy companionship but the

evidence is that for the past many years such rules and ideals have been debased, corrupted, or

ignored and the bulk of society members are either criminally inclined or use the society for their

own personal and financial advantage. The religious aura and devoted patriotism that colour the

original Triad rituals should not be allowed to cloud the actual and sordid activities to which the

society is now mainly devoted.

(Morgan 1960:xviii–xix)

In later pages, he goes on to say how the former aura of mystery and solemnity of the Triad

could not touch the new recruits (91). There is a now-and-then dichotomy that, in making the

comparison, today’s Triad is worse than the original Triad. Today’s Triad is only a criminal

organization that forgets all the ideals. The original Triad had different rituals and religious aura

that were patriotic. Because of the corrupt criminal activities, the ideals were lost. The

celebration of the golden age of the Triad means to fix an ideal image for the “original” Triad on

the one hand. On the other, criminal activities are not imputed to social disorder, but to deviance

from the imagined ideals into evil and debased behaviors. Also, the rhetoric of glorifying the

origin of the Triad exposes their hypocrisy, because police collusion with triads and police

corruption were widespread in everyday life in Hong Kong, from selling drugs together with

gangsters, joining illegal gambling activities, being involved in the prostitution business and

restaurants, exhorting money from street peddlers to money laundering and real estate

investment.

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 Crowning the glorious origins of the Triad did not mean the colonial government gave in.

Rather, they regulated well the interpretations of the Triad’s past – in other words, the Janus-

faced nationalism handed down by the KMT is regulated. Even though the liberal-bourgeois

nationalists may challenge imperialism and feudalism, and the ethno-nationalists may develop

what Hector Rodriguez suggests as being a “Confucian vision of subaltern justice”, both sides of

nationalism were defanged by the colonial government. Morgan even praises the Republican

revolution and explains away the first Opium War (1842), which was nothing more than the

“clashes of civilizations” that “the growing impact of European-born civilization whose political

and religious philosophies and whose commercial ambitions were even more inimical to the very

foundations of the regime” (23). Given the Cold War, reactionary nationalism, rather than

revolutionary nationalism, was welcome as long as it did not pose any potential threat to the

existing colonial governance. Also, Morgan illustrates that the fall of the Triad is due to internal

dissention and concludes that “the history of its decline from overall authority due to internal

dissention seems to suggest that the old maxim of ‘Divide and conquer’ still holds good” (90).

The divisive Chinese subjectivities were beneficial to their governance. Here, reactionary

nationalism and colonialism were intertwined and mutually conditioned. During the Cold War,

Morgan’s historiography contained, excluded and subsumed other narratives of nationalism

which were based upon anti-imperialism, anti-feudalism, and even proletarian class struggles.

Without understanding the competing discourses of nationalism, it is hard to understand how the

Wong Fei-hung series promoted the community’s order, in which Wong Fei-hung upholds

liberal bourgeois values like anti-arranged marriage on the one hand, and lectures disciples and

opponents with Confucian messages on the other.

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Revisiting Vernacular Modernism

Like the martial artists engaging in the Janus-faced discourses of nationalism, the Hong

Kong film industry was witnessing similar debates and tensions in the late 1930s when the

Second Sino-Japanese War broke out. At the time, Cantonese cinema was considered low-brow,

superstitious, and feudal, and Mandarin or Shanghai cinema was modern and cosmopolitan.

Cantonese cinema was cheaply made with a slightly stagy and theatrical aesthetics, which were

considered low-brow aesthetic, while Shanghai cinema was full of sophisticated editing modeled

from Hollywood. For different reasons ranging from uniting the country and Cantonese culture

against the Japanese aggression to showing Cantonese language can be part of the modernity, the

question that how to rescue Cantonese-language films became a cultural site for intellectuals,

critics, filmmakers and politicians to struggle and negotiate with. Given the complicated

interpretations of the meanings of the vernacular and their lived experience in colonial Hong

Kong, the concept of vernacular modernism can be qualified and further complicated to

challenge the way the historiography has been written. In short, “Cantonese” as a dialect or

vernacular could signify different values from various political perspectives. In this section,

complicating the framework of vernacular modernism is to lay bare how different political

ideologies appropriated their “vernaculars” and registered their imaginary pasts and values.

Through this tapestry of political ideologies, we can see in what ways Wu Pang and Kwan Tak-

hing mediated different ideals to create his Wong Fei-hung, one that is “modern” and

“traditional” but never “revolutionary”.

According to Zhang Zhen, the concept of vernacular modernism is to reestablish the

historical connection between film culture and modernity, to see how early Chinese cinema

articulated the ambivalence toward a global vernacular represented by classical Hollywood, to

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negotiate between “cosmopolitanism and nationalism, between film as a utopian ‘universal

language’ on the one hand, and local vernaculars on the other (Zhang 2001: 250). The plurality

of vernacular that interests me is a grid-like force field that “constantly produces tension as well

as energy, separating or combining diverse social and material components, aesthetic traditions

and trends, and sensorial and emotional flows” (3). The newly born Cantonese cinema engaged

with similar competing discourses of the vernacular and their attendant nationalism(s) –

traditional and modern China. What complicated the binary discourses was the fact that the

vernacular, embodied in its ethno-national and liberal-bourgeois sense, was challenged by leftist

practices of art and literature. The vernacular was considered in the 1930s by a group of leftist

artists and Communist writers that the May Fourth vernacular was too limited to elites. In order

to politicize and live out culture from a working-class perspective, the vernacular challenges not

just the binary sense of linguistics – the difference between the May Fourth vernacular and

classical Chinese, but also transforms the political subjects from the elites into the working

masses. Politically, how did the force field embodied by the hero Wong Fei-hung mediate the

traditional, the modern and even the revolutionary vernacular(s) and their attendant

nationalism(s) in the face of colonial modernity during the Cold War?

With the advent of the talkie, Cantonese cinema or Southern Chinese cinema (Huanan

dianying) was born in the early 1930s. It was also a period when Japanese imperialists were

invading the North-eastern part of China. Filmmakers across the country participated in making

National Defense Cinema (guofang dianying) in the mid-1930s. Hong Kong was a main base to

produce commercial films for the overseas markets in Southeast Asian countries. To the

nationalist government and intellectuals from Shanghai, Hong Kong was backward, vulgar and

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colonized (Law 2009:115). Cantonese films were vulgar, unhealthy and superstitious in form and

content. Cantonese films directly adapted a lot of old folk stories, Cantonese opera plays and

Hollywood movies. They employed less sophisticated styles, and did not often use continuity of

cause-and-effect, and shot-reverse-shot in dialogue scenes. In 1932, educators like He Yan

advocated the first Cantonese film cleansing movement to rid the industry of any unpatriotic and

superstitious elements. In 1934, the Central Film Censorship Committee (Zhongyang Dianying

jiancha Weiyuanhui) enforced an outright ban on martial arts films. In 1937, out of the economic

and socio-cultural concerns, the same committee planned to impose a ban on dialect cinema,

which mainly included Cantonese movies. Because of the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese

War, the ban was postponed. Before the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in 1941, given the

influx of Chinese journalists, writers, and cultural leaders, and the KMT and CCP party members

taking shelter from the mainland in Hong Kong, there were numerous campaigns of and debates

on elevating Cantonese films.22

There were three main ways to defend Cantonese films as a site to articulate their

discourses of nationalism: ethno-nationalism, liberal-bourgeois nationalism, and proletariat

revolutionary nationalism. Directors like Fung Chi-kong thought that Cantonese films could be a

tool of enlightenment and argued against the saying that overseas Chinese who enjoyed

Cantonese films are uncivilized. Cantonese-speaking Chinese could be patriotic too (Fung

22
Various film association were established in Hong Kong like the Association of Southern Chinese Cinema
(Huanan Dianying Xiehui) or The Overseas Chinese Film Guild (Huaqiao Dianying Gonghui) by Runje Shaw in
1937 to deliver their petition against the ban; the Hong Kong branch of The National Resistance Association of
Literary and Art Workers (Zhonghua quanguo wenyi jie kangdi xiehui xianggang fenhui) by a group of progressive
and left-leaning writers and artists in March 1939; Chinese Culture Association (Zhongguo Wenhua xiejinhui) by
a group of KMT members in September, 1939; the Hong Kong branch of China Educational Film Society
(zhongguo jiaoyu dianying xiehui xianggang fenhui) by Luo Ming-you, the boss of Lianhua Film Company, who
advocated the second Cantonese film cleansing movement. Their common targets among these campaigns were
martial arts films produced in Hong Kong.

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1937a; Fung 1937b). Following the May Fourth tradition, Fung emphasized the need to promote

films about enlightenment and each dialect sound cinema (fangyan dianying) could work in their

own way:

The language of cinema is a medium of consciousness. Judgments should be made more on

consciousness. It seems not the right time to impose a ban on dialect. Every language has its own

responsibility in particular places. For example, Amoy films can enlighten people in Amoy and

liberate them from stubbornness and naiveté; Cantonese films can liberate people in Guangdong

from feudalism. After a period of time, enlightenment will be accomplished.

(Fung 1937b; no page)

In other words, Cantonese cinema can be as enlightening and educational as those

Shanghai productions. In a more acrimonious article entitled “Should Cantonese Movies be

Banned,” an anonymous editor questioned what standard Mandarin was. A sense of ethno-

nationalism was evidently shown in the article:

What is genuine “standard national language” (biaozhun guoyu)? Now we have a problem. Should

we like in the past take as the golden truth the mandate from the reactionary “Peking

government”? Should we take Mandarin as the standardized language, one that combines the

Peking dialect with Manchurian tone, abandons checked tone (ru sheng), and floods with a

“saddened and tragic tone” (shuai mi ai bei). ‘Grunt!’ We all know that language is for expressing

emotion. I would like to ask: should our national Chinese express such a “saddened and sluggish

tone” (weimi buzhen)?

(“Yueyu Pian Shifou Gai Jin?” 1937)

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That the memory of the Mandarin is a barbarian language was now metaphorically transformed

to the national language advocated by the Nanjing government. To them, the barbarian language

like Mandarin was too weak to mobilize Chinese to fight against the Japanese army. These

discussions were followed by articles about the spirit of Guangdong (Guangdong jingshen),

written by a novelist Song Wan-li. He wrote six articles in 1938 to promote the spirit of

Guangdong.23 He argued that Guangdong was the mother of modern revolution, which was the

alternative origin to that of Chinese intellectuals who promulgated Mandarin as the unified

national language. The spirit of Guangdong not only denotes the linguistic difference, but also

the spirit in traditional China that helped Chinese resisting foreign regimes like the Yuan (1271-

1368) and Qing dynasties.

Since the early 1930s, left-wing writers and Communist writers had attacked the liberal-

bourgeois concept of culture in the May Fourth tradition and promoted popular arts and literature

spoken that used popular (pu ji) languages. They criticized wuxia fictions and other mass culture

not because they are low-brow but because they enslave the working classes completely from

liberation. The escapist films cannot touch the lived experience of the working masses and stop

them from gaining class consciousness. Qu qiu-bai, one of the lead figures in left-wing arts and

literature in Shanghai, attacked wuxia fiction and films as bearers of “dirty demonic feudalism

and the ‘ethics of the petty-market’ – the capitalist ethics of ‘people either buying or starving’

(Qu 1985:459). Following suit, Cai Chu-sheng, a well-known leftist filmmaker who was born in

Shanghai to Cantonese parents, went to Hong Kong in 1937 and directed Cantonese and

Mandarin National Defense films like The Blood-stained Baoshan Fortress (xue jian baoshan

23
For more, see (Song, “Huannan Dianying Yu Guangdong Jingshen” 1938; Song, “Yiren Yu Zhanshi” 1938;
Song, “Jinhuo de Huanan Dianying Jie” 1938; Song, “Zenyang Zucheng Yizuo Huanan Dianying de Guofang
Baolei?” 1938; Song, “Zhongguo He Li Huo de Qianjian” 1938; Song, “Huanan Dianying He Li Baowei Da
Huanan” 1938)

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cheng, 1938) and Orphan Island Paradise (Gudao Tiantang, 1939), despite the colonial

censorship of patriotic films.24 At a tea party, he said to Cantonese filmmakers, “The Soviet

Union is a socialist country. The United States is a capitalist country. We cannot follow them,

because we only have one path – The Chinese National Line (zhonghua minzu lu xian) (“You

Jiazhi de Chahuahui” 1938). After the Second World War, the debates kept on. In 1949, Cai

wrote that it was a fantasy to homogenize dialects like Cantonese. The main task is to close the

gap between culture and the working masses so that they could understand and receive it (Cai

1949).

In the late 1940s, both Cantonese local music like Nanyin and Dragon Boat music were

sites to transform dialect literature and Cantonese culture into proletariat cultural works. Nanyin

and Dragon Boat music were so popular in all Cantonese-speaking provinces. They were

traditional forms of popular art, but they could mix stories like Lu Xun’s New Year’s Sacrifice

about liberation to spread progressive messages to illiterate people. Fu Gong-wang, a Communist

artist in the late 1940s Guangzhou, studied Dragon Boat and Nanyin music and thought that even

though they might include feudal values and beliefs, the music content “is a progressive form of

resistance by common people against their everyday suffering; it is wrong to deny their values

and ignore their class natures” (G. Fu 1949:50). In the end, he thought that to transform these

folk arts was more than the questions of theory and singing forms. Rather, the transformation

should be attached to the reception of everyday workers, peasants, and soldiers.

24
On the one hand, the colonial Hong Kong government allowed the publication of patriotic journals and
magazines and the release of patriotic films. On the other hand, the censorship of them was harsh. Films about anti-
Japanese war were cut or banned. In publications, characters like “Japanese imperialist” and “imperialist Japan”
were removed. At this Crucial Juncture (Zuihuo Guantou, 1938), a patriotic film directed by a cluster of patriotic
Cantonese directors, was banned and after a series of lobbies and appeals, it was released. For more, see (Li and
Zhou 8–9).

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 In 1949 Chen Can-yun, a Communist novelist and dramatist, also affirmed that

Cantonese and Cantonese films had their future, only if they served the laborers, the peasants and

other working masses. Over sixty million people in the world spoke Cantonese. The problem of

Cantonese films lay in their old values like Confucian and patriarchal values, chastity, and feudal

loyalty, and in their consumption of foreign material life, such as Hollywood movies. The new

artistic content of films should be “national, popular (da zhong) and scientific” (Chen 1999:205).

I draw attention to these debates to show that Cantonese film as an example of vernacular

modernism could register different imaginary pasts, origins of the nation-state, linguistic

preferences, aesthetic orientations, and principles of values and beliefs. Having worked as a

director and an actor in the 1930s, Wu Pang and Kwan Tak-Hing respectively articulated

different sources of the vernacular to create the hero Wong Fei-hung.

In his autobiography, Wu Pang frequently mentions how his martial arts films were

different from the previous ones, which were too stagy and unreal (Wu 1995:4). He learnt realist

Hollywood movie techniques when he worked as a caption translator in Beijing Big Theater,

Shanghai. Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front taught him how to pay attention to

details and how to learn a great lesson about humanity from film (54). He met and admired left-

wing directors like Bu Wan-cang and Cai Chu-Sheng, who inspired him to become a director.

The realist trend in the Wong Fei Hung series was by no means aesthetic only, but a political

concern. Wu started as a director in the late 1930s. As mentioned above, numerous campaigns

and assemblies were established to promote patriotic films in the late 1930s. Many emergency

measures were taken to promote “healthy” Cantonese pictures. The National Spirit Oath-taking

Assembly was held in July 1938. About two hundred filmmakers joined the assembly (“Dianying

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Jie Juxing Longzhong Xuanshi Dianli” 1939). One of them was Wu Pang. During the wartime,

he stopped shooting, and worked as a draftsman in a Water Resource Department, a sender for a

newspaper, an interpreter in the Foreign Affairs of the Military Commission, and a clerk at the

US Army Post Office 627 Kunming (Wu 1995:93). Wu Pang, Kwan Tak-hing and Tso Tat-Wah

were three of the signatories of the “Manifesto of Cleansing Movement,” published in the leftist

newspaper Ta Kung Pao on April 8, 1949. Its slogan was “Let glory be with Cantonese films; let

shame be apart from Cantonese films.” That became the third Cantonese Film Cleansing

movement. In the early 1950s, left-wing artists and writers had great influences on all intellectual

activities (Lu 1999:5).

Despite his firm belief in cinema as a tool of pedagogy and his hostility to Cantonese

films of cuzhilanzao or “roughly produced and cheaply made,” he was not a political hardliner.

His Wong Fei-hung was never a radical militant. During the Cold War, the above-mentioned

competing discourses on the vernacular and nationalism precluded any possibilities of making

proletariat subjectivity in imagining the heroes. In the absence of a revolutionary working-class

hero, Wong Fei-hung arose out of the two interlocking ideals: the modern and the traditional

hero. Wong Fei-hung is an anti-superstition hero in Wong Fei-hung’s Rival for the Fireworks

(Huang fei-hung hua di qiang pao, 1955) [hereafter Fireworks], while he is a Han Chinese hero

against a Mandarin in Wong Fei-hung Goes to a Birthday Party at Guanshan (1956). Wu Pang’s

last Wong Fei-hung film Wong Fei-Hung Against the Ruffians (1967) was released during the

1967 leftists’ riot, which disrupted the schedule of the film screening and its distribution. Wu

Pang described the leftist and patriotic rioters as “people scuffling with the military police

intentionally to disrupt the social order” (Wu 1995:235). To him, the leftist riot is not a patriotic

act, because patriotism is not about disrupting the social order or the colonial order.

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 Similar to Wu Pang, Kwan Tak-hing was familiar with Hollywood films and stars.

Kwan’s idols were John Wayne and Douglas Fairbank. He even collected cowboy hats and jeans.

He started acting young martial male roles, or xiao wu, in a Cantonese opera troupe. He often

played the role of Guan Yu and Wu Song. Both of them are well-known fictional heroes in

Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, two of the Four Great Classical Novels in

Chinese literature. He was trained in the martial art of White Crane and many other boxing

techniques. In the early 1930s, he was invited to perform at the Great China Theater in San

Francisco. He earned his reputation in the film Blossom Time (Ge lü qing chao, 1933), the first

sound Cantonese film shot and produced by the Grandview Film Company in the US. The film

was well acclaimed and Kwan began his dual careers in Cantonese opera and films.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Kwan was one of the leaders to mobilize Chinese

in the mainland and oversea Chinese communities. He not only fundraised, donated five

ambulances to military troops in Guangdong, sent his precious Cantonese opera costumes to the

Chinese Women War Relief Council, quit his jobs and joined the One Bowl Rice Movement,25

but he was also active in political mobilization (“Xinliangjiu Xiansheng Yu Yueju Jiuwang

Tuan” 1940; “Xinliangjiu You You Yi Jian Honglie Shi” 1939; “Xinliangjiu Zuijin You You Yi

Jian Shi”1939). He organized the Cantonese Opera Salvation Service Corps, which also went to

the mainland to mobilize people and raise funds. Ouyang Yu-qian, a famous leftist critic of

Chinese theaters and operas, celebrated Kwan as a man of his word, who, compared to other

Cantonese opera actors, cared not about his fame and unconditionally worked for the Chinese

(Ouyang 1939). Another critic, Lu Di said that the Corps could offer people a better image of

25
During the War, Kwan was in great financial difficulties and his wife was in custody, but he threw himself into
fundraising and patriotism. In a stage performance, he carried five kids at the same time and sang. In various
fundraising events, he carried a fifty-pound wooden dragon head, stretched a three-hundred-kilogram bow and
begged people on his knees for donations.

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Cantonese opera, which had been criticized as low-brow entertainment and vulgar (D. Lu 1939).

Kwan was appointed by the KMT as the head of the Cantonese Opera Propaganda Team of the

Political Department of the 7th headquarters, a committee member of the Guangdong Relief

Commission, and a representative in the Gunagxi Appeasement Office (“Xinliangjiu Dao

Guangzhou Wan Haifang” 1940). The appeasement offices (suijing gongshu) were established

by the KMT government across the country to work like a local militia to suppress bandits and

maintain local order. It was also used to suppress the red army.26 Kwan went on to raise funds

and militarize Cantonese opera artists in Malaysia, the Philippines, Honolulu, San Francisco,

New York and Mexico. After the war, he was welcomed back and venerated as jieyi yiren (a

righteous artist) and yueju bing zhong shuai (“The General of Cantonese Opera Army”) (Yong-

tang 1946:11).

Like Wu Pang, Kwan’s portrayal of the hero Wong Fei-hung mediated in the force field

of the vernacular that cut across the modern and the traditional, but never crossed over to the

proletariat or working classes revolution, even though fishermen, workers, and hawkers often

appears as victims in the film series. It is no accident that Wu Pang would choose Kwan Tak-

hing rather than Ng Chor Fan, a left-leaning actor, to be Wong Fei Hung.27 Kwan’s transnational

experience secured the overseas markets and his martial body produced a sense of realism on the

screen. Also, his patriotism was safe for the colonial order. Kwan once brought his opera troupe

to Taiwan and performed The Immortal Zhang Yu-qiao, or Wanshi liufang zhangyuqiao, an anti-

26
When Kwan visited Chongqing, the provisional wartime capital, and saw Chen Cheng, who was one of the main
commanders of the National Revolutionary Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Chen became the
Governor of Taiwan Province, Vice president, and premier of the Republic of China after the civil war (“Aiguo
Lingren Guandexing” 1940)
27
In his autobiography, Wu Pang explains why he preferred Kwan to Ng, “First, during the War, he had a
reputation of “aiguo yi ren” (Patriotic artist). Second. Kwan knows martial arts as he was famous in playing
the warrior-type in Cantonese opera, whose stage name was xin liang jiu. Third, foreign investors were
interested in his movies. Lastly, Kwan had worked in my movies before” (Wu 1995:9).

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Manchuism Cantonese opera play that was full of anti-Communism innuendo. Kwan’s rendition

of Wong Fei-hung, who delivered Confucian messages with pauses and gentle voice, was learnt

from Sun Yat-sen, the president of the Republic of China,

I studied how Sun Yat-sen gave a speech and saw that he was terrific. His eyes attracted you but

his speech was calm and scholarly. I put it to you – in ancient times, our masters of old spoke a

word at a time, and these became sentences. If you spoke like a firecracker firstly, the words

wouldn’t register in the ear and nobody can hear you clearly; second, the speech would just vanish

in the air.

(Kwan 1999:37)

It is interesting to see how Kwan made a connection between the speech of Sun Yat-Sen with old

masters in ancient China. That explains his interpretation of Wong Fei-hung as a man who

combines qualities of the modern hero and traditional scholar. Delivering Confucian messages

while fighting superstition. All this was conditioned by the complicated tensions of the

vernacular. Vernacular modernism can be seen as a force field where Cantonese could have

different and even conflicting imaginary pasts and aesthetic orientations and values.

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 Fig. 4 Cantonese Opera Salvation Service Corps

Fig. 5 Kwan carried five kids in a fundraising performance

Fig. 6 Kwan (3rd left in the front row) as a war-relief leader in a military hospital

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Community’s Order before Politics

What connected the competing discourses of nationalism in martial arts, the

interpretations of the vernacular in the Cantonese film industry and Wu Pang’s and Kwan Tak

Hing’s war experience to the Wong Fei-hung series was the emphasis on the community’s order.

The role of martial artists in the late Qing and the early Republican era was to suppress bandits

and peasant uprisings. The formation of mintuan (local militia) was to maintain law and order in

rural China; Kwan’s work in the appeasement office was to maintain local order. Wu’s choice of

a self-contained and abstract background of the Wong Fei-hung series contributed to the images

of an utopian order, while Kwan’s patriotism went hand in hand with colonial order. The core of

the early Wong Fei-hung series is about keeping the community’s order in place rather than

focusing on the heroic acts of Wong Fei-hung. In Wu Pang’s series, Wong Fei-hung does not

have any psychological or character changes. In Wong Fung’s Wong Fei-hung films of the late

1960s, the second wave of the film series, Wong Fei-hung encounters “different types of

suffering before gaining his success…the social reality of Hong Kong permeated through into

Guangzhou in the series” (Po 2010:54). Given the changing of cultural landscapes – the

influence of Hollywood Western, Japanese samurai, the rise of generation of boomers, and a

series of political and social movements at home and abroad, in Wong Fung’s series, the master-

disciple relationship is questioned, and enemies are from different parts of the world like Japan.

Given more location shots and continuity editing, the community is much larger than the one in

Wu’s.

In this section, I will focus on the maintenance of the community’s order. In the series,

the community here contains two meanings. First, it refers literally to the neighborhood Wong

and his disciples live and work in in the film. Second, it refers to the sense of community created

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by the series. The regular cast including Kwan Tak-hing as Wong Fei-hung, Sek Kin as the

villain, and Tso Tat-wah as Leung Foon, the repetitive storytelling and the mise en scène all

contribute to the stability of a community. Wu’s series is always making community’s order

before conveying any political messages like fighting against Mandarins, superstition and

feudalism, or fighting for ethno-nationalism and Confucian harmony. The community’s order

underlines the negotiation between these conflicting discourses of nationalism.

In the film series, the community’s order draws references from the baojia system, a

traditional community-based system of law enforcement and civil control, and Zhu Yu-zhai’s

original novel The Unofficial Biography of Wong Fei-hung. In these two references, the common

crime the enemies made was disrupting the community’s order. Comparing to other wuxia films,

which were about avenging the death of a father or a master, the Wong Fei-hung series had more

“realist” crimes – gangsters and sexual perverts. Because of that, the series not only gained its

reputation in Singapore, which was Hong Kong’s biggest export market, but also helped

Singapore promote the Anti-Yellow Movement, a student movement for purifying sexually

suggestive images and messages in publications, films and entertainment businesses. That

became a political movement in the late 1950s when the People’s Action Party gained its seat in

the election and implemented a series of disciplinary policies in the name of controlling the so

called “yellow culture” like long hair, pornography, and gangsterism. At the end of this chapter,

we will see the difference between the community in Wu Pang’s series and that from left-wing

films in Hong Kong. Even though both of them involve anti-feudalism, for example, the

community in Wu’s series is not bound by working-class collectivity.

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 Since the Song dynasty (960-1279), the baojia system was implemented in rural areas.

One jia consisted of ten households, with a headman elected or appointed by the local

magistrate. One bao was made up of ten jia. The combined baojia meant to be responsible for

any offense committed by any member of the roughly hundred-family unit. The heads of baojia

were usually rich landlords, moneylenders or pawnbrokers. They had tuanlian or local militia

training for self-defense against bandits, robbers and pirates. In the nineteenth century, the baojia

system was used to suppress pirates in the Pearl Delta area (Mak 2016:29). In the late Qing

dynasty, Wong Fei-hung was the chief coach in a local militia (min tuan zong jiaolian).

However, in the Republican era, the baojia system was used to exploit famers and suppress

bandits and Communists (Edgar 1994:65). The baojia system was politically ultra-reactionary. It

went hand in hand with the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement (Guomin Jingshen

zongdongyuan), a political campaign modelled from imperialist Japan and launched by Chiang

Kai-Shek in order to suppress ideological dissent and reform mass morality during the second

CCP-KMT United front. Just like Wong Fei-hung in the film series, the baojia system during the

War of Resistance against Japanese aggression clamped down on “improper entertainment,”

“irrational habits” and “indulgencies like gambling and smoking” (Tsui 2018:149). A national

subject should respect their national tradition, namely Confucianism, have a healthy body, be

devoted to anticorruption, promote hygienic habits, and avoid any improper ideas about things

including material indulgence and Communism. The baojia system in short presented a

“sanitized” and legitimate image of a healthy and politically stable community.

In the original novel, Zhu Yu-zhai always mentions Wong Fei-hung’s position as a chief

coach in local militia and how his disciples worked in the KMT. However, Zhu does not

emphasize too much on Wong Fei-hung’s status as a national hero, even though he writes about

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how Wong accepts a challenge from a foreigner to fight his fierce dog in Hong Kong (Zhu

1933:20). Most of the time, Wong in the novel refuses to engage in any political issues. For

example, his radical disciple Xia Zhong-min criticizes the couplet written on the medical clinic

Po Chi Lam plaque for being too conservative (161) and Xia has a conflict with people in a

Confucian festival (162). Wong steps back and decides to accept no more disciples in the hope of

making less conflicts. Even though Zhu was a supporter of modern China fighting against

superstition and feudalism, he did not spend much time on portraying Wong Fei-hung as an

active hero. Instead, Zhu often left the stories aside and talked directly to his readers. In the

beginning of the novel, he digresses to describe the use of the Fifth Brother Eight Trigram Pole

(wulang bagua gun) and the Iron Wire Fist (1–3). Both are the Hung Ga routines. He also uses

seven pages to directly quote the secret breathing exercises of the Yijin Jing, or the Tendon

Change Classic (119–25).

Reading the novel challenges our perceptions of the martial arts novel, because it does

not offer readers a coherent story, but instead includes many digressions into everyday life

tactics and survival skills. For example, Zhu gives comment on the business of bone-setting. He

criticizes many bonesetters for their unprofessionalism, such as scaring patients about the

seriousness of their condition and prolonging the period of medication so that the bonesetters

could earn more. He then introduces readers to the surgery of bone-setting, the relationship

between yi shu (medical arts) and quan shu (fist arts), and the difference between curable and

incurable wounds. He reveals the secret of magical doctors who cheat patients with herbal

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alcohol (31-33), and the secret of zhong yin, or silver-farming,28 a trick by some corrupted

monks who persuade worshippers to donate money and “farm” them for more money. (86-88).

It is not so much a novel as a pedagogical manual that offers everyday lessons to his

fellows in the community. The continuity of episodic narratives seems to be a supplement to

different everyday lessons rather than the other way around. Rarely understood by scholars, these

lived experience and lessons in the local community and the communicative rhetoric were either

dismissed as “nothing to appreciate” (Po 2010:48) or they were cut completely in a book that

anthologies many popular pulp fictions including the Wong Fei-hung stories, which for instance

edits out the introduction of the fighting techniques in the first chapter (Wong 2014:240). Even

though Wu Pang’s film series is a loose adaptation, he cleverly displays his skills by drawing

both meanings from the baojia system and the novel that the community’s order is apolitically

“healthy”, pedagogical and communicative.

The abstract time and place in the film series do not provide viewers with any historical

junctures. The costumes, props, makeup and studio sets loosely hint at the time frame of the late

Qing dynasty. The enemies are not historical warlords. As Hector Rodriguez describes the film

series, it features “a petty gangster, malicious martial arts instructor, lascivious merchant or

corrupt government official who confronted Wong Fei-hung and his students for various

reasons” (Rodriguez 1997:3–4). What common crimes they make is that they break the

community’s order.

Most episodes featured two rival martial arts schools as in The Story of Wong Fei-hung,

Part Two (1949), and How Wong Fei-hung Smashed the Five Tigers (Huang fei-hong dapo wu

28
This story was adapted into The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part 2 (1949). Luk A-Foon, the goddaughter of Wong
Fei-hung, does “silver farming” in a Daoist temple in order to help her husband’s poor business. A Daoist and a
hustler abduct her. Leung Foon and Wong Fei-hung rescue her and burn down the temple.

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hu zhen, 1961) [hereafter Five Tigers]. The two rival schools narrative is structured around social

problems. Usually, the bad master, associated with a gang, disturbs the community as he exploits

his gang to bully the villagers or exhort money from them. Gangsterism includes the Triad

society, pirates, evil martial artists and merchants. They are engaged in smuggling, gambling,

abduction, extortion, and the prostitution business. Comparing the film series to previous wuxia

films, the causes of action are more social than based on individual revenge. However, these

crimes do not connect to the outside world. They are not syndicates associated with global

capitalists. The crimes happen and are fought about only in the neighborhood. Also, the

problems point to the establishment like the head of the landed gentry, corrupted monks and

local magistrate.29 In Wong Fei-hung Seizes the Bride at Xiguan (Huang fei-hong xiguan qiang

xinniang, 1958) (hereafter Xiguan), Wu Pang uses the opening sequence to criticize the illiterate

military commander and a local minister by showing how they arrange marriage for their

children and bribe an imperial courier. Both Mandarin officials are superstitious and corrupted as

they have to choose a lucky day and time for the wedding parade. Wong Fei-hung and his

disciples infiltrate the parade and rescue the daughter. The daughter can have her true love

instead of the arranged partner. The military commander is punished by the Empress Dowager

Cixi while the local minister realizes his wrongdoings. All things are back to normal. The

paradigmatic relationships of the enemies, including the gangsters, corrupt officers, and even

monsters like a human-sized gorilla in Wong Fei-hung’s Battle with the Gorilla (Xingxing wang

dazhan Huang fei-hong, 1960) (hereafter Gorilla) mean to structure the enemies as ones that

disturb the community’s order.

29
More examples include Wong Fei-hung’s Battle at Shuangmendi (1956) in which a local gentry head refuses to
lend his ancestral hall to Wong Fei-hung for training local militia and spreads the rumor that the hall is haunted. The
hall is a front for an illegal smuggling business. The gentry head disguises his fellows as hopping vampires to scare
people off.

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 The enemies are always internal to the community rather than external. Like in the

ending of Xiguan, the minister is punished by the Empress Dowager Cixi, the regent who

controlled the Qing government from 1861 to 1908. But the Empress or the capital Beijing does

not appear and the problem is solved within the community by the teamwork of Wong Fei-hung

and his disciples. The absence of the external diegetic world (Beijing, central government or

politics in general) contributes to the self-contained community space. It means that the problems

in a community can be solved within it. The enemies are, therefore, separated from the external

world. Only when Wong Fei-hung lectures, eliminates, or eradicates the undesirable enemies or

objects can the community’s order be restored.

In this sense, the problems are “curable.” Like Wong’s patients in his medical clinic,

social problems in the community are “curable.” Wong is like a doctor, who facilitates a close

working relationship between people or organizations. Therefore, the community’s order is

maintained not only internally but also collaboratively. Wong, as a local militia coach,

collaborated with good landlords and magistrates to maintain law and order. In Wong Fei-hung’s

Combat in the Boxing Ring (Huang Fei-hong leitai zhengba zhan, 1960) [hereafter Boxing Ring],

the gentry of the neighborhood asks Wong for help as there is flooding in the community causing

many villagers to become homeless; in The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part I (1949), Wong is

invited to a gala dinner by the Xiqiao gentry. Wong also works together with local constables to

subdue the real and fake gorilla in Gorilla.

Apparently, Wu Pang tries to “accommodate certain progressive, even left-wing, strands

of Chinese cinema”(Rodriguez 1997:21) and the victims are either fishermen, prostitutes,

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farmers, street performers, and villagers.30 Even though the problems are social, they are not

necessarily related to class. The community’s order is disrupted by individual gangsters or

martial artists. No episodes in the series question why and how there are gangsters or wealthy

landlords. Wong’s disciples like Buck Teeth So, Porky Wing, and Leung Foon and friends like

Beggar So are all from the working classes. Porky Wing, modelled from Lam Sai-wing and

played by Lam’s disciple Lau Cham, works as a butcher. Leung Foon works as an instructor for

people in three markets (fish, fruit, and vegetable markets). However, the disciples are comic

sidekicks. They make mistakes and become a subject of Wong’s lessons. The victory of the

community’s order is not about working-class solidarity, but cross-class collaboration and

harmony facilitated by Wong and his liaison institutions.

As a martial arts instructor in a local militia, Wong Fei-hung even teaches people how to

train local militia. In How Wong Fei-hung Saved the Dragon’s Mother Temple, Master Tam

rejects the offer be an instructor in a local militia. Wong Fei-hung gives him a lecture:

Wong Fei-hung: If the order in the community is maintained, everyone can live happily and work

diligently (anjuleye). We are all citizens (laobaixing). For the sake of stability,

you should not reject the offer.

Master Tam: Yes. I would like to ask for your advice. You’ve been a chief instructor of local

militia for such a long time in Guangzhou. How do you teach local militia?

Wong Fei-hung: It is not a difficult task. Well, let me put this to you. It is an easy job. You should

be a man of fairness. To reward or punish based on merit. To work carefully. To

execute bravely. The local militia will, therefore, serve and respect you. (13:23)

30
For example, fishermen and tofu peddlers in Wong Fei-hung Rescues the Fishmonger (1956); fishermen in Wong
Fei-hung’s Combat in the Boxing Ring; textile workers in How Wong Fei-hung Set Fire to Dashatou (1956); a petty
merchant of a ginseng shop in The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part 1 (1949).

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The community’s enemies, in short, are internal, social, and visble. It means the violence to the

community is seeable rather than structural. The community’s order is concerned with objective

violence, which can be seen. Maintaining law and order does not relate to changing the social

structure but simply making sure everyone can live and work happily under the status quo. The

work of local militia is more about managerial interests than people’s interests. It is a “healthy”

community first, regardless of any political messages. Even in films like Xiguan where there is a

fight against arranged marriage, the messages do not really promote anti-feudalism. More

important than that is to police the community. Social revolution is always absent or sidelined.31

One crime that is very common in most of the episodes is sexual harassment and sexual

advances. Villains in the series often attempt to rape innocent women and dismiss the status of

women. To secure a “healthy” community, Wu Pang makes women more enlightened and

liberated. In Xiguan, the wife of the minister talks back to the minister and defends the rights of

her daughter; in Boxing Ring, the mother of an evil martial artist gives her son a lecture about

what a real hero should be; in How Wong Fei-hung Fought a Bloody Battle in the Spinster’s

Home (Huang Fei-hong xue jian gupo wu, 1957) [hereafter Spinster’s Home], a famous female

pirate quits her gang, because the gang exploits her blood sister. She rescues Wong Fei-hung and

decides to be an independent woman. Apparently, the image of the independent woman is the

lasting impact of the May Fourth tradition. Women are independent and can participate in the

men’s world. However, the gender division in the community is not always equal. What is

important in the gender division is security rather than equality. Wong Fei-hung’s asceticism is

derived from the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement, defined by a series of modernized

31
A revolutionary figure Wong Keung appears in the beginning of How Wong Fei-hung Pitted a Lion against the
Unicorn (1956). He is wanted by the Qing government and is protected by a Daoist. After the Qing officials know
the whereabouts of Wong Keung, the Daoist sacrifices his monastery for Wong Keung’s revolution against the
regime. Interestingly, the narrative shifts the focus and Wong Keung no longer appears in the following scenes.

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Confucian doctrines and everyday health programs. In The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part I, when

he escapes into a lady’s chamber, he feels very uneasy. When she confesses her love to him, he

rejects her and says he can be her non-biological father in order to keep her away.32 He stays

celibate in the series.33 In the novel and in his real life, Wong married four times (Zhu 1971:52–

53), visited prostitutes, and smoked opium. Hector Rodriguez argues that the difference depicts

Wong’s veneer of “paternalistic benevolence and Confucian self-control to be a psychic defense

against the obvious anxiety evoked by feminine sexuality” (Rodriguez 1997:16). I think his

celibacy is not exclusive to Confucian self-control. It is rather similar to the one in Western

heroes, who makes “the west safe for the virgins to come out and reproduce, but not with him,

that is the job for the rest of the community” (Hayward 1996:418). Western heroes usually do

not marry the abducted and pure women. Like the Western, the Wong Fei-hung series do not

show the marriage of Wong Fei-hung. Also, Wong’s disciplined body and the filmic image of

independent woman are not antagonistic, because both of them bring no threats to the

community. The independent woman in Spinster’s Home concludes with a closeup image of her

and her suitor, who is a rich merchant’s son. The daughter rescued from the arranged marriage in

Xiguan also ends up with her real love.

The healthy image of the community echoed the social needs in Singapore, the biggest

market for the Wong Fei-hung series. After a series of cases of rape and murder in 1953, Chinese

students in Singapore attributed the crimes to the prevalence of “yellow culture” in society, full

of popular strip-tease shows, sexually suggestive Hollywood, Hong Kong, and Japanese films,

32
The practice is like a blood brother. The non-biological father-daughter relationship means they are as close as
biological father and daughter.
33
Wu Pang’s Wong Fei-hung is a celibate master. His marital relationship is not emphasized in the series.
However, he mentions his wife and son in some episodes like Wong Fei-hung Goes to a Birthday Party at
Guanshan (1956), Wong Fei-hung's Battle with the Gorilla, and Wong Fei-hung Seizes the Bride at Xiguan.

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and nudist picture books. The Anti-Yellow movement started as a student movement and lasted

from 1953 to 1956, with students arrested by the British government and their periodicals

banned. They promoted a healthy aesthetic. In 1959, the People’s Action Party (PAP) won the

election and inherited the student’s Anti-Yellow vocabularies for the “purpose of cultivating a

national ethos and amassing political capital, representing one of the first instances of a dominant

regime co-opting civil society causes to fortify its hegemony in Singapore” (Lau 2016:14). The

PAP implemented a series of policies to suppress “yellow” publications, banned pinball

machines and jukeboxes, and censored films that featured nudity and gangsterism. The Wong

Fei-hung series were among the few martial arts films that continued to be screened in

Singapore.

Hong Kong newspaper publicity about How Wong Fei-hung Defeated the Tiger on the

Opera Stage (1959), a month after the PAP gained the seat, reads “It is a new film that suits the

Anti-Yellow Movement and anti-nonsense in Singapore and promotes shangwu jingshen (spirit

of militarism), viewers will find it exciting and sensational.” The film series that promoted a

healthy community and a celibate hero determined to eradicate bandits and gangsters in his

community could be accepted by the new government in Singapore. However, in the ensuing

years, the PAP developed serious fractions within the party between pro-Communist China and

the moderates and those non-Chinese speaking members. When Singapore joined Malaysia in

1963, they shifted away from radical politics and activism. When Singapore gained

independence in 1965, the PAP developed more conservative policies in the name of anti-

western values and lifestyles. They emphasized Confucianism, respect for authority and order,

and family centricity to quell criticisms in the Western media about its control of media and lack

of human rights (Lau 2016:113). The community’s order in the film series was by no means

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radical and the healthy messages in the film series can offer entertainment and bring no threats to

foreign markets.

However, some may question what the differences are between the Wong Fei-hung film

series and some of the films produced by left-leaning studios like Zhong Lian/ the Union

Enterprise that also feature a “healthy” community and convey moral messages. There are some

significant differences between Wu Pang’s community’s order and that from leftist films. For

example, in Lee Tit’s In the Face of Demolition (1953), a taxi driver in a tenement house

expresses his ideal image of the community that is “One for all and all for one” (ren ren wei wo,

wo wei ren ren). The maxim is materially based rather than moral doctrines from Confucianism.

The maxim excludes capitalists, feudalists, and landlords. The community’s order is not based on

someone’s absolute moral high ground but working-class solidarity. The teacher, a symbol of the

petty bourgeois, transforms (gaizao) himself and learns his mistake after working with the

landlord. He finally sides with the tenants and donates blood to his pregnant tenant. In the face of

the demolition of their building, working-class tenants run away from the building. Only the

greedy loan shark returns to the building for IOUs and dies in the demolition. Female characters

in the Wong Fei-hung series are independent and sometimes films in this series end up uniting a

couple in true love while In the Face of Demolition does not end with a closeup of a couple.

Instead, the ending concludes with the bonding of a community bound by their common class

interest – a teacher, a taxi driver, a club girl, and a victim of landlord. All this tries to show that

the community’s order in the Wong Fei-hung series granted the agency to a hero and his

oligarchy (policemen, good mandarin officials, and landed gentry) while the leftist films take

working masses as the primary social agents. Even though Wu Pang inherited the legacy of the

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May Fourth as leftist filmmakers did, his community’s order is maintained by Wong Fei-hung

who serves as the arbitrator of justice, while justice is class-based in leftist films.

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Fig. 7 Film publicity in Wah Kiu Yat Po showing how the film How Wong Fei-Hung Defeated the Tiger on the
Opera Stage supports spirit of militarism and Anti-Yellow Movement.

Fig. 8 The ending of In the Face of Demolition (left) and Wong Fei-Hung Seizes the Bride at Xiguan (right)

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Philanthropist - Master of Shaming

The community’s order offers the series healthy images and gender division, regardless

of the political ideas. What is the structure of this community and the structural relation between

Wong Fei-hung and the community? Hector Rodrigeuz points out that the film series “would

almost invariably highlight, and often celebrate, elite intervention in everyday life” (Rodriguez

1997:19). He thinks that Wong is a Confucian hero. By explaining the activist aspect of

Confucianism, he relates it to the colonial reality in that “the cultural authority of Hong Kong’s

Chinese and British elites contained an intrinsic tension between, on the one hand, an interest in

depoliticizing public life by excluding administrative decisions from grass-root contestation and,

on the other, an active promotion of Confucian norms and values which sanctioned popular

activism and emphasized the moral accountability of rulers” (22). In a socio-cultural sense,

Wong Fei-hung is a Confucian hero, despite his elite status, co-opting different progressive

ideas. He makes neighborhood networks, embodies community-based restorative justice

practices, and organizes self-defense projects and well-sourced social services. However, the

question of whether he is Confucian or not should be changed completely. In reality,

Confucianism is never a radical value used to fight against the elite and the establishment.

Rather, Wong is more like an agent than a hero, one that is constituted by a structural position in

the community. The progressive ideas are cancelled off in favor of the community’s order. Wong

is more like a philanthropist, who insists the evils of the community are not economic or

structural but are physical and moral. Also, he is a martial arts master. His relationship to the

community is one between master and disciple rather than a citizen or a civil servant. Even

though Wong is a master of Hung Ga, his ultimate weapon is not Hung Ga routine but the power

of shame. Not only does he lecture his disciples, but also makes his opponents feel ashamed.

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These are totally different from other Hung Ga legendary figures like Fong Sai-yuk and Hong

Xi-guan, who were legendary Shaolin figures and young rebellious heroes.

Rodriguez also illustrates Wong Fei-hung as a philanthropist, who “donates money to the

poor, charges low fees for his medical services, worships his ancestors, respects the elderly,

explicitly reaffirms his commitment to the values of peace and harmony, endures verbal insults

and bodily harm without losing his composed self-restraint, and insistently conveys his ethical

ideals in the form of maxims and rules that frame every narrative situation in terms of a lesson to

be learnt” (Rodriguez 1997:16). But he does not analyze the structural position he embodies.

Wong as a philanthropist in the community, is absent from any antagonism towards the royal law

(wang fa). In Wong Fei-hung Trapped in Hell (1959) [hereafter Trapped in Hell], a gangster sets

Wong up and frames him as a rapist and murderer when he tries to help a dying lady. Wong is

locked in a prison. While his disciples tell Wong that the officials are corrupted, and attempt to

make a jailbreak, Wong scolds his disciples. “Even though the officials are corrupted. I am a

man of righteousness. I did not kill and do anything illegal. If I leave, that means I committed a

crime.” He believes in the juridical system even though the magistrate is corrupted. He asks his

disciples to communicate with a Viceroy of Liangguang in order to help him out. His disciples

think that the government is too corrupted to get their masters out. Wong scolds them again, “For

my reputation, I prefer staying here to getting out.” It is not until his viceroy friend appears and

the husband of the victim turns in his truth, Wong is vindicated. This ending once again proves

that royal law is just and Wong’s adherence to it can guarantee his reputation. Wong in the film

actually follows what a nineteenth century philanthropist would do.

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 In the late nineteenth century, Hong Kong Chinese philanthropists and charity

institutions, for instance Tung Wah Hospital, dispensed medicine as well as justice. They were

encouraged by the colonial government to give advice on various government policies, manage

temples, build schools, and settle civic disputes concerning anything Chinese. As an agent of

indirect rule, Chinese charity institutions gained a quasi-official standing from the colonial

government to control and manage Chinese (Law 2009:23). These philanthropist elites became a

bridge between Chinese officials from the mainland and the colonial government. However,

Wong in the film is different from them, because he does not manifest his reputation through the

British Crown. He still resides in an abstract Guangdong in the late Qing period, negotiating and

collaborating with the landed gentry and local magistrates.

Like charity institutions, Po Chi Lam, the medical clinic opened by Wong in the films

and in reality, helps the poor. But the victims are just the poor rather than the oppressed. Bone-

setting medicine treats the symptom rather than the social conditions that cause them. The poor

peasants, fishermen and villagers in the film series are poor because they lack someone strong to

protect them or they lack opportunity and social support, not because the capitalist class hoards

the surplus and imperialists invaded the fatherland. In real life, Kwan Tak-hing, the actor who

played Wong Fei-hung, opened his own “Po Chi Lam” in Hong Kong and became a

philanthropist. Kwan, like his eponymous hero, likes to give lectures in charity shows. It is as if

the advantages of harmony and peace could be obtained through moral lectures without class

struggles. The moral lectures lead us to the relationship between master and disciples.

Wong is not only a philanthropist who donates money and rice to the poor, but he is also

a martial arts teacher always surrounded by disciples. What distinguishes Wong Fei-hung from

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other cinematic heroes like Fong Sai-yuk and Hong Xi-guan is that he gives stern lectures and

disciplines disciples as well as enemies. Wong Fei-hung’s Po Chi Lam is a medical clinic as well

as a martial arts school, providing young people who leave their homes with a shelter. The

master-disciple relationship determines his status as a philanthropist in relation to the

community. He takes every social problem as a revolving around rival school conflicts and

public morals.

Given the popularity of the images of the master-disciple relationship in the first four

installments, when Wu Pang restarted the series in 1955, Leung Foon was “resurrected” and the

same actor Tso Tat-wah continued to play Leung Foon. Also, Wu Pang added an extra disciple to

the posse in Fireworks: Buck Teeth So (Ya ca su), a fictional comic character who has a practical

mind, plays tricks, knows no martial arts, and always makes mistakes and lies. The resurrection

of Leung Foon and the presence of Buck Teeth So attempted to reaffirm the master-disciple

relationship. The comic effect of Buck Teeth So is totally different from the comic character

Kikuchiyo in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954). Kikuchiyo through his silly and reckless

acts helps to connect the helpless villagers and the samurai together. His comic effect is to ensure

their bonding with the villagers. Buck Teeth So and other disciples only affirm the

unquestionable status of Wong and their master-disciple roles. The reappearance of Leung Foon

means the efforts to represent the master/teacher could not be made without his antithesis. Wong

Fei-hung, as a teacher and a grandmaster, needs his disciples and villains, because the image of

the moral model cannot be achieved without his antithesis.

The master-disciple relationship is so important that everyone in the community, even the

magistrate, or villains, listen to his lectures. The relationship of master-disciple is more like a

pastoral relationship. Wong is like a shepherd, who looks after the animals, guides them to a

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better pasture, and makes sure they eat well and are properly fed. However, Wong is not exactly

a sacrificial pastor in the Church. He is exercising the power of paternal care – the relationship

governs a people not a territory, a community not a state. Wong as a martial artist, therefore,

cares only about an abstract Guangzhou rather than the politics in the late Qing and early

Republican Guangzhou, an abstract opponent and the poor rather than the oppressed and the

concrete relationship between warlords, capitalists and the KMT. The master-disciple

relationship has its historical relevance in the context of 1950s Hong Kong. It was usually used

in different sectors of work that did not have advanced schools of training yet required certain

skills and techniques including construction workers, drivers, stuntmen, chefs, restaurants, house

painters, woodworking labourers, steel fixers, filmmakers etc. Given the absence of union

culture, labor rights, minimium wages, standard working-hours, effective retirement schemes,

and the protection by the state, these working-class people, who were the target audiences of the

Wong Fei-hung series, easily found identification in the series. The master-disciple relationship

is part and parcel of the colonial modernity.34 What is so unique in Wong’s teaching is his moral

weapon – shaming.

Shaming is not new. Shaming or chi has been a core concept in Confucianism. Chi is one

of the Confucian virtues. Wrongdoers could be enlightened and educated through being shamed

introspectively. Shame also existed in Christianity and many other religions. During the

Republican Era, shame was updated to serve the need of patriotism and nationalism in the

modern context (Weipin 2010:106). The ancient discourse of guilt and shame transformed itself

to attach with consumerism. The loss of country and the invasion of imperialists, being the

34
Interestingly, even in today’s Hong Kong, the path to become a lawmaker is done through a training period,
known as pupillage, which is defined by the pupil and pupil-master relationship.

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examples of national shame (guochi), were embodied in different products. What is unique in the

Wong Fei-hung series from other martial arts films is that Wong uses the technique of shaming

to regard his disciples and opponents’ action and attitudes as morally deficient in relation to the

exemplary Wong Fei-hung. As Hector Rodriguez says, “the concept of shame indicates the

internalization of a public attitude towards the self” (1997:17). But how does it happen? Wong

always shames his disciples like Leung Foon in front of their neighbors, or shames his opponents

in front of a magistrate or other authority figures.

Often with a sarcastic tone, Wong teases Mandarins’ uselessness or feels contempt for

their corruption. In Spinster’s Home, a Mandarin asks Wong for help to suppress a pirate gang.

Wong Fei-hung despises the official’s weakness after he knocks down the gang:

Your majesty, what happened to you? You said your legs are shivering (jiao ruan) when you

needed to investigate; you said that again when the bandits left; your legs are shivering again when

we fought. When something happened, you said you have shivering legs. Even when nothing

happened, you said you’ve shivering legs. Why is this official such a chicken? You Officials! My

foot!

In Wong Fei-hung’s Battle at Saddle Hill (1957), after Wong Fei-hung and his disciples knock

down a gang in an old village, where the gang leads villagers to stone a culprit to death, Wong

Fei-hung gives the gang and villagers a lecture:

Wong : Your actions are too much. You deserve this bad karma. Do you understand? You tie up

people who break the village’s rules and want to stone them to death! This is what we

call “evil has an evil recompense.” You feel nothing when you stone people. Do you feel

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 pain when people stone you? Now you know what pain is. All of you are hurt now.

Should the village rules be changed?

The gang: The rules are from our ancestors. How should we…

Wong Fei-hung: Oh. I understand. You said they are from your ancestors and can never be

changed. Let me tell you. I am the chief instructor of the local militia and have

responsibility to maintain the community’s order. Let’s arrest them.

The gang: Don’t arrest us. Even though they are from the ancestors they must be changed!

Wong Fei-hung: It is a virtue if wrongdoers can change (zhi cuo neng gai, shanmodayan).35 Can’t

you guys be good? We are all villagers. Please ask your heart when you stone people.

Everyone has his or her own parents. Don’t you have your own parents? Be good from

now on.

From the above examples, we can see two features of Wong’s shaming. First, shaming invites

public attention. The lesson is mainly on maintaining law and order in a community. Whether the

message is progressive or not, shaming happens in a group of people, including villagers,

magistrates, or gangsters. The defender, usually played by Sek Kin, would either leave

shamefully or apologize on his knees. Shaming can be so powerful when offenders’ actions in

one of their roles in that community would be thought of by those who know them in other roles.

It means that the offenders betray the differences in their social roles. It is especially true when

the social bonding is strong, and when the community knows each other and their different roles.

Therefore, forgiveness, apology, and repentance are more culturally important than

stigmatization or physical punishment. In most of Wu Pang’s episodes, Wong does not kill but

shames people in front of others. Second, there is no distance between Wong and the offenders.

35
A popular phrase from one of the Confucian classics the Zuo Zhuan (late 4th century BC), which comments and
expounds on the ancient Chinese chronicle Spring and Autumn Annals or Chunqiu.

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The “verdict” or the “weapon” is always visible. Wong’s disciples will not give the lecture, but

only Wong can give it. There is legal decision, no bureaucratic calculation, no analysis of the

problem, and not even any votes of the jury between the offender’s action and Wong’s lectures.

Wong takes all these on by himself. He donates food, fights gangsters, judges offenders, tells the

landed gentry what legal actions to take, and lectures and shames offenders.

In the late 1960s, when Wong Fung started a new trend of the Wong Fei-hung series,

although Kwan Tak-hing still played Wong Fei-hung, the power to exercise shaming lessons is

subverted. In Wong Fei-hung: The Incredible Success in Canton (1968), Wong is given a lecture

by a sing-song girl. Wong refuses to help his new disciple. She points at him and gives him the

following lesson: “You are selfish and cravenly cling to life; you cannot live up to your

Confucian values.” Wong is the one to be shamed in front of his disciples and the ailing mom of

the disciple. The status of Wong in the new series can be questioned. Most importantly, at the

end of the film, no lectures are given to the villains. The villains are killed, while Wong gasps

after the fight. Wong reports the crime to the local magistrate, who then orders him to be the

chief of the local militia. It is interesting to see the differences between how Wu Pang’s and

Wong Fung’s Wong Fei-hung manifests the path towards late colonial modernity. The master-

disciple relationship in Wu Pang’s series takes shaming as the ultimate weapon because the

social bonding is stronger in the community. The villain may be a husband and a son, but he is

also a corrupt gentry. Shaming was comparatively effective in the 1950s, when social division

was not as strong as in the late 1960s when industrialization and urbanization were in rise.

Rather, Wong in the new series separates his role from the court. Division of legal labor is

clearer in the new series. Also, the master-disciple relationship is questioned, although it is not

broken down. In the late 1960s, which Yip Man-Fung (2017) defines as the era of Hong Kong

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modernity, the master-disciple relationship, as a pre-modern way of studying and teaching and

maintaining community’s order continued to be part and parcel of the colonial modernity. That

relationship still dominated in different sectors of work in late 1960s Hong Kong. However, the

film sense concerning the community’s order enhanced by the philanthropist-master-disciple

relationship in the 1950s could not catch up with the film form in the late 1960s, which were

characterized by Chang Cheh and King Hu’s rapid editing and zooming. Even though the film

forms changed tremendously in the new Wong Fei-hung series, including closeups of Kwan Tak-

Hing’s tears, the use of handheld cameras in fight scenes and high angles during the knockdown,

the new series quickly faded away and was nowhere near as popular as the 1950s iterations. In

the last section, I analyze how the philanthropist-master-disciple relationship dictated the film

form and how that aesthetic faded out in the 1960s.

Realism and Community Making

Studying the aesthetic of the Wong Fei-hung series, most scholars focus on their realism,

the use of actual fighting skills, and the divergence from certain strands of the Peking opera

styles of performance (Rodriguez 1997:12; Yip 2017:66). Leon Hunt terms the realist aesthetic

in the Wong Fei-hung series as an archival authenticity, which refers to the “authenticity of the

actual martial arts featured in kung fu films” (Hunt 2003:29). Wu Pang in his autobiography

always mentions how he modernized the genre and invited real Hung Ga masters and disciples to

perform (Wu 1995:21). Wu Pang’s use of realist aesthetics like long takes and wide shots is

firstly for pedagogy, documenting real martial arts and preserving local cultures, but they are not

as “authentic” as Wu Pang claimed. Instead of preserving an authentic culture, the realist

aesthetic mixed spectacles of martial arts moves, operatic acrobatics and even special effects

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together. Second, the long takes and wide shots, along with other realist aesthetics, creates a

sense of community, yet it is at the expense of the masses.

Wu Pang’s efforts to promote militarism and to massifying secret martial arts is beyond

question. He wanted to use the film medium to teach previously secret martial arts skills to the

masses so they would not disappear in the future. In The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part 3 (1950),

he even used one of the martial artists to convey this idea, “What is mi chun (secret instruction)?

What is jueji (esoteric skills)? If everything is secretly instructed, everything will disappear in

the future. Esoteric arts are ridiculous! Life is limitless and learning is endless (shengsheng bu

jue, xue wu zhijing).” A similar idea is presented in Wu Pang’s The Five Heroes’ Deadly Spears

(Wu Hu Duan Hun Qiang, 1951). He thinks that the weakness of the nation is due to too much

esoteric knowledge. National culture should be massified, so that China could be stronger. To

him, realism in martial arts is important. It is to modernize martial arts films which were full of

stagy fights and special effects like The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple series (1928-1931), or

the western mold of Robin Hood’s fighting like The Valliant Girl Nicknamed White Rose (1929).

In the first four installments of the Wong Fei-hung series, Wu Pang invited skilled martial artists

trained in both Southern and Northern fighting styles like Yuen Siu-tin, the father of Yuen Woo-

ping. Wong Fei-hung’s actual disciples, wife (Mok Gui Lan, the fourth wife) and son were fight

consultants in the series.

Like Wong Fei-hung in the film, Wu Pang himself likes to give lessons, yet through the

film medium. He employed a number of long takes and medium long shots to present martial

arts. In The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part 1, Chan Hon-chung, a martial artist who learnt from

Lam Sai-wing, performs the Tiger and Crane Paired Fist form. The scene starts with constructive

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editing, which builds up the scene from the shop placard “Po Chi Lam” to the performance. The

camera then pans leftward until we see Chan Hon-chung in a medium shot performing the

martial art. The performance has only one cut that does not hurt the continuity of performance.

The camera remains stationary in front of him. Then it pans further left until we see Wong Fei-

hung. At this moment the non-diegetic performance ends. These non-diegetic sequences like

lion-dancing, folk music playing, Dragon Boat music, Nanyin music, martial arts performances

were usually filmed in one take and were framed within a medium-wide shot full of onlookers.

Even though there is no complicated editing to exhibit dynamic action, the scene offers

the spectators a closer look at “real” martial arts performances. Montages or further complicated

editing may hurt the continuity of the performance and the archival value. Viewers in the movie

theater could identify themselves as in a similar position to theatergoers as well as cinemagoers

in such scenes.36 According to Wu Pang, many martial artists and students came to theaters

multiple times to learn from the screen (Wu 1995:27).

Even though Wu Pang tried to convey realist martial arts and cast away anything stagy,

his Wong Fei-hung series still employed different cinematic techniques to show the power of

Wong Fei-hung. The alternative title of the first installment is Wong Fei-hung's Whip that

Smacks the Candle. It is because Kwan Tak-hing was famous for performing martial arts with a

whip during the War of Resistance. Wong Fei-hung uses the whip to put out two rows of

candlelight. Wu Pang turned bamboo sticks into candles and set a trick door to put out the

candlelight when the whip came (Wu 1995:24). Other cinematic techniques like reversing the

36
Endings like Gorilla, Trapped in Hell, Five Tigers include long sequences from Cantonese opera plays like Zhao
Wuniang (literally, Zhao the Fifth Lady) and Da Dong Jie bai (literally, Sworn Brother-sister in a Cave). They are
classic opera plays, in which the former one promotes fidelity of a wife, whose husband gets a place in the capital
and married a new woman, and the latter one is about an anecdote about the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty
(960-1279) Zhao Kuangyin, who rescues a girl in a cave and they become sworn-brother and sister.

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film were employed to showcase the power of jumping. Swordplay and some theatrical

movements are also present in The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part 3.

Although the Wong Fei-hung series was the first to showcase Hung Ga martial arts, many

Beijing operatic acrobatic movements like flipping from a high stage were used. The realist

aesthetic was mixed with the existing theatrical and operatic tradition. When long takes and wide

shots are used to showcase and preserve the authenticity of Hung Ga moves, many of them are

not accurate and distorted. For example, in The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part 2, Wong Fei-hung

teaches his disciples the “shadowless kick” (wu ying jiao). The kick is derived from a move

“Moony Hand and Foot” (yue ying shou jiao) of the Tiger Crane Paired Form Fist routine. The

move is a combined movement of both hands and legs. The right hand holds up high as a feint

and hits an opponent with the left fist and foot together. In the film, Wong Fei-hung is framed in

a medium-wide shot. Surrounded by his disciples, Wong Fei-hung starts the movement with

holding his hands out, which are hand gestures, derived from the warrior type in the opening of a

Cantonese martial play. He holds both hands up to his eyes level so as to do the trick and then

gives a high kick. He divides the movement into certain steps so that he shows them clearly to

his surrounding disciples and audiences in the theater. However, the strike and the kick should be

done together. The kick in the movement is a low and sharp one rather than a high one. To real

Hung Ga martial artists, his “shadowless kick” fails. However, the series had made the kick as a

remarkable martial arts technique. The “shadowless kick” is so famous that it was reinvigorated

in Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China series in the 1990s. Tsui turned it into a multiple kick

combo in the air.

In How Wong Fei Hung Defeated Three Bullies with a Rod, Lau Cham, the real disciple

of Lam Sai-wing, played a villain and has a pole fight with Wong Fei-hung. First, the medium-

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wide shot frames both fighters holding poles. A shot-reverse shot shows the fronts of both

fighters. Lau Cham strikes his pole towards the camera, and performs a series of movements that

are derived from Hung Ga pole fighting, including unicorn footwork, fishing pole, and a feint

attack that lures the opponent to strike. The shots were filmed from the front, and viewers can

feel the blow of Lau Cham’s pole. However, many important details of footwork and fingers

holding the pole were neglected. A front shot cannot show how he holds the pole and stands.

In these two examples, cinema translates martial arts into spectacles. Both the

“shadowless kick” and the pole fight tried to be educational, but they failed to offer accurate

description and efficient camera angles. The pedagogical function of martial arts performances

sometimes became gimmicks and spectacles. According to his autobiography, given the market

pressure, Wu Pang couldn’t help but continued to cash in spectacles in the series. He used scenes

of lion dancing, invited opera stars, mixed comedy like Wong Fei-hung and the Lantern Festival

Disturbance, added horror elements like in Wong Fei-hung’s Battle at Shuangmendi (1956), used

color film like in Wong fei-hung on Rainbow Bridge (1959), and as already mentioned even

added monsters like in Gorilla. Despite that, theatergoers can identify with the crowd in the

diegetic world. Wong Fei-hung in the series delivers cultural lessons to disciples and to

audiences in theaters. The philanthropist-master-disciple relationship in the film series enhanced

the pedagogical relationship between the film and the viewers. More importantly, the viewpoint

defined by the film form created a film sense of community. Viewers were part of the

community that Wong Fei-hung was maintaining law and order in.

Besides the long takes and wide shots, other cinematic devices like closeups, voice-over

and narration were used to communicate with spectators. For instance, the closeup at the end of

the fourth installment concludes with the death of Leung Foon, the disciple of Wong Fei-hung.

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In the 1950s, it was rare to have a closeup shot. Most of the shots were wide shot and medium-

wide shot. Because Leung Foon is aggressive and refuses to listen to the words from Wong Fei-

hung. Leung gets veneral diseases after visiting prostitutes and he dies in the last fight. Framed

within a close up, Wong fei-hung sighs and gazes off screen and concludes, “The aggressive and

impulsive must fail to win” (hao yong dou hen bibai). The closeup is a lesson to viewers at the

theaters. The closeup demarcates who is the master and the disciples, who are the disciplined and

who are the aggressive, and who teaches and who are taught. Usually, dialogue scenes were

filmed in wide shots and medium shots. In fighting sequences, a shot-reverse-shot was usually

used to convey the action and reaction; most of them were wide shots and medium shots. This

closeup in the series is a rare one. In the series, it functioned like a theatrical narrator,

communicating with the audiences. This technique was also used in Wu Pang’s film Tao Lung

Fighting Against Femme Guardian (Tu Long nü San Dou Fen Jin Gang, 1960), co-directed with

Leung Ming. Leung Ming plays a role of a carefree beggar in the film and gives a two-minute

monologue in front of the camera with a medium-closeup shot: “Our Great Han Family and

Mountain have been occupied by the Mongols. Our rivers and mountains (jiang shan) are turning

grey. We Han people should NOT kill each other, should NOT be slaving cows and horses for

the Mongols, should NOT be submissive to the Mongols, and should NOT fight each other.” It is

a rare use of monologue, as both narrator and lecturer, to call for Han-centric national

unification.

Like the original novel by Zhu yu-zhai, the film series included a lot of everyday lessons

and knowledge of local customs. In How Wong Fei-hung Subdued the Two Tigers (1956), a

female voice-over worked like a folk tale storyteller to connect scenes and to praise how good

Wong Fei-hung is: “A man should be as great as this man. For his disciples’ happiness, Wong

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Fei-hung lowers himself to avoid seeing Yang Fei-fu and to head towards Qingyuan.” In various

episodes, some rituals and festivals were introduced through characters; for example, the Golden

Flower Festival in Wong Fei-hung, King of Lion Dance (1957) and the temple of Dragon’s

mother in How Wong Fei-hung Saved the Dragon’s Mother Temple (1956). The camera steadily

moves and follows the voice-over’s description of the bed of Dragon’s mother, the cabin and the

gown. The voice-over ends when a medium shot shows the source of the diegetic character - a

lady introducing the rituals to a group of female worshippers. Other marketing gimmicks were

used to create a sense of community. For his new film How Ten Heroes of Guangdong Slew the

Dragon (1950), Chan Hon-Chong, the Hung Ga martial artist who performed in the Story of

Wong Fei-hung Part 1, asked Wu Pang to print a booklet containing the recipe of a secret

Chinese herbal soup so that viewers could know how to cure their injuries while they worked

(Wu 1995:39–40).

Given the open relationship with the public and the virtue of pronounced intertextuality,

Wu Pang’s Wong Fei-hung series were like the examples of early cinema, where the cinema

exhibited “overlapping types of public sphere, of ‘nonsynchronous’ layers of cultural

organization” (Hansen 1996:93). That relationship explains why in narrative stories in the series

were episodic and contained long takes and wide shots that reenacted the theatrical experience.

Interestingly, all the above examples include the masses or spectators. The characters in the film

teach or perform something to the crowd while the filmic form delivers them to the spectators in

the theater. Target audiences needed not submerge themselves in the narrative and contemplate.

Rather, the realism in the series encouraged a more participatory and communicative

relationship, an active sociability, and a connection between viewers. Through these filmic forms

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and cinematic devices, the sense of community was formed. Interestingly, the community is

formed with the distrust of the masses.

From the perspective of Wu Pang and the character Wong Fei-hung, Wong Fei-hung

teaches disciples and viewers, because the masses needed to be disciplined and civilized. In

many of the above examples, crowds often turn into a mob. The masses in the film series is

always a potential threat to the community’s order. The local festivals, or market towns are

always the scenes for conflicts, rivalries and antagonisms. Popular events, festivals, and martial

arts performances in the film series are places of cultural lessons on the one hand, and on the

other they are hotbeds of crime and aggression. Usually, after the digetic introduction of a

festival like the Golden Flower Festival in Wong Fei-hung, King of Lion Dance, some crimes

happen. These local activities induce the uneducated common folk to commit crimes, undermine

social obligations and challenge authority. In Trapped in Hell, Wong is not only framed for a

case of rape and murder by a gangster but also wronged by a group of villagers and a local

village leader (bao zhang). The masses were often described as a potential threat. In some

episodes, Wong makes use of the masses. In Xiguan, Wong orders his friend Beggar So (Su Qi-

er) to bring a bunch of homeless beggars to stalk the minister in order to delay their wedding

procession. The uneducated masses are easily provoked, manipulated, and simple-minded so

readily accept the instruction from the authority. Wong Fei-hung, as a role model, is the opposite

to them. The realism, in short, is not something like critical realism, concerning and critically

engaging with social problems, nor like Italian neo-realism, illustrating the postwar social

problems in the streets by non-professional actors. Wu Pang’s realism is mixing wide shots and

long takes with a theatrical way of delivering moral messages. The lesson and the aesthetic forms

presented a community safe from historical juncture and external threat in the year 1949.

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Conclusion

In 1976, Kwan Tak-hing, working in conjunction with Television Broadcasts Limited

(TVB), completed 13 episodes of the Wong Fei-hung TV series. In the series, the screenwriters

and directors were passionate university graduates who had participated in student movements –

ranging from the defense of Diaoyutai Island Movement to the promotion of Chinese as the

official language in the colony. Some of them were later members of the Hong Kong New Wave.

According to Ng Ho, one of the coordinators of the TV series, Kwan Tak-hing felt dissatisfied

with the spatial and temporal arrangement in the series. In a review, Ng says,

We put Wong Fei-hung into the turbulent context of modern China. We described how his

disciples resisted the imperialist invasion, joined the Northern Expedition, fought the warlord

Yuen Shikai, and even participated in the May Fourth Movement. They participated in many

revolutionary events. Because of this, Kwan Tak-hing felt dissatisfied and argued with us.

(Law et al. 1997:87)

The reason why Kwan Tak-hing was dissatisfied with this is that the TV series broke the spatial

and temporal unity of the Wong Fei-hung series. To Kwan Tak-hing, too many references to

contemporary settings and historical events would hurt the pleasure of the spectators. The series

itself had created a self-contained community and its order since 1949.

Negotiating the competing discourses of the nation in Chinese martial arts and in the

Cantonese film industry, Wu Pang created his Hung Ga hero Wong Fei-hung, who articulates

both modern and traditional values, as an agent of the community’s order. The coherent theme

and form of the series (1949-1961) were the stability of the community rather than questioning

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the law and order. The community’s order always comes before politics. Wong’s philanthropist-

master-disciple relationship creates a safe place where community leaders were prone to

collaboration or even to collusion with whatever government was in power. Film form and film

sense provided audiences with an authentic, yet intact popular culture in a community, which

was established abstractly at the expense of concrete common people. The security of the

community, in terms of form and content, would be questioned and challenged in the following

years when the first wave of the Wong Fei-hung series faded out. In the early 1960s, a new sub-

genre of the wuxia film emerged, which depicted the apocalyptic martial world, where no

master-disciple relationship was guaranteed and the community ensured by Wong Fei-hung was

about to be eclipsed.

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Fig. 9 A voice over of a lady introducing rituals of Dragon’s Mother Temple in How Wong Fei-hung Saved the
Dragon’s Mother Temple (1956)

152
Fig. 10 Wong Fei-hung performs “shadowless kick” in front of his disciples in The Story of Wong Fei Hung Part 2

Fig. 11 “Moony Hand and Foot” (Yue ying shou jiao) of the Tiger Crane Paired Form Fist routine

153
Fig. 12 The last scene in The Story of Wong Fei-hung, Part 4: The Death of Leung Foon

154
Fig. 13 Lau Cham’s pole fight in How Wong Fei-hung Defeated Three Bullies with a Rod (1953)

155
Fig. 14 Chan Hon-chung performs the Tiger and Crane Fist in The Story of Wong Fei-hung Part 1

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 CHAPTER 3 - Apocalyptic Martial Arts World - Adapting the Fears and Anxieties

in the Cold War (1961-1965)

Introduction

In the previous chapter, I showed how Wu Pang’s Wong Fei-hung series prioritized the

community’s order in a depoliticized way amid conflicting discourses related to nationalism. The

coherent themes and form of the series (1949-1961), supported by the philanthropist-master-

disciple relationship inside and outside the Wong series, contributed to forming the stability of

the community and the realist wide-shot aesthetics. In this chapter, I will focus on a bigger

community, the martial arts world (wulin or jianghu) and its attendant magical and fantastical

cinematic special effect. From 1961 to the mid-1960s, we can see the gradual collapse of the

martial art world, and the abundant use of a rapid editing style and special effects like drawing

on film print to register the destruction. The destruction of the community paved the road for the

birth of the individual hero in the mid-late 1960s. I argue that the collapse is an emerging theme

in the early 1960s wuxia genre, manifesting in a presentation of the apocalyptic martial arts

world (wulin hao jie).37 This anxiety indirectly expressed and responded to the fear toward the

possibility of destruction caused by nuclear weapons, and the Communist influence.

In the early 1960s, the apocalyptic martial arts world emerged in the subgenre of wuxia

cinema known as shenguai wuxia. Shenguai means gods and spirits (shen), and the guai refers to

the strange and magical monsters and legendary creatures that populate these films. Shenguai

37
Miu Hong-Nee’s The Secret Book (1961) was seen as the film that sparked off the theme of the apocalyptic
martial arts world in crisis (Po 2010:72). Its concluding installment in 1962 broke all box-office records of the past
decade for both local and foreign films grossing HK$280,000 (Yu 1981:92).

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wuxia films first appeared in the 1930s, featuring special effects to portray magical powers and

fantasy. These stories of the apocalyptic martial arts world in the 1960s were usually adapted

from “new school” martial arts fictions from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The new theme includes

the martial arts world in crisis – everyone from different sects is on a quest for destructive

weapons or sacred scrolls that can destroy the martial arts world. Unlike with the Wong Fei-hung

series, where Wong Fei-hung punishes the local bandits or corrupt Qing officials, heroes in this

new trend rescue the martial arts world from mass destruction by evil powers. Humanity is on

the brink of mass annihilation. The hero’s mission is to take revenge and restore the peace of the

martial arts world by obtaining destructive martial arts objects like destructive weapons or sacred

scrolls that spell out the means of destruction. In response to geopolitical fears and anxieties, this

tendency of the wuxia genre presents an abstract preception of human beings and social

oppression. In the quest for destructive martial arts, human beings are defined as naturally

egoistic, aggressive, acquisitive, individualistic and inert on the one hand, while conservative

family relations, domination by the hero, and a renewed martial arts world order are stressed as

the central features of law and order on the other.

Little scholarship has mentioned this emerging theme in wuxia films, and its relation to

the geopolitical circumstance. Lau Shing-hon, a film scholar in Hong Kong, explains the new

theme that heroes are having profane motives – fortune and fame as the core of the conflict (Lau

1981: 3), while Koo Siu-fung attributes the apocalyptic crisis in the martial arts world as the

traditional essence of Chinese culture – paternalism (Koo 1981:21). Both of them neglect the

Cold War circumstance and define Chinese culture in an essentialized way. Koo’s discussion

about the Chinese essence is at a thin distance from fatalism – the martial arts world or Chinese

can never obtain democracy, as paternalism and Confucianism are their unchanged essence. Only

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Po Fung, a Hong Kong film critic, has clearly mentioned this tendency in his book. He describes

the theme as wulin hao jie or the great catastrophe in the martial arts world (Po 2010:72). The

martial arts world is in disorder, and the martial arts world was having a threat of mass killing;

the heroes’ mission in these films is to renew the martial arts world order. They are needed to

eradicate the “irrationality” of the martial arts world in order to stabilize the use of destructive

power (74).

I accept his views on the theme of wulin hao jie, and this chapter is to see the

“irrationality” of martial arts in this new theme of the genre. It is my contention that the wuxia

genre was shaped by the evolving Cold War environment and in relation to the nuclear arm race.

My investigation focuses on a number of aspects which include industrial, ideological,

geopolitical, and technological. E’ Mei Film Company and Sin Hok Gong Luen were the two

important Cantonese film studios which specialized in producing high quality wuxia films

adapted from Hong Kong and Taiwanese martial arts novels. First, we will look at these two

specific studios and also look at key figures like Jin Yong, Luo Bin, Ni Kuang, Lee Fa and Chan

Lit Ban. Second, we will see how the inspiration from American and Japanese sci-fi and Cold

War fears were adapted and manifested in the wuxia genre. Particularly, we will see the Hong

Kong’s popular reception of the atomic bomb test in China in 1964. The test had a significant

effect on ordinary citizens and writers and filmmakers could cash in their fear and anxieties in

their writing and filmmaking. Many films I discuss and analyse in this chapter were film

adaptations. I will show that the politics of the film adaptation was part and parcel of what my

theory of the “law outside the Law” entails. After that, I will analyze three films: Lee Fa’s The

Mandarin Swords (Yuan Yang Dou, 1961), Ling Yun’s Buddha’s Palm series (Ru Lai Shen

Zhang, 1964, 1965, 1968), and Chan Lit Ban’s The Six Fingered Lord of the Lute (Liu Zhi Qin

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Mo, 1965). The Mandarin Swords was produced by E’Mei Film Company while The Six

Fingered Lord of the Lute was produced by Sin Hok Gong Luen. Buddha’s Palm series was one

of the classic Cantonese wuxia film series in the 1960s, employing numerous special effects to

illustrate the good and evil. Their narratives and aesthetic form manifested, responded to and

contained geopolitical fears and anxieties. These three sets of films are representative in which

they show how a collective shift from family to individualism, and from community solidarity to

collective madness. We can then see how each of them coped with the fears. For example, the

first film exhibits a Han-centered “wuxia family” and collective, the second one a renewed

martial arts world hierarchy, and the third one a mass madness with political commentary.

E’Mei Studio, Jin Yong and Sin Hok Gang Luen and Luo Bin

What made this shenguai wuxia tendency unique is the production context of these films

and their narratives. Apart from folk tales, legends and Cantonese combat novels (ji ji xiao shuo),

wuxia films started to be adapted from serialized martial arts novels in the late 1950s. In the early

1950s, wuxia films like the Wong Fei Hung series adapted Cantonese combat novels written by

Zhu Yu-zhai in the 1930s (as discussed in the previous chapter). They were mostly about

Cantonese legendary heroes like Hong Xi-guan and Wong Fei-hung, who are real historical

figures associated with the southern Chinese martial arts. Capitalizing on the popularity of the

real fighting contest between the White Crane and the Taiji in Macau in 1954, Liang Yusheng

and Jin Yong wrote their first serialized martial arts novels, Longhu dou jinghua (Dragon and

Tiger Fighting in the Capital City) in 1954 and Shujian enchou lu (Romance of Book and Sword)

in 1955 respectively. They became the most famous and the icons of new school wuxia novels in

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Hong Kong. That sparked off the “new school” wuxia serialized novels, which situate fictional

characters who know magical martial arts in their historical background. Unlike the Cantonese

combat martial arts novels, the popularity of the “new school” serialized novels was a

transnational phenomenon. Jin Yong’s novels were popular in overseas Chinese communities,

including North America and various South East Asian countries.38 Different Taiwanese martial

arts novels were serialized in Hong Kong newspapers and martial arts magazines and were later

made into film adaptation in the early 1960s. The circulation of these novels and magazines

provided these film adaptations with sufficient transnational markets.

One of the studios which specialized in wuxia films and adapted wuxia novels into films

in the early 1960s was E’Mei Film Company, founded by Lee Fa. The studio adapted many of

Jin Yong’s martial arts fictions. Their principle of “wenyi wuxia” tried to capitalize on the

popularity of wuxia novels and wuxia films, but also raise the genre to a higher level. Wenyi

denotes art and literature or something with a high literary quality. Their films convey messages

about “nationalism” and “traditional virtue.” Interestingly, their ideological positions set limits to

certain important features of their representation of heroes and how they deal with crisis in the

martial arts world. The motifs like stability, elites, traditional cultural lessons, and the absence of

radical changes were inseparable from their political positions. Another studio Sin Hok Gang

Luen, or literally “Magical Crane Hong Kong Union” was founded by Luo Bin, who attempted

to cash in on his printing and magazine business by moving into film production, and he

appointed new directors and stars to launch a series of wuxia films. Many of them were written

38
Besides the support from The New Evening Post (Xin Wan Bao) and Ming Pao, the media conglomerate at the
time in Hong Kong, the languages the “New school” wuxia serialized novels used are significant factors for their
popularity. They are in standard Mandarin or baihua wen (vernacular Chinese). Unlike Cantonese Combat novels,
which used a lot of classical Chinese and Cantonese expression, the “new school” wuxia novels could be read by a
wider Chinese-speaking audience and so have a much wider circulation.
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by famous sci-fiction and wuxia novelists like Ni Kuang. Sin Hok Gong Luen’s films include

suspense and mass killing and thriller. While E’ Mei focused on traditional values like

Confucianism, Sin Hok Gong Luen emphasized the failure of humanity.

In the early 1960s, wuxia films were still targets of criticism for their operatic acting and

action, low budget production, repetitive characters and indistinguishable costumes (Q. Liu

1963). Despite that, according to an industrial report in early 1964, wuxia films were among the

top three popular genres in Cantonese cinema.39 Out of a total of 210 Cantonese films produced

in 1963, there were 86 urban dramas (shi zhuang pian), 62 period costume opera films (gu

zhuang ge chang pian) and 62 wuxia films (Huo 1964). The most profitable genres were urban

dramas and wuxia films. The Cantonese film industry witnessed several financial problems at

this time: high rents for studios and high salaries for stars. To cope with these problems,

producers used the same backdrop for two films. Buying copyrights of wuxia novels and

adapting them into films with two installments were also ways to cut costs. Creative production

was cut short; producers cut actors pay from the amount of two installments into one and a half

(Gao 1963). The production of wuxia films was quick, because the script was ready-made by

stories in newspapers and magazines; the shooting days were short, and the budget was low.

They outnumbered the production of period costume operas. It was in this context that the

themes about questing after a destructive weapon in the martial arts world were emerging.

Lee Fa (1909-1975) and Shaw Bak-Nin founded the E’Mei Film Company on July 26,

1958. It specialized in making wuxia films and adapted novels written by Jin Yong (1924-2018)

39
According to Yu Mo-wen, the productions of Cantonese wuxia films were in their golden years in the early
1960s. There were 20 Cantonese wuxia films in 1960; 47 in 1961; 27 in 1962; 61 in 1963; 38 in 1964; 42 in 1965;
29 in 1966; 9 in 1967; 26 in 1968; 28 in 1969 (Yu 1981:92). The number of wuxia films may not be accurately
recorded. In Huo’s figure there were 62 wuxia films, while in Yu’s figure there were 61.
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and Liang Yu-Sheng (1924-2009). The actors they hired were Ng Chor Fan, Lee Ching, and

Cheung Ying; filmmakers included Lee Sun-fung and Lee Fa himself. Many of these filmmakers

and actors had left-wing backgrounds or had worked in leftists film companies and newspapers.

Lee was a student in the Guangdong Drama Research Institute, founded in 1929 by Ouyang Yu-

qian who was a well-known Communist playwright. Lee was among the first filmmakers in

Hong Kong who watched and promoted the dubbed version of Mikhail Romm’s Lenin in

October (1937) and Lenin in 1918 (1939). Given his status and political affiliation, he was

allowed to shoot landscape scenes in the mainland; for example, his The Musketeer from

Luoyang (Luoyang qi xia chuan, 1964) used a lot of scenes shot by him in Luo Yang, one of the

cradles of Chinese civilization. The film broke box office records grossing HK $300,000. Jin

Yong and Liang Yu-sheng not only worked and published their wuxia novels in the leftist

newspaper New Evening Post (or Xin wan bao), but Jin Yong had also worked as a screenwriter

for a leftist film company.40 The above-mentioned actors were from Union Film Enterprise,

which aimed at producing serious films and promoting messages of opposing superstition and

feudal marriage. The actors were considered as left-wing or left leaning, but they were not

ideological hardliners. Many of these left-wing filmmakers, novelists, and actors later became

anti-Communists.41

40
Before founding Ming Pao, Jin Yong was a prolific screenwriter in the Great Wall Movie Enterprises Limited,
one of the leading left-wing studios in Hong Kong. His works include Li Pin-qian’s The Peerless Beauty (Jue Dai
Jia Ren, 1953), Yuen Yeung-on’s Never Leave Me (Bu Yao Li Kai Wo, 1955), Li Ping-qian’s The Three Loves (San
Lian, 1956), Cheng Pu-Kao’s The Fairy Dove (Xiao Ge Zi Gu Niang, 1957), Cheng Pu-kao’s When You Were not
with Me (Lan Hua Hua, 1958), Cheng Pu-Kao and Jin Yong’s The Nature of Spring (You Nü Huai Chuan, 1958),
and Hu Siao-Fung’s One Million for Me (Wu Ye Qin Sheng, 1959).
41
Because of his Ming Pao and its conservative political stance, Jin Yong was considered as an anti-communist,
especially during the 1967 riots. Ironically, because of the same political stance, Jin Yong was among the first
visitors in the early 1980s who could meet Deng Xiao-ping and Hu Yao-bang, the Chairman of the Central Military
Commission and the Chairman of the Communist Party of China respectively. Jin Yong was a committee member of
the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Basic Law Drafting Committee. Since then his conservative position
dragged him into the support of the pro-establishment camp. Lee Fa’s son Lee Yee is a well-known columnist in
Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, which housed a lot of anti-Communist and anti-China intellectuals and
writers including Ni Kuang and Chip Tsao. Actors like Ng Chor Fan defected to the anti-communist side after the
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 Jin Yong was not just a novelist and scriptwriter, but also a founder of his newspaper

Ming Pao, and an important policymaker in negotiating terms during the drafting of the Sino-

British Joint Declaration. For the sake of maintaining a good image of writing wuxia fictions, he

invented a new label “wenyi wuxia.” It was used to elevate the genre to a prestigous level and

aimed at promoting nationalism and traditional virtues and culture. The “healthy” images of their

wuxia film productions were epitomized in Jin Yong’s eight moral doctrines of wuxia novels and

films, which include: (1) promoting traditional morals and virtues like loyalty, filial piety,

brotherhood and altruism, (2) cutting out all sexual scenes, (3) restraining action from unbearable

cruelty and blood, (4) promoting no superstition and evildoers should get their comeuppance, (5)

having tragic heroes does not mean to despair but to inspire, (6) righteous deeds of heroes do not

mean thieves and bandits, (7) promoting loyal and faithful romantic relationships, and (8)

ensuring equality between different races and eliminate racial prejudice from the perspective of

patriotism (Jin 1961). These moral principles attempted to rescue wuxia from mass production

and mere sensational consumption. The wenyi in “wenyi wuxia” was nothing more radical and

militant than elevating the film genre to the literary level. The term “wenyi wuxia” tried to

discursively bring a cultural and civilized subject into being, one that is national and legitimized

under colonial rule. The fact that nationalism became a cultural and moral lesson, one that is free

of revolutionary politics and class struggle was a hegemonic consent between the Hong Kong

government and civil society.

1967 leftist riot. He once said in Li Han-Xiang’s autobiography, “I was like hypnotized, following people in the sea;
‘Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman.’ We were not sailing, but struggling in the sea of bitterness (ku hai). We
didn’t even have a boat! Damn! One day, I understand the idiom ‘The sea of bitterness has no bounds, turn your
head to see the shore.’ I quit. Since then, I quit my film business, returned to my home, and held my grandson in my
arms. What do I have? Country? Nation? Damn! My grandson is mine.” (H. Li 1997:8)
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 A few scholars mention Jin Yong’s problematic political position, and his influence on

Hong Kong’s dominant ideology (Liu 2011). Without understanding the ideological formation of

Jin Yong’s political position, we cannot understand his influence on his works, and their film

adaptations. While it is impossible to analyze the lifelong development of his political views, I

will focus on his political views in the early 1960s, which is when he was writing many of his

wuxia novels. In his editorial in Ming Pao, views like depoliticization were prevalent. In his

view, Chinese people should not care about politics but about business and eating (Editorial,

“Xianggang Zizhi Wuyi Youhai” 1963). While talking about the mission of founding the

Chinese University of Hong Kong, he said that it should be promoting traditional culture that

could be equivalent to Western Civilization, and there should be fewer discussion about politics

concerning Communism and anti-Communism (Editorial, “Zhongwen Daxue Ying You de

Lixiang” 1962). The culture that Jin Yong had in mind is Han-centered Chinese civilization

rather than that of ethnic minorities. This actually goes against the eighth moral doctrine he

suggested for wuxia stories. In 1963, some local and foreign politicians like Ma Fan-fai

advocated self-government and constitutional reform in Hong Kong. Jin Yong refuted it and

said,

Many Hong Kong people think that it is not necessary for constitutional reform at the

moment. We do not hope that, considering the current situation, Hong Kong practices self-

government. It will cost much to elect a bunch of Chinese elites to disturb the existing stability

and prosperity in Hong Kong.

(Editorial, “Xianggang Zizhi Wuyi Youhai” 1963)

In his column, he said,

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 Chinese in Hong Kong are busy with having necessities; they are not interested in

politics, not to mention such daydreaming about self-governance. As a matter of fact, every

Chinese knows that Hong Kong could not be independent, let alone the Hong Kong government

allowing the existence of such political parties.

(Xu 1963)

On the relationship between democracy and freedom, Jin Yong unabashedly separated

two concepts, “Given the turbulent times in Asia, what people most wanted is ‘freedom’ rather

than ‘democracy.’ If a regime can give people ‘freedom,’ it is fine to have no ‘democracy’”

(Editorial, “Nanhan Zhengju de Guanjian Suozai” 1963). He even agreed with the idea that Hong

Kong should change its name from “Colonial Hong Kong” to “Free Port” because the term

‘colony’ may bring Hong Kong and the government a bad image (Editorial, “Zancheng

Xianggang Gaiming” 1964). To Jin Yong, it is important to promote Hong Kong as a free port

that had a low tax rate rather than a site to oppose imperialism. Colonialism is, therefore,

excused in the name of modernization and bourgeois freedom. His concept of freedom is a

matter of consumer rights, and capitalist privilege.

In other words, his core value was protecting the existing law and order for the stability

and prosperity of Hong Kong. Cultural nationalism could be idealized and promoted as long as it

would not disrupt the existing order. Bourgeois democracy and decolonization were never his

concerns. Chinese people who remain within the bounds of existing society should cast away all

revolutionary ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. Colonizers were seen as politically neutral as

they could offer better living standards and bourgeois freedom. These ideas are manifested in his

works and their film adaptations: the moral and spiritual development of heroes, the focus on a

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hero who is Han and has noble blood, the absence of the Emperor who is always forgiven, the

acquiescence to the authorities, and the depoliticized action by heroes. While they fight against

domination and oppression in the quest for invincible martial arts, heroes reproduce the existing

order.

Sin Hok Gong Luen had a totally different style and thematic concern. First, Luo Bin

(1923-2012), the producer and founder of Sin Hok Gong Luen, was born in Macau and raised in

Shanghai. He went to the Jingwu Athletic Association for martial arts training when he was

young.42 However, he didn’t pursue the training further and instead worked at a publication

house opened by Feng Bao-shan, “The Universal” or Huanqiu, in postwar Shanghai before going

to Hong Kong in 1948. He founded another Huanqiu in Hong Kong in 1950, and published

entertainment magazines like Blue Book (lanpi shu), West Point (xidian), and Black and White

(heibai), which were also circulated in Singapore and considered as part of the “yellow culture”

by radical students. What’s more important is his newspaper Sin Pao or Hong Kong Daily News,

which serialized a lot of wuxia fictions by Ti Feng, Zhuge Qingyun, Sima Ling, Jin Tong, and Ni

Kuang.43 Whereas Ming Pao was taken as a newspaper founded by intellectuals (wen ren ban

bao), Sin Pao was founded by merchants (shang ren ban bao). Luo Bin did not write any martial

arts fictions as Jin Yong did, but he recruited a lot of writers from Hong Kong and Taiwan. He

then capitalized upon his own publication house Huanqiu and established a martial arts novel

weekly Wuxia World on April 1, 1959.44

42
The Jingwu Athletic Association is discussed in Chapter 2.
43
Jin Tong’s original pen name is Wolong Sheng. His real name is Niu He Ting. He was a Taiwanese novelist.
Given the popularity of Jin Yong’s novels, Wolong Sheng changed his pen name to Jin Tong.
44
It became the most popular martial arts magazine in Hong Kong. After sixty years, it reached its end on January
15, 2019, and became the oldest martial arts magazine in Hong Kong
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 Capitalizing on the popularity of martial arts fictions and films, Luo Bin expanded his

publication business into film and founded Sin Hok Gong Luen in 1961 (Luo 2008:112, 114).

The expansion was a strategy characterized by Luo Bin as “one chicken with three different

flavors” (yi ji san chi, similar to the phrase “kill two birds with one stone”). His wife He Li-li

managed and supervised the studio. Sin Hok Gong Luen was not the main source of his profit,

but it could function as one promotional arm for his martial arts fictions, newspapers, and

magazines. He was serious about his film productions. His studio’s shooting days for one film

usually exceeded twenty days, much more than the infamous seven-day productions.45 Directors

were asked to make more interesting shots in a film, making a thousand shots to attract more

viewers (Guo 2006:33). Sin Hok Gong Luen had training lessons for new actors. Going against

the hasty schedules that were the norm in the Cantonese film industry, Luo Bin often asked

directors to reshoot scenes. Sin Hok Gong Luen also had a serious postproduction process, which

was rare in the film industry at the time. It included dubbing, choir singing, and design for the

costumes and weapon props.46

Like other rising Cantonese directors like Chu Yuan and Lung Kong, Chan Lit-Ban was a

director who pursued not only the market but also personal expression and a higher standard for

Cantonese pictures.47 From 1961 to 1969, Chan Lit-ban specialized in wuxia films for Sin Hok

Gong Luen, which produced twenty-three wuxia films during this period (Yu 1981:93). Sin Hok

45
In Hong Kong, there was a term called qi ri xian, or “freshness out of seven days.” It is used to denigrate the
model of many Cantonese film productions that were cheaply made and roughly produced. Filmmakers cared only
about money but not the quality of films. They simply made films out of seven days.
46
Tung Pui-Sun, who migrated to Hong Kong in 1957 after the Anti-Rightist Campaign, was hired to design
costumes and weapons and became a famous illustrator of serialized martial arts novel. His work including comics,
animations, illustrations, film posters and billboards covered half of the print media in Hong Kong.
47
For more information about Chan Lit ban, see (Po Fung 2010:85-89). According to Tung Pui-Sun’s interview,
Chan Lit Ban experienced his downturn in the late sixties when Cantonese pictures flopped in Hong Kong and
overseas markets. Chan Lit-Ban later worked as a clerk in a warehouse. Tung says there is no other news about his
whereabouts (Dong, 2012 Mar Ming Pao Monthly).
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Gong Luen provided him with a lot of new blood like Nancy Sit, Suet Nay and Cheung Ying-

Tsoi who challenged the old faces of heroes like Tso Tat-wah and Lam Ka Sing. All this

indicated that wuxia films were raising a new horizon of expectation in the mid 1960s. Law Kar,

the veteran Hong Kong film critic, characterizes Chan Lit-Ban’s work as an example of

“championing young heroines in stories containing anti-establishment, anti-morality, and anti-

authority feelings and sentiments on the one hand, and on the other hand valorizing violent

performance and the release of pent-up emotion; particularly the masochism of heroines” (Law

1997: 19). In the film adaptation of The Six-fingered Lord of the Lute, Chan consciously used

filmic devices like stylistic montage to represent the chaos in the martial arts world and the

horror of the destructive weapons.

One final important figure working for this film studio was Ni Kuang, who was not only

a novelist of martial arts novels and science fiction stories, but also a screenwriter for later wuxia

films like Chang Cheh’s One Armed Swordsman (1967) and Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury (1972) in the

late sixties and the early seventies. After his escape from China to Hong Kong in 1957, Ni

Kuang first used his penname “Yue Chuan” to write wuxia fictions in Zhen Bao. Later, Luo Bin

recruited him to write fictions of mystery and urban romance. He used another penname “Wei

Li” and wrote serialized novels entitled Nü Hei Xia Mulan Hua or “Female Warrior Mulan Hua,”

about a heroine similar to Pearl White in contemporary Hong Kong. In 1963, he worked for Jin

Yong’s Ming Pao and wrote many sci-fi stories, which became much more popular than his

other works. Ni Kuang, an ex-Communist-turned-anti-Communist, often characterizes the

mystery in his sci-fi works, in which superior technology or aliens control an individual. This

superior subject is to warn earthlings or to take over the minds of human beings and make slaves

of them. The allegorical messages are referring the alienation in front of mysterious and

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formidable power. It is no coincidence that in The Six-fingered Lord of the Lute, the evil power is

always mysterious and unknown.

A typical capitalist and a businessman, Luo Bin always said he was only a businessman

without any party affiliations (wu dang wu pai) (Wong 2002:15–17). One should not forget the

fact that indicating his affiliation with the “Free World,” and he took a number of broad member

roles in political organizations, youth programs and commerce chamber. Every year on the

national day of the Republic of China (Oct 10), he raised the Nationalist flag at the building of

the Kowloon Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong (Guo 2006:57). He was a chairperson of Hong

Kong Road Safety Patrol, and The Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers). Both youth

programs were funded and sponsored by the colonial government. The reason why he

participated in them was his hostility towards juvenile delinquents. He thought that once young

people were disciplined, society would have less juvenile delinquents (Guo 2006:47). Also, his

aversion to the government’s intervention in business was shown when his magazine business

and color printing factory were disturbed by the Singapore and Taiwan governments respectively

(Guo 2006:51-52). The Singapore government needed to send a delegate to every broad meeting,

while the Taiwanese government needed a factory license to open printing factory. Because of

that, he thought both governments were tyrannical. Most importantly, Luo was the chairman of

the Hong Kong and Kowloon Film and Drama Filmmakers Free General Association Limited, a

rightist organization whose main functions included fundraising for Hong Kong filmmakers from

the KMT government in Taiwan, helping Hong Kong directors and actors work in Taiwan,

settling disputes among filmmakers, and setting quotas for foreign films imported to Taiwan.

The films registered by the General Association would be considered as national films in

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Taiwan. In an interview, Luo emphasizes that the association was concerned with business rather

than politics:

At that time, the General Association monitored actors if they have joined the association

or not. Only if they join the General Association can their films be sold to Taiwan. It is for

preventing any leftist artists and avoiding political controversy…There was not a loss to joining

the General Association. So, why not? When you join it, your films can be sold to overseas

markets. If not, your films cannot be distributed, and your living will be ruined. All of this is about

living, not politics.

(Luo 2008:123)

The General Association facilitated the production and distribution between Hong Kong

and Taiwan. Once the filmmakers and others joined the Association, the films could be sold to

Taiwanese markets. When the Cultural Revolution started, many leftist artists were jobless and

defected to the General Association and sought for freedom (touben ziyou). They were required

to write confessional letters (hui guo shu) before joining it. For example, Yuen Yeung-on, Kao

Yuen and Chen Si-si who worked in leftist film companies defected to the General Association

in 1968. According to Lee Pui Tak’s study, given the peculiarity of Hong Kong in the

geopolitical context, Hong Kong filmmakers and artists were practical and often took advantage

between the left and the right (zuo you feng yuan) (Lee 2009:94). Many filmmakers thought that

“the left” or “the right” was only a political label, and had nothing to do with film business.

Some leftist artists like Lo Dun even claimed that they didn’t like “red”, because that may get

them into trouble (Lee 2009:91). But this “no-leftism-and-rightism-only-business” value was

exactly a reflection of the depoliticization favoring the colonial government and the capitalist

Cold War powers. What seems to be outside of ideology in reality takes place in ideology,
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because ideology has its roots in material relations, concrete reality and social practices. It is not

just about film artists taking advantages from both sides or double-crossing, but the stubborn

ideology that is rooted in economic necessity. The ideology in this particular context was the

separation between the economic and the political. The material existence and the externalization

of ideology in institutions like film companies and the General Association reproduced the

ideology acquired by the colonial government; that is remaining depoliticized and ideologically

free are good and neutral. This is actually one of the effects of ideology, as expounded by Louis

Althusser: the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology

(Althusser 2014:265). Shaped by their conservative stances, the colonial government, and the

Cold War powers, that ideology conditioned the writing of their apocalyptic martial arts world

and how they received inspiration from American and Japanese science fiction and the first

atomic test in China.

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 Fig. 15 The logo of the E'Mei Film Company

Fig. 16 “Hong Kong Autonomy, Nothing Good and Harmful” Editorial, Ming Pao on Mar 6, 1963

173
Fig. 17 “Agree to Change the name of Hong Kong” Editorial, Ming Pao on Jan 4th, 1964

Fig. 18 Film Poster of The Mandarin Swords in 1961

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 Fig. 19 The film program shows that Sin Hok Gong Luen established an acting school and their first
graduated students. Also, for promoting The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute, there was a performance and game show
(you yi da hui).

Fig. 20 Film synopsis and the advertisement of the film as a nuclear bomb

Fig. 21 Three theme songs in the film were released as an album

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Nuclear Arms Race – Wuxia and Sci-fi Concerns

The nuclear arms race not only produced global fears and anxieties but also inspired

1950s American sci-fi. I argue Hong Kong wuxia films (particularly ones about the martial arts

world in crisis because of weapons of destructive power and the quest for them) share similar

concerns with these sci-fi films. Drawing on the example of 1950s U.S. sci-fi means only to

demonstrate the anxiety and concerns were global and local. The anxiety was shared and

circulated in the Far East. Hong Kong, as a capitalist society under British rule, had a different

manifestation of this anxiety through local popular culture.

The arms race started from the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll program in 1946. Russians

successfully tested an atomic bomb in 1949. Various countries participated in the nuclear arms

race and that accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s.48 The arms race legitimatized the theory of

Mutually Assured Destruction. The doctrine was based on a full-scale use of a nuclear weapon

by the opposing sides, leading to the mass annihilation of both participating countries. This

created the deterrence theory, which justified the use of destructive weapons like nuclear bombs

against the enemy, and could prevent war by deterring the enemy from using the same weapons.

These theories provided Hollywood sci-fi with narratives of fear and paranoia of nuclear war, for

example, Rudolph Maté’s When Worlds Collide (1951), Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly

(1955), and Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Victoria O’Donnell argues that

48
The U.S. exploded its first H-bomb and the Soviet Union exploded its first H-bomb in 1953. The Lucky Dragon
Event occurred in 1954 when the nuclear fallout from the United States’ testing at Bikini Atoll contaminated a
Japanese fishing boat. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 put the world on the brink of mass destruction. Nikita
Khrushchev’s idea of revisionism and socialist humanism suppressed the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the
‘inhuman’ past of Stalin’s period, and, as Louis Althusser says, demonstrated “their will to bridge the gap that
separates them from possible allies” (Althusser 2005:236). Compromising on the Cuban Crisis, the Soviet Union
signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty with the United States and the United Kingdom in 1963. While China has claimed
that nuclear weapons cannot be used and can never end any wars, it conducted its first nuclear test successfully in
October, 1964.
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1950s American science fiction films “presented indirect expressions of anxiety about the

possibility of a nuclear holocaust or a Communist invasion of America” (O’Donnell 2003:169).

Wuxia films in the early 1960s shared similar concerns. The apocalyptic martial arts

world in the genre was set in antiquity in which no scientists and historical references to nuclear

war and Communist invasion could be easily recognized but a destructive weapon or martial art

was introduced to annihilate the whole world. Hong Kong did not have sci-fi films until Shaw

Brothers produced films like The Super Inframan (1975) and The Mighty Peking Man (1977),

remaking the Kamen Rider series and King Kong respectively.49 Regarding the theme of anti-

nuclear war, Lung Kong’s Hiroshima 28 (1974) was the first Hong Kong feature film directly

denouncing nuclear war, imperialism and militarism.

Despite the lacuna of sci-fi productions in 1950s and 1960s Hong Kong, there were

screenings of Japanese sci-fi movies in 1950s Hong Kong.50 Ishiro Honda’s The H Man (1958)

was shown in Hong Kong in 1959. A film critic Ye Qin in his/her film review (Ye 1959)

reflected the use of science should be in “good hands” in order to avoid nuclear war, even though

the meaning of “good hands” was not discussed. The relationship between sci-fi and wuxia

fictions could be seen in local newspapers. For example, in Ming Pao, a newspaper founded by

Jin Yong in 1959, sci-fi stories written by Ni Kuang shared the same pages with Jin Yong’s

wuxia serials. New columns in the same page about space wars, atomic bombs and annihilation

of humanity were pervasive in the early 1960s.51 Editorials and columns discussed whether the

49
The early example of mass destruction and invincible weapons in film narratives can be found in New Arabian
Night (Xin Tian Fang Ye Tan, 1947), directed in Hong Kong by Dan Du-Yu who adapted One Thousand and One
Nights. Some say that Wong Tin-lam’s Riots in Outer Space (Liang Sha you Tai Kong, 1959) can be seen as the first
sci-fi film in Hong Kong (RTHK and CUHK 1985:27).
50
Other films like Koji Shima’s Warning from Space (1956) were also shown in Hong Kong in 1959.
51
For example, there were titles like “Space War and Space Weapons” (He 1963), “Four Thousand Atomic Bombs
Can Make Mass Extinction of Human Being” (“Siqian Yuanzidan Touxia Ke Shi Renlei Jueji” 1959). Some
columns introduced the horridness of the atomic bomb, with titles like “The Power of Atom, Its Calamity, Nuclear
War, Destroying the World” (Bao 1964).
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theory of mutually assured destruction (kan jia chan) is better than half assured destruction (ban

jia chan) and their effectiveness of deterrence in 1963.52

The first atomic bomb test in Communist China produced anxieties for local Hong Kong

people in 1964. The discussion around destructive weapons was highlighted in the debates on

using nuclear weapons between Ming Pao and two leftist newspapers Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei

Po. Although two camps of the newspaper had a divergent ideology, they shared a common

narrative: how to understand the use of destructive weapons and how to maintain the nuclear

weapons in “good hands”.

The debate started from October to December 1964. Jin Yong, the chief editor of Ming

Pao, disagreed with the testing of the atomic bomb in China and remarked that it was neither a

glory nor a benefit to mankind on October 20. In the following days, the editorial said that the

test was sinister and evil. Other editors and columnists called for more attention to living

standards of material and spiritual beings, and to the lack of democracy and freedom in China

(W. Zhang 1964; Q. Zhou 1964). On October 25, the chief editor in Ta Kung Pao defended the

test and claimed that Jin Yong had been unpatriotically promoting inappropriate sentiment

against China in his editorial since 1962. In the following days, Wen Wei Po joined the

discussion and said that the atomic test was for national defense, which was different from

holding an evil and aggressive purpose. The testing was for deterrence of other nuclear weapons.

Their accusations against Jin Yong and Ming Pao can be summarized into three points: first, Jin

52
An editorial by Jin Yong in Ming Pao September 3, 1963 titled “The Theory of Mutually Assured Destruction is
Beneficial to Mankind” (Editorial 1963) discussed the theory of deference could bring peace to the world and is
better than “Half Assured Destruction” promoted by Mao Ze-Dong. A columnist San Su (San 1963) refuted it
satirically the next day, saying either the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction or Half Assured Destruction are
both still putting the world at stake.
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Yong and his editors had underestimated the development of nuclear weapons in China. Second,

they made sarcastic comments about China and spoke for American imperialism as if the U.S.

didn’t have nuclear weapons. Third, Jin Yong’s Ming Pao pretended to be politically neutral on

many important political issues, but their views did not care about American dominance of

nuclear warheads (Ran-xi 1964; Chachawei 1964; H. Zhang 1964”).

Despite the heated debate from both sides, both chief editors from Ta Kung Pao and

Ming Pao were proud of the national achievement. Jin Yong disagreed with the testing of it, but

in his column said, “First, it belongs to Chinese, not Indian nor Japanese. Second, our scientific

development can advance to the level that can produce the atomic bomb. It is a very important

event” (Xu 1964). In the following year, citizens continued to discuss the danger and fear of

nuclear weapons, and most people thought that any country who could use nuclear weapons to

make peace meant that they were in “good hands.”53 The debate and discussion settled on these

consensuses: first, the use of destructive nuclear weapons was part of national defense and

deterrence. Second, it was a national pride. Third, the use of nuclear weapon was an instrument

to maintain peace in order to contain the fear of it. An irony in the Cold War anxieties is

revealed: you need to use strategies to be sinister to contain the evil.

All these debates and concerns about the nuclear war and atomic bomb had strong

connections to the theme of the apocalyptic martial arts world in wuxia films: whether the

destructive weapon should be dismantled or guarded by good hands. Some heroes will dismantle

it at the end of the film like Ling Yun’s The White Bone Swords, Yang Kung-leung’s Ingenious

53
For example, Ma Man-Fai, a Chinese elite and politician in Hong Kong who advocated the rights of self-
government in Hong Kong, opened a seminar in 1965 to discuss nuclear weapon. Participants affirmed the
achievement of China, but they considered that the nuclear weapon was harmful to mankind and that they should be
held in good hands (Editorial 1965).
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Flutter (Xian Di Shen Long, 1961), Wong Fung’s Palace of Evil (Mo Gong Shen Zhang, 1964),

and Ling Yun’s A Drop of Chivalrous Blood (Yi Di Xiayi Xue, 1965). However, more films were

concerned with destructive weapons that were held in good hands for peacekeeping. In Moslem

Sacred Fire Decree, the young hero Yin Tian-chou comments on the catastrophe created by the

quest for the treasure map, which leads people to the destructive weapons: “If everyone knows

nothing about martial arts, there will be no more killing between us.” Another young hero Duan

Yun-sou asks him what to do if everyone knows powerful martial arts. “That’s why people

cannot make peace with each other,” says Yin. In later scenes, Yin Tian-Chou shares with his

partner Du Juan-er his views on the instrumentality of destructive weapons: “However, if the

weapons are used in a moral way, it can be beneficial to mankind.” When Du asks him if a

destructive weapon contains anything moral, he answers, “Of course! There are many evildoers

in the world. If we can have a powerful weapon that can suppress them, they can be deterred

from doing anything wrong.” Similar discussions were prevalent in wuxia films.

All these discussions were based on one assumption: people who could use destructive

weapons to maintain peace and order in the martial arts world are classified as “good hands.”

Destructive weapons were defensive rather than aggressive, although the definition of good and

evil is never questioned. The “good hand” is good because it can maintain peace. No one

questioned the hierarchial strata of the martial arts world. The enemy is defined as someone who

attempts to disrupt the orderly society and the martial arts ranking order. In short, the “good

hand” assumes various forms of authoritarian regimes, domination, and oppression were the

same. The hero rejects domination, repression, and manipulation on the one hand, but on the

other hand, he refuses to question the martial arts world’s order. In the early 1960s wuxia films,

the hierarchy in the martial arts world was evident. Heroes were divided into different levels and

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their magical power was defined accordingly. The one and only hero climbed up the martial arts

ladder before obtaining the destructive weapon to keep the martial arts world in peace. In

Mandarin Sword, it is the secret scroll; in the Buddha’s Palm series, the ninth level of the

Buddha’s Palm; in The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute, the “Heavenly Dragon Eight Sounds”.

We can easily see how the Cold War anxieties were reproduced into the local genre.

After China tested its first atomic bomb, a sense of horror was manifested in popular imaginary.

In a report from Ming Pao on the effect of the first atomic bomb testing by China, the sense of

horror was peddled like a cinematic plot:

Since the Chinese communists have tested their nuclear bomb and exploded their atomic

bomb recently, Hong Kong citizens have different responses. It seems that we are on the brink of

the crisis of another world war. In the past month, a baby, who was dying, spoke something it

could never know: there will be flooding this year; a mutiny will happen in the next year; the

changing of global relations, which disturbs world peace intermittently, creates a strong sense of

apocalypse; for avoiding the global war, strange things happened again in recent days: in the areas

of Tsz Wan Shan, Wong Tai Sin, and Shau Kei Wan, a bloody handprint is found; five fingers

stretching out; dripping blood; neighbors are shocked; some of them receive a yellow paper that

reads…

(Ming Pao October 22, 1964)

In the same year, the invincible and destructive nuclear bomb was used in film publicity. For

example, in the film program of The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute, the image of a nuclear bomb

was used to illustrate the power of the evil lord of the Lute: “Sin Hok Gong Luen Exploded its

Nuclear Bomb; Nuclear Bomb Exploded – Shocking the World! The Six-Fingered Lord of the

Lute – Stirring up the Film World!” The humanism in the wuxia films helps to define what a

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good hero is, who can own and use invincible weapons or destructive martial arts to dispense

justice to the martial arts world. This was the message of deterrence articulated by Klaatu in The

Day the Earth Stood Still: “If you threaten to extend your violence, this earth of yours will be

reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace or pursue your

present course and face obliteration.” This humanism betrays “the military reality of America’s

preeminent role in the U.N.-sponsored police action in Korea” (Torry 1991:16). The definition of

the “good hand” is self-evident, because the hero or the “good hand” can use the destructive

force to deter possible aggression. In short, the “good hand” is always the hegemon. This notion

of the “good hand” continued in the late Cold War. In his analysis of early 1980s popular culture

in the U.S., Andrew Britton suggests that the deep structure of science fiction provided U.S.

citizens in the Reagan era with an “escape” from their anxieties about nuclear weapons, because

“the message is cogent and succinct: the bomb is a good thing in the hands of Americans and a

bad thing in the hands of the Soviet Union” (Britton 2009:119).

The apocalyptic martial arts world in Hong Kong wuxia films shared the same concern

with American sci-fi films in terms of: the uncertainty of the human future and the fear of

invincible weapons. The “good hands” was an abstract call for an end to oppression and

authoritarianism by acquiescing to the new hegemony and authorities. In the apocalyptic martial

arts world, only the hero is qualified to own the invincible martial arts to deter enemies from

controlling the martial arts world without questioning the existing relations. Besides narratives

and themes, the production value of wuxia films and American sci-fi films was similar in terms

of cinematic styles. Both of their styles tended to be restrained and visually bland because of

their low budgets. Unlike American sci-fi actors, actors in wuxia films, for example, Tso Tat-

wah and Lam Ka-sing, were well known. They were either well-known actors or opera artists

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from Cantonese opera or the Cantonese film industry. However, like their American sci-fi

counterparts, they were not particularly handsome, and because of their similarity in acting styles

and the films’ storylines, their roles could be interchangeable. Also, the spectacle was simplistic;

viewers could distinguish the visual effects: double exposure, wires, models and miniatures, and

the human actors playing monsters and animals. All of this highlights the process of turning

contemporary fears into indirect narratives (O’Donnell 2003:171). Through film adaptation,

directors channeled Cold War fears and anxieties.

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 Fig. 22 Film program of The Six Fingered Lord of the Lute

Fig 23 “The Theory of Mutually Assured Destruction is Beneficial to Mankind” Editorial in Ming Pao, Sep

3, 1963

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 Fig. 24 “On Mutually Assured Destruction and Half Assured Destruction” by San Su in Ming Pao, Sep 4,

1963

Fig. 25 The conversation between Yin Tian-chou and Duan Yun-sou on “if everyone does not know martial arts would

bring peace” in Siu Sang’s Moslem Sacred Fire Decree (1965)

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Fig. 26 The conversation between Yin Tian-chou and Du Juan-er on the virtues of destructive weapons in Siu Sang’s

Moslem Sacred Fire Decree (1965)

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Adaptation as a Worldview

Film adaptation was not new in wuxia films. In the 1930s, the first wuxia film hit, The

Burning of the Red Lotus Temple series was adapted from Xiang Kai-ran’s novels. In the 1950s,

the Union Film Enterprise adapted May Fourth classic like Ba Jin’s The Family, Spring and

Autumn, and foreign literature like Nikolai Ostrovsky’s Thunderstorm into films. According to

film historian Yu Mo-Yun, 60% of all Cantonese wuxia films were adapted from the “New

School” fiction; original screenplays formed the basis for 35% of the output while remakes of

earlier films provided approximately 5% of the output (M. Yu 1981:94). The E’Mei studio

adapted works of popular martial arts novelists like Jin Yong and Liang Yu-Sheng, while Sin

Hok Gong Luen specialized in producing adaptations of the works of Ni Kuang, Wolong

Sheng/Jin Tong and Zhuge Qing-Yun.

The shift from adapting Cantonese Combat novels to “new school” wuxia serialized

novels in the film industry signified not only an expanded scope of the community and its

popularity, but also a shift in the methods and perspectives in interpreting the world. Adaptation

is a form of political reading, which produces rather than imitates the world for filmmakers and

viewers to identify. The practice of film adaptation was more than simply an addition or

reduction of the original texts. In the 1960s, the “new school” wuxia novels depicted a world

bigger than a secluded community in the Wong Fei Hung series. It was an apocalyptic world of

mass killing which no moral shaming could prevent or stop. The concept of mass education of

martial arts in the Wong Fei-hung series was replaced by esoteric knowledge and martial arts

skill, which became the object of competition. The hierarchy of the martial arts world was

shaken by the collapse of the master-disciple relationship. In these films, bandits and corrupt

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officials are no moew evil than the hypocritical master. The two-school-rivalry conflict is

replaced by a dystopian world where different martial arts schools are searching for the secret

destructive weapon.

The practice of adaptation was a transnational one. There were many martial arts fiction

to adapt from: in addition to Jin Yong’s own publication house and martial arts magazine Wuxia

and History (wuxia yu lishi), there were works that were created by other Hong Kong and

Taiwanesee martial arts novelists and published in the Wuxia World (wuxia shijie), a magazine

founded by Luo Bin. Given the popularity of wuxia literature, many serialized stories in

newspapers and magazines were converted into books, and later adapted into films. During the

screenings, the novels were re-adapted and sent for simultaneous broadcasting from different

radio stations like Radio Rediffusion, Commercial Radio Hong Kong, Radio Television Hong

Kong and Radio Vilaverde Lda, which was in Macau. The story of the film was adapted into

forms like picture books, comic books, and film programs that were sold in movie theaters.

The practice of adaptation capitalized on different media platforms to maximize profit.

The markets not only included Hong Kong and Macau, but also Southeast Asian countries where

the magazines and novels were sold. Besides profit making, the practice of film adaptation of

wuxia novels had two more functions and meanings. The practice of adaptation was an

economical device to elevate Cantonese filmmaking from low quality to prestige; for example,

Union Film Enterprise, well known for their critical realist filmmaking and subject matters in the

1950s, adapted a lot of literary classics from foreign literature classics and the May Fourth

Movement, which were aiming at enlightening people from feudal families and superstition. The

label “wenyi” (literally meaning literary and art) was used to denote social and artistic status in

promoting wuxia cinema. The E’Mei studio was famous for their “wenyi wuxia” adaptations. I

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accept Zhang Zhen’s discussion about the transnationality and elasticity of the category, “wenyi”

through translation and transliteration (Zhang 2018:89–90), but add to it by arguing that “wenyi”

adaptation practices bear distinct geopolitical impulses.

The second meaning of film adaptation is its particular worldview. Given the Cold War

circumstance, the adaptation provided viewers with a kind of reading of the world free of

anxieties and fear. Particularly, in this apocalyptic world, film adaptation negotiated the anxieties

and transformed all the horror into a safer and familiar world. The world produced by film

adaptations is further depoliticized and dehistoricized – cultural references and historical

backgrounds are reduced to familiar cinematic molds. This kind of adaptation is a form of

creation rather than imitation. It breaks away from the concept of fidelity and provides a

particular way of “reading, rewriting, critique, translation, transmutation, metamorphosis,

recreation, trans-modalization, signifying, performance, dialogization, cannibalization,

reinvisioning, incarnation, or re-accentuation’ of the original text (Stam 2005:25). This concept

of adaptation was popular not only in academia, but also in 1960s Hong Kong. Jin Yong who

had once worked in one of the leading left-wing studios, Great Wall Movie Enterprise, as a

screenwriter, had similar thoughts on film adaptation, “Film is another kind of creation. If we

directly copy the original story, it can’t be an interesting and complete movie” (Jin 1963: 1).

Some critics even theorized the practice of film adaptation. A critic Yi Ni theorized the practice

of adaptation as a kind of creative labor or chuangzuo xing de laodong. Efforts include making

additions and deductions for a concrete theme and consistent narrative, dramatizing the conflict

between characters, and vulgarizing the story for common viewers. These efforts are made

against the notion of “canon” and “fan culture” which demand the fidelity of film adaptations (Yi

1963).

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 Despite its importance, this practice of adaptation is relatively neglected by Hong Kong

scholars. They either focus on film adaptation by critically acclaimed screenwriters like Yi Wen

or Eileen Chang (Wong 2013), or ignore the difference between film adaptation and novels in

their studies (Liu 2011). Books on martial arts films (Teo 2009) do not contain in-depth research

and analysis about the relationship between film and novels in the early 1960s, let alone its

importance to the film and TV adaptations of wuxia novels in the following decades. Without

understanding the styles of film adaptation of wuxia novels, we simply cannot know what world

the filmmakers were trying to create and provide it to the viewers to contain their fears and

anxieties with. Given the Cold War circumstance, this martial arts world is politically

conditioned by and conditioning the status quo. In other words, adaptation as a worldview is not

just about film adaptation but a way to read and reproduce the existing world.

Many Cantonese wuxia film adaptations aim at clarity. Shifts in perspectives and the

effect of suspense in novels are replaced by a more linear, chronological order in film narrative.

In The Six-fingered Lord of the Lute, many characters like the masked hero Dong Fang-Bai,

appear much earlier in the film. The original novel by Ni Kuang is full of suspense and mystery

about the murder of highly respected martial arts leaders, but viewers learn much earlier in the

film about the conspiracy of the mass destruction of the martial arts world by the six-fingered

Lord. Similar practices were used in Buddha’s Palm. The original novel has numerous

characters, but the screenwriter Szeto On not only put the later characters in earlier sequences in

the film but also blended some enemies into one character. For example, the villain Ou Yang-

Hao in the film is made of two evil characters in the novel, Huang Jin-cheng and Ou Yang-

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Hao.54 Sometimes, for the sake of clarity, the narrative will be straightened out at the expense of

the drama’s logic. In the original story of The Mandarin Swords, a royal bodyguard delivers the

Mandarin Swords secretly as the swords have secrets that can make people invincible and control

the world. However, in the film, the bodyguard not only tells his colleagues the secret but also

four passersby what he is delivering in order to let viewers clearly understand the plot.

Given the clarity, even though Cantonese wuxia films had two to three installments to

adapt the voluminous novels, filmmakers and screenwriters had to simplify a lot of interpersonal

relations and historical and cultural references. Often, historical references in Jin Yong’s original

stories were reduced in many film adaptations.55 For example, in The Mandarin Swords, the

hero’s name was altered from Xiao Ban-he (literally meaning “half the He”) in the original novel

to Xiao Ban-tian (literally meaning “half the sky”). This alteration reduces the historical and

nationalistic meaning of his name contained within the original novel. He is a righteous eunuch,

and he names himself after Zheng He, who was a court eunuch during the Ming Dynasty. Zheng

He was a famous historical figure who went to explore the ‘Western Ocean’ (Indian Ocean) and

promoted Chinese culture and civilization. Xiao Ban-he hopes to be as great as Zheng He, but,

he adopts the name “Half the He” out of respect and humbleness. The change reduces some

ethnonational messages as figures from the Ming Dynasty was often celebrated as the legitimate

Han-centric dynasty. Although this strategy reduced a lot of historical innuendo and

commentary, it also made characters more relatable to everyday life.56 Character relationships

54
In the film, the young hero Long Jian-Fei meets his enemy Ouyang Hao and his romantic partner Qiu Yu-hua
much earlier than in the original novel. Because of this earlier appearance, the love triangle and martial arts world
conflict are clearer.
55
It includes the reduction of the use of dialects, distinct features of weapons by side characters, regional cultures
and historical costumes.
56
There is another case that makes character more relatable. In Cheung Ying and Choi Cheong’s Story of the Sword
and the Sabre (1963), a young hero Zhang Wu-ji is no longer named after his master Golden Haired Lion King (jing
mao shi wang)’s son. In the film, Golden Haired Lion King is much milder and hopes Zhang Wuji for having a
unencumbered life (bai wu jin ji), a lucky phrase used in common greetings and wishes.
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are simplified too. In the original story of Buddha’s Palm, “One Evil, Two Flyings, Three Great

Palms” (yi xie, shuang fei, san jue zhang) is the martial arts ranking in the martial arts world. The

“Two Flyings” are a man Qiu Gu-yin and a woman Sun Bi-ling. In the novel, they are evil

masters from a mysterious clan. Qiu has two granddaughters, who are Qiu Yu-Hua and Qiu Yu-

Juan. In the film adaptation, Sun Bi Ling becomes their grandmother and the two Flyings are

replaced by two sisters: Sun Bi-ling and Liu Piao Piao, an invented character in the film. Also,

the romantic relationship in the novel is changed from polygamy (the ending implies the hero

Long Jian Fei, and his two partners Qiu Yu-hua and Chu Fang live happily ever after) to

monogamy (Chu Fang is absent in the film adaptation).

Given the strategies of simplicity and clarity in film adaptations, viewers can find the

narratives easier to follow and character relationships more relevant to identify with. In terms of

relevance, Cheung Ying, the co-director of Story of the Sword and the Sabre, has talked about

the importance of making film adaptation relevant to the audience members (Cheung 1963). He

mentions three points: first, since wuxia novels are set in ancient times, it is important to shorten

the historical distance in order to let the viewer feel more familiar with the world depicted.

Second, wuxia films should promote violence with reasonable justice and virtue. Third, in order

to help viewers relate to the film, wuxia films should be entertaining as cinema is not for

pedagogical and a film is not a textbook. It is interesting to see how he illustrates the death of the

hero couple, Zhang Cui-shan and Yin Su-su at the climax. The hero commits suicide in front of

all leaders from different martial arts sects to protect his wife as she has paralyzed his senior

colleague. The hero shows his love to his wife who later kills herself too. This differs from the

original story in which the hero kills himself not out of love, but because his evil wife has

brought him great shame since she attempted to kill his beloved senior colleague. Film

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adaptation accentuates family relations and heterosexual relationships that sometimes do not

exist in the original source material.

Critics often attribute the popularity of wuxia films to animation, wirework, human-like

monsters and graphic effects.57 They elicit attractions from viewers just like magical and

splendid martial arts described in the novels; for example, the mysterious bamboo formation in

Chan Lit-ban’s The Azure Blood and the Golden Pin (Bi Xue Jin Chai 1963) showcases the use

of double exposure to create the illusion of people beating each other. Rarely do critics mention

that many Cantonese wuxia films exploited a lot of narrative devices – cross-dressing, play of

identity, and Cantonese duets – devices used in many Chinese opera plays. These devices were

removed in Chang Cheh’s wuxia films. In many Cantonese wuxia film adaptations, they were

utilized in important plot development, like cross-dressing can be used for espionage. In The

Mandarin Swords, the screenwriter created additional plots like searching for the real pair of

swords in Part II, which was not part of the original story. The practice of adaptation used and

borrowed the familiar tricks and plots from opera plays and turned them into cinematic

attractions.

In terms of casting, actors tended to be typecast, similar to opera actors in Cantonese

opera. Tso Tat-wah always plays the hero, while Shek Kin plays the villain role. They have less

psychological development than those in the novels. Especially in the early 1960s, filmic devices

like inner voice or close-up shots were seldom used in wuxia films. However, comparing the

novel and the film adaptations, we can see the effort of innovative creation of characters. In Story

of the Sword and the Sabre, the character Yin Su-su, a merciless yet righteous heroine, is

compromised by actress Pak Yin’s persona of good mother and wife (xian qi liang mu). The

57
In many film reviews written by Liu Yan-wen, Liu Wen-he, and Liu Wen-peng in Ming Pao, special effects were
considered childish and superstitious (shenhua) (Wen-peng Liu 1963; Wen-he Liu 1965).
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plotlines that her revenge is not active but passive, her delivery at a temple and her conflict and

reconciliation with her father emphasize her role of sacrifice and motherhood. In the Buddha’s

Palm series, Gu Han-Yun, the best martial artist who knows the Buddha palm, is not a hard-

boiled and lonely man living in an “Insulated Cave” (jue yuan dong) like in the original novel,

but a lively, saintly old man living in a cave with his giant pet bird called “Golden Eye.” The

actor Ling Mung’s rendition of Gu Han-yun makes a significant change in the film. Whenever he

appears, his signature laugh denotes his liveliness and refusal to take any partisan position or to

become involved in the martial arts world.58

All of this implies that in the wuxia film adaptations, there were efforts in creating a

familiar world, borrowed and appropriated from opera plays, cinema, and novels. The strategies

in wuxia film adaptation illustrate how filmmakers see the world, one that is simpler, more

melodramatic, relatable and familiar than that of novels. More importantly, they were used to

encounter, counter, translate, negotiate. and contain the global fears and anxieties during the

Cold War. Although they are basic strategies of film adaptation, each of the following films has

their own way to adapt the original wuxia stories into films.

58
Another character Bi Gu, the leader of Zhang Li Sect in the Buddha’s Palm series is worth mentioning.
Compared to the original image in the novel, Ko Lo Cheun’s Bi Gu is a funny old man rather than a shrewd and
aggressive middle-aged martial artist. In the film, his signature loud cry of his nickname “Eastern Island Zhang Li”
(dong dao zhang li), which appears whenever he is introduced to the scene, has long became a collective memory in
Hong Kong.
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The Making of the Wuxia Family in The Mandarin Swords

Lee Fa’s The Mandarin Swords was adapted from a novella Blade-dance of the Two

Lovers. 59 The fiction was first serialized from January 11 to February 11, 1961 in the magazine

Wuxia and History, which was newly founded by Jin Yong on January 11, 1960.60 Interestingly,

the E’Mei Film Company started shooting it on December 1960 with Jin Yong’s permission and

copyright. After its release in March, the fiction was republished in Ming Pao the following May

of the same year. All of this shows the close relationship between Jin Yong, his publishing press

and the film company. The Mandarin Swords has two installments. It is set in the Qing dynasty.

It is about how different heroes, bandits and the Qing officials are after a secret weapon, a pair of

Mandarin swords, which allegedly could make heroes invincible in the martial arts world.

During the search, a hero Yuen Guan-nan and a heroine Xiao Zhong-hui fall in love. However,

they are suspected to have the same mother. After knowing their biological parents who are from

different righteous and noble families, the scandal of incest is resolved. The film ends happily

with revealing the swords’ secret: an inscription hidden in the swords, which says, “the

merciful/humaneness are invincible” (ren zhe wu di). The ending scene shows when time passes,

the hero couple are having more and more children and each of them holds a pair of swords.

Interestingly, the wishful object of the quest is the warning lesson. The lesson is both the

wish fulfillment and the invincible weapons. The lesson is about individual transformation and

self-cultivation. The Confucian message “the merciful/ humaneness are invincible” is not only

59
The Chinese titles of the fiction and the film are the same – Yuan Yang Dao.
60
Wuxia and History was founded in opposition to Wuxia World (wuxia shijie) established by Luo Bin on April 1,
1959. Wuxia and History usually published Jin Yong’s and Gu Long’s fictions. It was one of the two major wuxia
magazines in Hong Kong; the other one was Wuxia World, which will be discussed later.
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about self discipline but also that of the family and country.61 Only the merciful can reduce the

anxieties of destructive weapons, because being merciful is the most powerful. The message

draws from the Great Learning (Daxue), one of the four canonical Confucian books, that one

should “cultivate oneself, then regulate the family, then govern the state, and finally lead the

world into peace” (xiu shen qi jia zhi guo ping tian xia). In this doctrine of government, one can

see the upward and downward continuity. Central to wuxia films is the management and

formation of a family, which requires that the righteous hero marries someone, and plays the role

of the responsible head of household; only then is he able to steer the martial arts world free from

fear and horror brought by the destructive weapons. The ability for this hero to set things tight is

all because he is merciful. Opposing the Qing dynasty is, therefore, reduced from a national

question to an ethical one.

Here, I would like to propose a concept, “a great wuxia family” (wuxia da jiating) to do

my analysis. The term is derived from a phrase used in the People’s Republic of China “great

revolutionary family” (ge ming da jia ting). It was used to describe the unconditional love and

solidarity among comrades from different family backgrounds. In the “great revolutionary

family,” traditional family ties are often criticized. A new familial relationship is established

based upon the revolutionary spirit and underclass solidarity. For example, in Yu Yan-Fu’s

There will be Followers (Zi You Huo Lai Ren, 1963), the “revolutionary family” consists of the

non-biological father, who is a railroad worker and a Communist, the non-biological Grandma,

who is a female worker, and the daughter, who is the orphan heroine. In the “wuxia family,” the

61
In his studies of governmentality, Michel Foucault describes clusters of literature of anti-Machiavellian treatises.
The pedagogical texts written by François de La Mothe Le Vayer for the French Dauphin categories three levels of
government: the government of oneself, which falls under morality; the art of properly governing a family, which is
part of economy; and finally, the “science of governing well” the state, which belongs to politics (Foucault
2007:94). This discussion about governmentality highly inspires my thinking about the formation of the wuxia
family, in which the government of the family for the common good is central to wuxia films in this period.
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biological parents must be championed as righteous heroes. They are usually from noble clans.

Many of them are from a broken elite family (which usually knows some sacred or secret martial

arts) and return to a newly formed elite family. A few of them are fishermen or peasants like the

fisherman hero in Fung Chi-kong’s The Dragon Sword at the Bottom of the Sea (1964).

However, the labor and work of peasants and fishermen are no sooner emphasized than their

encounter with the heroes in the films. In the course of various encounters, the orphan hero in

wuxia films becomes more legendary and extra-ordinary. In the end, a patriarchal figure appears

to dispense justice and officiate the wedding for the hero. The comparison to There will be

Followers is not random. In the scene of There will be Followers, a Chinese calligraphy appears

in the office of a Japanese imperialist Hatoyama. As part of the decoration, the Chinese

calligraphy is hanged on the wall. That reads, “ren zhe wu di” (“the merciful/humaneness are

invincible”) the same words The Mandarin Swords has for the secret weapon. Interestingly, as

part of the mise-en-scène, the saying describes how Hatoyama appropriates Chinese traditional

culture on the one hand, and launches the war in the Northeastern China. On the contrary, the

saying in The Mandarin Swords is something traditional that Chinese should uphold. The sharing

of this Confucian saying is not just about the sharing of the same cultural roots, but how

Confucian lessons are often used as a front for cultural domination and colonialism. This ethical

term is guiding the formation of the great wuxia family to contain the object of desire, or desire.

In the Mandarin Swords, the central members of the wuxia family include an orphan hero

(Yuan Guan-nan), a heroine (Xiao Zhong-Hui), and legitimate martial arts world authorities

(Xiao Ban-tian, Master Beggar, and mothers of Yuan Guan-nan and Xiao Zhong-hui). They can

call for a collectivity – in solidarity with the oppressed groups. Regarding orphan narratives

within a larger perspective, the orphan as a recurring motif is an “integral part of a transnational

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melodramatic mode and of a global vernacular articulating the modern experience” (Zhang

2018:84). The orphan narrative is “a transcultural, archetypical protagonist and an emblematic

meme of modern times in which homelessness is the quintessential human condition and mode

of consciousness” (85). I will add that the way to present and adapt an orphan narrative in wuxia

films is responsive toward geopolitical conditions, which regulated and shaped the type of socio-

familial relationship an orphan hero embodied. An orphan hero in wuxia films in the early 1960s

did not remain alienated in the same way as in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) or call

for proletarian class unity as in Yu Yan Fu’s There Will be Followers. An orphan hero in Hong

Kong wuxia films often ends with marriage, sealed by a group shot of the heroes’ family. Given

the Cold War circumstances, the Confucian codes the orphan hero bears in his family did not

disrupt the existing order and social relations. Instead, this code will help the heroes form a

larger collective to contain all sorts of threats.

Like other wuxia films, revenge is the motivation of an orphan. In most film adaptations,

the narrative of revenge starts from the beginning or the orphan is determined to take revenge

without hesitation.62 At the end of the revenge, heroes get married. In the course of his action,

the orphan hero must pursue public good before achieving personal happiness. The orphan hero

is often confronted with this moral challenge. In other words, only the revenge has been taken

(the public) can the pursuit of happiness be guaranteed (the private). In The Mandarin Swords,

the hero couple’s happiness comes after the defeat of the Qing army. In the course of revenge, a

62
In Cantonese wuxia films, revenge is a means to help heroes enter the symbolic world and achieve happiness
without hesitation. In the novel, the young hero Zhang Wu-ji in Story of the Sword and the Sabre hesitates to take
revenge after his parents are forced to kill themselves. In the film, he is determined to call for revenge. It is
interesting to note that the film adaptation of Story of the Sword and the Sabre has changed the “Ice Fire Island”
(bing huo dao), a primitive place where the young hero was born, to the “Island of Loneliness” (Ling ding dao). The
change signifies psychological development - an urge to grow from the non-separation and primitive to constitute
his identity in the symbolic world and to emphasize the importance of family and community. Loneliness is,
therefore, bad. Revenge can help form collectivity.
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hero must be merciful and humane. Happiness is, therefore, conditioned with moral principles –

because the orphan hero can manage and brings the martial arts world into peace, the making of

family is legitimate.

Marriage in many Cantonese films was a consistent topic, but in wuxia films it has two

specific meanings.63 First, it signifies a hero’s trajectory of development from a moral subject to

the head of a righteous family. Similar to the disciples in the Wong Fei-hung series in the 1950s,

heroes in the first few years in the 1960s continued to conclude with marriage as a happy ending.

That is different from those lonely and contemplative heroes in Chang Cheh’s films in the mid

1960s. Second, it is always about an alliance between two righteous individuals who represent

two families. The two families are righteous. Ethnically, they must be Han or from the Central

Plain (zhong yuan). They are the oppressed and victims of some sort of authoritarianism. The

heroes’ biological parents were killed by non-Han officers or they were harassed by Han-traitors.

In the quest for the invincible martial arts, the hero may encounter a love triangle. In this

encounter, the hero needs to face the dilemma of choosing what type of partner he wants. The

hero couple must be descendants of blue blood or righteous heroes. In order words, the enemy

cannot be biologically related. In Wong Hok-sing’s Golden Scissors (Pi Li Jin Jiao Jian), the

heroine can kill her father, because she finds out the person she assumed to be her father actually

killed her biological father and is not biologically related to her. Biological parents must be

righteous. The enemy is not biologically related and must be the one who disrupts the solidarity

of the wuxia family. Usually a woman from an evil clan will be killed or sacrificed, even if she is

the descendant of a righteous hero. To solve the dilemma, a hero chooses his partner who is

63
The topic of marriage was important in other genres in the same period. For example, Mok Hong-see’s Three
Females (San nü xing, 1960) is about how three different kinds of couples pursue happiness in contemporary Hong
Kong.
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innocent or if she is from an evil clan, she needs to regret her wrongdoings. Usually, marriage in

wuxia films is more conservative than that of the novel. In the original novella of The Mandarin

Swords, another young hero couple Lin Yu-long and Ren Fei-feng always fight and argue with

each other. The fighting and arguing are depicted as the behavior of a loving couple. In the film,

the anti-Qing master Xiao Ban-tian lectures them, “You two are arguing about such trivial issues.

What’s before us is very important! We people should not have conflict; otherwise, it will ruin

the mission.” Their fighting and arguments in the film no longer denotes a positive model of how

a happy couple should act. Faced with the threat of the invincible weapons, countering the threat

depends on the formation of a collective bound by Confucian codes. The wuxia family is

invincible enough to counter the threat, because it asserts the righteousness of two noble and

righteous families (two blue bloodlines). The message “the merciful are invincible” indicates not

just moral introspection but also external solidarity.

To build solidarity in a legitimate wuxia family, the gender division of labor is required.

Politics of sexuality is crucial in affirmation of the familial relations; it includes the virginity of

the heroine and gender divisions. The role of the heroine is not always submissive in Cantonese

wuxia films, while the character of heroes is not always masculine. The female warrior is

common in Cantonese wuxia films.64 The agency of women was evident in Cantonese wuxia

films. In The Mandarin Swords, only the heroine Xiao Zhong Hui fights the Qing army. The

hero Yuan Guan-nan has more a supplementary role. Despite that, the meaning of “yuan yang”

swords evidently implies yin-yang balance and cooperation.65 The invincible or destructive

64
The female warrior Xu Mei in Fung Fung and Wong Fung’s Temperamental Amazon (Diao Man Nüxia, 1961)
strongly opposes superstition and arranged marriage throughout the film – she sets up a martial arts competition to
actively choose her husband, makes a public announcement in the competition about fighting against gender
inequality, and encourages her husband to be patriotic.
65
In many Cantonese wuxia films, for example Wong Fung’s Swords of Tian Shan (Tian Shan Long Feng Jian,
1961), Ling Yun’s The White Bone Swords (Bai Gu Yin Yang Jian, 1962), and Siu Sang’s Moslem Sacred Fire
200
weapon can only be in the hands of a loving couple, because they can control the invincible

weapons. The balance is heterosexual rather than something like the homosocial community in

the Wong Fei-hung series. In the wuxia family, incest is a taboo. As mentioned above, marriage

not only defines the relationship between a hero and a heroine, but also forms the connection to

other righteous individuals that represents other righteous family bloodlines. If incest is allowed,

the solidarity with other oppressed groups cannot be formed. Exogamy is to form alliance and

strengthen social solidarity.66 Because of this, the villain is usually a sex offender, transgressing

the boundary between friend and enemy. Sexually harassing a heroine can break the alliance.

Zhuo Tian-xiong, the Han-traitor, in the film attempts to sexually harass Xiao Zhong-Hui. The

noble clans’ solidarity is, therefore, accentuated in the film adaptation through the motif of

incest.

The last creation in the film adaptation is an insertion of a legitimate authority in the

closure. The marriage cannot be done without the presence of a legitimate authority figure. The

role of the martial arts authorities is to officiate it, dispense justice, and approve the orphan

hero’s choice in partners. This figure can be the master of the hero (Ling Yun’s The White Bone

Sword Part II (Bai Gu Yin Yang Jian, 1962), the grandfather of the hero (Miu Kong Yee’s The

Golden Coat (Jian Xia Jin Lü Yi, 1963) or a venerable monk or martial artist (Miu Kong Yee’s

Competing Heroes Part II (Di Jiang Zheng Xiong Ji, 1965). He arranges marriage for the couple,

sometimes for multiple couples. He is publicly recognized and his martial arts must be more

Decree (Wulin Sheng Huo Ling, 1965), the invincible weapons were usually a pair of swords or tokens like Dragon-
Phoenix swords, Yin-yang swords, and Yin-yang tokens.
66
The topic of incest was common in Cantonese wuxia films. It was to affirm what type of socio-familial relation
the orphan hero should belong to. In Moslem Sacred Fire Decree Part II, twin brother and sister Yin Tian-Chou and
Dan Feng were separated and respectively raised by good master You Ming Gui Sou and bad nun Jing Yin. Jing Yin
orders Dan Feng to hurt and chase after her brother Yin Tian-Chou for his invincible weapons – a pair of Sacred Fire
Tokens. Without knowing he is her twin brother, she falls in love with him during the quest. However, the taboo is
quickly solved in the closure. When a righteous monk tells them their family background, Yin Tian-Chou reunites
with his sister and returns to embrace his partner Du Juan’er.
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powerful than that of the heroes. His appearance in the closure legitimatizes arranged marriage.

The arranged marriage is no longer a feudal practice as the May Fourth intellectuals would have

criticized, but signifies the orphan hero’s achievement of making solidarity with other righteous

families. The position of that patriarchal authority bears everyone’s consent in the martial arts

world. However, he does not intervene in secular matters until the last resort and refuses any

partisan involvement in the politics of the martial arts world.

As the authority bears an important position in the wuxia family – to dispense justice and

approve the marriage, which affirms the alliance – he cannot be ambiguous in terms of sexual

identity. In Mandarin Swords, the anti-Qing hero Xiao Ban-tian cannot play this role of

authority, but a master beggar. In the novel, Xiao Ban-tian reveals the truth of the hero couple’s

biological parents, and holds a wedding ceremony for them. In the end of the novel, the hero

couple learn from another young hero couple Lin Yu-long and Ren Fei-feng how to use the

Mandarin swords. In the film adaptation, the screenwriter invented a beggar and a dumb servant

who help tell the truth and teach only the heroine martial arts. In the last sequence of the film, the

beggar is even entitled to lecture everyone about the Confucian message: “The merciful is

invincible. Down with tyrants! Learning martial arts is for enjoying good health, not for fighting

and bullying. Remember this phrase, you can be invincible in the world.” The anti-Qing hero

Xiao Ban-tian is banned from this position of authority, because he is a eunuch. A castrated man

is unable to reproduce the bloodline of the righteous family. In the novel, he is proactive to be a

eunuch and says, “I was castrated at the age of 16 for serving the Emperor in order to avenge the

murder of my father by the Manchurian Emperor.” However, in the film adaptation, he says to

the Qing army, “I am a eunuch. During my study, you slaves kidnapped me to be a eunuch. I am

forced to be a eunuch. I am the victim.” His victimized position and the ban of his authoritative

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position function to dispel any queerness in the wuxia family. Just like the taboo of incest in

marriage, the ban is for reassuring the formation of the wuxia family. Even though some may

argue that there were a lot of filmic devices in The Mandarin Swords, which may implicitly hint

the play of queerness like cross-dressing and shifting gender roles, they would never function as

a liberating force to disrupt the existing gender division.

As my concept the “law outside the Law” illustrates, in films like The Mandarin Swords,

the emperor is always absent.67 He is not culpable and remains unpresented. Zhuo Tian-xiong,

the Han-traitor, is the main villain. After the hero couple have overcome Zhuo Tian-xiong, they

can form the wuxia family. The Qing emperor is absent. The emperor or the sovereignty was

taken as a familial relationship. The wuxia family existed not only to deter the threat in the

martial arts world, but also to understand the conditions of existence. The wuxia family was used

as an allegory of abstract social and historical reality. The use of the “internal enemy” is one

more way to deflect the social reality in its narrative discourse. The Han-traitor is a subject of

internal otherness. The Han-traitor is usually killed or given a lesson in film adaptations. For

example, Zhuo Tian-xiong in the film repents but in the novel he gets caught. It indicates that the

Han-traitor could be a friend as long as he is lectured to be loyal to Han people. The unity is for

ethno-national unification. In this unification, the emperor is absent, and a collaborator

67
In wuxia films, either the emperor is absent or the sovereignty is explained through familial relationships. In
wuxia film Secret Book Part III (1962), the emperor from the late Ming Dynasty is always forgiven for his
wrongdoing. The former General Lan Hai-ping lectures Bai Yun-fei, who is a heroine and a former princess in exile,
“I think he now understands it and hopes you can come back to the palace. Don’t you forgive him? Sometimes
parents do make mistakes. A son or daughter should not care about this too much.” At the end of the story, Lan Hai-
ping arrests the Han-traitor Su Ming-Hai, who collaborates with the Qing emperor, and asks Bai Yun-fei, “Yun-fei,
your dad realizes his fault and misses you so much and wants to reunite with you.” The emperor is corrupted not
because he is morally corrupted, but because he is used by a group of corrupted officials. In the original story of this
film, Flying Swallow, Terrified Dragon (Fei Yan Jing Long), when the princess criticizes Liu Jin, the powerful
corrupted eunuch during the Ming Dynasty, the General Zhao Hai-ping (the original name of Lan Hai-ping in the
novel) says, “Your father is a Heavenly Son. We are serving as chen zi (minister and child), and we should not make
further criticism.”
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personifies all kinds of crimes. The otherness is internalized so that the problem is made to be

solvable. The weapon with destructive power was displaced and interpreted into familial issues.

When the orphan hero is trained with the Confucian doctrines and manages his home, directs his

wife and children well, fights the traitors, he can deter all kinds of anxieties from the martial arts

world.

In terms of aesthetics, The Mandarin Swords did not have any cartoons or animations. It

borrowed familiar Cantonese opera traditions to portray the solidarity of the wuxia family. First,

the action choreographer was Yuen Xiao-tian, who also played the dumb master in the film.

Most of the martial arts moves were Peking and Cantonese opera movements. Stuntmen did all

the complicated moves like backflips or cartwheels when the heroine fights them. Most of the

fighting scenes included a lot of wide shots and long takes similar to those from the Wong Fei-

hung series. Static wide shots capture different group fights within a frame. Divided into three

sections, foreground, middle-ground, and background, people fight with opera practice routines,

like jumping over a hit, ducking a sword, whirling in the air, twirling various sorts of props,

climbing and balancing, and somersaults. Only when the lead actors fight, medium or medium-

close-up shots were used to present the heroes’ agility. Seeing opponents coming from offscreen

to the lead actors one by one, heroes fight them one after another. All the camera movements and

angles were familiar to opera and cinema viewers. The Mandarin Swords also employed several

narrative devices to prolong the narratives. The second installment of the film was a total

digression not based on the novel. It added scenes like opera singing between the hero couple

and cross dressing to create cinematic drama and attractions for the audiences. The plots that

different heroes cross-dress their opposite sex to steal the Mandarin swords and people are

confused about real and fake swords, are all familiar narrative devices in opera stories.

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 Even though there are no special effects in The Mandarin Swords, we can find some

basic cinematic tricks like reverse shots were used in a dangerous dungeon. The final fight

between the heroine Xiao Zhong-hui and the Qing army, in particular, manifests some interesting

special effects and camera angles. Her whole family is standing behind in the background, while

the heroine receives instruction from the master Beggar and fights the Qing army alone with her

pair of Mandarin swords. She is in the foreground with a shallow focus, and the whole family is

behind her. The actress Lam Fung, who played the heroine, was a big star borrowed from the

Shaw Brother Studio, and more medium close-up shots were used to show her beauty. Even

though there were a lot of group shots, the main actors and actress were in shallow focus,

concentrating on their star quality. In this showdown, the heroine skillfully wields and shows off

some moves using her pair of swords in front of the camera and the next shot shows a group of

opponents being physically blown away by the power of her swordplay. An offscreen big fan

was used in the set to create the effect of the opponents being blown away. Interestingly, the

sequence is inter-cut with some top shots in order to capture the whole movement. In the

following years, the “great wuxia family” and the familiarity of the film form began to change

when the threat from the outside world was mounting against the stability of the collective.

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 Fig. 27 The ending scene of The Mandarin Swords

Fig. 28 In this scene of Yu Yan-fu’s There Will be Followers, the Chinese calligraphy hanged on the wall reads “ren zhe wu di”

in a Japanese imperialist office.

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 Fig. 29 Xiao Ban-Tian says “I am forced to be a eunuch.”

Fig. 30 The hero Yuan Guan-nan and heroine Xiao Zhong-hui perform duet

Fig. 31 A shallow focus is used to accentuate the star quality; a top shot is used to show the last fight.

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Fig. 32 A big fan is used on the set to show the effect of the Mandarin swords

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Restoration of Martial Arts World Order in the Buddha’s Palm series

In the mid 1960s, the Cantonese movie industry witnessed another difficult time. The

production plunged from 300 films in 1963 to 200 in 1964. Film critics attributed the fall to

various factors like the social unrest in Malaysia and Singapore that were major markets,

distributors losing interest in buying Cantonese movies, high rents for studios, high salaries for

stars, and a 30% increase in the cost of film negatives (Yu 1965). In response to this difficult

situation, filmmakers intended to make more cinema of attractions: having more shots of natural

landscapes and making films in color. Given the limited space in Hong Kong, filmmakers went

to Taiwan for footage of natural landscapes. In one film industry report, the mid-1960s showed

two tendencies: the flop of period costume opera films and the rise of light comedy (qing song xi

qu), and the emergence of new actors and actress (Gu 1964:19), including Suet Nay, Cheung

Ying-Tsoi, and Chow Chung in the mid 1960s.68

In terms of cinematic style, wuxia films employed more camera angles in the 1960s. In an

interview with Xu Zheng-Hong, a film director who worked at Shaw Brothers’ Studio

specializing in wuxia films, he explained the difference between the 1950s and 1960s film

industry: “In the fifties, there were roughly five to six hundred shots in a film. A martial arts film

of the early sixties would have about one thousand shots. Shooting ratio ranged from 3:1 to 5:1”

(Lau 1981:202–03). The abundant use of animation, slow motion and wirework in wuxia films

was comparatively economic and efficient compared to choreographing hand-to-hand combative

68
Chow Chung is the actor who plays Yuan Guan-nan in The Mandarin Swords. Suet Nay and Cheung Ying-Tsoi
worked mostly with Sin Hok Gong Luen’s production of martial arts films like The Azure Blood and the Golden
Pin. Suet Nay plays the characters Long Ying-Xue and the Evil Girl in Buddhist Spiritual Palm Returned (1968) and
Buddhist Spiritual Palm (1968).
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sequence in the Wong Fei-hung series.69 However, film critics dismissed the use of special

effects was as “repetitive”, “childish” and “nonsense” (wu qi) (Wen-he Liu 1964; Wen-he Liu

1965). However, this cinema of attractions was not only for spectacle but also contained

symbolic meanings in representing the apocalyptic martial arts world.

In the mid 1960s, there was a strong influence from Taiwanese martial arts novels in

which the martial arts world provides less bonding for heroes who are obsessed in the quest for

destructive martial arts to dominate the world. Taiwanese novelists like Jin Tong/ Wolong

Sheng, Zhuge Qing Yun, Gu Long and Liu Can-Yang had an immense influence on Hong Kong

martial arts films. Works like Flying Swallow, Terrified Dragon (Fei Yan Jing Long), and

Heavenly Buddha’s Palm (Tian Fo Zhang) respectively were adapted into the films The Azure

Blood and the Golden Pin and the Buddha’s Palm series, and were also influential in producing

different kinds of popular imaginary including comic books and TV dramas.

Their fictitious worlds are not set in a specific historical period but rather an unspecified

time and place where the eight or nine sects in the martial arts world are fighting and competing

with each other for a destructive martial art. According to Po Fung, given the censorship of

fiction in Taiwan, representing history in fictions were banned (Po 2010:71). These Taiwanese

martial arts fictions were concerned with “magical adventures and dangerous encounters; they

indirectly reflect human desires and fears” (74-75). The old masters or authorities cannot

officiate the young heroes’ marriage and even hold their positions. All the old great martial

artists are killed and all sacred scrolls are burned into ashes. Han people in these film adaptations

69
Han Ying Jie, a famous action choreographer in the 1960s, once said in an interview: “The Cantonese martial arts
films were very popular in Singapore and Malaysia in those days. The audiences were mainly housewives, children
and servants, certainly the less intellectual and the low economic strata who wanted to see their favorite stars in
action. Choreographing the unarmed combat sequences in the Wong Fei-hung films was much more precise and
demanding, whereas the ‘fantastique’ wuxia pian relied mainly on special effects to recreate the fight scenes” (Lau
1981:211). This also indicates the target audiences were children and housewives who enjoy cinematic spectacles.
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are more evil than non-Han people, although heroes are often Han. Other Han people become

egoistic and evil in their quest for destructive and invincible weapons. Only the young hero is

qualified to give a moral lecture to the non-Han characters and those corrupted leaders of Han. In

his review of Buddha’s Palm, Law Kar criticizes it but praises the characters, “The film is

nonsensical fantasy (shen guai wu qi), but it has lampooned the corrupt tradition of the impotent

senior. For example, Ko Lo-Chuen’s Bi Gu, an old martial artist, criticizes himself before his

death and encourages the younger generation to work diligently and independently” (Law et al.

1997:13). It indicates that the old world is collapsing and young heroes are rising and they will

renew the order of the martial arts world.

Most importantly, in this apocalyptic martial arts world is structured by a system of a

ranking for martial arts, working like a social stratification and a social ladder. For example,

there are “One Evil, Two Flyings, Three Great Palms” (yi xie, shuang fei, san jue zhang) in the

Buddha’s Palm series, “One Palace, Two Valleys, Three Castles” (yi gong, er gu, san bao) in

The Azure Blood and the Golden Pin, and “One Ghost, Half Devil, Eights Sects” (yi gui, ban

guai, ba men pai) in Moslem Sacred Fire Decree. Each of them represents different martial

artists and martial arts sects. On the top of the ranking is the Buddha’s palm, belonging to “One

Evil,” also known as Gu Han-yun, who knows the destructive martial arts “Buddha Palm.”

Under him, there are two heroines Sun Bi Ling and Liu Piao Piao whose martial arts are at the

stage of “Directionless Flying rings” (wu ding fei huan) and “Nine Ropes Flying Bells” (jiu suo

fei ling).70 Under them, there are three masters of Great Palms. Martial arts are quantifiable and

classifiable by their different capabilities. Their practioners and disciples are consequently also

classified into different classes accordingly. After the main hero learns the top-level martial arts,

70
These are my translations.
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the destructive weapon and power, he can launch his peacekeeping operation. He can teach

several uncivilized non-Han people. The order of the martial arts world remains unchanged. The

hero’s mission is to renew it rather than question it. The central theme of this apocalyptic martial

arts world is whether destructive weapons should be dismantled or kept in “good” hands, and

who these good hands belong to.

The Buddha’s Palm series has seven installments. The first installment of Buddha’s

Palm, directed by Ling Yun in 1964, was released on February 27, 1964.71 The series was

produced by Foo Wah Film Company in 1964 and Foo Kwan in 1965 and 1968. The details of

these two film companies are unknown. Buddha’s Palm or Ru Lai Shen Zhang was serialized in

Ming Pao from November 29, 1962 to October 13, 1963. The identity of the author is still

debatable. In the newspaper, the author was named Shangguan Hong. Allegedly, Ming Pao

plagiarized the novel Heavenly Buddha’s Palm (tian fo zhang) written by a Taiwanese novelist

Liu Can-yang.72 Ming Pao changed character names and shortened the original story. The story

ended abruptly with a sudden marriage between the main hero Long Jian-fei and two heroines

Chu Fang and Qiu Yu-Hua. Szeto On, the screenwriter of Buddha’s Palm, found the story boring

and was reluctant to adapt it. However, the producer Ng Hing-wah, who was also the producer of

many episodes of the Wong Fei Hung series, told him that their boss had already bought the

copyright, so Szeto On needed to finish it. Szeto On says in an interview, “Did I need to rewrite

all this? I can’t create something out of nothing. I, therefore, took out some characters’ names

71
Ling Yun is a prolific director of wuxia films in Hong Kong. However, there are few studies on him. See (Po
Fung 2010:81-84).
72
In a documentary “Wuxia 60: Taiwan Wuxia Novel History,” Liu Can-yang said that he did not know how to
protest when he knew that his novel was adapted into the film Buddha’s Palm. He only went to protest and
requested the copyright fee, when Shaw Brothers Studio remade it into a film in 1982, and Wong Yuk-long, a Hong
Kong comic book artist and entrepreneur, adapted the story into a comic book in the same year.
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from the original story and remade the story. Alas! It was killing me! The names of the martial

arts and strikes are my own invention” (Szeto 2008:103). According to my findings, only the

first two installments out of seven are loosely adapted from some plotlines in the original story,

and the others are loosely based upon previous characters.

Central to the films is the question of what constitutes the “good hands” after the collapse

of the old order when all the masters are killed. The “good hand” has two assumptions: first,

humanity has a duality in which people can personally take sides. It is all about rational choice

and individual conscience. Second, the “good hand” is actually a product of struggle and

competition. Heroes need to climb the martial arts strata. These two premises produce not only a

rigid sense of hierarchy in human society; it also reinforces social Darwinism, engendering a

dog-eat-dog martial arts world. The “good hand” is the one who can define the boundary

between culture and nature, and the rational and the irrational. The hero is a figure and

representative of civilization. He has mastery over nature, the animal monsters, and the irrational

villain. In the fifth installment, the hero couple take care of Yuan Tong, an uneducated and

uncivilized kid, and turn him into a civilized person, while the villain “Iron Face” Luo kills

people without mercy and sucks blood from living people for practicing his destructive martial

arts. The hero Long Jian-fei needs to retain the martial arts world’s order in order to sustain the

process of the transformation of nature (animal, monster, egoistic people, the non-Han) into

useful products.

First, the “good hand” needs to take control of the destructive weapons so that the order

of the martial arts world will be secured. Unlike Wong Fei-hung, who delivers martial arts

education to all walks of life, Long Jian-fei, the protagonist of the Buddha Palm series, makes

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the Buddha’s palm esoteric. While Wong Fei-hung is the representative of Confucian figures,

Long Jian-fei is the representative of humanity and culture in an abstract sense. He can transform

raw material (nature) into a useful product (culture) in the martial arts world. Natural instinct is

defined as animalistic competition, which leads to unfettered desire for a Hobbesian war of “all

against all”. In the case of the Buddha’s Palm series, the hero replaces his master Gu Han-yun

and ascends to the top, where only he knows the secret of the Buddha’s palm. The hero must first

fight a long way to get to the top and only then can he give the order to keep world peace. In the

film adaptation, the screenwriter Szeto On invents all nine stages of the Buddha’s palm for the

hero to climb.73 At the end of the fourth installment, Long Jian-fei learns the last stage of

Buddha’s palm, so he can control the martial arts world. He is the “fittest” representative of

civilization. Only he can decide when to use the ninth stage of the Buddha’s palm. The

peacekeeping in the martial arts world is conditioned by meritocracy rather than a democratic

state. In every episode, the hero Long Jian-fei needs to uses his destructive martial arts and

eradicate all kinds of irrational, primitive and inhumane creatures who threaten the martial arts

world.

Interestingly, in the apocalyptic martial arts world, the destructive weapon is born out of

nature rather than through disciplinary training. The hero needs to transform it into a useful

weapon to suppress the irrationality and unbridled power of this weapon. In another Ling Yun

film, The White Bone Sword, the white bone sword is inside a tree monster. Other monsters

include skeletons, hopping vampires, giant bats, giant birds, and gorillas. Monsters and animals

73
The nine stages are “foguang chu xian” (Buddhist lights first out), “E’mei fo deng” (E’mei’s Buddhist Lamp), “fo
wen jia nan” (Buddha asks Canaan), “fo wo tong zai” (Buddha and I are together), “fo fa shuang en” (Buddhist
double mercy), “xi tian ying fo” (Western world welcoming Buddha), “fo guang pu zhao” (Buddhist lights are
everywhere), “fo fa wu bian” (Buddhist principles are boundless) and “wan fo chao zong” (Ten thousand Buddha are
back to origins). Only the “fo guang chu xian,” “fo wo tong zai” and “xi tian ying fo” are from the original novel.
The creative invention shows that the levels of martial arts are built in the film adaptation.
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are not the chief villains but they guard the destructive weapons and valuable herbs. They

function as challenges from which the hero takes them down to get the sacred scroll or treasures.

Also, the destructive weapons originate from foreign countries, which are considered primitive

and religious. In the Buddha’s Palm series, Buddha’s palm is from India. In the original novel,

the Buddha’s palm (ru lai shen zhang) originated in India where one of the Arhats learns it from

Buddha in the dream and passes it down to China for promoting Buddhism. Other places include

Tibet, Persia, Mongolia, and ethnic regions in China like those of the Miao people. They are seen

as primitive, exotic, and uncivilized in most wuxia films. They are not capable of controlling

their emotions and senses. Their weapons, therefore, are destructive and irrational in nature. In

Siu Sang’s Sacred Fire, Heroic Wind (Sheng Huo Xiong Feng, 1966), the destructive Yin-yang

tokens are revealed to be the sacred and Moslem property of Persia.

In this process of civilizing, racial and sexual hierarchy are clearly established. Girls from

evil clans, foreign countries, or ethnic groups are characterized as childish, emotional, and

exotic. They tend to express their natural instinct. For example, in the third installment of

Buddha’s Palm, the heroine Liu Piao-Piao is from the foreign clan in the Tian Xiang Sect; she

cares about her beautiful face even when she is having her last breath. Mastery of nature,

therefore, takes on a racial and sexual connotation. In order words, those who are racially and

sexually marked are depicted as primitive, irrational, and uncivilized. The distinction not only

defines the boundary between Han and non-Han, but also transforms the irrational power through

which the hero can tame animals, master nature, control emotion and desire, and contain the

threat from other destructive weapons.74

74
In Wong Hok-sing’s Four Crazy Heroes (Huang Tang Si Xia, 1964), four masters teach four youngsters the
martial arts of crying, laughing, stammering and fishing. The control of senses can be a way of martial arts. It
signifies the ability to master emotion and transform them into martial arts. The battle between Taoist Crying and
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 The mastery of nature is best exemplified by the recurring images of death in martial arts

films. The apocalyptic martial arts world was often tinged with horror in response to the global

anxieties and the Cold War insecurity. The images of the return of the repressed are represented

as skeletons, hopping vampires, giant skulls, and booby-traps with dead bodies. Images of danse

macabre did exist in martial arts films. They conveyed the sense of the horror of apocalypse and

indicated the coming of war. Ling Yun’s other masterpiece, The White-Bone Sword series (1962-

1963), the series before the Buddha’s Palm series, are examples. However, the danse macabre

did not mete out justice nor did it signify death was the final destination that everyone will reach.

The recurring images of death in martial arts films were negated in order to provide life and

culture. The monsters, hopping vampires and dancing skeletons are tamed to be the tools of the

heroes.

According to Stephen Teo, who quotes Lo Wai Lok’s analysis of Buddha’s Palm, the

film is a work of “abstract culturalism – a representation of a vague historical China which

satisfies the audience’s recognition of certain homogenizing codifications in the world of

shenguai wuxia, including the jianghu, the contrasting themes of obligation and revenge which

determine the growth of the hero, and Buddhist ideas of transmigration, transcendence and

enlightenment.” (2009:90) They miss the whole point about how the rational and the cultural in

the Buddha’s Palm series were established and supported by an unquestioned hierarchy. This

hierarchy creates authoritarianism in the martial arts world, as everyone is blind to the fact that

the most powerful and destructive weapon is actually the top rank. The mission of the “good

hand” was not to question the ranking system or the method by which the destructive weapon is

passed down. To everyone in the martial arts world, the ninth stage of Buddha’s palm is the

Taoist Laughing in Ling Yun’s Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery (Huo Shao Hong Lian Si, 1963) is an exemplar
of this mastery.
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means to ensure security. The violence/security is not found in the original novel. In the novel,

Long Jian-fei challenges Sun Bi-ling (the grandmother in the film series), and Long Jian-fei

hears his master Gu Han-yun says, “Roaming in the martial arts world, you should not kill

mercilessly. However, if your opponent wants to take your life, then, doubtlessly, you need to

use your most venomous power to kill your opponent.” He then replies, “father-master (yifu), I

cannot make my hands bloodier. However, they are pushing me too much” (Shangguan 1963:

279). Long Jian-fei decides to kill and says, “Blood for blood. To use killing to stop more

killing” (Shangguan 1963:280). In the original novel of Buddha Palm, violence is not meant to

secure any cultural hierarchy or maintain peace and order.

The means of attaining the destructive weapon not only ensures not just order in the

martial arts world, but also authoritarianism. The Buddha’s Palm series is not so much about

abstract culturalism; it is about maintaining a system of security and upholding a certain

definition of the human. The history of civilization is marked by the survival of the “fittest”

within the existing hierarchical relations. In Buddha’s Palm the most powerful martial artists

remain Long’s family. As his master Gu Han-Yun tells Long Jian-Fei that the practitioner of

Buddha’s palm only advances and never goes backward,75 the “linear progression and self-

improvement in the progression of movement is not at all in contradiction with the spirit of

modernity” (S. Li 2005:53). Like the advanced technology, Buddha’s palm is a sign of state-of-

the-art martial arts, that can heal people, kill opponents and maintain peace.

Similar to The Mandarin Swords, the Buddha’s Palm series showcased the fears of the

destructive martial arts on the one hand, but on the other hand, demonstrated how the “wuxia”

heroes transformed into the “good hands” whose mission was to control this weapon and contain

75
In the first installment, Gu Han-yun lectures Long Jian-fei that the principle of Buddha’s palm is “zhi you xiang
qian, meiyou tui huo” (only advancing without turning back).
217
its destructive power. But unlike The Mandarin Swords, in order to show the irrationality of the

destructive martial arts, the Buddha’s Palm series used an extensive amount of animation and

graphic design to showcase the spectacle of magical weapons. They also included many

monsters and animals, which are the guardians of sacred weapons. More editing styles like

montage and canted angles broke away from the theatrical setting and style of Cantonese films of

the 1950s. The focus was directed from solidarity to the spectacle of magical weapons. The

Chinese film titles shift the focus from the plot to the powerful martial arts or destructive

weapons like “mandarin swords,” “Buddha palm,” “sacred fire decree,” “golden scissors,”

“heaven sword and dragon sabre,” and “white-bone swords” for example. Many shots of

animations are used to showcase the power of invincible martial arts in Buddha Palm, while in

The Mandarin Swords the heroine performs swordplay without any special effects. Narratively,

in The Mandarin Swords, heroes can form solidarity at the end of the final installment, while the

hero and heroine encounter endless challenges and their masters and family are killed in the third

and fourth installments of the Buddha’s Palm series.

The animation corresponded to the martial arts world hierarchy “One Evil, Two Flyings,

Three Great Palms.” The director drew different cartoons one by one on the print films to show

the palm ray or flying swords. For the magical powers of the “Two Flyings” “Directionless

Flying Rings” and “Nine Ropes Flying Bells,” we can see the animated rings radiating from Sun

Bi-ling’s body, and a real big bell is wired in mid-air, and the animation of wavelengths was

drawn on the print, so that we see them radiating from the bell on screen. Because the ninth stage

of the Buddha’s palm “wan fo chaozong” (literally, ten thousand Buddhas returning to the origin)

is the most powerful, the special effects and the animation were the most spectacular. When the

hero Long Jian-fei figures out the ninth stage, he sits in front of a vessel, and holds both hands

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high in a medium-close-up shot. Animation of fire surrounds his hands when he shouts out “wan

fo chaozong”. In the next shot, we can see something like ink in the water. Shades of black are

like clouds changing their shapes. The next shot goes back to the studio set with a darker tone. A

wide shot shows the hero in the background, emitting his palm ray to the sky, while everyone in

the middle-ground and foreground is stunned by the changing of the sky. Then a tracking shot

shows how a tree is uprooted, while the camera is shaking. What follows is a reverse shot of

some rocks moving up in the air. The land is splitting open and people are shaking. Finally, some

villains are killed by the falling rocks, while two of the “Three Great Palms” fall into the fissure

of the land, forced open by the hero. After the fight, the color tone turns back to become lighter

again. In the fifth installment, a similar cinematic technique was used to illustrate the magical

power “tian can jiao” (or the “Giant Leg”) by the villain “Iron Face” Luo, who can disturb the

authority of the Buddha’s palm. A wide shot shows “Iron Face” Luo emitting some wavelengths

and the film converts from negative to positive. He fends off all the attacks from the heroes’

clans. When the film converts back to negative, the film shows him jumping to a high rock with

a cut, hanging his leg down. When he uses his magical power on his right leg, a wide shot shows

him changing his right leg into a giant hairy leg with a lap dissolve.

Most importantly, the special effects and human-like monsters structure the theme of

humanity. In the fifth installment, we can see a model of a centipede in the organ of Little

Dragon Girl. It is a trick by the evil villain “Iron Face” Luo to control the servant maid. The

special effect of the centipede signifies the inhumanity of the villain. Finally, the hero Long Jian-

fei uses his Buddha’s palm to eject the centipede out of Little Dragon Girl’s mouth. In the first

four installments, even a human-like animal like the pet of Gu Han-Yun, Golden Eye (jin yan’er)

can be more humane than evil villains. It can be a model of filial piety, because when Gu Han-

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Yun dies, it cries in front of his tomb. The special effects helped demarcate the boundary

between human and non-human, civilized and barbarians in the times of the evolving

environment of global fears and anxieties.

The special effects registered the fantasy of magical power on the one hand, and its

extremely pernicious nature on the other. The top ranked fighter in the hierarchical pyramid is

the fittest to control it. The martial arts world’s hierarchy calls for hardship and endurance to one

to eventually become the leader. If the competition and struggles produce the strongest human

types including those who can control the destructive weapons, then clearly the powerful must in

no way be limited. In the Buddha’s Palm series, Long Jian-fei gets the destructive weapon – the

ninth stage of the Buddha’s palm. Due to this, he can maintain order and peace in the social

structure. Long’s family becomes a venerable bloodline that everyone needs to respect

(especially in the last two installments). The powerful can call for unification as they have

destructive weapons at hand. The agenda of peacekeeping is always underwritten by the

monopoly of martial arts and the unquestionable hierarchy. The powerful can eliminate all the

competition and struggles in favor of security and civilization. It is no coincidence that the U.S.

was seen as a world hegemony by writers like Jin Yong. They assumed that stability and

prosperity could be maintained by the existing strong powers.

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Fig. 33 An advertisement for Buddha’s Palm serialized in Ming Pao

221
 Fig. 34 The first publication of Buddha's Palm in Ming Pao on November 29, 1962

Fig. 35 Hopping vampires are trained to fight in Ling Yun's The White-bone Swords Part II (1962)

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 Fig. 36 Heroine Hu Xiang-feng goes to fight a group of skeletons before getting the magical herbal grass in

The White Bone Swords (1963)

Fig. 37 Monsters like giant bats and yetis are common in The Buddha's Palm series

Fig. 38 The magical power of the “Two Flyings”: Directionless Flying rings” and “Nine Ropes Flying Bells”

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Fig. 39 Grandmaster Gu Han-yun gives a lecture to Long Jian-fei that the principle of Buddha’s palm is “only

advancing without returning back” in the first installment of the series.

Fig. 40 In the fifth installment The Furious Buddha’s Palm, the villain “Iron Face” Luo uses his

destructive weapon “the giant leg” to carry out a massacre in the martial arts world.

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Mass Madness in The Six-fingered Lord of the Lute (1965)

Unlike The Mandarin Swords and The Buddha’s Palm series, heroes in The Six Fingered

Lord of the Lute are longer shown to promote any Confucian messages and keep the martial arts

world in order. The hero cannot have any monopoly on the destructive martial arts. The evil lord

of the Lute and his associate are disturbing the existing order, and everyone is deluded into

madness. Because of that, civilizational hierarchy cannot be sustained. Ni Kuang’s story The Six-

fingered Lord of the Lute was first published in Luo Bin’s Sin Pao and republished in Luo Bin’s

magazines like Blue Book and then Wuxia World. In the film program of The Six Fingered Lord

of the Lute, as I’ve mentioned, we can see the analogy between the film and the nuclear bomb.

Given the context of the film and the novel when China tested its first atomic bomb, Ni Kuang’s

original story of Lute comments on human nature and criticizes the loss of free will, which is

controlled by the evil lord of the lute, representing the ideological infiltration by Communist

brainwashing and mind control. Tropes like brainwashing and mind control by an evil lord,

groups of people fighting and cursing each other, and the source of evil remaining mysterious,

are evident in both novel and film adaptation. The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute is doubtlessly a

political commentary on contemporary China.

The film has three installments and is set in an unspecified time and place. The story is

divided into four different perspectives: a bodyguard couple, their son Lü Lian, hero Tan Sheng

and his daughter Tan Yue-Hua, and hero Han Sun and his daughter Han Yu-Xia. Villains include

the Holy Ghost (gui sheng sheng ling), and the evil lord of the lute. The evil lord of the lute plots

against all heroes in the martial arts world, making them chase after one another for a secret

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McGuffin, which is a hoax to make them kill each other, while he scapegoats, enslaves and kills

heroes with the sound of an evil lute, and disrupts the heroes’ marriage.

The film’s political commentary on contemporary China includes a number of references

to Mao Zedong. Despite the film’s indirect expression, two evil characters in the film adaptation

- Holy Ghost and the evil lord, the adopted father and the biological father of Ghost Slave

respectively - clearly allegorically represent Chairman Mao. Ghost Slave is an orphan and raised

by Holy Ghost, who is from the evil sect. When Ghost Slave shows his cave to the heroine Tan

Yue-Hua, on the wall is written, “Long live my Savior, The Holy Ghost” (Da en gong sheng ling

Changsheng Busi). The propagandist slogan resonates with the rhetoric of celebration of the

great leader in Mainland China. Tan Yue-hua, on the other hand, lectures him that worshiping a

leader is the cult of a slave. The evil lord of the lute is the biological father of Ghost Slave. The

evil lord of the lute avenges himself as he was beaten by the heroes twenty years ago, and his

wife and one of his sons suffered a cold death. The evil lord lost his second son Ghost Slave and

then practiced the evil lute in order to seek revenge. He is a fantasy villain who can manipulate

sound and imagery, and is capable of controlling the will of people. In other words, the evil lord

is an ideologoue and a manipulator of people’s minds. According to film critic Po Fung, The Six-

fingered Lord of the Lute is a work wholeheartedly expressed by someone who has experienced

the revolutionary regime, which overthrows everything (Po Fung 2010:74). Here, “someone”

may hint at ex-Communists like Ni Kuang, the author of the original story, who migrated to

Hong Kong in 1957 and experienced political upheaval in mainland China. The hero character

Dong fang-bai is also relevant here. His name Dong Fang-bai (literally meaning “the East is

white”) is the opposite to the Communist song called Dong Fang Hong or “The East is Red.” It

was a song written in the early 1940s, and after the Korean War, the lyrics was revised for

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idolizing Mao and promoting his image as a perfect hero. It is interesting to see that at the end of

the film, the two opposing characters Dong Fang-bai and the evil lord fight each other to death.

In one particular scene, the reference to Mao is more evident. When the bodyguard

couple think Mr. Six-Finger, who is a guy made up by the evil lord to deceive the heroes, has

killed their son, they are determined to kill him. The wife throws the candlelight and the shot

shifts to a screen full of fiery waves of fire. A female choir sing offscreen:

Raging Fire! Raging Fire! A single spark can start a prairie fire. Raging fire makes more

crises. Turning land of prosperity into scorched earth. Turning great seas into bloody rivers. The

lute of eight strings and the evil of Six-finger are making the martial arts world turn upside down.

Fighting each other. No more harmony. Calamity in the martial arts world. All people in the world

are suffering.

During the singing, viewers are confronted with a dense montage of a symbolic apocalypse.

First, the wife strikes the candle to the ground while the camera tilts down quickly to the ground.

The screen is full of fiery waves of fire. Second, there is a wide shot of miniature houses, which

are on fire. Next, a medium-wide shot of a rock explosion and the camera pans from right to left

and tilts down quickly to show that the river is on fire. A quick cut shifts to a medium-closeup

showing the evil lord turning his back on the camera and playing his lute. A series of rapid

montage show that something explodes in the windy woods; a tree exploded; chicken and dogs

flee. In the last four shots, the editing is so fast that rats are escaping in a narrow tunnel from a

small hole. A static camera shows cats are chasing after them. A closeup shot with low angle on

the hole where rats continue to escape while cats are chasing after them. A final closeup shows

cats are jumping in the tunnel and catching the rats.

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 This series of rapid montages signifying the coming of war and the cat and mouse game

offers a direct political commentary. The most significant reference is the phrase “A single spark

can start a prairie fire” (xing xing zhi huo ke yi liao yuan), which is Mao Zedong’s quote.76 This

quote was included in the song “Northern October Winds” (Bei Fang Chui Lai Shi Yue de Feng),

which was one of the songs in The East is Red, a Chinese musical epic produced in the same year

1965, glorifying the history of the Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party.77 However, in

this film, the quote suggests not just the cause of the calamity, but also the effect that this

calamity brings – social disorder and a violent cat-and-mouse game. Chan Lit-ban here makes a

political comment on the Cold war anxieties and mystery. Through merging Mao Zedong’s

quotes into a choir and displaying a series of non-diegetic montage, the film shows the

apocalyptic nightmare to viewers. “A single spark can start a prairie” becomes a cause of the

apocalypse rather than a phrase to enlist the revolutionary passion to dispel pessimism in the

party or to glorify revolution.

The central theme of madness in the film is loud and clear. Plots about madness can be

seen in works like Wong Fung’s The Swords of Tien Shan (Tian Shan Long Feng Jian, 1961),

Fung Chi-Kong’s The Dragon Sword at the Bottom of the Sea (Hai Di Long Yin Jian, 1964), and

Chan Cheuk-sang’s The Skeleton Whip (Bai Gu Mo Bian, 1964). In these works, the evil either

erases the memory of a hero or changes his heart. However, they were only some plots about the

evil controlling a hero’s free will and consciousness. They functioned no more than decorating

76
The phrase is an ancient Chinese saying. Mao Ze-dong used it to describe the contradictions in the early 1930s.
Given the labours’ and students’ strikes, peasants’ uprisings and various mutinies, Mao Ze-dong sent a letter to his
military field commander Lin Biao in 1930, and urged him to seize the opportunities rather than leading the red
army into pessimism.
77
The lyric is about the influence of the October Revolution on China. The wind blows from the North, which gives
birth to the Communist Party. Since then, a single spark lights a prairie fire and the whole sky is red (liaoyuan
xinghuo man tian hong). The title of the second act is also called “A Single Spark Lights a Prairie Fire” (Xing Huo
Liao Yuan).
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the story. In Six Fingered Lord of the Lute, madness is part of the main theme. The evil lord can

use the lute to make illusion and fantasy in order to make slaves of heroes. The heroes are

vulnerable to fantasy and illusion.

The invincible martial art “Heavenly Dragon Eight Sounds” (Tian Long Ba Yin) is the

best in the martial arts world.78 The evil lord can play “Heavenly Dragon Eight Sounds” to

disturb a hero’s rationality and kill people without a trace. In other words, it is about the

manipulation of sound and image. There are several characteristics of this power. First, the

power of this martial art is related to the loss of free will, loss of identity, and creating illusions

that the heroes see, which leads them to kill their friends and family. Whoever can control the

vision is the best in the martial arts world. In the illusion, a hero can see bad things happening.

Given their good conscience, he goes and fights, but he actually kills his friends and family. To

control one’s vision is to control people’s free will. “Heavenly Dragon Eight Sounds” is thus a

tool for the evil to manufacture “false consciousness.” This martial art is to make heroes see

more to the extent that their good conscience makes them suffer. Ni Kuang in his novel

comments on the tragedy:

The saddest part is that these heroes are most righteous in the martial arts world. They

should not fight each other…all these other heroes who are blood brothers and friends are now

killing each other…Dong Fang-Bai knows the fact that these heroes are not aware who they are

desperately killing are actually their friends. They must have an illusion that they see something

bad happen and they are righteous to intervene and to protect the weak. These kinds of heroes are

virtuous and fearless. They fight to death

78
In the novel, it is called “Eight Dragon Heavenly Sounds” (Ba Long Tian Yin). Dong Fang-Bai remembers that
his old master introduced the martial art “Eight Dragon Heavenly Sound” when he was young. There are eight
movements in the music: happiness (xi), fury (nu), love (ai), ferocity (e), sorrow (ai), joy (le), and lust (yu). The
sounds had caused a major upheaval in the martial arts world (Ni 1991 Vol 3:177).
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 (Ni 1991 Vol 3:182)

The more righteous they are, the more serious their illusion is. A political reading can reveal that

it is an anti-communist commentary on the political movements in China. From this perspective,

intellectuals were used as pawns in political movements like the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

Because of the infiltration of ideology, friends and family fought with and even killed each other.

The disintegration of family ties and relations abandoned all the traditional morals and ethics.

People are blinded and deluded. The assumption of the criticism is that people were passively

involved in all these political movements. All people are like sheep in front of Mao, who is an

aggressor in the world. Mao is therefore seen as a fantasy manipulator, making illusions for

intellectuals and the mass to believe in. The practice of the mass line is only about brainwashing.

Also, “Heavenly Dragon Eight Sounds” is not a martial art that needs disciplinary

training. Contrary to the Buddha’s palm with which Long Jian-fei practices and learns from Gu

Han Yun, “Heavenly Dragon Eight Sounds” is what Po Fung calls is an “irrational power” (fei li

xing li liang), the kind which requires no disciplinary training to dominate the world. “Irrational”

refers not only to the irrational effect it creates on people, but also to how the nature of this

martial art deviates from martial arts that are acquired through hardship and practice. The

civilizing levels and stages of the Buddha’s palm are missing here in the case of “Heavenly

Dragon Eight Sounds.” There are no more stages of martial arts here, but instead the

instrumentality of weapons is highlighted. The evil lord of the lute knows nothing about martial

arts and he just plays the lute to kill. The evil lord is powerful because he controls the apparatus

of illusion. The apparatus of ideological delusion is so powerful that even disciplined heroes

cannot challenge them. At the end of the film, Tan Sheng, He Qing Hua and Dong Fang-Bai (the

“rational” martial arts) cannot challenge the evil lord (the “irrational” power). That’s why when
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the lute is broken, the evil lord is useless and Dong Fang-bai can fight him to death, although he

is already seriously hurt. Unlike most wuxia films’ ending, the final faceoff between Dong Fang-

bai and the evil lord does not involve spectacular fighting and graphic effect. They wrestle and

roll to the ground. In addition to political commentary, the destructive “Heavenly Dragon Eight

Sounds” challenges the disciplinary heroes collective.

Contrary to the wuxia family, there are no more romantic relationships that can lead to

solidarity between two wuxia families. In the ending of The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute, Tan

Yue-hua’s mother He Qing-Hua tries to host a marriage for the young hero Lü Lian and her

daughter Tan Yue-hua. She abducts her daughter into a forest and forces Lü Lian to stay with

her. However, the evil lord plays the lute that drives Lü Lian to rape her. The formation of the

wuxia family fails. Because of her loss of virginity, Tan Yue-Hua cannot marry Lü Lian’s master

Dong Fang-Bai and runs away. Lü Lian feels shamed in front of all masters. Even though Tan

Yue-Hua goes with Lü Lian when Dong Fang Bai dies at the end, this fails to make any happy

closure. Dong Fang-bai confesses to her in his last breath that he doesn’t really love her. His love

is a deception, because he loves her mother He Qing-hua. It is only because of the resemblances

she has with her mother, he arranges the wedding.

The film shows that a new order in the martial arts world cannot be created and any

attempt to transform the natural and cultivate it into part of the civilization ends in failure. The

process of culturalization fails, especially when “Heavenly Dragon Eight Sounds” is not a

martial art but an apparatus. In other words, breaking the wuxia family and the cultural hierarchy

constitutes the failure of the mass or collectivity. What is left at the end of the film is the

expansive wide shot of an individual hero lonely roaming the mountains by the sea. The breakup

of the wuxia family paves the way to the rise of Chang Cheh’s wuxia heroes in the late sixties –

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roaming heroes, who have physio-psychological trauma, mete out justice in the martial arts

world captured by extensive use of closeups and rapid montage.

Chan Lit-ban deliberately transformed the aesthetic of horror and fear into his subtle

commentary. He used film form to send a message about the collapse of the world, the coming of

war, and the mind control that leads to the madness of heroes. For example, the recurring shadow

of the evil lord and the medium closeup of the evil lord’s monstrous hands suggest the

mysterious identity of the evil lord. The face of the evil lord is not revealed until the last

installment. Visually, viewers cannot see the face of the evil lord in the early part of the film.

The obscurity helps create the sense of mystery.79 Later in the story, we know that the evil lord

uses his lute to take over the mind of the people. The way he presents the villain is similar to

demonizing Communist leaders. They are secretive and their method of brainwashing is

unknown to the people. People are blind to political infiltration. The senseless loss of freewill is

the result of the horror.

Because of the horror and mystery, heroes become paranoid. The use of split screen

expressively presents the paranoia of the bodyguard Lü Teng-Kong. When he sees his wife

killed, the screen splits into two horizontally. Half of the screen superimposed includes a group

of his friends who are walking toward him. A reaction shot tracking in shows him backing off.

Then the screen splits again vertically. The screen that involves his friends and enemies pointing

at him dwarfs that of Lü. The screen of Lü becomes smaller into a canted triangle. In the next

shot, while Lü occupies a marginal triangular space of the screen, an off-screen voiceover

accuses him of being greedy to accept the delivery job and forces him to admit his crime. His

friends and enemies on the top half of the screen cursing and pointing at him. In the next shot,

79
In The Buddha’s Palm Part One, Ling Yun also used similar techniques to introduce Sun Bi-Ling in order to
create the sense of mystery.
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the murderers of his wife are superimposed in the scene to show this is Lü’s illusion. He fights

the illusion of Holy Ghost and Mr. Six-Finger, who are humiliating and laughing at him until he

passes out. This montage of paranoia has several meanings. First, it showcases not only the sense

of horror, but also hero’s psychology. In film adaptation, his psychology of individuality stands

out, which is rare in Cantonese wuxia films. Second, the illusion Lü has is related to the evil lord.

Lü thinks that Holy Ghost and Mr. Six-Finger are the murderer, but the evil lord is the real boss.

The sense of horror and mystery is evident when the hero cannot make the right judgement.

Third, the use of split-screen and the voiceover accusing Lü is historically similar to a struggle

session, where a class enemy endures a form of public humiliation and torture. The victim of a

struggle session needs to admit various crimes in front of a crowd of people who are criticizing,

pointing at and laughing at the victim. The aesthetic is used by Chan Lit-ban as an allusive

remark on socialist China.

In terms of mise-en-scène, Chan Lit Ban makes good use of spatial arrangement to create

mystery and tension. In the original novel, in the scene when the heroine Tan Yue Hua visits a

big mansion and Ghost Slave secretly follows and protects her, there are only a few sentences:

“The door is half open. Tan Yue-Hua jumps down from her horse and goes inside it. What is

inside is a big atrium (tian jing) where there are four or five people who stand with their arms

hanging down, wear straw capes and straw hats. She cannot see them clearly. Behind the atrium

is the main hall. Tan Yue-hua makes a quick step and rushes to it. Meanwhile, she is so wet from

head to toe. She makes the ground very slippery. When she apologizes, she raises her head and

finds those five people are missing” (Ni 1991 vol 2: 196). In the film, following the perspective

of Tan Yue Hua, a static medium-wide shot first frames the main hall where four men with straw

capes and hats stand in symmetry and the fifth man stands in the middle of the background. All

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of them turn their backs to the camera. The only sound is the rain and the chain in her hands.

Second, a medium-closeup shot shows her hesitation. Third, the camera pans from right to left as

Tan Yue-hua passes through the atrium, and comes across four men. When she stares at the fifth

man, an off-screen knocking is heard. The fifth man then turns coldly and walks past the frame.

Fourth, a static shot shows the fifth man with his deadpan face opening a door to Ghost Slave.

Lastly, the camera again pans from right to left as it follows both the fifth man and Ghost Slave

passing through the atrium and walking across between four men. When the fifth man returns to

his post, he stops. Their faces are not revealed until they begin fighting. Comparing the novel to

the film adaptation, we can see Chan Lit-ban focuses more on the milieu of the mysterious

mansion in film adaptation while the novel shows Tan Yue-hua’s thought and action. The milieu

is not just a background, but it is an integral part, which every martial artist lives within.

All these techniques create a strong sense of horror and mystery through obscure images

and narratives. Close ups of the monstrous hands, split screens, broken lines, montages of

paranoia and meticulous spatial arrangement are part and parcel of the overall themes of the film

– madness, mystery and horror, and vision and power. As we can see from the above, Chan Lit-

ban not only made allusive remarks on contemporary China and Mao but also turns the aesthetic

into political commentary.

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Fig. 41 A medium-closeup of the hands playing lute and a back shot of the evil lord of lute shows the

mystery of the villain.

Fig. 42 Split screen creates the psychology of paranoia of the hero Lü Teng-kong. Also, it helps build a

political commentary on struggle sessions in contemporary China.

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 Fig. 43 Comparing the novel and the film adaptation, in terms of mise-en-scène, we can see Chan Lit-ban

focuses more on the milieu of the mysterious mansion in film adaptation. The milieu is part and parcel of the theme

rather than background.

236
Fig. 44 A meticulous non-diegetic montage of symbolic apocalypse, a political commentary and a sign of

cat and mouse game.

237
 Fig. 45 The "political slogan” in Ghost Slave's cave

Fig. 46 An expansive wide shot shows Ghost Slave roaming alone on the mountains by the sea

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 Conclusion

In Mandarin Swords, we see the formation of the wuxia family. The destructive weapon

is a moral lesson. Heroes are virtuous and humane (ren zhe wu di) even as they are invincible. In

the Buddha’s Palm series, heroes are the representative of culture and civilization. The

destructive weapon must be in “good hands” so that the order in the martial arts world can be

maintained. In Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute, the wuxia family and the hierarchy of culture and

civilization are broken. The film makes a political commentary through the mystery McGuffin,

and the villain ideologist, and cinematic styles such as rapid montage and split screens, all of

which serve to illustrate the themes of an impending war and the looming apocalyptic destruction

of the world. Allegorizing Mao, the villain in the figure of the evil lord is an ideologist and a

mass killer. All the wuxia masters are killed at the end of the film.

The tendency of using innuendo about Mao and the collapse of the wuxia family in an

abstract martial arts world was already visible in the late 1960s’ martial arts novels when the

Cultural Revolution started in 1967. For example, in Jin Yong’s The Smiling, Proud Wanderer

(Xiao ao Jianghu), serialized in his Ming Pao from 1967 to 1969, the martial arts world is set in

an abstract place and unspecified time. The hero Ling hu-chong’s respectable master Yue Buqun

is actually a hypocrite. He plots a scheme against another hero Lin Pingzhi to seize his sacred

swordplay manual. Political allegory and party division are shown in the Sun Moon Holy cult,

which was led by Ren Woxing until an androgynous evil Dongfang Bubai ousts him in a scheme.

Dongfang Bubai is literally the “East is invincible” and the cult can be read as a political allegory

commenting on factional struggles during the Cultural Revolution. In his last work The Deer and

the Cauldron (lu ding ji), Jin Yong openly acknowledges that Master Hong of the Mystic Dragon

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Sect and the sect itself are allegories for events of the Cultural Revolution (Frisch 2018). This

political allegory for commenting socialist China was evident in the following years, when

Chang Cheh made his yanggang heroes in the Shaw Brothers Studio. Not only his heroes are

lonely, the violence they unleash are unprecedent.

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CHAPTER 4 - Culture Wars Continued – The Politics of Chang Cheh’s Yanggang Heroes

No better concept characterizes director Chang Cheh’s aesthetics than his idea and style

known as yanggang (or hard masculinity). This focus on masculinity had the effect of largely

replacing the female dominance of films produced in Hong Kong in the first half of the 1960s.

Characterised by fast editing, an avid use of handheld cameras and slow motion, gruesome

depictions of the violent deaths of male heroes, and bodily mutilations and disembowelments,

film scholars have approached these aspects of Chang’s aesthetics in different ways. In terms of

formal analysis, David Bordwell (2003) discusses how Chang’s use of the zoom and narrative

strategies generate a pulsating effect. In terms of gender studies, Bérénice Reynaud (2003)

analyzes how the hero in One-Armed Swordsman (1967) confronts the symbolic vagina indetata.

Other scholars (Lo 2003; Desser 2005; Teo 2009) attribute the success of Chang’s yanggang

hero to the mid-60s youth culture, initiated by the counterculture movement, the Cultural

Revolution in China and the 1967 leftist riots in Hong Kong. Young people related their “spirit

of rebellion in the territory” to the one on the screen (Desser 2005:24).

Dovetailing these approaches, Yip Man-Fung argues that Hong Kong Mandarin martial

arts cinemas (mostly Shaw Brothers) in the 1960s and 1970s, marked by new aesthetic strategies

and thematic concerns, should be conceptualized as a “mass cultural expression of Hong Kong’s

colonial, urban-industrial modernity” (Yip 2017:2). In other words, by connecting the aesthetics

to the society, Yip Man-Fung emphasizes a specular relation between Mandarin martial arts

cinema and local identity defined by a “capitalist subjectivity grounded in the values of

individualism, competition and conquest, and ascetic discipline” (17). However, this specular

relation confines the capitalist subjectivity to the Mandarin martial arts films. Separating the

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nationalist identification and capitalist subjectivity, his argument about Mandarin martial arts

films being indicative of local capitalist subjectivity suggests that capitalism has nothing to do

with nationalism. More importantly, Yip fails to register a more complicated diachronic

formation of the concept yanggang within the Cold War framework. Luke White’s analysis of

Chang Cheh’s The Assassin (1967) also shows the limit of that kind of specular relation.

Allegorizing the 1967 leftist riots, Chang Cheh, according to White, glorifies the assassin

Nie Zheng in The Assassin. However, given the fact that Chang worked with the Kuomintang

Central Government and had a strong relationship with Chiang Ching-Kuo and his associates,

White finds there is a political ambiguity in the film. “Chang Cheh, that is to say, seems to

celebrate political violence, but refuses to embrace any particular politics” (White 2015:94).

Quoting Frantz Fanon, he argues that despite the political ambiguity, the muscular prowess in the

film provides the audience with desires, whose origins can be traced back through the Boxer

Rebellion in 1900 (89). To White, the nationalist fantasy Boxers embraced and how they

attempted to resist imperialists and colonizers by magical power is what Chang Cheh inherited

from them. Without understanding the ideological formation of yanggang and taking the Cold

War into account, Yip and White ignore the fact that Chang Cheh would never associate his

films with the fantasies of the Boxers. In his memoir (Chang 2002:55), Chang shows no

sympathies with Boxers, who were demonized as the Boxer bandits (quan fei) in the

Kuomintang/Nationalist historiography. Also, The Assassin has no political ambiguity if we

know that Chang Cheh was responding to Guo Moruo. Guo is a Communist archaeologist,

historian, politician, poet and writer. His Tang di zhi hua or The Flower of Brotherhood was a

play based upon the histories and stories of the assassin Nie Zheng in the Warring States period

(476 BC – 221BC). Chang’s dialogue is not just personal, but one that is based upon his work

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experience in the late 1940s as a commissioner of Shanghai’s Cultural Movement Committee, a

bureau of the Central Government. During the War of Resistance against Japan, the Nationalists

and the Communists worked together to fight Japanese imperialism on the one hand, and battled

each other in the cultural field on the other. Guo Moruo’s five-act Tang di zhi hua, shown

publicly in 1941, was one of the works in the field to call for national unification in opposition to

Japanese imperialism. Even though Chang Cheh was never a Nationalist Party member, his

ideology and his works shared the arts and literature supported by the Nationalists.

In this chapter, I will trace the political formation of Chang Cheh’s yanggang hero and

argue that it is more than an aesthetic concept which mirrors gender division and urban

modernity in Hong Kong. Borrowing the concept of “conservative revolutionaries” from Brian

Tsui (2018), I will argue that the advent of the yanggang hero is a contemporary example of

“conservative revolution” that marks the continued culture wars in the late 1960s and 1970s.

“Conservative revolutionaries” in Tsui’s study were born after the founding of the Nanjing

government in the late 1920s and the purge of Communists. They formed a cluster of

intellectuals and the urban middle class, in contention with proletarian politics to “channel

popular and elite sympathy away from left-wing or class politics and to cultivate social

movements and an everyday culture that engaged the masses in renovation of the spirit” (Tsui

2018:3-4). As a prolific writer and critic, Chang Cheh often expressed similar ideas in his

writings, including how art conducts rather than controls people to channel out their radical

desires, how one preserves their cultural essence in the face of westernization, and how one

should transcend the Euro-American “materialist” commodity culture, yet at the same time he

glorified colonial laissez-faire policies.

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 In the next section I will contextualize the political origins of yanggang heroes and how

the Shaw Brothers Studio helped realize these heroes on the big screen. The political nature of

the studio and Run Run Shaw is inextricably connected to the construction of the yanggang hero.

Without taking into account the political position of Run Run Shaw and his studio in the Cold

War, we cannot understand how the studio’s technological advancement and transnational

distribution were possible under the analysis by David Bordwell and Yip Man-fung. Afterwards,

I will provide new politically informed readings on three Chang Cheh films. They are The

Assassin (Da Cike, 1967), Boxer from Shantung (Ma yong zhen, 1972), and Shaolin Martial Arts

(Hong quan yu yong chun, 1974). They represent three different periods of Chang Cheh’s career

and works. The Assassin was made in his golden period after the million dollar-box office for

One-Armed Swordsman; Boxer from Shantung is a forerunner of Shanghai Bund (shanghai tan)

triad films; Shaolin Martial Arts is one of the Shaolin series launched by Chang Cheh in Taiwan

when he attempted to reinvigorate the Guangdong folk heroes with his newfound film company

“Zhang Gong.” In my readings, the films deal with history, class and queerness respectively.

Widening the horizon of understanding Chang Cheh’s yanggang hero, they showcase not so

much an aesthetic concept as a political way to legitimatize conservative revolutionaries’

temporalities in historiography, spatiality of social ladder in working-class agency and gender

norms during the Cold War. These three understudied topics in Chang’s works can help charge

the aesthetic term yanggang with a loaded political meaning, and work as a site to understand

how “conservative revolution” was entwined with colonial power and the Cold War hegemony

in the continuing culture wars.

Origins of Yanggang

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According to Stephen Teo (2003), Chang Cheh’s yanggang hero is an anti-hero, marked by

“traits of independence and free-thinking whose behavior challenged Confucian patriarchal

norms” (150). In her dissertation, however, Xu Lan lists examples of all Chang’s heroes and

argues that they “only have the name (ming) of youth, but do not have any elements of rebellion”

(wu fanpan zhi shi) (L. Xu 2005:46). To understand whether yanggang heroes are rebellious or

not, we need to change the theoretical problematic and ask what the political nature of the

yanggang hero is. In this section, I will lay out the general aesthetic features of yanggang,

contextualize how the aesthetic term yanggang is entangled with political responses to

Communist arts and practices, and attribute the political origins of yanggang to the culture war in

the 1930s between Nationalists and Communists.

Before discussing the general features of the yanggang hero, it is necessary to assess

Chang Cheh’s views on art and politics. Chang Cheh studied politics at the Faculty of Law at the

Central University of Chongqing in 1937. He worked as commissioner of the Cultural Movement

Committee (Zhongyang wenhua yundong weiyuanhui) in 1945 and was appointed as secretary of

the newly established Shanghai Cultural Movement Committee after the victory of the War of

Resistance. At that time, he worked with Pan Gongzhan and Zhang Daofan. Pan was from the

CC clique, a powerful fascist and clandestine faction led by Chen Lifu and Chen Guofu, while

Zhang worked as an officer of propaganda and education in the KMT government. After the civil

war (1945-1949), he moved to Taiwan and worked as a chief political adviser at the Department

of National Defense under Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-Shek. He also worked as an

instructor in the Political Warfare Cadres Academy (zhenggong ganbu xuexiao). Because of

increasing conflicts between senior party members and younger cadres, and one between Zhang

Daofan and Chiang Ching-kuo, Chang Cheh became tired of politics and decided to move to

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Hong Kong to start a life away from politics. But the conflict was more personal than

ideological. Even though he never joined the Chinese Nationalist Party, in his memoir, he says

“for reason of personal integrity, I also drew a clear line from the left-wing camp and wanted

nothing to do with them…my action and behavior never betrayed Chiang” (Chang 2002:39).

Despite his acquaintance with left-leaning artists when he was in Shanghai, he stated: “I never

contemplated switching over to the Communist Party, even to this day. I also joined the KMT

retreat to Taiwan” (2002:33). In other words, even though he resents the conflicts and corruption

in the Nationalist Party, he is firm in his loyalty to Chiang’s family and stays away from the

leftists.

In his writings, he always claims that he stayed away from politics since the time he

started working in the film business. “Although I decided to stay away from politics since my

thirties, my ideas in my films, dramas and literary works are consistent and coherent.”

(1988:135) To him, films and art should not be related to politics. Because of its detachment

from politics, Hong Kong cinema, compared with cinemas from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan

and China which had tighter film controls, could flourish freely and had fewer interventions from

the government. He even criticized the KMT government for controlling Hong Kong

filmmakers. While Hong Kong directors went to the mainland in the reform period (after 1978),

the KMT government banned their films. “The KMT government should not worry too much

about Hong Kong filmmakers promoting Communism after shooting in mainland China; they

would not promote Three Principles of the People either”80 (1989:172). He thinks that action

80
The Three Principles of the People or San-min Doctrine, is a political theory created by Sun Yat-sen. It became
the founding ideology of the Republic of China. It can be summarized as nationalism (minzu), democracy (minquan)
and the livelihood of the people (minsheng). Throughout the culture wars, given the cooperation between the
Communists and the Nationalists during the War of Resistance, the meanings of the Three principles of the People
were a site for the Communists and the Nationalist to reinterpret their meanings.
246
films, which are based on traditional Chinese kung fu, “have no connection to capitalism or any

other ideas (zhuyi)” (1989:3). For Chang, action aesthetics is “depoliticized” and yanggang is

ideologically free.

Core to this aesthetic is another Chinese term bei zhuang (tragic and solemn). First, that

aesthetic is exclusive to young men. Under Chang’s misogynist mindset, a career woman is

doomed to have a poor life. The tension between work and marriage will never be resolved,

because women are always emotional. In one of his writings, Chang discusses how a wife and

children are a burden for a man as they force him to make compromises in his career. The

conflict between work and love relationships is an eternal problem in ancient and contemporary

times “gu jin tong gai.” (Chang 1967:89) Most of his yanggang heroes are young men, who are

parentless. The narrative no longer focuses on the journeys of heroes to avenge the death of their

parents or teachers. Rather, at the end of the story, the heroes sacrifice their lives for their

friends. Second, their sacrificial bodies are morally beautiful. They are individual heroes,

fighting to their last breath. They die solemnly bare-chested. Bei zhuang, therefore, to Chang

Cheh, is not equal to tragedy (beiju), which he dismisses as didactic and prevalent in the old

form of Cantonese tear-jerkers and Mandarin costume pictures (1989:54). The tragic ending aims

at identifying the sacrifice and virtues like righteousness, unconditional love and loyalty more

than the structural causes. In contrast to the secular world where material and commodities

flourish in a capitalist society, the transcendental connotation after heroic sacrifice is attained

through aestheticizing death and violence. The hero is not so much tragic in his own death as

indicative of the spirit of sacrifice and suffering. Also, Chang dismisses some Italian Westerns

for their brutality and defends his films as being full of meaningful sacrifice and violence. To

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Chang Cheh, zhuang lie, a synonym of bei zhuang, is not equivalent to cruelty (canku), and his

yanggang heroes should uphold virtues and dismiss the material world (Chang 1968: 34–35).

Third, to show the bei zhuang of the yanggang hero, Chang Cheh made most of his

heroes suffer from disembowelment or a cut in their abdomen, which represents manliness and

masculinity. That penchant for death by disembowelment is taken from tragic repertoires like Jie

Pai Guan (The Boundary Gate) or Tiao Hua Che (Flipping Carts) in Peking Opera. According to

Chang, China has lost the militaristic culture since the Song dynasty (960 - 1279) and Qing

dynasty (1644-1911), which banned civil use of weapons and martial arts. Since then martial arts

have become simply spectacle and fancy performances on stage. For Chang, it is necessary to

rejuvenate the lost legacy of Chinese tradition. To do that, characterization and storytelling must

be “modern.” To be “modern” is to learn from Hollywood and Japanese films. Stars like James

Dean, Marlon Brando and Toshiro Mifune, and American and Japanese directors like John

Sturges, Akira Kurosawa and Ishihara Yujiro are Chang’s favorites, because they could use the

medium expressively to portray young heroes. Chang recruited many talents like Japanese

cameraman Miyagi Yukio, who specialized in visual composition, Cao Hui-qi, who specialized

in handheld camera movement, Bao Xue-li, who specialized in filming long shots, and Lau Kar-

leung and Tang Jia who specialized in realist action choreography different from theatrical kinds.

At the face value, for Chang Cheh, the yanggang hero is far removed from politics. He is

not fighting for capitalism nor for socialism. His violent actions and death are the masculine side

of traditional culture, lost in modern times. To rescue this culture is to learn from cinema,

especially those from Euro-America and Japan. Chang has always claimed that he updates and

modernizes Chinese cinema and elevates Chinese action cinema “from the worst in the world to

the best in the world” (Chang 1989:212). Here, we can take the yanggang hero as a site to lay

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bare the dichotomies including de-political/political, individuality/collectivity,

masculine/feminine, traditional/modern, Chinese/West, and spiritual/material in his responses to

certain aesthetic or cultural problems. As I will show, we can see that these aesthetic problems

are by no means apart from matters of politics.

In film historiography and in Chang Cheh’s writing, the yanggang hero is seen to respond

to the dominant female leads in Chinese cinema. Before Chang’s rise in the Shaw Brothers

Studio, Li Han-hsiang’s Enchanting Shadow (1960), Kingdom and the Beauty (1959), The Love

Eterne (1963), The Magnificent Concubine (1962), and Yueh Feng’s The Last Woman of Shang

(1964), all period costume dramas featuring female leads and tragic stories, helped the studio

gain some access to international film festivals and Euro-American markets.81 Even male

characters like Liang Shan-Bo in The Love Eterne are females cross-dressing. The femininity

Chang Cheh dismissed refers not only to female leads but to genres. For example, Cantonese

melodrama and opera, often marked with left-wing progressive lessons, were his targets. He

thought that left-wing melodramas like Cai Chu-sheng’s Spring River Flows East (1947) were

outmoded and didactic, while the action in Cantonese opera films and martial arts films were

nothing more than theatrical routines (Chang 1989:8). Chang’s yanggang hero was intended to

update and rescue Chinese cinema from the female-centered cinematic tradition, by promoting a

new masculine image in world cinema in the 1960s. According to him, Chinese cinema was far

behind the world trend as male stars dominated Hollywood and Japanese cinema. Also, Chang

wanted the yanggang hero to get rid of the emasculated image of the “sick man of East Asia”

81
The Love Eterne won six awards at the 2nd Golden Horse awards in Taiwan. It was also selected as Hong Kong
entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 36th Academy Awards, but it was not accepted as a nominee. The
Enchanting Shadow in 1960 and The Kingdom and the Beauty in 1959 were also selected. The Magnificent
Concubine won the Grand Prix for Best Interior Photography and Color at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.
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(1989:53). Most scholars like Yip Man Fung (2017:88) also point out these elements – the

yanggang aesthetic intervening in the “female-favoritism” in Chinese-language cinema and the

weak image of China in the world. However, an important aspect is missed – the ideological

schema that promotes Chinese long-lost masculinity against assimilation to westernization and

Communism.

What Chang Cheh means by westernization is the white supremacy in the nineteenth

century that dismissed oriental culture from privileged perspectives. “They don’t know there is

civilization in the East, which is much richer than theirs; they are arrogant, seeing no difference

between Chinese and African natives.” Chang argued that this perspective affects Peking opera.

He continued, “[to them] foot binding and having pigtail hairstyles are so savage.” (1989: 195)

He criticized the May Fourth movement not so much for being a patriotic movement against

Japanese imperialism and feudalism but as wholesale westernization (quanpan xihua) inherited

from that nineteenth-century foreigner’s perspectives (1989:180). Following this, he aligned

westernization to the Cultural Revolution and theatrical reform in China,

But even before the start of the Cultural Revolution, cultural and artistic affairs had already fallen

into the control of the Gang of Four. Peking opera was suppressed, with detrimental results. It

boiled down to the mentality of the Gang of Four, which was shaped by the total westernization

advocated after the May Fourth Movement. In politics, it was the inclination towards the Soviet

Union; on the cultural side, it was the advocacy of the use of Esperanto, the romanization of

Chinese, and the abolishment of Chinese characters. As for drama, the only accepted perspective

was Western realism of the 19th century, and Peking opera was perceived with the populist

perspective of a Western tourist. This Eastern cultural legacy was obliterated: the percussion

music was considered annoying and the painted face and bare chest ‘barbarian’…The qiaogong

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 (the art of walking in high-soled boots) technique, which was banned by the Gang of Four,

corresponds to the tiptoe technique in ballet; it is not the glorification of foot binding.

(Chang 2002: 107)

To Chang, the theatrical reform is not so much about “reforming the plays, reforming the people,

and reforming the institutions” (gai xi gai ren gai zhi) (Rebull 2017:50) or representing peasants,

workers, soldiers, as inheriting a western point of view. His ideas of the yanggang hero fighting

bare-chested and smeared with blood, modeled from pan chang da zhan (fighting with guts out)

in Peking opera, respond to the “purification” of plays, music, costumes and characters in

Communist China. Suffice it to say, Chang considers the Cultural Revolution as nothing but

destroying all kinds of traditional culture. His yanggang hero has a political mission to rescue

this culture from oblivion. The gender relations in contemporary politics and culture are just

unnatural and abnormal. His heroes do have political agendas. When he says that “Now,

fortunately, the films in the mainland are going to be extinct because of the Cultural Revolution;

it is time for us to replace them,” he is arguing that what should replace Communist culture are

traditional virtues (Chang 1968:35). He said that as an imaginary catharsis, action films could

help prevent aggressive young men from committing crimes in the street, and that because of the

virtues in wuxia cinema - loyalty, filial piety, integrity, and righteousness - Chinese martial arts

cinemas are much better than other action films from around the world. What is more important

is that instead of watching melodramas and “Liang Xiong Ge” (crossdressing Liang Shan-bo

from The Love Eterne), wuxia films are better for “counter-attacking-the Communists and

restoring the country” (fangong fu guo) (Chang 1968:34).

However, despite his aversion to westernization and material commodities, he fully

supported “free ports” defined by the laissez faire policies in colonial Hong Kong. To him and

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his contemporaries like Jin Yong, capitalism meant freedom and modernity rather than a colonial

or the condescending western perspective of the nineteenth-century. Regardless of imperialism

and class exploitation, Chang Cheh considered that Hong Kong is a place where the modern and

traditional freely mixed and that without any intervention from political parties, Hong Kong

cinema would be much richer and better in directorial freedom and diverse topics than Taiwan’s

and China’s. He even claimed that post-socialist China ought to learn modernization from Hong

Kong (1989:168).82

Now, we can have a new understanding of the yanggang hero. The masculinity of heroes

responds to the Cultural Revolution, which allegedly inherited a nineteenth-century foreigner’s

perspective in their theatrical reform. To Chang Cheh, the yanggang hero is both traditional and

modern. The yanggang hero continues the traditional virtues and legacy. However, he is not

didactic but modern. If necessary, this will be a good model for overseas young men to learn

from in order to “oppose Communism and restore the country.” This ideological schema

underpinning the culture wars during the Cold War originates from the works of Zhang Daofan

and Pan Gongzhan and contemporary neo-Confucian philosophers in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In his book China’s Conservative Revolution, Brian Tsui demonstrates how the

Nationalist party became conservative after the anti-Communist coup of 1927. In his analysis,

the movement, led by Hu Hanmin and Dai Jitao among other conservative right-wing leaders in

the party,

82
The teleological connotation carried in the project of modernization by Hong Kong in China echoes what Rey
Chow’s understanding is of the “Third Space” of Hong Kong. She thinks that Hong Kong can be a pioneer in post-
socialist China. In her blueprint of postcoloniality of Hong Kong’s future, she ignores the connection between
modernity and capitalism, and all other complicated colonial relationships. For more, see (Chow 1992; Law 2009).
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 sought an ethno-communal solution to China’s semi-colonial status. Instead of confronting the

capitalist system, it appealed to the nation and, by extension, Eastern civilization as aestheticized

communions in which acute class tensions were imagined away

(Tsui 2018:4)

They considered Communism as a threat to ethnic cohesion and a symptom of modern

decadence. They even launched campaigns like National Spiritual Mobilization (Guomin

jingshen zongdongyuan) in 1939 and aimed at suppressing social strife and removing threats to

political disunity. Rewriting Dr. Sun Yat Sen’s Three Principles of People with Confucian

virtues, they depoliticized any radical ideas and rejected any overthrow of the socio-economic

structure. The spiritual mobilization saw individual behavior and moral quality as constituent

parts of nation-building. This conservative revolution movement led by Chiang Kai-shek’s

government was defined within the global ascendance of right-wing movements. In short, they

promoted ethno-nationalism as a third way that could go beyond communism and capitalist

consumerism. This movement had an enormous influence on Chang Cheh as two of his mentors,

the aforementioned Zhang Daofan and Pan Gongzhan, were part of this conservative revolution.

Along with other colleagues, Pan Gongzhan promoted national literature. In 1930, they

wrote the “Manifesto of the Nationalist Art Movement” targeting the proletariat literature

movement by Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai. In the manifesto, he calls for a unification of national art

as literature and art are expressions of national spirit. “The utmost meaning of literature and art is

nationalism” (Pan 1979:81). He glorified national literature and art by the need to eradicate any

thoughts that stand in the way of national development. Writers had to express national spirit and

consciousness and to improve it (84-5). According to Brian Tsui, Pan Gongzhan evokes the

history of Han Chinese resistance against alien threats like the subjection of Uyghurs, Tibetans

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and ethnic groups in the southwestern frontier during the Han (202 BC – 220 AD) and Tang (618

- 907) periods. Pan emphasized that “a spirit of sacrifice had been the nation’s best guarantor

against foreign conquest” (Tsui 2018:129). It is no coincidence that this “spirit of sacrifice”

resonates in so many yanggang heroes.

The advent of the Cultural Movement Committee, where Chang worked, was a strategy

to contain Communist threats during the Second United Front (1937-1945)83 between the

Nationalist Party and the Communist Party. In 1940, the Nationalist Party established the Central

Cultural Movement. Seeing the increasing Communist cultural impact and huge influence of

Guo Moruo, Tian Han and other Communist artists in the Third Office of the Military

Commission,84 the Nationalist Party reorganized the Cultural Movement Committee in February

1941 and appointed Zhang Daofan and Pan Gongzhan as the president and the vice-president of

the committee respectively. In 1942, Mao’s talk “The Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art” was

circulated in Chongqing, where the provisional government of the Republic of China was

located. Meanwhile, Zhang Daofan and Pan Gongzhan published two journals, Literature and

Art Pioneer Bi-monthly (Wenyi xianfeng) and Cultural Pioneer Weekly (Wenhua xianfeng) in

1942. An article “The Literature and Art Policy We Need” (Women suo xuyao de wenyi

zhengce), a preface of Cultural Pioneer Weekly written by the chief editor Li Chendong and

Zhang Daofan, responded to Mao’s talk and created heated debates among the Nationalist party

members.

83
The Second United Front is the alliance between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party to resist Japanese
imperialist invasion. During the alliance, the KMT launched ambushes three times against the Communists, while
the Communists formed new alliances and resisted reactionary classes through propaganda.
84
The Third Office of the Military Commission was formed in Wuhan by Communist and progressive artists during
the War of Resistance. The chief commissioner (ting zhang) of the Third Office was Guo MoRuo, while the chief
secretary was Yang Han-heng. They mobilized people to resist Japanese invasion by organizing cultural activities
like theatrical performance, drama, opera, folk songs.
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 Rather than staying away from politics, Zhang Daofan called for artists and intellectuals’

engagement with reality and promoted arts that would serve the “Three Principles of People.” In

his article, he writes six No’s (liu bu) and five Yes’s (wu yao) to differentiate what artistic styles

and themes should be sanctioned. He discourages romanticism and realism. In his view, romantic

artists are too idealistic about society, while realist artists are too pessimistic about society.

Compared to Mao’s talk, Zhang’s article had totally different target audiences. Despite both

sides calling for political mobilization through literature and art, Mao mobilized peasants,

workers, soldiers and intellectuals in the liberated areas, while Zhang targeted all human beings

(quan renlei). In his conception of all human beings, it includes the suffering majority, but at the

same time landlords, capitalists and the ruling classes are involved too. In one of his tenets,

artists should show love (ren ai) in contrast to class hatred to make rulers, capitalists and

landlords conscience-stricken so that they know the reality and consciously change the miserable

world (Zhang 1999:219). National consciousness like loyalty, filial piety, kindness, love, trust,

righteousness and peace, are the moral values that must replace class hatred.

While Mao promoted criticism and self-criticism by artists and intellectuals in order to

make an affective connection to the peasants, workers and soldiers, Zhang focused on artistic

styles and disapproved of abstract art, impressionism, realism and romanticism. The ambivalence

of Zhang’s article lies more in his over-emphasis on the styles than in the political transformation

of intellectuals and the target audiences. His concept of national literature and art promoting

love, equality, altruism and sacrifice is that it can prevail over capitalism, defined by self-

interested rights and powers, and socialism, which produces class hatred for China where it has

an insufficient working-class base (Zhang 1999: 606). However, Zhang’s national literature and

art stayed abstracted and detached from the working masses. Artists may have artworks about

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working classes, yet from the perspective of the elite. In short, what literature and art needs for

Zhang is something abstracted from concrete class politics to serve the politics of the few

individual artists and statesmen.

While I am not arguing Chang Cheh’s yanggang hero’s ideological schema fully

endorses Pang Gongzhan’s and Zhang Daofan’s works, they do share a lot of similarities:

national consciousness, virtues, anti-Communism, the “third” way beyond Communism and

capitalist consumerism. The fact that Chang Cheh studied politics during the War of Resistance

and worked with Pan Gongzhan and Zhang Daofan, and his loyalty to the Chiang family is

relevant to how he interpreted these tenets of literature and art in his works.

The conservative revolution had its contemporary counterpart in 1950s Hong Kong.

Contemporary Neo-Confucian works formed a fortress in Hong Kong to define the essence of

Chinese culture and civilization. Neo-Confucian scholars and philosophers, like Tang Chun-I

and Qian Mu who resided in Hong Kong and Taiwan, promoted traditional Chinese culture.

They founded New Asia College in 1949 with the help of the Nationalist government and

American funding. In the hope of rescuing young people from giving up their Chinese languages

and culture, they lament that Chinese culture is disembodied and becomes scattered around like a

5000-year-old tree collapsed (C.-I. Tang 1974:3). Introspective soul searching is important for

overseas Chinese, as Chinese languages and cultures are being dismissed in foreign countries.85

The tragic imagery of Chinese culture, “dispersing flower and whithering fruits” (hua guo

85
Interestingly, neo-Confucian scholars are not popular, but their works are so familiar to Hong Kong students.
Introduced in 1993, the Chinese Language and Culture Examination became part of the Hong Kong advanced
supplementary level examination (AS-level). The required readings and supplementary reading materials are mostly
written by Neo-Confucian scholars like Tang Chun-I, Yin Hai-guang. Qian Mu’s A General History of China
(Guoshi dagang) was one of the supplementary readings in the Chinese History A-level examination.
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piaoling) are commonly found in their rhetoric to conserve the root, history, Chinese essence and

the past (16). Chang Cheh’s yanggang heroes who lose their body parts mirror such images. Like

Chang Cheh’s contempt for nineteenth-century western supremacy, neo-Confucian philosophers

run counter to the unreflective westernization found in the May Fourth Movement. They often

frown upon the western standard against which Chinese arts and culture is measured (34). Tang

also thinks that Chinese scholars can ignore the colonial government as they can be seen as

“mutually nonexistent” (hui wei bu cunzai) (71). Without cultural confidence, the Chinese race is

enslaved to western knowledge and institutions. Following the logic, Communist China is

enslaved to the Soviet Union and embraces Marxism and Leninism (42).

On the problem of youth crime, student strikes, and counter-culture movements in

today’s world, Tang argues that it is a question about whether young people let their spirits be

masters or slaves. When their spirit becomes angry and ruthless, young people hate everything

around them and destroy everything (57). Qian Mu also thinks that youth anger is a problem of

individualism. Young people have too many material desires, which Chinese traditional culture

should oppose (Qian 2001:68). Qian Mu goes further to discuss Cold War politics, which he

reduces to a national problem. The division system in Germany, Korea, and China will be settled

by national unification. The ideological and economic divisions in the Cold War were nothing

more than national problems. Free trade can generate wealth and private property. Capitalism

can ensure the happiness of private life and humanism, while communism goes against humanity

(48). Chang Cheh shared similar views on the youth problem and reduced student strikes, labor

strikes, the youth movements and the young rioters in 1960s Hong Kong to the problem of over-

population. Due to the crowded environment and the stagnant social mobility, young people,

who have no more room in society, became angry and took to the streets (Chang 1968:35).

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 According to Law Wing-sang’s studies on the cultural cold war and the diasporic nation,

the intellectual agenda of Neo-Confucianism in Hong Kong “changed substantially to harmonize

with the Cold War anti-communist struggle” (Law 2009:139). They criticized the undemocratic

rule of Communist China far more than they criticized colonialism in Hong Kong. The

Chineseness Neo-Confucian philosophers promoted and rescued, Law argues, cannot reflect the

immanent coloniality and failed to develop an organic relationship with the colonial Hong Kong

society that hosted them (140). However, the problems lie not so much in their detachment from

colonial reality or emphasis on nationalism as in their idealistic principles adhering too much to

the abstract bourgeois notion of cultural and moral values and to the market economy offered by

the colonial government and the Cold War hegemony.

These idealistic tenets echoed the cultural campaign launched by Chiang Kai-Shek in

Taiwan. Across the strait, Chiang Kai-shek launched another spiritual national mobilization

campaign, “Chinese Cultural Renaissance” (zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong) in 1966 to

counterattack the Cultural Revolution in the mainland. Among the activities included protection

of authentic traditional Chinese culture, publications of classical Chinese works, attacks on

Communist regimes and cultures, promotion of national language, customs and morals,

advocating Mandarin and Confucian values, and support for overseas Chinese studies and

research. The campaign faded out in the late 1970s when Chiang Kai-shek died. The rise and fall

of Chang Cheh’s yanggang heroes matched that campaign.

From conservative revolutionaries like Pan Gongzhan and Zhang Daofan to neo-

Confucianism and Cultural Renaissance in Taiwan, their aversion to westernization and

Communism and promotion of Chinese national traditions affected the making and development

of Chang Cheh’s yanggang hero. The yanggang hero is masculine, tragic and ascetic. He

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represents a model of authentic Chinese culture in the face of world cinema. He not only

challenges the popular trend of feminine heroes and images of the “sick man of East Asia” but

also challenges the revolutionary heroes in Communist China. While neo-Confucian

philosophers propagated their authentic Chinese culture and tradition through New Asia College,

Chang Cheh, who worked as a screenwriter and a film critic in Motion Picture and General

Investment (MP & GI), was waiting to experiment with his yanggang heroes. The time came

when he joined the Shaw Brothers Studio in 1962 and contributed to the launch of the wuxia new

century in 1965.

The Rise of Shaw Brothers and the Cultural Revolution

Mapping the sensory landscape in 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong, Yip Man-Fung (2017)

draws attention to the changing demographic, culture of consumption, foreign films, fashion

magazines and sensational media outlets, and action flicks from Japan and the U.S. He points out

that the success of the leading studio – the Shaw Brothers studio - was its willingness to capture

“the changing tastes of viewers by producing a string of flashy, youth-oriented musicals” (Yip

2017:61). But why Shaw Brothers? What made Shaw Brothers a monopoly in the Hong Kong

film industry? Yip ignores the fact that the “wuxia new century” at first was a failure in October,

1965. Not until One Armed Swordsman received a million box-office amid the 1967 leftist riots

was the launch of the “wuxia century” consolidated. It seems that the reason behind the rise of

the Shaw Brothers is not just about capturing the “changing tastes” of young people. Behind

entertainment and sensorial consumption lies the politicization of popular culture as ideological

persuasion. This is the context of the yanggang hero in relation to the Shaw Brother Studio and

its role in the anti-Communist crusade in Asia.

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 Some may question why a yanggang hero can’t be born in MP & GI, the rival studio

Chang Cheh had worked at for a year. Both MP & GI and the Shaw Brothers studios were

organizations of vertical integration. Both had production bases in Hong Kong, extensive

distribution networks in Singapore and Malaysia and exhibition theaters in Taiwan, Hong Kong,

and other overseas Chinese communities. By 1959, MP & GI controlled a chain of around 260

theaters, stretching from Singapore and Malaya to Sarawak, Borneo, and Thailand (Fu 2018:30).

Both companies enjoyed lower taxes in Hong Kong (29). They had modern facilities, made

strong ties with the Singapore and Malayan governments and recruited a lot of young talents.

More importantly, both studios joined forces to contribute to the cinematic containment in the

region. However, they may have a small ideological difference. MP & GI focused their

productions on modern, cosmopolitan middle-class life and independent women. In his analysis

of Air Hostess (Kongzhong xiaojie), directed by Evan Yang and produced by MP & GI in 1959,

Poshek Fu explains that the independence of the air hostess, showing defiance against her

arranged marriage and living her American way of life may run counter to the Nationalist

regime’s neo-Confucian values like filial piety and loyalty, which Shaw Brothers was expert at

(41). Even though Shaw Brothers also made pictures about women in contemporary Hong Kong,

the most popular ones were Diao Cham, Wang Chao-jun, Nie Xiao-Qian, who are period

costume subjects of loyalty, victimhood, patriarchy or sacrifice.

More importantly, due to a host of factors including the tragic death of Loke Won-Tho,

the founder of the MP & GI, along with his chief executives in a plane crash in 1964, the

launching of the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966, and the 1967 Hong Kong leftist riots,

Shaw Brothers’ collaboration with the Nationalist government in Taiwan and the colonial Hong

Kong government and its espousal of the anti-communist causes in the region helped expand the

260
dominance of its capital in the region. All this, following the success of wenyi/ literary

melodrama, huangmei opera films and period costume pictures in the late 1950s and early 1960s,

provided a fertile ground for Chang Cheh to create his heroes in the mid-1960s.

The Shaw organization has a long history of cinema production and distribution

throughout the twentieth century, from Tianyi Film company in the 1920s and 1930s to Shaw

and Sons Company in the 1950s. Their primary markets were the South East Asian countries. To

meet the demand for more pictures in Singapore and Malaysia, in 1957 Run Run Shaw moved to

Hong Kong from Singapore to set up Movietown as the main production base. Acquiring a large

piece of land from the government, Movietown was the largest privately-owned studio in the

world. It had a color laboratory, building sets, stables of horses, dubbing department, publicity

department, film processing, dormitories for directors, stars, and administrative staff. His brother

Runme Shaw, who worked in Singapore, was the chairman of more than 35 companies

associated with organizations like the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Bank of

Singapore, and the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board. The Shaw Brothers established their

business of real estate, banking, printing, and amusement parks. It also recruited a lot of talents,

ranging from highly educated screenwriters like Qiu Gang-jian, Cheng Kang, Song Qi, who

worked at MP & GI, and the sci-fi and martial arts novelist Ni Kuang, to action choreographers

like Tang Jia and Lau Kar-leung, who worked in the Cantonese film industry and leftist

Mandarin studios. By 1970, three hundred stuntmen worked in the studio. They worked under

three parties: Tang Jia, the Nanguo training school, and a Japanese choreographer (Liu 1970:56).

Learning advanced technology and stylistic forms from Hollywood and Japanese cinemas, Shaw

Brothers embraced state-of-the-art post-dubbing, editing, special effects, color, music and

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widescreen. Because of the increased production quality, Mandarin pictures cost five hundred

thousand to a million, while Cantonese pictures cost around three hundred thousand. Despite

that, it was still far from the average production cost in Hollywood, which was 18 million per

film (Yung 1969:166).

What interests me is Run Run Shaw’s view on Chinese people and Chinese culture. In an

interview, a British journalist Alan Whicker asked him about the Movietown and the working

laborers. “The Chinese, they are hardworking; they are intelligent and in no time they learn all

the tricks. These give us a lot of confidence that quality movies will pay,” Shaw replied

(McFarlane 1972). Chinese were submissive and hardworking in overseas communities. What

they needed in cinema was entertainment only. This smacks of racism, considering how he

treated his fellow employees and audiences. This conservative view on Chinese people was not

just personal but also what the studio upheld. This view corresponds closely to Chang Cheh’s

views on Hong Kong: “Hong Kong is a Chinese community where the people have the Chinese

virtues of being industrious and hardworking; it has been subject to a century of British rule and

thus has inherited the Western emphasis on flexibility and efficiency” (Chang 2002:92). In Law

Kar’s article, “The Origin and Development of Shaw's Colour Wuxia Century” (2003), he traces

through the history of the Shaws’ organization: “Dating back to Shaws’ Shanghai days of the

1920s and 30s, there had long been a tradition in their films to uphold the familial and religious

systems.” The core value of the Shaws was not just capturing the “changing taste” of young

people like Yip suggests, but the traditional family and social order. “Although Shaw himself

was aware of the need to cater to the tastes of the new post-war generation, he did not, because

of this, abandon his belief in ethical family order and values. He believed that too strong a

portrayal of youth rebelliousness would only alienate the adult members of the family” (Law

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2003:135). That’s why from the 1920s up to early 1960s, the Shaws focused more on feminine

heroines in wenyi pictures, Chinese folk stories and period costume pictures.

However, capital and culture alone cannot explain the rise of the yanggang hero in the

late 1960s without considering how Run Run Shaw ran the industry, collaborated with the

colonial government and took part in the Cold War containment crusade.

In the late 1960s, the film industry was dominated by Mandarin pictures. The Cantonese

film industry had a “dearth of far sighted and broad-minded producers,” according to Lung

Kong, a young Cantonese filmmaker at the time (Wong 1968). After the 1967 leftist riots, the

four main Cantonese companies stopped producing films. Even so, there were some young

filmmakers who attempted to modernize Cantonese films by using color, exploring mixed

genres, and raising the production costs, because the spectacular cinematic style and a proper

cinematic language “can suit the changing environment” (Lin 1982:30–31). Cantonese

filmmakers and actors were retired or worked in the television stations like Rediffusion TV

(RTV) or the newly founded television station by Run Run Shaw in 1966, Television Broadcast

(TVB) (Lai 1982:24). Also, because of the 1967 leftist riots, the leftist theaters lost tens of

thousands of fans. Since then, five left-wing cinemas were running at heavy losses. Due to the

public offensive against left-wing labor strikes, workers and organizations, some top stars,

producers and directors from the lefist film studios started to defect to the pro-Nationalist Hong

Kong and Kowloon Free Filmmakers General Association (HKFFGA), which is discussed in the

previous chapter (“Now Red Film Stars May Quit” 1969). The left-wing studios produced films

that could no longer be distributed through Cathay and Shaw Brothers in Malaysia and Singapore

(Wong 1969). Some staying in the leftist studios were frustrated, while some attempted to cover

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their losses and made swordplay and other entertainment films. Despite their efforts and limited

export to the mainland during such difficult times, Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, accused them of

money mongering and exporting “poisonous weeds” to the audiences in the mainland (Li 1970;

“Profit from Sex and Swordplay" 1970”; “HK Red Film-Makers in Peking” 1970).

Owing to the decline of all these rivals, Run Run Shaw could expand his movie empire.

As a capitalist, Run Run Shaw suppressed a labor strike during the 1967 leftist riots and fired

more than a hundred workers who participated in the labor strike. One of the laborers was

allegedly killed brutally by a police officer (“Fearless Shaws Employees" 1967; “No Room"

1967; “Shaws Fired" 1967; “Two Labors” 1967). After the riots, Shaw took advantage of the

failure of leftists’ unions and labor strikes, and had exclusive contracts with his artists and

workers as well as exclusive rights to his films. In an interview, he overtly admitted that,

We have no anti-trust law…To start with, labor here was in a much better position for our work,

while in Singapore there were unions and in our business it’s very difficult to follow the union

laws, to make pictures…We are making forty pictures a year, and if there is a union the working

hours are limited, you know, and with union conditions we would not be able to make so many

pictures

(Barnouw 2000:26)

Performing dangerous stunts such as jumping from high buildings to the ground, jumping onto

running horses, and performing risky fighting and acrobatic moves, stuntmen in martial arts

films did not have full insurance. Without legal regulations of minimum wages and maximum

hours, stuntmen’s wages were paid on a daily basis. The best stuntman would earn was 150 HKD

a day, while a third-tier stuntman would earn around 70 HKD a day (Liu 1970:57). Even big

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shots were in tight control at Shaw Brothers. Because of exclusive contracts, many artists broke

their contracts and “defected” to the new film company Golden Harvest, founded by Raymond

Chow and Leonard Ho who were previously managers at Shaw Brothers. Due to the contract

issues, Wang Yu, the star in many of Chang Cheh’s films, had a series of court battles in the

early 1970s with Shaw Brothers.86 The draconian control on actors, workmates, film rights and

other workers in his empire, turning more bureaucratic due to Mona Fong, the wife of Run Run

Shaw, finally became the reasons why many filmmakers and actors left the studio.

However, Run Run Shaw’s managerial skill and vision always impressed Chang Cheh,

who once even negotiated a labor strike deal between lighting workers and Run Run Shaw

(Chang 1989: 74-5). In Chang’s writing, Run Run Shaw is like a model leader, often comparing

his use of managerial power to his former leader Chiang Ching-kuo. Not only was Run Run

Shaw smart in investment and spartan in personal lives, but he was a philanthropist. He gave

donations to schools and hospitals. Chang defended Run Run Shaw by arguing that due to such

philanthropy, “‘capitalism’ and ‘capitalists’ in modern times are totally different from those in

the nineteenth century” (1989: 32-33). The humane image of the philanthropist-capitalist echoes

the idea of “People’s Capitalism in the USA” during the Eisenhower administration. “American

capitalism at mid-Twentieth Century is not the capitalism of colonialism, it is not the capitalism

of Karl Marx, it is not even our own capitalism of 50 years ago. It is, instead, a capitalism so

widely invested in (directly or indirectly) by so many people, with the benefits in goods and

wages shared in by so many people, that it is truly People’s Capitalism” (Osgood 2008:271–72).

As is the case for many capitalists in Hong Kong, philanthropist images are useful to place a

humane mask over the face of an exploitative boss. To ensure the circulation of his capital,

86
For more reportages of the lawsuits between Wang Yu and Shaw Brothers, see (“Film Star Sued” 1974; “Film
Star Puts” 1974; “Swordsman” 1974).
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Shaw’s relationship with the colonial government and his role in the anti-Communist

containment culture also granted him another status – a cultural diplomat.

The building of the Movietown over the 46-acre site was based on the colonial

government’s permission for selling a part of the mountain in the Clearway Bay to Shaw

Brothers, who bought it and sliced the top of it off to create the space to place the Movietown on.

Ever since the foundation of the Movietown, Run Run Shaw invited and received different

politicians, foreign artists, and Hong Kong governors to visit the studio (“Governor Black”

1964:25). After the 1967 riots, Sir David Trench visited the Movietown and officiated at a

foundation stone laying ceremony. He was proud of the expanding film business in Hong Kong,

and called for modernization of ideas and technology. Getting the approval from the governor,

Run Run Shaw said, “Under the leadership of our Hong Kong governor, we need to build a

peaceful, ordered and prosperous Hong Kong; because of this, we will try our best in the film

business to expend our highest efforts and carry out our responsibilities.” (“Hong Kong

Governor" 1968:7). Here, the idea of film business was not just a business but part and parcel of

making Hong Kong safe and prosperous. Even though the colonial government did not have a

well-established cultural policy, Hong Kong cultural capitalists like Shaw always worked hand

in hand with the government. As cultural diplomats, Run Run Shaw and Tan Sri Runme Shaw

escorted Queen Elizabeth II during her three-day visit in Singapore in 1972. All the cultural,

industrial and philanthropic contributions Shaw had made paid off, when Run Run Shaw was

appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1974 and was knighted in

1978 by Queen Elizabeth II.

Every October 10th, Run Run Shaw or his stars and executive members attended the gala

dinner by the HKFFGA to celebrate the national day of the Republic of China. Members raised

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the national flags and the chairman of the association reported the situation of their mother

country. Artists paid tribute to Chiang Kai-shek and the military commanders (“Stars Celebrate”

1961; “Movie Circles 1964). For the HKFFGA, Run Run Shaw also donated them a building for

their permanent address (Huang 2009:74). In the publicity magazines of Shaw Brothers,

Southern Screen, we can see a lot of reports on stars visiting the fatherland (zu guo) (Nationalist-

Taiwan being the authentic China) and celebrations of Chiang Kai-shek’s birthday. The ties with

the Nationalist government were stronger during the Cultural Revolution. During the launch of

the Chinese Cultural Renaissance by Chiang Kai-shek in 1966, Shaw Brothers, as the primary

convenor joined with the Cathay Organization/ MP & GI, and two other Cantonese film

companies: Hong Kong Rong Hua Company and the Kong Ngee Company to sign the “Joint

Convention for the Support of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement” in June 1968. They

promised not to buy and distribute Communist films from leftist studios. They would not employ

any leftist artists who did not claim that they had defected. They also promised to aid production

from free and independent film companies supported by the Nationalist government. A few

months before the covenant, Run Run Shaw arrived in Taiwan from his 39-day trip in Eastern

Europe. During the peak of the 1967 riots, Run Run Shaw left Singapore in August as a member

of the Singapore commerce investigation program for Eastern Europe. Out of the need for the

Free World alliance, the program aimed for an investigation of the economy and lives under the

dictatorial control. He visited the Soviet Union, Denmark, East and West Germany,

Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Run Run Shaw reported that there

was only poverty in Communist countries. “If more people from the Free World visited the Iron

Curtain, the Communist propaganda would never succeed outside the Curtain,” he exclaimed

(“Understanding the Progressive” 1968:36–37). As a diplomat-capitalist, Run Run Shaw secured

267
his entertainment empire by collaborating with the colonial government and playing an important

role in the Cold War crusade. The Cultural Revolution and the 1967 riots in Hong Kong actually

“helped” expand Shaws’ empire. Because during the Cultural Revolution, the alliance among

capitalists, reactionary regimes, neo-colonizers and the Cold War hegemons became stronger and

showed more ideological similarities and mission – promoting free trade, laissez-faire policy,

anti-Communism, abstract humanism, individualism, and suppressing labor strikes, working

class solidarity, and labor laws.

The rise of Shaw Brothers is not merely the smartness of Run Run Shaw or their

willingness to capture the changing tastes of the younger generation. The moment when the

Cultural Revolution started, the capitalists, colonizers, reactionary regimes and the Cold War

hegemons started their “revolutionary” counterpart. The ideological landscapes, therefore,

comprised the interests of the colonial powers, Cold War hegemons, reactionary regimes,

capitalists, and authors of texts. This can answer why Chang Cheh did not sympathize with the

Boxers, as mentioned in the introduction, because Boxers allegorically refer to Chinese

Communists in the ideological landscape.

In the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1966), Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan gave a

message to national soldiers and people in celebration of the 55th Anniversary of the Republic of

China. Accusing the Red Guards in mainland China of destroying five-thousand-year old

traditional culture, he attributed the Maoist bandits’ (mao fei) rebellion to the fantasy of the

Boxers bandits (quan fei). He even interpreted the meaning of Maoist thought as a result of a

series of historical peasant uprisings like Huang Chao in Tang dynasty, Han Shan Tong in Yuan

dynasty (1271-1368), Li Zi-Cheng and Zhang Xian-Zhong in Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and the

Boxer Rebellion in the Qing dynasty. That negative association and animalistic representation of

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peasant uprisings were shared in many Chang Cheh’s works including a wild peasant leader

Huang Chao and his rebel groups in The Heroic Ones (1970), irrational peasants believing in

magical power in Boxer Rebellion (1976) and a peasant rebel Fang La in All Men are Brothers

(1975). In these films, peasant uprisings are nothing more than groups of irrational and populist

mobs losing freewill. In his memoir, Chang says, “I don’t sympathize with the Boxers, but I fully

endorse the resistance movements initiated by folk heroes who were driven purely by their

nationalist beliefs” (Chang 2002: 55). Nationalism is one based on rational thought and science

rather than superstition and riots. They became one of the recurring anti-communist tropes in

Hong Kong films.87 Chang Cheh may not be conscious of Chiang Kai-shek’s speech, but they

shared ideological schema layered by conservative revolution, colonial government and Cold

War powers.

Even though their ideological schema became stronger during the Cultural Revolution,

conflicts would happen between different parties. The colonial government would not exempt

their censorship for Shaws’ productions. On the contrary, they would censor anything that

threatened their legitimacy and the strategic geopolitical relations in the region. There were

instances of censorship in Chang Cheh’s martial arts films. For example, a scene in Chang

Cheh’s Dead End (sijiao, 1969), which is about the collaboration between a policeman and a rich

man, was cut (Wei 2012:27). Film censors reviewed Chang Cheh’s Boxer Rebellion (baguo

lianjun, 1976) and asked to change the title into Spiritual Fists (shen quan san zhuangshi), as the

film depicted resistance against western powers (Chang 2002:57). The film passed the censors

after Shaws’ repeated negotiations and agreement to slash the scenes depicting the Allied Forces

87
Similarly negative images of peasants can easily be found in the films of Hong Kong new wave directors’ like
Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China II (1992), Cheng Siu-keung’s White Lotus Cult (1993) and Peter Chan’s
The Warlords (2007).
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and the Boxers. This complicated picture should highlight less the sensory realism from heroes

in the martial arts film than the ideological alliance from which yanggang heroes derive from.

With material supports like Shaw’s draconian control in the empire and its transnational

collaborative networks, that yanggang hero was now ready to fight in this culture war.

Contested Historiography and Temporalities – The Assassin (1967)

Formal analyses on Chang Cheh’s works tend to focus on fast editing, slow motion, and

pulsating style (Bordwell 2003; Yip 2017). Time, in this section, will not be reduced to just

editing and speed, but will also include the cultural sense of time that includes historical

background, historiography and the heroes’ sense of urgency in History. Rather than representing

a flow passing through the present or something that happened in the past, time is experienced

and imagined. For example, in the times of the Cultural Revolution, the urgency of Neo-

Confucian scholars and Chang Cheh to rescue traditional Chinese virtues by writing and

circulating traditional Chinese his-stories in overseas communities like Hong Kong is mediated

by narratives of the past (traditional virtues, narrating histories) and future (hope and vision).

Based on Sima Qian’s Biographies of Assassins (cike liezhuang), The Assassin is about a young

swordsman Nie Zheng, invited by Yan Zhongzi (a statesman in Han state) to assassin his

unpatriotic rival Han Kuei. Nie Zheng has a sense of urgency in assassination and prefers

sacrifice to working as a butcher and attending to his mother. To avoid implicating his girlfriend,

who is pregnant with his kid, and his sister, he kills himself by gouging his eyes and

disembowelment. We can see different layers of time and temporalities in The Assassin: the

historical background of the story (the Warring States period), the writing of the film (the year of

1967 riots), the temporalities represented by different characters (for example, Nie Zheng’s

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instantaneity – more on this below) and the representational time in its cinematic forms (editing).

I argue that the yanggang hero Nie Zheng exhibits a sense of “existential instantaneity” in

relation to other characters in the film. That image of Nie Zheng directly responded to Guo

Moruo’s play Tang Di Zhi Hua in re-narrating the his-story of the assassin. Firstly, we will

analyse what historiography means in the culture war, and explain why Chang Cheh chose the

Warring States period as his first “historical martial arts film” (lishi wuxia pian).88 Then, by

analysing the film in-depth, we will see how Chang Cheh adapted his assassin and responded to

Guo Moruo which leads us to a new understanding of the film’s ideological forms and aesthetics.

Generally speaking, in the culture war between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the

Chinese Communist Party, historiography was part of their battlefield: questions linked to what

an authentic nation is, how periodization is made and what kind of agents are part of history are

raised in their debates. For example, there was a frequent debate between the two parties about

the book The Destiny of China (Zhongguo zhi Mingyun), co-written by Chiang Kai-Shek and Tao

Xi-sheng in March, 1943. The book aimed at launching cultural attack on Chinese Communists

during the War of Resistance. Chen bo-da, who was then the vice-chair of the Central Office for

Political Research, wrote a review “On The Destiny of China” (ping zhongguo zhi mingyun),

revised by Mao Ze-dong in Liberation Daily (Jiefang Ribao) on July 21st, 1943. The Nationalists

focused on national virtues and their perspective are always Han-centered, while the

Communists put more emphasis on the working masses and peasants uprising, who are

considered to be the true agents of the course of History. In terms of modern Chinese history, the

Nationalists denounced the corruption of the Qing dynasty, but glorified the Qing military

generals and statesmen like Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtong and Li Hongzhang, who were the

88
“Lishi wuxia pian” appeared in Shaw Brothers’ publicity Hong Kong Movie News. See (“The Great Assassin”
1967).
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leaders in suppressing the Taiping rebellion. Both parties trace the origin of modern China

differently. In Nationalist historiography, modern China started from reformists like Liang

Qichao and Kang Youwei in the late Qing, the Yellow Flower Mound Uprising (1911) and the

Xinhai revolution (1911).89 The Communist historiography started from the invasion of China

by imperialists in the Opium War (1839) and the First Sino-Japanese War (1884). This is not

merely a difference in timeframe but in the subjects of history. The Communists put more

emphasis on ordinary heroes and peasants who suffered from both imperialists and the corrupted

Qing government, while the Nationalists focused on martyrs, legendary secret societies, military

Generals and reformists.

Narrating Chinese history is also part of the culture wars in the Hong Kong film industry.

For example, the pro-Nationalist Xin Hua studio in Hong Kong produced two films The Dawn of

China’s Revolution (Qiu Jin, 1953) and The 72 Martyrs of Canton (Bixue huanghua, 1954),90

making anti-Communist allusions to anti-Manchurians and anti-Japanese imperialists. These two

films became “the center of the Nationalist propaganda drive during Asia’s Cold War” (Fu

2018:23). In Chang Cheh’s works, starting from The Assassin, he made great efforts to narrate

Chinese history in his wuxia films. First, the typical ethno-nationalism we can find in Cantonese

wuxia films permeates in his works. The Han-centered perspective reinforces the otherness of

ethnic minorities like Manchurian, Jin, Mongolian and Tibetan. In his films like The Deadly Duo

(1971), the Han-emperor Kang from China is kidnapped by the Jin, a foreign state. A young hero

sacrifices his life to save him at the end. This ethno-nationalism is also at the core of the

89
Neo-Confucian Tang Chun-I admired Kang Youwei, as his theory of The Great Unit (Da tong sixiang) exhibited
reforms beyond races (chao zhongzu zhuyi) and nations (chao minzu zhuyi). Tang once agreed with Kang’s
constitutional monarchy although Tang preferred Sun yat-sen’s revolution that is based upon national virtues and
traditions. (Tang 1986:75–76).
90
This film was produced for the celebration of the re-elected President Chiang Kai-shek.
272
founding of the Republic of China, which has as its famous slogan “Expel the Tartars, Restore

China.” The legitimacy of the Republic of China is often affirmed in Chang’s films that are set in

the Republican era. In his films, aspiring heroes always say “Go to the South,” which connotes

the national revolutionary army (guomin geming jun) in the Whampoa Military Academy.91 A

young hero in Vengeance! (1970) plans to go to the South after he avenges the death of his

brother. Three anonymous heroes in The Anonymous Heroes (1971) are enlightened by a

revolutionary general from the South to fight against warlords. In The Duel (1972), a young hero

who is sent from the national revolutionary army to join a gang and fight against warlords and

gangsters. No films in Chang’s oeuvre are more direct in showing his political vision than The

Boxer Rebellion. While three brothers join the Boxers to fight against foreigners, they have

doubts about the Boxers’ unnatural power. In a scene, they read the manifesto of Revive China

Society, the former organization of the Nationalist Party founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. They think

the real hope is here. The camera then quickly pans to the manifesto and rapid zooms out to two

slides of a non-diegetic montage of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. To Chang Cheh, the model of nationalism

is Han-centered, modernized and rational rather than one based upon occultism, superstition and

blinded nationalism.

In Chang Cheh’s sense of History, ordinary heroes are not historical agents. Yanggang

heroes remain politically incompetent. Even though they participate in political assassinations,

they are not conscious of the importance of the mission. They only have the virtues of sacrifice

and passion but not the political engagement. In Iron Bodyguard (1973), Wang Wu, a martial

artist who helped Tan Sitong, a historical reformist in the late Qing, says, “The world needs

91
The Whampoa Military Academy, or the Republic of China Military Academy was opened in 1924 under the
Kuomintang. The image of the Academy features in Chang Cheh’s Seven-Man Army (badao luo zi 1976), which is
about different national soldiers join force against the Japanese invasion.
273
changes, but…I don’t know anything about reformism (weixin weijiu).” The position of these

ordinary heroes assumes their distance from the political elites. Often, they are less historical

agents than an instrument used by the emperors, politicians or scholars.

That assumption deprives any possibility of collective heroes. The individual heroes are

not politically conscious and able to form alliances. Knowledge is then exclusive to the educated

people or a few statesmen. The enemies consist of two kinds in Chang’s works. On the one hand,

the external enemy includes mobs, peasant uprisings, corrupted statesmen or warlords. On the

other hand, betrayers of brotherhood are the internal enemies. For example, Chang’s films like

Blood Brothers and The Heroic Ones start with peasant uprisings like the Taiping Rebellion

(1850-1864) and Huang Chao’s Rebellion (875-884) respectively. They function as historical

background. The narrative then shifts the focus on the internal enemies – the traitors of

brotherhood and they ignore the peasant rebels. External enemies are reduced to historical

background. Instead, the real threat comes from the internal enemies like traitors of Chinese

virtues. The real threat often changes from the external to the internal one. By eradicating the

internal one, the nation can be stronger. The nation then finds itself on the same level with

foreign nations or the external enemies. Because of this, the nation is safe from foreigners’

invasion and foreigners would respect our nation. Like in the ending of The Boxer Rebellion and

Seven Men Army, after a series of battles, German and Japanese military generals respectively

glorify the death of Chinese heroes. The national subjectivity is based on the mutual recognition

between modern nation-states which have long histories of culture and civilization.

Why would Chang Cheh select The Assassin as his first historical wuxia, which is set in

the Warring States period? According to his memoir, he wanted to “explore the state of mind of

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young warriors who risked their lives in pursuit of personal glory and passion” (2002:66). “I

wanted to write about a hot-blooded but nonetheless bored and lost young man who needed

guidance to expend his vitality on something worthwhile and meaningful. In my search for

‘modernity,’ I did not, however, intend to give up portraying that era, that sense of tragedy and

sacrifice of the Warring States Period.” (“Da ci ke daoyan tan da ci ke" 1968:60–61). Chang

Cheh even admitted that the 1967 riots influenced the portrayal of “the fervor, violence and

rebelliousness of The Assassin” (2002:75). Actually, the idea of making assassin pictures was not

born under the influence of the 1967 riots as Yip and White suggest. In Chang’s film review of

Keigo Kimura’s The Princess Sen (1954) in 1959, he admired Kimura’s delicate presentations of

oriental love and the heroism of samurai and thought that they were derived from Chinese

tradition. He then suggests that the Japanese samurai films were modelled after the virtues of

assassins like Nie Zheng and Jing Ke (2002:280-1). Both of them are historical assassins

recorded by the Western Han Dynasty official Sima Qian in his Records of the Grand Historian.

The suicidal passion and Japanese seppuku were even derived from the virtues of Chinese

assassins. What interested Chang Cheh was not so much the social turmoil and the leftist

radicalism in the riots (Yip 2017:38) as the assassins’ sacrifice. Situating that sacrifice in the

Warring States era is indicative of Chang’s intervention in the culture war, because this period

was a transition to the united country of the first dynasty of imperial China.

The periodization of the Warring States era was a common topic shared by Communist

and neo-Confucian historians. In the CCP’s Marxist historiography, different Communist

historians demarcated the transition from slave society (nuli shehui) to feudalist society (fengjian

shehui) in the Western Zhou (1045 BC – 771 BC), the Warring States period, or the Jin Dynasty

(266 - 420). These interpretations aroused political events in 1950s China. One of the historians

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was Guo Moruo, the writer of Tang di zhi hua. He claimed that China had become a feudalist

state ever since the Warring States period. For the neo-Confucian philosophers like Qian Mu, it

is not about the relation of production but the traditional culture. For Qian, the pre-Qin Chinese

tradition was authentic, which could be posed against the “Western tradition,” defined by

industry and science (Karl 2017:104). In their contemporary writings, the Warring States period

was often used as an analogy to contemporary world politics. Tang Chun-I used it to describe the

“world-trend” (shi yun) and assured the rise of the orient (63). Qian Mu went much further about

this analogy that the Second World War was a “war of liberation,” because the “world trend”

was shifting “from division to unification” (you fen er he) (Qian 2001:45). The subtle difference

between Communist historians and neo-Confucian philosophers lies in their interpretations of the

Warring States period. Whereas Communist historians took it as a transition based upon the

material relation of production, neo-Confucian philosophers emphasized the essentialized virtues

of the orient and took the period as a reference to contemporary world politics. In this culture

war, Chang Cheh dovetailed the neo-Confucian sense of historiography and took the spirit of

sacrifice as one that represents oriental beauty.

From the differences between Chang Cheh’s film and Guo Murou’s play and Sima

Qian’s original story of the assassin, we can see how Chang Cheh’s Nie Zheng directly

responded to Guo Murou’s. His acrimonious disputes about Guo Murou’s use of cross-dressing

roles in his play led him to place the emphasis on the yanggang hero. In Guo’s play,92 the heroes

are not just Nie Zheng, but also his older sister Nie Ying, his girlfriend Chun Gu, his friend Han

92
Unlike Chang Cheh, who adapted Sima Qian’s The Biographies of Assassins, Guo Moruo based his play upon
classic publications of chronicles of ancient China like Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, Bamboo
Annals (zhushu ji nian) and Annals of the Warring States (zhan guo ce).
276
Shan Jian, who all commit assassination and lose their lives in the process. Even the guest

counselor (ke qing) Yan Zhongzi is bravely points his sword toward his political enemy and

attempts to kill. Chang Cheh’s The Assassin focuses only on Nie Zheng as the sole hero. Guo’s

play actually strengthens the collective heroes and agency of female power, and the female

cross-dressing scene is not about the romance of mistaken identities that Chang criticized.

Female cross-dressing in the play is for the heroine to take up the role of her twin brother and to

show her bravery and independence. Nie’s sister never gets married, and his girlfriend criticizes

the poverty and the collaborative government in front of the military guards. In Chang’s film, the

assassination is exclusive to men. Unlike Sima Qian’s original narrative that remarks Nie

Zheng’s sister Nie Ying’s sacrifice as lienu (heroic woman), Chang Cheh’s female characters are

a burden for Nie Zheng, who needs to wait for his mother’s death and his sister’s marriage before

going to carry out the suicide mission by Yan Zhongzi. Singing prostitutes are playthings of rich

men or people with high social status in the film. Only if women are serving the heroes are they

considered good women. The ending shot that slowly zooms out focusing on Nie Zheng’s

girlfriend Xia Ying pregnant with their child, from a high angle,93 places her in the colorful

reeds where she and Nie used to hang around. Women in the end are there simply to help carry

the bloodline of men’s passion and sacrifice.

Guo’s play allegorizes the Qin state as the Japanese empire and calls for unification, as

the Jin state was divided by three different states. The play focuses on the decision to assassinate

the minister Han Kuei and emperor from the Han state, who are going to collaborate with the Qin

state. Chang’s film shares the same thematic concern. However, much more emphasis is put on

Nie Zheng’s existential crisis than unification. His melancholic dialogue with his girlfriend Xia

93
The name Xia Ying (literally summer baby) in the film probably corresponds to Chun Gu (literally spring
maiden) in Guo’s play.
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Ying accentuates his uselessness in History: “I am just an ordinary person, and my hope and

passion are empty…but what should I do with such a brain and body? In the end, I was like that

grass and wood, putrid and spiritless.” Nie Zheng’s existential crisis is thrown into sharp relief

by putting the typical patriot Yan Zhongzi, the guest counselor who invites Nie Zheng to do the

assassination into the background. Yan is otherwise the typical patriotic character, advocating

nationalism and patriotism. Unlike Sima Qian’s story and Guo’s play, Nie Zheng in Chang

Cheh’s film has a teacher Wu, who asks students to keep themselves updated on current affairs.

The teacher lectures them on the fall of central China,

We used to wear big clothes and copper-made weapons. Now we all wear short Tartar-clothes (hu

fu duan zhuang) and use steel blades. We seem to be uncomfortable with that. However, things in

the world need to change. The fall of the statesmen in central China is due to their stubbornness.

Now we have a big enemy, the Qin state. The Qin has the same customs as Tartars (rong di). We

used to wear clothes with big sleeves and Qin people go to war bare chested. Why can’t we be

more flexible and wear their short Tartar clothes?

Luke White suggests that the Tartar clothes and the steel blades signify the Red Guards and the

counter-cultural movement in the West (2015:87). Beyond that simple allegory, the central

China-Tartar binary is typical of Chang’s Han-centered ethnonationalism. The saying of

“flexibility” also echoes Chang’s call for modernizing traditional virtues in the face of strong

nations. In a later scene, the teacher gives Nie Zheng a sacred sword, “Shu Luo” which was

passed down from Fuchai of the Wu state during the Spring and Autumn Period (771 BC – 476

BC). Fuchai was the emperor from the South. As mentioned, the “South” denotes revolutionary

rebellion in Chang’s historiography. The sword also refers to the suicidal commitment by Wu

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Zixu, who received the sword from Fuchai. All these ethno-nationalistic elements (the Tartar

analogy, the stories of the sword) are absent in Guo’s play and original story. Due to his negative

bias towards scholar-like characters like Yan Zhongzi, Chang’s nationalism lies not in Yan

Zhongzi but Nie Zheng, who struggles with his existential crisis. To him, Yan Zhongzi’s

nationalism is one with calculation and planning, while Nie Zheng skips all the calculation of

cost and cares not the consequences. His existential being and spirit depends on instantaneity.

There are three different temporalities layered in the characters and narratives. Nie

Zheng’s temporality is a “now-or-never” instantaneity, which articulates his naivety in politics

and existential crisis as a will-to-power. His dialogue with his girlfriend in the reeds makes this

evident: “I am young and strong. Human beings will die eventually. Do you prefer me doing

something great before death to being an old man who can’t even hold his knife to kill a pig and

dies like a stranger in a foreign state?” Contrasting his temporality is his girlfriend Xia Ying’s

“past.” She says, “I think it is good to be ordinary. We can’t care too much about the world and

country; we don’t even need to. I just want my quiet life.” Nie’s sister Nie Ying entails this

temporality too. She reminds Nie of his mom and sister after Yan Zhongzi has invited him to be

his assassin. However, right before Nie’s assassination, his girlfriend understands his meaningful

action and says, “Now I understand that the longer we live, the more we suffer; let’s us have a

shorter yet happier life…the remaining few days will be our whole life. We only have “now” and

no more ‘future’.” The third temporality is from Yan Zhongzi’s “future.” He is a guest counselor

in the Han state. He is worried about its future if the emperor collaborates with the Qin state. He

is like the politicians Chang Cheh may frown on in real life. In short, Yan Zhongzi’s temporality

is teleological, pointing to the construction and establishment (jiangongliye). Step-by-step

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planning and calculation serve as nation-building for minister or counselors in the court, which is

in contrast to civilian hero Nie Zheng’s instantaneity and spontaneity.

The dialectics of temporalities also structures the stylistic composition in the film.

Inspired by Fei Mu’s Confucius (1940), Chang Cheh shot the entire film from a low angle with a

static 40mm lens (2002: 66). To present the grandness of History, he uses forty medium and long

shots throughout the film (1989: 219) to show the symmetry of the settings like the opening

scene of the palace and the sword-training school. Put in the middle ground or background,

individuals in the face of History are blocked by the things in the foreground. Nie Zheng is

always visually “blocked” in the middle and background. When Nie Zheng works as a butcher

and his sister asks him about the invitation of Yan Zhongzi, he is blocked by the wooden door

blinds in the background. Even in the portrait shot of Nie, a shadow of the blind is cast on his

face. Wooden door blinds, big columns and silkscreens are recurring motifs of the grandness of

History in the film. When Xia Ying is notified of the return of Nie Zheng, she goes through a

long corridor. The camera focuses more on the left-hand side of the corridor – making one-point

perspective along the brown columns on the left-hand side bigger than that of the right-hand side.

A static low camera angle, accompanied with the solemn music, sees two sides of female

servants on their knees rolling the blinds one by one from foreground to background until we see

Xia Ying holding Nie’s sword covered with a blue scarf in the vanishing point. She then walks

from the lower right background to the middle foreground. The columns, blinds, screens, which

are articulated with the static low camera angle, register the coldness and solemnity in History

out of which the film forms capture the death of yanggang hero Nie Zheng.

If “History” is spatialized with static angles, long takes and symmetry, Nie Zheng’s

action, especially in his showdown with the minister, associates abundant close-ups, scanted

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angles, quick pans, constructively rapid editing with his “existential instantaneity.” The tension

is shown when Nie is surrounded by archers and soldiers. Dressed in white in contrast to the

soldiers who are in dark green and red, Nie fights in the middle of a hallway, where two sides of

the screen see yellow-tiled roofs and black columns underneath pointing to the inner court in the

center. When he fights along the hallway, the camera tracks horizontally and the black columns

intermittently block our view of his fighting. Two kinds of editing and camera angles mix when

Nie Zheng cuts the blind and chases after the minister. When Nie rolls down the stairs, the

symmetrical lines are disrupted with handheld camera movement.

After he assassinates the minister, he goes back down the hallway. Now, archers are

standing by on the roof, while Nie Zheng is shown in the middle from a high angle. Weakening

his power with more powerful symmetrical lines by the columns and rooftops, the camera cranes

down and zooms in Nie as if to show his helplessness in the court. Leaning on a black column,

Nie, after several quick zooms, cuts his abdomen. After his last fight, in order to protect his

identity from being known, he disembowels himself and cuts his eyes out.

In this scene of disembowelment, Chang makes a halt in History. When Nie Zheng

slashes his eyes, the shot becomes a black screen – a non-diegetic insert of a stage performance.

Showing the sword sliding rightward, signifying he is slashing the eyes, the camera shows the

blood spraying on the screen. No sooner, a wide shot shows Nie, who is barely lit and standing in

the dark background, dropping his sword and falling down. Jerry Liu argues that it is a form of

transcendence that elevates death into transcendence. History is halted by the death of the hero

since he swiftly ascends to the realm of myth (Liu 1981:160–61). Yip Man Fung also states that

this death “leads not to nothingness but to immortality…Nie can only attain ultimate liberation in

the form of a brutal, but heroic, death” (Yip 2017:39). While I agree with their points about

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transcendence, what does this actually lead us to? It goes no farther than the “existential

instantaneity” itself. Diegetically, he wants to protect himself from being known, but non-

dietgetically this act of disembowelment and slashing his eyes is to be seen/known in History.

We can see in The Invincible Fist (1969) and Vengeance! (1970) that the moment that heroes

turn blind is that of arresting the time in History by way of slow-motion, freeze frame, non-

diegetic sequence, etc. The suicidal assassination instead confirms the impulse to the light, with a

very sober look at the possibility that the darkness will win. It is a teaching of Chinese

civilization and culture that Chinese have forgotten. To conservative revolutionaries, neo-

Confucianists and even Chiang kai-shek, the Chinese way of self-sacrifice is a beautiful virtue,

one that can help build the Chinese national essence, representative of the orient that can

challenge the western values, defined by instrumentality, commodification or Communism.

Because of this, the instantaneity of this yanggang hero is calling for “to-be-seen-ness.” Like a

microscope, the film arrests our gaze to this microscopic instantaneity.

Now, we can have a new understanding of Nie Zheng. He is a model that Chang Cheh

can use to battle against Guo Murou’s Nie Zheng. As part of the culture war, the yanggang

hero’s sacrifice performs “to-be-seen-ness,” leading back the transcendence to himself. Rejecting

Yan Zhongzi as the hero, the future-looking counselor, Chang Cheh makes this virtue of

“existential instantaneity” visible in the national history. The hope in Xia Ying’s child will carry

this bloodline of noble virtues in the next generation towards the unification of China. That

“instantaneity” registering the existential crisis in the “historical wuxia” has a different rendition

in the contemporary setting in Boxer from Shantung.

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 Fig 47 Nie Zheng and his final fight are blocked by columns or bamboo curtain

Fig 48 Wooden door blinds, big columns and silkscreen blinds are recurring motifs of the grandness of History in the film

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Fig. 49 This act of non-diegetic performance of slashing his eyes is to be seen/known in History

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Working Class and Spaces - Boxer from Shantung

By the year 1971, Chang Cheh was already a blockbuster director, whose films starting

from The Assassin and One-Armed Swordsman reached at least one million dollars at the local

box office when The Love Eterne in 1963 received around three hundred thousand dollars at the

local box office before getting becoming a huge hit in Taiwan. Different new stars like Wang

Yu, David Chiang and Ti Lung emerged. In 1971, Yue Feng, a veteran director, contemplated

making a film about Ma Suzhen, who was a female warrior modelled on the spin-off story of Ma

Yong-zhen, a historical gangster in the late nineteenth century Shanghai who has acquired iconic

status in Chinese folklore. Disgusted by the use of the fictional female character, Chang Cheh

planed to make another hit with a new star. He made a short advertisement film Xin yingxiong pu

or Repertoire of New Heroes for his Boxer from Shantung (“Ma Yongzhen” 1972:48). Viewers

who watched the short film sent letters to Shaw Brothers and selected a new actor Chan Kuen-tai

to be the main lead.

Yip Man Fung argues that the film seeks “to reexamine, and cast doubt on, the

mythologies associated with the capitalist discourses prevailing in Hong Kong at the time” (Yip

2017:42). Contrary to Yip, Po Fung thinks that Chang Cheh was now a big director who believed

only in working ability and power and did not care so much about justice in this film (Po

2010:37). Chang Cheh explained his perspective in an interview after the success of the film,

What I wanted to say in the film is that a man is climbing the social ladder in a big city. A story

about how he can’t make it and falls. A ‘wen’ (melodramatic or literary) director may choose

another character. But I think the most powerful is physical strength (wuli). A writer or a judge

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 could climb a social ladder too. But I would prefer Ma Yong Zhen (the character in the film). It is

not so much making him a hero as a hooligan (liumeng). That is more convincing

(Chang 1972:19).

Apparently, he wanted to address the underclass in the city. However, what interested him was

the physical strength of a hero rather than the class problem in capitalist society. The anti-hero in

the film did contribute to wuxia a new sub-genre, the Shanghai Bund (shanghai tan) triad film.

Some may counter-argue that in many Chang Cheh films there are always working-class heroes.

They fight against corrupted bosses, employers, warlords and syndicates. Luke White argues that

that Chang Cheh’s working-class masculinity paved the way for the proletarian and peasant

protagonists typical of the kung fu films of the 1970s like Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury (1972), Bruce

Lee’s The Way of Dragon (1972) and many other wuxia and kung fu films and TV shows in the

following decades (White 2015:87). Given his commitment to conservative revolution, Chang

Cheh’s working-class heroes are more about their magical power rather than working class

solidarity or their rights. The workers’ power became nullified as spectacles. Chang Cheh

continued the culture war by taking advantage of using working-class masculinity to counter any

threat from forming any social revolution. In this section, we see show how Chang Cheh

managed the issues of working-class heroes in his films, and how Chang Cheh wrote-off the

working-class in Boxer from Shantung. If The Assassin exhibits the instantaneity of the assassin,

Boxer from Shantung spatializes the existential crisis as a cyclical ladder. Yip Man Fung (46)

tries to prove that Chang Cheh launched a critique of capitalism in Hong Kong by using the

recurring motif of “stairs” in the film. The hero breaks the stairs down before he dies. However,

the “stairs” are “twisted” by Chang into a Möbius strip. The social ladder in his film is nothing

but Sisyphean stairs, leading to nowhere but the starting point. Like many conservative

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revolutionaries, Chang Cheh criticized capitalism and communism. What he criticizes is the

decadence of capitalist modernity, defined by commodities and a sumptuous way of life. His

criticism in the film is confined in an existential and even nihilistic way, abstracting labor

content and colonial reality. Rejecting the linear progression of urban modernity, Chang

provided his causal analysis and world view of capitalist society. It is a constant, incessant,

never-changing dead-end.

According to Sam Ho, Chang Cheh’s films had a “class sensibility,” featuring grassroot

heroes. He argues that these characters were “worldly” and had “lowly social positions.” Unlike

previous Mandarin costume pictures and historical dramas, they were more down-to-earth (Ho

2003:118–19). Indeed, ever since One-Armed Swordsman, Chang’s films had portrayed

working-class heroes and represented people from the underclasses. From One-armed

Swordsman on, the hero becomes a peasant at the end and, in its sequel, Return of the One-

Armed Swordsman (1969) he remains in the farmland at first. We also see Nie Zheng as a

butcher in The Assassin; a waiter in The New One-armed Swordsman (1971); construction

workers in The Angry Guest (1971); female workers in The Duel (1971); young waiters and

workers in The Delinquent (1973); poor fishermen in The Pirate (1973); textile workers in Men

from the Monastery (1974) and Disciple of Shaolin (1975); a rickshaw driver in The New Shaolin

Boxer (1976), to name a few.

Going back to the case of The Assassin, we can see that Nie Zheng feels ashamed with

his butcher job. He cannot release his anger because he has to do the work to take care of his

unmarried sister and ailing mother. Several shot-reverse-shots between him and the pigs in a sty

signify his anxiety over having to work in this environment with pigs. In Guo Moruo’s play that

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Chang responded to in his film, Nie Zheng enjoys being a butcher because it can train his will to

kill, “I tolerated it and trained myself when I lived as a dog-butcher” (Guo 1986:213). To Chang,

labor is the place where dreams do not belong. It is an act of passiveness, punishment and

suffering. The female workers in The Duel, for example, are controlled by the gangsters and

brought to be prostitutes. They are liberated only when a young hero kills the boss, breaks into

his office and gives the workers money and contracts. Working-class life is somewhere to escape

from, but working-class muscle and masculinity attracted Chang Cheh. In his films set in modern

days, scenes of showdowns usually take place in construction sites or factory warehouses. The

young hero in The Delinquent, belittled by peers for his useless step-father, starts fighting in

piles of scrap metal. Framed behind the scrapyard, they use the rusty metal bars to fight. In The

Angry Guest, tower cranes are placed in the mise-en-scène in the final fight between heroes and

the gangsters. Workers’ shovels, spades and excavators in the site become their weapons. By

focusing on their strength, naked chests, fists, muscles, sweat and blood, workers are always shot

with a sharp focus.

In other words, on the one hand, labor is passive and surrendering to reality. It is never

about dream-making. A hero can only find disgrace and contempt in a working place. Workers

are waiting for heroes to come and liberate them. Workers cannot be liberated until a hero comes

and rescues them. On the other hand, few workers have magical strength and power. Working-

class masculinity is born from the working class but detached from them. Law Kar (1997)

commenting on Chang Cheh’s heroes argued that there were no working masses and emotional

content, let alone details of characterization: “For the sake of heroism, Chang Cheh ignores the

working masses. It is a heroism without masses” (Law et al. 1997:31). Working-class heroes are

what Chang Cheh capitalized on to accentuate the magical power of the underclass, but after the

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death of the rich, the workers remain within the bounds of the existing society, and they should

cast away any hateful ideas against the bourgeois structure and the existing law and order.

Boxer from Shantung was based on a historical figure Ma Yong Zhen (1840-1879), who

was a boxer from Shandong. He worked as a street performer in the British Concession in

Shanghai. After the defeat of a policeman by Ma, he became more powerful and affiliated with

bandits and officials in the region. He even committed crimes like extortion and kidnapping. Out

of a conflict with a horse trader, Ma Yong Zhen was killed in an ambush. Since then his life

became a legendary story. It was adapted into opera plays, films and TV shows. In Chang’s The

Boxer of Shantung, Ma Yong Zhen is from the early Republican era rather than the late Qing. To

emphasize the working-class power and the material desire in modern Shanghai, he is no longer

a gangster, but an immigrant worker.

In the film, we don’t know anything about Ma Yong-zhen’s family background other

than the fact that he comes from Shandong. The film starts with Ma Yong-zhen and his sidekick

friend Xiao Jiang Bei living in a crowded tenement. They are poor workers, but we can’t see

what their work is. Ma has a pair of powerful fists. Unlike previous wuxia films, the film shows

no teachers or masters. In other words, the heroes’ collectivity we have analyzed from the films

in 1950s and early 1960s was reduced into a “free labor” hero, who has no obligations to avenge

the death of his teachers or masters. Or his martial arts are either nothing sacred or self-taught.

Although he is a worker, the film has only one scene showing Ma carrying a sandbag on his

shoulder. Most construction site workers at the beginning are barely seen. Workers who have

active roles in the film are Ma’s friend, Xiao Jiang Bei and girlfriend, Jin Lingzi. Xiao Jiang Bei

works as a coachman when Ma gets rich. Jin Lingzi and her father are a poor teahouse singer and

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a musician respectively. That father-and-daughter duo who travel and sing is apparently modeled

from Street Angels, a 1937 left-wing Chinese film directed by Yuan Muzhi. However, these real

workers are marginal in the film narratives. Instead, they are not the heroes, and they avoid

getting involved in the final battle between Ma and the gangsters. At the end of the story, they

get on a train and escape from the calamity in Shanghai.

There are two representations of workers in the film. By these two images of workers,

Chang cancels out any adversarial effect working-class hatred may bring. Workers are divided

into two main groups. The first has no dreams in Shanghai. They give in to labor, which is

considered as a means of subsistence. They are coachmen, foremen and construction workers in

the film. The other one is the grassroot workers who have dreams like Ma Yong Zhen and Tan

Si. Tan Si is a renowned young gangster. Always wearing a smile on his face and holding a long

smoking pipe between his lips, Tan Si is a model for Ma Yong Zhen to follow. Tan Si’s

contempt for Ma’s working for subsistence encourages him to climb the social ladder. More

importantly, Tan Si and Ma share a code of honor and friendship. When Ma Yong Zhen gets

rich, he buys the same type of carriage and smoking pipe as Tan does. So the dreams are not

about fighting against alienation but for material wealth and fame.

However, having a dream is not enough to distinguish Ma from others. Ma Yong Zhen

has a pair of magical fists. He can knock down bandits and a tall Russian wrestler. To exaggerate

the powerful fists, Ma always fights the axe gang with his bare hands. Hands of a free laborer are

the only means of production, who can sell himself to capitalists. Fists are then aestheticized and

fetishized as the magical instruments in the competitive society. Yip Man Fung points out the

Janus-faced working-class heroes. He argues that Bruce Lee’s body exhibits an “emblem of

liberated labor” with which the working-class audience could readily identify (2017:31).

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However, that kind of body is tightly linked to the spirit of competition and relentless pursuit of

success. The heightened emphasis on the body as a means of labor is characteristic of a rapidly

growing modern industrial society (33). While I agree with his points, the problem is that that

kind of aestheticization of the working-class body or means of labor precisely aligns with the

fact that the more capitalists affirm the discourses of the magical power of workers, the more the

working-class body becomes the source of values and wealth they can exploit from. Ascribing

supernatural creative power to labor, Chang Cheh can make sure that the man who does not

possess any property other than his own hands must make a choice between being the slave of

other men or struggling for fame. Despite the aestheticization of workers’ means of production,

Ma’s fists function not so much for working as fighting for reputation. It flips over the saying

that existence precedes essence. Virtues and fame became their foundation of existence. The

virtue makes him a kind gangster. When his lackeys begin to extort money from street peddlers

as the previous gangsters did, he shows mercy on them, saying “It is fine for the peddlers to owe

us money. He owes us three days’ money; he will settle if he has; we all started out poor. We all

had our penniless days. Don’t press them.” In this case, in order to prevent doing the same things

as bandits did, Ma becomes a kind gangster. Criminal exhortation is no longer a social problem,

but instead relates to personal behavior and morals. Kindness then reinforces the existing

relations by putting on a humanistic mask for gangsters.

Who is the class enemy in the film? There are no capitalists, imperialists and colonizers

in the semi-feudal and semi-colonial Shanghai. From the very beginning, Ma Yong-zhen is in

conflict with the innkeeper, as he is rude to Ma’s friend and looks down on poor tenants in the

tenement. The next conflict is between Ma and the coachmen of Tan Si. All of them are from the

working class. The primary contradiction is one between Ma and Boss Yang, who has four

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bandit lackeys controlling Shanghai opium dens, brothel houses and casinos. Even though Ma

dreams of being one of the top gangsters like Tan Si, Boss Yang is not his model to follow. Boss

Yang is calculative, sneaky and conniving. Because Boss Yang murders Tan Si for his opium

business, he shares no codes of honor as the one that exists between Tan Si and Ma Yong Zhen.

On the one hand, Chang Cheh displaces class and social issues in the modern day by the logic of

a rags-to-riches gangster world. On the other hand, the enemies are within the same working

class. It is a contradiction within the working class more than class antagonism against capitalists

or landlords.

In other words, Chang Cheh divides two types of working-class people and ascribes a

magical power to those who have dreams. However, that aestheticization of the bare hands plays

a role in fighting for fame rather than subsistence. The working-class hero has no more

obligation in class solidarity than being a kind gangster. The enemy is, therefore, abstracted from

reality, displacing a capitalist into a gangster boss. In the showdown between Ma and the big

boss, Ma falls down the stairs four times. In the ruins of the broken stairs, he finally avenges the

death of Tan Si and kills Boss Yang before he is chopped to death.

What Chang Cheh really criticizes in the film is material decadence provided by capitalist

modernity. Like many conservative revolutionaries illustrated by Brian Tsui, Chang Cheh offers

a critique of capitalism by “appealing to shared customs and spiritual traditions” (Tsui 2018:14).

In this film, he criticizes the material wealth and commodities rather than capitalism per se. It

manifests via the imagery of stairs. The imagery of stairs appears three times. All of which are

how Ma Yong-zhen gains recognition from others: Ma Yong-zhen fights against the Boss

Yang’s lackeys in his tenement; he takes over Boss Yang’s casino; his showdown with Boss

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Yang in a two-story restaurant. The imagery of stairs, or social ladder points to a teleological and

linear progression that material wealth can be realized at the end of the last step. Boss Yang is on

the top of the ladder, while Ma is struggling in the stairs. If we use the above reference of

temporalities to describe the characters in the film, Boss Yang is a man of planning and plots,

and Ma’s friend Xiao Jiang Bei and girlfriend Jin Lingzi are ordinary people who compromise

by staying away from any confrontation. Heroes are always struggling in in-between spaces.

However, unlike The Assassin, Boxer from Shantung spatializes the temporalities through the

imagery of the stairs. The spaces of the stairs become Chang Cheh’s criticism against the empty

promises guaranteed by modernity – the mythic values of upward striving underpinning capitalist

Shanghai. “I heard Shanghai is full of gold (opportunities). What is needed is just strength,” says

Ma Yong-zhen, who is disappointed with Shanghai. The frantic laughter, with which both Tan Si

and Ma Yong Zhen die tragically, denotes their realization of the nothingness at the end of the

“stairs.”

In other films, Chang Cheh’s use of stairs, bridges and towers also signifies the

nothingness at the end. Heroes must fall tragically from the buildings, towers, or staircases in

Have Sword Will Travel (1969), Vengeance!, Dead End, The Heroic Ones or The New One-

armed Swordsman to name a few. By that recurring motifs, Chang Cheh “twists” the linear

structure into a cyclical one. The linear structure is not broken but “twisted” into a Möbius strip.

It means that the social structure remains unchanged even though Ma Yong-zhen topples it down

at the end and kills the big boss. The social structure is too big for Ma Yong-zhen to oppose

against. The stairs provide nothing for Ma Yong-zhen, as they are an abstract metaphorical motif

that displaces social problems, class reality and even working-class people. In other words,

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Chang Cheh’s critique is based not on social reality but an existential metaphor – turning modern

heroes into Sisyphus trapped in-between the stairs.

This is how Chang Cheh understands capitalist modernity. The material wealth and desire

in a modern city never stop. The incessant desire causes never-ending chaos. “In Shanghai, some

rise and some fall every day,” a carriage dealer says, commenting on the rise of Ma Yong Zhen.

Ma’s girlfriend Jin Lingzi is disappointed when she sees Ma becomeing a gang leader in the

neighborhood and his lackeys continue to exhort money from ordinary people. Ma feels sorry

and returns her money, but she scolds Ma, “I won’t get the money from you. Spare us the

protection fee for ten days. Master Tan Si, Brother Ma, or Jin Laoqi from earlier days or whoever

is in charge next, we must pay protection fees to him. What’s the difference?” The fact that

materiality is transient is what the gangster world is all about. The warning lesson is similar to

the incessant suffering in the Buddhist hell. When Tan Si is murdered, Ma Yong Zhen rushes to

him. Stunned as Ma realizes his impending fate, Ma copies Tan Si in every way: clothes,

smoking pipe and carriage. The role model is now killed, and Ma then realizes his Sisyphean

destiny. In terms of narrative, the opening titles show the rapid change of montages of tall

buildings and clock towers in Shanghai. All painted in red and shot from high angles illustrating

the vertigo of modern Shanghai. In the closing credits, it is a static low angle shot of the railroad

track, showing the departure of a train. Both tall buildings (vertical) and railroad track

(horizontal) signify the linear development, but now function as a motif of reincarnation. The

same story will continue with another round of characters. The departure of a train hints at the

arrival of another train. Similar to the opening and ending scenes of Jean Renoir’s Toni (1935),

the immigrant workers share the same destiny. Indeed, a few months later after the release of

Boxer from Shantung, Chang Cheh made a sequel Man of Iron with the same cast and story. Its

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Chinese title Chou Lianhuan literally means the wheel of hatred. In short, the wheel of the

gangster world is a place full of incessant desires and killing, which forestalls any agency of

working-class people.

The imagery of stairs and towers is not new in film history. In early Chinese cinema a

tricky staircase and a high tower were used in comedy and wuxia films. Laborer’s Love (1922)

shows the craftmanship and wit of a labororer who transforms a staircase into a sliding ramp.

The cross-dressed heroine in Heroine White Rose (1929) shows her agility on a similarly tricky

staircase when she seeks revenge in the family rival Gongbao (Gong’s castle). The monkey

master and the heroine in Red Heroine (1929) showcase their skills of rope climbing up a high

building. In the West, the stairs in Max Ophüls’ The Letter from Unknown Woman (1948) and

Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) function as the psychological development and the distinction

between private and public space. Unlike the stairs in Hollywood, the stairs in Boxer from

Shantung are a commentary on the existential struggle in a modern city. The imagery of stairs,

accompanied by the dialectic use of high and low angles, shows the rise and fall of Ma Yong

Zheng. For example, a high angle starts as an establishing shot, showing the line of lightbulbs lit

up in Ma’s neighborhood in the evening. It tilts down to show a group of workers finishing their

jobs on the construction site. In the upper left-hand corner, Ma is in the spotlight, facing

backward and eating at a street vendor. His presence occupies less than one-third of the screen.

During the conversation with his friend, the close-up shot/reverse shot between Ma and his

friend describes his dream of being his idol Tan Si. Before ending the scene, the camera tracks

out and rises to show them with a high angle. The dialectic use of the camera angles offers

commentary on his rise and fall. The thematic example would be his first ascent on the social

ladder. Ma Yong Zheng, shot at a low angle and framed between the gaps of the stairs, walks up

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the stairway with triumphant background music. A static long shot then tracks in his ascent and

shows the line of his workmates looking at him from the ground. The camera continues to track

in and passes by his friend Xiao Jiang Bei, who says “he is really going up the ladder” and stops

to frame Ma’s back from a low angle. In order to accentuate the motif of the rise and fall of a

gangster, Chang Cheh makes the yanggang hero fall four times. Intercutting slow motion with

normal speed, a low-angle wide shot shows the fall of Ma. Another wide shot then shows him

from a high angle, fixing him on the right-hand side of the screen. The second fall also combines

the use of slow motion and low angle. This fall puts Ma into a frenzy of rage. He then carries a

bandit and bumps into another one, who is leaning on the column of the stairs. The fight makes a

hole in the column, which anticipates the fall of the entire staircase. A handheld high-angle

camera moving between the balusters frames the exhausted Ma, who is struggling to climb the

stairway. The big boss’s lackey kicks him. He falls the third time with a normal speed. He then

breaks the broken column and makes the entire stairway fall. The big boss and his two lackeys

fall into the ruins of the stairs. Ma approaches him and finally kills the big boss by slitting his

throat. After he finishes the big boss, he bursts into a peal of frantic laughter. Suddenly, one of

the lackeys chops him from behind. The frantic laughter becomes a non-diegetic noise. Shot with

a wide angle and in slow motion, Ma adds the last balletic fall over the remaining stairs and dies.

Despite the spectacular dialectic uses of low and high angles, the contradictions could not

lead to any transcendental understanding of the material conditions of Ma Yong Zhen and his

working reality. Since the contradictions are empty of material contents, the dialectic

developments cannot reflect any class reality but idealistic virtues like brotherhood, friendship,

and existential struggles in the gangster world. The dialectic use of the camera angles and the

recurring motif of stairs at best provide a critique of the material wealth and commodities in an

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abstract Shanghai. However, the smack of cynicism and fatalism in the rags-to-riches gangster

story, the imagery of the stairs and the dialectic camera angles break themselves down into a

cyclical structure, closing off any agency of the working class and its heroes.

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Fig. 50 The opening titles show opening titles show the rapid change of montages of tall buildings in Shanghai while

a static shot shows departure of a train in the ending titles

Fig. 51 The dialectic use of high angle and low angle to show the destiny of Ma Yong Zhen. In the upper left-hand

corner, Ma is in the spotlight, facing backward and eating at a street vendor

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Fig. 52 With the imagery of stairs, the dialectic use of high-low angle captures Ma’s rise and fall

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Queerness as Enemies – Shaolin Martial Arts

Ever since the production of Stanley Kwan’s documentary Yang ± Yin: Gender in

Chinese Cinema (1996), in which Kwan provided queer readings of Chinese cinema, especially

wuxia and action films, yanggang heroes have become a significant subject for gender studies

and queer studies. The male bonding, muscles, naked chests, the blood and brutality, and the

same-sex relationships in Chang Cheh’s films offer a spectacle for the male gaze (Bérénice

2003:22; Yip 2017:25) and a viewing experience comprising of “a touch of adventure, leading

quietly – secretly, in fact – under the public gaze to the realm of satisfaction” (Lam 2003:178).

The cinema texts are full of desire and love. Gayness lies in its identification of those characters

who care not so much about the existing moral rules as their own desires. The forbidden love and

desire from loyal wives and brothers become a site for gay people to search in that peach garden,

a symbol of fraternal loyalty turning into same-sex desire (Maike 2003:30). Although Chang

Cheh censured those kinds of theories and statements in his writings (Chang 2002:77), some

even suggested Chang himself is gay (Seife 2003). The question about whether there are

homosexual and homosocial desires in his films should be rephrased into one that historicizes

queerness in the culture war. Also, the antithesis of the yanggang is not just about femininity but

queerness. Queerness has its political connotation in the culture war. Even though Stephen Teo

tries to defend Chang’s invocation of wuxia’s romantic tradition stressing friendship and the

unconditional love among same-sex comrades against homoerotic undertones, he misses the

point that same-sex friendship is built against queerness (Teo 2009:154).

I will argue that queerness, to conservative revolutionaries like Chang Cheh, is the

ultimate enemy, which denotes all kinds of unnatural beings, including revolutionary women,

men who cannot reproduce and martial arts that retract sex organs. From 1974 to 1976, with

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Shaw Brothers’ initial support, Chang Cheh started a semi-independent film company called

Chang’s Film Company in Taiwan, and produced the Shaolin series, revitalizing and retooling

the legendary Shaolin figures that were a hit in 1950s Cantonese films. We will see the crisis

Shaw Brothers faced in the mid-1970s, and what the Shaolin series signified in that culture war.

This section is structured by this question: what is the signification of queerness and its

relationship to Communism in the Cold War’s cultural containment and its threat to purifying

Chinese opera as part of the national building in Republican China? Shaolin Martial Arts will be

my focus because it illustrates how yanggang heroes’ ultimate enemies are not women but a pair

of queer martial artists who can retract their penises and kill Shaolin disciples.

According to Ng Ho (2008), the year 1974 was a disastrous year for Shaw Brothers. It

was not only the global oil crisis that led to the energy crisis and high inflation in Hong Kong,

but also the crash in the Hong Kong stock market. This resulted in a high unemployment rate. In

the film industry, many governments from major overseas markets banned imports, restricted

exhibition, and censored martial arts films. For example, Brunei, Sarawak, and Sabah banned

any exhibitions of wuxia films in 1973. Singapore and Taiwan set a stricter censorship policy on

violence and nudity. Even in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, martial arts films were banned for their

alleged corruption of the minds of young people (Ng 2008:31-34). Even though Bruce Lee’s

films ushered in a kung fu wave in the United States and Europe, the sensation and spectacle

could not sustain long-term marketing and distribution networks and it only lasted for a few

years. In Hong Kong, the threat of television was serious. Ever since Run Run Shaw had founded

the first free-to-air television broadcast TVB in 1967, other cable television companies followed

suit like Commercial Television and Rediffusion Television (later Asia Television) in 1973.

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Competition amongst these companies and their channels fueled the ratings war by importing

and producing various dramas and variety shows.

The biggest threat was the rise of Golden Harvest. Raymond Chow and Leonard Ho, the

founders of Golden Harvest, were executives and managers with Shaw Brothers. They left in

1970 to form their studio. Although they didn’t have the vertical scale of production, distribution

and exhibition as Shaw’s did, they utilized a newer and more flexible approach to independent

producers and filmmakers. Because of that model, smaller and independent studios emerged. The

film industry churned out many martial arts flicks like before. Hong Kong was over-supplied by

martial arts films that were roughly cut and hastily made. Many of those studios were either in

the hands of speculative investors or Triad members/ secret society members.

To respond to these crises, Shaw Brothers first recruited TV stars to play roles in their

films. Movietown was renovated to have bigger and more spectacular sets. Since Raymond

Chow and Leonard Ho had gone, Mona Fong, the wife of Run Run Shaw, played an important

role in cutting production budgets. Every film production was limited to two months. To cross

the national and regional boundaries, Shaw Brothers were interested in making co-productions

like Supermen Against the Orient (Italy, 1973), This Time I’ll Make You Rich (West Germany

and Italy, 1975), Super Stooges vs the Wonder Women (Italy, 1975), The Legend of the Seven

Golden Vampires (UK, 1974), Blood Money (Italy, Spain, 1974), and Cleopatra Jones and the

Casino of Gold (US, 1975) to name a few.

From the above titles, we can see Shaw Brothers started to co-produce B movies that

encompass action, horror, comedy, adventure, crime and other exploitation film elements. In

local markets, Shaw Brothers tried films that featured elements of local thrillers (drug addicts,

prostitutes and gamblers), foreign porno stars, and superstitions from Southeast Asia, including

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films such as The Bamboo House of Dolls (1973), The Kiss of Death (1973) and Black Magic

(1975). Shaw Brothers even re-released some pictures like Li Han-hsiang’s The Kingdom and the

Beauty and The Love Eterne to squeeze the “surplus value” of the old pictures (Ng 2008:52). To

fully capitalize on Shaw Brothers’ assets and capital, Chang Cheh was asked to found Chang’s

Film Company (or Zhang Gong) in Taiwan and inaugurated the Shaolin series, featuring the new

star Alexander Fu.

The Shaolin series aimed to revitalize the familiar Guangdong legends so as to cater to

the local market. The series includes historical and fictional figures like Fong Sai Yuk, Woo Wei

Kin, and Hung Xi Guan, which I have discussed in Chapter 2. Shaw Brothers did try to retool the

stories of Wong Fei-hung and produced films like He Meng Hua’s The Master of Kung Fu

(Huang fei hong, 1973) and Wang Feng’s Rivals of Kung fu (Huang fei hung yi qu ding cai pao,

1974), but they failed. The Shaolin series includes eight films, five of which revolved around the

same story. They are Heroes Two (1974), Men from the Monastery (1974), Five Shaolin Masters

(1974), Shaolin Temple (1976) and The Shaolin Avengers (1976). The story retools the theme of

“oppose the Qing and restore the Ming” (fan qing fu ming) and the suppression of the Shaolin

Temple by the Qing government. The disciples go into exile and scatter around China to spread

the martial arts. The Shaolin disciples represent justice and righteousness while disciples from

the rival school Wudang are evil, and collaborate with the Qing government. Shaolin Martial

Arts (1974), Disciples of Shaolin (1975) and The New Shaolin Boxers (1976) are the other three

films, which have the same antagonisms between Hans and Manchurians. The Manchurians are

exploiting bosses, controlling businesses in Guangdong and collaborating with evil martial arts

schools. Disciples of Shaolin, which won the Mandela Award (Best Film in Praise of Nationalist

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Spirits) at the Asian Film Festival in 1975, is an adaptation of Boxer from Shantung into a

Shaolin world.

There are significant differences between Chang Cheh’s series and those in the 1950s.

First, Chang Cheh used young stars (around their twenties) who know real martial arts, while

Sek Yin-Tsi, who played Fong Sai Yuk in his thirties, was a Cantonese opera artist. Older actors

and characters often feature Cantonese martial arts films in the 1950s, including Kwan Tak Hing

who played the father-figure Wong Fei Hung in his fifties. In terms of narratives, many Shaolin

heroes die at the end in Chang’s series. The series did not have happy endings like those in the

1950s. Instead, the films stop at the hope of the surviving heroes passing down the Shaolin

martial arts. The Shaolin series was about youth culture and gangster traditions. The Qing

government in the series, to Ng, was an innuendo of the colonial government in Hong Kong (Ng

2003:291). However, I disagree with his point because according to the historiography of

conservative revolutionaries, the Qing government is an innuendo of Communist China. The

main difference between Chang Cheh’s Shaolin series and those in the 1940s and 1950s, apart

from the production budget and scale, I suggest, is the strong sense of political defiance against

the Qing suppression. That political connotation is not to be found in 1950s films.

In these difficult years for Shaw Brothers, Chang Cheh continued his culture war by

conjuring up the image of the totalitarian Qing government and its suppression of the justice of

Shaolin disciples. For example, Empress Dowager Cixi and the populist Boxer rebellion in Boxer

Rebellion, which was made during the same period, are respectively allusive to Jiang Qing, the

wife of Mao, and the Red Guards. That image of Empress Dowager Cixi and the Boxers charges

gender and race with political connotations. The Qing is queer as it is a regime controlled by a

foreign race. The gender association in the Han-centered historiography by the conservative is

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the unison between yin and yang. The chain of transitive association works, therefore, like this:

Qing China = foreign race = barbarian = ethnic minority = queerness = imbalance of yin-yang =

Communist China. The yanggang hero aims to redress that imbalance. That articulation is

possible only by adding to the Nationalist historiography the cultural containment by the U.S.

hegemony in the Cold War and the national building of Peking opera in the Republican era. All

this defined queerness as otherness, the ultimate enemies that the yanggang hero has to defend

against.

In Chapter 3, I talked about the fears and anxieties over the nuclear holocaust and

Communist infiltration registered in Hollywood science fiction in the 1950s. These fears were

also concerned with gender identity, seeing the increasing number of gay people in public and

the decline of masculinity in the U.S. The articulation between homosexuality and Communism

was a discursive product of national security and cultural containment. Because gay men were

virtually indistinguishable from straight men, homosexuality “undermined the nation’s defenses

against Communist infiltration.” The politicization of homosexuality was crucial to the

consolidation of the Cold War consensus (Corber 1997:3). The common grounds for gay men

and Communists was that “Communists meant to challenge the prevailing social order and that

homosexuality presented an alternative to the prevailing sexual order” (Epstein 1994:22). What

is extraordinary in this articulation is that people are losing independent will and brainwashed

into a “monster race,” a theme that shaped sci-fi, but also were described as looking and acting

like everyone else (38-9). In an anti-Communist if not fascist film, My Son John (1952), a

mother is worried about her son John, who does not have a girlfriend. John’s parents are devout

Catholic, believing every word in the Bible. John’s father is suspicious of higher education and

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sophistication. Communists were likely to be intelligent and act like everyone else. The image of

John signifies that a spy can be everywhere, even in a private place like the home. Besides, they

are dangerous and suspicious because of their ambiguous sexuality. While queerness is

associated as a threat to the US nation, in the context of Chinese opera, queerness is harmful in

nation building.

Eradicating the history of same-sex relations in the Peking opera field is to establish the

art with a respectable image. In his memoir, Chang Cheh admits that homosexuality existed in

huadan (male stage players specializing in female parts)” (2002:77). He dismisses that kind of

queer huadan, and emphasizes that homosexuality is totally different from the male bonding in

his films. In the late Qing, boy actors or young huadan were high-class courtesans. Wenqing

Kang (2009) argues that same-sex relations between literati patrons and a talented huadan was

superior to relations with mere prostitutes. That relation went against sexual norms of society

and marked the elite status of the high-class men (Kang 2009:116). However, with the founding

of the Republic of China, this relationship was seen as a humiliation both to the male actors and

to the new republic. The Beijing government ordered a ban on any sexual relations between

literati and actors. Peking opera “had been elevated to the status of a national opera representing

the cultural essence of the modernizing nation” (134). In the face of imperialists and western

powers, Chinese writers, tabloid journalists and serious novelists made a conscious effort to

erase the history of male same-sex relations in Peking opera (144). The ambiguity of those

relations would contaminate the body politic of the nation and invite the contempt of foreigners.

To build a strong China in the international arena, the image of dan actors must be disarticulated

with that of queerness. Their image must be part of the national pride. Or sometimes, their image

could be presented as victims under the feudal practices. Dan actors were victims because their

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gayness was a part of the feudal and patriarchal problem. In other words, people can no longer

relate dan actors to any queerness after sexualization, nationalization and victimization of dan

actors. That’s why Chang Cheh always emphasizes wusheng (military role) and masculinity in

plays like Jie Pai Guan. It is his nationalist endeavor to reduce any threat to the image of a

strong China in the international arena.

Apart from the national building in Peking opera, in the minds of conservative

revolutionaries, Communists denote people who are addicted to toxic drugs, sexually hedonistic,

morally corrupt, and physically and psychologically unhealthy (Tsui 2018:76-7). Conservative

revolutionaries’ ideal division of gender is a conservative one: women are encouraged to be

politically aware, while they should be put at the service of domestic rules. They are docile,

resourceful mothers to a struggling nation.

That articulation between Communism and queerness added another dimension: the Qing

dynasty. The hatred of the Qing dynasty or Manchurians has different meanings from different

perspectives. In Europe and America, the racist image of Fu Manchu, an evil Manchurian

criminal and scientist, signifies sickening East Asian and “yellow peril” in popular culture.

Communists also despise the Qing dynasty, not because it was the foreign race, but because it

weakened the nation, suppressed peasant uprisings and invited imperialists’ invasion.

Nationalists, founded on overthrowing the Qing dynasty, put more emphasis on the racial

difference between Han Chinese and Manchurians. As I have mentioned in previous sections, in

Nationalist historiography, Manchurians could allude to Communists and Japanese imperialists.

Manchurians, Communists and queer people, to them, are unnatural.

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 Underpinning the Shaolin series, that associative relation reveals direct political

references. The rhetoric of anti-communism and ethnonationalism in the series is so subtle that

people unfamiliar with the myths of secret society or Hungmen may miss it. For example, in

addition to the typical Shaolin heroes like Fong Sai Yuk and Hung Xi Guan, Chang Cheh added

legendary figures from the Hungmen in Five Shaolin Masters and Shaolin Temple. These figures

and the rituals they practice in the film are illegal in real life. As illustrated in Chapter 2, the

legendary origins of Hungmen are related to “Oppose the Qing, Restore the Ming.” Chang Cheh

even created an anti-Qing hero who is from Taiwan. In Shaolin Temple, Hu De Di, one of the

legendary figures of the secret society, tells a monk that he is sent by Koxinga from Taiwan, who

is a historical figure resisting the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century and established a

dynasty in Taiwan (1661-1683). Some political rhetorics are so hidden in the idiom and mise-en-

scene that English subtitles cannot accurately translate them. At the end of Heroes Two, the

legendary Shaolin figure Hung Xi Guan speaks an idiom: san hu keyi wang qin, yi lu keyi

zhongxing (even three small states from Chu can destroy the Qin empire; a brigade can restore

the country). It indirectly means even though the Nationalist party is now like a brigade in a

small island like Taiwan, they can restore the country from the tyrannical regime like the Qin

state (221 to 206 BC). In Five Shaolin Masters, when Hu De Di meets his comrades at a

stronghold, the camera shows a closeup of the couplet on a pair of columns: lian yun cun/ hao ce

shi nian sheng ju; tianxia gong/ wang qin yi lu zhongxing (Our spirit is like the linking clouds

and we could avenge the decades loss; solidarity is under the heaven and a brigade can restore

the country). These are the subtle details of the references in Chang’s political messages. During

the start of the Cultural Revolution, Chiang Kai-Shek had similar rhetoric in a speech on the

Youth Day. Lumping the Qing government and Communist China together, he reiterated the

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revolutionary spirit in the Xinhai revolution (1911) against the Qing government and his

determination to “destroy the Communist tyranny, which is against nation, people’s rights and

people’s lives.” A rhetoric term is worth mentioning. He used the same Confucianist term zhong

xing (literally restoring the prosperity from a declining dynasty), as was included in the couplet

in Chang’s film, to describe the future of the youngsters. Like Chiang, Chang Cheh put his hopes

on those surviving Shaolin disciples/ overseas Chinese who can restore the country in the near

future.

However, we can’t find such militant and overt political messages in Shaolin Martial

Arts. It is a simple “two rival schools” narrative that the disciples from the Eight Banner martial

arts school racially discriminate and murder the students from the Shaolin schools. The

Manchurians are ordered to suppress those Shaolin disciples and recruit two special Manchurian

killers. After much training, two young heroes avenge the death of their colleagues and master.

What stands out in this film is its emphasis on the balance and unity in gender, martial arts,

characters, and narrative. The Chinese title of the film is Hong quan yu yong chun, or “Hung fist

and Wing Chun.” Both of them are branches of the southern Chinese martial arts. While Hung

fist is considered as one of yin qiao yin ma (literally hard bridge and hard horse stance) or the

“hard” martial arts, Wing Chun focuses on flexibility and short-distance attacks. More

importantly, the softness is attributed to the founder Yim Wing-chun, who is a female martial

artist and learns from a nun Ng Mui, another legendary female founder of the school. The

balance of the martial arts is important as they can use it to defeat the queer martial arts by the

Qing killers.

In terms of characters, there is a pair of young heroes, Li Yao and Chen Bao-rong. Li is

talkative while Chen is silent and taciturn. They are disciples of Master Lin. When their martial

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arts school is harassed by Manchurians from the Eight Banners Martial arts school, Li and Chen

go to ask Master Lin for help. Master Lin lives in a remote place with his daughter away from

the conflict. In this utopian place, the heroes have their girlfriends with similar characters. While

Li’s is talkative and playful, Chen’s is silent and serious. While the men practice martial arts, the

women help serve the master and make meals. That utopia recalls the ideal image of gender

division by Chang Cheh.

Men and women are totally different. Ever since the ancient times, men are for hunting, defense

and protection of the individuals, while women are for reproduction, and extending the nation.

Nature establishes different missions for us. For hundreds of thousands of years, men have been

masculine, women feminine. If the order is turned upside down, it is not natural.

(Chang 1989: 53)

This family is the core place to defend against the threat of Manchurians, queerness and

Communism. Their enemies are also in pairs. The Manchurian killer duo Yu Bi and Ba Gang,

who specialize in “iron shirt” and “hard qigong,” mercilessly murder students from the Shaolin

school. After the death of their master, the two young heroes go separately to find new masters to

learn Wing Chun and Tiger-Crane style (a soft-hard style in Hung fist). Before they finish the

training, another pair of Shaolin heroes practice the “eagle claw” so as to grip the groins of the

two Manchurian killers. However, they fail. Probably, the “eagle claw” is part of the northern

martial arts, and it cannot attack the Manchurians’ “iron shirt,” which is also from the north.

Also, the southern martial arts are more militant and revolutionary than the northern one,

according to Chang Cheh (2002:98). Interestingly, another dialectic of south/ north can be seen

in action choreography. Yuen Siu-tin, a northern opera artist who often featured in 1950s

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Cantonese martial arts film and was the father of Yuen Woo-ping, who became a famous action

choreographer in both Hong Kong and Hollywood, plays the role of a Hung fist master to teach

the Shaolin hero Li Yao.

The complementary forces between masculinity and femininity, yin and yang, softness

and hardness, and south and north are conceived as a power to deter queerness. The Manchurian

killers Yu Bi and Ba Gang. Their faces are emotionless and their voices are flat. They are like

killing machines or the human duplicates devoid of human emotion from Don Siegel’s Invasion

of the Body Snatchers (1956). More importantly, they can retract their penises. That martial art is

as powerful as Bai Mei’s, who is a villain figure from the rival Wudang clan. Their sexual

identity is ambiguous. When their boss asks a prostitute to touch and seduce his killer Ba Gang,

she is scared and stunned to find that he retracts his penis. Yip Man Fung argues that it is the

“interconnection of sexual asceticism and fighting capacity” and explains why the eunuch is

depicted as a powerful villain in King Hu’s Dragon Inn. For Yip, the very deficiencies in sexual

abilities are paradoxically what preserve the “male essence” (2017:47). While it might be true in

that argument, the ambiguity and unnaturalness of the killers’ bodies help yanggang heroes

define themselves as legitimate Han heroes who can reproduce. The female masculinity of those

woman warriors may not cause a fissure and undermine the essentialized relationship between

codes of masculinity and femininity (Yip 2017:131). Rather, as long as the woman warriors help

elaborate domestic space and civilize the males of their clan, the role of women is not as large a

threat as the queer body is.

In the final confrontation, the dialectic of soft and hard is the key to kill the Manchurian

queer bodies. While the Shaolin hero Chen Bao-Rong uses the usual hard punch to hit Yu Bi’s

abdomen, Yu Bi bounces back the punch as usual. Fooled by the hard punch, Yu Bi does not

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know Chen knows Wing Chun. Meanwhile, Chen uses his soft move of Wing Chun to pierce

through his abdomen with his fingers and pull his intestines out. Another hero Li Yao also fakes

his martial arts moves, showing only the tiger styles in front of Ba Gang. Li Yao suddenly uses

the crane style and blinds him with flying kicks and jabs. Li then rolls over the floor, kicks his

groin and kills him. After the fight, both heroes receive their girlfriends and the film concludes

with them walking away happily. The dialectic, like the one in Boxer from Shantung, is to affirm

the existing division of gender. Bracketed from reality, the dialectics between yin and yang,

softness and hardness, south and north help form a fortress against the outside threat of

unnaturalness of Manchurians, Communists, and queer bodies, and ensure literally and

symbolically the reproduction of Shaolin martial arts and heroes.

The capacity of reproduction goes hand in hand with the theme of passing down the

martial arts in the Shaolin series. The pedagogical function is manifest in non-diegetic

sequences. In the opening titles in the Shaolin series, actors, who know real martial arts, perform

a set of martial arts routines. In a studio set with a red backdrop, actors usually perform southern

martial arts like Hung Ga or Choy Li Fut. In Shaolin Martial Arts, the opening titles show eight

actors on location over a mountain in an extreme-wide shot. They are half-naked practicing the

routine of Hung Ga. Different medium and wide shots capture their footwork and hand

techniques. The opening titles take two minutes before unfolding the story. Soon there is another

semi-non-diegetic sequence in which Lau Kar-wing, a real Hung Ga martial artist and actor,

performs a ceremony with Guan Yu’s blade. Because of his ritual performance, Manchurians and

Han Chinese start the conflict. Different shots and levels help audience to see, if not learn from,

the two-minute performance, which include static wide shots, medium closeups, and over-the-

head shots. A wide shot frames the performer between the hall’s doors. He even strikes the blade

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towards the camera. Similar to the pedagogical function of the Wong Fei Hung series that I

discuss in Chapter 2, directors attempt to use the film medium to document the real martial arts

for passing down these arts. But unlike the Wong Fei Hung series, the wide shots and long takes

in the Shaolin series are mixed with spectacular angles to accentuate the authenticity and

expressiveness of martial arts. Chang Cheh even adds color tones to impart expressiveness.

Many brutal killings in the Shaolin series are tainted with a red tone. It helps add an aesthetic

caliber on the one hand. On the other hand, it follows the increasingly strict censorship of film in

various markets by obscuring the brutality. For example, when the Shaolin hero Chen Bao-Rong

takes out the intestines of Yu Bi, all the closeups of the punch and the pull are in red screen. In

the next shot, a black and white wide shot captures the dying agony of Yu Bi. The authenticity

and expressiveness in the camerawork help defend the Shaolin martial arts which work in

accordance with the complementary forces under Heaven against the queer bodies and martial

arts. Therefore, the dull and repetitive everyday trainings in Shaolin Martial Arts like peeling off

tree barks, grabbing fish, and poking a big bell are not just the “power of banality” as Meaghan

Morris (2001) discusses, but they are from nature. They are part of the conservative Chinese

ecology and cosmology that everything in the world is made out of yin and yang. Heroes can

learn from nature while the Manchurian killers are unnatural. Even though Chang Cheh upholds

yanggang heroes, he balances them with female counterparts as supporting roles. Yip Man Fung

thinks that the Shaolin series is a digression from “Chang’s previous obsessions with individual

heroism and righteous brotherhood and a growing identification with tradition and succession”

(2017:105). On the contrary, the identification with tradition and succession has never changed.

In the culture war, the conservative and traditional culture including historiography and gender

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roles are the backbone of Chang Cheh’s oeuvre for opposing Manchurians, Communism and

queerness.

Conclusion

Apparently, the culture war ended in the late 1970s. Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975 while

Mao died in 1976. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution faded out as the national spiritual

campaign did in Taiwan. The inflated production budgets and poor financial performances of

Boxer Rebellion and The Naval Commandos (1977) dragged Chang’s Film company into drastic

financial difficulties. Chang Cheh was in debt and had to go back to Hong Kong. He needed to

pay off the debt by making twenty-five films for Shaw Brothers (Chang 1988:12). More

importantly, his action choreographer Lau Kar-leung had a conflict with Chang, and established

his own name by making well-known and well-received pictures like Dirty Ho (1979), The

Executioners from Shaolin (1977), and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978). Facing the

emergence of numerous independent film companies, Shaw Brothers started to shift its focus into

the television business and ceased its production in 1986. The Movietown became TV City.

Although Chang Cheh’s Crippled Avengers (1978) and The Five Venoms (1978) were notable

for their recognition and popularity in the overseas video markets, Chang’s films’ popularity

waned fast in the 1980s. The Hong Kong New Wave started, and new directors emerged. Jackie

Chan, a new kung fu star appeared. More cynical and playful stories in martial arts films became

more popular than the films Chang was making. Chang left Shaw Brothers and established Hong

Kong Chang He Company in 1983. However, he ran into more bad luck in Taiwan. He had a

copyright issue with his investor when he made The Shanghai Thirteen (1984). He was not

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allowed to go back to Taiwan. China invited Chang through the Xinhua New Agency to direct

films in China. Great Shanghai 1937 (1986) was one of the last few works he made in China.

Despite the sad ending for Chang’s movie career, the culture war still lingers on in

different senses. Many of Chang Cheh’s motifs like brotherhood and male bonding were

reincarnated in the Hong Kong New Wave works. John Woo, who worked as assistant director

on a number of Chang Cheh films, revitalized these themes in response to Hong Kong’s future in

A Better Tomorrow (1986), in which Ti Lung, who was one of Chang Cheh’s major stars, is also

one of the main characters in the film. Tsui Hark, another iconic new wave director in Hong

Kong, learnt much from Chang Cheh and used the wuxia genre to make political comments on

Hong Kong and China’s future. For example, the androgynous tree Demoness in A Chinese

Ghost Story (1986) is a queer grandmother figure controlling the poor soul of a female ghost Niu

Siu-sin. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tsui made the sequel A Chinese Ghost Story II

(1990) and even turned “The Internationale” into a disturbing Buddhist chant so as to make a

sarcastic comment on the hypocritical Communist officials who liked to act humanistic. Even

King Hu continued to use the queer villain to insinuate tyranny and comment ambiguously on

Chinese identity in overseas countries. In Painted Skin (1993), there is a liminal area where the

yin-yang King reigns over. Yin-yang King chants in front of his million followers, “After my

thousand years of training, I am powerful. I am neither a human nor a spirit; neither a god nor a

fairy; neither Taoist nor a Buddhist. In this yin-yang limbo, I call myself a king.” He can possess

human beings but cannot reproduce. Finally, what fixes this imbalance of yin-yang is the

righteous patriarchal hero.

These new political readings of Chang’s films aim to expand the concept of yanggang

from an aesthetic term into a political one, which had its currency in the culture wars. The

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culture wars started all the way back from the 1930s between Communists and Nationalists in

literary works. Chang Cheh resumed the wars with his yanggang hero. More than only a local

one, the war is part of and within the global strategy of containment. Imbricated with the power

of the Cold War, mediating through the colonial power and local capitalists, and inheriting the

conservative revolution, the yanggang hero played an important role in legitimatizing Chang’s

temporality and historiography in The Assassin, his cyclical and cynical working-class power in

Boxer from Shantung, and his conservative gender norms in Shaolin Martial Arts. In the age of

“there is no alternative” to capitalism, wuxia persisted and its “conservative revolution”

continued.

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Fig. 53 The red and black and white screens show the death agony of one of the queer Manchurian martial artists Yu
Bi

Fig. 54 Queer Manchurian martial artists Yu Bi (left) and Ba Gang (right) are emotionless in front of prostitutes

Fig. 55 After the death of Yu Bi and Ba Gang, two heroes leave happily with their girlfriends. The gender normalcy
is reaffirmed

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Conclusion: The Local Turn and the Bruce Lee Dialectic

Some may argue that kungfu films in the 1970s, which emphasized realist fighting and

contemporary settings,94 and sometimes criticized the injustice of the law, may falsify my

concepts wu/xia and the “law outside the Law.” Films and television shows featured more local

settings and local stories. Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon (1972), for example, criticizes

capitalist syndicates and glorifies working-class masculinity, while Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury (1972)

shows the aggression of Japanese imperialist. Also, the colonial government, especially after the

1967 leftist riot, became more responsive to the public demand by recruiting local Chinese. It

started to implement more infrastructures, welfare, and cultural programs to boost local identity.

Chinese language became the official language in 1974. The Qing code of polygamy marriage

was outlawed in 1971, and replaced by family planning in 1975. The Vietnam War was coming

to an end in 1975. The counter-culture movements and other liberation movements were dying

out and the oil crisis strained the U.S economy. The 1970s in Hong Kong is commonly seen as a

phenomenal break for Hong Kong, because the local identity emerged. Wuxia, as an ideology of

security, seems not able to correspond to the emerging modernity of Hong Kong, as the material

bases had drastically changed and the gap between the “law and the Law” was closed. On the

contrary, I will conclude that wuxia as an ideology continued to work. It is the backbone to

forming the discursive narrative of Hong Kong identity, conditioned by nationalism, the colonial

power, and the Cold War.

94
In his article “A Narrow World, strewn with prohibitions’: Chang Cheh’s The Assassin and the 1967 Hong Kong
riots,” Luke White demarcates the changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s that the fake and theatrical fighting
were replaced by more realistic action and fighting (White 2015:82). This realism is echoing the violence in the
colonial reality (84).
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 There was a tension in martial arts films in the 1970s. Bruce Lee’s and King Hu’s martial

arts films pushed the genre to the level of art and philosophy. Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do and his

movies were not just “chop chop” but included oriental philosophy. King Hu’s A Touch of Zen

won the Technical Grand Prize award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Art and philosophy

seemed to help liberate the genre from the notorious image of “senseless fighting” to the level of

contemplation and philosophical speculation. Particularly, Bruce Lee’s martial arts and his films

turn martial arts into a way of thinking of body as a medium of expression. “Ultimately, martial

arts mean to honestly express oneself” is the core of Lee’s martial arts Jeet Kune Do. Using his

films to promote his martial arts, he says in Enter the Dragon (1973), “My style? You can call it

‘the art of fighting without fighting.’” On the contrary, Hong Kong film industry experienced a

local turn by including more realist action and individualistic heroes. More location shooting and

local issues instead of national messages were added in filmmaking. On the one hand, the genre

became more “cultural” and philosophical, something high above the ground. On the other hand,

it also became more attached to the ground, showing local concerns and local heroes and

featuring stories about Hong Kong rather than an abstract China.

In this conclusion, I identify two main points. First, the making of the “local” turn is a

continuation of the wuxia ideology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were more local

Chinese representatives in the film and television industry, civil servants, legislators, local

capitalists and industrialists, and social movements targeting local issues. I will show that the

making of the local in the government, the social movements, and the film industry was the old

wine in a new bottle. The wuxia ideology is the old wine, while the new bottle is the local

identity. Behind the façade of the local identity is the mechanism of security. The Hong Kong

identity is not just something ambiguous and an in-between “Third Space” like many post-

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colonial studies scholars may argue (Chow 1992), but an Orientalist point of view embedded in

local Chinese. It was not difficult to identify an adversary who spoke another language and wore

conspicuous colonial medals. However, when those were replaced by local Chinese elites, the

connections to external controlling forces were much more difficult to represent. Second, kungfu

films, especially those featuring Bruce Lee were part of this “localization.” The reason why

Bruce Lee could be a superstar in the West is that his image and body were a good example of a

middleman. As a Chinese-American traveling between the United States and Hong Kong, Bruce

Lee promoted his rebellious yet philosophical body and garnered profits and symbolic capital in

the post-counter-culture movement in the 1970s.

The Making of Hong Kong Identity

Wing-sang Law argues that there was a continuation between diasporic nationalism,

namely the neo-Confucianism, and the various attempts to construct Hong Kong identity (Law

2009:151). It means the local identity that today’s Hong Kong people are proud of was part of

the nationalist discourses. While Law focuses on the intellectual discourses shared by elite

scholars and officers, I will focus on how wuxia ideology was part and parcel of the local

identity, which was a collaborated result between the government, social movements, and the

film industry in the early 1970s.

After the suppression of the leftist riot, the fear of Communist rule drove people to side

with the colonial government and even the police force. Since the leftist riot broke out, the

government evaluated the role and value of Hong Kong. A British diplomat Sir Kenneth Michael

Wilford wrote a proposal on the possibilities of the future of Hong Kong. In general, the proposal

describes Hong Kong as having marginal economic value, while politically, Hong Kong as a

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colony may spoil the U.K’s image as a decolonizing power. Industrially, Hong Kong’s products

may pose a danger to the U.K’s own production, although Hong Kong’s products provided the

U.K with a lower cost of living. However, Hong Kong could still benefit the U.K through a lot of

invisible earnings like shipping, insurance, banking, and aircraft (Wilford 1967-1968). In the

paper, he even suggests making a better Hong Kong in the New Territories, because “if we are

deprived of the New Territories there would be no case for retaining the ceded parts of the

Colony.” Therefore, developing Hong Kong was to build confidence for further negotiation “if

there would be a pragmatic or technocrat regime” in the future mainland China. This paper urges

the Hong Kong government to make a long-term plan, and it would be essential no later than

1980 and possibly in the mid-1970s to begin making plans for the transfer of sovereignty over

Hong Kong to China (Wilford 1967-1968:17). During the peak of the riot, on the fourth of May,

colonial secretariat T.A.K Elliott wrote to the London Office,

the lack of even a ketch of any carefully thought out long-term policy towards Hong

Kong does create short-term planning difficulties…Hong Kong is now the most

significant remaining dependent territory; and it could become the center of an

international crisis.

(Elliott 1967)

The Minister of State at the Commonwealth Office made a statement on the recent disturbance in

Hong Kong, “the Government of Hong Kong has the duty to maintain peace, order and good

government. This task they must fulfill, and we have given them clear assurance of our complete

support and determination to maintain our position there” (Denson 1967). So, what does this

have to do with local identity and the wuxia ideology? The local was born in this long-term

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planning in the name of maintaining peace and good government. Governor Murray MacLehose

(1971-1982) endorsed and developed this long-term policy. All the important infrastructures and

cultural programs were set up and developed during this period, including creating the

Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) to root out police force corruption, setting

up a massive housing program, constructing the new transportation system, introducing 9-year

compulsory education, establishing new towns in the New Territories and others. He was the

longest-serving governor of the colony. When the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, the U.K.

finally saw the “pragmatic and technocrat” leader in the mainland. Governor MacLehose went to

Beijing in 1979 to raise the question of the 99-year lease of the New Territories with Deng Xiao-

ping.

In the 1970s, “Hong Kong” became a marketing label. Hong Kong Festival was held in

1969, 1971, and 1973 with the intention to foster in the people of Hong Kong a sense of

belonging and identity. Even though some student activists protested against the shows as they

were expensive and whitewashing the colonial reality,95 Hong Kong as a marketing label still

sold. The government collaborated with different talents and departments to make propaganda

for Hong Kong. In 1969, two British filmmakers C. A. Gilkison, who was a professional

government consultant, and John Armstrong came to work with the government to shoot three

documentary films on the port of Hong Kong and resettlement housing. They were distributed

through Columbia Pictures and television stations (“Films: Tell the Truth” 1969; “HK Growth

Will Be Filmed” 1969; “Govt Plans Movie Deal” 1969). The Hong Kong Tourist Association,

established in 1957, was commissioned to produce promotional films. Picture Hong Kong,

95
A group of university students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong protested against the hypocrisy of the
colonial government and accused them of expending a large amount of money to whitewash the ugly side of the
colonial reality(“Xianggang Jie Jinri Kaimu" 1971).
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produced by Mr. and Mrs. Harold Weaver in 1969, won first place in the North Orient division

of the 1970 Pacific Area Travel Association film festival (“HKTA Film Shines at Festival”

1970). Similar promotional films were made to promote the success of industrial and

manufacturing Hong Kong.96 Other films were made to introduce the oriental side of Hong

Kong, in which visitors could find peace in various temples, paddy fields, duck farms, boat

people and deserted beaches (“Documentary on HK with a Difference” 1973).

The Hong Kong Development Council, established in 1966, was another strong media

arm to promote Hong Kong as an emerging industrial and trade center in East Asia. The

government commissioned the Caltex Petroleum Corporation in 1968 to produce Handshakes

Like This to promote Hong Kong products. The film was circulated in thirteen cities in the

United States, and won third prize in the Pacific Area Travel Association (“Film on Colony Wins

Prize” 1969; “Film Depicts HK Activity” 1969; “TDC Documentary Wins Festival Prize in

U.S.” 1973). In 1975, the seminal cinematographer from Hollywood Jack Cardiff was invited to

work with a local film talent Leong Po-Chih, who was later a prominent figure in the Hong Kong

New Wave. They worked together to produce a film on the recent progress of Hong Kong as an

important manufacturing and trade center (“Maoyi fazhan ju yao dianying qicai paishe

duanpian”1975).

In the name of law and order, prosperity and stability, these propaganda works had the

same rhetoric as my concepts wu/xia and the “law outside the Law” suggest. Fronted as an image

of prosperity, the emerging modernity in Hong Kong came with the rise of local capitalists.

Violence is justified in the name of law and order, while the colonial reality of Hong Kong is

96
Other films produced by the Hong Kong Tourist Association included Hong Kong, and Come See Hong Kong.
The former was produced by a Japanese team while the latter was transmitted via satellite to Canadian
television(“It’s over to TV Stations” 1970; “Hongkong on Canadian TV” 1972).
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always distanced and abstracted. Hong Kong as a marketing label could not cross the boundary

of law and order. When Granada Television Company’s World in Action, a British investigative

current affairs program, worked with the local police force and the government to make an

episode “A Case to Answer” in 1969, the boundary was crossed. It tried to boost the police

forces reputation but it actually showed a lot of corruption in the force. News reported how the

force overcharged the film crew for making a Chinese ceremony. The controversy led to an

urgent meeting for the commissioner of police, the defense Secretary and the vice-chancellor

from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. They argued against the demonization of the police

force, and concluded that it was a bogus atmosphere that the film overexaggerated the problem

of corruption among policemen, who had public support after the 1967 leftist riot. To the official,

policemen were determined to fight corruption. The film was not banned in Hong Kong, because

“any attempts by us to stop this documentary could give rise to misunderstanding, particularly in

the light of the press publicity which this program has received throughout the world” (Granada

TV Film “World in Action”).97 In the same year, the police force was granted the title ‘royal’ for

its suppression of the riot. The Royal Hong Kong Police Force became a symbol of law and

order and often appeared in films and TV.

Because of the 1967 leftist riot, the Hong Kong government reorganized the urban

council under non-government control in 1973 and launched a series of local cultural programs

catering to young people. These included the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (1974), the

Hong Kong International Film Festival (1976), the Hong Kong Repertory Theater (1977), the

Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Chung Ying Theater Company (1979), the Hong Kong Ballet

(1979) to name a few. Also, to channel the anger and frustration among young people, the

97
For more newspaper coverage, see (“Agent Says Film on Graft ‘Twisted’” 1969; “Crocodile Tears?” 1969;
“Controversy over Film on Alleged Corruption” 1969; “TV Film on Corruption CENSORS STEP IN” 1969).
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government initiated a series of disciplinary programs. From the government’s point of view, the

local identity and the sense of belonging go hand in hand with the law and order and a

disciplinary body. To erase the notorious images of the police force, the police department

started to recruit policemen who had higher education. Disciplinary programs like Civil Aid

Service Cadet Corps (1968), Hong Kong Sea Cadet Corps (1968), the Junior Leaders Corps of

the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (the Volunteers) (1971), Hong Kong Air Cadet Corps (1971),

Junior Police Call (1974) and others were introduced. In elementary and secondary schools,

students joined scouting, Hong Kong Red Cross, Hong Kong Road Safety Patrol and many other

cultural activities. These non-confrontational alternatives to student unions, labor unions, and

radical activities privileged order over rebellion, discipline over emotion, self-cultivation over

demands for wider social changes. The local is first of all a government intervention, as part of

the long-term policy for the negotiation with the new regime in mainland China. However, the

local identity was not just a top-down plan. It can be found in social and student movements. The

emergence of local social movements in the 1970s was a result of the retreat of radical politics.

After the 1967 leftist riot, radical politics were generally absent. The Federation of Trade

Union was more isolated and marginalized in the political spectrum and lost their support. They

then became more apolitical in promoting any radical labor movements. While the 1967 leftist

riot was aiming at overthrowing British imperialism in Hong Kong, many student movements in

the 1970s like the Chinese Language Campaign and the Defend-Diaoyus/ Senkaku Islands

Campaign (1969-1972), despite their importance, did not totally aim at bringing down the entire

social structure. Other social and student movements include the labor strike for blind workers in

1971, fighting corruption in Jinxi Secondary School in 1977, the Boat People Rights Movement

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from 1977 to 1979. These movements retreated from state politics to the street. Localism

appeared when protestors and student activism were generally divided into two different factions

in the 1970s: while the “social-ist” faction (she hui pai), which included Trotskyists, anarchists,

reformists, and liberal democrats, tried to focus on city-wide action and human-rights campaigns

against the colonial government, the homeland-ist faction (guo cui pai), which included Maoists

and radical activists, arranged visiting tours to China and enhanced patriotism toward

Communist China.

In the 1970s, the homeland-ist took root in student unions in universities. Their slogan is

“Understanding the motherland, Caring about society” (renshi zuguo, guanxi shehui). They

launched “China Week” (zhongguo zhou) in 1973 to exhibit Chinese folk dance, hold seminars

on unification, and screen One Man’s China, From War to Revolution, a documentary by Felix

Greene. While discussing this activist decade also known as the Red Era (huo hong niandai) is

beyond the scope of this thesis,98 I wanted to point out that even though both factions opened

many possibilities for social movements and different forms of mobilizations, they retreated

from class-based activism, and militant politics. The social-ist faction, modeled from the

counter-culture movement, Trotskyism, and the new left, criticized British colonialism,

American imperialism, Maoism, and the bureaucracy in Communist China. After the defeat of

the leftist riot, the homeland-ist faction could not do anything militant, and became the

mouthpiece for Communist China. They only promoted Maoism but could not work out any

radical politics in Hong Kong. When Communist China was admitted into the United Nation in

1971, the homeland-ist faction became an important site for uniting overseas Chinese. After Mao

died in 1976, most Maoists in Hong Kong became disillusioned and many of them converted to

98
The Red Era refers to the abundant students’ activism in the early to mid 1970s, where the homeland-ist took
dominance in university campus life. For more on the Red Era, see (Law 2017).
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conservative or extreme rightists like the journalist Lee Yee. His father was the martial arts

director Lee Fa I have discussed in Chapter 3.

Here, with no electoral democracy, the rejection of the Chinese Communist Party, the

brutality of the corrupt police force and the control of the colonial government, local movements

were distanced from any radical state politics. While the government was making a marketing

label for local Hong Kong, the student and social movements focused on colonial reality in a

reformist and comparatively mild way. Despite the antagonism between social activists and the

government, both took Hong Kong as a place of concern and would not disrupt its overall

stability and prosperity. Also, the government realized that the nationalism(s), be it Neo-

Confucianism, Trotskyist revisionist revolution, or Maoists’ sightseeing, could pose no harm to

the existing law and order structure.

Starting from the early 1970s, location shooting became a fad. Due to the shoestring

budget of independent filmmakers, studio sets were no longer sought after. The rise of the local

was the result of the industrial restructuring. In Chapter 4, we see how the rise of the Shaw

Brothers Studio as a production center in Asia was based on the Cultural Revolution and the

suppression of the 1967 leftist riot. More and more actors, filmmakers, and producers from

Hollywood and Europe came to Hong Kong for co-production and distribution. Especially for

small companies from the United States and Europe, Hong Kong was a distributing center (“HK

Growing as Movie Center” 1971). In 1966, the location shooting for Robert Wise’s The Sand

Pebbles had an enduring impact on Hong Kong action cinema. An epic war film in which the

action choreographer Loren Janes recruited twenty to thirty stuntmen in Hong Kong and trained

them in three weeks. They learnt the use of gunshots, trampolines, paper boxes, and other useful

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filmic techniques that were adapted into action films. Shaw Brothers recruited these talents and

continued to churn out studio-based products like a conveyor belt. The studio exported its films

to the overseas markets. Run Run Shaw even expanded his exhibition markets in Europe,

Canada, and the United States. His movie empire was such a monopoly that national film

industries in Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore started to set quotas for

Hong Kong films. Artemio Marquex from the Philippines came to Hong Kong for a co-

production in order to boost the national films in the Philippines (Alexander 1970). Indonesia

also implemented a tighter control on Hong Kong kungfu films and set rates for Hong Kong

import films (“Indonesia Sets Film Limits”1975; “Indonesian Plan Will Hit Colony Cinema

Industry”1974; “Indon Move May Hit HK Film Trade” 1974). However, the Shaw’s success and

its draconian control on actors, producers, and filmmakers created its opponent. Raymond Chow

and Leonard Ho, who were executives with Shaw Brothers but left in 1970, formed the rival

studio Golden Harvest. What distinguished it from Shaw Brothers is that Golden Harvest

contracted independent producers and filmmakers, and gave them more creative freedom and

budgets that Shaw Brothers would never do. For example, The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury

(1972) were shot by Lo Wei’s Si Wei Movie Company.

Scholars like Luke White (2015) suggest that the kungfu films in the late 1960s and the

early 1970s depicted action in a more violent and realistic way. That strong sense of realness

could be attributed to, apart from the industrial restructuring, the result of urbanization. Lands in

the New Territories were gradually developed into new towns. First, it made less natural

landscapes available for wuxia or period costume pictures. Only big studios like Shaw Brothers

could afford period settings and props. Second, the massive changes in the cityscape provided

filmmakers with topics and concerns like drug abuse, sex workers, and juvenile delinquents.

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More films featuring gunplay, crime, and drug abuse were made. It was no coincidence that films

from the Hong Kong New Wave like Leong Po-Chih and Josephine Siao’s Jumping Ash (1976)

shared similar concerns. Michael Hui’s comedies also abandoned studio sets and manifested the

absurdity in modern Hong Kong. Ng See-yuen’s Anti-Corruption (1975) was the first film to

celebrate the ICAC. To catch up with the fad, Chang Cheh started the Shaolin series I discussed

in Chapter 4, and tried to incorporate Guangdong legendary figures to make a “local” turn

(Chang 1989:106). The use of Mandarin in the Shaw’s production was still alien to the majority

of the Cantonese-speaking population. Not until Chor Yuen’s The House of 72 Tenants (1973), a

makeover of a classic leftist Cantonese film The House of 72 Tenants (1963) that became a huge

money-spinner, did Shaw Brothers revive the use of Cantonese language in filmmaking. Shaw

Brothers even set up a low-budget production line of films about local news and crime reports

like Cheng Kang, Hua Shan and Ho Meng Hua’s The Criminals (1976) that is based on notorious

murder cases in Hong Kong.

More importantly, Run Run Shaw, Douglas Clague, a British soldier and an unofficial

member of the Executive Council in Hong Kong, and Harold Lee of the Lee Hysan family,

founded the first free-to-air TV channel Television Broadcast Limited (TVB) in 1966. Local

elites and university graduates like Selina Chow, Michael Hui, Ng Ho, Patrick Tam, and Law

Kar joined TVB to be executives, managers, hosts, or scriptwriters. Many young graduates from

the United States and Britain like Ann Hui, Tsui Hark came back and joined TV stations like

Radio and Television Hong Kong, and Rediffusion Television (RTV). In the mid-1970s, TVB

and RTV were launching a TV war, producing different TV series on policemen and stories

based on sensational news. While TVB made the CID series, RTV created Ten Sensational

Cases (Shi da qi an) in 1976. Johnny Mak’s Big Sister (Da jiajie, 1976), Operation Manhunt (Da

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zhang fu), and New Operation Manhunt (xin da zhang fu) broke records for RTV and brought

sensationalism to Hong Kong TV screens. The ICAC also recruited young talents to shoot

propaganda. Ann Hui directed six dramas for the ICAC and two of them were so controversial

that they were banned. Radio Television Hong Kong’s Below the Lion Rock, a documentary

series about all walks of lives in Hong Kong, recruited a lot of young graduates of film and TV

from abroad. According to Law Kar, films could no longer played the role of reflecting society in

the 1970s, but stimulating senses, desires, and anger. Compared to the films in the 1950s, these

films featuring local events and sensations did not have any pedagogical functions. On the

contrary, television and radio stations collaborated with the government, made communication

with the public, and created a sense of belonging in the society (K. Law 2018:43). For example,

in 1974, a breaking news story of the Po Sang Bank robbery holdup was broadcast live by TVB

for twenty hours. It was the first live news broadcast in the history of Hong Kong, where Hong

Kong people witnessed real gunshots and the holdup in real time.

The demand for immediacy, realism, and sensationalism in media went hand in hand with

the rise of the middle class and local elitism in Hong Kong. The realism can be summed up as

critical realism, criticizing from the point of view of an intellectual, student, scholar, social

worker, and other professional who intended to reform the existing world. In many TV dramas

and documentaries, the critical realism at best was critical of the social structure and the position

of intellectuals. Local students and young graduates who studied abroad often dismissed Hong

Kong for its corruption, low-brow culture, and material decadence. In an episode Returning the

Nest (Hui chao, 1974) from the Below the Lion Rock series, several young intellectuals who

studied abroad see Hong Kong as a place full of backward thinking, selfish people, bureaucrats, a

poor welfare system, and low-brow culture. While some young people decide to leave Hong

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Kong, one young woman (played by Josephine Siao) decides to stay and rescue Hong Kong with

the knowledge she learned from abroad. At the time, Siao was a graduate student from Seton

Hall University and Regis University. She was one of the child stars, who could successfully

transform to adult stardom, stayed in Hong Kong, and became one of the main forces of the New

Wave. The “local” turn in Hong Kong, as it were, did not mean that everything in Hong Kong is

great, but they took Hong Kong as a place of concern to rebuild and rescue. The perspective was

always of the bourgeois elite. Also, the realism was based upon the separation from the leftist’s

realist aesthetic. After the 1967 leftist riot, the leftist studios in Hong Kong declined in their

production, because they needed to follow the ever-shifting political lines in the mainland.

Despite that, Feng Huang/Phoenix studio continued to make documentaries like The Kwangchow

Acrobatic Troupe (Za ji yinghao) in 1973. The Great Wall studio also produced A Brilliant

Spectacle (Wan zhi qian hong) in 1974. Even though there were some great realist films

produced like Huang Yu and Wu Pei-yung’s The Younger Generation (Xiao dang jia, 1971), and

Hu Siao-fung’s The Hut on Hilltop (Wu, 1970), they lost popular support amongst Hong Kong

people. The realism in leftist studios, to many Hong Kong people, was nothing but

propagandistic. Given the ongoing Cultural Revolution in the mainland, the leftist studios and

other leftist organizations were no longer sure of their political legitimacy, and they found it

difficult to carry on making socially critical films. The suppression of the leftist riot sounded the

death knell for the leftists, because the Hong Kong government realized the fact that the leftist

studios in Hong Kong were not supported by Beijing. During the late stage of the Cold War from

the mid-1970s, the Hong Kong government had free rein to deal with them. Despite that, the

critical realism taken by some of the new wave filmmakers in their TV dramas led to directors

like Allen Fong making their films (for instance Father and Son (1981)) in the leftist studios,

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which the New Wave directors considered serious production companies, staying away from

commercial streamline production like the Shaw Brothers.

The “local” turn was firstly a government intervention. As a marketing label, Hong Kong

was a manufacturing and trade center for capitalists all over the world. The opposition in Hong

Kong also experienced the “local” turn, one that was concerned with the local issues and

pressing problems like labor strikes, welfare reforms, human rights, and language problems.

National issues were minimized after the Defend Diaoyu Campaign. Maoist factions retreated

from state politics and avoided engaging with the working masses. Realism in the film industry

was a result of industrial restructuring. The rise of free-to-air TV stations was important to

provide people in Hong Kong with Cantonese popular songs, location settings, dramas, and live

news reports. However, the immediacy, sensationalism, and realism were separated from any

concrete reality and radical transformation. The “local” turn produced a group of Chinese elites,

working in the government, the stock markets, media, films, and other cultural institutions. The

crisis of representation lies not in the disappearance of realism but in its inability to reflect and

solve the life-and-death struggle with colonialism and imperialism. Cold War came to an early

end here in the mid-1970s with the victory of the new emerging local elites in Hong Kong.

Bruce Lee’s Philosophical Dialectic

Bruce Lee and his films were part of this “local” turn. His name and films caused a

sensation in Hong Kong and the world. His films registered anger, existential crisis, and bodily

attractions for local young people like never before. The realism in his films was spectacularly

engaging and exciting. Strangely, none of his first three films are actually set in Hong Kong, but

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only footages of Hong Kong are inserted in Enter the Dragon. He was definitely a good example

of the Chinese elite. Studying abroad and showing contempt for the existing Chinese martial arts

films, he decided to travel back to Hong Kong from the United States in the hope of developing

his film business and his new ideas about martial arts. Like Josephine Siao, Lee was a child star

and successfully continued his stardom when he came back from studying abroad. Before his

premature death in 1973, Bruce Lee starred and directed films like The Big Boss (1971), Fist of

Fury (1972), Way of the Dragon (1972), Enter the Dragon (1973), and a short fight sequence of

The Game of Death (1978). Comparing to the existing martial arts films, in terms of aesthetics,

they are nothing new. They are neither the first to include punches and kicks nor the naked

bodies of masculine heroes. As I discuss in Chapter 4, Chang Cheh is the pioneer in these

subjects (Po 2013). What is new in his martial arts films, especially the ones directed by him, is

that he elevated martial arts to the level of philosophy. Using my concept wu/xia we can see that

the value in xia became more abstract and philosophical. Although The Big Boss and The Fist of

Fury are respectively about Chinese migrant workers in Thailand and Chinese nationalism under

the Japanese occupation, Lee always wanted to promote his ideas of martial arts through the film

medium. When he was in the United States, he had already introduced his martial art Jeet Kune

Do in four episodes of the television series Longstreet. The art is defined by its adaptability,

fluidity, and emptiness. “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water

into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in

a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend,” he

repeated his line from Longstreet during the television interview The Pierre Berton Show. Art

and philosophy, something cultural and abstract, are used to justify, define, and set new standard

for the body and violence. Also, the law is always outside and even monitored by the Law. In his

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films, policemen always arrive in the nick of time: arresting the hero in The Big Boss, shooting

the hero in Fist of Fury, arresting the syndicate boss as the hero runs away in Way of the Dragon,

and arriving with teams of helicopters in Enter the Dragon. The appearance of the police force in

these endings not only secures their position as arbitrators of justice but also that the “law” is

always outside the Law. Whatever power the heroes may have in the film, the wuxia ideology

continued to function as basic grammars to ensure and reinforce security rather than destroy the

existing social hierarchy.

Bruce Lee is first a martial artist and then an actor. He used the film medium to promote

his art Jeet Kune Doo and philosophy. At the opening of Enter the Dragon his character Lee

explains his arts,

To have no technique. There is no opponent. Because the word ‘I’ does not exist. A good fight

should be…like a small play, but played seriously. A good martial artist does not become tense,

but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent

expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. When there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits

all by itself.

In various interviews, he always said he took a philosophy major at the University of

Washington, while his transcript shows that he was admitted as a drama major and studied only

two philosophy courses. But why philosophy in his martial arts and film business? As a universal

language, philosophy seems to transcend the national boundaries. As he said during The Pierre

Berton Show, “Under the heaven, and under the sky but one family.” To him, philosophy, too,

helps abstract and liberate human bodies from rigid styles, martial arts schools, and national

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boundaries. Using my concept wu/xia, we see that Lee legitimatized the “wu” in wuxia, and the

“xia” is the philosophy. Human bodies are an expressive medium to express oneself. Therefore,

what he cares about is neither the community’s order in Chapter 2, the peaceful martial world in

Chapter 3, nor anti-Communist masculinity in Chapter 4.

The “local” turn is ironically embedded in this abstractness. The more local it is, the more

removed it is from concrete reality. The body is no longer social but becomes an art medium.

The bodies are not socially and economically determined, but they are expressive tools. In the

films, Bruce Lee’s characters became more abstract, changing from Cheng Chao-an in The Big

Boss, Chen Zhen (a common Chinese last name “Chen” while “Zhen” denotes realness) in Fist of

Fury, Tang Long (literally Chinese Dragon) in Way of the Dragon, to Lee in Enter the Dragon.

What concerned him is not the physical self-defense or violence itself but mental self-defense.

He needed to abstract the concrete bodies before legitimatizing and translating them onto the

screen. In all his films, he does not promote any particular Chinese martial arts, but his own

style. To him, Jeet Kune Do is different from other martial arts styles, because it emphasizes

fluidity and emptiness but not a rigid set rule. Lo Kwai-Cheung (Lo 2005) argues that Bruce

Lee’s body is a void, which does not fall into the Chinese hero category, because of his diverse

background, and that the Chineseness his films presented is a distant past. On the contrary, to

me, the bodily void-ness is not a question about authentic Chineseness or not, but through

abstraction, his martial arts can be represented as an art form. To him, national identity is not a

pressing concern. The common concern shared by Lee’s generation, who came back from

overseas, was the disappointment at the current situation in Hong Kong and their distrust of the

older generation. In a documentary, Bruce Lee, the Man and the Legend (1973), the director Wu

Shih found a lost audio record from Bruce Lee, who was discussing an unfinished film in a five-

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people working party. He was describing the storyboard “What is the true meaning of Martial

Arts?”

The hero encounters the first teacher, and asks him what the true meaning of martial arts is. The

teacher replies that martial arts are nothing more than building a strong body and a nation. But

when our camera is panning down, we can see the teacher has a big belly. Almost to his knees.

The image is very unhealthy. When the hero looks at the teacher’s belly, we will pause the scene

immediately. The hero continues to walk when the scene stops. The theme song plays again. We

will make four sections like this. When it has reached the last section, the hero asks the same

question again, “what is the true meaning of martial arts.” When the teacher replies, we distort the

tape. So when he tells the answer it becomes [imitating the distortion of the audiotape]. The hero

then feels disgusted and sighs. Cut. The frame stops again. The theme song is finished when the

hero starts to walk again.

Here, we can see the true meaning of art is no longer in the hands of the older generation. The

older teacher was unhealthy and hypocritical about their martial arts objectives. In short, the new

generation is a generation of disillusionment and rebellion. They hated the old Hong Kong. They

felt that they needed to represent the new Hong Kong. To rebuild a better Hong Kong film

industry, they needed to elevate it to the level of art and philosophy.

Because of that even though Bruce Lee’s films are full of realist fighting and location

shooting, the times and places in his films are abstract from the concrete ones. In The Big Boss,

where the story and location shooting took place in Thailand, Hong Kong is absent. In the

opening scene, the exchange between Chinese migrant workers shows that young workers from

Hong Kong or somewhere in China have been uprooted by a flood. Young people either abandon

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their homeland or become criminals. In Fist of Fury, the story is set in early Republican

Shanghai. Hong Kong does not appear in the film. In Way of the Dragon, the hero Tang Long is

from Hong Kong, but he stays in the New Territories rather than downtown. Hong Kong is

nothing more than the countryside where Tang Long practices martial arts. In the opening credits

of Enter the Dragon, Hong Kong is a place where martial arts students learn at a Shaolin

Temple. It is also a place where Jim Kelly and John Saxon can find the exotic and oriental street

scenes like the ones in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). The unnamed island where the enemy

Han resides, which rests partly in British water and has its ambiguous ownership, becomes a

post-colonial metaphor for Hong Kong (Hunt 2019).

In Chapter 4, I have examined the motif of the staircase used by Chang Cheh to signify

the nothingness in the pursuit of material wealth. Heroes must fall tragically from buildings,

towers, or staircases when they reach up high. The hero in Boxer from Shantung destroys the

stairs so as to criticize the empty promises by modernity. Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon, Enter

the Dragon, and the footage of the incomplete Game of Death have a new interpretation of the

stairs. In the five-level pagoda in Game of Death, Bruce Lee encounters different challenges on

each floor, each more challenging than the last. Promoting his idea of Jeet Kune Do, Lee finds

each of their weakness and adapts to different situations to defeat his opponents from a Filipino

Eskrima master, to a Korean Hapkido master, to the seven-foot-tall Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The

stairs are the working of the dialectics. They are not the social ladder, but the way to transcend

from oneself to another. The dialectical contradiction or opponents exist only for and through the

making of better martial arts. “All types of knowledge, ultimately, means self-knowledge,” Lee

explains his teaching philosophy on The Pierre Berton Show. To him, his students paid him to

express themselves through bodily movements. The dialectic is seen as resulting from the

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alienation of knowledge, martial arts, or philosophy. Located in different areas, the opponents

are obstacles for heroes to overcome to surpass themselves. Comparing this dialectic pagoda to

Chang Cheh’s stairs, the heroes in Lee’s films do not fall. He transcends and liberates himself

through all these opponents. King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (1971) can be another reference to this

transcendence. In the showdown, the abbot Hui Yuan, who rescues the heroine and other

innocent people, is badly injured by the chief commander from the Eastern Depot. When the

abbot bleeds golden blood, a low-angle wide shot shows him sitting on a high rock and

mediating against the setting sun. The heroine staggers toward a silhouetted figure of the abbot,

while he is pointing to the sky. The film concludes with the setting sun forming a halo around his

head. A wide shot shows monks and the heroine on their knees while listening to a Buddhist

hymn. The image of the mediating abbot suggests the Buddhist enlightenment. What is shared

with Bruce Lee’s stairs is that the absolute value of art, philosophy, or enlightenment awaits at

the end. In their conclusions, the secular heroes are enlightened through constant fighting and

killing.

To attain enlightenment, this dialectic structure remains formal, one that abstracts

concrete reality, and polices boundaries of class and sexual relations. Even though Bruce Lee’s

characters are from the working class like the heroes in The Big Boss and Way of the Dragon, the

class itself does not have a class-defined agenda. The class enemies do not suggest ultimate aims

for revolutionary social impact and social change but they are great martial artists. Bruce Lee

fights alone instead of mobilizing groups of workers. The representation of the underclass and

the oppressed is not different from those I discuss in Chang Cheh’s films. The social impact is

minimized by the individualistic heroism of Lee’s characters and his working-class community’s

role is reduced to that of an enthusiastic spectator.

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 In terms of gender and sexuality, many scholars argue that Bruce Lee’s characters tried to

negate the image of Asian softness and fight against racial stereotypes. Jachinson Chan analyzes

the triumph of the underdog narrative and Lee’s masculinity (Chan 2001). Yvonne Tasker argues

that Lee’s body tries to negate the Asian softness in the face of western audiences. Oriental

fantasies were replaced by western realism. However, Lee still places himself in a subservient

role as a British spy in Enter the Dragon, a role similar to his Kato in The Green Hornet series.

Tasker also suggests that the way Lee fights for the community and as part of a community may

hint at different masculinities from American heroes who are more isolated (Tasker 1997:316).

Chris Berry argues that Chan and Tasker interpret Bruce Lee only within the convention of

American masculinity, “Lee’s characters do not oppress the female characters nor do they exhibit

an exaggerated James Bond-like heterosexism” (Berry 2006:224). To contextualize Bruce Lee

and his films, Berry uses two pre-modern terms wen-wu to describe Chinese masculinity. While

wen denotes a scholar-official or the cultural power of gentlemen, wu refers to martial

masculinity. He argues that wen-wu masculinity is equally patriarchal and heterosexual. The

Bruce Lee phenomenon is a reassertion of a Chinese wu masculinity in the international arena

(225).

Berry argues that Bruce Lee embodies a neo-wu masculinity. On the one hand, it reasserts

and appropriates American codes of masculinity, and is closely tied to the various nationalist and

anti-colonial interpretations of the underdog narratives in his films. On the other hand, the

assertion is based upon a homophobic structure and subscribes to the western value system. In

Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon, Lee’s characters reject prostitutes. Berry points out

that Lee conforms to the core wu value of eschewing involvement with women lest they sap his

strength or damage his concentration. In Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon, the queer

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collaborator-traitor and interpreter represent the homosexual element from which Lee expels in

the homophobic structure. However, as I illustrate in Chapter 4, this homophobic structure is part

of the Cold War narrative, in which queerness is symbolically abnormal in the realms of

sexuality and fertility. Queerness denotes Communism and the destruction of familial

relationships. In Bruce Lee’s dialectic structure, queerness is always absent in the making of

contradictions. Unlike Chang Cheh’s Shaolin Martial Arts (1974) where the big bosses are two

emotionless castrated Mandarin killers, there are no queer martial artists in Bruce Lee’s films.

The collaborator-interpreter played by Wei Ping-ao is not qualified as a contradiction, from

which Lee’s characters can transform themselves. The contradiction in Lee’s dialectic stairs must

first of all be martial artists and their martial power is equal to that of Lee’s characters.

The philosophical dialectic seems to go beyond any nationality, race, ethnicity or

nationalism. It is said that Mao Zedong burst into tears when he watched Fist of Fury (Zhou

2010). The appeal of the oriental philosopher-martial artist corresponded to the international

retreat from radical politics in the post-counter-culture movement. In the early 1970s, when

Bruce Lee’s and other martial arts films entered the US markets, it was the end of the civil rights

movement and the Vietnam War was about to end.

Lee is a perfect example of the model minority. He is not like the figure of Fu Manchu,

but more like that of Charlie Chan. In his films, he fights and works with white martial artists,

works within the Chinese community, and opposes the racists and criminals. Bruce Lee himself

is a Chinese American, who taught non-Chinese students martial arts, which displeased Chinese

martial artists in Seattle. Lee is what the Chinese Confession Program (1955-1965) wanted. It

created division and distrust within Chinese communities, encouraging and rewarding those who

340
would betray and turn in their neighbors and community members who allegedly had

Communist ties. When Lee played Kato in The Green Hornet in 1966-67, it was the Chinese

Confession Program and the establishment of the Nationality and Immigration Act of 1965,

which ended the quota on Asian immigrants.

To make himself stand out from other martial artists and actors, philosophy (mind),

which supposedly contradicts the physical (body), was used to promote his martial arts. The

transcendence leads nowhere but to his popular image, whose body poses no threat to the

existing law and order. Before he made his success in Hong Kong, he appeared on a Hong Kong

popular variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight. He introduced his martial arts and that attracted the

attention of Raymond Chow, who negotiated a better deal with Lee than the Shaw Brothers

Studio. In the show, Lee received a souvenir plaque, which reads “yangwei haiwai” (making a

name overseas). Even though he was playing only a supporting role in the Green Hornet and

Longstreet, he was a rare Asian who promoted Chinese philosophy and martial arts in front of

the western audience. The otherness from the West was what Golden Harvest and Warner

Brothers wanted to cash in on. Golden Harvest, as a new studio company, used Bruce Lee to

compete with Shaw Brothers, while Warner Brothers coopted any symbolic values from the

counter-culture movement, westernized and translated him into an acceptable hero on the screen.

In the late 1970s, Warner Brothers absorbed any potential counter-cultural identity that Hong

Kong action films may hold for minority audiences in the United States into conservative

Hollywood action movies. It is no accident that Enter the Dragon included orientalist Hong

Kong and symbols of black nationalist and Pan-Africanism. Bruce Lee is a Shaolin student and

instructor, works as a British spy, and kills Han, an evil figure derived from Fu Manchu.

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 Vijay Prashad (2001) mentions how kungfu films, particularly Bruce Lee’s, could

empower people from the third world. He was an icon of an anti-racist and anti-colonial struggle

in Africa (van Staden 2017:49). However, the nationalism in Lee’s films is always compromised.

In chapter 1, I compare Ying Ku (1967) and Fist of Fury. The former is an anti-Japanese

imperialist film produced by a leftist studio in Hong Kong, while the latter glorifies nationalism

in the Japanese-occupied Shanghai, which was produced by Golden Harvest. People are always

surprised why Fist of Fury could be so well received in Japan. However, the circulation and

promotion of Fist of Fury in the foreign markets were first of all based on the fact that it was a

transnational commodity. The original line in Fist of Fury, “You remember, we Chinese are not

sick men of Asia” in the early Mandarin version was dubbed “You remember, we Jingwu school

are not sick men of Asia.” Any lines that may instigate interracial conflict were amended. Only

in the late 1970s, the lines were redubbed in Cantonese and Mandarin. At the end of Ying Ku, the

heroine and her army shout “Down with Japanese imperialism,” while Chen Zhen, the hero in

Fist of Fury never shows his political vision. Instead, he fights anyone who insults and kills

people from the Jingwu school alone. Bill Brown aptly describes the global popularity of Bruce

Lee, “The political resistance of the 1960s transforms into the consumer pleasure of the 1970s

and 1980s and, further, how collective radicality becomes transcoded into a privatizing politics

of consumption” (Brown 1997:25–26). In other words, the countercultural scene in the late

1960s resurfaced as the commodification of subculture in the 1970s. It is a physical feat

consumed as an image in the register of mass culture. The existential struggle in Lee’s

philosophical dialectic abstracts both class and ethnic conflict in the sense of empowerment of

mass-cultural and cross-cultural novelty (37).

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 Wuxia-made Hong Kong tries to postulate that rethinking wuxia in this way provides a

new entry point for understanding the historiography of martial arts films in relation to

colonialism and the Cold War. Wuxia, as an ideology, serves as a mechanism of security for the

middlemen to police the community and maintain law and order. The efforts to revisit the

concentric power dynamic between popular texts, the colonial government, and the Cold War are

crucial for critical intellectual and social practices. A renewed understanding of the justification

of heroes and heroic deeds is indispensable to delink the relationship between violence (wu), and

virtue (xia) and to disenchant the distance between the law and the Law. The delinking and

disenchantment aim not at giving a cynical attitude to heroes but at unveiling the material and

ideological foundation of heroes and their mechanism. As Karl Marx said, “Men make their own

history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected

circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past,” to

rewrite and rethink wuxia film history is to look forward to a critical understanding of the

possibilities and potentials of images and practices for a new man, and a new social and global

relation.

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