Martial arts cinema and Hong Kong modernity : aesthetics, representation, circulation 9789888390717, 9888390716

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“Yip subjects critical clichés to rigorous examination, moving beyond generalized notions of martial arts cinema’s appeal and offering up informed scrutiny of every facet of the genre. He has the ability to encapsulate these films’ particularities with cogent examples and, at the same time, demonstrate a thorough familiarity with the historical context in which this endlessly fascinating genre arose.” —David Desser, professor emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “Eschewing a reductive chronology, Yip offers a persuasive, detailed, and sophisticated excavation of martial arts cinema which is read through and in relation to rapid transformation of Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s. An exemplar of critical genre study, this book represents a significant contribution to the discipline.” —Yvonne Tasker, professor of film studies and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of East Anglia At the core of Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity: Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation is a fascinating paradox: the martial arts film, long regarded as a vehicle of Chinese cultural nationalism, can also be understood as a mass cultural expression of Hong Kong’s modern urban-industrial society. This important and popular genre, Man-Fung Yip argues, articulates the experiential qualities, the competing social subjectivities and gender discourses, as well as the heightened circulation of capital, people, goods, information, and technologies in Hong Kong of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to providing a novel conceptual framework for the study of Hong Kong martial arts cinema and shedding light on the nexus between social change and cultural/aesthetic form, this book offers perceptive analyses of individual films, including not only the canonical works of King Hu, Chang Cheh, and Bruce Lee, but also many lesser-known ones by Lau Kar-leung and Chor Yuen, among others, that have not been adequately discussed before. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, Yip’s stimulating study will ignite debates in new directions for both scholars and fans of Chinese-language martial arts cinema.

Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity

Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation

Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation

Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity

Man-Fung Yip is an assistant professor of film and media studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Printed and bound in Hong Kong, China

Man-Fung Yip

Film Studies

Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity

Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity

Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation

Man-Fung Yip

Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong www.hkupress.org © 2017 Hong Kong University Press ISBN 978-988-8390-71-7 (Hardback) All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. An earlier version of Chapter 2 “In the Realm of the Senses” was published as “In the Realm of the Senses: Sensory Realism, Speed, and Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema,” Cinema Journal 53 (4): 76–97. Copyright © 2014 by the University of Texas Press. All rights reserved. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound by Paramount Printing Co., Ltd. in Hong Kong, China

To Isabel

Contents

Acknowledgments Notes on Transliteration

viii x

Introduction: Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity 1. Body Semiotics 2. In the Realm of the Senses 3. Myth and Masculinity 4. The Difficulty of Difference 5. Marginal Cinema, Minor Transnationalism Epilogue

1 24 56 85 115 145 186

Filmography Bibliography Index

197 203 215

Acknowledgments

This book, which grows out of my dissertation at the University of Chicago, owes its existence to the guidance and support of many individuals. My deepest gratitude goes to the late Miriam Hansen, my dissertation advisor and mentor, whose intellectual rigor and passion were endless inspiration to me. I would be deeply proud if the following pages catch some measure of her spirit. I am also grateful to members of my dissertation committee—Judith Zeitlin, Michael Raine, and Xinyu Dong—for their guidance and inspiration, and for their constructive comments on earlier versions of material appearing in this book. A great many colleagues and friends have provided support over the years. Particular thanks are due to my wonderful colleagues at the University of Oklahoma; to Fan Guangxin, Hui Kwok Wai, Diane Wei Lewis, Daniel Morgan, Song Xiang, Yuki Takinami, Ting Chun Chun, Tsai Po-Chen, Zhang Ling, and other friends during my Chicago days; and to Ka Ming, Leo Lam, Sing Wan, and Ernest Wong, who share with me a passion for cinema and who have enlivened my life with their camaraderie and goodwill. Parts of the book have been presented in workshops and conferences, and I am grateful for all the comments and suggestions made by the audiences of these presentations. My thanks also go to David Desser and Paul Bowman who, as reviewers of the original book manuscript, offered insightful criticism and corrected a number of factual inaccuracies. A number of institutions and archives were crucial to making this book possible. I would like to thank the College of Arts and Sciences and the Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma for grants and leave time for research and writing. Thanks are also due to the staff at the Hong Kong Film Archive, the University of Hong Kong Libraries, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library. Financial support for the book’s publication was provided from the Office of the Vice-President for Research and the Senior Vice-President and Provost’s Office, University of Oklahoma. Last but not least, Eric Mok, Clara Ho, and the editorial team at the Hong Kong University Press deserve special thanks for offering expert editorial suggestions and giving the book its final shape.

Acknowledgments

ix

My wife, Isabel, has provided continuous moral and emotional support since I embarked on this project a long time ago. Her love and encouragement have seen me through tough and stressful times and made the prolonged and at times agonizing journey of writing more bearable than it would have been otherwise. Earlier versions of parts of this book have been previously published: a shorter version of chapter 2 can be found in Cinema Journal 53, no. 4 (August 2014): 76–97, while part of chapter 4 appeared in Chinese Literature Today 3, nos. 1 & 2 (2013): 82–87. I wish to thank the publishers for permission to adapt the material for this book.

Notes on Transliteration

All Chinese terms and film titles are transliterated according to the Hanyu pinyin system. To distinguish between Mandarin and Cantonese, I use different transliteration systems for Chinese names. For instance, Cantonese names are transliterated according to their specific pronunciation; thus, “Wong Fei-hung” and “Lau Kar-leung” are used rather than “Huang Feihong” and “Liu Jialiang.” An exception is made to some well-known figures, whose names are transliterated in the manner in which they most frequently appear elsewhere in literature (for example, “Chang Cheh” and “Cheng Pei-pei” instead of “Zhang Che” and “Zheng Peipei”).

Introduction Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity

Made at a time when confidence was dwindling in Hong Kong due to a battered economy and in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic outbreak,1 Kung Fu Hustle (Gongfu, 2004), the highly acclaimed action comedy by Stephen Chow, can be seen as an attempt to revitalize the positive energy and tenacious resolve—what is commonly referred to as the “Hong Kong spirit” (Xianggang jingshen)—that has allegedly propelled the city’s amazing socioeconomic growth. It brought about this revitalization, in part, through the character Sing (played by Chow himself), a petty crook who has had to endure years of adversity before transforming himself into a kung fu master and using his newly acquired skills to fight for justice and redemption. But no less important are the ways in which the film invoked various past traditions of Hong  Kong martial arts cinema—the Cantonese magical swordplay movies of the 1960s and the classic films of Bruce Lee and Chang Cheh, for instance—and reimagined them in the context of today’s special effects-packed Hollywood blockbusters. As a genre, the martial arts film is widely considered the most representative of Hong Kong cinema, but it can also be read as a metonymic symbol of the city’s rapid and successful modernization during the postwar era. This is the case not just because the genre’s rise to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s, in both domestic and international markets, coincided with the economic takeoff that has made Hong Kong one of the most affluent places in the world; more importantly, the ideological discourses underpinning many martial arts films, such as the spirit of competition and conquest, the ethics of hard work and discipline, and perseverance in the face of overwhelming difficulties, conjure up the very same ethos perceived to be an indispensable driving force for 1. The source of the economic downturn can be traced to the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998, when currency devaluation in Thailand and its ripple effects caused a serious slump in numerous regional economies. The heat of the financial crisis was also felt by Hong Kong, which saw a sharp rise in unemployment and a drastic drop in the Hong Kong stock market and in property values. The gloomy economic environment was further abetted by the dot.com meltdown of 2000, when the speculative bubble surrounding the Internet sector and related fields imploded and triggered the slowdown not only of the global economy but also of the recovery process in Hong Kong. The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the spring of 2003 added another bad news to the already growing pile of woes. A highly contagious and deadly form of pneumonia, the SARS epidemic killed some 300 people and dealt a major blow to the tourist industry (and to the still ailing local economy).

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Hong Kong’s remarkable growth. In this sense, the attempt of Kung Fu Hustle to hark back to earlier traditions of martial arts cinema and reinvent them with high-tech special effects reflects a twofold objective: to uphold the continued importance of the martial arts film in today’s globalized screen culture dominated by Hollywood blockbusters; and to reaffirm, at a time of crisis, some of the core values that have shaped and defined the modern self-identity of Hong Kong people. The cultural politics of Kung Fu Hustle is fascinating, but what really interests me here about the film is the broader theoretical issue it raises regarding the study of Hong Kong martial arts cinema: in highlighting the martial arts film and Hong Kong’s postwar development as points of intersection and convergence, Kung Fu Hustle opens up a space for examining the genre within a larger historical context, one that pertains to sweeping changes associated with the rapidly modernizing society of the former British colony. And this is precisely what I endeavor to do in this book: to investigate the complex overlaps between martial arts cinema and Hong Kong modernity, focusing in particular on the years between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1970s. Long regarded as a crucial period of transformation in Hong Kong society and culture, the 1960s and 1970s not only witnessed a new, radically different trend of martial arts films, but were also a time when Hong Kong transformed itself from a small trading port to a modern industrial city with new forms of social life and experience. Far from being a mere historical coincidence, the two seemingly discrete trends turn out to be closely intertwined. Indeed, 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. This attempt to embed martial arts cinema within the social and cultural landscape of Hong Kong modernity might seem odd or even counterintuitive, given the critical commonplace that tends to reduce the genre to a mere vehicle for cultural nationalism. This sort of cultural nationalist reading, which stresses the long history of martial arts literature and culture in China and considers martial arts cinema as an integral part of this quintessential Chinese tradition, is a useful and even necessary, but ultimately inadequate, approach. Not only does it fail to address some of the most important features—be they institutional, aesthetic, or ideological—that have marked Hong Kong martial arts films, it also has little to say about the larger social and historical contexts from which the films emerged in particular periods of time. With a rapidly growing industrial economy and an increasingly cosmopolitan urban culture, Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s constituted an arena where different ideas, styles, experiences, and structures of feeling interacted and negotiated new forms and meanings of modern life. As one of the most popular genres in Hong Kong cinema

Introduction

3

at the time, the martial arts film played an essential role in facilitating this process, reflecting and reinforcing the everyday experiences and discourses associated with a new modern social order. In conceiving the martial arts film as a cultural counterpart and response to the burgeoning modernity of Hong Kong, I am following a recent trend of work that explores cinema—or at least specific film practices—within the wider context of a modernizing metropolitan society.2 A major premise underlying this approach is the complex interconnection between cinema and modernity; or specifically, the conception of cinema as an emblem of the modern, a mass culture expression or incarnation of various processes of modernization and modernity (such as the Fordist method of mass production and mass consumption, the sensory intensification of everyday life, and drastic changes in social and gender relations). Among the most forceful proponent of this line of inquiry was Miriam Hansen, who, in a series of articles, developed the concept of vernacular modernism as a way to conceptualize the ability of cinema to provide a horizon for the contradictory experience of technological, urban-industrial modernity.3 For Hansen, this horizon offered by cinema is a fundamentally public one, rendering perceptible the aporias of modern life not just for individual reflection but for mimetic identification by a mass audience. Furthermore, this reflexive relation of cinema with modernity, while capable of triggering cognitive processes in the viewers, is centrally grounded in sensory and affective experience due to film being a medium that gives primacy to the aesthetic organization of images and sounds. In conceiving such a vernacular mode of modernism, Hansen aimed to expand the scope of modernist aesthetics so that it is not just confined to certain elite movements in literature, music, painting, and other art forms, but includes a wider range of practices—even those within the realm of mass culture—that engage in dynamic interaction with the social, political, and economic processes of modern society. It comes hardly as a surprise, then, that Hansen first developed the concept of vernacular modernism in relation to classical Hollywood cinema, arguing that the transcultural appeal of this mass-produced, mass-consumed form of entertainment was grounded not so much in the presumed universality of its classical style as in 2. Some representative examples of this line of investigation include (in chronological order of publication): Tom Gunning, “The Whole Town’s Gawking: Early Cinema and the Visual Experience of Modernity,” Yale Journal of Criticism 7, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 189–201; Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz, ed., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996); Leo Charney, Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998); Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); and, as we will see shortly, the work of Miriam Hansen on vernacular modernism. 3. The articles include: Hansen, “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism,” Modernism/Modernity 6, no. 2 (1999): 59–77; “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism,” Film Quarterly 54, no. 1 (Autumn 2000): 10–22; “Vernacular Modernism: Tracking Cinema on a Global Scale,” in World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, ed. Nataša Durovicová and Kathleen Newman (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), 287–314.

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its reflexive capacity to articulate and disseminate the particular historical experience associated with capitalist-industrial modernity. Later, in an attempt to extend the concept to film practices in other modernizing societies, Hansen switched her focus to Shanghai cinema of the 1920s and 1930s and took it as representing a parallel yet different brand of vernacular modernism, one evolving “in a complex relation to American—and other foreign—models while drawing on and transforming Chinese traditions in theater, literature, graphic and print culture, both modernist and popular.”4 Hansen’s work has had a major impact on Chinese cinema scholarship; many scholars have followed her lead and approached, in more comprehensive and historically informed ways, Chinese cinema of the interwar period through the lens of vernacular modernism.5 My book is similarly influenced by this conceptual framework, but it goes beyond the previous emphasis on the early twentieth century period and considers Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s as resuscitating the vernacular-modernist tradition in Chinese-language cinema—albeit in a different context and on a more global scale. In all, with its aim to bring martial arts cinema and Hong Kong modernity into meaningful intersection, this book requires us to look at the genre with new eyes, from a perspective that does not simply regard it as a cult object or, worse still, discount it as a form of frivolous entertainment—in other words, a genre unworthy of serious attention. Nor is it enough to follow complacently the critical orthodoxy that has hitherto shaped our understanding of the genre. Rather, what is needed is a systematic and historically informed approach, one that would take the ostensibly “shallow” genre to be a complex body of work that sheds light on important aesthetic, social, and cultural issues. But before I further sketch out such an approach, a brief look at the history of Hong Kong/Chinese-language martial arts cinema is in order.

The Genealogy of a Genre The first Chinese-language martial arts films can be traced to Shanghai cinema of the late 1920s. By today’s standards, these films could look rather tame: they lack the kind of dazzling action choreography as we know it today, and tend to give primacy to special effects that seem crude and rudimentary to modern eyes. All this, however, should not blind us to the mass sensation created by the films, which comprised almost 60 percent of the total Chinese film production in the period. For some critics, the enormous popularity of the genre is best explained by its ability to evoke a symbolic “Chineseness” and to articulate a sense of national pride and alternative 4. Hansen, “Fallen Women,” 13. 5. Examples of this trend include Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), and Weihong Bao, Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915–1945 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

Introduction

5

justice, which was avidly exploited by the film industry to satisfy the nationalist sentiments of the time.6 Recent research, however, has complicated this view by switching the focus to the genre’s historical overlap with a nascent Chinese modernity. According to this position, the early martial arts films, with their inventive use of film technology, their emphasis on kinesthetic experience and the transformative power of the body, and their propensity to destabilize the boundaries between magic and science, archaic fantasy and modern desire, were closely linked to the massive transformation in everyday life resulting from the burgeoning modernity of Shanghai. Besides, the importance given to the female warrior, a figure often put at the center of dramatic tension and visual spectacle in the films, may also be taken as reflecting the growing social power of women in modern life.7 Their popularity among ordinary viewers notwithstanding, the early Shanghai martial arts films came under increasing attack by both government officials and cultural elites for their allegedly superstitious and anarchistic tendencies. The genre was eventually banned in 1932, and it was not until the production base of Chinese commercial filmmaking was relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the late 1940s that martial arts cinema was given a new lease on life. In the beginning, most Hong  Kong martial arts movies were made by émigré filmmakers from the mainland and thus retained many of the characteristics—in particular, the magical and supernatural elements—of their Shanghai predecessors. This trend, however, quickly waned and was replaced by martial arts films with more indigenous materials and styles. A good case in point is the series of movies based on the adventures of real-life Cantonese folk hero Wong Fei-hung: first appearing in 1949 and totaling almost one hundred films made in a period of over twenty years, this long-running series launched a new trend of martial arts film emphasizing the use of “real kung fu” (zhen gongfu). Moreover, like many martial arts films of the time, it drew on literary sources—in this case, the Guangdong School martial arts fiction.8 Produced and circulated primarily within the cultural and linguistic sphere of Guangdong (including Hong Kong and the Cantonese-speaking segments of the Chinese diaspora), Guangdong School fiction is known first and foremost for its local flavor, especially its use of Cantonese 6. For a good example of this line of argument, see Jubin Hu, Projecting a Nation: Chinese National Cinema before 1949 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), chapter 3. 7. See Zhang, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen, especially chapter 7, and Weihong Bao, “From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927–1931,” Camera Obscura 20, no. 3 (2005): 193–231. 8. According to Hu Peng, who directed the first ever Wong Fei-hung film in 1949 (and would go on to make dozens of them), the main inspiration of the series came from a radio play based on the novel Huang Feihong biezhuan [The unofficial history of Wong Fei-hung], which was first serialized in the newspaper Gongshang ribao on October 28, 1947. The author of the novel, Zhu Yuzhai, was himself a skilled martial artist and a student of Lam Sai-wing, who in turn was a disciple of the real-life Wong Fei-hung. See Hu Peng, Wo yu Huang Feihong: wushi nian dianying daoyan shengya huiyilu [Wong Fei-hung and I: Memoirs of a film director’s fifty-year career] (Hong Kong: San He, 1995), 6–7.

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Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity

slang and its celebration of local heroes and traditions—a tendency that can also be observed in the Wong Fei-hung films.9 Another major literary source for the martial arts films of the period was the so-called “new school martial arts fiction” (xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo). First leaping into prominence with the success of Liang Yusheng’s Dragon and Tiger Vie in the Capital (Longhu dou jinghua, 1954) and Jin Yong’s Books and Swords, Gratitude and Revenge (Shujian enchou lu, 1956), this trend clearly showed the influence of its “old school” counterpart in Republican Shanghai. Yet it also marked a major departure not only in terms of content and style, but also in the production and circulation of martial arts fiction away from the mainland to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese communities overseas.10 It did not take long for Hong Kong film producers to realize the commercial potential of this increasingly popular trend. Film adaptations of new school novels by Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, and Zhuge Qingyun started to come out in the late 1950s (and would continue into the present). A number of new school authors also moved on to work in the film industry itself. A good case in point is Ni Kuang, a prolific writer who authored more than 300 scripts and was involved in such pivotal martial arts films as Chang Cheh’s One-Armed Swordsman (Dubei dao, 1967) and Blood Brothers (Ci Ma, 1973). With growing demand from both local and regional markets, the early 1960s saw a surge in the production of Hong Kong martial arts films. The once dominant Wong Fei-hung series, however, had declined in popularity. Instead, the most visible trend in the period was the revival of magical swordplay films, albeit ones with higher production values and more sophisticated special effects. It is worth pointing out here that most martial arts films made before the mid-1960s were Cantoneselanguage productions. Mandarin films, which had become an integral part of Hong Kong cinema since the influx of Shanghai film talent into the local industry in the immediate postwar period, were targeted primarily at the more educated and more refined middle-class audiences who saw themselves as above the “frivolous” entertainment of martial arts films. This situation, however, started to change when the legendary Shaw Brothers studio launched in 1965 a campaign for “new school” (xinpai) martial arts films with the production of eight swordplay movies, including Xu Zenghong’s Temple of the Red Lotus (Jianghu qixia, 1965), Chang Cheh’s Tiger

9. For an overview of the Guangdong School martial arts fiction, see John Christopher Hamm, Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 32–48. On the Wong Fei-hung film series, see the essays in Mastering Virtue: The Cinematic Legend of a Martial Artist, ed. Po Fung and Lau Yam (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2012). See also Po Fung, “A Hero Reinvented: Wong Fei-hung’s Cinema Odyssey,” in The Hong Kong–Guangdong Film Connection, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2005), 248–60, and Hector Rodriguez, “Hong Kong Popular Culture as an Interpretive Arena: The Huang Feihong Film Series,” Screen 38, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 1–24. 10. See Hamm, Paper Swordsmen, 1–11; 49–78.

Introduction

7

Boy (Huxia jianchou, 1966), and King Hu’s Come Drink with Me (Da zuixia, 1966).11 Eschewing the stylized theatrical fights and supernatural special effects that pervaded and distinguished their Cantonese counterparts of the time, these Mandarin martial arts movies took their cues from Hollywood and Japanese cinema and embraced, in the name of “realism,” a highly sensational style emphasizing gory violence and other forms of sensory stimulation. In the beginning, many of these new style martial arts films featured strong, active female characters as protagonists, but this femalecentric trend was soon challenged with the rise of a new male heroic prototype marked by a strong sense of youthful energy and defiance and by a propensity for violent action. Conceived under the rubric of yanggang (“staunch masculinity”) and identified most closely with the films of Chang Cheh, this new masculine paradigm proved enormously popular among the young generation and increasingly—though not completely—put the woman warrior figure into the shadow. With the transition to the hard-hitting kung fu subgenre at the beginning of the 1970s, these trends towards sensory intensification and representations of hypermasculinity became even more apparent. In contrast to the swordplay movie, which is for the most part set in a distant or mythical past evoking ancient tradition and history, the kung fu film tends to feature a more modern setting, focusing in particular on the late Qing and early Republican periods—a pivotal era in which China moved away from dynastic rule to the struggle for the formation of a modern nation. On the other hand, the kung fu subgenre also distinguishes itself with its emphasis on “real,” authentic hand-to-hand combat over supernatural swordplay or special effects, thereby showing a characteristically modern outlook rooted in realism and rationalism. The importance accorded to “real kung fu,” with its associations with corporeal effort and training, also reflects a focus on physical labor as well as bodily discipline and empowerment closely linked to Hong Kong’s labor-intensive industrialization in the period. The popularity of martial arts films reached a peak in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, when they comprised nearly 70 percent of the film industry’s total output and dominated both the local as well as regional markets. It was around this time that a new company, Golden Harvest, came into being and quickly established itself as a major force in Hong Kong cinema.12 Adopting a more flexible approach than Shaw

11. This campaign for a renewed action cinema was first launched in a special section in the October 1965 issue of Southern Screen (Nanguo dianying), the official publication of the Shaw organization. See “Shaw Launches ‘Action Era,’” Southern Screen 92 (October 1965): 30–43. See also Law Kar, “The Origin and Development of Shaws’ Color Wuxia Century,” in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 129–43. 12. Golden Harvest was founded in 1970 by Raymond Chow, former production chief at Shaw Brothers, and quickly became one of the most prominent film studios in Hong Kong. It would continue to occupy a leading position in Hong Kong cinema until the early 1990s. For an overview of the company, see Golden Harvest: Leading Change in Changing Times, ed. Po Fung (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2013).

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Brothers, Golden Harvest contracted with independent filmmakers and offered them greater creative freedom and pay; as a result, it was able to attract a group of gifted stars and directors, including Bruce Lee. Thanks to Lee and the kung fu craze associated with him, Hong Kong martial arts films started to attract a global audience, not only in Europe and the United States but also in numerous third-world countries all over the world.13 This international breakthrough, however, turned out to be a fleeting phenomenon: with Lee’s premature death in the summer of 1973 and the problem of overproduction in general, the worldwide interest in the genre started to fade. A period of stagnation followed, but the genre was soon revitalized and taken in new directions, most notably the Shaolin kung fu films of Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung; Chor Yuen’s series of dark, evocative swordplay films based on the novels of Gu Long; and kung fu comedies featuring, among others, a young Jackie Chan. Martial arts films continued to flourish in the 1980s, albeit in distinctly modernized forms: some, like Chan and Sammo Hung, recast the period kung fu film into the action-adventure genre with a modern urban setting, whereas John Woo, a protégé of Chang Cheh, reinvented the yanggang aesthetic in his acclaimed gangster epics such as A Better Tomorrow (Yingxiong bense, 1986) and The Killer (Diexie Shuangxiong, 1989). The Wong Fei-hung saga was revived in the Once Upon a Time in China (Huang Feihong) series starring Jet Li, while a new cycle of swordplay movies, ones that made innovative use of both indigenous and Hollywood-style special effects, took the market by storm in the early 1990s. Over the following decade, thanks in part to home video, cable TV, DVD, the internet, and other new distribution technologies, Hong Kong martial arts and action films succeeded in (re)gaining a wide international following and seizing the attention of producers and filmmakers all around the world. Even Hollywood started, in the early 1990s, making concerted efforts to appropriate the unique action aesthetics of Hong Kong cinema, bringing in many of the industry’s brightest talent (among them John Woo, Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li, and Yuen Woo-ping). By the turn of the new century, the “Hong Kong style” had left a clear mark in the Hollywood mainstream, as attested to by films such as John Woo’s Face/Off (1997), the Wachowskis’ 13. On the global circulation and influence of 1970s Hong Kong martial arts cinema, see David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 19–43; Amy Abugo Ongiri, “Bruce Lee in the Ghetto Connection: Kung Fu Theater and African American Reinventing Culture at the Margins,” in East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture, ed. Shilpa Davé, LeiLani Nishime, and Tasha G. Oren (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 249–61; May  Joseph, “Kung Fu Cinema and Frugality,” in The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 433–50; S. V. Srinivas, “Hong Kong Action Film in the Indian B Circuit,” InterAsian Cultural Studies 4, no. 1 (April 2003): 40–62; and Kim Soyoung, “Genre as Contact Zone: Hong Kong Action and Korean Hwalkuk,” in Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, ed. Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li, and Stephen Ching-kiu Chan (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 97–110.

Introduction

9

The Matrix (1999), and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series (2003–2004). Meanwhile, the unprecedented success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu canglong, 2000) further paved the way for a string of global Chinese-language martial arts films, most notably Zhang Yimou’s Hero (Yingxiong, 2002) and House of Flying Daggers (Shimian maifu, 2004), Kung Fu Hustle, and Chen Kaige’s The Promise (Wuji, 2005). Taken together, these developments bear out the growing transnational appeal and impact of Hong Kong/Chinese-language martial arts and action cinema. What used to be a local film genre has become an essential part of global mass culture, circulating across borders and generating in the process new networks, markets, audiences, as well as forms of consumption.

Between Modern and Traditional The historical sketch above is by no means exhaustive, but it should suffice to give a sense of the scope and complexity of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, which has taken on very different forms and meanings in different periods of time. This book makes no attempt to study the genre in a comprehensive way. My focus is primarily on the Mandarin martial arts films, of both swordplay and kung fu varieties, that dominated Hong Kong cinema during the late 1960s and much of the 1970s. The reasons for emphasizing this particular group of films are twofold: on the one hand, owing in part to lack of access, many of these films have been ignored until relatively recently,14 and it is an imbalance that I intend to rectify. More importantly, it is in these films that the underlying argument of the book, that is, the close interconnections between martial arts cinema and the sensory and social-ideological formations of Hong Kong modernity, can be illustrated most clearly. Granted, this attempt to bring martial arts cinema and Hong Kong modernity into meaningful intersections could strike one as odd and surprising, since the martial arts film, with its deep roots in traditional Chinese literature and culture, is commonly taken as a genre more identified with native tradition than with modern (Western) ideas and styles. In the history of Chinese cinema, as Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar argue, it is realism, often mixed with romantic and/or melodramatic elements, that “was approved as the mode of modernity” and “constructed as the aesthetic counterpart of the quest to make China a modern nation-state.” The martial arts film, by  contrast, is “culturally nationalist”; it is notable for its “dynamic extension of traditional popular cultural forms” and “hails viewers first and foremost as Chinese people seeing a Chinese spectacle.”15 At first sight, a similar argument can also be 14. For years, Shaws had refused outside access to its films, and it was not until 2002 that the studio finally sold its vast film library to Celestial Pictures, which went on to restore and distribute many of the films on DVD, VCD, and cable television. 15. Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 77; 48.

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made for Hong Kong martial arts cinema. For example, when Shaws launched its campaign for new martial arts films in the mid-1960s, it was in many ways merely extending a strategy that had been successfully exploited, namely an attempt to cultivate in its films a sense of nostalgia and cultural nationalism. This explains why the studio’s output in the period comprised mainly historical epics and huangmei diao musicals, both of which pivoted on the idea of an essentialized Chineseness based on the use of traditional Chinese subjects, imagery, and aesthetic forms. Here is, for instance, what Poshek Fu says about the huangmei diao musical: The Chinese characters [in the huangmei diao films] are all frozen in a temporal frame that is as ahistorical as it is decontextualized in space; and the good and the virtuous (inadvertently, also the most beautiful) among them are projected as the embodiment of Chinese traditions encapsulated in a series of Confucianist clichés, namely chastity, loyalty, purity, integrity, courage, industry, and filial piety. This idealization of an imagined tradition that was China, accentuated by a traditionalist aesthetics of popular songs and folk opera music . . . had enormous appeal among the Chinese diaspora, many of whom were recently exiled from the Mainland due to the change of political power, and were thus painfully nostalgic for the homeland.16

Without doubt, much of what Fu says about the huangmei diao musical applies equally well to martial arts films, particularly those of the swordplay variety. Despite their generic period settings that relate only tangentially to Chinese (political) history, swordplay films do conjure up a strong sense of “Chineseness” through their inclusion and appropriation of unique Chinese cultural ideas (such as the chivalric code of behavior embodied by the concept xia) and practices (notably martial arts fiction and Beijing opera). Even the kung fu film, which evinces a more distinctly modern sensibility and is relatively free from nostalgic associations, is still widely perceived as evoking a set of Chinese “essences” that inspire love and yearning for the homeland. This can clearly be seen in the way Chinese kung fu has been valorized as a form of national heritage commonly known as guoshu (national arts). As David Desser points out in connection with the nationalist appeal of the kung fu subgenre, it is martial arts as a specifically Chinese knowledge, and not physical strength or virility per se, that gives unsurpassed aura to the male heroic body and makes it a privileged source of Chinese pride.17 Yet nostalgia, as a yearning for the past, is not necessarily opposed to the experience of modernity but rather has a complex relationship with it. In other words, the

16. Poshek Fu, “Going Global: A Cultural History of the Shaw Brothers Studio, 1960–1970,” in Border Crossings in Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 2000), 47 17. David Desser, “Fists of Legend: Constructing Chinese Identity in the Hong Kong Cinema,” in ChineseLanguage Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, ed. Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 288–91.

Introduction

11

meanings embedded in the cultural nationalist discourse of the martial arts film are by no means fixed or static; rather, they need to be specifically coordinated with a larger understanding of the industrial practices and sociohistorical circumstances of the time. For instance, the martial arts film craze in late 1920s and early 1930s Shanghai entailed not simply a nostalgic urge to connect with native traditions. The cultural nationalist appeal of the genre was clear and unmistakable, but it was also to a large extent harnessed as a means of expanding the audience base in order to bolster a nascent Chinese film industry, which was in turn conceived as part of a larger project of building a modern Chinese nation.18 On the other hand, with China becoming a communist state after 1949 and isolated from the broader world, both Taiwan and Hong Kong were free to articulate their own versions of “authentic” Chineseness through nostalgic reconstructions of traditional Chinese culture in popular media. Unlike Taiwan, however, where the discourse of cultural nationalism was often used as a legitimizing mechanism for the ruling Guomindang government, the cultural nationalist mode in 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 hardly as 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.19 The seeming traditionalism of Shaws’ productions, then, is deceptive and needs to be taken with caution, since it obscures in many ways the fundamentally modern quality of the films as mass commodities. In its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, Shaw Brothers was a veritable modern industrial organization with a massive, fully modernized studio and hundreds of employees under long-term contract. Like its American counterparts, the company adopted an assembly-line model of production designed to maximize efficiency and output, and relied on a system of vertical integration to maintain control of the market. And similar to other large Hong Kong film studios, it boasted a vibrant overseas market network in Taiwan as well as in Southeast Asia, thus reflecting and reinforcing the city’s widely recognized strengths in regional capitalism. By the late 1960s, Shaw Brothers had grown into one of the most established film companies in the region and represented for many people a symbol of dynamism and growth. “To most Asian filmmakers,” as Fu points out, “the Movietown [the vast studio complex built by the Shaw organization in the 1960s] . . .

18. See Hu, Projecting a Nation, chapter 3; and Stephen Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 9. 19. For Stephen Teo, this tendency to assert one’s Chineseness by identifying with an essentialized cultural ideal constitutes an example of what he calls “abstract nationalism.” See Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute, 1997), 112–13.

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represented modern, it was the Hollywood in the East: its efficient management, its streamlined production procedures, its sumptuous studio facilities, and its superabundance of glamorous, fashionable stars.”20 Similarly, in the words of Korean filmmaker Chung  Chang-wha, who had a long and successful career in Hong Kong during the late 1960s and the 1970s, Shaws was “one of the most prosperous studios in Asia at the time,” a place where “any talented director [would want] to work.”21 Not only were Shaws’ films mass commodities aimed at maximum profit, but they are also better seen, in aesthetic terms, as a combination of modern and traditional elements. On one level, many of the Shaw films could seem rather old-fashioned and conservative, especially when compared to the productions from Motion Pictures and General Investment Co. Ltd. (MP & GI), the main competitor of Shaws in the 1960s. Under the leadership of Loke Wan Tho, with his bold vision of modernizing the everyday culture of Chinese societies through cinema, MP & GI concentrated on making self-consciously hip and modern films that utilized contemporary settings and themes as well as a slick, dynamic style bearing clear Hollywood influence.22 At the outset, Shaws could not compete with its rival in these terms; its strengths, as noted earlier, resided in period pictures, in such genres as historical epics, huangmei diao musicals, and martial arts films—a trend that can be traced back to the studio’s Shanghai years in the 1920s and 1930s.23 Yet the surface traditionalism of these films is misleading. It is worth noting that Shaws, despite its films’ adherence to traditional subjects and genres as well as their propensity for nostalgic sentiments, had since the early 1960s made a concerted attempt to modernize its products by recruiting Japanese professionals, from cinematographer Nishimoto Tadashi and special effects designer Tsuburaya Eiji to a group of directors including Inoue Umetsugu, Nakahira Ko, and Matsuo Akinori. Taking advantage of their skills and expertise, the studio successfully appropriated a range of new technologies and techniques (e.g., color and widescreen cinematography, hand-held camera, and aspects of set construction).24 All this had a crucial impact on its films: for instance, while the huangmei diao musical utilizes folkloric narratives and draws on traditional folk music, it is also, as one critic argues,

20. Fu, “Going Global,” 50. 21. John Kreng and Hyung-Sook Lee, “Remembering the Forgotten Name of an Asian Action Master: Interview with Director Chung Chang-Wha,” Spectator 27, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 90. 22. For an overview of MP & GI and what may be called its “modernity program,” see Poshek Fu, “Hong Kong and Singapore: A History of Cathay Cinema,” in The Cathay Story, ed. Wong Ain-lin (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), 60–75. 23. For more discussion on the early years of Shaws’ filmmaking activities, see Zhou Chengren, “Shanghai’s Unique Film Productions and Hong Kong’s Early Cinema,” in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-lin (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 19–35. 24. On this strategy of recruiting Japanese film workers, see Yau Shuk-ting Kinnia, Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Understanding the Origins of East Asian Film Networks (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 86–103.

Introduction

13

a “highly cinematic genre” that makes use of “modern cinematic techniques and modes of delivery.”25 The paradox here can hardly be missed: while there is no question that Shaws created through its films a fantasy representation of a timeless, eternal China, it did so almost entirely in the form of a modern technologized spectacle. Similarly, despite the conventional perception of their being tradition-bound and tied to cultural beliefs and practices from premodern China, it is important not to overlook the modern dimensions of Shaws’ martial arts films—and those from other companies, notably Golden Harvest—that proliferated in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Emerging and thriving in a period when Hong Kong cinema, like the city as a whole, was embarking on a rapid course of modernization, these commercial and profit-driven films, while banal and formulaic in many respects, turn out to be more intriguing than is usually thought. On the one hand, given the hitherto conservative local film culture, the films represented a major aesthetic breakthrough, borrowing many of their stylistic and technological innovations from Japanese and Hollywood cinema and laying the foundation for the films of the 1980s and beyond. Hand-held camera, slow- and fast-motion, elaborate action choreography, rapid (and occasionally elliptical) editing, creative wirework and other special effects—all this constituted part of a new dynamic style which, at once popular and experimental, would help propel Hong Kong martial arts (and action) cinema into a form of global mass entertainment. Yet making a case for the aesthetic values of these 1960s and 1970s martial arts films does not entail a narrowly textual approach. What is more important is to consider the complex intertwining of the films and their social and historical contexts, especially the ways in which the films, their style as well as their content, can be said to be rooted in the dynamics of Hong Kong’s postwar modernization process. This, I should note, is not to simply argue that the films, with their emphasis on movement and sensational action, mirrored the energy and vitality of a society undergoing rapid growth. Nor is it adequate to say that the explicit display of strong, athletic bodies in the films alluded to a growing confidence and assertiveness among Hong  Kong people. These interpretations are not necessarily wrong, but they are far too generalized to be of much analytical value. To better understand martial arts films of the period as a cultural expression of Hong Kong modernity, it is necessary to first consider the array of socioeconomic and cultural changes brought about by Hong Kong’s postwar transformation into a modern urban-industrial society, and then explain how these changes helped develop a new trend of martial arts films.

25. Edwin W. Chen, “Musical China, Classical Impressions: A Preliminary Study of Shaws’ Huangmei Diao Film,” in The Shaw Screen, 51.

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Mapping Hong Kong Modernity Modernity is a notoriously difficult concept to define, and any attempt to make sense of it is necessarily partial and context-specific. On the broadest level, the onset of modernity and a new modern world can be traced to seventeenth-century Europe, where the rise of Enlightenment thought—a heightened emphasis on liberty, equality, and the scientific method, all founded upon the alleged centrality of human reason—challenged and ultimately swept aside medieval worldviews and traditional hierarchical political and social orders (as epitomized by absolute monarchy, the privileges of the nobility, and the political power and authority of the Catholic Church). In particular, the emergence of modern science during this period, triggered by a new methodology for uncovering truth about the natural world, brought about a host of scientific and technological breakthroughs, many of which would be harnessed in practical applications—in manufacturing, for instance, where the use of steam engines and other innovations led to higher productivity and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s and 1800s. With new technologies emerging in the second half of the 1800s, especially large-scale iron and steel production and the use of electric power, the Industrial Revolution entered a new phase; not only did production output increase significantly (and would be further boosted by FordistTaylorist methods of mass production), but accelerated industrial development also gave rise to an array of attendant social phenomena—from urbanization and mass consumerism to the proliferation of mass media and culture and the expansion of women’s social visibility—that defined and continue to define modern society. In this book, I take modernity to be an ensemble of interrelated historical processes—economic, social, cultural-ideological, and experiential—that brought drastically new ideas, practices, and subjectivities to Europe, North America, and eventually all around the world. This, however, does not suggest that modernity is a simple rupture with tradition, nor does it entail a form of Anglo-Eurocentrism. Rather, modernity involves what Harry Harootunian calls a “doubling” that inscribes in everyday life the differences between the exigencies of capitalism and other modern forces on the one hand and, on the other hand, the lingering traces of the (premodern) past, as manifested in the persistence of traditional values, patterns of culture, and modes of life.26 Due to the different inflections in the encounter of the new and the vestiges of another era that never entirely go away, the paths taken by different societies towards and through modernity are necessarily not the same. In Hong Kong’s case, the rapid course of industrialization (and the various socioeconomic and cultural transformations associated with it) in the 1960s and 1970s, imbricated with the forces of past traditions and the experience of colonization and diaspora, gave rise 26. Harry Harootunian, History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 111.

Introduction

15

to a complex social constellation that centrally shaped the colonial, urban-industrial modernity of the city. There is widespread consensus among researchers that the 1960s and 1970s constituted a major transitional era in Hong Kong society and culture.27 Soon after Hong Kong became a colony under Britain, it was made into a transshipment port for commodities from various parts of China, Southeast Asia, and the West. While research has revealed that the manufacturing industry started to develop in Hong  Kong as early as in the nineteenth century, and that Chinese entrepreneurs had set up industries on a relatively sizable scale there by the 1930s,28 full-fledged industrialization did not take place until the 1950s. Two factors converged to make this process possible (and necessary). First, the Korean War (1950–1953) and the ensuing embargo imposed on China led to a sharp fall in Hong Kong’s all-important entrepôt trade, thus forcing it to shift its economic base. Manufacturing turned out to be a viable option, given that the embargo on China gave Hong Kong industries an opportunity to fill the void and to export their products to foreign countries. The second factor pertained to the influx of mainland Chinese refugees during the postwar period. The exodus came primarily in two waves: the first took place between 1945 and 1951, when tens of thousands of mainland Chinese fled to Hong Kong to escape civil war and communist rule. The second wave occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s during the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and the subsequent famine in China. Many of these refugees, particularly those from the first wave, were rich industrialists from Guangdong and Shanghai who brought with them capital, machinery, as well as entrepreneurial skills and would play an essential role in the restructuring of Hong Kong’s economy from a trading hub to an exportoriented manufacturing center. But while these mainland industrialists were vital to Hong Kong’s economic makeover, no less important were those less affluent migrants who provided a ready source of cheap labor for the rapidly expanding manufacturing sector. These people, many of whom had few resources or skills, had to carve out a living in a society that was ill-prepared to absorb them into its social and economic structures within a short period of time. The sense of living in a borrowed place and time, with very little to rely on, created great insecurity, but this lack of certainty and a safety net was ironically what provided the personal and collective drive for economic

27. See, for instance, Gordon Matthews, Eric Kit-wai Ma, and Tai-lok Lui, Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), chapter 2; Tai-lok Lui, “Xianggang gushi buyi jiang: fei lishi de zhimindi chenggong gushi” [Hong Kong story is not easy to tell: The ahistorical success story of the colony], in Narrating Hong Kong Culture and Identity, ed. Pun Ngai and Yee Lai-man (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2003), 206–18; and Helen Siu, “Hong Kong: Cultural Kaleidoscope on a World Landscape,” in Narrating Hong Kong Culture and Identity, 113–34. 28. On the prewar industrial development of Hong Kong, see Tak-Wing Ngo, “Industrial History and the Artifice of Laissez-faire Colonialism,” in Hong Kong’s History: State and Society under Colonial Rule, ed. Tak-Wing Ngo (New York: Routledge, 1999), 119–40.

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and social advancement—an ethics of asceticism widely considered the basis of Hong Kong’s success story. Spurred by the capital and labor of postwar Chinese refugees, Hong Kong experienced tremendous growth from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, transforming itself in less than thirty years’ time into one of the most prosperous places in the world. To be sure, this accelerated growth, as remarkable and impressive as it was, should not blind us to its darker, less attractive sides: long working hours, awful work conditions, lack of income redistribution and thus a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and so forth. Indeed, these problems, together with the absence of political participation in a society under colonial rule, were among the major reasons for the growing social unrest in Hong Kong during the late 1960s. The conflict and tension that had been building up first exploded in 1966 when the suppression of a peaceful hunger strike in opposition to a ferry fare hike set off a series of protests, marches, and street violence. These disturbances were followed, in less than a year, by even more large-scale riots in which pro-communist activists in Hong Kong, provoked by news of the Cultural Revolution in China, turned a minor labor dispute into weeks of strikes, demonstrations, and even terrorist attacks.29 But in spite of the immediate tolls taken on the economy, these turbulent events did not pose an enduring threat to the city’s overall growth trajectory. On the contrary, they might have actually sped up the process as the public grew wary of the use of violence after months of conflicts, and more and more people came to believe that peace and prosperity were what they needed. Their attention thus turned increasingly to the material benefits of an economically buoyant society. With the rapid recovery and return to high-speed growth, a new image of Hong Kong, one predicated on the myth of the city’s “economic miracle,” was swiftly disseminating in the media and taking an increasingly strong hold of the collective popular imagination. Rapid economic growth in postwar Hong Kong triggered, or at least interacted dynamically with, an array of concomitant social phenomena. Urbanization is a case in point, a process intimately linked to the city’s industrial takeoff—and to its fastgrowing population, for that matter30—and bringing about a more dense, crowded, chaotic, and perceptually stimulating built environment. Industrial and urban development served as the catalyst for a burgeoning mass culture, too, with a mélange of entertainment and leisure options—from pulp fiction, comics, radio, cinema, and (since 1967) broadcast television to cafés, dance halls, department stores, and shopping malls—pervading Hong Kong’s robust popular cultural scene and providing 29. For an in-depth account of these disturbances and riots, see Gary Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed: The 1967 Riots (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010). 30. Thanks to the influx of Chinese refugees but also to rapid natural increase in the relative stability of the immediate postwar period, the population of Hong Kong increased almost fivefold from 0.6 million in 1945, the year when the Japanese occupation ended, to about 3 million in 1961, half of which was under the age of 25.

Introduction

17

ample sources of diversion for the local populace.31 The coming-of-age of postwar baby boomers in the 1960s, a generation who aspired to new forms of distraction and consumer goods, further fueled this burgeoning mass culture. Meanwhile, the substantial female labor force in the rapidly expanding manufacturing sector granted Hong Kong women a level of economic and social freedom never seen before, while the export-oriented nature of Hong Kong’s emergent industrial economy kept alive and further bolstered the historical role of the city as a hub of transnational flows. Taken together, these developments played an important role in shaping Hong Kong society and culture, bringing widespread changes not only to social and economic structures and the experiential matrix of everyday life, but also to the ways people perceived and made sense of themselves as well as the world surrounding them. By the end of the 1970s, Hong Kong had emerged as a profoundly different city from its previous self a mere two decades earlier, establishing itself not just as one of the newly industrialized economies in the region but as a vibrant metropolitan society and a crucial node in the network of regional and international flows, its hitherto tradition-oriented population gradually turning into a modern, forward-thinking community. Not all of the phenomena discussed above are relevant to this book, but many are and will be central to my analysis in the chapters to come. For example, the advent of industrial capitalism, coupled with a rising young generation who grew up under the colonial system and had little knowledge or experience of mainland China, provided some of the conditions for an emerging Hong Kong identity defined not so much by racial or culturalist identification as by a capitalist subjectivity grounded in the values of individualism, competition and conquest, and ascetic discipline. This same capitalist subjectivity is also what increasingly pervaded and characterized Hong Kong martial arts films of the period. On the other hand, it is not just the social but the sensory-perceptual dynamics of Hong Kong modernity that need to be addressed. As important as the transformation in social subjectivities was to the “modern turn” of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, no less crucial was the emergence of a perceptually dense environment, both at work and in a burgeoning mass culture marked by dazzling displays of images and commodities. All this entailed a fundamental change in the sensory economy of Hong Kong’s everyday life, which in turn helped usher in new aesthetic modes—in martial arts films and other forms of mass entertainment—that registered and mediated the changing experiential milieu associated with a modern urban-industrial society. These are but two aspects in which martial arts cinema and Hong Kong modernity—two seemingly distinct and independent realms—may be said to converge and intersect. The list can undoubtedly go on, and it is precisely the goal of this book 31. For more discussion on Hong Kong culture in this critical period, see Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, ed. Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Center, 1995).

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to bring to light these interconnections, to investigate the different ways in which the economic, social, and perceptual transformations associated with Hong Kong modernity in the 1960s and 1970s found expression in the martial arts film. In the next and final section of this introduction, I will sketch out three general levels of analysis and outline the ways in which they inform the various chapters of this book.

Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation As discussed above, a process of rapid industrialization and modernization from the mid-1950s onward had brought drastic changes to both the sensory-perceptual milieu and social-ideological structure of Hong Kong. It is against this historical background that a new trend of martial arts films emerged in the mid-1960s and quickly came to dominate the city’s thriving film (and mass culture) market. While there are a variety of ways to make sense of the genre’s linkages and intersections with the large-scale transformations Hong Kong was experiencing at the time, my analysis in this book will investigate the issue on three different but interconnected levels: aesthetics, representation, and circulation. Aesthetics, as originally conceived by eighteenth-century philosopher Alexander Baumgarten and re-elaborated by Terry Eagleton and Susan Buck-Morss, is primarily a discourse of the body. It is concerned with the ways in which our embodied being, through the senses, may derive pleasure and gratification from certain objects and activities within the phenomenal world.32 This particular notion of the aesthetic provides a useful starting point for my analysis of how, in response to the sensory intensification and thus the changing matrices of perception associated with Hong Kong’s urban-industrial modernity, a new sensational and visceral style stressing impact, speed, and other sensory stimulations materialized and played a key role in shaping and defining martial arts films of the period. Put otherwise, what I try to show is a paradigmatic change in the aesthetic experience of martial arts cinema, as manifested in the ways the viewer’s body, as an apperceptive apparatus, was increasingly foregrounded and came to represent a central place for aesthetic pleasure and experiential authenticity. In addition to transforming the sensory experience of everyday life, rapid urbanindustrial modernization also led to sweeping social and ideological changes in Hong  Kong, which in turn brought about new representations of national/local identities and social relations in martial arts cinema. One example, as I have briefly touched upon earlier, involves the rise of a new capitalist subjectivity that fundamentally reshaped not only the self-perception of Hong Kong people but also the ways 32. See Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 13–17; and Susan Buck-Morss, “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered,” October 62 (Fall 1992): 3–41.

Introduction

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in which Hong Kong identity was imagined and constructed in both sociopolitical and cultural discourses. Another case in point pertains to the massive disembedding of gender relations: as Hong Kong became more and more modernized and was increasingly influenced by new discourses and ways of life, traditional values and norms became less entrenched and more open to challenge. The effect of this ideological destabilization was no more evident than in the ways gender roles and identities were reimagined in the period: not only did women become more socially and financially independent (and thus more prominent in public life), but the prevailing male order was also in need of constant adjustment vis-à-vis the changing social milieu. And the martial arts film, with its popularity and cultural dominance at the time, was one of the prime vehicles through which the modern imagination explored new concepts and constructions of femininity and masculinity. Yet I should note that all these changes, whether in relation to the rise of a new Hong Kong identity or to the radical reconceptualization of gender issues, were always fraught with tensions and ambiguities—and hence the complex and contradictory representations of social subjectivity and gender identity in martial arts cinema. In closely studying these representations and the complex meanings they contain, I seek to reveal the deep cultural ambivalence that underpinned Hong Kong society as it went through rapid capitalist modernization. The third level of analysis revolves around the process of circulation, understood as a dynamic cultural phenomenon that involves the movement of objects, images, and people across spaces and serves as a driving force for transnational flows and interactions. Just as Hong Kong, in the boom years of the 1960s and 1970s, developed into an export-based manufacturing center and consolidated itself as an essential node in the network of regional and global flows, Hong Kong cinema of the period also made heightened efforts to forge a wide network of linkages facilitating transnational circulation and exchange. In this context, the martial arts film offers a fascinating case study, not least because it was by far the most successful genre in crossing boundaries and expanding Hong Kong cinema’s overseas markets beyond the traditional (regional) ones. My goal, then, is to explore and illuminate the transnational practices and politics of martial arts films from the late 1960s and 1970s, drawing attention to the new modes of exchange as well as to the new forms of engagement and imagination facilitated by such circulatory networks. Taken together, these three levels of analysis reveal the complex processes through which the martial arts film genre actively articulated and mediated the multifaceted experiences—colonial-capitalist, urban and mass-mediated, and cosmopolitan yet culturally anchored—associated with Hong Kong’s burgeoning modernity in the 1960s and 1970s. The rest of the book will further look into these processes and explore their larger historical implications. Chapter 1 considers how the bodies of martial arts film heroes, posed between mastery and vulnerability, served as a site/

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sight through which the aspirations and anxieties of Hong Kong people living in the flux of a rapidly modernizing society were expressed and made visible. In particular, I identify three types of male heroic body—the narcissistic body, the sacrificial body, and the ascetic body—and discuss how each responded to, and crystallized out of, particular ideological pressures arising from a society going through a course of rapid modernization. As socially symbolic signs, these different but interrelated representations of the body are exceptionally rich in meanings, inscribing within themselves not only fantasies of liberated labor but also the historical experience of violence, in the form of both colonization and unfettered growth, that lay beneath the transformation of Hong Kong into a modern industrial society. In Chapter 2, I explore the issue of the body from a different perspective—not at the level of representation but rather as a perceiving vehicle (i.e., the body of the spectator) acted on by a film’s stimuli. As a genre, the martial arts film is particularly known for offering a wealth of raw, immediate sensations that trigger powerful visceral responses from viewers. But while this is true, what needs to be emphasized is the historicity of such a perceptual aesthetic, which varies across time and is inextricably linked to changes of experiential modes in different historical circumstances. For instance, in the context of Hong Kong’s rapidly growing urban-industrial modernity of the 1960s and 1970s, the proliferation of sense stimuli and sense activities, both at work and in everyday life, radically altered the sensory-affective experience of the real. This proved to have a paradigmatic impact on the martial arts film, which was rapidly embracing a new, unprecedented level of sensationalism, or what I call here “sensory realism”—i.e., a mode of realism grounded not so much in visual resemblance between image and world as in the correspondences between a film’s perceptual-affective stimulations and the viewer’s real-life sense experiences. It is in this sense that martial arts films of the period can be seen as bringing a “modern” or “modernist” style to Hong Kong cinema, a style characterized by speed, impact, and new forms of cinematic materiality and hapticality. The next two chapters shift the focus to questions of gender representation. Chapter 3 examines the rise and proliferation of the so-called yanggang (“staunch masculinity”) martial arts films from the late 1960s on, which popularized a new paradigm of hypermasculinity and brought fundamental changes to the local filmmaking tradition hitherto dominated by women’s genres and female stars. While much critical attention has been devoted to the ways these yanggang films fashioned a new heroic figure characterized by virile physicality and by a manly ability to endure hardship and conquer adversity through violence, my focus is different and centers on the recurrent theme of male bonding—not only the horizontal bonding between sworn brothers but also the vertical or hierarchical one between masters and disciples. Central to my argument is that this emphasis on male homosocial relationships, in imagining and valorizing an exclusively male sphere seemingly able to transcend

Introduction

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both women and other antagonistic forces in society, is best understood as an attempt to cope with the increasing threats to hegemonic masculinity posed by the rise of female social power and by the emergence of a ruthless capitalist order in a rapidly modernizing Hong Kong. These threats, however, were never completely curbed, and this explains why the prevailing male order had to keep reinventing itself, through cinema and other means, to maintain and reaffirm its semblance of control. Despite the prevailing conception of the martial arts film as a “male” genre, it is worth mentioning that Hong Kong cinema, more than any other film industry perhaps, has established a prominent tradition of onscreen women warriors. Chapter 4 considers the representations of these female fighting figures—or nüxia, meaning literally “female knights-errant”—in a group of martial arts films from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. In light of the rising social position and economic independence of women in Hong Kong during the period, it is tempting to construe such prominent female characters, with their outstanding martial skills that give them a high degree of physical and social autonomy, as a symbol of female empowerment reflective of larger social trends. Yet I argue that the gender politics involved in the films is considerably more complex, and that the truly transgressive aspect of cinematic nüxia lies not simply in their taking on of qualities (such as violent physicality) historically associated with men. Rather, what is potentially more radical is their adeptness in performing multiple gender identities, from female masculinity (the appropriation and refunctionalization of dominant masculine norms) to the feminine masquerade (the conscious flaunting of femininity). Such gender play bears a transgressive potential by virtue of its ability to effect a mixing or blurring of gender identities, and thus to destabilize and even challenge the notion of masculinity and femininity as fixed, immutable categories. The last set of issues to be explored in this book focuses on processes of transnational circulation and exchange. Due to its emphasis on physical action and sensory stimulation, the martial arts film—and action cinema in general—is often taken to be a genre that has lent itself most readily to global circulation and consumption. While true to a degree, such a view is inadequate and fails to address the different forms and meanings of transnational practices that have informed the genre in different periods of time. In Chapter 5, my discussion explores what I call the “minor transnationalism” of Hong Kong martial arts films from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. By the word “minor,” I do not simply mean the marginal status of the films in terms of their mode of production (poverty-row budgets; meager production values) and aesthetic strategies (a visceral style emphasizing force over fineness; a hybrid textuality eschewing “purity” and “authenticity”). What I also have in mind is that these films, precisely because of their marginality, tended to operate in a “minor” transnational mode that, unlike today’s Hollywood blockbusters dominating markets worldwide and imposing on viewers a set of aesthetic as well as ideological preferences presented as “universal”

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norms, adhered to more “lateral” and nonhierarchical network structures and modes of exchange. Specifically, it is my contention that action cinema of the period, of which Hong Kong martial arts films are but one example, can be conceptualized as a contact zone—in other words, a symbolic space of exchange in which films from diverse national or regional origins, often with different textual, cultural, and ideological attributes, meet and act upon one another to create not only new hybrid texts but also new forms of identification that actively negotiate with national, racial, and other types of identity boundaries. To apply this idea of contact zone to Hong Kong martial arts cinema, I first consider how a cosmopolitan film culture of Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, one with a strong presence of Hollywood, Japanese, and European cinema, offered a host of ideas and styles which local martial arts films drew on and reinvented in developing a new idiom for the experience of modern life. Then I  approach transnational flows and cultural translation from the other direction, focusing on the regional and international circulation of Hong Kong martial arts films and looking into their interactions and exchanges with other “minor” action genres. A Chinese immigrant fighting to set Mexican slaves free from their evil American masters (Mario Caiano’s My Name Is Shanghai Joe/Il mio nome è Shangai Joe, 1972); the maimed action hero appropriated as a symbol responding to the intertwined experiences of colonial oppression, a partitioned nation, and state-led modernization (Lee Doo-yong’s Returned One-Legged Man/Doraon oedali series, 1974)—these are but some of the fascinating yet unexpected cinematic formations that have emerged from the transnational intakes of Hong Kong martial arts films. In adopting such a transnational and comparative perspective, I hope to shed light on some of the common historical experiences (colonialism and racism; capitalist-industrial modernity) that shaped and influenced many parts of the world while considering, at the same time, the particular inflections of these experiences in different contexts. While the focus of the book is mostly on the period from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, its implications go beyond this particular time frame and are meaningful for understanding more recent martial arts films. In the epilogue, I revisit some of the book’s major arguments and reconsider them in the context of recent developments pertaining to both martial arts cinema and Hong Kong society in general. As will become obvious, the martial arts film’s cultural and commercial resilience can be explained in part by its adaptability—that is, its ability to adjust and reinvent itself according to shifting historical conditions. But no less important are some of the more enduring aspects of the genre, particularly those that pertain to its complex historical connections with Hong Kong’s multifaceted processes of modernization and modernity. The body of the action hero as an emblem or symbol of Hong Kong’s capitalist spirit; an aesthetic of “sensory realism” that grew out of the sensory experience of modern urban-industrial life; the emphasis on bonded males and on active,

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assertive female protagonists; a complex web of transnational networks and practices—all these features have persisted, in some form or another, over the decades and have continued to impinge on the cultural imaginary of contemporary martial arts films, articulating and speaking to the collective memories and experiences of Hong Kong people.

1 Body Semiotics

Compared to their predecessors, Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s are marked by a more emphatic corporeal focus; by the ways, for instance, in which the strong, athletic bodies of the male action stars are put on display and form a central part of the visual spectacle offered to viewers. While such overt display of the (male) body can be understood from a number of different perspectives—as an eroticized spectacle or as a way to reconstitute a masculine Chinese identity—it is my contention that its significance also lies in the articulation of a specific Hong Kong identity, one that bears an unmistakable imprint of the city’s rapid transformation into a modern industrial society and captures the aspirations and anxieties of Hong Kong people living in a state of flux. The robust bodies of the action heroes, with their implicit and explicit association with training and their use as an instrument for overcoming adversity and achieving success, conjured up in many ways the capitalist ethos of hard work, competition and conquest, and ascetic perseverance widely considered as the driving force for Hong Kong’s phenomenal economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, the spectacle of physical mastery and empowerment spoke to the main target audiences of the films, namely young blue-collar workers for whom the body, as a vehicle of physical labor, was often the only “tool” which they could count on to improve their economic and social standing. Yet these same bodies, however powerful and resilient they might be, were also frequently marked with signs of disintegration and death that mirrored the experience of violence arising from Hong Kong’s unfettered development. Through close analyses of Bruce Lee’s star image and a number of martial arts films from the late 1960s and 1970s, this chapter considers how the action bodies, poised between mastery and vulnerability, constituted a site/sight that registered and mediated an array of competing social imaginaries associated with Hong Kong’s colonial-capitalist modernity.

Narcissistic Bodies: Fantasies of National Pride and Labor Power Following the new trend of Mandarin martial arts films emerging around the mid-1960s, a group of male action stars—notably Wang Yu, David Chiang, Ti Lung,

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Chen  Kuan-tai, and the most famous of all, Bruce Lee—rapidly came into prominence and made visible a new masculine image that struck a chord with many filmgoers at the time. Part of the fascination with these emerging male figures lay in their strong, robust physicality, which provided a sharp contrast to the kind of “soft” male bodies hitherto prevalent in the historically female-oriented Hong Kong cinema.1 Such “virilization” of the male body can be construed in a number of ways, and one of them stresses its erotic and sexual appeal. For Chang Cheh, who, as we will see, played a central role in fashioning a new heroic prototype in Hong Kong cinema, the overt display of well-built and often semi-naked male bodies in the new martial arts films presented a challenge to the conservatism of the female audiences at the time, who allegedly dared not openly admit to liking a male star and preferred watching female stars and even “fake males,” i.e., females in male disguise.2 What Chang seemed to imply with these remarks is that the emerging male action stars, and their muscular bodies in particular, appealed—erotically or otherwise—to the female viewers and served to redress the gender balance in Hong Kong cinema. On the other hand, the spectacle of the male body is also amenable to a kind of queer reading in which male homosexual desire and the homoerotic component of the male gaze are foregrounded. As Michael Lam puts it with regard to Chang’s films: It was Chang Cheh who made us understand that naked male bodies didn’t have to be mocked, nor were they necessarily vulgar. The bodies have an unadulterated dignity, pregnant with the potential to seduce. Given the right circumstances, they could even elicit desire and love.3

Conceiving the virile male bodies as eroticized spectacles no doubt offers many insights, but more pertinent to my discussion here is a second approach that revolves around what Susan Brownell calls “somatization.” Put generally, this discourse describes how, in China, sociopolitical tensions are often expressed in a bodily idiom such that calls for their resolution typically center on healing and strengthening the body. This tendency, Brownell suggests, is reflected most clearly in the kind of polemic that reads against the feminization of China and the derision of Chinese people as the “sick man of Asia,” and posits the strength of the individual body as a symbol for the well-being of the national body.4 As might be expected, the martial 1. Given the predominance of melodramas, huangmei diao musicals, and other female-centered genres, pre1965 Hong Kong (Mandarin) films were populated with male characters—weak, overly sentimental wimps or the cultured scholar-intellectual type, for instance—not known for their virility and physicality. I will return to this point and examine it more closely in Chapter 3 of this book. 2. He Guan [Chang Cheh], “Guoqi yinghua” [Outdated film talk], Hong Kong Movie News 18 (June 1967): 50. By  “fake males” Chang was referring to the common practice of female cross-dressing in huangmei diao musicals, Cantonese opera films, and other popular film genres in Hong Kong in the 1950s and early 1960s. 3. Michael Lam, “The Mysterious Gayness in Chang Cheh’s Unhappy World,” in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 177. 4. Susan Brownell, Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 22. Not surprisingly, one area where this kind of nationalist body

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arts film, with its emphasis on strong, athletic bodies constantly engaged in action, represents a particularly productive area for this kind of interpretation. Within such a framework, the body of the action hero is no longer a mere object for the spectator’s erotic gaze. Rather, it functions as an imaginary source of omnipotence that renders the character a more perfect figure of identification and conjures up a powerful sense of national pride and collective self-love. Attempts to construe the action body as a site of national identification have a long history and can be found in relation to the Shanghai martial art films of the 1920s.5 A similar tendency has also informed discussions of postwar Hong Kong martial arts cinema: in the Mandarin swordplay films that flourished in the second half of the 1960s, for instance, the assertion of nationalism is said to be inscribed, implicitly at least, in the figure of the powerful Chinese hero whose robust, well-trained body and readiness for action indicated a desire to reject and reverse a history of softness and passivity that had profoundly shaped the images of Chinese people. I said “implicitly,” because the swordplay movies, unlike the later kung fu films, did not generally situate the discourse of physical empowerment within a specific nationalist or anticolonial narrative, but rather set it against a larger framework of cultural nationalism in which a sense of national identity was articulated through the nostalgic reconstruction of a premodern, even mythical China marked by traditional cultural ideas and practices. The nationalist body discourse constructed in the swordplay films was thus mostly abstract, containing scant references to concrete historical realities and adhering to a kind of culturalist hermeneutics premised on the idea of premodern tradition as the main source of contemporary identity.6 However, as the martial arts film evolved from swordplay to kung fu in the early 1970s, the abstract cultural nationalism associated with the former also developed into a more confrontational form of nationalist ideology. This can be seen in the growing tendency to invoke Japanese or Western imperialist forces as a foil against which a sense of collective identity was affirmed, by way of a mirror-like play of self and other. These anti-Japanese/anti-imperialist sentiments in the kung fu films reflected to a large extent the social climate of the period, which saw a rapid rise of nationalist activism in connection with the alleged military expansion of Japan in the region. A case in point is the “Defend Diaoyutai Movement,” a series of student-led

discourse has been particularly influential is the modern physical culture known as tiyu, which is precisely the central subject of Brownell’s book. This pioneering study, as its title suggests, focuses predominantly on the Communist era. For more discussion on Chinese sport and physical culture in earlier periods, see Andrew  S.  Morris, Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004). 5. See, for instance, Jubin Hu, Projecting a Nation: Chinese National Cinema before 1949 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), chapter 3. 6. For more discussion of this kind of “abstract cultural nationalism,” see Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute, 1997), 112–13.

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demonstrations that first erupted in the spring of 1971 against the Japanese occupation of the Diaoyutai Islands near the northeast coast of Taiwan.7 The local film industry was quick to pick up and capitalize on these popular antiJapanese emotions, churning out a succession of films—Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury (Jingwu men, 1972), Chung Chang-wha’s King Boxer a.k.a. Five Fingers of Death (Tianxia diyi quan, 1972), and Wang Yu’s Beach of the War Gods (Zhanshen tan, 1973), among others—that valorize a masculinized Chinese identity against Japanese coercion. Indeed, even before the protests, a film such as Wang Yu’s The Chinese Boxer (Longhu dou, 1970), which is often seen as launching the modern kung fu subgenre that was to dominate Hong Kong cinema throughout the 1970s, had already sought to tap into the growing anti-Japanese nationalist sentiments at the time. In the film, a top student of a martial arts school, played by the director himself, finds his world turned upside down when three Japanese karate experts hired by a rival of his master kill almost everyone in the school and leave him seriously wounded. Recalling his master’s advice, the student begins a grueling process of iron palm training and is finally able to exact vengeance on the Japanese foes. Despite the simplicity of its plot, one can already see in the film an array of themes—Chinese virtue versus Japanese villainy; competing martial arts styles/martial arts schools along racial lines; the idea of training and the (male) body as a site of empowerment and change—that would be reiterated time and again in subsequent kung fu movies. The most renowned of these anti-Japanese kung fu films is without doubt Fist of Fury. The film features Bruce Lee as Chen Zhen, a martial arts student who, after showing some initial restraint, sets out to fight for the honor of the Chinese people and take revenge on those guilty of murdering his master. In a series of now classic fight sequences, Lee is shown to battle with and triumph over a slew of Japanese and foreign opponents—the students and sensei in the Hongkou Dojo, a Russian wrestler, and finally, the katana expert Hiroshi Suzuki. And although no training sequence is depicted in the film, the idea of subjecting the body to grueling drills and exercises as a means of self-empowerment (and, by extension, national strengthening) is in a sense already evident through the display of Lee’s lean yet powerful body, which has often been viewed as an exemplary manifestation of superb training (Figure 1.1).8 7. The Diaoyutai Islands had been officially under Chinese administration since at least the fifteenth century, but when the Qing government was defeated in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, it ceded Taiwan, including the Diaoyutai Islands, to Japan. After World War II, sovereignty to Taiwan was returned to China, but it was unclear whether the disputed islands were also included in the transfer. The issue remained quiet during the 1950s and 1960s, but when the United States and Japan signed the Okinawa Reversion Treaty in 1970 that would include the Diaoyutai Islands as part of Okinawa to be returned to Japanese rule in 1972, many Chinese people saw it as a violation of Chinese sovereignty. Thousands of overseas Chinese students protested against Japan across the United States in the first few months of 1971, followed by other demonstrations in Hong Kong and elsewhere. 8. In the words of Chuck Norris, “no one ever trained as fanatically as Bruce [Lee]. He seemed to train twenty-fours a day”; quoted in Davis Miller, The Tao of Bruce Lee: A Martial Arts Memoir (New York: Random

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Figure 1.1 Bruce Lee’s superbly trained body in The Way of the Dragon (1972)

The list of examples goes on, but it should be evident by now that the late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a nationalist current new to Hong Kong cinema—one that was inscribed, as David Desser argues, on the body of the male action hero.9 Similarly, Yvonne Tasker identifies in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, and in the works of Bruce Lee in particular, “a discourse of macho Chinese nationalism” that uses a rhetoric of “hardness”—that is, the hard body of the male protagonist—as a way of talking about national strengthening and anti-imperialist struggle.10 Using again Lee’s movies as a point of reference, M. T. Kato sees the kung fu film as embodying a “performative” narrative that conveys, through the kinesthetic and symbolic expressions of the body, a powerful message of nationalist emancipation against colonial power structures. For Kato, it is precisely this empowering political agency, based on the allegory of decolonization struggles and on a profound sense of social justice and identification with the disenfranchised, that popularized Hong Kong martial arts films among the global underclass and enabled the films to transcend languages and cultures with ease.11 House, 2012), 121. The public in general has also been fascinated by Lee’s powerful body and how it came into being. As a sign of this, there were many reports and anecdotes, both before and after his death, about Lee’s obsession with training and his numerous training methods—running, pushing weights, jumping rope, performing staggering numbers of calisthenics, punching different kinds of bags, and so on. See, for instance, Ge Bi, “Ziqiang buxi de Li Xiaolong” [The ceaseless self-strengthening of Bruce Lee], Golden Movie News 73 (April 1978). 9. David Desser, “Fists of Legend: Constructing Chinese Identity in the Hong Kong Cinema,” in ChineseLanguage Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, ed. Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 280–97. 10. Yvonne Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema,” in Race and the Subject of Masculinities, ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 316, 324–25. 11. M. T. Kato, From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007).

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However, the question of nationalism in martial arts cinema is much more complex than is generally recognized. Kwai-cheung Lo, for example, admits the important role played by the bodies of Hong Kong action stars in reconstituting a masculine/ muscular Chinese or Hong Kong identity, but finds in the bodies no positive or descriptive cultural features from which this identity may be drawn. Referring specifically to Bruce Lee, he argues that the “China” represented in his kung fu films, like the swordplay movies before them, is an imaginary space void of concrete social and political reality. Nor is there much sense of Hong Kong culture in the films, which, as was the custom of the time, were made in Mandarin instead of in Cantonese, the dialect spoken by the majority of Hong Kong people. Added to all of this is the “foreignness” of Lee himself, who was born in the United States, spent much of his adulthood there, and had an American wife. The mechanism for identity construction, then, does not lie in Lee’s body locating or signifying a specific Chinese or Hong Kong identity; it resides rather in the phantasmic quality of the body—a “sublime body” that occupies a hollow space, without any positive content, to be filled in specific historical circumstances.12 Similarly, in his article titled “Kung Fu: Negotiating Nationalism and Modernity,” Siu-leung Li challenges any facile idea of the martial arts film as expressing or representing national pride. He argues that kung fu as a specifically Chinese combat skill, valorized in Hong Kong cinema as a symbolic means to reassert a strong China and a strong Chinese subject, is repeatedly undercut by the question of its effectiveness vis-à-vis the modern weaponry of firearms. The issue at stake, then, is the usefulness (or lack thereof) of unarmed martial arts like kung fu in the modern world dominated by guns and explosives. The nationalist discourse pervading many Hong Kong martial arts films is thus said to operate in a “self-negating mode,” enacting a constant unveiling of its own incoherence and reflecting the anxiety of Hong Kong people over China’s hitherto not-so-successful negotiations with Western modernity.13 The inadequacy of studying the martial arts film through a nationalist lens is indicative of a larger difficulty in conceptualizing Chinese national identity in Hong Kong. Theoretically, Hong Kong is no doubt part of China, but it has also become increasingly alien to its mother country since the latter became a communist dictatorship. The separation became even greater with increasing social and economic modernization in the then British colony. As a result, there was a marked shift in the way Hong Kong people perceived their own identity, which changed from being closely attached to China—in terms of cultural affinity at least—to embrace instead, from the late 1960s onward, their own separate identity as heunggongyahn 12. Kwai-cheung Lo, Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong (Urbana-Champaign and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 81–83. 13. Siu-leung Li, “Kung Fu: Negotiating Nationalism and Modernity,” Cultural Studies 15, nos. 3–4 (2001): 515–42.

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(Hongkongers). This emergent identity, shaped more by capitalist subjectivity than by nationalist ideology,14 was particularly obvious among the postwar baby boomers, who grew up in the colony with only limited knowledge or experience of mainland China. For them, belonging to a nation was far from a natural thing, a fact further abetted by the policy of the colonial government to de-emphasize the idea of national belonging, whether in schools or in everyday culture, for the sake of its own legitimacy. In this sense, it is ironic that the “nationalist” kung fu films discussed earlier actually came out at a time that saw the coming-of-age of the postwar baby boomers on the one hand, and a growing legitimization of the existing British colonial order after the 1967 riots on the other.15 Even the anti-Japanese nationalism, which may seem to be more historically motivated, was more complex than has been generally recognized. While the anti-Japanese sentiments did reveal a genuine popular outrage against the infringement upon Chinese sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands, they can also be viewed more broadly as a response to Japan’s economic expansionism in the period. Indeed, the two kinds of threat—military and economic—were in many ways inseparable, for they were often understood as part and parcel of the same process of Japanese imperialist expansion into Asia.16 At the same time, Hong Kong itself was rapidly developing into a regional and global low-cost manufacturing center during the 1960s and 1970s and thus liked to consider Japan not only an aggressor but also a competitor. From this perspective, the conflict between the Chinese hero and the Japanese villain(s) repeatedly enacted in the kung fu film can be seen as reflecting the perceived economic rivalry between Japan and a newly developed Hong Kong. Stephen Teo seemed to have precisely this idea in mind when he made a connection

14. See, for instance, Gordon Mathews, Eric Kit-wai Ma, and Tai-lok Lui, Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 35–36; 148–67. 15. As I briefly noted in the introduction, the 1967 riots refer to a series of large-scale clashes in which pro-communist activists in Hong Kong, prompted by news of the Cultural Revolution in China, turned a minor labor dispute into weeks of strikes, demonstrations, and even terrorist attacks against the colonial establishment. They marked a major turning point in Hong Kong history, albeit in ways not anticipated by many people at the time: after the riots were brought down, the communists’ network in Hong Kong was in a shambles and lost whatever public support it had built up because of their violent tactics. Indeed, the riots gave the colonial government new popularity and legitimacy by reminding Hong Kong people of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. With the economy beginning to bounce back, and with the colonial government making conscious attempts to improve labor relations, foster a sense of belonging, and increase social services like education and housing, more and more people came to believe that there was little to gain from anti-British campaigns, and the anticolonial consciousness faded quickly as a result. 16. Not surprisingly, discussions of the sovereignty disputes over the Diaoyutai Islands at the time were often linked to more general analyses of Japan’s regional economic expansionism. See, for instance, Lin Guojiong, “Riben jingji pengzhang yu junbei kuozhang de yuanyin jinshi: diaoyutai lieyu burong qinduo!” [The longterm reasons for and short-term tendencies of Japanese economic and military expansion: The Diaoyutai Islands cannot be intruded on and snatched away!], Ming Pao Monthly 6, no. 7 (July 1971): 6–15. But even before the Diaoyutai Islands became a subject of dispute, there had been writings on Japan’s “economic invasion” and “capitalist imperialism.” See Feng Qiang, “Riben zai qishiniandai de xinjuese” [Japan’s new role in the 1970s], Pan gu 32 (May 1970): 2–4 (part 1) and 33–34 (August 1970): 40–42 (part 2).

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between the rise of a new heroic prototype in Hong Kong martial arts films around the mid-1960s and the intensifying regional competition of the period.17 Thus understood, the nationalist discourse of the martial arts film cannot be linked simply to the production of an abstract masculine/muscular Chinese identity, but needs to be taken as complexly intertwined with a growing sense of local consciousness among Hong Kong people, an emerging local identity molded to a large extent by the capitalist ethics of competition and conquest. This is not to dispute the usefulness of nationalism as an interpretive frame or reference, but rather to broaden its purview to include, for example, a local-based identity grounded not so much in racial or culturalist identification as in a capitalist subjectivity stressing the relentless quest for economic and social advancement. It is only through acknowledging the interconnection between these nationalist, ethno-racial, and capitalist discourses that we can better come to terms with the complex historical juncture of the martial arts film and the experiences pertaining to the colonial-capitalist modernity of Hong Kong. It is in this sense that the emphasis of martial arts films on characters who compete and overcome adversity through their bodies can be viewed as expressing not only Chinese national pride or superiority, but also a characteristic feature of Hong Kong’s rapidly growing labor-intensive economy at the time, namely the reliance of workers on their physical strength and skills for survival and social advancement. But unlike the bodies of those real-life workers, which were subjected to different kinds of policing and disciplining,18 the bodies of martial arts film heroes are free and able to transcend all limitations, thus serving as an emblem of “liberated labor” with which the genre’s primarily working-class audiences could readily identify.19 As Hong Kong became more affluent as a result of accelerated economic growth, the symbolic meanings associated with these powerful on-screen bodies also shifted from fantasies of physical emancipation for exploited workers to a mirroring of the desire of the burgeoning middle class to gaze at healthy bodies. As a local critic puts it: “The wellbuilt male characters in the films, bare to the waist, satisfied the want of the middle class to gaze at ‘healthy’ bodies, and realized their subconscious need for worshipping 17. Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute, 1997), 97–98. 18. The oppressive nature of industrial work can be gleaned from the following first-person account given by a worker about his work in a cigarette factory: “Our work is as boring and monotonous as a machine . . . Factories might be different, but the lives of workers are all the same; we are no different from the machines . . . Looking out from the narrow factor’s windows, we see blocks of filthy and messy resettlement estates, which are like concentration camps. After toiling in the factory, we continue our lives miserably in these cramped cages.” See Xin Lao, “Wo de gong-chang shengya” [My life in a factory], Pan gu 26 (August 1969), 3. 19. Discussing the martial arts films of Chang Cheh, Sam Ho argues that they constitute what he describes as a “class descending approach” in featuring characters who are more “worldly” and “have lowly social positions.” As such, they differed substantially from previous Mandarin movies of Hong Kong, which had tended to be more refined and “bourgeois” than their Cantonese counterparts. See Sam Ho, “One Jolts, the Other Orchestrates: Two Transitional Shaw Brothers Figures,” in The Shaw Screen, 118–19.

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muscular beauty. Wealth is a precedent to health as you are then able to spend time to ‘keep fit.’”20 The dual emphasis of martial arts cinema on national pride and (fantasies of ) labor power is most clearly observed in Bruce Lee, who, as a cultural icon, served to condense some of the most deeply implanted aspirations and anxieties underlying Hong Kong society. On one level, the significance of Lee’s films lies to a large extent in his articulation of a Chinese national identity inscribed on and through his powerful, superbly trained body and spectacularized in fierce battles against foreign adversaries. Some of the most memorable moments in his works—among them the dojo fight scene in Fist of Fury and the battle with Chuck Norris’s character at the Coliseum in his self-directed film The Way of the Dragon (Menglong guojiang, 1972)—exemplify such patterns, depicting Lee as an invincible fighter who resists and challenges the imperialist evils symbolized by his Japanese and Western foes. Closely related to this is the propensity, evident in most of Lee’s films, to assert a sense of national selfesteem by demonstrating the superiority of Chinese kung fu over the martial arts styles from other countries, be it Japanese karate or Russian wrestling.21 Indeed, such a scheme would have formed the core of the thematic material and structure in The Game of Death (Siwang youxi), which was still in production when Lee died unexpectedly in the summer of 1973. In other cases, Lee’s films are centered less on national or racial conflict as on class confrontation. In Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (Tangshan daxiong, 1971), Lee plays Tang Lung, a Chinese worker in Thailand, who inadvertently aligns himself with the criminal boss at the outset, but then quickly changes sides and fights for the oppressed workers. In The Way of the Dragon, Lee’s character is a country lad from Hong Kong who travels to Rome to help out a relative whose restaurant is terrorized by an archetypal white capitalist with a gang of hired thugs. In these two films, the characters played by Lee are primarily working-class individuals who challenge the status quo represented by greed-driven capitalists. Seen in this light, it is not difficult to understand why Lee has been revered all around the world as a working-class hero who personifies what has been called the “ghetto myth.”22 As Bill Brown puts it succinctly: While [Lee’s] films theatricalize racial and national conflict—exhibiting Lee in combat with Russian, black American, and, most often, Japanese opponents— Lee’s success [can be] attributed to the simplicity with which his films villainize the capitalist; heroize the worker (particularized as the Hong Kong laborer);

20. Lau Tai-muk, “Conflict and Desire—Dialogues between the Hong Kong Martial Arts Genre and Social Issues in the Past 40 Years,” in The Making of Martial Arts Films: As Told by Filmmakers and Stars (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 1999), 32. 21. See Cheng Yu, “Anatomy of a Legend,” in A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies, ed. Li Cheuk-to (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1984), 24. 22. See Stuart Kaminsky, “Kung Fu Film as Ghetto Myth,” Journal of Popular Film 3, no. 2 (Spring 1974): 129–38.

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locate the power to defeat oppression in the body; and insist on a lawless, violent resolution to class conflict.23

For Brown, it is to a large extent this “postnational political imagination,” revolving around a deterritorializing collective struggle based less on identity politics than on a mutual enemy (i.e., American imperialism), that explains why Lee’s films have attracted such an enormous international following over the years. What provoked the enthusiasm of viewers, then, is not so much Lee’s “ethnic specificity” as his “generic ethnicity,” together with the tendency for the ethno-nationalist struggles enacted within his films to be translated into class conflicts. Indeed, Brown goes so far as to say that Lee’s films, given their popularity among marginalized and disenfranchised groups all over the world, engendered a form of what he calls “international mass spectatorship” and “international class longing.”24 It is important to note, however, that the seemingly rebellious, antibourgeois stance of Lee’s working-class characters does not entail a Marxist philosophy of class struggle. “Lee,” as one critic points out, “is never on the ‘people’s side.’ [His] films obviously belittle the impact of any collective action . . . Lee always fights alone. The visual rhetoric pretty much corresponds to his individual heroism, too. Lee seldom is in the same frame with his siblings. He gets separate, privileged shots. He does not integrate with the mass[es].”25 The viewer appeal of Lee, then, cannot be construed from a simple anti-capitalist perspective. Rather, it needs to be understood in relation to his ultra-individualism—a stance that is, ironically perhaps, intimately linked to the spirit of competition and conquest central to capitalist ideology. Another way of understanding this is to conceive of Lee as a “hero of modernization”: a personification of values and ideologies—individualistic striving and relentless pursuit for success, a capacity to endure and overcome adversity, a heightened emphasis on the body as a means of labor—characteristic of a rapidly growing modern industrial society. It is perhaps from this perspective that we should understand the following observation by a local critic: One day, I came across the word “superman” [chaoren] and thought of Bruce Lee. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduced the concept “superman” about one hundred years ago. According to him, anyone who is strong, has exceptional abilities, and is able to develop the self to the utmost degree should be called a “superman.”

23. Bill Brown, “Global Bodies/Postnationalities: Charles Johnson’s Consumer Culture,” Representations 58 (Spring, 1997): 32. 24. Ibid., 33. 25. Hsiung-ping Chiao, “Bruce Lee: His Influence on the Evolution of the Kung Fu Genre,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 9, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 37.

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Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity In terms of physical power, perseverance, and intellect, Lee, I think, is vastly superior to the average person. Thus, if we call him a “superman,” there should not be any doubt about that.26

While not conceptually rigorous, this notion of Lee as a superman, or Übermensch, does draw our attention to his image as a popular incarnation of the Nietzschean “will to power”: the image, put otherwise, of an empowered self who strives with utmost determination to reach the highest possible position in life and to attain what is deemed his or her manifest destiny. Such a discourse, again, emphasizes very much on Lee’s body—or the merging of body and will, to be exact—through which his potential both as a kung fu film star and as an individual striving to succeed in life is seen as being realized to the fullest extent.27 This Nietzschean interpretation of Lee, however, is not without a sense of paradox: on the one hand, Lee is viewed as a chaoren, a most extraordinary being to whom few, if any, are comparable. On the other hand, there is nothing in him—neither his powerful body nor his superb martial arts skills—that cannot be achieved, in some ways, by others. All it takes is training, hard work, effort, a will to succeed—in short, those qualities that supposedly enable one to thrive in work and in life. “To see Bruce Lee on film,” in the words of a critic, “is to see a human body brought to a level of supreme ability through a combination of almost supernatural talent and a lifetime of hard work.”28 This concise assessment sums up best the paradoxical meanings at work in the particular figuration of vitalistic masculinity embodied and made tangible by Lee: straddling between virtual ideals and concrete actualizations, the polysemic nature of Lee’s image provided, and continues to provide, viewers with both a larger-than-life identity on which to project their fantasies and a more practical, down-to-earth one on which to model their selves.

Sacrificial Bodies: Regenerative Violence and Its Limits My discussion so far has focused on how the new breed of male protagonists in Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s, with their robust physicality entailing mastery and control, offered the viewer a source of narcissistic identification linked to an abstract Chinese national identity on the one hand, and to an emergent local identity shaped by the rapidly growing capitalist society of Hong Kong on the other. But as powerful as these male figures might be, they are not always invincible. 26. Chen Fang, “Chaoren—Li Xiaolong” [Superman—Bruce Lee], The Milky Way Pictorial [Yinhe huabao] 181 (April 1973): 21. 27. It is from this perspective that we should make sense of the proliferation of news reports/anecdotes about Lee’s superhuman training methods, as well as the rumors that linked his death to his use of performanceenhancing drugs. All these “testimonies” formed part of the mythology surrounding Lee, a myth that was constructed around the star’s obsessive drive to self-empowerment and success. 28. Bruce Thomas, Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit (Berkeley, CA: Frog Limited, 1994), 258.

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On the contrary, a certain vulnerability and powerlessness is often seen to exist, even though a point of distinction has to be made in the way this “weakness” is represented and given meanings. In Fist of Fury, for instance, the final freeze frame of Bruce Lee’s character leaping into the air in the face of the Japanese firing squad might seem to suggest his ultimate defeat from a narrative standpoint, but what it signifies stylistically is a supreme image of defiance: not only is the hero spared a bloody death, but death itself is also seemingly halted and thus transcended. In other cases, however, the disintegration and destruction of the hero’s body is highlighted and shown in extremely graphic details: cuts and blows, tortures, even quartering and disembowelment, with the heroes writhing in blood and pain before they die. Such graphic depictions of violence and death compel us to rethink the question of identification. More specifically, the questions that I want to investigate in this section are: What kind(s) of satisfaction, if any, can these images of mutilation, dismemberment, and death offer to the viewer? And what are the limits to such pleasure(s) derived from an economy of masochism? My analysis here focuses on a number of films by Chang Cheh, who, together with King Hu, is often credited as revolutionizing Hong Kong martial arts cinema in the late 1960s. Born in Hangzhou in 1924 and brought up in Shanghai, Chang moved to Hong Kong in 1957 and started writing film reviews in newspapers before entering the film industry, working first as a script supervisor and writer and then as a director. He made his first martial arts film, Tiger Boy (Huxia jianchou), in 1966 and would go on to make a series of box-office hits, among them The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), The Assassin (Da cike, 1967), and The Golden Swallow (Jin yanzi, 1968). In these films, Chang popularized a violent, male-centered style known as yanggang and shocked the public with extremely graphic images that emphasized bloodletting, mutilation, and brutal death. The aesthetics of violence in Chang’s films has been examined in various ways, but I want to approach it here from a different perspective—specifically, through the idea of regenerative violence. The concept of regeneration through violence, I hasten to add, is not something new; it is, for instance, a recurrent motif in American Western narratives. As Richard Slotkin argues, the European immigrants who settled the New World saw in it an opportunity to rejuvenate their fortunes, their spirit, and the power of their church and nation. Yet the wilderness of the land and the intimidating presence of the native people posed a continual threat to the settlers, and the means to regeneration ultimately turned into a means to violence. Out of a simple desire for land and prosperity, the pioneers not only suffered enormous hardship trying to master the hostile environment, but also instigated a great amount of violence—mass killings, torture, enslavement, forced conversion—in fighting the native Indians. All these experiences found their way into a highly self-conscious literature whose notion of America “as a wide-open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious,

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self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top” has come to represent a kind of national mythology, propagating a mythic belief in self-annihilation as the will-tomyth, as self-affirmation.29 Indeed, this concept of regeneration through violence has been so ingrained in the American imaginary that it has become a dominant structuring metaphor of the American experience. In spite of its origin in the American frontier experience, the discourse of regenerative violence is not confined to it. In many ways, the Chinese refugees who relocated to Hong Kong in the postwar period shared many of the same physical and psychological conditions of the European immigrants in nineteenth-century America: the sense of displacement and the lapsing of communication with the homeland; the divergence of the new realities from past experiences at home; the perception of the new land as a place of opportunity despite widespread “violence” (in the form of labor exploitation, social inequality, and so on in the case of Hong Kong); an ethics of hard work, persistent upward striving, and dedicated self-sacrifice. Granted, the political and social conditions of postwar Hong Kong were far removed from those in America hundreds of years ago, but the process of rapid industrialization and modernization in the then British colony, with its coexistence of accelerated growth on the one hand and dismal working conditions and lack of income redistribution on the other, was in many ways similar to the “blending of unmitigated harshness and tremendous potential fertility” that typified the experience of the American frontier.30 Faced with both limitless opportunities and the exigencies of survival, Hong Kong people held—and continue to hold—a strong competitive spirit and a “never-saydie” philosophy that have ostensibly enabled them to press ahead amid difficulties and to thrive both materially and socially. These outlooks, which are also commonly taken as structuring the American worldview, have played a major role in shaping the experience of Hong Kong people and impinging on the cultural imaginary of Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Emphasizing the aspirational aspects of Hong Kong’s industrial modernity does not mean that it did not have its darker sides. While the 1960s was an important transitional decade in which Hong Kong developed from an entrepôt into a modern industrial metropolis, it also saw a period of great social unrest that was reflected, among other things, in the 1966–1967 riots and in the proliferation of violent crime among young people.31 Violence in society, it should be emphasized, is not an intrinsic 29. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1973/1996), 3–5; 14–24. 30. Ibid., 18. 31. In addition to the high percentage of young people—those under the age of 21—participating in the riots, it is obvious from reports at the time that youth crime was an increasing problem in Hong Kong, one that would continue into the 1970s and draw great attention from the public. See, for instance, Lu Yu, “Xiandai shehui li de qingnian wenti” [Youth problems in modern society], Shidai qingnian 7 (October 1969): 2–4; Tan Baogan, “Qingnian wenti mian mian guan” [A multi-perspective look at youth problems], Shidai qingnian 11 (February 1970): 5–7 (part 1) and 12 (March 1970): 5–9 (part 2); and Gao Zan, “Xianggang qingshaonian

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function of human nature but a phenomenon embodying traces of the proximate historical context. It is not that the young people of Hong Kong who participated in violent acts were inclined to them by nature; rather, violence needs to be regarded as an imaginary solution to real-life problems. In this sense, the upheaval in late 1960s Hong Kong was symptomatic of the tension and restlessness that had been building up within the colony. It pointed to a larger social crisis resulting from a confluence of factors, among them the lack of a social contract in the colonial system; the absence of democratic processes and the reduction of the population to mere spectators; and the devaluation and exploitation of labor in the city’s inexorable march towards industrialization. Insofar as most of these issues were structural problems within a colonial-capitalist system that could not be resolved in a short time, there was a real danger that the waves of violence that had been rocking Hong Kong would continue unabated. We can obtain a better understanding of this threat by turning to the writings of French philosopher René Girard. Drawing attention to the mimetic nature of violence, Girard argues that violence is like a contagious disease that stays on and is hard to subdue; when unappeased, it seeks and always finds a surrogate victim. Therefore, when it comes to violence, intolerance can be as fatal an attitude as tolerance, for when violence breaks out it can happen that those who oppose its perpetration do more to assure its triumph than those who support it. Inevitably, there comes a point when violence can only be met with more violence. It is under these premises that Girard proposes the idea of “sacrificial violence,” a form of violence that is truly decisive and self-contained, putting an end to violence (as retaliatory vengeance) by displacing and deflecting it to a relatively insignificant victim. As exemplified in sacrificial killing or capital punishment, where the threat of vengeance is limited to single act of sanctioned retaliation, sacrificial violence constitutes a form of substitution that helps to absorb, rather than to repress, the internal feuds and rivalries pent up within a community.32 The way in which Chang Cheh understood and used violence in his films reflected a similar belief in the social and psychological significance of sacrificial violence. In his writings at the time, Chang emphasized time and again that graphic screen violence was a reflection or manifestation of larger social conflicts and contradictions (rather than what caused them), and that it played a major role in shielding the community from its own aggression by displacing it to other objects—in this case, the imaginary figure of the action hero. Specifically, he talked about how Hong Kong society at the time was ill-equipped to provide for the needs of the growing young fanzui wenti mian mian guan” [A multi-perspective look at the problem of adolescent delinquency], Nan bei ji 18, November 16, 1971, 20–22. 32. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1979), 1–4; 8–25.

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generation—the poorly educated, inadequately homed, and overworked males in particular—who often resorted to violent behaviors. In this context, he saw film violence as playing an important role by offering an avenue for these young people to vent their pent-up energy and frustration.33 Such sacrificial violence is most clearly reflected in the hero’s ennobling death which, while extremely brutal and gruesome, is seen as capable of restoring meaning not only to the individual but also to the larger social order. To better understand how this process operates, we can turn to The Assassin, a film made by Chang Cheh at the peak of the 1967 riots. Its period setting notwithstanding, the film is replete with references to the contemporary situation; for one thing, it is set in the Warring States era—a period of turmoil and uncertainty that clearly alludes to the social upheavals in Hong Kong at the time. Moreover, the film is pervaded with a sense of urgency and intensity hitherto unseen in Hong Kong cinema. As the director himself admits: The Assassin was made during the peak of the riots. I hadn’t moved into the Shaw quarters at the time. Going to work one day, I faced the real threat of homemade bombs. The fervor, violence, and rebelliousness of The Assassin were clearly inspired by the 1967 riots.34

Based loosely on a real-life event recorded in the chapter “Biography of the Assassins” from Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), the film tells the story of Nie Zheng (Wang Yu), a young warrior with great ambition to achieve glorious deeds and lead a distinguished career. Yet his lofty aspirations are dashed when the martial arts school to which he belongs is accused of mutiny and raided by soldiers. While fighting his way to safety, he has no choice but to hide in a neighboring state, taking up a job as a butcher. There is no room for his heroism or for his martial arts skills; at one point, he laments his empty house (“jia tu sibi”) and grieves over the fact that his body (“qichi zhi qu”) is all that is left.35 An opportunity eventually comes when a high-ranking official, having learned of Nie’s outstanding swordsmanship, enlists Nie in a plot to assassinate the evil prime minister. After some complications, Nie accepts the mission, knowing very well that this will likely cost him his life. Significantly, he is willing to sacrifice himself not just out of a desire for revenge or as a pursuit of an abstract justice. Rather, his motivation resides centrally in the fact that the act 33. See Chang Cheh, “Lun wuxia pian” [On the martial arts film], Southern Screen 126 (August 1968): 34–35. See also Wang Zhi, “Zhang Zhe!” [Chang Cheh!] Nan bei ji 22, March 16, 1972, 54–56. It should be mentioned, however, that many critics were skeptical of Chang’s position. See, for example, Luo Gui-yan, “Pianjian yu xiongbian: ping Zhang Zhe de baoli guandian” [Prejudice and debate: On Chang Cheh’s viewpoints on violence], Ming Pao Monthly 79 (July 1972): 94–96. 34. Chang Cheh: A Memoir, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2004), 99. 35. This reference to the body, again, reminds us of the primarily working-class ideology of the martial arts genre: like the manual laborers and other blue-collar workers, Nie has now nothing to depend on except his own body.

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will enable him to realize his goal of self-actualization. In a pivotal scene before carrying out his mission, Nie spends a last night with his lover Xia Ying (Chiao Chiao). Trying to convince her of his decision, he tells Xia to look at him and proclaims that it is the quality, rather than the longevity, of life that matters: “I am young, tall, and strong. Everybody dies. Would you rather I die now, doing a great and glorious deed? Or would you have me grow old and weak, too feeble to hold a knife or kill a pig, and die a stranger stranded in the state of Qi?” While Nie is saying this, the camera, shot from a slightly low angle, captures his strong and well-built body first in medium close-up, and then slowly pulls away to reveal the entire upper torso, followed by a quick zoom-in that draws the viewer’s attention to the anguished expression on his face. The way in which this sequence is staged and shot, while not out of the ordinary, offers a palpable expression of Nie’s complex emotions: his proud confidence in his own body, his desire to use it to achieve greatness, and his anguish over living a life of mediocrity. The courageous act of fulfilling an impossible but righteous task turns Nie into a tragic hero—a rebel or even a revolutionary of sorts, who defies a corrupted and indifferent society by asserting his own will and independence. Nie dies in the end, but it is a noble death imbued with a profound sense of what is frequently described as beizhuang, meaning literally “tragic grandeur.” This notion of beizhuang is clearly conjured up in the way Nie refuses to give up even after being severely wounded, and insists on meeting his destiny head-on. Realizing that there is no way for escape, Nie not only commits hara-kiri—a most painful, excruciating form of death by disembowelment—but also blinds himself with a sword. Stylistically, the latter deed is represented in a powerfully original way. First, a sword, taken from Nie’s point of view, is shown slashing horizontally against a pitch-black background. Then blood starts to splash across the screen, and the film cuts to a new shot in which a blooddrenched Nie, against the same abstract blackness as in the previous shot, appears in the background, struggles for a while, and finally dies (Figure 1.2). In breaking away, however briefly, from the diegetic level of the film, this stylized presentation of death serves to raise Nie’s sacrifice to supreme significance by turning it into, in the words of a critic writing about another Chang Cheh film, the “abstraction of the sign.”36 What is represented here, then, is not so much the death of an individual character as the general idea of a transcendent death—a death that leads not to nothingness but to immortality. It is exactly in this sense that the extremity of the violence subjected to Nie can be justified and understood as restoring to the (dead) hero the legitimacy of his desires: trapped in an adverse environment of constant frustration and setback, Nie can only attain ultimate liberation in the form of a brutal, but heroic, death— a transcendental fulfillment of the suppressed self by way of regenerative violence. 36. Jerry Liu, “Chang Cheh: Aesthetics=Ideology?” in A Study of the Hong Kong Swordplay Film, 1945–1980, ed. Lau Shing-hon (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1981), 161.

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Figure 1.2 Death as an abstract sign: The Assassin (1967)

In a fascinating study of what she calls “narrative mortality,” Catherine Russell investigates the tendency in narrative cinema to understand death as closure; that is, to regard mortality as providing a means of meaning, of wrapping things up. “If the threat of death,” she argues, “is a threat of disappearance, loss, and absence, the disavowal of death is a confirmation of presence, mastery, and meaning.”37 This denial of the nihilistic drive lying at the center of death is also borne out by The Assassin. Despite Nie’s sacrifice, the future is not completely closed off, and there is a strong sense that his death will not be in vain. A sign of this is the change in attitude of Nie’s sister, who was skeptical of her brother’s lofty ideals at first but becomes convinced of their meanings in the end. As her own sacrifice, she voluntarily submits herself to the trap devised by the authorities and claims her brother’s corpse, thereby guaranteeing that his name will pass on in history. Indeed, it is not merely Nie’s name that is preserved; as we find out near the end of the film, Nie has an unborn son with Xia—a clear signal of the continuation of his lineage. All this conveys a strong sense of meaning and purpose, even a sense of transcendence, to Nie’s death. As noted above, Chang Cheh believed that such on-screen acts of constructive violence and sacrificial death, which entail a process of self-affirmation and self-actualization, had broader social uses. For him, they served as a symbolic sublimation of the violent impulses in society, reducing the destructive effects of those impulses in actual life so that the society could focus its attention on economic development and other matters. Such a view has been taken up by noted local critic Sek Kei, who argues that after the 1967 riots, Hong Kong people and the colonial administration “came into a kind of tacit agreement to concentrate on economy and leave politics aside.” Martial arts films—and those by Chang Cheh in particular—“served as a convenient 37. Catherine Russell, Narrative Mortality: Death, Closure, and New Wave Cinemas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 7.

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conduit for youthful restlessness, where anger, rebelliousness, discontent, and violent urges could be discharged on the screen as an entertainment form and the real energy directed to labour.”38 Whether this understanding of screen violence is theoretically sound or not is a moot point; what is more important is the impact it had on shaping and defining Chang’s distinctive approach to violence in his films. Nevertheless, as Russell makes it clear, there is a possibility in which excessive violence in the representation of death can bring about the return of the repressed fear of death outside of the parameters of “meaning”; that is, a sense in which the excess of violence and spectacular death are intimately linked to a failure of narrative to redeem history.39 This collapse in the process of sacrificial or regenerative violence can be most clearly observed, within the context of Hong Kong martial arts cinema in the 1970s, in a group of films that use the rise-and-fall narrative of an upward striving individual to explore the fissures of a society where profit and self-interest have become the overriding principles. Although these films are typically set in Republican China, they can be seen as closely linked to the experience of Hong Kong people, especially those who originated in China and came to the British colony as refugees during the postwar period. For while the protagonists in these films are not immigrants in the strict sense, they are fortune-seekers who migrate from the country to the city (primarily Shanghai) and thus embody, in psychological terms, a similar amalgamation of insecurity (of living in an alien environment) and yearnings for socioeconomic improvement that also informed the Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. As a colonial society that lacked a clear sense of future and opportunities for political participation, Hong Kong was, like the worldly and money-oriented cities represented in the films, a prospering but single-minded system where the most evident channel for social advancement was in the economic realm. This led to an obsessive drive to get ahead through work, which in turn gave rise to the famous “all-out” work ethic that expressed itself behaviorally in the form of hard work and diligence, dedication of effort, as well as a willingness to postpone immediate gratification. Wong Siu-lun, a Hong Kong sociologist, describes the process in this way: Since the Chinese Communist Party victory in 1949, Hong Kong has been living on edge about its political future. But as a surviving British colony, it could still provide shelter to refugees who came from various parts of China and Southeast Asia. These refugees and their children knew how fickle life could be, that fortunes and safety could vanish overnight. They were afflicted with high anxiety. Thus they worked hard by putting in extraordinarily long hours. They studied feverishly to acquire skills and qualifications. They saved and held on to money as their life vests. They watched the world vigilantly for signs of danger as well as opportunity. They diversified their assets in order to spread risks. And this

38. Sek Kei, “Chang Cheh’s Revolution in Masculine Violence,” in Chang Cheh: A Memoir, 13. 39. Russell, Narrative Mortality, 3–7.

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If this persistent pursuit of social mobility and success has often been taken as a unique spirit of Hong Kong people that rendered possible the city’s postwar economic miracle, the group of martial arts films noted here take a distinctly more critical view, and produce a mass cultural experience of a hitherto denied perspective on Hong Kong’s colonial-capitalist modernity. The films’ critique, however, is made not by denial or defiance, but rather through the attempts of the protagonists to fight into the heart of the materialist social structure. In exposing the illusory nature of this fight, the films seek to reexamine, and cast doubt on, the mythologies associated with the capitalist discourses prevailing in Hong Kong at the time. In what follows, I use Chang Cheh’s The Boxer from Shantung (Ma Yongzhen, 1972) as a case study to explain and further develop my ideas above.41 Set in Shanghai during the early 1920s, the film recounts the story of Ma Yongzhen (Chen Kuan-tai), a country lad from Shantung who, like many others, seeks to find his fortune in Shanghai. Working as a manual laborer at the outset, he is living poorly, suffering the scorns and insults of his landlord. His fate changes, however, after coming across the powerful gang leader Fourth Master Tan (David Chiang) and winning his admiration through a show of courage and martial arts skills. In many ways, Tan becomes a figure of imitation for Ma, and the latter’s meteoric rise in the gangster world is reflected in the way he takes up the appearance and habits of Tan—using a similar cigarette holder, for instance; or traveling in a lavish carriage akin to the one used by Tan. On the surface, The Boxer from Shantung is a typical rags-to-riches story that champions the values of upward striving and individual agency underpinning the modern industrial society of Hong Kong. This is precisely what Ma believes in the beginning: “I heard Shanghai is full of opportunities. What is needed is just the strength and ability.” Indeed, this thematic of social climbing—of “going up the ladder,” so to speak—is literally visualized in an early scene: after Ma fights off some thugs in the run-down inn where he is staying, the innkeeper turns an entirely different eye on him and offers him the best sleeping space on the upper level. Ma takes the offer with proud satisfaction, and as he slowly and triumphantly walks up the stairs, the

40. Wong Siu-lun, “Chinese Entrepreneurs as Cultural Heroes,” in Modernization and Chinese Entrepreneurship, ed. East Asian Institute (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. and Singapore University Press, 1998), 27. See also David A. Levin and Sze Yeung, “The Hong Kong Work Ethic,” in Work and Society: Labour and Human Resources in East Asia, ed. Ian Nish, Gordon Redding, and Sek-hong Ng (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996), 135–54. 41. After The Boxer from Shantung, which was an enormous success at the time and prompted a stream of quick imitations, Chang made a number of follow-ups—including Man of Iron (1972; codirected with Pao Hsueh-li) and Disciples of Shaolin (1975)—that reiterate the critique of the capitalist ethics of individualist striving and competition found in the earlier film.

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Figure 1.3 The rise of the gangster: Ma Yongzhen (Chen Kuan-tai) walking up the stairs in The Boxer from Shantung (1972)

low-angle camera captures his ascent (in both a literal and figurative sense) from the ground and prefigures his meteoric rise as a gangster (Figure 1.3). Similar to The Assassin, the (male) body takes on a major significance here, constituting the most basic instrument that can be relied on in pursuing one’s social aspirations and ambitions. Indeed, the words uttered by Ma when he is confronted by some hoodlums at the beginning of the film—“I might be a bum, but I can fight”—may well serve as a motto for the film’s primarily working-class viewers, for whom the body often represented the only means in their search for a better life. True to his words, Ma literally fights his way up to the top, thus demonstrating the power of the body as a tool that would permit one to break out of social hierarchies. This body, it is worth mentioning, is no longer imbued with nationalist meanings but becomes increasingly class-coded. Take, for instance, the scene in which Ma accepts the challenge in fighting a Russian strongman. The invocation of foreign forces, as has been noted earlier, is a recurrent trope in the kung fu film, serving predominantly as a way to evoke the nationalist feelings of the viewers through a structured opposition between self and other. But unlike, for instance, Fist of Fury, where the battles of Bruce Lee’s character and his opponents of different nationalities and races are used as a narrative device to highlight the film’s nationalist underpinning, the fight between Ma and the Russian strongman is no longer staged as a rivalry between competing races, nor does it serve to portray the struggles of the colonized against the colonizer. Indeed, the Russian strongman in the film is nothing but a tool for the scheming entrepreneurial gangsters to profit from those who dare to challenge him. In this sense, Ma’s triumph signals not so much an affirmation of national self-esteem but constitutes rather part of the story of upward striving that has propelled the film’s narrative all along. Yet The Boxer from Shantung does not simply celebrate the rags-to-riches story of Ma. On the contrary, it takes a markedly skeptical stance, one that casts serious doubt

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on, through its depiction of the disillusionment and downfall of the aspiring gangster, the myth of individualistic striving vital to the spirit of capitalism. As Ma thrusts his way to the top, he fails to maintain his sense of virtue that can be observed early in the film, when he promises not to forget his poor friends even if he becomes rich and successful. While Ma, as a gang leader, does show some concerns over the poor and stops his followers from bullying them, the overall position of the film on this is ambiguous at best, thus prefiguring the even more pronounced cynicism in some of the director’s later films.42 For one thing, as Ma starts having his own turf, he does not cease from extorting “protection fees” from the poor folks making a living there but merely gives them more time to raise money, thus contradicting the very promise which he has vowed to follow. His acts of exploitation come as a profound disappointment to the songstress Lingzi (Ching Li), who, impressed by Ma’s sense of justice and strength of character, has looked upon him as different from other gangsters. Ma also seems attracted to her, as signaled by the repeated use of the shot-reverse shot pattern that establishes an intimate bond between the two. Yet any further development in their relationship is curtailed by Ma’s inability, or unwillingness, to  separate himself from the gangster world. Lingzi finally realizes that Ma is no more than another racketeer, and that, more importantly, he will be supplanted by a new one soon. Put otherwise, not only does she condemn Ma’s actions, she also foretells his inevitable demise. The downfall of Ma is ensured when he takes up an invitation—a clear trap— to  meet with Yang Shuang (Chiang Nan), the head of the rival Axe Gang and the mastermind behind the slaying of Fourth Master Tan. What motivates Ma is his desire for vengeance, and the fact that he does kill Yang gives some semblance of meaning to his “sacrifice.” Yet it is in the end a very hollow meaning, marked not by renewal or regeneration but by a strong sense of fatalism, a feeling of limited agency vis-à-vis an impersonal social order that seems resistant to change. Epitomizing this notion of a ruthless and indifferent world is the concept of jianghu: originating in classical martial arts stories, jianghu refers to a fictional milieu inhabited by various kinds of itinerant outsiders, including swordsmen and swordswomen with extraordinary martial arts skills. In The Boxer from Shantung, however, the idea is recast to stand in for the gangster’s world—a ruthless, inhuman, dog-eat-dog world not unlike the modern capitalist society, both shaped and controlled by the rules of perpetual competition and conquest. In this merciless universe, the motto for survival is to take over others’ turfs, so to speak, and to try to get ahead at all costs. Ma has at last come to realize this—“I know how to play this game. If you’re satisfied with your turf, you won’t be able to keep it”; yet this recognition comes too late, and he has no choice but 42. I am thinking particularly of Disciples of Shaolin (1975), in which the protagonist, a poor but righteous working-class youth with little education but amazing martial arts skills, slowly degenerates into a callous, womanizing foreman as he climbs his way up in the social ladder.

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to continue the game until the end. What we witness in the film, then, is a kind of “sacrificial crisis”: the propagation of a violence so impersonal in its workings, and so inexorably brutal in its effects, that it leaves little room for regeneration.43 It is again at the site of the body, specifically in terms of its damage and destruction, that this sacrificial crisis may be most evidently seen. Even more than Chang’s other films of the period, The Boxer from Shantung shows the director’s style at its most aggressive and brutal, generating an abundance of explicit, viscerally confrontational images of violence that assault the viewer continuously. And compared to The Assassin, the violence in the film has a much darker and even nihilistic tone to it. For example, in probably one of the most violent and bloodiest endings in the history of martial arts cinema, we see the final confrontation between Ma and the Axe Gang, an extended and extremely violent showdown that seems to know no bounds. From the moment when Ma is ambushed in a teahouse, what follows is a never-ending barrage of bloodletting, mutilation, and slaughter, leaving in the end an overwhelming sense of futility and emptiness. As in The Assassin, the motif of disembowelment is evident here, as Ma is shown fatally wounded at the belly very early in the scene but continues to fight to the end, until no lives are spared. The sheer length and ferocity of violence depicted in the scene is shocking; what it makes manifest is the terrifying experience of watching a slow and tortuous death. Rather than a simple excitatory reaction, the viewer is impelled to watch, and feel, the agonizing physical and emotional pain of a person who is crumpling before his or her very eyes. The endless bloodshed and suffering, made even more protracted by frequent uses of slow motion, has the effect of disrupting the conventional flow of narrative time and gives the scene an abstract discursiveness open to an allegorical interpretation. As Russell explains: If violence can be construed as allegorical ruins, it is not because of the slow motion itself, or of any other isolated technique . . . but principally of the scale and duration of the violence. A casually organized narrative suddenly gives way to a nonlinear sequence of shots in which time, space, and bodies are fragmented. It is to the extent that the violence against the characters extends to a violence to and of the image that the scene may be described as autonomous and allegorical.44

As an allegorical text, The Boxer from Shantung offers a trenchant critique of the popular capitalist myth that sees Hong Kong as an open society, a place of open opportunities where individual pursuit of success is not only possible but highly desirable. In the final extended battle, Ma is shown trying repeatedly to reach Yang, the boss of the Axe Gang, by climbing up the stairs, but each time he is dragged back to the ground by rival gang members. Realizing the futility of his attempts, Ma brings down the whole staircase and finally kills Yang. Yet there is hardly a trace of catharsis in 43. On this concept of sacrificial crisis, see Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 39–49. 44. Russell, Narrative Mortality, 191.

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this act: Ma may have succeeded in taking revenge for Tan, but his future is doomed. Indeed, in destroying the very symbol—the stairs—that stands for the social hierarchical structure he was trying to climb, Ma inadvertently exposes the hollow core of his dream. His superb martial arts skills may have enabled him to advance himself in society, but this only leads to a process of tragic self-destruction. After disposing of Yang, Ma himself is slashed from the back. Just as he is going to kill the assailant, he seems to realize the absurdity of all this repetition of violence and starts laughing hysterically. This gives his opponent an opportunity to strike at him again, this time fatally. Symptomatically, Ma’s laughter continues to be heard in the soundtrack, taking on an increasingly disembodied and sinister quality, until he finally dies. If the belief in one’s ability to get ahead and achieve success entails a teleological conception of history as progress, the film works quite insistently to reject it, denying not only the present but also the prospect of a different (and better) future. What lies ahead is not simply tainted by the present but is effectively closed off by death—a mass death, to be exact, captured perfectly by the closing image of the scene: a high-angle shot of Ma’s lifeless body and countless other corpses scattered all over the teahouse (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4 Nihilistic violence and sacrificial crisis in The Boxer from Shantung (1972)

Sacrificial violence seems no longer able to redeem the heart of darkness that lies at the core of a merciless capitalist society. The hero dies in the end, but there is hardly any possibility for self-affirmation or social regeneration, and the system responsible for his downfall is as entrenched as ever. A sense of disillusionment is unmistakable, which is further reinforced by the epilogue of the film: Lingzhi and Jiangbei—the love object and devoted sidekick of Ma respectively—are seen fighting their way amid a crowd of passengers and trying to catch a train away from Shanghai, thereby reversing Ma’s geographical trajectory and, by extension, undercutting its ideological meanings. But as the train slowly leaves the platform (and away from the camera) in the film’s last image, the viewers are left to ponder: Where could the train

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be possibly going? Is there still a refuge untainted by the capitalist system? The film does not offer any answers to these questions, thus impelling the viewers to confront the ambiguous ending themselves.

Ascetic Bodies: The Power of Banality The last type of body representation to be considered in this chapter involves what I call the “ascetic body.” By the term “ascetic” I do not simply mean a morality of renunciation but take it in a more general sense, as a practice of empowering the self through submission to a regime of arduous training and discipline. Such a conception, which can be traced to the ancient Greek term askēsis meaning training, exercise, and any type of disciplined practice, is along the lines of a number of previous studies, most notably Max Weber’s investigation into the relationship between ascetic practices and empowerment of the self. In many ways, asceticism is a notion that lies at the core of the philosophy and practice of martial arts. To become a true martial artist is to renounce part of the self, especially in terms of corporeal pleasure. It is hardly surprising, then, to find the recurrent motif of sexual abstinence in martial arts cinema, where sex is often depicted not only as morally corrupting but also as harmful to the body. In Way of the Dragon, Tang Lung, the Bruce Lee character who has recently flown to Rome from Hong Kong, is taken to the apartment of a European woman who turns out to be a prostitute. Not aware of her true identity, Tang casually works out in front of a mirror, but runs away in a hurry when he sees the woman appear before him scantily dressed. While the scene is obviously played for humor, it also indicates a fear towards the threats posed by open sexuality to the body. Conversely, the interconnection of sexual asceticism and fighting capacity probably explains why the eunuch is frequently depicted in the martial arts film—and King Hu’s Dragon Inn (Longmen kezhan, 1967) is a prime example here—as a particularly formidable figure, for the very deficiencies in sexual abilities are paradoxically what preserve the “male essence” and thus render the eunuch all the more powerful as a fighter. In this sense, the action hero in a martial arts film is not all that different, except that his asceticism is not a result of actual biological limitations but rather a manifestation of self-control and discipline. In other instances, the idea of asceticism is not so much about disavowal but involves a more active dimension revolving around a systematic exercise of the self on the self, a process of self-empowerment through persistent and vigorous training. This idea of empowering the self through ascetic practices, as will be clear, was a major motif in many martial arts films of the 1970s. It was also embedded with broader social meanings, serving as an ideological template for a new kind of subject— a  tenacious, persevering individual capable of enduring hardship and adversity— in Hong Kong’s rapidly growing modern industrial society. It is important to recall

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at this point that gong fu, the Cantonese term from which the kung fu film derives its name, has two different but related meanings: the (physical) effort required for completing a task; and the abilities and skills acquired over time. Implicit in the term, then, are a cluster of ideas—labor, training, industriousness, a capacity to endure and persist, a will to succeed—centrally associated with work and its ascetic morality. That there is a deep connection between ascetic modes of self-fashioning and the spirit of capitalism is hardly a new idea and has already been examined by German sociologist Max Weber, particularly in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. According to Weber, the development of capitalism in the West was intimately linked to the emergence of a unique type of self, one with a particular mode of power inclined towards rationalized labor characteristic of capitalist society. This power is conceived as rooted in the Puritan concept of the calling, which endowed Protestant entrepreneurs with an ascetic ethic that manifested itself, among other things, in a determined effort to discipline the natural self and subject it to a new and higher self devoted to the pursuit of wealth and material successes as signs of divine grace.45 The linkage of ascetic Protestantism (Calvinism) and the spirit of capitalism is a compelling one. Yet the true explanatory heart of Weber’s book, as Harvey Goldman has contended, has less to do with this historical connection than with Weber’s reconfiguration of Puritan models for the purpose of finding novel ways to empower the self for mastery of the world. Against the discourse of weakness and impotence pervading the increasingly rationalized social order in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Weber found in the Puritan calling a model for modern selffashioning through which one could achieve mastery over oneself and over the world by means of what may be called “ascetic practices of the self.” In other words, unlike Michel Foucault and other critics for whom the self is inescapably shaped by relations of power in social institutions and practices, Weber called for the empowerment of the self, that is, the creation of selves with power up to the task of coping with rationality and mastering the institutions that produced submissive and obedient selves.46 Weber’s concern with power, as suggested elsewhere by Goldman, was mediated through Nietzsche; but unlike the latter, who targeted his critique of Western culture at asceticism, seeing it as the sign of a weak will, Weber conceived the will to power as neither natural nor confined to aristocracies, but rather rooted in specific social and cultural practices, most notably ascetic Protestantism and its concept of calling.47 45. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with Other Writings on the Rise of the Rest, 4th ed., trans. Stephen Kalberg (New York and Oxford: London: Oxford University Press, 2009). 46. Harvey Goldman, Max Weber and Thomas Mann: Calling and the Shaping of the Self (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 18–51. 47. Goldman, “Weber’s Ascetic Practices of the Self,” in Weber’s Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 164–65. On Nietzsche’s critique of asceticism, see the last essay entitled “What Is the Meaning of Ascetic

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In  stressing the essential historical role played by this idea of calling and bringing a secular version of it into social theory, Weber made a powerful case for an ascetic foundation of meaning and value that is not turned inward but directed outward, serving the interests of life and enabling us to fulfill the purposes that we have set for ourselves, whatever they may be. It is my contention that an ascetic ethic also provided a powerful force for the breeding of capitalist individuals in postwar Hong Kong and gave them an extraordinary capacity to endure and overcome adversity. Yet this asceticism, unlike the one discussed by Weber, had little to do with Protestantism; rather, it was linked to the sociopolitical conditions of Hong Kong during the postwar period, when newly arrived Chinese refugees, faced with the uncertainties of living in a borrowed place and time and with the lack of an adequate social safety net in a colonial society, were able to take advantage of a rapidly expanding industrial sector and a comparatively open opportunity structure to move up in the social hierarchy. This meant, however, that the most effective avenue for upward mobility was within the economic realm, and that one could not count on anything but his or her own effort in order to achieve success. All this provided the conditions for the emergence of a capitalist ascetic ethic that legitimated economic success as an ultimate purpose to which all energies should be devoted, while fostering at the same time a mode of power best epitomized by the “do or die” work ethic that kept one working diligently day and night. In the mythologies surrounding Hong Kong’s postwar economic miracle, this discourse of ascetic empowerment of the self is widely seen as one of the major driving forces underlying the rapid growth and continual prosperity of the city. Yet a sense of doubt, which was given clear expression in a film like The Boxer from Shantung, has also constantly haunted this ideological fantasy. Indeed, such fears became actual reality when the Hong Kong economy, which had quickly recovered from the 1966–1967 riots and reached a peak in the first half of 1973, tumbled dramatically towards the end of the year: not only the stock market crashed, but the economy was also under the threat of recession due to the oil crisis and other factors. The local film industry, too, took a nosedive, with annual production plunging from over 150 in 1972 to 80 plus in 1975. The martial arts film, which had been the dominant local genre since the late 1960s, was also in sharp decline.48 The dire situation went on for some time, and it was not until around 1975 that the economy started to rebound (and would undergo another phase of growth throughout the late 1970s and 1980s). At about the same time, a new trend of martial arts cinema—the Shaolin kung fu films—emerged and sparked a revival of the genre. Ideas?” in his book On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 68–120. 48. On the effects of the 1973–75 economic downturn on the Hong Kong film industry, see Ng Ho, Gucheng ji: lun xianggang dianying ji suwenxue [Tale of an orphaned city: On Hong Kong cinema and subculture] (Hong Kong: ciwenhua youxian gongsi, 2008), chapter 2.

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It is in one of these Shaolin kung fu films, Five Shaolin Masters (Shaolin wuzu, 1974) by Chang Cheh, that a new emphasis on the discourse of training can be observed. This shift, which would be further developed and reconfigured in many of Lau Kar-leung’s films as well as in the action comedies of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, did not happen by coincidence: against the backdrop of a severe economic crisis, people started to realize the fragile foundation of their newfound wealth and prosperity and developed a deeper, more self-conscious look at the ascetic ethic widely seen as the foundation for Hong Kong’s economic takeoff. If the narcissistic body of Bruce Lee evoked an empowered self linked to fantasies of national pride and labor power, and if the sacrificial bodies in Chang Cheh’s films spoke to a growing disquiet about Hong Kong’s unbridled development, the ascetic bodies of the “training films” not only signaled a renewal of the capitalist myths of hard work and individualist pursuit of success; they also served to underscore the ascetic source of these myths, thereby vindicating past sacrifices and reaffirming a contemporary discipline of the self as a means to regeneration. It should be noted that the idea of training had been a recurrent motif in martial arts cinema, not only at a textual level but also from a larger, extra-textual perspective. Thus, even though training was not an issue extensively explored in the films of Bruce Lee, it was actively raised by critics and viewers alike and became a crucial part in the mythologies surrounding the star’s vigorous body and superb martial arts as well as his tenacious drive to success. At the same time, there were numerous behindthe-scenes reports and publicity materials that foregrounded the grueling and perilous aspects—not only the training but also the accidents, the injuries, even the risks of losing one’s life—involved in the making of a martial arts or action film.49 While the recognition given to actors and actresses is well deserved, it is just part of the story. What we need to recognize are the ideological meanings of all these popular and industrial discourses, which are centrally grounded in the notion of ascetic selfempowerment as a means to individual and world mastery.50 On a textual level, training was also incorporated into the martial arts film early on, but it had hitherto assumed a less emphatic role. In The One-Armed Swordsman, for instance, the young hero loses his right arm during a clash with his master’s daughter 49. See, for instance, Yu Yeying, “Dongzuo pian yu pai yu jingxian: yanyuan wei qiu bizhen, jinru wan ming jieduan” [Action films are becoming more and more dangerous to make: Actors and actresses risk their lives to make lifelike action], Golden Movie News 21 (December 1973): 52–53. 50. It is also from this dual perspective that we should understand the many stories that have been told, in different media outlets, about how Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and others received hellish training as a child in the renowned China Drama Academy. These stories, from which Alex Law’s film Painted Faces (Qi xiaofu, 1988) is derived, are by no means mere recollections of the “good old days.” Rather, they should be understood as serving at least two different purposes: authenticating the stars by stressing the arduous training processes that enable them to perform difficult stunts themselves, and legitimating the “no pain, no gain” ideology underlying Hong Kong’s historical experience of achievement through hardship.

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and has to train his left hand in order to reclaim his swordsmanship. Similarly, there is a brief sequence near the end of The Chinese Boxer that depicts the hero’s determined effort to improve his martial arts skills through a process of grueling training—placing his hands in a vat of heated iron fillings, running and jumping with iron rods attached to his legs, and so on. In both cases, the training process, which serves primarily as a narrative device that moves the plot to what is really at stake (defending one’s martial arts school against attacks; seeking revenge for a grave injustice), is not given much emphasis and is only shown in brief montage sequences. But even in its brevity one can already see the underlying philosophy of the training process, namely the systematic physical drilling and disciplining of the self as a means to power and mastery. While the thematic meaning of training has remained largely unchanged over time, what differs in some of the later films is that the training process itself becomes a central focus, as witnessed by the amount of screen time and details devoted to it. The pivotal film in this regard is Lau Kar-leung’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Shaolin sanshiliu fang, 1978), widely considered one of the key Hong Kong martial arts film produced in the second half of the 1970s. Set in the early Qing period, the film tells the story of Liu Yude (Gordon Liu), who begins as an upright but rather naïve student drawn by his activist teacher to a local revolt against the Manchu government, and ends up being a consummate kung fu master after years of arduous training in the Shaolin Temple. Narrative-wise, the film can be broadly divided into three parts: the first part deals with the failed mutiny and the ensuing manhunt that forces the young rebel to flee to the Shaolin Temple, whereas the last depicts how the newly transformed Liu, now renamed as San De, exacts revenge on the Manchu officials and establishes the 36th Chamber of Shaolin dedicated to teaching martial arts to regular folk. But despite a number of exciting set pieces in both parts, the main attraction of the film lies in the extended training sequences that take up the majority of the film’s middle act. In a series of ingeniously staged scenes, the viewer is shown the process in which San De undergoes various regimes of harsh body and mind conditioning. At the outset, the training is focused on specific parts or skills of the body, as when walking across floating logs improves one’s balance and agility, carrying pails of water uphill builds up upper body strength, and banging a giant metal bell with a heavy weight attached to a long slender bamboo rod strengthens the wrist. Other training includes focusing the eyes on moving points of light for sharpness and concentration of sight, and butting the head against sand bags to enhance its strength It is only after these basics have been mastered that the student is able to move on to actual combat training. In addition to satisfying the curiosity of audiences, who want to see how a martial arts novice can be trained into a kung fu master, the training sequences are also interesting in that they make evident what can be called, to paraphrase Meaghan Morris, the power of banality; that is, the way how “practice, repetition, training, the ‘dull

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gestures of an everyday reality’ intimately form the martial artist and bring wonder into the world.”51 More specifically, this concept of banal power may be considered on two levels: on the one hand, it is not by coincidence that the training process depicted in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin focuses not on some fancy combat skills or weapon fighting styles—at least not in the beginning—but rather on such fundamentals as balance, strength, and resilience, all of which are related to the basic capabilities of the body. Underlying this choice of focus is a simple but essential idea: the path to success, whether in kung fu learning or in other endeavors, is grounded precisely in such basic aptitudes, and in order to master them, one needs to go through some ordinary and often monotonous, but ultimately rewarding, training practices. Translated into formal and stylistic terms, this idea of banal power manifests itself in the straightforward but rigorous découpage used in depicting the different training exercises. Take, for instance, the eye-training sequence in which San De is told to place his head between two gigantic burning incense sticks and to dart his eyes left and right in order to follow the movement of the candle flames before him. The ways in which the sequence is shot and edited may seem rather unexceptional; it  comprises for the most part close-up images of the moving candle flames alternated with those of San De trying to follow the flames with his eyes (without moving his head). A more careful look, however, reveals some subtle variations in this pattern, most notably a slight change in shot scale (from close-ups to extreme close-ups) and a more noticeable increase in the speed of both San De’s eye movement and the movement of the candle flames. These variations signal a gradual intensification of the training process, which in turn implies an augmentation of San De’s power, as attested to by the increasingly rapid and almost mechanical motion of his eyes. Deceptively simple, the eye-training sequence shows the power of banality in that the training process, and thus the process of self-empowerment, are expressed not through flashy cinematic techniques or complex action choreography, but rather by means of the constant reiteration of a basic practice, captured and represented in a similarly plain and methodical way. On the other hand, and this is related to the first point, it is worth noting how frequently the training depicted in the film evokes the banal experience of average workers. The emphasis on the body is one example, conjuring up the nature of physical work for the film’s primarily working-class audiences. Yet the affinities can be even more direct; for example, the scene in which San De is shown carrying pails of water uphill portrays a routine that clearly alludes to the chores of many manual laborers. Indeed, this link between kung fu training and everyday work becomes even more overt in Lau Kar-leung’s Return to the 36th Chamber (Shaolin dapeng 51. Meaghan Morris, “Learning from Bruce Lee: Pedagogy and Political Correctness in Martial Arts Cinema,” in Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies, ed. Matthew Tinkcom and Amy Villarejo (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 179.

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dashi, 1980). Not exactly a sequel but a reworking of the ideas of kung fu pedagogy, ascetic training, and empowerment of the self explored in the earlier film, Return to the 36th Chamber is very direct in its allusions to the laboring class and their work experience. Not accidentally, a labor dispute opens the film: the owner of a dyeing mill has decided to cut the workers’ salary, and when the workers put on a protest, they are viciously beaten by the Manchu foremen. A young con man, played again by Gordon Liu, tries to help out the workers by posing as the powerful San De. His real identity, however, is soon discovered, which leads to further beatings and thrashings of the workers. After the sham, Zhou Renjie, as the con man is called, goes to the Shaolin Temple with the aim of learning kung fu from the real San De. What follows, then, is another series of ingenious sequences on martial arts training, which turns out to take mainly the form of work: instead of having Zhou go through the conventional training processes, San De orders the unruly disciple to scaffold the entire Shaolin Temple—nominally for its regularly scheduled renovation, but actually as a means to train and discipline him. Reluctant but obedient, Zhou gets to work every day but is continually sidetracked by the martial arts training going on in the courtyard, of which he has an unobstructed view from his vantage point on high. He starts inventing and doing his own training drills, using the resources of his work to improvise training facilities. In one case, he puts up a kung fu wooden dummy, known generally as muren zhuang, by using the bamboo poles intended for scaffolding the temple (Figure 1.5). In another instance, he follows the leg-strengthening exercise by forcing himself to work with his feet tied to the scaffold. The essential point, however, is that Zhou himself is completely unaware of the “training” he has been going through. It is only after leaving the Shaolin Temple and fighting off some idle workers in town that he finally realizes his newly acquired martial arts skills. With these skills Zhou is able to defeat the boss of the dyeing mill and to force him to rehire the sacked workers and to pay them their full wages.

Figure 1.5 Labor as covert training: Liu Yude (Gordon Liu, top) in Return to the 36th Chamber (1980)

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What we see in Return of the 36th Chamber is banal power at its most powerful: ascetic training, as a means to self-empowerment and mastery of the world, is shown to be so embedded in the everyday work experience that it becomes an unconscious process. A different way to put this is that labor—and specifically, manual labor— constitutes a kind of covert training and thus a source of power and liberation. The significance of this conception of labor-as-training stems to a large extent from its ability to create new perceptions about the body and to ascribe new meanings to the often unpleasant experience of industrial labor. In the context of work, training refers not only to the long and grueling process of acquiring a craft or skill, but also to something like assembly-line work, which “trains” the worker, by drills and repetition, to respond automatically to its uniform and unvarying rhythm. In the two 36th Chamber films discussed here, however, these awful meanings of training are recast and transformed into the experience, at once cognitive and sensory-affective, of watching a body being trained into a powerful instrument in a short (screen) time. This process of self-empowerment, achieved through ascetic practices evoking physical labor, is not only a question of building up endurance or perseverance; more important is a capacity to compete, to overcome barriers and obstacles in the way to success, through the transformed body. As such, it offered the primarily workingclass viewers of the films a fantasy of liberation, of rising above their toiling bodies and rendering meaningful and even desirable their hardships and sacrifices at work. Yet the key term here is perhaps “fantasy,” and it is important to point out that the idea of self-empowerment through ascetic training found in many Shaolin kung fu films constitutes in the end a regulatory and disciplining mechanism that is anything but liberating. One can get a better understanding of what is at stake here through the notion of “technologies of the self ” proposed by Michel Foucault. Moving away from his earlier emphasis on the social disciplining mechanisms to which the body is subjected in modern life, Foucault suggests in some of his later works that the power imposed on the body is about not only social forms of regulation and control but also methods and techniques through which individuals constitute themselves in an active fashion.52 Such practices of the self, however, do not necessarily signify a form of liberation, since they “are not something that the individual invents by himself ” but rather “patterns . . . which are proposed, suggested and imposed on him by his culture, his society and his social group.”53 As an example of such (imposed) practices of self-fashioning, the ascetic attainment of power, whether manifested on screen (martial arts training) or in everyday life (labor), derived from and contributed to the capitalist ethic underlying Hong Kong’s industrial modernity; it is thus 52. See, for instance, Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998). 53. Foucault, “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in The Final Foucault, ed. James Bernauer and David Rasmussen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 11.

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best conceived not as a process of liberation but one of subjection. This process of subjection, I hasten to add, did not work by producing tame, docile bodies. Rather, its  regulatory effects lay in creating new perceptions and experiences about the capacities of the body, thereby refashioning the individuals not simply as empowered subjects but as empowered workers ready for selling their bodies as labor.

2 In the Realm of the Senses

As a technology of perception, the cinema constructs a transsensory world of light, color, rhythm, kinetic movement, and sound that cannot be reduced simply to descriptions and interpretations at the hermeneutic level. Equally at stake are the ways in which a film engages the senses of the viewer, offering a mode of embodied knowledge. While such embodied reception manifests itself primarily in direct bodily sensation and affect, it should not be taken as mere corporeal immediacy. Rather, it is a historically mediated, ideologically fraught process that brings together different discourses and practices and registers the changing perceptual and epistemic realms across time. Acknowledging the embodied dimensions of the cinematic medium is particularly important in the study of martial arts cinema. The martial arts film, as Leon Hunt has noted, is not only “a genre of bodies” but also “a genre that acts on the body of the spectator.”1 This means that an intense engagement with the viewer’s body—with the corporeal materiality of the senses—is a defining characteristic of the genre. Yet it is not enough to say that the martial arts film elicits powerful sensory effects; what is left unaddressed is the historicity of such a perceptual aesthetic, which varies across time and is closely linked to changes of experiential modes in different historical circumstances. A more adequate study, then, requires a mode of analysis that focuses on how the genre engages the viewers at a visceral level and explains the sociohistorical meanings inscribed in this process. Such an approach entails, on one hand, a close attention to matters of form and style, especially those tangible but not readily interpretable qualities whose effects are mostly corporeal and affective; a second area of inquiry pertains to the question of historical mediation, specifically the complex nexus linking sensory perception, social change, and aesthetic form. In this chapter, I pursue the two previously mentioned lines of inquiry and use them to illuminate Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s. Central to my argument is that rapid processes of social and economic modernization in postwar Hong Kong had brought with them an intensified sensory environment

1. Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters (London and New York: Wallflower, 2003), 2.

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and thus created a different matrix of perceptual and affective possibilities. And it is these changes in social, economic, and experiential realms that helped usher in, around the mid- to late 1960s, new modes of cultural representation, of which the shift towards sensationalism—or what I call sensory realism—in the martial arts film genre was a primary manifestation. Put differently, the new trend of martial arts films, with its propensity for sensory and visceral stimulation and the rhetoric of realism underpinning it, can be said to register the changing experience of the real linked to Hong Kong’s colonial-capitalist modernity, thereby functioning as a marker of the complex connections between cultural and aesthetic texts and sociohistorical processes.

The Senses of a Modernizing Society Beginning in the mid-1960s, Hong Kong films became increasingly sensationalistic, not only with respect to content but also in terms of the style of presentation. Exploiting first violence and later sex, as encapsulated by the pun quantou (fist) and zhentou (pillow) frequently used in publicity materials and journalistic writings, filmmakers tried hard to muster every shock tactic at their disposal and launched an unprecedented assault on the viewer’s senses and sensibilities. Epitomizing this shift towards sensationalism was a group of new Mandarin martial arts films associated primarily, but not exclusively, with the powerful Shaw Brothers studio.2 Eschewing stylized theatrical fighting and fantastic special effects in favor of a visceral and graphically violent approach, these films turned out to be enormously popular and set the stage for other sensation-oriented martial arts films, which came to dominate Hong Kong cinema throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Chapter 1, I have explored the social and psychological meanings of graphic violence in these new martial arts films, but the discussions there deal with the question only partially, conceiving the violent representations mainly as a discursive trope that engages the viewer textually at the semiotic and hermeneutic levels.3 There is,

2. It is worth mentioning here that the majority of Hong Kong martial arts films made before the mid-1960s were Cantonese productions. Mandarin films, which had become an integral part of Hong Kong cinema since the postwar period, were targeted mainly at the more educated, middle-class audiences, who saw themselves as above the “vulgar” entertainment of the martial arts film. This situation, however, began to change in 1965, when Shaw Brothers shifted its focus to the martial arts film genre. 3. Specifically, it is my contention that as a socially symbolic sign, ultraviolence in late 1960s and early 1970s martial arts films manifested itself in various forms and engaged in a continuous dialogue with the changing social conditions associated with Hong Kong’s colonial-capitalist modernity. In some cases, the films articulated a constructively expressed violence—one permeated with a strong sense of purpose and nobility of spirit—that served to absorb the violent impulses in society and recast them as a means to social and individual regeneration. On the other hand, there were instances that saw the collapse of this process of regenerative violence, where bloodshed and carnage was drained of all sense of meaning and closure and functioned as an allegorical critique of a rampant capitalist system.

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however, a no less important aspect to consider, namely the ways in which we engage film violence through the materiality of our own bodies. Watching a film with overtly violent content, many people would agree, is a deeply corporeal experience. What is at stake, therefore, has little to do with the disembodied mind and goes beyond the usual emphasis on logical-cognitive meanings. Rather, it is the film’s capacity for sensory and tactile stimulation, triggered and amplified by various stylistic devices, that constitutes a more pertinent focus of study. Stated differently, as a concrete visual and visceral force rather than a mere vehicle for semiotic signification, film violence offers an intensity of raw, immediate sensation that powerfully engages the eye and body of the spectator. In this sense, the growing propensity for ultraviolence in Hong Kong martial arts films can be—and should be— taken as part of the genre’s larger trend towards sensory intensification; a trend that manifested itself in the tendency to generate, often in the name of “realism,” vivid sensory spectacles involving not only violent bloodshed but also thrilling displays of physical action. I will take a detailed look at this issue later. For now, my goal is simply to lay the groundwork for my discussion by outlining the conjunction of social, economic, and cultural forces that made possible the conditions—the rise of a new sensory environment and the corresponding shifts in perceptual and experiential modes—out of which a new trend of fast-paced and action-filled martial arts films emerged. In conceiving the lifeworld as a sensory realm and focusing on the ways sense impressions from everyday life are subjectively incorporated, such a contextual mapping marks out a terrain that is best understood as what Michael Taussig, in a brief but penetrating essay, calls “everydayness”: a “common sense of the everyday” that “includes much that is not sense so much as sensuousness, an embodied and somewhat automatic knowledge that functions like peripheral vision, not studied contemplation, a knowledge that is imageric and sensate rather than ideational.”4 Hong Kong in the 1960s was a city of profound change and transformation. A particular configuration of modern urban-industrial life emerged, bringing with it a wealth of new sensory experiences that not only impinged on the prevailing perceptual mode in society but also produced the context for the materialization of a new type of martial arts film. A key factor underlying Hong Kong’s transformation into a modern society with its unique sensory texture of life was the city’s rapid industrialization process during the postwar years. From an entrepôt specializing in trade to and from China, Hong Kong had by the mid-1960s remade itself into one of the most industrialized territories in Asia, second only to Japan. While few places had industrialized as rapidly as this former British colony, the human cost of such unfettered development was also very high. Like China today, Hong Kong had a notorious reputation for exploiting and capitalizing on sweated labor. Research, for

4. Michael Taussig, “Tactility and Distraction,” Cultural Anthropology 6, no. 2 (1991): 147.

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instance, indicated that a majority of Hong Kong workers had a working week of over seventy hours—among the highest in Asia.5 Extended working hours, coupled with jobs requiring heavy manual or repetitive labor, had the effect of dulling and deforming the senses, a situation further abetted by the deplorable working conditions under which many worked. Janet W. Salaff, a sociologist who carried out field research on women workers in early 1970s Hong Kong, made the following observation: The factory districts overwhelm the visitor with the single-dimensional impression of grayness. The dull, monotonic sound of textile machinery matches the monochromic gray, punctuated by the screams of jets as they wing their way overhead . . . [In places where fabric is printed] the acrid smell of formaldehyde masks all other sense.6

Salaff, it should be pointed out, was mainly discussing the large and medium-sized factories in the then newly developed industrial districts. The conditions in the many squatter factories and cottage workshops, particularly those located in the old urban areas, were significantly worse, amounting indeed to what Karl Marx described, in a different context, as a “systematic robbery of what is necessary for the life of the workman.”7 But even when the workers returned home from long hours of grueling labor, this did not necessarily mean relief for them, for they often came back to a no less harsh and oppressive environment marked by suffocating summer heat, noise, stench, and an exceedingly packed living space. Such appalling conditions arose to a large extent out of Hong Kong’s extensive housing problems in the postwar years, which in turn resulted from a rapidly growing population triggered by massive migration from China on one hand, and by a high rate of natural increase on the other. Between 1945 and 1950, for instance, Hong Kong’s population quadrupled from 600,000 to about 2.4 million, and the figure continued to shoot up in the following two decades: 3.1 million in 1961, 3.7 million in 1966, and over 4 million by 1969.8 In light of this dramatic population growth, it is no surprise that Hong Kong, with its small surface area and scarcity of developable land, suffered from a severe housing shortage and a deprived living environment. Squatting was rampant and a regular part of the cityscape; there were, for instance, tens of thousands of squatters who built huts on the roofs of existing buildings, and other squatter settlements, no less primitive, were 5. See Joe England and John Rear, Chinese Labour under British Rule (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1981), 46. 6. Janet W. Salaff, Working Daughters of Hong Kong: Filial Piety or Power in the Family? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 46. 7. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling; ed. Frederick Engels (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), 426. 8. The figures are taken from Hong Kong Statistics, 1946–67 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1969) and Hong Kong Population and Housing Census, 1971 Main Report (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1972), both published by the Census and Statistics Department.

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found on hillsides or in the outskirts of the city. As can be imagined, living in such impoverished structures was an ordeal for the senses: one had to endure not only the roasting heat, but also the stench and filth of open drains, uncleared litter, and even human excrement. It goes without saying that many of these squatter dwellers also had to put up with exceedingly overcrowded conditions. Yet even those who lived in more decent structures, such as private tenement buildings or government-built resettlement estates, still found themselves looking for a more open living environment. With approximately 80 percent of the population living in the metropolitan area in 1968— that is, more than 3.3 million people jammed into fewer than 30 square miles of builtup land, at a density of about 250,000 persons per square mile—Hong Kong had one of the highest urban densities in the world.9 It was not unusual to find a family of seven or eight persons squeezing in a tiny room of no more than 120 square feet. Due to this shortage of space, the younger members of the family were often forced to sleep in a cockloft or on the floor to give more room to the adults. Ventilation was usually poor, thus making the cramped room feel even more oppressive, and exceedingly hot and humid during summer. At the same time, with so many people living in close proximity within a single building or housing estate, noise was often also a constant source of nuisance. A field researcher put it succinctly: “The noise of human voices rises from the blocks in a volume which matches the noise of traffic . . . At any time, it seems, one is overhearing a hundred conversations.”10 The sensory deprivation of the working class can hardly be denied, given the grueling conditions of wage labor and the congested, filthy living environment associated with squatter huts, meager tenements, and other forms of cheap housing prevalent in Hong Kong during this period. Yet such dreadful circumstances should not blind us to the more pleasant arousals associated with rapid industrial development and the emergence of a modern mass culture. As Hong Kong became more affluent, and as standards of living rose as a result of accelerated growth, a culture of consumption developed that manifested itself in the spread of modern department stores and shopping malls,11 as well as in the expansion of the annual Hong Kong Industrial Products Exhibition (renamed as Hong Kong Products Expo and as Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo in the 1990s). The exhibition, first inaugurated in 1938, grew into an increasingly popular event and expanded its scope rapidly after World War II. It reached a peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, attracting nearly 2,000 exhibitors

9. Keith Hopkins, “Housing the Poor,” in Hong Kong: The Industrial Colony (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1971), 275. 10. Ibid., 300–301. 11. On the development of modern shopping malls in Hong Kong, see Tai-lok Lui, “The Malling of Hong Kong,” in Consuming Hong Kong, ed. Gordon Matthews and Tai-lok Lui (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), 23–45.

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and over 1.5 million visitors each year.12 The grand ornate pavilions erected by the companies; the glamorous shows and performances, including the Miss Exhibition Pageant; the wide variety of locally manufactured products set out in elaborate displays—all this presented a spectacle of consumer abundance that constituted an indispensable part of the changing sensory environment of Hong Kong. A proliferation of dazzling sensations can also be observed in the realm of mass culture, which by the 1960s had become more diverse and cosmopolitan, and increasingly geared towards the postwar baby boomers who came of age in the period.13 These teenagers and young adults, having grown up under the colonial education system and in the midst of vast socioeconomic changes associated with rapid modernization, developed a cultural outlook very different from that of the older generation. They were much more receptive, for instance, to violent spectacles, and took to Western fads and styles disseminated through a diversity of media outlets. This shift to a younger demographic and thus to a set of different tastes and lifestyles had a major effect in shaping the local mass culture. From the “three dime novels” (Hong Kong– style pulp fictions) to sensationalistic action comics, and from go-go dance, rock and roll music, James Bond films, and other trends of Western pop culture to advertising and fashion magazines that reflected and promoted a newly emergent consumer culture, an array of mass cultural attractions aimed at the young postwar generation came into vogue and generated in the process a new dazzling audiovisual arena that redefined the cultural landscape of postwar Hong Kong. In particular, the cinema illustrated vividly this shift towards sensory intensification in a youth-driven mass culture. Not only did foreign films, especially the violent action flicks from Japan and the United States, bring a perceptual power and intensity never seen before on Hong Kong screens, local film companies also sought to rejuvenate their products by turning to more sensational subjects and styles. Leading the trend was the Shaw Brothers studio, which dominated Hong Kong’s Mandarinlanguage cinema throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Apart from pioneering a trend of highly visceral, kinesthetic martial arts films, the studio also made an attempt to capture the changing tastes of viewers by producing a string of flashy, youth-oriented musicals—among them Doe Ching’s Love Parade (Huatuan jinchu, 1963) and Inoue Umetsugu’s Hong Kong Nocturne (Xiangjiang huayue ye, 1967)—and turning out its own James Bond–style spy thrillers, including Lo Wei’s The Golden Buddha (Jin 12. For a brief historical survey of the exhibition, see Gongzhan sishi, zhengrong suiyue [Forty years of the Hong Kong Industrial Products Exhibition: The age of excellence] (Hong Kong: Xianggang zhonghua changshang lianhe hui and xing dao ribao, 2005). 13. Due to the postwar baby boom, Hong Kong was becoming an increasingly youthful society in the 1960s and 1970s. According to the 1961 census, more than half (52 percent) of the total population was under the age of 24, with the majority (over 40 percent) aged 14 or below. As these postwar baby boomers came of age later on in the decade, they became a major driving force for the transformation of Hong Kong cinema and other forms of mass culture.

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pusa, 1966), Nakahira Ko’s Special Agent 009 (Tejing 009, 1967), and many others. The efforts of Shaw Brothers, however, were only part of a larger trend in the local film industry; even the conservative Cantonese cinema sought to adapt to the changing times by embracing new types of films. Thus, the filmed operas and family melodramas dominant in the 1950s went into a sharp decline. Replacing them were films that featured youthful stars, which took an open approach to genre (with a frequent and often incongruous mix of action, song-and-dance numbers, and farcical comedy), and experimented with a more dynamic style, using such nontraditional techniques as rapid transitions, fast and elliptical cutting, and even split screens.14 As should be clear, a convergence of factors—accelerated industrial development, rapid population growth, an emergent culture of consumption, and the propagation of a youth-based mass culture—drastically transformed the sensory texture of everyday life and caused a new experiential mode to emerge in 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong. The individual was confronted with an increasingly “busy” sensory environment in which a multiplication and intensification of sense impressions, both distressing and pleasurable, had a crucial bearing on the perceptual and psychological foundations of subjective experience. Another way to put this is that the sensory excess of Hong Kong’s burgeoning urban-industrial life helped shape and develop a new mode of human apperception—one that placed a primary emphasis on the direct perception of the senses and on the absolute immediacy of experience. It should be noted that the idea of human perception as having a history and operating differently in diverse sociohistorical circumstances is not something new.15 Yet we need to go further and ask how changes in perceptual and experiential modes translate into changes in cultural practices and works of art. In his study of the interfaces between sensational melodramas and the experience of modern life in early twentieth-century America, Ben Singer attempts to offer some answers to this question. Addressing some of the criticisms leveled against the socalled “modernity thesis”—the contention that cinema responded to and grew out of the perceptual dynamics of urban modernity—Singer argues that attempts to forge meaningful connections between cinema and sensory-perceptual change in modernity, while undeniably broad and speculative, should not be dismissed as utterly implausible. For instance, harking back to the ideas of Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and others, he discusses how an appetite for sensational entertainment may be connected not only to a desire to compensate for the chaotic and meaningless hustle of modern life, but also to the condition of sensory burnout triggered by

14. On these and related developments in 1960s Cantonese cinema, see Poshek Fu, “The 1960s: Modernity, Youth Culture, and Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 71–89. 15. For a good introductory account on this subject, see Robert Jütte, A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace, trans. James Lynn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).

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overstimulation. One can conceptualize this phenomenon of deadened sensation in (at least) two ways: organic fatigue, or an inability to muster enough energy to react to new stimuli; and a more complex process that involves the numbing of the sensorium in protection against extreme or excessive stimulations. But whatever the cause, the result is fundamentally the same: a propensity for ever more powerful stimuli required to break through the blunted sensory apparatus. A vicious circle is thus at work, as the craving for thrilling entertainments simply loops back to, and reinforces, the very condition of hyperstimulus that has brought about the blasé attitude and the desire for powerful thrills in the first place.16 A similar process seems to have characterized Hong Kong martial arts cinema, whose history is also marked by an escalating spiral of sensational and violent representations, driven by viewers craving increasingly intense stimulation. It is my contention, however, that this process can also be fruitfully investigated with respect to the question of realism: in a world where the immediacy of sensory perception has become a marker of experiential authenticity, the growing sensationalism of the martial arts film signals a fundamental impulse towards sensory realism, i.e., an attempt to approximate the “embodied real”—how one lives his or her body and uses it to negotiate the sensory environment—in a rapidly changing modern society. In many cases, the bodily experience involved cannot be fully captured in language and falls outside of the dominant paradigm of representation based on rhetoric and semiotics. Rather, it pertains more to the realm of affect as defined by Brian Massumi in his introduction to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: “a pre-personal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another, and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act.”17 In other words, what is at stake here are not so much “meanings” (as expressed in themes and ideologies) as what can be described as affective resonances—a non-representational and preconscious experience of intensity constitutive of the embodied sensations in both martial arts cinema and everyday life. In what follows, I further explore this idea of sensory realism and use it to explain how, in Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s, the senses came to constitute an essential place for aesthetic gratification and experiential authenticity. In doing so, my goal is to show how the films, with their unique visceral aesthetics, bear a profound but elusive relation to processes of modernization and to the changing matrices of perception and affect associated with them.

16. Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 120–26. 17. Brian Massumi, “Translator’s Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy,” in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A  Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), xvi.

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Sensory Realism and Martial Arts Cinema My exploration of sensory realism in Hong Kong martial arts cinema is predicated on the essentially corporeal foundation of aesthetics; on the ways in which our embodied being, through the senses, derives pleasure from objects and activities found in the phenomenal world. As an aesthetic mode, sensory realism is closely bound up with the perceptual milieu of modern society, but it is also inseparable from the representational medium in which it is expressed. The cinema offers an interesting case in point: as Vivian Sobchack argues, the cinematic medium presents not simply an object to be viewed but creates, through its appeal to kinesthetic movement and tactile visuality, “concrete situations of viewing—specific, mobile, and invested engagements of embodied, enworlded, and situated subjects/objects.”18 What this means is that the filmic experience, involving not simply an intellectual but rather a corporeal engagement with images and sounds (what Sobchack calls “our performative relation to the screen”),19 has a particularly close affinity to sensory realism and its emphasis on embodied sensation and affect. Similarly, drawing on the works of Walter Benjamin (as Singer does), Taussig concurs on the vital role the body plays in making sense of a film, stressing the cinema as a uniquely corporeal form of art that functions as a vehicle for a tactile, physiological experience. The camera in constant movement, registering one’s sensuous merging with filmic imagery; the ability of a film to magnify, to single out details and forms invisible to the unaided eye; the capacity of montage to effect changes of place and focus that repeatedly “assault” the spectator—all this endows the cinema with what Taussig calls a “tactile optics,” where visual perception acquires a distinct materiality and tactility, with the eye acting as a conduit for the body being absorbed by the film image.20 If this kind of embodied spectatorship is a general feature of the cinema, it is even more apparent in what Linda Williams calls the “body genre.” In her formulation, body genres, which encompass various types of film with low cultural status, specifically pornography, horror, and melodrama, are marked by an overabundance of sensational or emotional effects (sex, violence and fear, overwhelming sadness) as well as by spectacles of bodies caught in the grip of such intense emotions/sensations. Yet, as Williams goes on to argue, it is not enough to only pay attention to these representations of “sensational bodies”; what is more important is “to go beyond the mere fact of sensation to explore its system and structure as well as its effect on

18. Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 151. 19. “Vivian Sobchack in Conversation with Scott Bukatman,” The Journal of e-Media Studies 2, no. 1 (2009), http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/1/xmlpage/4/article/338 (accessed 5 April, 2015). 20. Taussig, “Tactility and Distraction,” 149–52.

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the bodies of spectators.”21 Body genres, in other words, do not simply refer to films that sensationally display bodies on the screen. Rather, what distinguishes the genres and makes them unique is their ability to provoke powerful mimetic responses from the spectator, whose body is frequently “caught up in an almost involuntary mimicry of the emotion or sensation of the body on the screen.”22 Although the martial arts film is not included in Williams’ discussions, it displays many of the features identified by her as characteristic of a body genre. For instance, the thrills and sensations of a martial arts film, of its spectacles of action and violence, are articulated on and through the characters’ bodies just as in a horror movie. More importantly, such spectacles of bodily sensation also engage the viewer at a fundamentally sensory and visceral level. When watching a martial arts film, it is a common experience to cringe or to tense up at the sight of a powerful strike, or to feel an overwhelming urge to emulate the amazing feats of bodily prowess displayed by the characters. All this reveals the efficacy with which kinesthetic movement and physical violence stimulate, on the basis of a complex play with visual, aural, and tactile senses, embodied and mimetic responses from the spectators. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the martial arts film offers one of the most obvious manifestations of the connections between filmic imagery and spectatorial mimesis.23 But while the martial arts film constitutes an example of corporeal cinema whose effect is as much sensory and visceral as purely intellectual, it is only around the mid-1960s—when the perceptual dynamics of Hong Kong were intensifying under accelerated modernization—that heightened sensory stimulation, and depictions of graphic violence in particular, first became distinct and widespread stylistic choices. Interestingly, the way in which this turn towards sensationalism was conceived and discussed largely revolved around the notion of “realism”: when Shaw Brothers launched its campaign of “new school” (shinpai) martial arts film, what was repeatedly emphasized were concepts such as pozhen (realistic) and zhenshi (true and real), in  contrast to shizhen (loss of veracity) and xujia (false; fabricated). For instance, in a promotional article published in the studio’s official magazine, Southern Screen (Nanguo dianyin), the new martial arts films of Shaws were characterized as a break with “conventional ‘stagy’ shooting methods” and said to introduce new techniques that brought about “a high level of realism, particularly in the fighting sequences.”24 One of the films discussed was Xu Zenghong’s Temple of the Red Lotus, which was said to “excel all its predecessors by the startling realism of its fight scenes,” while

21. Linda Williams, “Body Genres: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” in Film and Theory: An Anthology, ed. Robert Stam and Toby Miller (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 208. 22. Ibid., 210. 23. For a discussion of this kinetic-mimetic aspect of the martial arts film, see Aaron Anderson, “Action in Motion: Kinesthesia in Martial Arts Films,” Jump Cut 42 (December 1998): 1–11. 24. “Shaws Launches ‘Action Era,’” Southern Screen 92 (Oct 1965): 30.

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another production, Chang Cheh’s Tiger Boy, was described as a “suspenseful adventure-romance” packed with “realistic rough-and-tumble fights.”25 At first sight, this rhetoric of realism is understandable, given that the Mandarin martial arts films emerging in the mid-1960s were conceived in many ways as a response to their highly popular Cantonese counterparts in the period, which were known for their copious use of special effects (such as animation and superimposition) as well as for their whimsical supernatural action (as epitomized by so-called “palm power,” flying swords, and airborne knights-errant). This, however, was by no means the first time that calls for “realism” had been voiced in connection with the martial arts film genre. During the late 1940s, a new series of films based on the adventures of real-life Cantonese martial arts hero Wong Fei-hung—a series that would continue throughout the 1950s and 1960s—came out precisely against the backdrop of fantasy-laden swordplay movies that had proliferated in Hong Kong cinema during the immediate postwar period. In the words of Hu Peng, who in 1949 directed the first film of the series, the swordplay films popular at the time were fake and tedious. To differentiate his work, Hu sought to create a new type of martial arts film that refused to depict ghosts or fairies, minimized the presence of artificial effects, and used actual fighting skills.26 Not unlike the later Mandarin martial arts films, then, the Wong Fei-hung series defined itself predominantly on the basis of a certain notion of “realism,” as manifested in its claim of using “real kung fu” (zhen gongfu) and embracing a seemingly “objective” style marked by distant framing and minimal editing (Figure 2.1). Yet this parallel can be very misleading and has to be taken with caution, for what is at issue are very often different claims of realism, which in turn point towards different meanings and implications.

Figure 2.1 “Real” kung fu in The True Story of Wong Fei-hung I: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (Huang feihong zhengzhuan shangji: bianfeng mie zhu, 1949) 25. Ibid., 34; 42. 26. Hu Peng, Wo yu Huang Feihong: wushi nian dianying daoyan shengya huiyilu [Wong Fei-hung and I: Memoirs of a film director’s fifty-year career] (Hong Kong: Sanhe, 1995), 4–6.

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At this point, it is useful to consider more closely the idea of realism and distinguish it from the related, yet different, concept of authenticity. In Leon Hunt’s formulation, the concept of authenticity as it is applied to the martial arts film exists in three major forms: archival, cinematic, and corporeal.27 Archival authenticity refers to the use of historically real fighting styles drawn from established martial arts traditions. Cinematic authenticity is connected to particular film techniques, such as wide shots and extended takes, that serve to construct a quasi-documentary representation of the action. Third and finally, corporeal authenticity focuses on the sheer physical capacity of the performing body, and is measured as much by stunt work and physical danger as by fighting ability.28 In its various manifestations, the notion of authenticity is understood primarily as a question of truthfulness, one that pertains both to the pro-filmic material (the historically real martial arts styles and techniques; the genuine physical skills of the actor or actress) and to specific cinematic styles that presumably enable the physical reality of the pro-filmic event to be faithfully reproduced. All this, I would argue, is not far from the concerns of realism, especially if we approach the idea from the dual perspective of truth telling and representational verisimilitude—that is, as a commitment to depicting what is considered true or real, and as a mode of representation which, through particular techniques (long takes; deep focus) that purport to reject stylization in favor of preserving the spatial and temporal integrity of the profilmic world, strives towards an accurate reproduction of that reality. In this understanding, the different modes of authenticity discussed by Hunt, with their espousal of documentary accuracy, simple and transparent style, and unmediated bodily performance, can also be seen as providing some of the conditions that enhance the “realism” of the fighting and signal what we see on the screen as “real.” Nevertheless, there are different ways to think about realism in martial arts cinema, and the discourse of authenticity is but one of them. Another possibility is what I call sensory realism—that is, a mode of realism understood not so much in visual terms but rather as a matter of sensory-affective experience. Verisimilitude in this instance goes beyond mere visual resemblance between image and world, but rather builds on correspondences between a film’s perceptual and visceral sensations and the viewer’s real-life sense experiences. Two further points can be made here. First, just as human sense perception, as I suggested earlier, constitutes a historical category that changes across time, sensory realism also needs to be taken as a historically determined rather than a fixed and unchanging idea. The second point has to do with the issue of style: rather than embracing the goal of transparency associated with a simple, unobtrusive style, sensory realism puts a strong emphasis on cinematic artifice and thus poses a challenge to the alleged opposition between stylization and realism. 27. Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters, 29. 28. Ibid., 29–41.

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It is evident from the foregoing that the question of realism in martial arts cinema is more complex than it may at first seem. Consider the Wong Fei-hung films discussed earlier: despite what Hector Rodriguez describes as their “reflexive attention to a realistic mode of representation of martial arts emphasizing ‘real combat,’”29 these films are largely seen today, in terms of sensory-affective experience at least, as profoundly fake, relying too much on theatrical acrobatics and adhering too often to an “objective” shooting style rooted in the notion of transparent mediation. Indeed, such a stance is hardly new and was already evident in the mid-1960s, when a new conception of realism emerged and came to increasingly define the martial arts film. Specifically, not only were opera-derived fights and fantastic special effects scorned for being far removed from reality, but the propensity towards archival and cinematic authenticity, as manifested in the Wong Fei-hung series, also gave way to a pursuit of vivid, powerful sensations. Put otherwise, the realism of a martial arts film was no longer a mere question of depicting, and preserving, particular martial arts styles; nor was it a matter of cognitive knowledge alone (“I know that the martial arts featured in the film are real, and that all the fights are performed with minimal technological mediation”). Rather, the issue had shifted to the realm of embodied experience (“The fighting looks real”; “I can feel the blows”), which is a function not only of a highimpact combat style grounded in forceful body contact—a style often characterized as yingqiao yingma (tough and hard-edged) and quan quan daorou (literally meaning “every punch gets to the flesh”)—but also of a more complex cinematic style capable of bringing out the power, the speed, and other sensory effects of the on-screen action. This trend towards sensory realism, as I have suggested, first emerged in the mid1960s when Shaw Brothers released and achieved success with a string of new style martial arts films. By the end of the decade, this new “sense-ationalist” style had firmly established itself as a dominant aesthetic feature in the genre and would continue to shape the ways in which martial arts films were made and discussed throughout the 1970s (and beyond). The two filmmakers most associated with this trend, especially in its early phase during the second half of the 1960s, were King Hu and Chang Cheh. With Hu, who specialized in the swordplay subgenre, a subtle interplay between sensory excitement and graceful stylization is evident in the ways his action sequences are presented. In some cases, the combats are marked by a perceptually powerful fighting style based on swift and hard-hitting strikes, forceful contact, and bloody violence. This can be seen in a brief early scene from Dragon Inn, where Zhu Ji (Xue Han) dispatches, in a burst of incisive, rapid-fire attacks, a band of dongchang (a special eunuch agency charged with ferreting out treasonable activities) agents sent to eliminate the descendants of a wronged minister. Similarly, in the final battle of Come Drink with Me, Fan Dabei (Yue Hua) kills the evil monk Liao Kong 29. Hector Rodriguez, “Hong Kong Popular Culture as an Interpretive Arena: The Huang Feihong Film Series,” Screen 38, vol. 1 (Spring 1997): 9–10.

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(Yang Zhiqing) by thrusting a bamboo pole into the latter’s heart—and upon withdrawing the pole, a gush of blood spurts out onto Fan’s face. In other instances, the fights are given a more stylized treatment, juxtaposing Chinese operatic conventions and the stylistic possibilities specific to the cinematic medium. While not as hard-edged or graphically violent, this approach, with its complex action choreography and richness of stylistic delivery, is no less effective in stimulating the viewer’s senses. In the bamboo forest scene in A Touch of Zen (Xianü, 1971), for example, Hu uses a number of devices—dynamic whip-pans, edge-framing that allows action to burst in from offscreen abruptly and with maximum force, and fast and disjunctive editing—to bring about a high level of sensory arousal. Sound, too, plays an essential role: the loud din of clashing weapons, the amplified sound effects that mark each strike or kick, the robust percussive beat—all this adds substantially to the overall sensory impact of the scene. Towards the end, Hu breaks up the final attack of Yang Huizhen (Xu Feng) on a dongchang agent into a flurry of shots—twenty, to be exact—that are not only brief (some as brief as six frames) and elliptical (key moments are trimmed off from the action, thus creating glaring discontinuities), but also differ greatly in size and camera angle (including a stunning point-of-view shot of Yang diving towards her opponent on the ground). Whatever other purposes it may serve,30 style in A Touch of Zen (and Hu’s other films) works to a large extent to generate thrills and excitement and to give the near-fantastic martial arts feats a perceptual force surpassing anything that had appeared in Hong  Kong cinema. In this sense, it can be said that Hu renewed the martial arts film genre by advancing a new mode of choreographed action at once more “real” (in terms of its sensory intensity and its tendency to eschew fantastic special effects) and more stylized (from the perspective of its unique, highly engaging approach to the cinematic medium). Compared to Hu, Chang Cheh may not be as well-known as a stylist. Yet it is arguably he, with his yanggang (“staunch masculinity”) martial arts films, who played the largest role in driving Hong Kong cinema in the direction of sensationalism and graphic violence. As a local critic puts it, Chang’s “fight scenes serve but one purpose: to stimulate the senses.”31 In The One-Armed Swordsman, the main character Fang Kang (Wang Yu) has his arm curtly chopped off by his master’s daughter, and the sensory and visceral intensity of the incident is heightened through a mix of dynamic cinematic devices such as hand-held camera, point-of-view shots, fast and abrupt editing, and dramatic music/sound effects. Blood Brothers, on the other hand, 30. David Bordwell, for instance, has argued that these devices constitute part of an “aesthetic of the glimpse,” a deliberately “oblique” style that seeks to highlight certain qualities of the martial arts action, especially its abruptness and speediness, by depicting it as only partially visible. See Bordwell, “Richness through Imperfection: King Hu and the Glimpse,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong, 113–36. 31. Tian Yan, “The Fallen Idol: Zhang Che in Retrospect,” in A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies, ed. Li Cheuk-to (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1984), 45.

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makes use of another technique—the rapid zoom—to increase the level of sensory stimulation. An example occurs in a scene near the end, which depicts Huang Chung (Chen Kuan-tai), a roadside bandit-turned-troop leader, being ambushed by a group of military officers sent by his sworn brother, Ma Xinyi (Ti Lung). When an officer thrusts a blade into Huang’s stomach, the camera quickly zooms in to a close-up of the latter’s face and holds on it momentarily. Then the film cuts to a similarly close view of the officer before abruptly zooming out as he pulls the blade out of Huang’s body. Clearly, the zoom shots serve a variety of functions here; for one thing, they draw attention to Huang’s painful expressions as he is dealt the fatal strike. But in rapidly altering the focal length of the lens and thus the size of the filmed objects, and in creating a sense of sudden explosive movement not unlike that of a firing bullet, the quick zooms also serve to generate a kind of shock effect and add to the sensory and visceral experience of the viewer. In addition, the fact that the zooms are timed around the movement of the blade, following closely its forward and backward motion, also has the effect of increasing the force of the strike and ratcheting up its perceptual and experiential impact. No less importantly, the vividness of the action is often matched by its ruthlessness, which takes screen violence to a whole new level. Time and again, one finds in Chang’s films a barely concealed fascination, even obsession, with spectacles of bloodletting and bodily mutilation. There are, for instance, copious scenes in which the protagonists are either brutally blinded (The Assassin; Vengeance! [Baochu, 1970]) or suffer from a loss of limbs (the One-Armed Swordsman series [1967, 1969, 1971]; Crippled Avengers [Can que, 1978]). More generally, as already noted in the previous chapter, Chang is known for his depiction of death-defying heroes who, gravely injured and often with weapons impaled in their blood-drenched bodies, refuse to go down and continue to fight until their last breath (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2 Bloodletting and physical mutilation in The Assassin (1967)

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By the traditional norms of restraint and plausibility, the gruesome violence in Chang’s films can seem overblown. There is often a surreal, artificial quality to it— to the large quantity of spilled “blood,” for instance, which looks more like red paint than anything else. All this, however, does not lessen the films’ appeal to “realism,” especially if we shift our focus from the narrow idea of objective verisimilitude to a broader perspective involving sensory-affective experience. Thus conceived, the gory and graphically violent images churned out by Chang, as part of a more general aesthetics of sensory realism, can be taken as eliciting from viewers powerful perceptual and affective responses that not only correlate with the violent action on screen but also echo the embodied effects of real-life experiences—acts of crime and violence, to be sure, especially in light of the 1967 riots and growing crime rates in the period, but also all kinds of sensory and visceral “shock” proliferating at work and in everyday life. This largely explains why Chang’s films found a particularly receptive audience in those groups—younger people and blue-collar workers—who were generally more exposed to, and affected by, the cranked-up stimuli in the rapidly industrializing and modernizing society of Hong Kong. For these viewers, the intense bodily sensations and affective experiences found in Chang’s films were precisely what struck a chord with them—not so much at a cognitive level but at the level of embodied perception in which the viewers could bring their everyday sense experiences to bear on the films themselves. As Hong Kong martial arts cinema continued to evolve during the 1970s, sensory realism remained a dominant norm shaping the ways in which films of the genre were made and evaluated, but other factors, such as the appeal to “real kung fu,” also played an increasingly significant role. For example, the transition of the martial arts film genre from swordplay to kung fu in the early 1970s involved in part the growing centrality of unarmed combat as a major attraction; actors and actresses with genuine martial arts skills thus came to be increasingly sought after. The main figure in this context was undoubtedly Bruce Lee: with the enormous box office success of his films, which showcased his exceptional fighting abilities and turned him into a cultural icon both at home and abroad, the charismatic action star did more than anybody else to bring kung fu cinema into fashion and to set off the trend of using real martial artists in films. As Ng See-yuen, who himself made a number of highly successful kung fu films in the 1970s and 1980s, recalled: “In the early 1970s, the Hong Kong audience wanted just one thing from a kung fu film: an actor with genuine martial arts skills. In that sense, Bruce Lee completely satisfied a need.”32 However, the increasing emphasis on the physical capabilities of the action star did not mean that the kung fu film became simply a sort of passive, documentary-like

32. Liu Shi, “Ng See-Yuen: An Interview,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, 145.

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record of actors and actresses performing extraordinary feats of martial prowess. Granted, to preserve the spatiotemporal unity, and thus the sense of authenticity, of the on-screen action, it had been a customary practice to depict a fight in distant shots and relatively lengthy takes. This is the case with the old Wong Fei-hung series, and it can still be observed in many kung fu films of the 1970s—including those by Lau Kar-leung, who, according to action choreographer Tung Wai, often demanded that a shot, whether depicting man-to-man combat or ensemble fighting, contain at least forty moves.33 But with viewers being more accustomed to, and actively seeking, films with a high level of sensory stimulation, it became apparent that the martial arts film could no longer rely on the human body alone, no matter how adept and accomplished it might be. Equally indispensable was a more effective use of cinematic devices that would bring a greater sense of power and dynamism to the action sequence. Indeed, compared to their predecessors, filmmakers in the 1970s were generally more resourceful and took more trouble over technique. They would often change the position of the camera to give a more diverse presentation of the combat, and would also use camera movement to coordinate with the increasingly complex action choreography. Editing was sped up to intensify the pace and dynamism of the fight, while vivid sound effects/background music were added for greater intensity and impact. Even a simple tool such as the trampoline was taken advantage of and used to enhance the power and speed of a character’s leap. An example here illustrates my point. Near the end of Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon, Tang Long, the film’s protagonist played by Lee, is engaged in a fierce battle with Colt (Chuck Norris) at the Coliseum. Widely considered a classic moment in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, the fight is usually taken as exemplifying Lee’s “notricks” approach to the genre, displaying an allegedly “objective” style that favors wide shots and fairly extended takes and is thus, in the words of one local critic, “closer to capturing the fight-performance or representing a reportage of a fight from the ring side.”34 Yet a close look at the sequence suggests that the depiction of the fight is not as objective or unmediated as it is made to appear. There is, for instance, a frequent use of point-of-view shots so that the viewer, as if seeing from the eyes of Lee or Norris, seems to get punched or kicked himself or herself (Figure 2.3). Another notable device, as in the Blood Brothers example discussed earlier, is the quick zoom. A case in point occurs late in the scene, just before a near-defeated Norris, his arm and leg 33. For Tung’s recollections, see The Making of Martial Arts Films: As Told by Filmmakers and Stars (Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1999), 75. It is worth mentioning here that the challenging demands of Lau as recounted by Tung may have been exaggerated, for most of Lau’s films are more heavily edited, and even the lengthiest shots contain far fewer moves than what Tung suggested. This being said, there is no question that the takes are still long enough to give a relatively “holistic” picture of the martial arts action, and that the cuts in the films are mostly for clarity and emphasis, not obfuscation. 34. Cheng Yu, “Anatomy of a Legend,” in A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies, ed. Li Cheuk-to (Hong Kong: The Urban Council, 1984), 25.

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Figure 2.3 Sensory realism: optical point-of-view shot in The Way of the Dragon (1972)

broken, tries to launch a last-ditch attack on his opponent. To underscore this key moment, the film resorts to a rather elaborate use of the zoom: a quick zoom-in isolating Norris’s face, followed by a zoom-out back to the initial medium close-up view before immediately and rapidly zooming in again. The same multiple-zoom structure is then repeated twice, first on a kitten and then on Lee. With its strong rhythmic thrust and sense of driving motion, enhanced further by the loud, ominous thumps in the soundtrack, this complex pattern of rapid zooms triggers an intensification of visual and visceral sensation leading to the scene’s dramatic end—the killing of Norris by (a reluctant) Lee. Furthermore, while parts of the fight do conform to a more documentary-like style as in the extended shot, taken from distance and fixed in perspective, that shows Lee bouncing lightly on his toes like a boxer and deftly evading and deflecting Norris’s attack, the scene as a whole relies fairly heavily on editing, with an average shot length of about four seconds.35 What we find here, however, is not the kind of elliptical cutting that distinguishes the films of King Hu. For the most part, Lee makes use of constructive editing, breaking up the action into numerous but coherent and continuous fragments so that the viewer can “construct” a unified whole out of the details. Such a technique has long been a staple of martial arts cinema and is especially useful in depicting action that is too difficult—or simply impossible—to be captured in one single continuous shot. But in the case here, this goal of “cheating” or masking the inadequate skills of an actor or actress to perform a particular move is arguably less important and yields to the broader aim of arousing the senses. Consider, for instance, the tendency of having a blow or kick delivered in long or medium shot but 35. It is worth noting that even this supposedly “objective” shot is not free from artifice: it is filmed entirely in slow motion—presumably to underscore the changes in Lee’s fighting tactic, which turns out to be a key turning point in the fight and would enable Lee to prevail over Norris in the end.

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landing in close-up. In many cases, the cut to a closer view, just before the moment of “contact,” is motivated not so much by the difficulty of the action as by the desire to maximize the power of the strike and thus to amplify the visceral experience of the viewer. Despite what many critics believe, then, the climactic fight at the Coliseum analyzed above is not all about Lee showcasing his terrific combat skills, faithfully recorded by an “impassive” camera. Rather, it is marked by a more complex structure, one that embraces and incorporates the twin goals of corporeal authenticity and sensory realism. Simply put, the scene as a whole can be divided into segments denoting different stages in the fight between Lee and Norris. Each of these segments would begin with a purportedly “objective” style (wide shots and longish takes) that seeks to preserve the “realism” of the action bodies filmed in their integrity; move on to a more elaborate, and more perceptually exciting, mode of cinematic presentation as the fight intensifies; and end with a moment of temporary stasis, often with the two characters gazing at one another and regrouping themselves before launching into the next round. In this way, the scene draws on two distinct stylistic approaches, which in turn support and produce two different conceptions of realism.36 It needs to be said, however, that although an array of cinematic devices are used to more powerfully grip the viewer, what makes the fight so exciting to watch cannot be attributed exclusively to film style, but involves rather the complex amalgamation between the capacity of the human body (as manifested in the exceptional martial arts skills of Bruce Lee) and the resources of the cinematic medium. On the one hand, physical prowess alone is not enough to give the combat a level of perceptual and visceral power demanded by an increasingly sensation-seeking audience. This is the case because cinematic martial arts, as a mode of performance, is of a very different nature from actual street fighting, and some sort of aesthetic or technological mediation is necessary in order to make the on-screen action look “real,” i.e., more forceful and dynamic. On the other hand, while subjective shots, rapid zooms, fast cutting, and other devices help intensify the martial arts spectacle in the film, their effects would not be as compelling if they were not grounded in Lee’s superb corporeal performance, one that is marked by speed, precision, and a high level of athleticism possible only with trained martial artists.

36. This coexistence of different stylistic approaches and, by extension, conceptions of realism can also be found in the films of Lau Kar-leung. For example, most of Lau’s films begin with a non-diegetic sequence that, like a documentary record, captures and demonstrates the particular martial arts styles that will be used in the films. In a sense, these non-diegetic performances, shot in a more “objective” style and against a stark, monochromatic background, serve as an essential grounding for the more cinematically mediated, and perceptually more powerful, presentation of action in the diegetic parts of the films.

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Fast and Furious A major dimension of what I call the sensory realism of the martial arts film, one that has an intimate relation with the rapidly modernizing and industrializing society of Hong Kong, revolves around the issue of speed. Speed, I hasten to add, is by no means a new concept when it comes to the study of Hong Kong cinema (and the cultural space of the city in general). In his book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, Ackbar Abbas puts forth an influential argument about the former British colony as a “culture of disappearance”: a space of perpetual dislocation and displacement closely associated with speed, particularly the kind of speed that “comes in the wake of electronic technology and the mediatization of the real.”37 Under such circumstances, Abbas goes on to argue, our notion of physical dimensions “loses all meaning through sensory overload, the fusion and confusion of the fast and the slow, the absence of transition between the big and the small.” As a result, the experience of space becomes “more varied and multifarious, oversaturated with signs and images, at the same time as it becomes more abstract and ungraspable.”38 Similarly, in her introduction to At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, Esther Yau stresses the importance of speed, from both an industrial and a formal-stylistic perspective, in understanding Hong Kong cinema.39 On one level, the significance of speed is reflected in the ways films are produced, distributed, and consumed. In Hong Kong, films are often written, shot, and assembled within an exceptionally short time span, ranging from a week to a few months. Theatrical exhibitions also keep to a tight screening schedule, with very brief intervals between shows. And with few exceptions, genres that are successful at the box office are widely imitated and parodied by inferior quickies, only to find themselves falling out of favor in a short period of time. Much more than their counterparts, then, Hong Kong films “display an explicit self-consciousness of competitive time, as if they embody the notion that conquest of the vast marketplace can only be possible through fast production and instantaneous dispatches.”40 At the same time, speed also plays a large role in the formal and stylistic structures of Hong Kong films, many of which adhere to a fast-paced rhythm in terms of shot duration, dialogue, body movement, and use of multiple ellipses. All this, Yau suggests, reflects a new emerging narrative tied to the age of globalization:

37. Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 8–9. 38. Ibid., 9. 39. Esther C. M. Yau, “Introduction: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World,” in At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther C. M. Yau (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 3. 40. Ibid.

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Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity Riding on the winds of change, the mutations of commercial Hong Kong cinema since 1980 have foretold a new narrative of globalization: that of speed . . . Indeed, Hong Kong movies are as much about this world city’s paradoxes in a politically unusual and compressed time (that is, the 1997 handover) as they are about a technological culture’s race for global economic opportunities and cultural capital. These movies equally anticipate and register the impact of a high-speed race for profit against the barriers of time and distance.41

The analyses of both Abbas and Yau are valuable and provide many useful insights to the complex relations between Hong Kong cinema (and culture) and broader conditions and experiences of compressed time in everyday life. Yet both critics confine their discussions to the period after 1980; what they fail to point out is the fact that this propensity for speed, whether manifested in the local cinema or in the larger society as a whole, has a much longer history and can be traced to at least the 1960s. The 1960s, as I have already pointed out, was a period of profound transformation in Hong Kong: the transition from a trading port to an export-based manufacturing center whose success was predicated on catching the latest trends in foreign markets; a time of rapid growth and intense competition; the massive influx of refugees, many of whom originated in rural China and thus moved from a time of settled locality and kinship to one of discontinuity and rivalry. All these changes, closely linked to the rise of Hong Kong as a modern urban-industrial society, had significantly reshaped the ways of time reckoning and redefined the temporal dynamics of both social realities and personal lives in the then British colony. The close relationship of speed and modernity has frequently been noted. “The sense of living ‘a faster life,’” John Tomlinson explains, “is not a sort of anthropological constant of generational succession, but a contingent state of affairs: a genuine and significant shift in temporality that occurs and accelerates specifically in modern societies.”42 According to this view, speed as a modern phenomenon can be traced to the era of the Industrial Revolution and became a major cultural issue during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when new means of mechanized transport (trains, automobiles, airplanes, etc.), extensive use of machinery in industrial production, and the introduction of the assembly line radically changed one’s experience of time. A rapid pace has continued to shape everyday life and has remained an integral component of the modern imaginary, although Tomlinson makes a point in saying that speed has gone through a kind of qualitative change in recent decades, transforming from a fast but effortful velocity to one of “light,” effortless delivery amid the proliferation of information and media technologies.43 41. Ibid., 4. 42. John Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy (London and Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2007), 1. 43. Ibid., 72–93. Similarly, Robert Hassan argues that modern (and postmodern) economies and societies have been ruled over by two “temporal empires,” one based on the “clock time” of industrial modernity and the

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Not only has time—or one’s experience of time, to be exact—fundamentally changed in modern societies, its cultural value has gone through significant readjustments during the modern period as well. The emphasis given to controlling the working tempo noted earlier, for instance, was closely linked to a new idea of time as a scarce resource and thus a valuable commodity of the production process. Time is money, as the saying goes; it thus hardly comes as a surprise to find, in the modern consciousness, a kind of “speed mania” fueled by the capitalist ideologies of accumulation, competition, and race to achievement. Another example is the close association of speed with progress—as epitomized by the popular beliefs in the intrinsic benefits of mechanization and the accelerated mode of production thus made possible— in delivering the fruits of material modernity.44 There are undoubtedly more skeptical views, but they have never quite succeeded in displacing speed from its dominant position in the modern social imagination. In film practices, as Peter Wollen argues, such fascination with speed has “thoroughly infiltrated the mainstream cinema, while countervailing tendencies were marginalized into the art film and a subsidiary sector of the avant-garde.”45 In fact, it is his contention that “during the 1990s, even the surviving pockets of resistance have come under continuous threat as the culture of speed has accelerated its global expansion.”46 Speed, then, as an overriding cultural value, has almost completely dominated the ways in which films are conceived and made today. Speed came to exert a major impact on Hong Kong cinema, both institutionally and from the standpoint of form and style, from the early 1960s on. On the one hand, with the rapid expansion of the local film industry and the introduction of modern capitalist management techniques, effective use and organization of time became an indispensable tool for the pursuit of maximized profit. This trend is best illustrated by the example of the Shaw Brothers studio: to maintain a rapid and continuous supply of films for its theaters both in Hong Kong and throughout Southeast Asia, the Shaws adopted a model of rationalized production in which speed and efficiency were of utmost importance. Not only was the studio run like an assembly line using optimally planned logistics; the crews also worked in shifts, thus ensuring that no time was lost. At its height, the studio would commence production on a new film every eight or nine days, with as many as a dozen films in production at any given time. Shooting would take only an average of forty days per film.47

44. 45. 46. 47.

other on the “network time” central to today’s postindustrial, informational world order. See Hassan, Empires of Speed: Time and the Acceleration of Politics and Society (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2009), chaps. 2 and 3. Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 20–25. Peter Wollen, Paris, Hollywood: Writings on Film (London and New York: Verso, 2002), 272. Ibid. On the rationalized management strategies and production practices of the Shaws, see Lily Kong, “Shaw Cinema Enterprise and Understanding Cultural Industries,” in China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema, ed. Poshek Fu (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 32–33. These attempts to increase production efficiency were clearly modeled on the Fordist system of classical Hollywood

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The 1960s also witnessed the appearance of a new temporality in Hong Kong cinema. Cutting rates and tempo of action were intensified, the pace of films became faster, and speed increasingly came to be viewed as an aesthetically gratifying quality in its own right. This pursuit of an accelerated—and by extension, more sensational— cinematic experience was most evidently borne out by the trend of new Mandarin martial arts films discussed here. With fast-moving narratives, rapid-fire action, and other manifestations of speed, these martial arts films set off a trend of acceleration that has continued to grow over the past few decades. This profound fascination with speed was not lost on viewers at the time; one critic put it in this way: “Fast! Fast! Fast! Fast guns, fast fists, fast swords! All this has come to constitute the rallying cries [nahan] of the changing audiences and has marked the appearance [ fengmao] of the changing films.”48 As a concrete everyday experience, speed may be understood from a number of different perspectives. Tomlinson identifies two of them: physical movement and the rate of occurrence of events. While physical movement offers the most conventional understanding of speed and is related to planes, trains, automobiles, and other mechanized means of transport, the rate of occurrence of events refers to a broader context in which events crowd into our daily schedules and lead to a more hectic and stressful pace of life.49 Similarly, the impression of speed in a film also corresponds to the two dimensions noted here: while the tempo of narrative is linked to the pace at which the events of a film take place, movement within the frame, aided by undercranking, fast editing, and other devices, pertains more to the idea of speed conceived in terms of physical motion. Martial arts films, as is often noted, are hardly known for their sophisticated storytelling. As in a musical, their plots can be likened to a clothesline to which moments of spectacle (in this case fights, stunts, chases, and so forth) are pinned. Another way to put this is that most martial arts films are driven by action; in order to get to the real attractions without being distracted by “extraneous” events, they tend to move at a swift pace during the non-action scenes while dwelling on the fights and other moments of physical action. Indeed, it is hardly surprising to find a swordplay or kung fu film whose plot revolves almost entirely around a single-minded quest for revenge. What we see on the screen, then, is a near repetition of events in which the hero or heroine, in an effort to seek vengeance for a slain master, friend, or family member, duels with a string of increasingly powerful opponents. The fights follow one another in quick succession and are barely motivated, and the exposition scenes are often glossed over or skipped altogether. Yet this rudimentary, slapdash approach cinema, but a more proximate source of influence came from the Japanese, whose efficiency was actively sought after by local film executives. 48. “After the Movie Acceleration . . . ,” Milky Way Pictorial 212 (December 1975): 16. 49. Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 2–3.

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to storytelling does not entail mere incompetence or lack of effort. Rather, it reflects the special priority that the genre, in its goal of bringing higher levels of sensory stimulation, gives to the delivery of physical action over plot and character. There is perhaps nothing exceptional about what is said here. Similar points have been made by Adrian Martin, who describes what he calls the “Hong Kong style” as a particular impulse towards cinema, one that is “not driven . . . by literary constructs of character or theme, or ideological processes, but [by] a more abstracted form of action as screen-sensation.”50 From this we can see why speed is, and has always been, an element integral to the martial arts film: not only does the genre’s focus on physical action, as I have noted, predispose it to a fast-paced narrative, but the “screen-sensation” mentioned by Martin is also most manifestly displayed and experienced through the impression of speed conveyed in fights, chases, and other forms of physical spectacle. In this respect, Bruce Lee set the standard with the incredible speed of his mobile, athletic body. “A good fighter,” as explained in a training manual written by M. Uyehara and Lee himself, “is one who can hit his opponent quicker, harder, without much perceptible effort, and yet avoid being hit.”51 While few people have actually seen Lee fight in real life, one may still get an idea of how extraordinarily fast he could be through the action sequences in his films. One critic, for instance, claims that Lee was “so explosively quick” in Robert Clouse’s Enter the Dragon (1973) that “the paths of his hand-strikes were invisible. You could see techniques begin and end—nothing in the middle.”52 Another case in point can be found in the ice factory brawl about halfway into The Big Boss; despite his promise to his mother not to fight and cause trouble again, the character played by Lee finds himself dragged into a dispute between his Chinese coworkers and the Thai cronies of the factory owner. At  one point, we see Lee kick a knife out of an opponent’s hand and launch a high-kick landing on the thug’s head. The speed and power of Lee’s moves are incredible; it takes him a mere second to execute the kicks, and the tremendous energy unleashed by them is something never before captured in film. Indeed, it is precisely Lee’s ability to carry out a series of kicks in rapid succession, showcased as much in this example as in other combat sequences of the film, that earned him the nickname “Three-kicks Lee” (Li sanjiao). What the astounding quickness of Lee represents, however, is only one type of speed: a velocity of nature achieved primarily through the (trained) human body as

50. Adrian Martin, “At the Edge of the Cut: An Encounter with the Hong Kong Style in Contemporary Action Cinema,” in Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, ed. Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li, and Stephen Chan Ching-kiu (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 179. 51. Bruce Lee and M. Uyehara, Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method: Basic Training (Santa Clarita, CA: Ohara Publications, 1977), 96. 52. Davis Miller, The Tao of Bruce Lee: A Martial Arts Memoir (New York: Random House, 2012), 5.

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opposed to a velocity of technology associated with cinematic devices and special effects. Such a distinction is important because it makes us realize an important fact: no matter how fast one can pull a punch or launch a kick, there is a limit to the capacity of human embodiment, to what the human body can do. And if such limitations are true for a superb fighter such as Lee, they become even more apparent in other action stars who are not as talented or well trained as he was. But in what may be called an instance of “prosthetic human power,” these constraints can seemingly be overcome through the body’s imbrication with technology—an amalgamation or integration of human and technological forces that I discuss further here. To accelerate the action, Hong Kong filmmakers frequently used (and continue to use) under-cranking, a cinematographic device whereby each film frame is captured at a rate slightly slower than it is played back, so that when the film is projected at normal speed, time—and movement within the frame—will appear to be moving faster. It is not clear when exactly this technique was first introduced to Hong Kong cinema, but by the early to mid-1970s, it had become a fairly conventional way to speed up the action in a martial arts film. In many cases, the under-cranking was done with relative restraint, and its effects were thus not overtly perceptible (and almost subliminal). But there were instances where the technique was pushed to such an extreme that the action would look unrealistically—but thrillingly—fast. One example is Cheng Kang’s The 14 Amazons (Shisi nü yinghao, 1972): in the final battle between the female generals of the Yang family and the foreign invaders, undercranking accelerates the action to such a degree that the characters often move at a startling speed, and the scene as a whole is turned into a spectacle of rush and bustle that engages the viewer at a fundamentally sensory and visceral level. The zoom was another device frequently used to yield a sense of enhanced speed in 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films. Critics nowadays often sneer at the excessive use of this technique in martial arts films of the period, dismissing it as a sign of creative sloppiness. Such criticisms, it should be said, are justified to some extent. Yet the copious use of the zoom, especially in outdoor scenes, also reflected practical considerations. As Bordwell points out, the zoom lens proved a handy device during the 1950s and 1960s when location shooting became more common; with it, filmmakers could take a “searching and revealing” approach in which they started a shot with a wide-angle view of the setting or crowd action, then changed the focal length of the lens and zoomed in on a detail (and back again).53 This, for instance, is precisely what happens early in Chang Cheh’s The Heroic Ones (Shisan taibao, 1970), when a band of rebel warriors besieging the capital is first shown in an extreme long shot filmed from the top of the city gate, followed by a quick zoom into a bald man standing slightly ahead of the group. That man turns out to be the rebel leader, and

53. Bordwell, On the History of Film Style (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 246–49.

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the zoom clearly serves to single him out in a relatively straightforward way, without the need of a new camera setup or editing. In other cases, however, the function of the zoom is not so much to guide our attention to crucial details in the image as to accentuate rhythm and make the action more dynamic. In particular, the rapid zoom, with its effect of moving swiftly towards or away from a person or object, is capable of generating a strong sense of momentum and speed. It also creates a kind of shock effect through its abrupt compression or extension of space and sudden jolts in perspective. Many examples can be used to illustrate these points, including the two brief scenes from The Way of the Dragon and Blood Brothers that I discussed at some length earlier. Another case in point can be found in The Spiritual Boxer (Shenda, 1975), the directorial debut of Lau Kar-leung. Early in the film, Xiao Qian (Wang Yu), having tricked the villagers into believing that he has invoked the spirit of the mythical Monkey King and is possessed by it, is challenged by a skeptical martial arts instructor. A long profile shot shows the instructor slamming a two-fist punch at Xiao. Just at the moment of contact, the camera cuts to a medium close-up view of the two men shot from the back of Xiao, and then zooms out quickly as Xiao takes the punch and hits the ground rolling backward. To be sure, the rapid zoom-out does not actually increase the tempo of the action, but it does create, through its very structure, a sense of abrupt speed change that makes the action appear faster and more dynamic and vibrant than it really is. Another means to create an impression of speed is through rapid editing. This, to be sure, is by no means a new idea, but one that has been exploited by filmmakers throughout the history of cinema. An early (and frequently noted) example is Abel Gance’s La roue (1923)— specifically, the way in which the film creates, in the words of Bazin, “the illusion of the steadily increasing speed of a locomotive without actually using any images of speed . . . [but] simply by a multiplicity of shots of everdecreasing length.”54 For Bazin, this illusion—that is, the creation of meanings not proper to the images themselves but derived exclusively from their ordering and juxtaposition—is precisely what he found problematic, because it undercut the realism of the film by destroying the sense of openness and ambiguity pertaining to the diegetic world and thus diminishing the active role of the viewer in creating meanings. But for the Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s, editing was not, as Bazin suggested, an impediment to realism but rather one of the many devices that brought to the films a more powerful sensation of speed and thus what made them more “real” from the perspective of perceptual-affective experience. Following the lead of their Japanese and American counterparts, Hong Kong filmmakers started to embrace in the 1960s a faster pace by increasing the number of shots in their films. Chinese films,

54. André Bazin, “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” in What Is Cinema? vol. 1, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 25.

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according to Chang Cheh, “used to be made up of two or three hundred shots; but following the Japanese practice [of detailed shot breakdown], there could be seven or eight hundred shots, even over a thousand, in a film of the same length.”55 A similar point was also brought up by Ng See-yuen: “In the 1960s, there [was] an average of 500 or 600 shots in a film. Now [the 1970s] the number is at least 1,000. It means that films are faster paced now.”56 While fast cutting was a general attribute of Hong Kong martial arts films in the late 1960s and 1970s, it is King Hu who pushed this practice to new heights. An exemplary case is the bamboo forest scene in A Touch of Zen discussed earlier, but there are other examples. In Raining in the Mountain (Kongshan lingyu, 1979), the sequence in which Esquire Wen (Sun Yue) and White Fox (Xu Feng) battle with a band of colorfully clad women averages 1.5 seconds per shot; by all measures, the cutting rate is remarkably fast (and comparable by and large to other combat scenes in Hu’s films of the period).57 But yet, if the sequence is further broken down, we can find passages that are even more densely edited, flashing by in a heartbeat and offering no more than glimpses of the action. Adrian Martin calls such split-second editing “disintegrative montage,” because what we are witnessing in these instants are no longer shots, but frames; the shot-units “disintegrate,” so to speak, and are replaced by frame-units. This kind of montage, Martin goes on to say, is capable of generating “some of the most glorious, sublimely euphoric moments of cinema,” moments in which the screen is seemingly made to disappear and the action appears to come right off the screen, “in a pure shock [of] wash or sensation.”58 In this context of accelerated cutting, Hong Kong filmmakers at the time typically relied on continuity editing to ensure clear and unambiguous presentation of information. Hu, on the other hand, experimented boldly with the use of elliptical cutting, which has the effect of further accentuating the perceived speed of his action sequences by not showing the entire trajectory of the protagonists’ movements as if the camera is unable to catch up with their velocity—even though that means “illegibility” for some of his cuts. When White Fox, with the help of Wen, leaps to a tree during the forest combat in Raining in the Mountain, the action is captured in a flurry of extremely brief and elliptical images that show the female fighter soaring, spinning, and somersaulting through the air. In one shot, she is seen sailing to the right, and then the next shot—suddenly and without transition—shows her soaring upward, only to be followed by the third and fourth shots that abruptly shift the direction of movement again and map the female fighter’s leftward trajectory. A less elaborate 55. Chang Cheh, A Memoir, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2004), 155. 56. Liu, “Ng See-Yuen,” 144. 57. For instance, according to Bordwell’s calculations, the average shot length in the final reel of The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) is 2.4 seconds, whereas the climactic fight on the beach in The Valiant Ones (1975) averages 1.6 seconds per shot. See Bordwell, “Richness through Imperfection,” 129. 58. Martin, “At the Edge of the Cut,” 182.

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(but equally compelling) example can be observed in A Touch of Zen, where a flagrant jump cut eliminates much of the process involved in a leap—everything except the launch and the landing—and carries the villain (Han Yingjie) instantly from the background to a confrontation with the monk Hui Yuan (Roy Chiao) in the foreground. In both instances, the use of ellipsis not only renders the action glaringly abrupt (and thus less than perfectly legible), but also serves to convey a sense of uncanny speed, one that seems to be too fleeting to be fully registered even by the camera, not to mention the naked eye. Nevertheless, despite what has been said above, Hong Kong martial arts films of the period were not all about quickness and speed. Rather, a unique characteristic of the genre lies in what Bordwell calls the “burst/pause/burst” structure, which alternates instants of swift action (and fast cutting) with moments of deceleration (and increasing shot lengths), thus creating an overall flow that evinces a strong rhythmic pulse.59 The Coliseum fight at the end of The Way of the Dragon is a good case in point. As I have shown, the scene has a rather systematic way of presenting the fight, dividing it into a number of different stages and, within each stage, quickening both the action and the tempo of editing at crucial moments (the clashes) while stabilizing and slowing them down in others (the standoff; the regrouping). Indeed, even within the more hectic passages there are brief pauses between attacks that punctuate, however momentarily, the flow of the action, thus building up a rhythm. Admittedly, the speedy and flashy segments are generally what catch the viewer’s attention, but the slower and even still moments are also important, serving to render the bursts of action more intense and powerful. Such a concept, as  Wong  Kin-yuen points out, goes back to Daoist philosophy, which posits that stillness is the ultimate source of all energies, and that things or matters that are supposed to be still are in fact imbued with “dynamic forces of intensity, ready to burst out at a moment of utmost disequilibrium.”60 It is exactly this interdependence of stillness and action and the intensive process of energy transfer that can be found embodied in The Way of the Dragon (and in Hong Kong martial arts films at large). Rapid narrative development, under-cranking, quick zooms, fast and rhythmic editing—all these and other techniques contributed to a powerful sense of speed in late 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films. This attempt to accelerate the cinematic experience, as I suggested, constituted part of the genre’s larger trend towards sensory intensification, itself a symptom and marker of the changing experiential modes associated with an expanding urban-industrial milieu. It is in this sense that we may conceive the films as exemplifying a new mode of representing the real, that is to say, a mode of sensory realism where the films, through their representations of 59. Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 221–31. 60. Wong Kin-yuen, “Technoscience Culture: Embodiment and Wuda pian,” in Hong Kong Connections, 278.

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speed and other sensations, registered and reproduced the heightened immediacy of experience lying at the core of modern life. This, as I have attempted to show, yields a richer perspective on the martial arts film, enhancing our understanding of its visceral aesthetic and the profound relations it had with the new matrices of perception and affect opened up by processes of modernization.

3 Myth and Masculinity

As a society caught in the processes of rapid urban-industrial modernization, Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s witnessed significant changes in the ways gender roles and identities were configured. These changes, in turn, played a central role in molding gender representations in the sphere of mass culture, including the cinema. There is no doubt that the gender dynamics of Hong Kong films were moving in new directions during the period; for instance, the rise of a new trend of martial arts films in the second half of the 1960s, a trend that stressed ultraviolence and fashioned a new cult of virile masculinity, signaled a shift of Hong Kong cinema from the “female-centrism” in the 1950s and early 1960s to the increasing male dominance thereafter. The status of female stars gradually declined, just as the female characters on-screen also became overshadowed by their male counterparts. This is not to suggest that women simply disappeared from Hong Kong films, but rather that their presence was constantly being (re)negotiated in the context of an increasingly maledominated cinema. A good case in point is the figure of the woman warrior: despite the popularity of martial arts films emphasizing male action stars as well as dominant masculine ideologies, female protagonists with amazing combat skills remained a visible presence meriting careful, in-depth examination. But before I take a closer look at these cinematic women warriors, it is my intention to first consider, in this chapter, the new paradigm of masculinity that has shaped and defined Hong Kong martial arts cinema since the late 1960s. While one may approach this new masculine paradigm from different perspectives—in terms of the representation of the body, or through its depiction of a new heroic prototype capable of enduring extreme hardship and overcoming adversity by means of violence— I want to highlight here an alternative set of issues centering on the theme of male bonding. As will be clear, the masculinization of Hong Kong martial arts cinema did not manifest itself simply in the growing visibility of a young, virile, aggressive hero embodying a fantasy image of ideal manhood. No less significant was the imagination of an exclusively male order, a realm of male homosocial relationships encompassing not only the horizontal ties between sworn brothers but also the vertical or hierarchical ones between masters and disciples. This discourse of male bonding, however,

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should not be taken as a mere latent expression of homosexual desire, but is better seen as a response to the changing social and gender formations associated with Hong Kong’s rapid modernization processes. More specifically, I argue that representations of brotherhood and master-disciple relations in Hong Kong martial arts films, in fantasizing an all-male sphere seemingly able to transcend women and other hostile forces in society, signaled a cultural attempt to cope with the perceived threats to hegemonic masculinity posed by the increasing social power of women and by the rise of a ruthless capitalist order. This process demands attention because of the complex social meanings it conveys, as manifested not only in its tendency to furnish ideological support to the dominant male order by providing imaginary solutions to social antagonisms, but also in its moments of rupture that suggest alternative imaginings of the world.

The Masculinization of Hong Kong Cinema Since the early 1990s, Hong Kong cinema has gained increasing exposure and recognition around the world, albeit mostly for its violent, male-dominated action genres. The masculine focus of these films—their unique representations of the male body and male homosocial relationships, for instance—is so taken for granted that one easily overlooks the fact that there used to be a time, specifically the 1950s and much of the 1960s, when Hong Kong cinema was primarily female-centric. Not only female stars—Pak Yin and later Chan Po-chu and Siao Fong-fong in Cantonese films; Li Lihua, Lin Dai, You Min, Ge Lan, Ling Po, and Xia Meng in the Mandarin-speaking ones—dominated the screens of local theaters, outshining their male counterparts, but a strong female bias marked many popular genres as well, notably huangmei diao musicals and Cantonese opera movies, both of which are known for their widespread use of female cross-dressing. In terms of representation, too, women were often depicted as stronger and more resilient than men. This may be seen most clearly in the wenyi pian (melodrama), in which the female characters are generally the ones who have to shoulder the burdens of the family and make all the hard choices (while still having to abide by the Confucian model of womanhood). Alongside them, the men appear hopelessly incompetent, too battered by life’s troubles to stand on their feet and constantly mired in a state of shame and remorse.1 To be sure, not all male characters were as inept and pathetic as I have just noted, but the general tendency was clearly towards a model of masculinity that was soft, passive, and cerebral. According to Kam Louie, traditional Chinese thinking considers civil (wen) and military (wu) accomplishments as the dual aspects of ideal 1. For a brief discussion of the wenyi pian, including its “weak hero” archetype, see Stephen Teo, “Chinese Melodrama: The Wenyi Genre,” in Traditions in World Cinema, ed. Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer, and Steven Jay Schneider (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 203–13.

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masculinity.2 In Hong Kong cinema, it is without doubt the wen aspect that was highlighted before the mid-1960s. Consider, for instance, Zhao Lui, a highly popular actor in Hong Kong Mandarin cinema during the late 1950s and early 1960s: described as a “handsome man” (mei nanzi) who was “honest and generous” (dunhou), “poised” (wenzhong), as well as “gracious and elegant” (siwen xiaosa),3 Zhao exemplified the kind of gentry/professional elite or scholar-intellectual type prevalent in Mandarin films of the period. Such a male image, characterized by a strong sense of cultured refinement and sophistication, resonated well with the primarily middle-class tastes of Shanghai émigrés, particularly those with a higher education background. A similar situation was also evident in the Cantonese cinema of the 1950s. The reigning male stars of the period, such as Cheung Wood-yau, Ng Cho-fan, and Cheung Ying, were all past forty and best known for their impersonation of the gentler and even effeminate types given to overt sentimentality—selfless fathers who make constant sacrifices for their families, or weak, faltering husbands who succumb to worldly temptations only to be redirected to the right path by their loyal, compassionate wives. Not that there was a total absence of strong and commanding male characters; the example of Wong Fei-hung, the protagonist in a long-running series of kung fu films that spanned more than two decades from the late 1940s through to the mid-1970s, immediately comes to mind. But even this legendary figure, however popular and recognized he might be, did not readily demonstrate the kind of virile masculinity that would be accentuated in Mandarin martial arts films of the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. For despite being a martial artist with exceptional fighting skills, Wong tended to stress the virtues of moderation and tolerance and to seek out conciliatory rather than violent solutions to conflicts. He seldom lost his composure and self-restraint—not even in the face of recurrent threats and provocations from his foes—and used violence only as a last resort. This conservative adherence to the values of law and order, peace and harmony, epitomized a characteristically humanistic moral outlook, one grounded in customary standards of Confucian ethics such as humanity (ren), modesty (rang), forgiveness (shu), and self-containment (keji).4 From a larger historical perspective, the gender dynamics discussed here, especially the focus on strong, resilient female characters, was not unique to Hong Kong cinema but a trend that had distinguished Chinese-language films from the outset. In early twentieth-century Shanghai, where the conditions of semicolonial modernity had brought about vast changes in political and social structures as well as in the

2. Kam Louie, Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), chapter 1. 3. See Qiu Niang, “Yinmu da qingren: Zhao Lui” [The great lover of the silver screen: Zhao Lui], Southern Screen 22 (December 1959): 44–45. 4. On the Confucian grounding of the Wong Fei-hung figure, see Hector Rodriguez, “Hong Kong Popular Culture as an Interpretive Arena: The Huang Feihong Film Series,” Screen 38, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 1–24.

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thought patterns of people, women in films often served as a site of contestation and embodied the competing beliefs and attitudes of a society in flux. From the prevailing types in films of the 1920s—maidens or widows torn between self and family; androgynous female warriors with otherworldly auras and capabilities—to a new breed of female characters harboring modern Western ideas and styles, both progressive and decadent, in the 1930s, women were often thrust into the forefront of the ideological battle over the conditions of modern China, functioning as a symbol of a thriving urban modernity that was both liberating and seductive, but which was also marked, simultaneously, by intensified social incongruity and political unrest.5 Not surprisingly, given the importance accorded to female characters, early Shanghai cinema was built around a star system that was for the most part female-centered. Film actresses, as Michael G. Chang points out, were among the major attractions that drew viewers to the theaters, not to mention being some of the most upwardly mobile and visible women in 1920s and 1930s Shanghai—an astonishing turn of events in many ways, considering that female performers in China had been barred from appearing on the public stage from the seventeenth century till the late nineteenth century.6 It is exactly this history of gender bias, in both early Shanghai and postwar Hong  Kong films, that led Chang Cheh to complain of the “female favoritism” of Chinese-language cinema.7 In response, he sought to restore masculine virility in Hong Kong cinema—and in the Chinese national character at large, given the persistent feminization of China as a result of its recent history of military and political subjugation—by fashioning a new heroic prototype in his works. Conceived under the rubric of yanggang (staunch masculinity), this emerging male figure took an immediate hold on viewers and would play a major role in shaping the course of Hong Kong cinema. As a local critic suggests, Chang’s yanggang style “was so overwhelmingly 5. The competing forces at play in female film characters are discussed extensively by Zhang Zhen in her book, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). 6. Michael G. Chang, “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Actresses and Public Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s–1930s,” in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–43, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 128–59. It is worth pointing out here, however, that the actresses’ rise to fame was by no means a smooth affair. On the contrary, it was a tension-ridden phenomenon that mirrored the complexities and ambiguities of modern urban life. The contradictions underlying this process were perhaps best borne out by the tragic fate of Ruan Lingyu, the icon of Shanghai silent cinema whose career was cut short when she, falling victim to the relentless media scrutiny on her private life and to the confining discourse on what constituted the acceptable behaviors for film actresses (and urban women in general), committed suicide at the age of 24. 7. Besides being critical of the female-centered star system of Hong Kong cinema in general, Chang had a special aversion to the practice of female cross-dressing and was acutely aware of the fact that things were different in other parts of the world. As he recalled later in life: “I felt that in movies around the world, male actors were at the top. All the important parts were played by men. Why is it that Chinese movies did not have male actors? If male actors could stand up, the audience would double . . . That is why I advocated male-centered movies with yanggang as the central element.” See The Making of Martial Arts Films: As Told by Filmmakers and Stars, ed. Winnie Fu (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 1999), 43.

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powerful that it simply uprooted the foundation of local cinema and established the supremacy of the male action star for years to come.”8 Central to this yanggang trend were a group of young actors—Wang Yu, Lo Lieh, Ti Lung, David Chiang, Chen Kuan-tai, and others—all of whom were in their midtwenties when they first broke into the scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As has already been noted in the first chapter, what set apart these newcomers from their predecessors was first and foremost their robust physicality, the ways in which their strong, athletic bodies were put on display for the gaze of viewers. In addition to this heightened corporeal focus, a new subjectivity—what John Woo has described as a spirit of “youthful romanticism”9—also constituted a key element shaping and defining the screen personas of these yanggang stars. What this suggests, on the one hand, is a sense of irrepressible verve and a dash of boundless energy commonly associated with young people. On the other hand, by romanticism Woo has in mind not simply a propensity towards sentimental or sorrowful emotions. Rather, the idea pertains to a wider spectrum of meanings—ardor, passion, freedom, individuality, and most important of all, a bold and defiant spirit—which explains why the characters played by the new action stars are typically young rebels who stand up to the older generation and to the established social order in general. And it is also this quality of youthful rebelliousness, with its anarchic and destructive impulse, that partly accounts for the characters’ penchant for ultraviolent actions. In other words, the gruesome violence characteristic of Chang Cheh’s films—the recurrent scenes of bodily mutilation and the painful and gory deaths, for instance—can be seen not only as a way for the young heroes to display and affirm their masculinity; it also reflects their urge, as social outsiders, to challenge the status quo and release their pent-up dissatisfaction and anger.10 In Chang’s yanggang universe, then, a group of young, rebellious, violence-prone heroes, played by a new breed of action stars, take center stage and radically transform not only the gender but also the generational dynamics of Hong Kong cinema. For many local filmgoers, the yanggang heroes embodied a new, and distinctly modern, model of masculinity significantly different from what they had been used to seeing in the past. Yet no new idea emerges out of a vacuum, and if the Wong  Fei-hung figure, not to mention the refined elites or the sacrificial fathers/remorseful husbands, in earlier Hong Kong films evoked a traditional mindset determined largely by Confucian ideologies (hierarchical familism, an emphasis on civility and culture, and so on), the new masculinized heroes—physically tough and aggressive, and driven by a strong sense of individualism—drew their roots from a society that was under 8. Sek Kei, “Chang Cheh’s Revolution in Masculine Violence,” in Chang Cheh: A Memoir, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), 11. 9. John Woo, “Remembering Chang Cheh,” in Chang Cheh, 9. 10. For a detailed discussion of Chang Cheh’s yanggang aesthetics, see Stephen Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 91–104.

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a rapid process of urban-industrial modernization and thus increasingly shaped by a modern capitalist subjectivity highlighting individualist competition and pursuit of self-interest. The new masculine paradigm also arose out of a specific demographic context, one marked by a rapidly growing young population as the postwar baby boomers came of age. In 1961, the number of Hong Kong people aged between 15 and 29 was approximately 0.62 million. The figure soared to 0.95 million in 1971 and to 1.3 million in 1976, which made up about 25 and 30 percent of the total population, respectively.11 Thus, a key issue confronting Hong Kong film companies in the late 1960s was the rapid surge of teenage and young adult viewers. The importance of this audience group was further abetted by the introduction of free broadcast television in 1967, which lured away many older viewers with its hassle-free entertainment. Considering their receptiveness to modern Western ideas and styles, the young people tended to have different views on what constituted ideal masculinity from their more conservative elders. For instance, in a roundtable discussion set up by Hong Kong Movie News (Xianggang yinghua), a number of young professional women were asked to share their opinions on both local and foreign film actors. Among their many intriguing observations, there was a consensus that Hong Kong cinema was in need of a male idol, a “real man” (nanzi han) with unique qualities of personality and character, as opposed to the kind of effeminate male stars marked by an excessive “air of rouge” (zhifen qi).12 In this sense, the rise of yanggang, with its imagining of a new masculine ideal grounded in youthful verve and defiance, can be seen as a response to the changing demographics and tastes of Hong Kong filmgoers. In addition to these broad social and demographic factors, the yanggang trend was also indebted to other more proximate influences, notably postwar American and Japanese films. The 1960s, as is often claimed, saw the rise of youth culture—and with it the remodeling of masculinity—as a global phenomenon. In Hollywood, the new masculine paradigm was exemplified by the young rebellious figures of James Dean and Marlon Brando as well as by the “tough guy” image embodied by Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and many others. Given the influence of Hollywood films in Hong Kong at the time, the popularity of these American stars among local viewers comes hardly as a surprise; not only were they seen as a model to which Hong Kong actors were often compared,13 but local film publications and middlebrow 11. All the figures are calculated from data published in Hong Kong Statistics, 1946–67 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1969), Hong Kong Population and Housing Census 1971: Main Report (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1972), and Hong Kong By-Census 1976: Main Report (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1979). 12. Yi Shu, “Xianggang dianying xuyao you ge nanxing ouxiang” [Hong Kong cinema needs a male idol]. Hong Kong Movie News 7 (July 1966): 64–67. 13. A case in point is Wang Xia, an actor who was actively promoted, in publicity materials and feature articles, as the “Sean Connery of the East.” See Wu Biancao, “Yintan tiehan: Wang Xia” [The ironman of the silver screen: Wang Xia], Southern Screen 106 (December 1966): 58–61.

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women’s magazines also ran regular articles about them, extolling them as models of ideal masculinity. For example, Sean Connery, whose James Bond film Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962) had been an enormous box office hit in Hong Kong, was praised for his “sexiness” (xinggan) and lauded as a symbol of “male beauty” (nanxing mei).14 Similarly, an article on Charles Bronson described the actor as “tough” and “handsomely ugly”; and despite the fact that his face “looks like it’s been worked over with a pneumatic drill” and that his hair mops the top of his head “like a wig run riot,” he was described as a “sex symbol” admired by women all over the world.15 There is no question that Chang Cheh had a deep interest in, and was greatly influenced by, these exemplary figures of postwar American screen masculinity. His film reviews, written before he started working for Shaw Brothers and became one of Hong Kong’s leading directors, often talked about Hollywood films and devoted a large part of their discussion to the male performers. In particular, he emphasized the spirit of rebelliousness ( panni), which he took as a major trait in a modern, youthoriented society and a quality that distinguished many of the American actors. In one case, he noted that postwar youths were bored, confused, and lost, which explained why they showed an intense and overwhelming urge to rebel. Montgomery Clift, he went on to argue, established himself as a youth idol precisely because of his inner sense of rebelliousness combined with a mix of “melancholic” (youyu) and “delicate” (xianruo) qualities, whereas Marlon Brando expressed this rebellious disposition with “violent abandon” (cubao benfang). James Dean, on the other hand, was said to combine the characteristics of the two and thus represented a pinnacle of this rebellious type.16 Without doubt, the tendency of Chang to portray his heroes as youthful rebels who defy conventions and stand up to the establishment clearly derived, in part at least, from the precedents set by the American stars. No less than the Hollywood male stars discussed above, a number of Japanese actors also served as important templates for Chang’s reconceptualization of Chinese masculinity in his films. As a long-time admirer of Kurosawa Akira, Chang not surprisingly had a high regard for Mifune Toshiro, whose portrayals of no-nonsense, down-to-earth samurai with a strong sense of courage, honor, gritty determination, and uncompromising independence gave the director a readily adaptable model for his heroic characters.17 Another less-talked-about source of influence was Ishihara Yujiro, who as a youth idol and as an icon of “macho cool” dominated Japanese cinema 14. “Nanxing mei de xiangzheng: Xin Kangnali” [The symbol of male beauty: Sean Connery], Southern Screen 80 (October 1964): 60. 15. “Bronson: The Handsome Ugly Man,” Style Hongkong (July 1973): 19. 16. See Zhang Che: Huiyi lu Yingping ji [Chang Cheh: Memoir and film reviews], ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), 245. 17. See, for instance, Chang’s review of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), in which he discussed at length Mifune’s screen persona and performance style. The review, originally published in 1962, is reprinted in Zhang Che, 297–98.

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throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. That Chang had a strong admiration for the Japanese star, despite the fact that the latter was almost completely unknown in Hong Kong, is hardly surprising.18 In his study of the discourse of Yujiro’s celebrity and the history of youth and masculinity in postwar Japan, Michael Raine contends that the highly popular star represented an impersonation of ikasu otoko—the cool guy who ignored convention and did things his own way—and embodied the new subjectivity signified by the taiyozoku (“sun tribe”): cynical, violent, sexually unbridled, and suspiciously foreign.19 In addition, Yujiro also made manifest a new type of body, one that was often taken as “un-Japanese” because it evoked the swaggering moves, the stylish appearance, and even the long, lanky legs of foreign (i.e., Hollywood and European) film heroes. All this, according to Raine, gave the actor a distinctively “sengo” (postwar) sensibility, a new stance on life epitomized not only in the cynical, “dry” rejection of the traditional “wet” human relations, but also in a new brand of modern masculinity associated with the discourse of Japan’s postwar “economic miracle” and a rapidly changing body culture.20 What attracted Chang to Yujiro, then, is presumably this mixture of modern male subjectivity and body image—an amalgamation of strong physique, punkish insolence, and James Dean–like rebelliousness deemed particularly suited to the tastes of the young generation. My discussion so far has stressed the influences of postwar American and Japanese screen masculinities, but this is not to suggest that Chang Cheh paid no attention to the masculine paradigms specific to Chinese history and culture. On the contrary, it is my contention that the yanggang model advocated by Chang constitutes a unique combination of both native and foreign traditions, and that China has a long history of awe-inspiring martial heroes—real and fictional—whom the director explicitly drew on and reinvented in his films. In The Assassin, for instance, the young warrior played by Wang Yu is based on the historical figure Nie Zheng as recounted in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, while the Ming novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), which depicts a band of outlaws forging an alternative social and moral order outside of mainstream society, furnished the materials for a trio of Chang’s films in 18. In his review of Inoue Umetsugu’s The Man Who Causes a Storm (Arashi o yobu otoko, 1957), Chang Cheh noted that he had been attracted to Yujiro after seeing a film—presumably Kurahara Koreyoshi’s I Am Waiting (Ore wa matteru ze, 1957)—in which the actor starred as an ex-boxer. He found Yujiro’s performance in Inoue’s film equally impressive, despite his complaints about the dubbing that robbed the actor’s unique toughness and grittiness. See Zhang Che, 289. 19. The term taiyozoku was coined to describe those new youth characters—rich but bored, self-indulgent, and vicious, with scarce regard for conventional morality—that populated the pages of Ishihara Shintaro’s novels. Enormously popular with the young postwar generation, these characters quickly found their way to films of the period, including Furukawa Takumi’s Season of the Sun (Taiyo no kisetsu, 1955) and Nakahira Ko’s Crazed Fruit (Kurutta kajitsu, 1956). 20. Michael Raine, “Ishihara Yûjirô: Youth, Celebrity, and the Male Body in Late 1950s Japanese Culture,” in Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, ed. Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 202–25.

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the 1970s, viz. The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan, 1972), Delightful Forest (Kuaihuo lin, 1972), and All Men Are Brothers (Dangkou zhi, 1975). Nie Zheng and the outlaws in The Water Margin are great fighters with outstanding combat skills, but martial excellence, as encapsulated by the term wu, is not the only thing that mattered to Chang. Equally important, if not more so, is the spirit of xia—the chivalric ideals of honor, righteousness, and altruism epitomized by the heroic figures. It is true that the protagonists in Chang’s films are often violent and law-defying young rebels who follow their own personal goals and show little regard for the “virtues” of congeniality and humility. Yet beneath this veneer of a radical nonconformist is a more moderate figure who abides by a set of time-honored moral principles. In The Assassin, the eponymous hero takes on the mission of assassinating a corrupt official not only because it realizes his own desire to achieve great deeds, but also because the act represents for him a higher calling of sacrificing for his nation. In other instances, the characters are no less selfless and often fight for the poor against their oppressors (The Magnificent Trio/Biancheng sanxia), for the peace and order of the martial artists’ community (Return of the One-Armed Swordsman/Dubei daowang), as well as for fraternal justice (Vengeance!, Blood Brothers, the films based on The Water Margin). This last aspect—a deep, abiding commitment to fraternal relationships based on loyalty and mutual obligation—is particularly worth noting, for it recurred across Chang Cheh’s oeuvre and has come to be considered as one of the director’s signature themes. To be sure, righteous brotherhood is a motif running through numerous Chinese literary works in the past, but it did not figure prominently in Hong Kong martial arts cinema until Chang popularized it in his films of the early 1970s. In previous martial arts movies, especially the long-running series featuring the Wong Fei-hung character noted earlier, the focus had often been on the “vertical” relationship between an older patriarchal figure and his devoted following of disciples. In contrast, given Chang’s pro-youth stance, the older male characters in his films are largely minor and negligible, if not missing altogether; when they do assume a more important role, as in The One-Armed Swordsman or The Invincible Fist (Tieshou wuqing, 1969), they are villains who are killed by the young heroes in the end. Not surprisingly, the kind of master-disciple relationship central to the Wong Fei-hung films is de-emphasized and replaced by a more “horizontal” type of male bonding. This can be seen in the ways Chang’s heroes tend to bond with men of their same young generation who share a kindred spirit of self-esteem, passion and enthusiasm, and unflinching defiance to convention. Thanks to Chang and his many imitators, such representations of fraternal solidarity rapidly grew in popularity and became a new and increasingly dominant trend in Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Meanwhile, films dealing with the master-disciple relationship, having been eclipsed by the newfound interest in fraternal or brotherly love, would reemerge from the mid-1970s on, albeit in different guises and with different emphases. Male bonding,

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then, is a theme whose forms and meanings have constantly evolved in the martial arts film genre, and it is precisely this continual process of change and reconfiguration, and the wider social meanings associated with it, that I want to further explore in the rest of this chapter.

All Men Are Brothers An essential feature characterizing the yanggang films of Chang Cheh is the recurrent emphasis on the theme of male bonding—the idea of a close-knit network of homosocial relationships emphasizing solidarity and cooperation in men. This fascination and even obsession with bonded males, especially the kind of fraternal ties between sworn brothers or between close kindred friends, has often been construed in sexual terms, as an expression of homoerotic desire.21 In his memoir, the director forcefully contested such claims and countered that all these talks about homosexuality in his films, influenced excessively by Western thinking, are nothing but a blatant misrepresentation and distortion of his works. According to him, sworn brotherhood and male friendship have little, if anything, to do with homosexual love. Rather, they represent a paradigm of Chinese chivalry, a traditional ideal with a long history in Chinese society and culture. He cited, in particular, the fictionalized brotherhoods depicted in classical novels such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms (San guo yanyi) and The Water Margin, arguing that such eulogized male bonds—between Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei in the first case and among a group of 108 outlaw heroes in the second—epitomize the concept of yi (righteousness) and should by no means be mentioned in the same breath as homosexuality.22 It is not my intention here to examine whether Chang’s films convey homoerotic overtones. For me, it is more interesting to place the issue of male homosociality within a larger context, that is, to analyze it in relation to the essential role of bonded men in coping with conditions of adversity and uncertainty under rapid social change. Such a perspective has seldom been addressed, let alone studied in any depth, although it was explicitly brought up and discussed by Chang himself. “For higher intelligent animals,” he contended, “there is a clear division of roles played by the male and female sexes: the male specializes in hunting for food and preserving the individuals; the female is responsible for reproduction and continuance of the family line . . . Human beings are not born with sharp paws or teeth, and have since ancient

21. See, for instance, Michael Lam, “The Mysterious Gayness in Chang Cheh’s Unhappy World,” in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-lin (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 175–86. Also of note is Stanley Kwan’s documentary, Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema (Nansheng nüxiang, 1996), in which the director explicitly reflects on and explores the homoerotic undertones in Chang’s films. 22. Chang Cheh, 101.

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time congregated to hunt for food and beat off fierce animals. Men . . . must bond for mutual support and build friendship founded on a sense of righteousness.”23 From these premises, Chang went on to talk about the significance of male bonding within a specifically Chinese context: In a safe and stable society, men can afford to woo the opposite sex to propagate the species, but in a society where survival comes first, preservation of the individual always comes first! The experiences of turbulent times in China have hastened the institutionalization of blood brotherhood.24

Despite their unabashed sexism, Chang’s remarks provide an alternative perspective on how the emphatic focus on male bonding in his films can be understood. What the director seemed to be saying is this: close bonds and relations between men, which have a long history in Chinese society and culture, serve as a necessary means to protect against external threats imposed on a community or society and are thus vital to the survival of the group during tumultuous times. Women tend to be excluded from these structures of male bonding, not only because they are said to be less physically suited to activities such as combat or defense, but also due to the fact that their presence could interfere with the cooperative nature of the male groups by provoking rivalry and competition for sexual access. To explain his point, Chang turned again to the example of The Water Margin: impelled to forsake lawful society and to hide in the Liangshan Marsh, the outlaw heroes of the novel pledge brotherhood to one another and establish a closely knit fraternal community that provides mutual support, protection, and comradeship. In contrast, they show a markedly cautious attitude towards women, keeping a distance from them for fear that they will, as the director put it, “pose a threat to morale and solidarity.”25 However, male bonding as a theme is not simply found in The Water Margin (and other literary works). Rather, as recent studies of Chinese male culture have made clear, male homosocial relationships constitute a pervasive reality that has structured the lives of Chinese men throughout time. “Bonds among men,” as Susan Mann argues, “were key to success and survival for rich and poor, elite and commoner,

23. Ibid., 101–2. Such a view of male bonding, which grounds itself on the idea of sexual division of labor, might seem dubious from a political as well as ideological standpoint. Yet it is important to note that Chang was not the first one to propose this sort of argument. Striking parallels, for instance, can be found between Chang’s remarks and the biodeterminist theory of male bonding proposed by Lionel Tiger. In his book Men in Groups, Tiger traces the role of male bonding for the development of organized hunting and explores the genetic consequences associated with this new food-gathering behavior. Specifically, he argues for the primacy of male bonding as the central force in human evolution, noting that specialization for hunting favored those “genetic packages” which arranged matters so that males hunted in close, cooperating, and aggressive groups, while females engaged in maternal as well as some gathering activity. See Tiger, Men in Groups (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1969), 41–54. 24. Chang Cheh, 102. 25. Ibid.

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in Chinese history.”26 In China’s late imperial culture, for instance, where elite mobility strategies focused predominantly on the imperial examination system, the networks of patrons, mentors, fellow students, and friends formed in shuyuan (private schools and academies in ancient China) and in the examinations themselves were of vital importance, as they represented an indispensable means to both learning the niceties of personal connections and patronage as well as pursuing a career in the complicated bureaucratic world. Yet friends were equally, if not more, important to those excluded from the imperial bureaucracy as they were one of the main sources of help in finding career alternatives and in offering protection and aid when doing business far away from home.27 If male bonding was an essential and widespread phenomenon in everyday Chinese life, it took on even greater importance in times when a stable base of social security was lacking. A case in point involves the fraternal linkages and networks associated with the millions of laboring migrants who, left adrift amid social and political upheavals in China, sought livelihoods and better economic opportunities in foreign lands.28 That these migrants, the majority of whom were single men from the lower strata of society, were in need of such male group support is hardly surprising: without the protection of traditional lineage, village, or clan, male bonding played a major role in providing the rootless and marginalized individuals with the economic, social, and emotional support necessary for their survival in an alien and often hostile environment. For instance, many early Chinese migrants left and moved to a foreign country under the sponsorship of a kin or a friend, and it was often the latter who acted as a “big brother” and helped provide them with food, shelter, employment, and companionship. When out-migration accelerated in the mid-nineteenth century under the credit-ticket system, the informal bonds between migrants became institutionalized and transformed into a range of different voluntary associations that functioned as fraternal clubs and bound the members together into a moral community based on a shared sense of duty and obligation. One example of such voluntary associations is the huiguan. Originating in fifteenth-century China as a sort of mutual aid organization for people who traveled to Beijing and other cities to take examinations or engage in long-distance trade, the huiguan spread increasingly to other countries as more and more Chinese set out

26. Susan Mann, “The Male Bond in Chinese History and Culture,” The American Historical Review 105, no. 5 (Dec 2000): 1601. 27. Ibid., 1605–6. 28. Although my focus here is mainly on Chinese migrants who left their homeland and started a new life in foreign soils—or at least in an “in-between” space such as Hong Kong—it is worth noting that until the mid-nineteenth century, most migrations of Chinese people had been within China itself. Besides those who left homes for extended periods in order to take the imperial examinations or to engage in trade, most of the internal migrants were nonelite commoners forced to relocate because of economic adversity and/or sociopolitical turmoil.

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to seek their fortune abroad. These overseas huiguan, organized along clan, region, or  dialect lines, were linked to various activities catering to the needs of migrants who were struggling to make the transition to a new and unfamiliar place: providing food, lodging, credit, and other forms of support; facilitating trade and employment opportunities; organizing entertainment and community social functions; and maintaining temples and halls devoted to the clan, lineage, or native place deities. Through these activities, the huiguan brought together large numbers of displaced individuals and helped foster a sense of comradeship and group solidarity among them.29 Given its particular nature, membership to a huiguan is for the most part restricted to people coming from the same region or speaking the same dialect. A less exclusive form of voluntary association connected to Chinese migrants (and other marginal people) is secret societies, often known historically by the terms tong and hui. According to some researchers, secret societies first emerged in China during the early Qing period out of anti-Manchu sentiment, proliferating rapidly in both China as well as Southeast Asia and playing a crucial role, in terms of financial and organizational aids, in Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary movement some two hundred years later.30 More recent studies, however, have questioned the “seditious” nature of secret societies, arguing instead that the roots of these organizations lie not so much in anti-Manchu politics—or other forms of popular resistance, for that matter—as in meeting the practical needs of marginalized men for mutual protection and mutual aid in a dangerous and competitive society. In other words, as a survival or adaptive strategy, secret societies are more properly understood as one variety of voluntary association formed by non-elite men and have fulfilled very similar functions as the huiguan.31 One divergence, though, is the emphasis of secret societies on sworn brotherhood ties—bonds between men formed less by blood ties or place of origin than through rituals (e.g., blood oaths) that create binding fraternal loyalty and trust. Even more than other forms of voluntary associations, secret societies relied on this idiom of fictive brotherhood to mobilize unrelated men into a cooperative—and presumably egalitarian—community. In doing so, they provided the individuals, often 29. For more discussion on the huiguan and other voluntary associations, see Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce and Evelyn Hu-Dehart, “Introduction: The Chinese Diaspora and Voluntary Associations,” in Voluntary Organizations in the Chinese Diaspora, ed. Khun Eng Kuah-Pearch and Evelyn Hu-Dehart (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 1–28. 30. It is worth noting that these ideas about secret societies’ anti-Manchu history were actively appropriated, and thus perpetuated, by many Hong Kong martial arts films. One example is Chang Cheh’s Five Shaolin Masters, which tells the story of five Shaolin disciples who, having survived the assault on the legendary temple by the Qing troops, pledge brotherhood and go on to build a secret society—the Hongmen (Hung League)—as a base for their anti-Manchu struggle. 31. For a good example of scholarship along this vein, see David Ownby, Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China: The Formation of a Tradition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). See also Ownby, “Introduction: Secret Societies Reconsidered,” in “Secret Societies” Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and Southeast Asia, ed. David Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues (New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 3–33.

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peasants or laborers pushed to the margins of society, a sense of social identity and belonging hitherto denied them. Other examples of voluntary association can be enumerated, but the discussion above should suffice to explain why, in an immigrant society such as Hong Kong or in the diasporic Chinese communities throughout Southeast Asia and around the world, notions of fraternal solidarity and justice have taken on such importance in the popular imagination as well as in everyday life practices. In the case of Hong Kong, the many refugees from China, many of whom were poor and lacked specific skills, had to negotiate a living in a society that was only beginning to industrialize and was thus ill-prepared to absorb them into its socioeconomic structures within a short time. The exigencies of mere survival in a new and difficult environment, abetted by a ruthless capitalist system and by the laissez-faire policy of the colonial government, forced many people to fall back on the material and emotional support offered by huiguan, secret societies, and other (male) communal associations. Another factor, which I will return to and consider more closely in the following chapter, is the growing economic and social position of women—and thus the perceived threats it brought to the patriarchal system—in a society undergoing rapid industrialization and modernization. As pointed out earlier, Chang Cheh also held a similar belief in the needs of men to bond with and support each other in times of hardship and uncertainty, and it is in large part this conviction that motivated the focus on male bonding in his films. While this concept of male camaraderie and its associated values of trust, reciprocal obligation, and loyalty can already be found in some of the director’s early works, including The Magnificent Trio (1966), The Assassin, and Have Sword, Will Travel (Baobiao, 1969), it is not till Vengeance! that these issues were highlighted and became a center of focus. Set in the early republican period, Vengeance! opens with Guan Yulou (Ti Lung), a performer of Peking opera, catching his wife flirting with the martial arts instructor Feng Kaishan (Ku Feng). On the next day, Yulou seeks revenge by making a scene in Feng’s martial arts school, warning the latter to keep away from his wife. Infuriated by this insult, Feng conspires with a group of influential friends and has Yulou killed in one of the most memorable scenes from the film, in which the actual death of Yulou—shot in slow motion and depicted with frighteningly graphic details (eyegouging; knives stuck in the body)—is intercut with a no less gruesome death he had previously performed on stage. Upon learning the news of the slaying, Xiaolou (David Chiang), the younger brother of Yulou, arrives in town to wage war with those responsible, causing plenty of spilled blood, including his own, in the process. The brief synopsis above might seem to suggest a straightforward narrative of fraternal love and revenge, but it is worth noting the rather understated way in which the bonds between Yulou and Xiaolou are presented in the film. In saying this, I do not mean that their brotherly ties are weak or unimportant; after all, it is a deep sense

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of brotherhood that serves as the primary, if not the sole, driving force for Xiaolou’s unswerving quest for revenge. Rather, my point here is that the bonds between the brothers are so taken for granted, as if they were a mythical given requiring no proof or justification, that any depiction of them in detail is deemed superfluous. Indeed, as Xiaolou does not make his first appearance until after Yulou is murdered early in the film, the two brothers are almost never seen together, let alone having any contact or interaction. Nor is there any recounting of the brothers’ past comradeship that would have given the viewers a better sense of the profound affinities between them. One exception, though, occurs late in the film, just after Xiaolou has succeeded, to his own demise, in avenging his brother: as a blood-drenched, fatally injured Xiaolou struggles to stand, images of the past—a slow-motion shot of Yulou and Xiaolou rehearsing their operatic moves, followed by two parallel images, again in slow motion, showing Yulou’s gruesome “deaths” on stage as well as in real life—pass through his mind. These images not only capture past moments of harmony and unity between the two brothers; they also, no less importantly, underscore the same orgy of pain and violence that marks the duo’s separate but eerily similar ends (Figures 3.1 and 3.2).

Figures 3.1 and 3.2 Brotherhood in death: the last moments of Yulou (Ti Lung, top) and Xiaolou (David Chiang, below) in Vengeance! (1970)

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But even in this instance, the significance of the fraternal bonds is somewhat undermined by the fact that Yulou is actually not the only or the last person in Xiaolou’s mind before his death. Rather, the one Xiaolou is thinking of, and fantasizing a final reunion with, in the very last moments of his life is his lover Zhengfang (Wang Ping). That the ending is conceived in such a way, with its uneasy coexistence of sacrificial brotherhood and heterosexual love, suggests the fundamentally split nature of the film: while centrally premised on the ideal of male bonding (between two close brothers), the film does not display the misogynist tendency frequently found in Chang Cheh’s works. Indeed, Chang was uncommonly positive in portraying the romantic relationship between Xiaolou and Zhengfang, as though he wanted to dilute the film’s homoerotic overtones by situating Xiaolou within a clear heterosexual relationship. At one point, Xiaolou and Zhengfang are shown enjoying a few moments of intimacy together in a park. The blatantly romantic and even dreamy images, best exemplified by a medium close-up shot of the lovers in profile, looking raptly at each other and kissing over a bed of flowers, seem jarringly at odds with the film’s narrative concerns with male solidarity and with the director’s penchant for an ultramasculine yanggang aesthetic. In addition, the film also grants an enhanced functional status to Zhengfang, who plays a relatively significant role in Xiaolou’s revenge plan. Zhengfang is no invincible female fighter, I hasten to add, but it is with her help, for instance, that Xiaolou is able to sneak in Feng Kaishan’s hideout and kill him. Ultimately, however, the presence of an unusually visible and consequential female lead in Vengeance! does not constitute a real challenge to the myth of brotherhood central to the film. Zhengfang is important as support and as a romantic object of desire, but she never for a moment questions, let alone tries to put a stop to, Xiaolou’s unswerving urge for revenge. For his part, Xiaolou, despite his love for Zhengfang, at no time considers evading his fraternal obligations and forsaking his goal to avenge his brother. On this point at least, Vengeance! differs from some of Chang’s earlier films in which the male protagonists often find themselves torn between their manly aspirations or obligations and the divergent expectations from their beloved. A case in point is The One-Armed Swordsman, where the main character played by Wang Yu has to choose between his promise to leave the martial arts world behind and live a peaceful life with his lover on the one hand, and his duty to save his master from the attacks of old enemies on the other. Even if the film finds a way to resolve the conflicts, the quandary facing the hero is real and palpable. Such ambivalence, however, is almost completely absent in Vengeance!. The deep brotherly ties between Yulou and Xiaolou are so mythicized and exist in such an exalted order that they are seemingly beyond doubt and challenge. For all its attempts to make Zhengfang a more vital and intriguing character, then, the film ultimately subordinates her and the heterosexual/ heteronormal norms she represents to the bonds of loyalty, obligation, and honor that form the foundation of fraternal solidarity and righteous brotherhood.

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As should be clear from the above, male bonding (in the form of deep abiding brotherhood ties) acquires an unassailable significance in Vengeance!, constituting not only a major force propelling the plot but also an overriding norm transcending heterosexual romance and even the primacy of the individual self. This emphasis on fraternal relations would be maintained and further expanded in a slew of later films, including The Duel (Da juedou, 1971), The Deadly Duo (Shuang xia, 1971), The New One-Armed Swordsman (Xin dubei dao, 1971), and The Water Margin. Indeed, with women being either trivialized/marginalized or dispensed with altogether, there is a growing sense of male-centeredness in these films that verges on misogyny.32 Yet, as a sign of the increasing complexity and self-reflexivity of his works, Chang Cheh would cast a more critical eye on this fraternal ideal in some of his later films. As we will see, the threats to male solidarity do not simply come from women; more importantly, they pertain to a ruthless and impersonal social order which, with its singleminded focus on competition and individualist pursuit of success, undercuts the values of trust and reciprocal obligation underlying all bonds of brotherhood, fictive or otherwise.33 The film that best shows this failure in the myth of righteous brotherhood (and would become a point of reference for numerous Hong Kong martial arts and action movies34) is Blood Brothers. Based loosely on a real-life incident in the Qing era, the film revolves around the assassination of Ma Xinji (Ti Lung), governor-general of Jiujiang and Zhenjiang, by his sworn brother Zhang Wenxiang (David Chiang). Early in the film, we see an apprehended Zhang speak before the court and recount the events that led to Ma’s death: Zhang and Huang Zong (Chen Kuan-tai) are small-time bandits targeting traveling merchants and scholars/students. One day, they meet and 32. As we are going to see, this attempt to marginalize women found its logical conclusion in the Shaolin martial arts films from the mid- to the late 1970s: in these films, the monastic setting guarantees pretty much an exclusively male sphere of action and thus reduces the presence of women to a minimum. 33. Although it is not directly related to my discussion here, it is worth noting the contrast between this questioning of male bonding in Chang Cheh’s films and the recent proliferation of both scholarly and journalistic discourses that regard the growing (business) connections among ethnic Chinese communities around the world as a key to the rapid economic growth of mainland China and the Chinese diaspora in the last few decades. Simply put, such discourses focus on the notion of guanxi—webs of personalized connections based on kinship, pseudo-kinship, and friendship ties—and explain how these relationships function as a cultural strategy or social capital for Chinese business success. For a sample of works using this guanxi perspective to study Chinese business networks, see S. Gordon Redding, The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990); Murray Weidenbaum and Samuel Hughes, The Bamboo Network: How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs Are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia (New York: Martin Kessler Books, 1996); and Constance Lever-Tracy, David Ip, and Noel Tracy, The Chinese Diaspora and Mainland China: An Emerging Economic Synergy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). 34. Of the many remakes or pseudo-remakes of this landmark film, the most important two are John Woo’s Bullet in the Head (Diexue jietou, 1990) and Peter Chan’s The Warlords (Touming Zhuang, 2007). Woo, it should be noted, worked as an assistant director to Chang Cheh in both Vengeance! and Blood Brothers; it thus comes hardly as a surprise that he has been strongly influenced by the latter and that his films show the same deep fascination with the idea of male bonding central to the works of the older director.

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befriend Ma while going about their usual business. The three men soon become sworn brothers and together take over the fortress of a group of hill brigands. Unlike Zhang and Huang, who harbor little ambition and are content with their newfound fortune, Ma is committed to the goal of achieving “great deeds.” At the same time, Ma becomes drawn to Huang’s wife, Mi Lan (Ching Li), who also has a secret affection for him, seeing him as the ideal man her rash, womanizing husband is not. Huang is oblivious to all of this, but a more discerning Zhang begins to have doubts. The tension, however, is temporarily eased when Ma decides to leave for the imperial examinations. Two years have passed before Ma succeeds in thrusting his way up in the army hierarchy. He enlists the help of Zhang and Huang (and the bandit troops he has trained) to fight against the Taiping rebels. Things go smoothly at the outset, but as Ma resumes his tryst with Mi Lan, the once close and abiding bonds between the sworn brothers start to crumble. Fearful that the scandalous affair would be exposed and would ruin his thriving career, Ma has Huang killed by his trusted minions. Infuriated by this betrayal, Zhang kills Ma and fearlessly faces the consequences of his action. Just as The Boxer from Shantung examines the fall of an ambitious gangster who strives to climb up the social ladder at all cost, Blood Brothers gives us a no less disturbing portrayal of a man driven, and ultimately destroyed, by his ruthless quest for power and domination. In the latter case, however, this obsessive desire to succeed and get to the top not just brings about the demise of the social climber himself, but undercuts and even negates the whole cultural myth of righteous brotherhood— a myth which Chang Cheh himself had done much to propagate in his earlier films. Critics, though, have largely overlooked this dimension of the film, focusing instead on women and more generally sexual desire as a deadly catalyst for the collapse of the brotherhood code. According to this reading, it is because of Ma’s adulterous affair with Mi Lan—the wife of Huang Zong and thus Ma’s sister-in-law—that leads to the rift between the three sworn brothers. This is without question a sound interpretation, but also a rather limited one that fails to take into consideration other crucial forces at work. For example, it is important to recognize the complex dynamics between sexual desire and a broader aspiration grounded in the pursuit of fame and success. As the film makes it clear, what attracts Mi Lan to Ma is first and foremost the latter’s bold ambition to climb to an ever higher position in life, which makes a sharp contrast to the narrow outlook of her brutish, simple-minded husband. On the other hand, while Ma is in love with Mi Lan, his priority lies first and foremost in attaining personal accomplishment and success. In this sense, his decision to leave the bandit base for the imperial examinations—and thus to stem his nascent affair with Mi Lan—can perhaps be attributed not so much to his sense of honor as to a more practical concern to avoid any distraction from his ambitious goals. Later, after Ma has risen to become a successful Qing general, he asks Huang and Zhang to

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join him but makes sure that Mi Lan is taken to a different place and does not come with them to the army camp. This, again, may be viewed not as a sign of Ma’s moral integrity but rather as a precaution not to spoil the bonds with his sworn brothers, who are needed to fight the rebels (and thus to help him achieve higher positions). In Blood Brothers, then, the notion of women as a divisive and even destructive force to fraternal solidarity is intertwined with a larger perspective that calls attention to the equally, if not more, dangerous threats posed by the capitalist ethics stressing persistent upward striving and the relentless pursuit of success. Throughout the film, Ma is depicted as someone who harbors great ambitions and will use whatever means it takes to thrust himself to the top. It is precisely this fanatical drive to succeed that spurs him, after taking command of a small bandit base, to subject the surrendered outlaws to strenuous military-style training. And as an early sign of his ruthlessness, he kills one of the men for simply raising doubts on the usefulness of the exhausting drills and exercises. This firm but merciless determination, the film is at pains to point out, is what sets Ma apart from his two sworn brothers: just as Ma is busy training the bandit troop and preparing himself for the imperial examinations, Zhang and especially Huang are seen mostly idling or out having fun in town. As the fame and position of Ma grow, so does his distance from his sworn brothers. One telltale example of this can be seen in the aforementioned scene in which Ma, having established himself as an up-and-coming figure in the Qing army, meets up with Huang and Zhang at the army camp. Not having seen Ma for years, Huang and Zhang are eager to see him and to rekindle their spirit of brotherhood. What actually takes place, however, is not exactly the warm reunion they have anticipated, but rather a detached and even chilling reception. Looking sinister and grim in Manchu garb and in his newly grown moustache, Ma reassures Huang and Zhang of their fraternal ties, but then immediately contradicts himself by telling them never to mention their outlaw pasts again lest the information be used against him. The cold and distant demeanor of Ma, and his ominously measured utterance, contrast starkly from the typical casual style of Huang and Zhang and signifies the increasing alienation between Ma and his sworn brothers. The viewer is left in no doubt about the widening rift between the three men, which is made even more noticeable by the ways the scene tends to put Huang and Zhang closely together in the same shots while isolating Ma in separate ones—or else, in one marked instance, has the two groups placed at the opposite edges of the widescreen composition (Figure 3.3). Without realizing the changes in their relationships, Huang and Zhang do their best to fight the rebels and help Ma secure his advancement in the Qing establishment. This, however, only adds to Ma’s demonic self-possession, to the point he is not about to let anything—not even his sworn brothers—stand in the way of his goals. This is why Huang has to be gotten rid of, not just because of Mi Lan, but also, more importantly, due to Huang’s often unofficerly conduct, which has started to breed

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Figure 3.3 The breakdown of fraternal solidarity in Blood Brothers (1973)

rumors and is thus considered by Ma as a liability to his career. For his betrayal, Ma is assassinated by Zhang; yet, in light of everything that has happened, this act of fraternal justice seems hollow and hardly enough to restore meaning and faith to the codes of honor underlining the brotherhood ideal. The film ends with the extremely brutal execution of Zhang (his heart is literally plucked out by a knife), and the two devious and ambitious associates of Ma are shown rejoicing over Zhang’s demise with their fellow officers like gleeful jackals, celebrating and congratulating one another for fulfilling a career-promoting task. In focusing on the ways in which the ideals of fraternal love and solidarity are undermined by an emerging set of values predicated on the cold, ruthless pursuit of position and power, Blood Brothers offers a powerful critique of the social Darwinist ideology that underlies Hong Kong’s march towards capitalist modernity.

The Reinvention of the Master-Disciple Relationship When discussing Lau Kar-leung’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin in the first chapter, I  focused my discussion mainly on the emphasis it accorded to martial arts training and took it as a conscious affirmation of the ascetic ethics underpinning Hong Kong’s rapid postwar economic growth. Yet the film can also be read in other ways. As Meaghan Morris argues, the training film “offers more than a spectacle of fabulously self-made bodies acting out their masochistic reshaping routines. It also frames and moralizes this spectacle as a pedagogical experience.”35 In this understanding, martial arts training is not simply about empowering the self through ascetic practices, it also entails a pedagogical process involving the transmission of

35. See Meaghan Morris, “Learning from Bruce Lee: Pedagogy and Political Correctness in Martial Arts Cinema,” in Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies, ed. Matthew Tinckcom and Amy Villarejo (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 176.

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combat skills and/or martial virtues from the master (shifu) to the disciple (tudi). Central to this process, then, is a specific form of male bonding grounded in the master-disciple relationship. It is in an earlier Shaolin kung fu film—Chang Cheh’s Shaolin Martial Arts (Hongquan yu yongchun, 1974)—that this imbrication of training, pedagogy, and the master-disciple relationship first came to be emphasized. The film tells the story of four Shaolin disciples who, having survived the attacks from a number of kung fu experts hired by Manchu officials, are dispatched by their dying master to continue their martial arts training with various new mentors. Two of them go to train under Master Eagle Claws, but their newly acquired skills prove no match for the Manchu assailants. The other two disciples, under the grueling training of their new masters, pick up the tiger-crane and wing chun combat styles and ultimately succeed in eliminating their nemeses. Compared to Chang’s earlier films, Shaolin Martial Arts clearly pointed to a new direction in its focus on the pedagogical experience—thus the showcasing of lengthy training sequences—and in the deep respect given to the master figure. This shift in emphasis, especially with respect to the changing generational dynamics, can be explained in part by the fact that Chang, having reinvented the martial arts film genre and established himself as one of Hong Kong cinema’s foremost directors, was no longer a “young rebel” seeking to defy or abolish traditions. Rather, he himself had become a “master” who had his own clique of “disciples.” Therefore, although male bonding remained an important theme, what can be seen in Shaolin Martial Arts—and in Chang’s later Shaolin kung fu films, particularly Five  Shaolin Masters and Shaolin Temple (Shaolin si, 1976)36—is a clear digression from Chang’s previous obsessions with individual heroism and righteous brotherhood and a growing identification with tradition and succession (chuancheng). This emphasis on keeping alive the tradition—the process of transmitting and perpetuating a body of knowledge and skills through a chain of master-disciple relationships—can be seen even more clearly in the films of Lau Kar-leung. This comes hardly as a surprise, given that the director—a Hung Fist (hong quan) practitioner whose martial arts ancestry can be traced to the legendary Shaolin Temple—is himself part of a revered tradition: the tradition of Shaolin or South China martial arts.37 Lau explored 36. In Five Shaolin Masters, five surviving disciples of the Shaolin Temple, which has been burned to the ground by the Qing army, return to the temple ruins and go through the training process again in the absence of their masters. In doing so, they not merely manage to perfect their martial arts skills and take revenge against the Manchu invaders; more importantly, they keep the Shaolin martial arts tradition alive and (as legend has it) pass it on through their later exploits in the South China region. Shaolin Temple, on the other hand, is a sort of prequel to Five Shaolin Masters, focusing on a slightly earlier period when “secular disciples” are first admitted to the temple to learn martial arts. The film, then, focuses on the training process and ends where Five Shaolin Masters begins: the burning of the Shaolin Temple and the dissemination of Shaolin martial arts through the dispersed disciples. 37. This Shaolin/South China martial arts tradition comprises a chain of master-disciple relationships stretching from the Shaolin monk Zhi Shan through Hong Xiguan, Lu Acai, Huang Qiying, Wong Fei-hung,

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these ideas of tradition and succession in many of his films, of which Challenge of the Masters (Lu Acai yu Huang Feihong, 1976) is among the most thought-provoking. In the film, Gordon Liu plays Wong Fei-hung, the iconic Cantonese folk hero who had been the subject of many earlier movies, notably the long-running series featuring Kwan Tak-hing from 1949 to the late 1960s (and beyond). But instead of being the esteemed patriarchal figure as in the aforementioned series, the character is presented here as a talented but unruly lad who, dismissed by his father as too reckless and immature, is barred from learning martial arts (and thus from assuming his place in the family’s martial arts lineage). It is only through the efforts of Yuan Zheng (Lau Kar-wing) that Wong is taken in as a disciple by Lu Acai (Chen Kuan-tai), who turns out to be the master of Wong’s father. After years of grueling training, during which time Yuan is killed by a criminal named Zhen Erhu (played by Lau Kar-leung himself), the young Wong Fei-hung finally succeeds in “re-forming” himself—not only physically but also morally—and returns home to face off with Zhen and to lead his family’s martial arts school to victory in the annual firecracker contest. In many ways, Challenge of the Masters stands as a tribute to the pedagogical process lying at the center of the physical and moral formation of a martial artist. Like Shaolin Martial Arts and many other Shaolin kung fu movies, the film weaves the process of martial arts training into the very heart of its narrative. For instance, there are several extended sequences in which the young Wong Fei-hung hones and cultivates his fighting skills—strengthening the legs through stance practices, circling a pole around bowls of decreasing sizes, sparring with a wooden dummy, and so on. Through such grueling training drills, the hero successfully transforms himself from a kung fu novice to a martial arts expert worthy of his master’s name. To be sure, we can find such detailed exposition of the training process in other films, but Lau Kar-leung gave it an extra dimension here by underscoring the importance of the master or shifu figure. For Lau, training is not simply a self-propelling quest for power and mastery, with the shifu acting as a mere passive muse or being absent altogether.38 Instead, it is a collaborative process that requires the active participation of the master. In Challenge of the Masters, Lu Acai is given precisely such an active role, coaching and initiating the disciple into mastery through beatings, demonstrations and examples, and the same exhaustive training drills that have formed the master himself. By the end, the master and the disciple have become a single unit joined by a shared martial arts heritage, their unity beautifully captured by the immaculate Lin Shirong, and Liu Zhan to Lau Kar-leung himself. Indeed, it has been suggested that Lau, who had acted as an action choreographer in many of Chang Cheh’s films until their split in 1974, played a crucial role in shaping the content and style of the latter’s first Shaolin kung fu films. 38. This is the case, for instance, in Chang Cheh’s The One-Armed Swordsman or in Wang Yu’s The Chinese Boxer (1970). In both cases, the heroes of the films go through their training and perfect their martial arts skills all by themselves, in the absence of their masters.

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Figure 3.4 The idealized master-disciple couple: Lu Acai (Chen Kuan-tai, left) and Wong Fei-hung (Gordon Liu, right) in Challenge of the Masters (1976)

synchronization of movements and rhythms during their final sparring practice (Figure 3.4). Furthermore, the master exists not only as a physical trainer but also as someone committed to the moral development of the disciple. In other words, it is not merely combat skills but the code of martial chivalry—especially the virtues of humility, forgiveness, and nonviolence—that are taught and passed on. “More forgiveness, less aggression”—these are the final words from Lu Acai as he bids farewell to his young disciple. And it is exactly these same words that flash by in the latter’s mind after he defeats Zhen Erhu and is about to take Zhen’s life. He refrains from unleashing the fatal strike in the end, and even tries to help his wounded opponent stand, even though the latter tries desperately to fight him again. The contrast of this Wong Fei-hung— poised, controlled, thoughtful, and authoritative in an understated way—with his earlier self cannot be greater: it is evident that the once rash and impetuous lad has completely refashioned himself, learning from his master (and surrogate father) that winning the heart of one’s enemy is ultimately more important than conquering him physically. In Challenge of the Masters, then, we find a deeply thought-out exploration of the close and powerful bonds between Wong Fei-hung and Lu Acai. For Lau Kar-leung, the choice of these two particular figures was not accidental but had an important autobiographical component to it. As noted earlier, Lau came from a martial arts heritage that is exceptionally rich and comprises some of South China’s most distinguished martial artists, including the real historical Lu Acai and Wong Fei-hung. Such personal connections are no doubt one of the reasons why the director took it upon himself to retell (and reinvent) the stories of these legendary folk heroes. At the same time, Challenge of the Masters can also be viewed as Lau’s homage to the Wong Fei-hung film series of the 1950s and 1960s, which played an indispensable role

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in his development as a filmmaker.39 To underscore the continuity between his film and the original series, Lau consciously quoted the theme music from the latter— most powerfully perhaps during the scene when the young Wong Fei-hung, after a long and rigorous training process, finally succeeds in mastering the martial arts skills of Lu Acai and is ready to take Lu’s place in succession. To this we can also add the film’s emphasis, as I pointed out earlier, on the values of forgiveness and righteous violence, which represent some of the core principles underlying the moral universe of the old Wong Fei-hung films. As should be clear by now, Challenge of the Masters is arguably one of Lau Kar-leung’s clearest statements on the moral and social values associated with the master-disciple relationship. Yet it became more and more apparent that such a view, with its reverent attitude to tradition and to the master or shifu figure, was becoming seriously out of sync with a society where traditional patriarchal values and structures were being increasingly eroded. Rapid modernization and the opening up of the society to Western influences; unprecedented economic growth and the rise of a utilitarian and opportunistic mentality; the rise of the postwar baby boomers, with their new, more liberal perspectives—all this contributed to such a change and caused a drastic rethinking of traditional values and relations. It is against this background that the growing popularity of kung fu comedies should be understood. The rise of this hybrid genre can be attributed in part to the revival of comedy films, as witnessed by the massive box office success of Chor Yuen’s The House of the 72 Tenants (Qishier jia fangke, 1973) and by the string of popular satirical comedies of Michael Hui that followed, in the early and mid-1970s.40 While the resurgence of comedies was linked to another trend of Hong Kong cinema at the time, i.e., the recovery of Cantonese-language filmmaking after years of decline,41 one has to take into account some larger social factors as well, including the global oil crisis and the ensuing stock market crash in 1973, which, as has been discussed in the first chapter, plunged Hong Kong society into a severe economic recession.

39. Lau entered the Hong Kong film industry as a bit-player and stuntman in the old Wong Fei-hung film series, and moved on from there to become an action choreographer before finally joining the Shaw Brothers studio in the mid-1960s. 40. The House of the 72 Tenants was the top grossing film in Hong Kong in 1973, surpassing even Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon in local box office returns. Its huge success led to a resurgence of interest in comedy films, and it is in this context that the emergence of Michael Hui should be understood. Almost without exception, all of Hui’s films in the 1970s, including Games Gamblers Play (Guima shuangxing, 1974), The Last Message (Tiancai yu baichi, 1975), The Private Eyes (Banjin baliang, 1976), and The Contract (Maishen qi, 1978), achieved wide popularity and were among the top grossing Hong Kong films in their respective years. For a good introduction to Hui’s comedies, see Jenny Lau, “Besides Fists and Blood: Michael Hui and Cantonese Comedy,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 158–75. 41. See Stephen Teo, “The 1970s: Movement and Transition,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 95–96.

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Unemployment was on the rise, and public confidence was further eroded by police corruption and an escalating crime rate. Responding to the gloomy mood of Hong Kong society at the time, the raucous humor and biting satire of the revived comedy films provided viewers with an indispensable avenue to relieve their pressure as well as to express their frustration and dissatisfaction. At the same time, the hitherto dominant martial arts film started to show signs of decline following the death of Bruce Lee. The film industry, however, was not ready to abandon the genre but rather sought to rejuvenate it in various ways. One such attempt was the launching of Shaolin kung fu films, a trend that first started around 1974 and reached a peak with The 36th Chamber of Shaolin in 1978. What is most fascinating about these films, as already argued, is their ideological effort to vindicate and reaffirm the ascetic ethics underpinning the discourse of Hong Kong’s postwar economic success. A slightly later trend pertained to the kung fu comedy, a genre whose lighter, more playful and yet frequently mocking tone paralleled the restored confidence and optimism—together with a growing cynicism—of Hong Kong people as the city gradually bounced back from the economic downturn. The kung fu comedy is known for its propensity towards hilarious fight scenes that eschew the kind of earnest kung fu action found in previous martial arts films, emphasizing instead a more lighthearted and slapstick-like combat style based on Peking opera–influenced acrobatics as well as cleverly manipulated props and situations.42 Another major characteristic, and this is more relevant to my discussion here, has to do with character inversion—a technique in which conventional representations of well-known character types are reframed, reversed, and parodied to enhance comical effects. It is worth pointing out that the kung fu comedy, like the trend of Shaolin kung fu films before it, places great emphasis on the relationship between the master and the disciple, albeit with a strong cynical and irreverent flavor to it. Such profanation is no less evident when it comes to matters of characterization. For example, unlike their righteous and dignified counterparts in previous martial arts films, the masters or shifu in kung fu comedies are not only, for the most part, lowly and eccentric in appearance, but are also frequently given questionable character traits. In Yuen Woo-ping’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (Shexing diaoshou, 1978), the roaming “master”—who first appears as a beggar attracting flies—may seem rather cowardly in that he is constantly on the run for fear of being tracked down by his rival. Similarly, in Drunken Master (Zui quan, 1978), also directed by Yuen, the “master” with a wild mop of gray hair and ragged clothes is a drunkard who is at his best when intoxicated, and is rendered pretty powerless when his greedy throat is not satisfied. 42. For more discussions on this kind of acrobatic action choreography, see Yung Sai-shing, “Moving Body: The Interactions between Chinese Opera and Action Cinema,” in Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, ed. Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li, and Stephen Chan Ching-kiu (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 21–34.

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Along with this refashioning of the master figure came a new conception of the disciple (and of the action hero in general). Commonly called the xiaozi, a Mandarin colloquial expression meaning the “brat” or the “kid,” this new disciple figure represented a clear contrast from the invincible or tragic heroes who had hitherto pervaded and distinguished Hong Kong martial arts films. Associated with another new generation of action stars, including Alexander Fu Sheng, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and others, the xiaozi is usually a youthful and mischievous lad who, for all his undeniably bright talent, is lazy, disobedient, and knows little of humility or respect. He has neither the seriousness of purpose nor the motivation or staying power to truly develop his potential. And almost without exception, it is only after suffering a humiliating loss or having a friend or family member unjustly killed that he will muster the resolve and determination to train in martial arts more seriously.43 Therein lies the importance of the shifu: it is only through the tutelage of the master, however eccentric and unorthodox he may be, that the xiaozi becomes disciplined and transformed, and could even get to the point of surpassing the skills of his master. Psychologically and morally, however, the xiaozi would often stay true to what he is—a slack, fun-loving, rule-breaking lad—and resists becoming a shifu himself. With the refashioning of both the master and the disciple figures, it is hardly surprising that the relationship between them has also acquired new, and often cynical and even subversive, meanings. This subversive aspect can be seen, for instance, in the increasingly “functional” and even business-like nature underpinning the masterdisciple bond: what counts in the end is not so much the idea of chuancheng, the chain of history that preserves and perpetuates a tradition, but rather the immediate advantages that can be gleaned from the relationship. In Sammo Hung’s Knockabout (Zajia xiaozi, 1979), we find two con brothers who, after failing to scam a man and getting beat up by him, beg to become his students and to learn martial arts from him. Their purpose, however, is dubious at best: what they plan to do is to learn all of the 43. It is worth noting that this xiaozi figure did not come from nowhere but can be traced to a well-known precedent, namely, Wei Xiaobao in Jin Yong’s The Deer and the Cauldron (Luding ji). First serialized in Ming Pao between 1969 and 1972, The Deer and the Cauldron turned out to be the last—and by far the most controversial—martial arts novel written by Jin. The root cause of this controversy had mainly to do with the unconventional ways in which the protagonist of the novel is represented. For instead of the kind of valiant and honorable heroes usually found in his earlier works (and in most martial arts novels), The Deer and the Cauldron features an anti-heroic protagonist who is illiterate, sly, and womanizing; a brat who knows nothing about martial arts and whose philosophy of life is marked by a mixture of opportunism and pure self-interest. But despite his many flaws, the xiao jiahuo (“little rascal”), as Jin Yong himself once called the character, is ultimately found likable due to his fundamental goodness and kind-heartedness, not to say his ability to make a host of seemingly impossible achievements—the meteoric rise through the hierarchy of both the Qing court and the anti-Qing Heaven and Earth Society; the acquisition of seven beautiful and obedient wives—through the exercise of native wit, a glib tongue, as well as a striking ability to adapt to one’s environment. For many people, Wei is best taken as an allegorical figure of Hong Kong. Like the British colony, he is a bastard whose father’s identity is not known; more importantly, he epitomizes what was, and still is, widely taken as the “Hong Kong spirit”—the ability to adapt, seize opportunities, and prosper in a fiercely competitive milieu.

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man’s martial arts skills so as to outdo him and eventually take his place. The man, too, is not what he appears and turns out to be a killer on the run. In fact, when his secret is discovered by the two brothers, he tries to put them down without hesitation. It has been pointed out that the sense of cynicism pervading Knockabout (and other kung fu comedies) is not coincidental and can be viewed as mirroring the values of a capitalist society. One critic puts it aptly, “[t]he underlying idea that ‘Honor thy master’ only holds true if the master can thereby be exploited, can be seen as a reflection of a modern competition society in which only the fittest survive.”44 Ng Ho, a respected Hong Kong film scholar and cultural historian, is even more direct, seeing the corrosion in the master-disciple relationship as explicitly linked to the survival instinct and the “man-eats-man” ethos of Hong Kong’s capitalist society: Present-day Hong Kong society is governed by the ‘law of the jungle,’ and ‘feudal’ virtues like benevolence, righteousness, and moral fibre [sic] are conspicuously absent. Kung-fu films of the 1960s and earlier were strongly rooted in these feudal values: they consistently centered on the righting of wrongs done to the shifu or the father, on the chivalric code, or on patriotic themes. Contemporary kung-fu comedies, however, are deeply imbued with the values of capitalism: their characters succeed through unscrupulousness, by biting the hand that feeds them, by stopping at nothing. Classically, martial artists willingly submitted themselves to feudal principles. The relationship between shifu and disciple was clear-cut, individuals were pure and high-minded, and there was a general disdain of concepts like fame and success. The change in value has been drastic, and its effect on the spirit of the martial arts has been calamitous. . . . [T]he change in the spirit of kung-fu films faithfully reflects a change in society: the struggle for survival.45

It is against this trend of demythologizing the master-disciple relationship that a film such as Lau Kar-leung’s Dirty Ho (Lantou He, 1979) should be understood. Set in the Qing period, the film tells the story of He Zhen (Wang Yu), a small-time thief who runs into repeated conflict with Wang Qingqin (Gordon Liu), but finds himself outwitted and outfought by the seemingly harmless jewelry dealer each time. The latter, however, turns out to be no ordinary businessman; he is in fact part of the Qing imperial family, the eleventh prince who is being targeted in an assassination plot. The film, then, is built around two closely interwoven plotlines—one centering on the series of attacks on the prince and his subsequent journey back to the palace; the other on the complex, ever-shifting relationship between He Zhen and the prince. Broadly speaking, the relationship between He and the prince goes through three stages. In the first stage, the young thief is repeatedly running afoul of the prince (who is posing as a jewelry dealer), first vying with him for the attention of a brothel 44. Chan Ting-ching, “The ‘Knockabout’ Comic Kung-fu Films of Samo Hung,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, ed. Lau Shing-hon (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980), 149. 45. Ng Ho, “Kung-Fu Comedies: Tradition, Structure, Character,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, 43.

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woman in a pleasure boat and then trying to snatch back the box of jewels taken by the prince during a police raid. Despite the constant troubles caused by He, the prince has no apparent grudge against him. On the contrary, he seems to take a liking to the rash but generally decent lad and is secretly protecting him from Qing officers. The second stage begins as He Zhen, having been hurt by a poisoned sword during one of his scuffles with the prince, grudgingly agrees to become the latter’s disciple in exchange for the antidote. At the same time, rivalries over inheritance to the throne are intensifying and the prince finds himself the target of several assassination attempts—first at a wine-tasting party and then during a visit to an antique dealer’s shop. Accompanying his master on both occasions, He Zhen remains a clueless bystander as the prince and his assassins, in their attempt to hide their true identities, make sure that their fighting does not come to the surface and disrupt the semblance of normalcy. Only at the end of the antique shop scene does He figure out what is really going on and try to intervene, although not before the prince gets a wound in the leg that would leave him with limited mobility for weeks. In the third and final stage, the injured prince is in need of He Zhen to be his bodyguard and to protect him from further attacks. The two retreat to an empty house where the prince is not only able to buy time for recovery, but also to improve the martial arts skills of his disciple. Thus follow a series of arduous and often painful exercises through which He, by now a loyal and subservient student, is trained into a more effective fighter. Together, the prince (who has not yet fully recovered and needs to be carried on a wheel cart) and his transformed disciple (who pushes the cart) set out on the dangerous journey to the imperial palace for the announcement of the emperor’s successor. Defeating a string of opponents along the way, the two arrive just in time for the official proclamation. However, as the importance of He Zhen has waned with the safe return of the prince, he is seen, in the film’s final freeze frame, being thrown out of the palace hall (Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5 The “abandoned” disciple in Dirty Ho (1979)

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Departing from the idealized visions found in Challenge of the Masters, Dirty Ho conceives the master-disciple relationship in very different (and more cynical) terms and has been called Lau Kar-leung’s “most subversive variation on the master-disciple gestalt.”46 To be sure, some of these “subversions” do not go very far and remain at a relatively innocuous level, thus allowing viewers to have fun without them feeling the tradition as being undermined. For instance, the ways in which the prince tricks He  Zhen into becoming his disciple may not seem to be the ways of a respected master, but his apparent goal—to help change the bright but immature xiaozi—is at least an honorable one. Likewise, the fact that He Zhen agrees to accept the prince as his shifu can be understood as no more than a “deal,” for he relies on the latter for the antidote to cure his poisoned wound. But as the film progresses, a transformation gradually takes place and the initially bitter and unenthusiastic student is thoroughly “converted,” turning into a model disciple who fulfills his role—training himself diligently; protecting the wounded prince and escorting him back to the imperial palace—eagerly and responsibly. In other cases, the subversive dimension is highlighted and becomes more evident. One may note, for instance, that it is not until the prince has been hurt in the leg (and thus left vulnerable for impending attacks) that he starts to instruct He Zhen in martial arts. This suggests that the training, which the film shows in quite some details, is motivated not by a sense of responsibility to perpetuate a tradition or to fight injustice, but rather in part by narrowly personal reasons: to improve He’s fighting skills so that he will make a more effective bodyguard. For Roger Garcia, it is precisely this kind of power dynamics, which turn the idea of master-disciple relationship from “popular legend” to the “political,” that make Dirty Ho so fascinating.47 As conceived in the film, the system of power relations is fundamentally skewed and constantly puts the prince in a more dominant position. This explains why the prince’s control over He actually increases in the second half of the film, with the latter transforming himself into a devoted and dutiful disciple, even though the shift in their relationship—from He’s dependence on the prince (for the antidote) to the prince’s dependence on He (for a safe journey back to the palace)—may point to a different scenario. Put otherwise, with each variation in the master-disciple relationship, it is He Zhen, the disciple, who is “consistently relegated to the subservient role indicating the underlying theme of the film as a study in personal and social exploitation.”48 The exploitation noted by Garcia is perhaps most clearly expressed in the final scene of the film. The time has come for the proclamation of the emperor’s successor. The prince hurries into the palace hall where the announcement is to be made, but in 46. Tony Rayns, “Resilience: The Cinema and Liu Jialiang,” in A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies, ed. Li Cheuk-to (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1984), 55. 47. Roger Garcia, “The Autarkic World of Liu Chia-liang,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, 130. 48. Ibid.

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such haste that he needs He Zhen to help him into his imperial garments. Once that is done, the prince deftly delivers a blow that sends the hapless disciple flying out of the hall, and the film ends with a freeze-frame of the latter in midair. Such an ending, whatever other meanings it might have, essentially reverses any trust or affection that has developed between the master and the disciple and signals their ultimate nonequivalence. As Garcia puts it succinctly: The gesture [of throwing He out of the palace hall] represents not only the reiteration of the impossibility of [He’s] entry into the same sphere as Wang, but also the end of fictional play. That is, the pupil can never become the master and, whatever relationship is formed, or instruction given, has been a game, an illusion. This radical reframing of the master-pupil relationship constitutes a break with the cinematic tradition of the martial arts genre. Gone, for example, is the benign paternalism of the master and the higher virtues of kung fu training; instead, their validity has become contingent upon their use.49

Such a cynical take is in line with the general tendency of kung fu comedies to rethink and redefine the master-disciple relationship. Yet Dirty Ho is different in its undermining of the subversive potential of the xiaozi figure in favor of a sly and manipulative master. For Lau Kar-leung, who had established himself as one of the most esteemed figures—the master, or shifu, if you will—in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, this choice of focus comes as no surprise. Indeed, Dirty Ho is best viewed as the director’s response to the trend of kung fu comedy at the time, subjecting the master-disciple relationship to scrutiny just as the subgenre did, but in such a way that the master figure, while being reconceptualized and transformed, continued to dominate the symbolic world of the film. All this reflects a desire to reaffirm the older patriarchal order, not by reverting to the traditional values of benevolence and honor, but rather by “modernizing” the master and making him even more devious and conniving, more exemplary of the “survival-of-the-fittest” mentality and the utilitarian spirit characteristic of the modern capitalist world than his young disciple. Hegemonic masculinity is not a fixed norm or ideal but is rather constantly adjusting itself to new social circumstances. The constant refashioning of the male heroic prototype and of male homosocial relationships in the martial arts film genre is but one example of this continual adjustment in the mass cultural realm. From the staunch, committed hero to the irreverent xiaozi, and from the emphasis on deep fraternal bonds to the various permutations of the master-disciple relations, the shifting representations of masculinity in Hong Kong martial arts cinema offer us a glimpse into the profound transformative power on the masculine order brought about by a rapidly modernizing society.

49. Ibid., 130–31.

4 The Difficulty of Difference

Despite the dominance of the yanggang trend and the growing masculinization of Hong Kong cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it is important to recognize the continuing production of films featuring sword-wielding and/or fist-fighting heroines as protagonists. As is commonly known, one of the distinctive features of Hong Kong martial arts and action cinema has been, and continues to be, the prominence given to the woman warrior figure. More than any other film industry, Hong Kong cinema has developed and maintained a vibrant tradition of powerful action heroines whose origin can be traced to Shanghai martial arts films of the late 1920s and early 1930s. When the martial arts film genre was revitalized in Hong Kong at the end of the 1940s, the woman warrior figure was also granted a new lease on life, and the following decades saw a proliferation of actresses—among them Yu Suqiu, Cheng Pei-pei, Hsu Feng, Angela Mao, and Shangguan Lingfeng—who captivated audiences with their portrayals of strong, self-determining women marked by exceptional martial arts skills. Even with the rise of the kung fu film in the early 1970s, a subgenre whose violent, intensely physical fighting style may seem to put women at a disadvantage, the woman warrior tradition did not simply disappear. On the contrary, as the examples of Angela Mao and Kara Hui suggest, there was no lack of commanding female fighters in kung fu films from the 1970s—a trend that would continue, in the 1980s and beyond, with the modern action thrillers featuring Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Yang. There is no question that the woman warrior figure has had an extensive presence in Hong Kong cinema, but what, one might ask, does this tell us about the gender dynamics in Hong Kong martial arts/action films and in the larger Hong Kong society as a whole? At one level, it is important to note the long history of the nüxia, or female knight-errant, figure in traditional Chinese literature and theater, and her “reincarnation” in the cinematic medium can be seen as a continuation of this well-established trend. But while there is some truth to this view, especially when films featuring a female knight-errant protagonist often draw their materials from past legends, folk tales, as well as literary works,1 the fact remains that filmic representations of the 1. To take two examples, King Hu’s masterpiece, A Touch of Zen, is adapted from the story “Xianü” (Chivalrous lady) collected in Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai zhiyi), whereas Cheng Kang’s

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nüxia display some unique characteristics that need to be considered on their own terms. For instance, the cinema as an audiovisual medium, with its intrinsic (and ever increasing) power of representation, has given the woman warrior a new immediacy and intensity that render her all the more powerful as a figure of identification. What is more, the time frames within which the cinematic nüxia flourished—Shanghai of the late 1920s; postwar Hong Kong, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s—were formative periods of Chinese modernity in which the socioeconomic conditions of women went through major changes. In the case of Hong Kong, these changes, which included higher education attainment, growing job opportunities, and increasing financial independence, gave women more freedom from traditional roles and responsibilities—albeit not without struggles and challenges. The diverse and often incompatible forces confronting Hong Kong women put them in a conflicting position between independence and duty, freedom and control; a position, as we will see, also shared by many women warriors in Hong Kong cinema at the time. While this clash—or uneasy coexistence at least—between transgressive self-determination and adherence to traditional patriarchal norms had marked the Chinese woman warrior from the beginning, it took on special meaning and spoke to the complex experiences of women, especially those of the younger generation, in modern Hong Kong. My goal in this chapter is to critically examine, against the context of women’s rising social position and changing self-identities in a rapidly modernizing society, the representations of swordswomen and female kung fu fighters in Hong Kong cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s. How are we to understand the juncture between these fighting heroines on screen and the processes of redefinition and renegotiation of gender identities in society? Did the woman warrior offer, by virtue of her physical prowess and her ability to destabilize rigid gender boundaries, an empowering figure for women in an increasingly liberal society? Or was she merely a fantasy image created by men in the service of Confucian patriarchy? In rethinking these questions, I reconsider the social relevance and cultural significance of the woman warrior figure in Hong Kong cinema and provide a more nuanced understanding of the different, and often conflicting, meanings at play.

The Ambivalent Figure of the Woman Warrior For a lot of Western viewers, what is fascinating about Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon lies not only in the film’s eye-catching and gravity-defying action sequences, but also in its unique representation of powerful female characters who fight men as equals. For all their very different personalities, both the dutiful Yu Xiulian (Michelle Yeoh) and the impetuous and rebellious Jen (Zhang Ziyi) share The 14 Amazons, which features a predominantly female cast, draws upon the famous legend—and its countless retellings and reinventions—about the Yang family women generals of the Northern Song dynasty.

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one thing in common: exceptional combat skills that give the characters a degree of power and independence not often associated with women. Those who are knowledgeable about the Chinese-language martial arts film, however, would point out that such fighting female characters are nothing new, and that they represent part of a long tradition of cinematic nüxia that can be traced back to Shanghai martial arts films of the late 1920s and early 1930s. As pointed out by Zhang Zhen and Weihong Bao, films with a nüxia protagonist, which drew on both American serial queen adventure films and traditional forms of Chinese culture, constituted a major subgenre in early Shanghai martial arts cinema. In these nüxia films, the heroines are usually endowed with near-fantastic bodily techniques, such as flying or leaping over walls or across chasms, that enable them to assume the role of avenger for an unjust death in the family or guardian of a community under external threat. In embodying technologized freedom, social autonomy, and even transcendence, these nüxia figures presented the viewers at the time with a new, distinctly modern female image that posed a challenge to traditional modes of gender representation.2 The woman warrior figure has also established a major presence in Hong Kong martial arts films from the beginning. One of the first female action stars emerging in Hong Kong is Yu Suqiu, who appeared in numerous low-budget Cantonese swordplay movies throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.3 Yet it is arguably the Shaw Brothers studio, with its “new school” martial arts films, that established a new image of the female knight-errant and turned the woman warrior figure into a cultural icon around the mid-1960s. In addition to King Hu’s Come Drink with Me, which I will examine more closely in the next section, another early example of this trend is Xu Zenghong’s Temple of the Red Lotus from 1965. The film, which is a reworking of the immensely popular Burning of the Red Lotus Temple series from late 1920s Shanghai, is remarkable not only for its portrayal of a swordswoman (Ling Po) with amazing martial arts skills, but also for its depiction of a righteous family in which all the female members are highly accomplished fighters. The representation of powerful women warriors remained a prominent feature in many Shaw Brothers martial arts films—and those from other companies, for that matter—until the early 1970s, when the yanggang trend popularized by Chang Cheh and the rise of the kung fu subgenre steered the local cinema into a markedly male-centered direction.4 Even then, fighting female characters did not just disappear out of sight; in the midst of Bruce Lee, 2. Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 226–35; and Weihong Bao, “From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927–1931,” Camera Obscura 20, no. 3 (2005): 193–231. 3. It is worth pointing out that Yu’s father, Yu Zhanyuan, was the founder of the famous China Drama Academy and Beijing opera teacher of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, among others. 4. For a general discussion of this trend of female knight-errant films before the early 1970s, see Stephen Teo, “The ‘Missing’ Female Knight-Errant in Hong Kong Action Cinema 1965–1971: Back in Critical Action,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 4, no. 2 (2010): 143–54.

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Wang Yu, and other male action stars was, for example, Angela Mao, who starred in a number of classic kung fu films, including Huang Feng’s Lady Whirlwind (Tiezhang xuanfengtui, 1972) and Hapkido (Heqi dao, 1972), as well as Chung Chang-wha’s Broken Oath (Po jie, 1978). To be sure, the woman warrior figure is not confined to the cinematic medium, and one can find an array of nüxia characters in Chinese literature and theater both past and present. One good example is Hua Mulan, a filial daughter who dresses as a man and joins the army in lieu of her ailing father, fighting numerous battles alongside male comrades for many years before returning home.5 Other instances include Nie Yinniang and Hong Xian in Tang chuanqi (prose romances), the women generals of the Yang family, and He Yufeng/Thirteenth Sister in the Qing novel A Tale of Heroic Lovers (Ernü yingxiong zhuan). On the surface, the abundance of fictional women warriors lends itself to a kind of feminist reading in which discourses on female empowerment and liberation take precedence. Indeed, it is not unusual for these action heroines to be conceived as taboo-breaking figures who pose a challenge to conventional gender representations. For instance, numerous re-imaginings and re-creations of the Mulan tale over the centuries, in a wide range of genres such as novels, plays, films, comics, and TV serials, have firmly established the womanturned-warrior as a cultural icon and a figure of empowerment for many Chinese women.6 Among those inspired by Mulan’s adventures is the renowned ChineseAmerican writer Maxine Hong Kingston. In her semiautobiographical novel, The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, Kingston recounts her childhood fantasy of living the life of Fa Mu Lan—yet another variation of the Mulan story, albeit a greatly modified one that also incorporates the stories of other Chinese warriors both male and female. What emerges in this retelling is a complex portrayal of a hybrid woman warrior figure who, in fighting not only for her family but also for her village, her country, and all women, provides a model for Kingston to refashion a new Asian-American feminist identity.7 In many ways, however, the progressive connotations of the woman warrior figure are more apparent than real. Joseph R. Allen, for instance, has noted that the many recountings of the Mulan legend, including the most recent and culturally diverse ones, are ultimately not stories of female empowerment but “tales of domestication.”8

5. The Mulan story found its first written form in a poem known as “Mulan shi” (The poem of Mulan), which is believed to date from the late Six Dynasties or early Tang period. 6. On the cinematic reimaginings of the Mulan story, see Kristine Harris, “Modern Mulans: Reimagining the Mulan Legend in Chinese Film, 1920s–60s,” in The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, ed. Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 309–30. 7. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (New York: A. Knopf, 1976), chapter 2. 8. Joseph R. Allen, “Dressing and Undressing the Chinese Woman Warrior,” Positions 4, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 346.

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This return to domesticity manifests itself not just in the trope of “homecoming” and the conventional familial bliss that greets Mulan’s arrival home; it is also reflected in the tendency, shared by most, if not all, versions of the story, to conclude with Mulan’s resumption of her feminine self—the shedding of her male guise and an almost voyeuristic attention to her (restored) womanly appearance as well as her now-revealed feminine charm.9 A subordination of female agency and subjectivity is no less obvious in the binary characterization that marks the female protagonist in A Tale of Heroic Lovers. On the one hand, the heroine, Thirteenth Sister, is a wandering nüxia who adheres to the chivalric codes of righteousness and honor and who aims to bring justice to her wrongly accused father. Although her embrace of knighterrantry is predominantly motivated by the code of filial piety, it at least makes her a model of courage and heroism that challenges the stereotypical views of women as meek and submissive. But once the injustice done to her father is avenged, the raison d’être for her unorthodox way of life no longer exists, and it is not surprising that she ends up fulfilling the role of a virtuous wife. Sufen Sophia Lai explains the shift thus: Before her marriage, Thirteenth Sister’s chivalrous character and unusual deeds were defined within the principles prescribed for knights-errant; she was allowed to transgress the gender boundaries set up by Confucian orthodoxy. From a patriarchal viewpoint, once her father’s unjust death was avenged and her mother deceased, the heroine no longer had any acceptable reason to continue her chivalry. Therefore, her alternatives besides marriage were a nunnery or death, both of which she considered. We may say that the choice of marriage is a symbolic death of the woman warrior, whose domestication transforms her back into the role dictated by Confucian doctrine.10

Similarly, in his study of cross-dressing in Chinese opera, Siu Leung Li points out that the theatrical representation of the woman warrior, while unique in its extensive presence in the core repertoire, “is repeatedly imbued with layers of gender politics . . . in which woman as the Other is often subordinated in one form or another.”11 The disruptive force of the woman warrior is said to be constantly undermined by the Confucian value of filial piety (towards the family) or loyalty (towards both the husband and the country), or by the notion that the female fighter is simply a construct serving as man’s complementary opposite. This, Li suggests, reflects a persistent attempt to reassert control on the part of the threatened male subject. In other words, rather than a bold, subversive figure posing a serious challenge to patriarchal authority, the woman warrior represents more a symptom of male fears about the

9. Ibid., 350. 10. Sufen Sophia Lai, “From Cross-Dressing Daughter to Lady Knight-Errant: The Origin and Evolution of Chinese Woman Warriors,” in Presence and Presentation: Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition, ed. Sherry J. Mou (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 102. 11. Siu Leung Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 89.

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rise of female power and is thus often reduced, in a predominantly male discourse, as “a potential same-to-be, a yet-not-the-same.”12 However, despite all the strategies of control and discipline, Li is quick to point out their limits, claiming that the normative regulatory ideal can never complete its materialization of “sex” through reiteration of regulatory norms. The recurrent subjugation of women warriors in Chinese opera— and in other cultural forms, for that matter—is thus as much a sign of the necessary incompleteness of patriarchal control as a reflection of its power. What emerges from this view, then, is a more complex image of the woman warrior; an image which, with its dialectic of empowerment and subjugation, is capable of causing a fissure in the discursive space and calling into question the hegemonic patriarchal norms.13 The open, polysemic nature of the woman warrior is precisely what has enabled this iconic cultural figure to be reinterpreted and refunctionalized in different times and places, thereby ensuring her repeated appearance over the centuries. Just as the traditional nüxia, in both literary and theatrical forms, carry a multiplicity of meanings intimately linked to the specific gender politics in premodern China, the action heroines in Hong Kong martial arts cinema are also complex cultural representations shaped and controlled by diverse forces. From an institutional perspective, the changing viewer demographics of Hong Kong cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s represented one such force: as previously argued in the book, the introduction of free broadcast television in 1967 made available new screen entertainment options (e.g., serial dramas and reruns of old classic films) that lured away many older viewers from movie theaters. Paralleling this trend was the rise of a young generation of audiences born after World War II, who not only had an insatiable appetite for sensory stimulation but were also more liberal towards issues pertaining to gender and sexuality. In this context, it comes hardly as a surprise that a different kind of film—one more attuned to the gender imagination of the young generation—would emerge to meet the demands of this new and increasingly vital audience group. Films with young, active, hard-fighting women warriors were a particularly revealing example, although it is important not to overlook the traditional, less progressive ideas that continued to shape these female characters. On a broader level, the women warriors in Hong Kong martial arts cinema need to be considered in connection with the changing gender structures and discourses in the then British colony. The 1960s and 1970s represented a time of profound transformation in Hong Kong; it is during this period that the city took off and set out on a course of rapid industrialization and modernization, which in turn triggered a process in which women’s roles and identities were actively negotiated and redefined. 12. Ibid., 106. Li borrows the phrase from Wlad Godzich’s “Foreword: The Further Possibility of Knowledge,” in Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), xiii. 13. Ibid., 106–7.

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On the one hand, increasing job opportunities brought about by Hong Kong’s expanding manufacturing sector set a context for women’s greater participation in the labor force. According to statistics, the work participation rate of women in Hong Kong had jumped from 36.8 percent in 1961 to 42.8 percent in 1971 and 49.5 percent in 1981.14 While the majority of these women laborers were factory workers toiling away in obscurity, the very fact that they were employed and engaged in extra-domestic work gave them a level of social visibility and financial independence hitherto unseen in previous generations.15 As the economy continued to expand and even more opportunities became available, there were by the late 1960s and early 1970s a growing number of successful career women to bolster the perception that the social status of women was indeed changing. At the same time, as an increasingly modern and Westernized society under British colonial rule, Hong Kong started to embrace more liberal ideas that destabilized, at least partially, the patriarchal norms and structures of traditional Chinese society. Polygamy, for example, was officially abolished in 1971, and the policy of six-year compulsory education, first introduced in 1971 (and extended to nine years in 1978), facilitated higher education attainment for women. Another sign (and consequence) of a more liberal social climate pertaining to questions of gender and sexuality was the proliferation of new images of women in mass culture. The early 1970s witnessed the rapid growth of middlebrow women’s magazines, such as STYLE Hongkong and Femina Hong Kong, which actively invoked the sophisticated, self-confident, professionally successful woman as model to be emulated.16 At a more grassroots level, a new female image can also be observed in the trend of women-oriented comics that emerged around the mid-1960s. Epitomizing this trend was 13-Dot, the first major comic in Hong Kong created by a woman illustrator (Lee Wai-chun) and targeted specifically at female readers. Its title character, modeled loosely on Richie Rich (the “poor little rich boy”) in the famous American comic of the same name, is the teenage daughter of a millionaire. She is pretty and compassionate, has an acute sense of fashion, and uses her immense family fortune to bankroll wild adventures, to learn skills such as bullfighting and ballet dancing, and for charity. In inventing a female 14. Thomas W. P. Wong, “Women and Work: Opportunities and Experiences,” in Women in Hong Kong, ed. Veronica Pearson and Benjamin K. P. Leung (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1995), 50. 15. More importantly, it can be said that these female factory workers played a vital role in the economic success story of Hong Kong. Just like the situation of China today, the rise of Hong Kong as an export-oriented manufacturing center was to a large extent accomplished by the backstage labor of underpaid female workers. Therefore, rather than being a mere effect of modernity, women can be seen as a principal cause for its development. 16. One major way in which the magazines disseminated these new female images was through their regular profiles and interviews with successful career women in Hong Kong. Among the women featured included the managing director of a local advertising agency, a young fashion designer who received her training in London and started her own boutique in Hong Kong, and a one-time actress who became director of AsianAmerican cultural affairs in Los Angeles.

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character who is not only chic and trendy but also has a fiercely independent and adventurous spirit, 13-Dot helped to produce and disseminate a modern, Westernized image of femininity for the consumption of many young women in Hong Kong.17 The cinema, too, arguably the most popular form of mass entertainment in Hong Kong at the time, offered a site where the new images of women in association with the city’s burgeoning urban-industrial modernity could be found. As early as the late 1950s and early 1960s, Motion Picture and General Investment Co. Ltd., then one of the leading studios in Hong Kong Mandarin cinema, made a string of films that explored women’s complex relationships with modernity, focusing in particular on the trope of “crossing borders”—not only geographical borders but also social, moral, and emotional ones.18 Even the hitherto conservative Cantonese cinema made a concerted effort from the mid-1960s on to modernize its representations of women. In doing so, it brought to prominence a new generation of female stars— most notably Siao Fong-fong and Chan Po-chu—who captivated viewers with their youthful and fashionable appearance, their diverse talents (dancing, singing, kung fu fighting), as well as their portrayals of strong, liberated women taking the lead in challenging injustice, striving for free love, and/or breaking down social and traditional moral barriers.19 Two genres in particular showcased these modern representations of women in Cantonese cinema. The first of these is the “youth film” (qingchun pian), a popular genre whose themes revolve centrally around the modern trappings of youth culture—dance halls, night clubs, Western fashion, rock and roll music, fast cars, and even sex and drugs—and the problems associated with modernized but alienated youths caught in a society in flux. In its attempt to capture the minds and actions of young people in a rapidly modernizing Hong Kong, the youth film put into circulation images of a new generation of men and particularly women who, driven by their youthful estrangement and rebelliousness, were not afraid to vent their frustration and to indulge in the hedonism of youth.20 The other example involves what Sam Ho calls the “Jane Bond” film. First introduced around the mid-1960s, this genre was modeled mainly after the imported James Bond films and centered on an action 17. Wendy Siuyi Wong, Hong Kong Comics (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), 77, 83. Apart from 13-Dot, there were also several other comic books that reflected the rapidly shifting images of women at the time. These included Sweet and Gentle, Miss Silly, and Ms. Carefree, the last of which features a sexy female protagonist strongly influenced by imported television programs such as Charlie’s Angels. 18. For a discussion on this idea of border-crossing and its relationship to the modern situation of women, see Mary Wong, “Women Who Cross Borders: MP & GI’s Modernity Programme,” in The Cathay Story, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), 162–75. 19. For more discussion of this new generation of stars, see The Restless Breed: Cantonese Stars of the Sixties, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1996). 20. On this genre of “youth film” and its sociocultural context, see Poshek Fu, “The 1960s: Modernity, Youth Culture, and Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 71–89.

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heroine who is smart and intelligent and whose exceptional fighting skills enable her to overpower male opponents. It is precisely this fantasy of physical and intellectual superiority that made Jane Bond such a gratifying figure for female audiences at the time, many of whom were benefiting from Hong Kong’s rapid economic growth and enjoying a level of freedom and confidence never before seen in the city.21 To this list of unconventional and potentially subversive female images one must add the representations of female knights-errant and other woman warrior types central to the martial arts film. Although such action heroines were by no means something new and had been a regular fixture in Hong Kong cinema since the late 1940s, they took on increasing prominence from the mid-1960s on, embodying a characteristically “modern” image—physically active, bold and independent in spirit, and full of youthful energy—that contrasted sharply with the ways in which women were depicted in films worldwide. This, at least, was part of the popular discourse disseminated at the time; for instance, a film columnist expressed displeasure with the ways women were typically depicted as weak and dependent in Hollywood films. Hong Kong movies, by contrast, were deemed superior as they often featured female characters who were able to confront powerful enemies head-on and did not have to depend on men.22 This idea of the woman warrior as an icon of female empowerment has continued to shape the views of more recent critics. Augusta Lee Palmer and Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, for example, argue that popular genres such as the action film frequently reveal a surprising complexity in terms of their portrayals of women and are in many ways “more permeable to a renewed vision of gender than supposedly progressive and postmodern art films.”23 Similarly, in her book-length study of Yuen  Woo-ping’s Wing Chun (Yongchun, 1993), Sasha Vojković explains how the prominence of women warriors in Hong Kong martial arts and action films reflects the influence of the more egalitarian gender imaginary in Daoist and Buddhist thoughts and undercuts the mode of thinking lying beneath dominant patriarchal systems.24 It needs pointing out here, however, that the changes in socioeconomic status and the mass cultural representations of women discussed above did not entirely transform the underlying gender structures of Hong Kong society. The mere fact that more women became wage workers or had access to higher education does not 21. See Sam Ho, “Licensed to Kick Men: The Jane Bond Films,” in The Restless Breed: Cantonese Stars in the Sixties, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: The Urban Council, 1996), 40–46. It is important to note that the Jane Bond film was not exclusively a product of Cantonese cinema. Shaw Brothers, at about the same time, also produced a host of female espionage and spy films featuring Lin Tsui or Lily Ho, although these efforts never quite caught fire and were put into the shadow by the studio’s growing focus on the martial arts film. 22. Chai Wawa, “Yintan ruozhe” [The weaklings of the silver screen], The Milky Way Pictorial 208 (August 1975): 60. 23. Augusta Lee Palmer and Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, “Of Executioners and Courtesans: The Performance of Gender in Hong Kong Cinema of the 1990s,” in Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural Asia, ed. Jenny Kwok Wah Lau (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2003), 204. 24. Sasha Vojković, Yuen Woo Ping’s Wing Chun (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 1–21.

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necessarily mean that they were “liberated”. On the contrary, there was ample proof of continuing subordination and marginalization of women—pay inequality, job segregation, not to mention the fact that women tended to occupy, whether as wives or as daughters, a subservient position at home.25 This persistent imbalance in gender relations attested to the lasting influence of traditional patriarchal norms in 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong. Many people, particularly those of the older generation, were still strongly attached to traditional Chinese morality, of which patriarchal familism is an integral component. The importance of this ideology was further accentuated by the colonial-capitalist political economy of Hong Kong at the time—an exploitative system that, with its propensity towards fierce and ruthless free-market competition and noticeable lack of social safety net, tended to throw people back on the (patriarchal) family as a shelter. Thus, as Janet Salaff has shown, many working women in Hong Kong in the 1970s still lived with their families before marriage and contributed most of their earnings to them, not only to help with general household expenses but also to meet the personal needs (such as educational expenses) of other, typically male, family members. In addition, being daughters, they were generally not given a major role in family decisions, but frequently had to carry the double burden of paid employment and housework—a situation that would often continue even after they got married, that is, if they did not have to give up working for the sake of housekeeping and/or child-rearing.26 Similarly, there is a more complex dimension to the new images of women being disseminated in the realm of popular culture. These images might serve to challenge or at least destabilize the hegemonic patriarchal order, but they could also support and strengthen it. This paradox was particularly borne out by the action heroines in martial arts films, whose potential to undermine conventional gender norms and representations was time and again weakened by an inability to completely reverse the dominant perceptions of women as devoted daughters and/or wives, or simply as inferior beings dependent on men. At the same time, the image of a physically and mentally tough female fighter, while signifying power and autonomy, was in many ways a mere copy of hegemonic masculinity, which continued to serve as the main standard against which other gender identities were measured. Responding to and participating in the diverse gender and sexual ideologies associated with Hong Kong’s modern industrial society, the woman warrior figure embodied an amalgamation of ideas, values, and desires that both enhanced and obstructed the possibility of new becomings. To substantiate my argument, I turn my focus in the next section to a

25. On the persistent subordinate position of women in modern industrial Hong Kong, see Wong, “Women and Work: Opportunities and Experiences,” 47–73. 26. See Janet Salaff, Working Daughters of Hong Kong: Filial Piety or Power in the Family? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).

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group of films featuring Cheng Pei-pei, one of the most popular female action stars in Hong Kong cinema during the late 1960s.

The Female Masculinity of Women Warriors Cheng Pei-pei, best known in the West for her role as the malicious Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was one of Hong Kong cinema’s most prominent female action stars in the second half of the 1960s. Lauded as “Queen of Martial Arts” (wuxia wanghou) by local media, Cheng starred in more than a dozen martial arts films from 1966 to 1970, before getting married and leaving Hong Kong for the United States. Upon her return in 1973, she signed a contract with Golden Harvest and appeared in Lo Wei’s Kung Fu Girl (Ti wa, 1973), to which I will turn my discussion later in the chapter. The film that propelled Cheng to stardom was King Hu’s Come Drink with Me. In the film, Cheng plays Golden Swallow, a proficient swordswoman dispatched by the governor—her father—to free her brother from a band of outlaws led by JadeFaced Tiger (Chen Honglie). The character impresses not only with her youthful look and exuberance (Cheng was only twenty when she made the film); even more remarkable are her near-fantastic feats of martial prowess, which are displayed early on in the film. In the famous scene at the tavern, Golden Swallow is harassed by thugs sent to negotiate with her about her brother’s release. The scene is carefully shot and the action perfectly choreographed to highlight the martial arts skills of the female knight-errant. At one point, she deftly intercepts with a mere chopstick a mass of coins hurled at her. In order to depict this astonishing feat in a credible way and without lessening its power, the director employed a very simple trick: we see, in a single continuous shot, Golden Swallow move her hand swiftly in the air and then stab into the table a chopstick with many coins (pre)strung on it. That the whole action is depicted in one unedited take, but at a speed too quick for the viewer to fully register (and to realize the artifice), is precisely what makes it appear both otherworldly powerful and eminently believable. But despite the fact that Golden Swallow is depicted as an awe-inspiring female fighter and that she is generally considered the most compelling character in the film, it does not follow that the heroine represents a simple celebration of women’s power. On the contrary, signs abound that her agency is constantly compromised and undermined. For one thing, Golden Swallow is positioned in a very close relationship to the dominant social and patriarchal order as symbolized by her governor-father, and her deeds reflect her position both as his official agent (bringing the band of outlaws to justice) and as his daughter (rescuing her captive brother). In this sense, it can be argued that she fights not so much for women’s freedom and independence as for the perpetuation of men’s authority and power.

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This reinscription of male dominance is further reinforced by the film’s narrative structure, as the focus shifts abruptly about halfway through from Golden Swallow to Fan Dabei, the film’s male protagonist played by Yue Hua. Even during the first half of the film, when Golden Swallow is arguably the principal narrative agent, Fan already serves as a guardian angel to her, assisting her and saving her whenever she is in danger. It is he, for instance, who lures her away from her room one night and secretly helps her avoid being ambushed. He also tips her off to the whereabouts of the outlaws so that she is able to track them down. As the film further develops, Fan effectively takes over the role of the protagonist while Golden Swallow is relegated to a secondary position, acting merely as a foil to his skills. This is particularly evident in the final fight with the renegade monk Liao Kong (Yang Zhiqing): not only does Fan come to the rescue of an injured Golden Swallow, but he is also the only one who possesses the skills needed to defeat Liao. The turning point that marks this shift of narrative focus occurs in the scene where Golden Swallow, disguising herself as a young maiden going to pray, infiltrates the outlaws’ den at a temple and gets into a fierce battle with them. During the fight she is wounded by a poisoned dart; she barely escapes but is too weak to go further. Exhausted, the heroine loses consciousness, which is represented cinematically by a swirling point-of-view shot that visualizes her subjective sensation of dizziness and vertigo (Figure 4.1). Something similar can be seen moments later, after Golden Swallow is rescued by Fan and taken to his mountain hut. As the heroine, irritated by Fan’s mocking remarks about her impetuous actions, decides to leave without having entirely recovered from her injuries, several subjective shots of distorted images— an alternately in- and out-of-focus landscape; the water of a stream changing to an oddly greenish color—are again used to signify her frail conditions. In both cases, Golden Swallow’s reduced abilities are heralded by the negation of her normal vision.

Figure 4.1 Woman as the “impossible” subject of the gaze: the blurred vision of Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei) in Come Drink with Me (1966)

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This is not an insignificant detail if we consider the subtle shift of gaze, which can be taken as a sign of heightened alertness and mental focus, that has hitherto marked the heroine in combat situations. In endowing the female knight-errant with this vigilant gaze but dispossessing her of it in the end, Come Drink with Me clearly bears out a recurrent argument in feminist film criticism: the woman as the subject of the gaze is an “impossible” sign subject to constant control and containment in mainstream (patriarchal) cinema. This ultimate taming of the woman warrior is not unique to Come Drink with Me and can be found in many other martial arts films of the time. Take, for example, Lo Wei’s The Golden Sword (Longmen jinjian, 1969): in the film, Cheng Pei-pei plays the role of a dirt-smeared, cross-dressing vagabond who possesses outstanding martial arts skills and belongs to a group of chivalrous beggars whose mission is to steal from the rich and give to the poor. This, at least, is how the character is portrayed in the beginning, before she meets the swordsman Bai Yulong (Gao Yuan) and eventually falls in love with him. After they get married, the once free-spirited, independent woman warrior is transformed into an obedient wife who drops out of view for long stretches in the second half of the film. In other cases, the characters portrayed by Cheng are not even particularly accomplished fighters who can act on their own or at least form an equal partnership with their male counterparts. Rather, the narrative would often seek to contain them by stressing their dependency on men and reinforcing their inferiority. In Chang Cheh’s The Flying Dagger (Feidao shou, 1969), Cheng’s character—a young swordswoman who incurs the wrath of the Green Dragon Clan’s powerful leader for killing his son—has to be saved time and again by the film’s male protagonist, with whom she has a romantic relationship. Another example is The Golden Swallow, also directed by Chang. Ironically, despite the film’s title, which refers to the same female knight-errant character played by Cheng in Come Drink with Me, the focus is primarily taken away from her. Indeed, as a mere romantic object for the film’s two male protagonists, the heroine is reduced to a major but passive narrative figure—a figure to be fought over rather than one who actively fights. While woman warrior characters continued to appear throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, there is no doubt that they became more and more marginalized within an increasingly male-dominated Hong Kong cinema—a trend best epitomized by the yanggang martial arts films of Chang Cheh and the hard-hitting kung fu films of Bruce Lee. The dominance of this masculinist trend, and the dearth of opportunities for actresses as a result, prompted Cheng’s decision to quit the film industry in 1971. She made a comeback in 1973 with Kung Fu Girl, but despite the powerfully transgressive role she was given in the film—a role that was consistently active in the narrative and offered the actress ample opportunities to showcase her physical skills—the gender politics of the film is far from obvious and needs to be examined closely.

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The story of Kung Fu Girl is set in the chaotic period of mid-1910s China, when Yuan Shikai, the president of the Chinese Republic, was to ratify a treaty that would cede part of northern China to Japan’s control. This reprehensible act of appeasement was met with fierce resistance and provoked many to protest publicly against Yuan. In the film, Cheng Pei-pei plays Xiaoying, a patriotic woman warrior who volunteers to join a group of revolutionaries and helps them find the whereabouts of Cai, their incarcerated leader. To achieve her mission, Xiaoying disguises herself as the long-separated sister of Captain Lei (Ou Wei), who works under Commissioner Wu (played by director Lo Wei) and was responsible for making the arrest of Cai and other dissenters. The impersonation plan works in the beginning, with Xiaoying gaining key intelligence and helping to thwart Lei’s plan to ambush the revolutionaries’ hideout. Her true identity, however, is eventually exposed, and she has no choice but to fight, even at the cost of her own life, to save Cai. Made at a time when kung fu films—a subgenre of martial arts cinema centered on unarmed combat and made popular by Bruce Lee—dominated local as well as regional markets (while also starting to establish a presence among audiences from around the world), Kung Fu Girl was no doubt designed to capitalize on the widespread success of the subgenre and on the global popularity of the action star. The film contains numerous references to Fist of Fury, an enormous box office hit starring Lee and directed, again, by Lo Wei. A palpable strain of anti-Japanese nationalism, for instance, pervades and characterizes both films: just as Fist of Fury can be said to draw on the growing anti-Japanese sentiments of Hong Kong people at the time by depicting Lee as an invincible Chinese hero who fights against evil Japanese opponents, Kung Fu Girl also follows a similar strategy in creating a tough woman warrior character pitted against Japanese imperialist invaders (and their Chinese collaborators). There are other more specific resemblances between the two films. Set pieces, for instance, were often recycled, as when the backroom and garden of Hongkou Dojo, where Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee) battles the Russian wrestler and the katana expert Suzuki near the end of Fist of Fury, were reused in the battle between Xiaoying and the Japanese consul Sano (Shishido Jo) in Kung Fu Girl. The same recycling strategy can also be seen in some of the action sequences. In Fist of Fury, at a key moment in the fight between Chen and the Russian wrestler, a kind of slow-motion ghosting effect is used to underscore Chen’s quirky hand movements. The same technique can also be observed in Kung Fu Girl, the only difference being that Xiaoying is making the motion with her leg instead of with her fists. Likewise, a famous moment in Fist of Fury has Chen delivering a powerful flying kick that sends Suzuki soaring out of the room through a sliding shoji door. In a similar way, towards the end of her fight with Sano, Xiaoying also launches a leaping kick that bursts through a shoji door and hits her Japanese opponent in his head, leaving him instantly debilitated (Figures 4.2 and 4.3).

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Figures 4.2 and 4.3 Original and copy: Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee) in Fist of Fury (1972) (top) and Xiaoying (Cheng Pei-pei) in Kung Fu Girl (1973) (below)

Yet it is in their respective endings that the most striking similarities between the two films can be found. As is well known, the memorable last shot of Fist of Fury shows a defiant Chen Zhen charging and making a flying kick at a line of armed Japanese soldiers. The particular setup of the shot, with the camera placed in the position of the firing squad (and thus right in front of Chen), is clearly meant to emphasize, and to let the viewer experience more forcefully, the audacity of the hero as he meets his death head-on. The shot ends with a freeze-frame of Chen in midair, the ricocheting sound of gunshots hinting at his ultimate fate. In halting the flow of time and thus sparing the hero a gory death, the freeze-frame serves as a symbol of defiance and even transcendence, elevating the image of death to an allegorical sign. Similarly, the ending of Kung Fu Girl is also staged, shot, and edited in a way that underscores the noble intrepidity of a death-defying Xiaoying: after the heroine has killed Sano and succeeded in freeing Cai, she finds herself enclosed by a squadron of law enforcers armed with rifles and guns. The rest of the scene alternates between shots of Xiaoying

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walking fearlessly towards Commissioner Wu and the armed officers, and images of the latter seen from the heroine’s perspective. Gunshots are heard, and the painful expressions on Xiaoying’s face notwithstanding, the heroine refuses to go down but stands defiantly proud and determined. As throbbing music swells, the film cuts to an extreme long shot of Xiaoying still in her firm stance, the only sign of her tragic destiny being the crimson color (symbolizing blood) dripping down from the top of the screen. While not as overtly dramatic as the corresponding moment in Fist of Fury, the ending of Kung Fu Girl shows a similar effort to allegorize death and to provide a symbolic space in which viewers are able to witness a process of regeneration through self-annihilation. There is perhaps nothing surprising about these acts of copying and recycling, which reflect to a large extent the derivative nature of popular cinema—that is, its tendency to repeat with only minor variations what has been proven commercially successful. Indeed, Fist of Fury is hardly the only box office hit that was ripped off; other films, including Chang Cheh’s The One-Armed Swordsman and The Boxer from Shantung, also spawned an abundance of imitations, many of which, like Kung Fu Girl, sought to separate themselves from the originals by featuring a female action protagonist.27 This shift from a male hero to a female heroine in the spinoffs is significant because it highlights an alternative way of understanding woman warrior characters, one that conceives them not as simple icons of female empowerment but rather as copies or imitations of their male counterparts. When applied to Kung Fu Girl, such a view suggests that it is not just the film itself, as a cultural commodity, that sought to copy Fist of Fury; the woman warrior played by Cheng Pei-pei in the film is also best conceived as a virtual image of Bruce Lee—a “spillover,” as Kwai-cheung Lo puts it in a different context, of the “excessive masculinity” that has characterized Hong Kong cinema since the late 1960s.28 Conceiving the woman warrior as an imitation, however, does not necessarily entail a sense of falsehood or inferiority. A better way to conceptualize the issue is perhaps through the idea of “female masculinity”: a case of masculinity without men, a complex gender identity capable of simultaneously reinforcing and transgressing the patriarchal norms from within.29 Even more than Cheng’s previous swordplay films, Kung Fu Girl seems to exemplify this notion of female masculinity, for as a 27. Imitations of The One-Armed Swordsman with a female protagonist include Huang Feng’s The Crimson Charm (Xuefu men, 1971) and Jin Shengen’s One-Armed Swordswoman (Nü dubei dao, 1972). In the case of The Boxer from Shantung, the most representative examples are Ding Shanxi’s Ma Su Chen (Ma Suzhen bao xiongchou, 1972) and Fu Qinghua’s A Brave Girl Boxer in Shanghai (Shanghai tan Ma Suzhen, 1972). 28. Kwai-cheung Lo, “Fighting Female Masculinity: Women Warriors and Their Foreignness in Hong Kong Action Cinema,” in Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 142. 29. Ibid., 137–54. See also Lo, “Copies of Copies in Hollywood and Hong Kong Cinemas: Rethinking the Woman-Warrior Figures,” in Hong Kong Film, Hollywood, and the New Global Cinema: No Film Is an Island, ed. Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam (London and New York, Routledge, 2007), 126–36.

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kung fu film it requires the heroine to take on a “masculine” fighting style accentuating contact and power. I have already noted Cheng’s imitation of the famous flying kick associated with Bruce Lee; more generally, she is also involved in many demanding sparring scenes, all of which emphasize contact fighting and turn the body into a deadly weapon. This female appropriation of a masculine/muscular combat style has the effect of undermining the essentialized relationship between codes of masculinity and femininity and their respective sexes, thus opening up a symbolic space where the traditional gender boundary is increasingly blurry and flexible. For in taking on qualities—the “hard” body, agency, toughness, and so on—historically associated with men, a masculinized woman warrior like Xiaoying in Kung Fu Girl seems to pose a challenge not only to the seemingly “natural” connection between maleness and masculinity, but also to the conventional gender schemas assigned to a female subject, thus producing multiple potentialities out of which new forms of female image and identity can be actualized. Despite, or rather because of, the gap that splits up what a woman is supposed to be in real life (a daddy’s girl; a dutiful, submissive wife; or an alluring girlfriend) from the image of a bold, transgressive woman warrior on screen, it is possible to read this contradiction, as Lo suggests, “in a subversive sense of tension” in which the female fighter is not simply a copy or imitation but “possesses an actual efficiency of its own that sets in motion the process of re-articulation of sexual relations by way of its politicization.”30 Yet a masculine woman warrior is ultimately a more contradictory figure than is usually assumed, for her “masculinization,” while not without its progressive or empowering aspect, also serves to sustain and reinforce the dominance of hegemonic masculinity by perpetuating it as a defining norm legitimizing sexual hierarchy and subordination. In Lo’s words again: Multiplying/pluralizing masculinity in different alternative versions, even by inventing “female masculinity” for women .  .  . would never really pose a significant challenge to the established notion that is fundamentally left unquestioned. Indeed, multiplicity or pluralization only helps make the ideology of masculinity stronger and more powerful, turning it into a stable origin or foundation exempted from any radical deconstruction. A gay masculine female, by the standards of the patriarchal norm, is far less intimidating and repulsive than a straight feminized male because the former differs little from the mainstream notion of masculinity. 31

Despite their dissociation from biological maleness, then, the social constructions of masculinity remain an overriding standard because they can convey symbolic values and thus become a target that different groups, including women, seek to imitate and appropriate for their own purposes. This is precisely the double bind confronting 30. Lo, “Copies of Copies in Hollywood and Hong Kong Cinemas,” 130. 31. Lo, “Fighting Female Masculinity,” 138.

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the woman warrior figure: the difficulty of imagining a subject position that eschews conventional notions of women as being weak and dependent without, however, replicating the dominant norms of masculinity and thus turning them into a stable foundation. To move beyond this double bind, it is useful to take a step back and not to overstate the masculine/muscular combat style in Kung Fu Girl and thus lose sight of its equally vital feminine dimension. Hong Kong martial arts cinema, as is frequently pointed out, has always shown a propensity to emphasize agility and acrobatic skills over sheer muscular power. This is especially true of the swordplay films of King Hu, which are known for their deep affinities with Peking opera and its stylized choreography of action. As the director himself confessed, “I have no knowledge of kung fu whatsoever. My action scenes . . . come from the stylized combat of Beijing opera. In fact, it’s dance.”32 Conceiving cinematic martial arts not as “real” fights or combats but rather as dance—or what Stephen Teo calls “cinema opera,” that is, an amalgamation of stage acrobatics and opera music on the one hand, and cinematic techniques of editing and mise-en-scène on the other33—allows for a certain feminine sensuality to infuse the action sequences and transform them into spectacles of the human body in motion comparable to song-and-dance numbers in musicals. This probably explains why Hu displayed such a deep fascination with the female knighterrant figure and granted her a major presence in many of his films, especially Come Drink with Me and A Touch of Zen, for what he wanted to highlight in his action scenes—the grace and poise of body movement—is arguably better conveyed by an actress, especially one trained in dance.34 While this feminine, dance-like nature of cinematic martial arts is more clearly manifested in the swordplay movie, it is a characteristic that has marked the kung fu film as well, despite the usual association of the latter with violence and aggression. This is presumably what Yvonne Tasker has in mind when she argues that the kung fu films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are memorable not so much for their violence as for the graceful sensuality of the action bodies. She is quick to point out, however, that such sensual physicality does not necessarily result in the feminization of the action hero. Rather, what she is proposing is the idea of cinematic martial arts as a “feminized art form,” that the martial arts performance in film, as with dance, “offers the possibility of occupying a feminine position that involves . . . an explicit location 32. The quote is taken from Koichi Yamada and Koyo Udagawa, A Touch of King Hu, translated into Chinese by Li He and Ma Sung-chi (Hong Kong: Zhengwen she, 1998), 68; the English translation is mine. 33. Teo, “Only the Valiant: King Hu and His Cinema Opera,” in Transcending the Times: King Hu and Eileen Chang, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1998), 19–24. 34. This is perhaps why Cheng Pei-pei was chosen to star in Come Drink with Me in the first place, for Cheng had been trained in ballet and displayed a nimbleness and agility central to the kind of martial arts performance required by Hu. More generally, it is also worth noting that a training background in dance also marked many later female action stars, from Angela Mao and Kara Hui to Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi.

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of the male body on display.”35 In this sense, the transition of the martial arts film from swordplay to kung fu might have resulted in a more masculine action style, but the shift was by no means absolute, and the feminine grace and sensuality of the martial arts “dance” remained central to the kung fu subgenre. Kung Fu Girl, with a tough yet graceful action heroine at the center of its mise-en-scène, is a good illustration of this: interspersed within the film’s violent, hard-hitting fights are moments of dance-like action, as when Xiaoying throws her beautiful high kicks like a dancer, or when the film (twice) depicts, in slow motion, the heroine performing a midair somersault reminiscent of theatrical acrobatics during her battle with Sano. It is precisely moments like these that bring to light the feminine aspects of the film’s martial arts action and impel us to rethink its complex gender meanings. Another way to complicate the notion of female masculinity—in Kung Fu Girl as in other Hong Kong martial arts films—is to draw attention to the practice of female transvestism or cross-dressing. When Golden Swallow first appears and turns up at the inn in Come Drink with Me, she is dressed as a man and is (mis)recognized as such by other characters. In King Hu’s Dragon Inn, we can find a similarly crossdressed heroine (Shangguan Lingfeng) who maintains a male appearance throughout the film. This, I hasten to add, is not something to which the film gives much emphasis. On the contrary, the notion of cross-dressing seems so taken for granted that it requires little attention—except for a brief moment when the main protagonist, Xiao Shaozi (Shi Jun), accidentally discovers the heroine’s true gender identity and appears surprised. In the case of Kung Fu Girl, the adoption of male dress has a special pragmatic function: as Xiaoying overhears Captain Lei’s plan to launch an attack on the revolutionaries, she slips into the guise of a male coal seller so that she can, without being recognized, go to the rebels and relay the news. From a historical standpoint, this tradition of cross-dressing in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, and in such genres as huangmei diao musicals and Cantonese opera films, is rooted in a long history of female transvestism in Chinese theater. In fact, the first fully developed Chinese theater, which emerged during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), favored female players and frequently had them cross-dress to impersonate male characters. According to Siu Leung Li, the foreign rule of the Mongols during the Yuan period, whose intrusion into Han Chinese culture had partially and temporarily suspended the hegemony of orthodox Confucian ideologies, was essential to the formation of an aberrant Chinese theater, with performing conventions considered as deviant exceptions in subsequent periods. The fall of the Yuan dynasty and the restoration of traditional Confucian values during the Ming and Qing periods led to more conservative ideologies with respect to gender and 35. Yvonne Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema,” in Race and the Subject of Masculinities, ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 320.

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sexuality. In the theater, what happened was a reinforcement of hierarchical sexual ordering in two interrelated practices: the male monopolization of the public stage and the restriction of female performers to the private sphere; and the prohibition of mixing players of different sexes in any performance context. Ironically, the desire to separate the sexes was in many ways what brought about a (new) female transvestite theater, in the form of the all-female private troupe, that drastically problematized and destabilized sexual and gender boundaries. Female performers and female cross-dressing eventually returned to the public stage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—a period when the social position of women was radically renegotiated within a rapidly changing modern society—and have assumed a more and more important role since then, as witnessed by the success and popularity of the regional Yue opera in recent times.36 For Li, female cross-dressing in Chinese theater, by virtue of its ability to cut cross and mix up gender boundaries, has often been a disordering and even subversive force in a patriarchal society. The transvestite acts of women warriors in Hong Kong martial arts films can also be said to show a similarly transgressive potential in accentuating the malleability and perfomativity of gender, especially when we consider these acts as part of a larger trend of gender (and identity) play. In Come Drink with Me, there is a revealing example in which Golden Swallow, dressed as a young woman, goes to a temple in order to free her captive brother. At the film’s diegetic level, when the heroine appears in female dress following her initial disguise as a swordsman, she can be said to be “cross-dressing,” assuming with the aid of a visibly feminine appearance a “performed” identity which is in fact her own. This “reverse” cross-dressing can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, as I indicated earlier, the scene at the temple marks the point in the film’s narrative where Golden Swallow gets hurt and loses her function as a narrative subject, a function which she is never able to regain even after recovering from her injuries. In other words, it is exactly at the moment when the woman warrior takes on her female identity that her power over the events is lost and her agency displaced to her male counterpart. Yet a different reading is also possible. The fact that Golden Swallow is able to shift between “sexes” and take on both masculine and feminine masks with ease entails a certain negation of a rigidly conceived gender system and serves to denaturalize and thus destabilize the notions of masculinity and femininity as essential, “Godgiven” categories. It is often suggested that women are more inclined than men to cross gender lines, and that sexual mobility is a distinguishing feature of femininity in its cultural construction. But instead of seeing this simply as a sign of women’s inferior status in society, which presumably makes it easier, and more advantageous, for them to slip into the disguise of men and assume the position of the other (and more powerful) sex, it is also possible to conceive of this fluidity as revealing a performative 36. Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera, 40–64; 191–97.

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understanding of gender, a conception that sees gender as mutable in its very performance.37 This is precisely what we see manifested in the ways Golden Swallow performs both the masculine and the feminine to achieve specific goals in accordance with the needs of the situations. Femininity and masculinity in this context, just like female and male clothing, can be “put on” or “taken off ” at will. Flexible, nonessential, and tactically chosen, such performative gender acts entail an undermining of the binary gender structure and help to bring about, through this destabilization, a more flexible system within the imaginary space of the cinema. More generally, this performative play with gender can be understood as part of a larger phenomenon of role-playing, of assuming roles with very different traits and characteristics. Take, for instance, Lu Bang’s Girl with a Thousand Identities (Feizei hong meigui, 1967): in the film, the heroine played by Siao Fong-fong appears in a variety of guises, from a physical trainer and a modern girl who can sing and dance to a Robin Hood–like cat burglar and a Jane Bond figure sabotaging the plan of a criminal group. Showcasing the diverse talent of the popular actress, this overt play with identities became, not surprisingly, a focal point in advertisements and other publicity materials. Similarly, in Lau Kar-leung’s My Young Auntie (Zhangbei, 1981), Kara Hui plays a young woman who assumes various roles at different points in the film: in the beginning, she is a loyal martial arts student who marries her dying master in order to protect his family fortune from his wicked brother. In doing so, she takes on the position of the family’s matriarch, a “senior” figure to her master’s beloved nephew (played by Lau Kar-leung himself), even though the latter is old enough to be her father. At the same time, despite her revered position in the family and her largely traditional worldview, there is a lighter, more mischievous side to Hui’s character. Ridiculed by her Westernized grandnephew as a country bumpkin, the young matriarch submits herself to a radical makeover and transforms herself, however uneasily, into a sexy, modern-looking woman in heels and a body-fitting qipao dress; she even puts on a bubbly blonde wig and impersonates an eighteenth-century French princess during a masquerade party. But on top of all these personas—head of the family, country bumpkin, modern girl, and sex symbol—the heroine also plays the role of a woman warrior, one who uses her remarkable martial arts skills to fend off suitors and to help protect her master’s family assets (Figure 4.4).38

37. The notion of gender performance (or gender performativity) as I am using it here differs in important ways from that conceived by Judith Butler in her influential book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990). Whereas Butler seeks to limit the agency of the subject by emphasizing the discursive production of gender through reiterated acting, and by locating the subversive potential of gender performance not in the individual’s will but in the unintended effects that expose the failure of the dominant system to ever fully legislate its ideals, my approach gives a larger role to the individual’s power to perform or play with genders in a conscious way. 38. For her dazzling performance in My Young Auntie, Kara Hui was awarded Best Actress at the first Hong Kong Film Awards.

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Figure 4.4 Kara Hui in the guise of a traditional nüxia in My Young Auntie (1981)

The fact that a character can take on multiple roles shows that one’s identity is not fixed or immutable. This emphasis on multiple and flexible identities can be said to reveal the burdens on women, in Hong Kong as in other places, to appear in different guises in different situations, a necessity demanded by a modern society in the grip of conflicting values pulling in separate directions at the same time. The changing personas can also feed fantasies of hidden sophistication: when Golden Swallow appears as a young woman and infiltrates the outlaws’ den in the temple, the overtly feminine appearance, with its connotations of softness and delicacy, masks a powerful, selfdetermining woman warrior who is able to fight for what she wants. On the other hand, we see in My Young Auntie the generally tough and tradition-minded heroine transform herself into a seductive modern girl who attracts male admirers in droves; but even in her skintight outfit, she is still able to fight them off. These examples are symptomatic of a widespread fantasy shared by many factory girls and other aspiring females in Hong Kong—that a woman often holds more promise than her mere appearance suggests, and that beneath the surface frequently lies a more gifted and versatile being.

Masquerade Politics: Performative Femininity and Gender Play Female masculinity, as I tried to show above, provides a useful framework for understanding the woman warrior figure in Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Yet it is also clear from the earlier discussion that the notion of the woman warrior as a copy or imitation of her male counterpart is more complex than is often realized and should be approached with caution. For example, the shift towards an increasingly violent and muscular combat style, as seen most clearly in the kung fu subgenre, was to a large extent incomplete and existed along with a more feminine conception of cinematic martial arts as dance. On the other hand, the significance of cross-dressing,

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of the woman warrior’s conscious appropriation of masculine outfit and behavior, lies not so much in the identification with male authority as in the performative power of gender play. It is worth mentioning that the idea of gender play encompasses not only crossdressing but also an array of other gender performances. One example (which seems to be at the opposite end of female masculinity) involves the feminine masquerade, or the deliberate flaunting of normative femininity. As a form of gender play, masquerade is not as straightforward as transvestism, which can be readily understood—in part at least—as a way for women to gain mastery and control through the assumption of a male identity. Masquerade, by contrast, remains in many ways a mystery because it is not clear why, given the inferior status of the female sex in a patriarchal world, a woman would want to wear a feminine mask and foreground her feminine traits except to satisfy men’s desires. A possible explanation considers masquerade as a defense mechanism: in the essay “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” Joan Riviere discusses a case study of an American businesswoman who, after virtuoso public performances, was compelled to coquettishly engage male colleagues. From this, Riviere proposes a theory of masquerade, which argues that a woman’s flaunting of her femininity serves as a way to mask the possession of masculinity and to fend off reprisals of her appropriation of masculine power. In Riviere’s theory, then, masquerade constitutes a norm of femininity, but a rather curious one that shows through its very contradictions the difficulty of any concept of femininity in a patriarchal society. Femininity functions only as a disguise to cover up the woman’s appropriation of masculinity, a deception intended to placate a potentially vengeful father figure.39 Within the context of a rapidly modernizing Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, this notion of masquerade had a special relevance. While increasing job opportunities, higher education attainment, and a more liberal milieu enabled women to occupy more important economic and social roles, there were many entrenched stereotypes and prejudices as well that forced them into various acts of role-playing. As Hong Kong sociologist Benjamin K. P. Leung argues, career women in Hong Kong were often “forced to play and reconcile contradictory roles. On the one hand, they had to prove themselves worthy of the position of authority; on the other, to make life easy for themselves, they were obliged to live up to men’s expectations that women are soft, gentle, and vulnerable. To resolve the dilemma, many chose to rely on feminine charm.”40 As in the case of the American businesswoman examined by Riviere, the display of femininity here functions for the most part as a reaction-formation, a compensatory gesture that makes femininity dependent upon masculinity for its very definition and existence. 39. Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” in Psychoanalysis and Woman: A Reader, ed. Shelley Saguaro (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 70–78. The essay was originally published in 1929. 40. Benjamin K. P. Leung, “Women and Social Change,” in Women in Hong Kong, 34.

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Yet Riviere’s theory (and its adoption by Leung in the Hong Kong context) is just one way of understanding the gender meanings of masquerade. Alternatively, as in the formulation by Mary Ann Doane, masquerade can be taken not as a compensatory mechanism for the possession of masculinity, but rather as a mask that defamiliarizes conventional imagery of women and disarticulates male systems of viewing.41 To illustrate her point, Doane turns to the femme fatale, a stock figure in cinema and popular culture who is both attractive (in a traditionally feminine and often sexy way) and dangerous (using her charms for particular gains, frequently leading the men who become involved with her into difficult and even deadly situations). This mysterious, seductive figure, while adhering to patriarchally defined features of femininity such as sexual appeal and the quality of “to-be-looked-at-ness,” also defamiliarizes them by turning them into a threat (and thus a source of active feminine power).42 Just as female masculinity constitutes a gender performance where masculinity is de-essentialized and functions as a discursive construct, the masquerade, in conceiving femininity as a mask that can be put on or taken off, also hints at the lack of a feminine essence and thereby generates a critical distance from which to engage with the idea of womanliness. For Doane, the ability of the masquerade to generate a distance from a fixed, essentialized femininity, especially one stipulated as proximity and presence, has radical implications for a reconceptualization of female spectatorship. Unlike Laura Mulvey, who has famously defined the structure of the gaze in mainstream cinema as characterized by an active-male/passive-female dichotomy,43 Doane proposes a different way of conceiving the screen-spectator relationship, one based on the opposition between proximity and distance. More specifically, she invokes Christian Metz and Noël Burch and argues that a distance between the film and the spectator is the crucial precondition for voyeuristic desire in the cinema. For the female spectator, however, this necessary distance or gap is often found missing, not only because of the general “over-presence” of the woman’s image—its glamorous, larger-than-life, even fetishistic quality—which tends to confer a narcissistic closeness on the relationship between the female spectator and the woman on/as screen, but also due to a widespread tendency within feminist criticism to identify a feminine specificity in terms of proximity and presence-to-itself. Consequently, the female spectator, deprived of the distance essential in structures of seeing, can only be the subject of the gaze by assuming a masculine (i.e., voyeuristic) position in relation to the cinematic sign, or she can identify so closely with the image that she finds herself in a masochistic position of over-identification.44 Not satisfied with either scenario, Doane sees the 41. Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” Screen 23, nos. 3–4 (September–October, 1982): 74–87. 42. Ibid., 82. 43. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn, 1975): 6–18. 44. Doane, “Film and the Masquerade,” 76–80.

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radical value of masquerade precisely in its potential to recover that missing distance from the image. “To masquerade,” as she argues, “is to manufacture a lack in the form of a certain distance between oneself and one’s image”; 45 the concept of femininity as masquerade thus provides the woman with the distance and the alienation needed for an alternative mode of looking. In what follows, I use Chor Yuen’s Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (Ainu, 1972) as an example to explore the multiple meanings of masquerade discussed above. Arguably one of the most fascinating, if unconventional, Hong Kong martial arts films from the 1970s, Intimate Confessions caused a stir upon its release with its sensational mix of gory violence and soft-core eroticism, not to mention its provocative depiction of lesbianism. The film has since attained cult status and was remade as Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan (Ainu xinzhuan) in 1984. Intimate Confessions opens—in medias res—with a prologue shrouded in mystery: Inspector Ji (Yue Hua) is investigating the death of a prominent nobleman and discovers that a courtesan named Ainu (Lily Ho) was the last person to see the victim alive. The film then cuts to the credit sequence in which the courtesan, waking up from a siesta, frolics in fluttering silken robes in dreamy slow motion. Beneath this image of a relaxed, carefree woman, however, is a tormented character. It turns out that Ainu is among a group of young women kidnapped and sold to a bustling brothel. The owner of the brothel, Chun Yi (Ding Pei), is a brilliant martial artist and is perfectly willing to kill those who betray her. This point is quickly made to Ainu, along with indications of a comfortable life if she submits to the demands of her captor. Ainu remains defiant at the outset and is brutally tortured for her noncompliance. Fascinated by Ainu’s beauty and toughness, Chun Yi, in a rare depiction of lesbian sexuality in Hong Kong cinema at the time, licks Ainu’s wounds and performs oral sex (not explicitly shown) on her helpless captive as the soundtrack screeches along. In another notorious segment of the film, Ainu’s virginity is auctioned off to a group of rich patrons, who violate her sexually in a series of hideous and repulsive scenes, complete with slow motion of gleefully laughing elderly men and exaggeratedly parodic music. After a botched escape, Ainu all but gives up hope of running away, although she maintains a burning desire for vengeance. While plotting her revenge, she becomes all that Chun Yi wants her to be, even acquiescing to a lesbian relationship with the latter. Deeply infatuated, Chun Yi teaches all of her martial arts skills to Ainu, who is gaining increasingly more power and influence within the brothel. At this juncture, the film picks up where the pre-credit sequence left off. The murdered nobleman turns out to be one of the elderly men who violated Ainu years ago, and although the latter is clearly the culprit, Inspector Ji finds himself unable to do anything about it. Nor can he stop Ainu from continuing her murderous plan: not only is there a lack of solid evidence, but Ainu also has the protection of the imminent 45. Ibid., 82.

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victims themselves, whose lust for her blinds them to her true intent. In the meantime, the bodies start piling up, and Ainu’s bloody vengeance finally leads her back to the brothel for a final confrontation with Chun Yi. In a way, Intimate Confessions seems to be just another rape-revenge fantasy where the melodramatic story of a sexually violated woman seeking revenge on her victimizers is used as an excuse to exploit and satisfy the viewer’s appetite for violence and sex, the two features that dominated Hong Kong cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The rape-revenge narrative also provides a convenient way to justify the presence of a nontraditional female character who is hateful of men and who wreaks havoc on a world dominated by men’s interests, although it can be argued that the patriarchal unconscious operating in the film retains an ultimate understanding of the heroine as weak and inferior. This, according to Kwai-cheung Lo, is precisely how the film’s surprise ending should be understood: no matter how tough and powerful she has become, Ainu is in the end a victim of her own “feminine” emotions; it is because of a woman’s “soft nature” that she yields to the dying wish of Chun Yi and kisses her one more time.46 This turns out to be a grave mistake, for Ainu is killed by the poison on Chun Yi’s lips. The demise of the lesbian lovers, Lo goes on to suggest, are inevitable because they spare the male viewers the unpleasant prospect of witnessing tough, men-hating women prevailing and going unpunished in the end. It is not my intention to argue against this particular interpretation of the film, but I do think that the film’s representations of female sexuality and agency are much more complex and merit interpretations from other perspectives. To start with, it is worth pointing out that what distinguishes Ainu as a character is in many ways her amalgamation of both masculine and feminine characteristics. Not only is she equipped with excellent combat skills, which are clearly displayed in her battle with Chun Yi and the latter’s cronies at the end of the film, but there is also a marked emphasis on the seductive beauty and erotic charm that form part of her armory as a female avenger. Indeed, for all her fighting abilities, Ainu avenges herself on her violators not so much by force as by using her feminine appeal to cast a seductive spell on them. The primacy given to eroticism over action is important for two different reasons. At one level, it provides an opportunity for the director to exploit the strong appetite for erotic stimulation among a growing young population. On the other hand, it serves a broader thematic function, creating a close parallel between Ainu’s acts of vengeance and the sexual humiliations she has experienced, the lone difference being the reversal of roles between victim and victimizer.

46. Lo, “Qishi niandai Xianggang dianying li de ying nüzi” [Tough women in Hong Kong cinema of the 1970s], in Zama shidai: wenhua shenfen, xingbie, richang shenghuo shijian yu Xianggang dianying 1970s [Age of hybridity: Cultural identity, gender, everyday life practice, and Hong Kong cinema of the 1970s], ed. Lo Kwai-Cheung and Eva Man Kit-Wah (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2005), 110.

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In articulating a gender identity that brings together conventionally masculine and feminine elements, Ainu prefigured the “action babe heroine” in contemporary cinema—an attractive, sexualized woman warrior with superior combat skills, who functions simultaneously as the action subject of the narrative and the erotic object of visual spectacle.47 As a figure embodying a mix of both active and passive traits, the action babe represents an explicit address to feminist concerns at the same time as she reflects the anxieties, and thus the desires to dominate and control, provoked by the rise of female power in a patriarchal society. Similar to Riviere’s idea of masquerade, then, the cultural logic behind the action babe figure lies in an attempt to make the appropriation of active masculine power by a woman less problematic by foregrounding her desirability in conventional feminine terms. The tendency to highlight feminine attractiveness—and thus the primacy given to male desire—is also evident in Intimate Confessions. Yet this line of argument needs qualification, for while many male viewers may want to appropriate Ainu as a fantasy sex object, their desires are compromised by the fact that the beguiling sexuality of the heroine constitutes a form of masquerade, an excess of femininity that poses a threat—at least in the diegetic world of the film—to those who crave for it. Like a femme fatale, then, Ainu is a seductive but perilous woman whose charms ensnare men in bonds of irresistible desire, bringing them great trouble and danger as a result. No less importantly, just as the masquerade causes a subversion of male desire and the masculine structure of the gaze, it also has the potential of creating a new position for the female spectator. Such a position, as Doane points out, is predicated on the ability of masquerade to produce a distance from femininity and “to generate a problematic within which the image is manipulable, producible, and readable by the woman.”48 In order to survive in a world dominated by lust, Ainu transforms or masquerades herself into the most desirable being of all, using her beauty and sexual appeal to forward her goals. The feminine mask she puts on is therefore a disguise, a form of play rather than the manifestation of an essence, and the female spectator who sees through the masquerade understands that femininity is simply a performance and is thus better able to stand back from it. In addition to formulating a new mode of female spectatorship, the de-emphasis on physical combat and the refashioning of the woman warrior as a masquerading femme fatale are also indicative of a larger tendency of genre-bending in Intimate Confessions. Put otherwise, while the film contains many motifs and features characteristic of martial arts cinema, it often rethinks them in drastically different ways and twists their meanings to suit its own agenda. Consider the theme of training and the associated master-disciple relationship: using the brothel as a stand-in for the 47. Marc O’Day, “Beauty in Motion: Gender, Spectacle and Action Babe Cinema,” in Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. Yvonne Tasker (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 201–18. 48. Doane, “Film and the Masquerade,” 87.

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martial arts school, the film likens the brothel madam to the master figure. Ainu, the “disciple,” is not only taught how to fight but is also forcibly “trained” in how to provide sexual services to men (as shown in a brief scene near the beginning of the film). If training, as has been suggested in the first chapter, conjures up the ascetic ethic underpinning Hong Kong’s colonial-capitalist modernity, it is here reconceptualized and deconstructed as a form of exploitation—which is in a way what asceticism as a work ethic/ideology really is, producing an industrious and disciplined but yet docile labor force to be appropriated for capital accumulation. And while training is still linked to empowerment and serves as a means for vengeance as in many other martial arts films (e.g., the seductive control of Ainu over her violators is presumably an outcome of her “training” in the brothel), the process is reimagined from a noble act of vengeance—for one’s master or sworn brother—to the perverse (albeit rightful) retaliation of a violated woman, an undertaking in which the female avenger is shown degenerating into a cruel, merciless victimizer indistinguishable from her oppressors. At this juncture, it is perhaps useful to ask who precisely Ainu’s object(s) of revenge is/are. On one level, the answer seems pretty evident; it clearly pertains to the four elderly noblemen who have sexually assaulted the heroine. But what about Chun Yi, who is in many ways the true cause of Ainu’s misery? If we accept that Chun Yi is also a revenge target, the question then becomes why Ainu chooses to kiss her in the end (and thus give her an opportunity to retaliate)? If we take Intimate Confessions as a simple revenge story, Ainu’s relationship with Chun Yi—her apparent acquiescence to her demands—is nothing but a pretense, just as her overt femininity is used to mask her desire to avenge herself on the lustful men. In this case, there is no strong reason why Ainu would feel sympathy for who is essentially her main victimizer. Is this simply a handy way, as some have suggested, to get rid of Ainu, whose triumph in the end would have posed a threat to hegemonic masculinity? Or  does it point to a different reading, one that entails a different relationship between Ainu and Chung Yi? To better answer these questions, let me take a short detour and consider briefly Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan, the loose remake of Intimate Confessions directed by Chor Yuen in 1984. Adhering to the same basic premise about a young woman being abducted and coerced into prostitution, the remake stands out in its attempt to underscore the affinities, and ultimate reversal of roles, between the brothel’s cruel and scheming madam (Candace Yu) and the ill-fated country girl-turned-courtesan (Nancy Hu). As the film stresses at various points, the madam was once, like her captive, a poverty-stricken, homeless young woman who nonetheless showed a fiercely defiant spirit. The fact that the two women have very similar backgrounds and share the same boldness of character brings them increasingly closer to one another. In fact, the madam develops a growing romantic interest—as opposed to a mere proprietary one—in her victim, and the latter takes advantage of this and turns herself

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from a vulnerable prey into a heartless oppressor. The madam, meanwhile, becomes lost and mired in sorrow and delusion, a victim to her own insatiable desire. What we witness, then, is a gradual transformation process in both characters, with each assuming the other’s initial roles and personas. While not as explicitly articulated as in Lust for Love, a similar exploration of the subtle relations between the victimizer and the victimized is also evident in Intimate Confessions. Time and again, the film hints at the possibility that Ainu and Chun Yi are in reality one person—or more accurately, a double of each other. They assert repeatedly that they are “one being” and cannot be separated, while Ainu also confesses near the end of the film that she has become as heinous as Chun Yi, and that both of them are “despicable, heartless, merciless, brutal, and sick.” This idea of the double, or doppelgänger, is also expressed visually, as can be seen in a brief but fascinating scene between Chun Yi and Ainu two-thirds into the film. The scene begins with a close-up of Chun Yi’s face, in profile, that fills the right side of the widescreen image. Interestingly, the face, seemingly cut off from the madam’s body (due to the close-up) as well as from the rear part of her head (which is blocked by a silk curtain), gives the impression of being a “mask” hanging in midair. This impression is further reinforced by the mysterious impassiveness of the face/mask and by the fixed gaze into the distance. With its abstract femininity, the face/mask could belong to any woman; indeed, it bears more than a slight resemblance to Ainu’s visage— a point made particularly evident when a rack focus shifts the viewer’s attention from the face/mask to Ainu as she, also in profile, enters the frame in the background from left (Figure 4.5). This association of Ainu and Chun Yi continues throughout the rest of the scene, and one has a strong feeling that although the two characters seem to be talking to one another, there is an uncanny, almost dream-like quality about their “exchanges” as if Ainu were speaking not to a real person but rather to a mirror image of herself.

Figure 4.5 Victim and victimizer as one: Ainu (Lily Ho, left) and Chung Yi (Ding Pei, right) in Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972)

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It is perhaps from this perspective that one should make sense of the film’s ending. If Ainu concedes to Chun Yi’s dying request (for one final kiss) and loses her life as a result, this is not because of the heroine’s “feminine emotions”; rather, it has more to do with the fact that the two characters, at a discursive level, can be conceived of as one being, one person. Therefore, in taking the life of Chun Yi, Ainu is in a sense also bringing her own demise. Such a reading has the advantage of understanding the film beyond the framework of a rape-revenge fantasy (with a lesbian twist) and drawing attention to its broader rethinking of the martial arts genre. At one level, in underscoring the mimetic nature of violence and the reversibility of roles between the oppressor and the oppressed, the film poses serious questions about the ethical legitimacy of revenge so often taken for granted in martial arts films. More generally, the fact that Chun Yi and Ainu share an indivisible bond between them—albeit one grounded not in mutual loyalty and respect but rather in exploitation, hatred, deceit, and delusion—can be construed as a perverse variation of the kind of idealized male bonding highlighted in the films of Chang Cheh and others around the period. Read symptomatically, the perversity of the relationship, which makes it problematic and even threatening to the hegemonic patriarchal order and thus needs to be gotten rid of, reflects the male anxieties over the growing female visibility and influence in modern Hong Kong. The gender representations of Intimate Confessions are complex and cannot be limited to any single position or meaning. While the film suggests the possibility of a new female subject position based on the masquerade, it also reinforces the notion of a threatening female order that needs to be contained. This complex dynamics of power and peril, autonomy and control, is played out most clearly in the character of Ainu, who along with Golden Swallow, Xiaoying, and other cinematic women warriors embody the goal of female enfranchisement while betraying at the same time the degree to which traditional gender ideologies still prevail.

5 Marginal Cinema, Minor Transnationalism

In 1973, the burgeoning kung fu craze reached a peak with Enter the Dragon, a joint production between Warner Bros. and Bruce Lee’s Concord Production that grossed an astounding $115 million worldwide off a budget of $850,000.1 For Lee, the collaboration with a major Hollywood studio, with its abundant production resources and enormous distribution network around the world, represented an opportunity to further boost and strengthen his international standing. For Warner Bros., on the other hand, the decision to invest on a martial arts film led by a Chinese action star indicated the studio’s recognition of Lee’s growing esteem and reflected its desire to tap into what was at the time a highly lucrative trend. Without doubt, by the time Enter the Dragon was made, the kung fu film had emerged as a global trend and a market force to reckon with. In addition to its popularity among African-American/ Hispanic urban viewers and white working-class audiences in the United States, the genre also had many subcultural fans in Europe, not to mention a massive following among the marginalized and disenfranchised groups in many third world countries. For example, reports had it that The Big Boss, Bruce Lee’s first kung fu film, was shown in packed theaters in Beirut for six weeks before its run had to be cut short due to the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). Even so, the film was able to attract more viewers in second-run theaters than did its American counterpart.2 Made over two decades later in 2000, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was another martial arts film involving transnational capital, multinational cast and crew collaboration, as well as multiethnic, cross-cultural reception. Defying the expectations of many critics, the film turned out to be a huge success. Not only did it become the highest grossing foreign language film in the United States and go on to win four awards at the Oscars, it was also an enormous box office hit in many parts of the world, including Taiwan and many Southeast Asian countries, though 1. The $850,000 production budget of Enter the Dragon, while unprecedented in Hong Kong cinema at the time, was relatively modest when compared to most Hollywood films. For instance, The Man with the Golden Gun, a 1974 James Bond film starring Roger Moore, was produced at a budget of $7 million. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) went even further, costing almost $12 million and ushering in a trend of blockbuster productions. 2. See Raymond Chow, “Guopian jinjun oumei de yidian ganxiang” [Some thoughts on the march of Chinese films towards Euro-American markets], Golden Movie News 14 (May 1973): 22–23.

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not—symptomatically—China or Hong Kong.3 The film’s worldwide success further strengthened Chinese presence in world cinema and paved the way for the emergence of what I call global Chinese-language martial arts blockbusters—a highly visible trend that has produced Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Kung Fu Hustle, The Promise, and other internationally renowned films. There is perhaps nothing surprising about what is said above; much has been written about the global prominence of Chinese-language martial arts cinema. As an agent of transnational cultural flows, it has been circulating alongside American and other global-oriented films and commodities in different parts of the world, playing a formative role in much of today’s action cinema. But while both Enter the Dragon and Crouching Tiger can be regarded as examples of transnational filmmaking, variations in their production practices, formal and stylistic strategies, as well as patterns of circulation and consumption attest to the complex multiplicity of cross-border cinematic ventures. Specifically, it is my contention that Crouching Tiger and the trend of global Chinese-language martial arts cinema it helped to usher in share to a greater or lesser extent some general characteristics—a “blockbuster” mode of production and a self-legitimizing discourse of cultural authenticity, for instance—that aim at countering and even challenging Hollywood hegemony. What this entails is a conception of transnational cultural politics in terms of domination and resistance, which in turn shows the growing power of China and its desire to assert its (cultural) presence on a global scale. Enter the Dragon, on the other hand, eschews the pretensions to power and authenticity associated with the recent martial arts blockbusters and is best conceptualized as an instance of “minor transnationalism”—a mode of transnational practice that operates not so much on a hierarchical relationship of domination and resistance as on a horizontal one involving processes of translation and transculturation. It is precisely this minor mode of transnationality in Hong Kong martial arts cinema of the late 1960s and 1970s that I want to explore and investigate more closely in this chapter.

Minor Transnationalism and Martial Arts Cinema There is no question that transnationalism has become a buzzword in film studies today. Over the past two decades, film scholars have increasingly questioned the “national cinema” paradigm and focused their attention on issues of transnational film production, circulation, and reception. This is surely an encouraging trend, but it is important to ask where all this focus on transnationalism has led us in terms of 3. Just as Crouching Tiger had a no more than a lukewarm reception in Hong Kong and China, Enter the Dragon was also not as popular in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia (with the exception of Japan) as Bruce Lee’s earlier movies. In Hong Kong, the film took in about HK$3.3 million—huge business for the time, but significantly less than Lee’s other films.

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a reconceptualization of film history. A major narrative in transnational film studies hinges on the notion of “global Hollywood,” which posits that Hollywood, aided by government support, aggressive business practices, and an ostensibly universal narrative form, constitutes the only global cinema in terms of market presence and domination, and that other film industries, while they may show transnational ambitions, are seldom able to control markets and audiences in the way Hollywood does (and has done for a long time).4 In fact, given the hegemonic influence of Hollywood, it is often assumed that filmmakers around the world can only globalize themselves through either of the following two ways: going to Hollywood and making films there, or at least emulating the Hollywood model (e.g., its tendency towards bigbudget productions centered on established stars and genres, high-tech visual and special effects, and expensive, broad-based marketing campaigns); or, alternatively, resisting Hollywood and countering its entertainment-oriented ethos with more serious subject matter and unconventional narrative/visual styles. While the first option has resulted in the globalization of the blockbuster aesthetics and its growing propensity to shape and control commercial cinemas around the world, the second is best exemplified by the international art cinema, which has historically existed as a niche alternative—albeit an increasingly prominent one—to mainstream commercial productions. But despite their vastly different positioning vis-à-vis Hollywood, the two approaches share a similar logic in that they both adhere to a vertical conception of cinematic transnationalism. In both instances, Hollywood is posited as the center against which other film practices define themselves: assimilation in the first case, and competition and/or resistance in the second. Similarly, when it comes to action cinema, the binary model of transnational cinema noted above entails the bifurcation of the genre into two major trends: Hollywood action films and their global imitators at one end of the spectrum, and at the other end, alternative modes of action cinema that, as exemplified by the recent global Chinese-language martial arts films, engage in a vertical struggle for recognition and influence against the rule of the Hollywood paradigm over film markets worldwide. However, while the hierarchical dynamics in global film culture is evident and not to be denied, to frame our understanding of late 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films entirely through this lens is to ignore what is most fascinating and unique about the film’s transnational practices. Emerging out of a rich cosmopolitan 4. On Hollywood’s global dominance from a political-economic and cultural policy perspective, see Toby Miller et al., Global Hollywood 2 (London: British Film Institute, 2004). For a cognitive-formalist approach that attributes the global appeal of Hollywood films to presumably universal aesthetic principles based in some kind of biologically hardwired structure, see the work of David Bordwell, including Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); “Convention, Construction, and Cinematic Vision,” in Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, ed. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 87–107; and The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006).

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local (film) culture, itself an outgrowth of a rapidly modernizing society that had established itself as a major node in the network of regional and international flows, Hong Kong martial arts films of the period acquired a deeply transnational orientation that can be seen not only in their propensity to draw on ideas and styles from various foreign film cultures, but also in their ability to cross borders and expand the currency of Hong Kong cinema on foreign markets. But unlike the recent trend of global Chinese-language martial arts films, not to mention the big-budget, effectsdriven Hollywood action blockbusters, the earlier swordplay and kung fu films from Hong Kong constituted by and large a “minor” cinema with limited production means and a class-based aesthetic more primed to downmarket pleasures than to mainstream standards of value. In addition, their relationships with Hollywood—and other foreign cinemas, for that matter—were complex and manifold, and cannot be reduced simply to a process of assimilation or opposition.5 With their marginality (in both industrial and aesthetic terms) as well as their micropractices of transnationality grounded in nonhierarchical interactions with cinemas and cultures around the world, Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s are best conceived as an example of what may be called “minor transnationalism.” The idea of minor transnationalism is not new and was first proposed by Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih.6 The departure point for their analysis is the failure of current theories of globalization to give intrinsic legitimacy to minority subjects and their cultures, which are by and large conceptualized in such a way that they are easily assimilated into a binary conception of transnationalism. Discussions of globalization, they argue, have too often presumed a hierarchical relationship of domination and resistance between the global and the local. For them, there is no question that minor or minority cultures are part of the globalization process, existing within the space of increasing global integration brought about by migration and capital and information flows. But what is often ignored or made invisible is the fact that these cultures also develop practices and networks of communication that exceed the parameters of theories stressing a binary, dominant-resistant model of transnational flows. To go beyond this oversimplistic view, Lionnet and Shih propose an alternative framework that focuses not only on the border-crossing connections between

5. Like the notion of “minor literature” proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), the “minor cinema” of late 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films, as we will see, also had the effect of “deterritorializing” a major language—Hollywood and Japanese action films in this case—through the processes of active appropriation and hybridization. But my discussion also emphasizes a more flexible, multi-perspective model of interactions between the major and the minor, which are not confined to vertical or hierarchical relations of power. 6. Françoise Lionnet and Shu-Mei Shih, “Thinking through the Minor, Transnationally,” in Minor Transnationalism, ed. Françoise Lionnet and Shu-Mei Shih (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 1–23.

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minor and major cultures, but also on the minor-to-minor networks that bypass the major altogether. This broader perspective is said to be able to bring new insights about how cultures—particularly minor ones—negotiate national, ethnic, and cultural boundaries, thereby revealing and underscoring the minor’s inherent complexity and multiplicity.7 As Lionnet and Shih conceive it, the idea of minor transnationalism is used primarily in relation to minority cultures; that is, the cultures of ethnic or sociological groups whose members, while not necessarily numerically inferior, are in a fringe or subordinate position vis-à-vis the dominant groups in terms of social status, education, employment, wealth, and/or political power. Being systematically ignored, distorted, and/or suppressed, minority cultures frequently find themselves struggling to have their voices heard even though they form an integral part of society. In a sense, Hong Kong has always exemplified such a minority culture. As a British colony, it was not only dominated, territorially as well as politically and economically, by the colonial power, but the effects of domination had also been felt in the realm of cultural ownership. This is not to suggest that Hong Kong culture was entirely supplanted, but the colonial mentality, coupled with the fact that Hong Kong was for a long time an immigrant city and thus often seen as a mere space of transit, has fostered the belief that Hong Kong could not have its own culture.8 At the same time, from a nativist Chinese perspective, Hong Kong culture is also found lacking because it is too Westernized and commercialized, a symbol of decadence and inauthenticity “tainted” by the city’s long years of colonial rule and capitalist exploitation. As a result, it is not usually seen as part of “authentic” Chinese traditions, which are deemed to be more legitimately located in mainland China and (to a lesser extent) Taiwan. Another way of saying this is that Hong Kong culture, as has been argued by Rey Chow and others, is constantly caught in a marginalized, “in-between” position overshadowed by both British colonialism and Chinese nativism.9 What this suggests, however, is not simply that Hong Kong’s cultural productions have often been ignored or relegated to a marginal realm; this is no doubt the case, but what is less remarked on is how such marginalization has contributed to a “minor” aesthetic marked by a certain “lack” or “deficiency” in terms of conventional production and artistic/cultural values, as can be seen in the emphases given to sensationalism and mass market appeal that give much of Hong Kong popular culture a commercial trash status. Also important to note is how this chronic state of in-betweenness has helped 7. Ibid., 5–12. 8. Ackbar Abbas calls this inability to recognize or acknowledge the existence of Hong Kong culture, a tendency best epitomized by the common perception of Hong Kong as “a cultural desert,” a case of “reverse hallucination.” See Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 6–7. 9. Rey Chow, “Between Colonizers: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s,” Diaspora 2, no. 2 (Fall, 1992): 151–70.

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foster a transnational imaginary in Hong Kong society and culture. Fully aware of itself as a kind of “bastard” and thus its own impurities, the local constituted in Hong Kong’s cultural and cinematic production has tended to eschew a conception of itself as bounded entity, with all its connotations of a fixed and well-delineated identity. Rather, it has actively sought to create a more fluid space for itself, a space porous to the infiltrations of alien elements—not only from neighboring nations and regions, but also from places far beyond its borders—and thus conducive to the formation of a “trans-subjectivity” capable of crossing boundaries. This transnational orientation is presumably what Kwai-cheung Lo has in mind when he argues that “the meaning of the Hong Kong local is always already overdetermined by the framework of the transnational,” and that “in the case of Hong Kong, the local is the transnational itself in its becoming.”10 The two aspects of Hong Kong culture noted above—the propensity for “minor” cultural articulations and the local as constituted in the transnational—can clearly be observed in the martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s. The minor mode of the films is manifested not only in their low-budget approaches,11 but also in their strong affinities with the less-than-refined tastes and sensibilities of working-class people: the priority given to the physical body; a preference for visceral impact, for force over fineness; an inclination towards deeds and action instead of words. For a lot of critics, this emphasis on physicality and on a mass sensationalist style is precisely what makes these martial arts films a lowbrow form of entertainment unworthy of serious attention. Yet it is also this penchant for visceral thrills and sensations, along with a tendency towards narratives centered on such “universal” themes as righteous violence and the struggle and triumph of the racial/social underclass, that have permitted the films to transcend all sorts of boundaries—geographical, political, and cultural. This dynamic between minor expressivity and cross-cultural appeal may be most clearly seen in the kung fu films of Bruce Lee and others, which gained wide international popularity in the early 1970s (and beyond). With their simple but powerful attractions based on awe-inspiring physical action and on the fantasy of overcoming injustice and prevailing over racial and/or class oppression, these films

10. See Kwai-cheung Lo, Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 112. 11. To be sure, what constituted a low-budget production was relative; most Shaw Brothers martial arts films, for instance, had much higher production values and looked more sophisticated than their Cantonese counterparts. But even these relatively well-financed films compared poorly, in terms of means of production, to the majority of Hollywood movies at the time. This tendency towards a low-budget mode of production became even more obvious as the martial arts film genre shifted from swordplay to kung fu in the early 1970s. For one thing, the shift to more recent settings and the emphasis on unarmed combat (over swordfighting) freed the studios from the need to spend on anything other than a number of action stars with real martial arts skills.This situation was further made worse by rampant overproduction, with fly-by-night producers bent on making fast money churning out film after film in quick succession.

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offered a direct and readily intelligible viewing experience that resonated with audiences—particularly those at the social margins—from a wide range of political and cultural backgrounds. Another way of approaching late 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films from a “minor transnational” perspective is through their distinctly eclectic style— that is, the tendency of the films to draw upon a wide variety of cinematic and cultural traditions, both native and foreign. Such eclecticism, however, should not be taken simply as a sign of creative sluggishness or cultural inauthenticity; rather, it has to be seen as reflecting the cultural matrix of a society that has long shown a strong propensity for transnationalism and is widely recognized as a site of hybridity and syncretism. As a former British colony situated at the southern coast of China, Hong Kong was throughout the first half of the twentieth century (and beyond) a bustling trading port where people, goods, and currencies from China and around the world intermingled and came into contact with one another. The transnational and cross-cultural nature of Hong Kong society was further abetted by its postwar development into an export-based manufacturing center, the success of which was crucially dependent on having quick and extensive access to information about changing world market trends through a wide network of linkages facilitating both regional and global flows. By the mid-1960s, Hong Kong had taken on an increasingly cosmopolitan character, firmly establishing itself as a dynamic hub that brought together people, ideas, and styles from different parts of the world.12 A similarly pluralistic orientation has marked and characterized the martial arts film. Like the larger society in which they arose, the swordplay and kung fu films of the late 1960s and 1970s were highly eclectic and open to foreign ideas and styles. Not surprisingly, given their popularity in Hong Kong at the time, American Westerns and other Hollywood action movies were a major source of inspiration and influence.13 Yet this does not necessarily mean that Hong Kong martial arts films were “blank” imitations or copies whose cultural particularities were diminished or even 12. A lot has been said and written on Hong Kong’s uniquely hybrid and pluralistic society and culture. See, for instance, Helen F. Siu, “Hong Kong: Cultural Kaleidoscope on a World Landscape,” in Narrating Hong Kong Culture and Identity, ed. Pun Ngai and Yee Lai-man (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2003), 113–34. 13. Pre-1970 box office statistics in Hong Kong are hard to come by, but what is clear is the dominance of American films, especially those of the action genres, in the early to mid-1960s. James Bond movies, in particular, caught the imagination of local audiences from the beginning, with Terence Young’s Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965) all topping the local box office. Although the rise of “new school” martial arts films in the mid-1960s made Hong Kong movies more competitive, Hollywood war and action films continued to do well commercially and have a substantial presence in the local film culture. According to one source, for instance, Lee Thompson’s Mackenna’s Gold (1969) was the top-grossing film in Hong Kong in 1969, while in 1970, the top spot went to Richard Fleischer’s Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), with Peter Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) at no. 3 and no. 11, respectively. See Xianggang dianying piaofang quanjilu [Complete box office statistics of motion pictures in Hong Kong], accessed December 5, 2015, http://www.angelfire.com/home/ bobic/HK_Movies/main.htm.

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erased; what passes unnoticed in such an account are the complex localization processes—processes of creative appropriation, hybridization, and transculturation in which nonnative elements are actively selected, mixed with other materials, transformed, and put into different use—that redefined and refunctionalized the input from American cinema. Besides, the bipolar view of Hong Kong and Hollywood is also inadequate, given the copious and complex transnational interactions that have characterized the martial arts film genre. Such interactions transpired, and continue to do so, not only between Hong Kong and the United States, but also between Hong  Kong and an array of other regions/countries such as Europe, Japan, South Korea, and countries in Southeast Asia. It is in many ways this eclectic and hybrid quality that gave Hong Kong martial arts cinema of the period a cross-cultural, translocal flexibility and helped to open it up for transnational circulation and consumption. This is important because, as is frequently noted, the limited size of Hong Kong’s domestic market has posed a constant challenge for local filmmakers. Survival has always relied on overseas markets, thus making transnationalism an essential feature of Hong Kong cinema from an early age. Recognizing from the beginning the importance of widening their market base, the most ambitious film companies in Hong Kong, such as Shaw Brothers and later Golden Harvest, made a resolute effort to establish theater chains not just in Hong Kong but throughout Taiwan and Southeast Asia, thus establishing themselves as prominent players in film production, distribution, and exhibition within the region.14 In the beginning, the overseas markets were confined to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries where a sizable diasporic Chinese community existed. But starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as viewers in other countries became more receptive to Hong Kong films (thanks in large part to the international kung fu craze), and as the decline in traditional overseas markets forced the industry to develop new revenue sources, local companies started to broaden their market reach and target their films at wider international audiences. A low-budget cinema with limited production means; a penchant for visceral and sensational effects; a close affinity with working-class tastes and ideologies; an  unapologetically eclectic style—all this formed part of the “minor” aesthetics characteristic of late 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films and played a key role in shaping the films’ transnational perspectives and practices. The rest of this chapter further explores and elaborates on these ideas, focusing in particular on the ways in which the martial arts genre drew on an array of thematic, stylistic, and ideological materials from the pluralistic film culture of Hong Kong, refashioned them, 14. By the 1970s, for example, the worldwide cinema chain of the Shaws had grown to 230, dotting Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, North America, Hawai‘i, and Canada. It also had distribution deals with 600 other theaters. See “Shaw Organisation, 1970,” Shaw Online, accessed July 7, 2015, http://www.shaw.sg/ sw_abouthistory. aspx?id=193 28 38 182 251 49 212 146 56 148 173 187 75 173 82 165.

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and created a new idiom to articulate and respond to the experience of colonialcapitalist modernity—an idiom, as will be clear, that would in turn circulate globally and interact with other action genres (Korean martial arts films, Blaxploitation, Italian Westerns). Underlying this approach is the idea of the martial arts/action film as a “contact zone”—in other words, a symbolic space of exchange where films of different national or regional origins, often with their own distinct textual, cultural, and ideological emphases, meet and act on one another to produce not only new hybrid texts but also new forms of identification that actively negotiate with national, racial, and other types of identity boundaries.15 In utilizing this “contact” perspective, my goal is to foreground the nonhierarchical, subtly interactive dimensions of cross-cultural encounters and to emphasize the complex agency of minor cultures in transnational processes.

Action Cinema as Contact Zone Just as Hong Kong was rapidly emerging as a vital node in the global network of flows during the 1960s and 1970s, Hong Kong cinema of the period is also best conceived as a symbolic space where a wide range of ideas and styles, both foreign and local, were circulated, juxtaposed, cross-fertilized, and contested. The constant need to open up new markets and to satisfy the diverse tastes of viewers with different social and cultural backgrounds made Hong Kong cinema an art of flexibility, hybridity, and creative appropriation, with filmmakers always casting a close eye on the prevalent trends in world cinema and culture and refashioning them for their own ends. Such openness to foreign ideas and styles can precisely be seen in the martial arts films of the 1960s and 1970s, whose imitative or “mimetic” character are reflected in their active borrowings and appropriations from Hollywood, Japanese, and other foreign film practices. Thus, for all the usual perception of the martial arts film as a quintessential “Chinese” genre, it is important to note that swordplay and kung fu movies of the 15. My use of the idea of contact zone is inspired by Mary Louise Pratt’s work on colonial cultural interactions. In Pratt’s formulation, contact zones refer to social spaces where cultures, often in contexts of asymmetrical power relations, meet and interact with one another. A case in point is the space of colonial encounters where peoples separated geographically and historically come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, inequality, and conflict. While fully aware of the dynamics of domination and submission in such encounters between two unequal cultures, Pratt does not confine her discussion to this but emphasizes the diverse ways in which the encounters can work and are constituted—ways that often go beyond a vertical relationship between domination and opposition/assimilation and include other modes of exchange evincing a more complex agency of the minor cultures. One example is the process of transculturation: the selection and reinvention, on the part of subordinated or marginal groups, of materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture. In foregrounding the active role of people in the periphery in making sense of what is imposed on them, transculturation raises the question of reception in cross-cultural exchanges and draws attention to the importance of creative appropriation in the process. See Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 6–7.

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period drew on a variety of foreign cinemas and cultures, constituting what Chang Cheh described as “a unique product of Hong Kong at the crossroads of East and West.”16 As already pointed out, the popularity of Hollywood action movies in Hong Kong (and around the world) rendered them an apt model for the “new school” martial arts films that emerged around the mid-1960s. The influence from Hollywood could be broad and generalized: critics, for example, have long noted some basic affinities between the Western and the swordplay movie, arguing that they both constitute some kind of “mythicized historical action films” marked by, among other things, “nostalgia for a vanished but .  .  . psychologically accessible past.”17 On King Hu’s Come Drink with Me, a pivotal work that established the new trend of martial arts cinema as a market force to reckon with, Stephen Teo writes: The mood and characters recall Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), where the baroque touches perfectly mirror the mythical world of lonely gunfighters, boss-ladies, outlaws and lynch-mob posses in the Western genre. In Come Drink with Me, similar touches draw out the world of deadly knight-ladies, evil monks draped in saffron robes, and scraggy heroes with mystical prowess in the martial arts. Like Johnny Guitar, the film shifts setting from the inn’s interior to a waterfall hideout. Both films create a colourful mythical environment allowing the dreamlike nature of cinema to emerge.18

For Teo, then, the “baroque” invocation of a mythicized past is something that Come Drink with Me shares with, and borrows from, a Western like Johnny Guitar. The inn in particular, which is a recurrent setting in Hu’s films (as well as in many post-1965 swordplay movies), helps shape the “mythical environment” and can be conceived as a functional equivalent to the saloon in the Western. The ties are especially clear in those films, such as Dragon Inn and The Fate of Lee Khan (Yingchun ge zhi fengbo, 1973), where the inn, like the saloon, is located in a wild frontier land and serves as a space that epitomizes, as a critic puts it, “the confrontation between good and evil, life and death”; a site that is at once “a slaughterhouse and a place of redemption,” where “guests walk in . . . and survive on their own personal code.”19 In other instances, the Hollywood uptake was more specific. It has been suggested, for instance, that the bizarre weapons used in One-Armed Swordsman and Yue Feng’s Bells of Death (Duohun ling, 1968) were influenced by the high-tech gadgets in James Bond films.20 On the other hand, Chang Cheh’s attempt to fashion a new 16. Zhang Zhe [Chang Cheh], “Creating the Martial Arts Film and the Hong Kong Cinema Style,” in The Making of Martial Arts Film: As Told by Filmmakers and Stars (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 1999), 18. 17. Ralph C. Croizier, “Beyond East and West: The American Western and Rise of the Chinese Swordplay Movie,” Journal of Popular Film 1, no. 3 (Summer 1972): 230; 232. 18. Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute, 1997), 91. 19. Ng Ho, “King Hu and the Aesthetics of Space,” in Transcending the Times: King Hu and Eileen Chang, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1998), 46. 20. Lau Shing-hon, “Three Interviews,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Swordsplay Film (1945–1980), ed. Lau Shing-hon (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1996), 209.

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male prototype—bold, defiant, and physically robust—was indebted to exemplary figures of postwar American screen masculinity such as James Dean, Marlon Brando, Sean  Connery, Clint Eastwood, and Paul Newman, among others.21 There were also cases in which the appropriation was so explicit that it verged on plagiarism. Take, for example, the famous ending of Fist of Fury, which depicts a death-defying Bruce Lee charging and then launching a flying kick towards the Japanese and foreign executioners waiting for him. A freeze frame holds Lee in midair as gunshots and a rousing song are heard in the soundtrack. While justly acclaimed as a superb manifestation of “kung fu nationalism,” this iconic moment in Hong Kong cinema turns out to be a direct rip-off—stylistically at least, if not in terms of thematic overtones— of George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which ends similarly with a freeze frame as the two outlaw protagonists, played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford, rush out of a building in an effort to escape from the pursuing police and soldiers. As the freeze frame halts all movement and action, the sounds of blazing guns are again heard, signifying the inevitable demise of the outlaws. Other examples surely exist, but it is worth noting that Hollywood action cinema at the time comprised a range of different subgenres, from Westerns and James Bond spy thrillers to the crime/gangster film. Differing in their thematic focus and stylistic approach, these diverse action pictures were appropriated by Hong Kong filmmakers in various ways and degrees. But there is at least one common aspect shared by all of the films—i.e., the propensity towards ever-increasing levels of sensationalism— that proved to be hugely influential on contemporaneous Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Of particular interest is a new kind of screen violence, one that was not just depicted more graphically than ever before but rendered in an increasingly nihilistic and gratuitous way that challenged the underlying moral norms of classical Hollywood cinema. This propensity towards harder-edged and more graphic film violence arose out of a complex confluence of factors—a climate of political and social violence; radical changes in taste and morality in society; the emergence of a sizable youth audience—and it was further given impetus by the revision, in 1966, of Hollywood’s Production Code (first instituted in the 1930s) and the creation of a four-way (G-M-R-X) film ratings system two years later. Loosening the earlier restrictions on specific content areas, including graphic depictions of violence, these changes helped usher in a wave of movies that pushed aggressively for a new kind of violent representation.22 Among the early examples were three Spaghetti Westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, 1964; For a Few Dollars More, 1965; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 1966) featuring the director-actor duo of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood: 21. See Chapter 3 of this book for more discussion of the American influence underpinning Chang’s refashioning of Hong Kong’s screen masculinity. 22. For a more detailed review on this point, see Stephen Prince, “Graphic Violence in the Cinema: Origins, Aesthetic Design, and Social Effects,” in Screen Violence, ed. Stephen Prince (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 6–8.

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having already done impressive business in Europe, the films were picked up by United Artists and released with great success in the United States in 1967. Meanwhile, American filmmakers also seized the opportunity to increase the level of viciousness and gory carnage in their works, and two films in particular—Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969)—epitomized the era’s cultural reimagining of violence as well as new ways of depicting it. Not only were the films loaded with graphic violence, but the foregrounding of antiheroic protagonists acting not out of a sense of righteousness but out of parochial, tainted self-interests also rendered the violence less honorable and less ethically defensible than in previous films. As Stephen Prince puts it with respect to The Wild Bunch: “Peckinpah did not merely attach a new level of film violence to screen images but exploded the moral absolutes that had given shape and meaning to screen narratives for decades.”23 Hong Kong filmmakers were surely conscious of, and took important lessons from, all these developments. As discussed earlier in the book, Hong Kong martial arts cinema of the period represented a radical departure in local filmmaking, producing an unprecedented level of sensory stimulation in general and graphic violence in particular. Leading the trend was Chang Cheh, whose films not only featured copious scenes of graphic bloodshed but also highlighted—at least in The Boxer from Shantung and some of his other works from the 1970s—the ferocious and nihilistic aspects of violence stripped of any reassuring moral reference point.24 Stylistically, a device closely identified with Chang’s representation of violence is slow motion— which, I hasten to add, is also a distinctive feature in Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch. Although Chang tended to downplay the influence, arguing that he first used slow motion in the opening credit sequence of The Magnificent Trio,25 it is evident that the technique became essential to his style only later, after its potential was amply realized by the American films. Hollywood action films, though, were not the only model available to Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Other sources of influence existed, of which Japanese cinema was one of the most important. That Japanese films were looked upon by Hong Kong filmmakers as a model to be emulated is hardly a surprise and can be traced to at least the 1950s. One has to keep in mind that in terms of quantity, Hong Kong cinema in 23. Prince, Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), xv. 24. Chang claimed that the Beijing opera Jie Pai Guan, specifically the battle set piece known as panchang dazhan, provided a model for the graphic violence in his films, particularly the recurrent scenes depicting the dying fight of the hero who, mortally wounded and with his guts coming out of the body, makes a last-ditch effort to wipe out the enemies. But while this might be the case, the operatic reference pertains more to the idea of a gruesome fight and does not readily account for the sheer sensory and visceral intensity of the scenes, which owe more to the ultraviolent depictions in American action films—and Japanese ones for that matter—than to the stylized performance in Beijing opera. Nor does it give any clue to the kind of dark, senseless violence that informs many of Chang’s films from the early 1970s on. 25. Chang Cheh, A Memoir, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2004), 83.

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the 1950s and 1960s could be compared to any film-producing center in the world, regularly churning out more than 200 features every year. But from an aesthetic and technical point of view, Hong Kong films remained at a relatively backward stage, lagging behind the more sophisticated productions from Japan and the EuroAmerican world. To improve production standards, many Hong Kong film companies turned to Japanese cinema and tried to learn from it in areas such as production efficiency, technology, and craftsmanship, not just due to Japan’s cultural proximity but more importantly because Japanese cinema was the most advanced in Asia at the time—and the only one with a proven international record.26 It is this goal to learn from the Japanese, rather than any ambition to expand its overseas market, that prompted Shaw Brothers to launch a number of collaborative projects with Japanese companies in the 1950s. Mizoguchi Kenji’s Princess Yang Kwei Fei (Yokihi, 1955), a joint production with Daiei, was the first of its kind, followed by Toyoda Shiro’s Madame White Snake (Byaku fujin no yoren, 1956), which featured the legendary actress Li Xianglan (a.k.a. Yamaguchi Yoshiko). Around the same period, Shaws also began to actively enlist the assistance of Japanese film professionals; among them was Nishimoto Tadashi (a.k.a. He Lanshan), who made vital contributions in color and widescreen cinematography.27 Shaws’ attempts to modernize Hong Kong cinema through the input of Japanese talent paid off in important ways. With the help of Nishimoto and others, the studio quickly mastered the cutting-edge technologies of the time and turned out a string of historical epics shot in sumptuous color and spectacular widescreen. Many of these films, such as Li Han-hsiang’s The Kingdom and the Beauty (Jiangshan meiren, 1959), The Magnificent Concubine (Yang guifei, 1962), and Empress Wu (Wu Zetian, 1963), enjoyed great commercial and critical success, both at home and abroad.28 26. After the international breakthrough of Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1950), which won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, a number of other films—including Mizoguchi Kenji’s Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (Sansho dayu, 1954), Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Gate of Hell (Jigokumon, 1953), Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, 1954), and Inagaki Hiroshi’s Rickshaw Man (Muhomatsu no issho, 1958)—also snatched top prizes at various European film festivals and propelled Japan’s entry into the international film arena. 27. For more discussion on Nishimoto’s career in Hong Kong, see Kinnia Yau Shuk-ting, Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Understanding the Origins of East Asian Film Networks (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 88–91. It is worth pointing out that this impulse to learn from Japanese technology and craftsmanship was not confined to Shaw Brothers. Xinhua, a film company headed by Zhang Shankun, worked closely with some Japanese studios (primarily Towa and Toho) in the mid-1950s in order to make color movies. Another example was Motion Pictures and General Investment Co. Ltd., which made a number of coproductions with (again) Toho in the early 1960s and recruited composer Hattori Ryoichi and choreographer Agata Yoji, among others, for its own productions. On these collaborations with Japanese companies, see Yau, Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries, 47–52; 73–82. 28. The Kingdom and the Beauty, for instance, not only became a huge box office hit in Hong Kong, but also rang up record numbers in attendance throughout Southeast Asia and was the first Shaw Brothers’ film to break into the international market. The film started its tour on October 1961, screening in Calcutta, Bombay, and other major cities of India. It went on to screen in Japan in November, with Lin Dai, the film’s female lead,

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Not surprisingly, given the effectiveness of this approach, Shaws continued to find ways to bolster the Japanese connection. A delegation of film workers, for instance, was sent to Japan to observe production practices at the major studios, while six Japanese directors—Inoue Umetsugu, Furukawa Takumi, Nakahira Ko, Shima Koji, Murayama Mitsuo, and Matsuo Akinori—were hired to help ramp up output. These Japanese directors were valued for their speed and efficiency, but they also played a crucial role in raising the technical standards of Shaws’ films by bringing with them crew members in photography, lighting, and the art department. In a musical, they also brought musicians, choreographers, and dancers.29 None of these Japanese directors, it is worth mentioning, was assigned to make martial arts films, but this by no means suggests that the genre was exempt from Japanese influence. On the contrary, Chang Cheh was quite frank about how he and other Hong Kong filmmakers took Japanese cinema as a model for their works: Using Chinese cinema as a base, we [King Hu and Chang Cheh] endeavoured to include Western style of thinking and technology .  .  . Japan [was] the most Westernized country in the East. Apart from influences from the West (particularly Hollywood movies), we [were also] influenced by Japanese cinema, in  particular the samurai pictures. I went to Japan to do location shooting for The Golden Swallow (1968). The location shooting itself was not at all significant compared to what I could learn from the production techniques of Japanese cinema. Some martial arts directors openly confess to being influenced by Japanese cinema and I think there’s no shame in that. Reception isn’t the same as copying. I was attracted to the martial arts film because I had seen the films of Akira Kurosawa and realized that it was possible to make quality pictures in the genre.30

In fact, this trend of using Japanese action films as a model or reference was actively encouraged by Shaw Brothers. For instance, as an effort to keep abreast of and draw inspiration from the latest developments in action cinema, Shaws held regular screenings of Japanese samurai and gangster films for its directors, scriptwriters, and other key production staff. This was in part why the company bought the distribution rights to hundreds of Japanese movies even when it had no intention to exhibit them—at  least not all of them—in theaters. As Chua Lam, the manager of Shaws’ making an appearance there. In August 1963, the film began screening in Sydney for two weeks before it went on to tour the whole territory. Similarly, The Magnificent Concubine had a limited release in Paris and London after winning an award for Best Color Photography for Interiors at the Cannes Film Festival, whereas Empress Wu, buoyed by successful showings at the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals in 1963, went on to play in various cities of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. See “Shaw Studio, Hong Kong,” Shaw Online, accessed July 7, 2015, http://shaw.sg/sw_abouthistory.aspx?id= 181 132 131 34 251 123 8 120 157 20 197 169 180 180 101 71. 29. See Law Kar, Kinnia Yau Shuk-ting, and June Lam Pui-wah, “Transnational Collaborations and Activities of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest: An Interview with Chua Lam,” in Border Crossings in Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 2000), 139. 30. Zhang, “Creating the Martial Arts Film and the Hong Kong Cinema Style,” 17–18.

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Japanese office at the time, recalls: “The film market was booming in Hong Kong in the 1960s. While attending previews in Japan, I bought every single one that looked like it would sell well. I ended up buying tons of Japanese flicks . . . The majority of the titles I bought were action [films]: from Nikkatsu, mostly gangster films, and from Toei, classical warrior films. From Daiei, I bought Zatoichi and the Nemuri Kyoshiro action series.”31 In importing Japanese action films for local distribution and organizing in-house screening sessions for its staff, Shaws was able to popularize these hitherto littleknown works among the public at the same time as it used them as a model for its own martial arts films. At one level, Japanese films provided plot ideas which Hong Kong directors could borrow and expand on. Chang Cheh’s The Magnificent Trio, for example, bases its plot closely on Gosha Hideo’s Three Outlaw Samurai (Sanbiki no samurai, 1964), recounting a similar story of three warriors of diverse backgrounds joining hands and battling crooked officials. Likewise, many kung fu films, including The Chinese Boxer and Fist of Fury, follow what Meaghan Morris refers to as the “two rival schools” narrative structure, which she contends was first used by Kurosawa  Akira in Sugata Sanshiro (1943).32 Wang would later draw on another classic by Kurosawa—Seven Samurai—in his martial arts epic Beach of the War Gods. As is well known, Kurosawa’s film recounts how a village of desperate farmers try to defend against a gang of bandits by hiring seven ronins, or samurai without masters. In Wang’s film, the story is transposed to sixteenth-century China, a  period when the Japanese pirates were aggressively invading villages along the southern Chinese coastline and demanding huge payments from the people. Hired by a group of Chinese villagers, a valiant warrior (played by the director himself ) sets out to enlist the help of a few like-minded fighters before heading for a climactic battle with the Japanese invaders. Yet the Japanese influence went beyond the level of narrative and can also be observed in matters of form and style. Critics have often noted a certain Japanese “flavor” in Hong Kong martial arts films of the 1960s and 1970s; even King Hu, whose films are notable for their strong affinity with Chinese aesthetics, took some cues from Japanese films in his handling of action sequences. David Bordwell, for instance, notes that Hu borrowed the Japanese convention of freezing mortally wounded fighters momentarily in place before their collapse, and used incisive cuts back from a swordstroke to a long shot showing several victims falling back

31. Law et al., “Transnational Collaborations,” 140. 32. Meaghan Morris, “The Man from Hong Kong in Sydney, 1975,” in Imagining Australia: Literature and Culture in the New New World, ed. Judith Ryan and Chris Wallace-Crabbe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Committee on Australian Studies, 2004), 246. I should point out that the influence of this “rival schools” narrative on Hong Kong kung fu films was likely brought not by Kurosawa’s film but by Uchikawa Seiichiro’s remake in 1965, which was released and very well received in Hong Kong.

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simultaneously.33 The Japanese influence can be observed in the films of Chang Cheh as well. In a scene before the final showdown in One-Armed Swordsman, for instance, the titular hero played by Wang Yu is confronted by a gang of adversaries at a teahouse as he hurries to his master’s help against the powerful Long-Armed Devil. At one point, the hero is attacked by three enemies after a long face-off and responds by delivering a burst of rapid sword strokes. In the next shot, the assailants are already breathing their last, standing frozen momentarily before toppling over. This emphasis on the quick, sudden stroke(s), as Bordwell argues, was not commonly found in Hong Kong martial arts films of the period, which tended to favor extended combats filled with thrusts, parries, feints, and evasive maneuvers. Rather, the technique was drawn from period swordplay films in Japan, which—like the tradition of Japanese sword art (kenjutsu) on which they are based—are less interested in lengthy sparring than in the power of the single strike, i.e., in finding the precise moment to thrust or slash.34 A case in point is the famous ending of Kurosawa’s Sanjuro (1962), in which the title character and his mortal foe face off against each other for a long time before they abruptly draw their swords and move to strike at almost the exact moment. A brief stasis follows this quick burst of action, and the next thing we see is a stream of blood gushing out from the foe before he collapses. Director Xu Zenghong once noted that the majority of Hong Kong martial arts films before the mid-1960s were extremely unrealistic, partly because “people rarely get killed even after an interminable combat sequence.”35 In this sense, the emphasis on the single, deadly powerful strike was a way, on the part of Hong Kong filmmakers, to add credibility and authenticity to their action scenes. But as the Sanjuro example above shows, the device can also be linked to a provocatively graphic depiction of violence, and it is exactly this aspect that was highlighted in a gruesome scene from One-Armed Swordsman (again) where the male protagonist has his arm abruptly cut off by his master’s daughter. At this juncture, it is worth noting that the over-thetop violence at the end of Sanjuro, while seldom before seen in Japanese cinema, would quickly become a staple feature in chambara (sword fighting) and other action films. Kobayashi Masaki’s Harakiri (1962), Imai Tadashi’s Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai (Bushido zankoku monogatari, 1963), Kudo Eiichi’s The Great Killing (Daisatsujin, 1964), Okamoto Kihachi’s Sword of Doom (Daibosatsu toge, 1966), the long-running Zatoichi series that started in 1962 and had totaled twenty-five films by 1973—all these movies made manifest a more explicit and transgressive presentation of violence by lingering on the carnage and on the graphic brutality of 33. See David Bordwell, “Richness through Imperfections: King Hu and the Glimpse,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 114–16. 34. Bordwell, “Another Shaw Production: Anamorphic Adventures in Hong Kong,” David Bordwell’s Website on Cinema, last modified October, 2009, http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/shaw.php. 35. Lau, “Three Interviews,” 204.

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disembowelment and other forms of physical mutilation. Many of these films, especially those from the Zatoichi series, were highly popular in Hong Kong and had a major impact on the local cinema.36 Indeed, one can argue that the root source of ultraviolence in the “new school” martial arts films can be traced not to the American countercultural movies of the late 1960s, not even to the Italian Westerns of Leone/ Eastwood, but rather to the violent action pictures from Japan that emerged in the early and mid-1960s. The Hollywood and Japanese influences on Hong Kong martial arts cinema, then, converged in the renditions of unprecedentedly violent screen worlds. Yet this uptake of American and Japanese film violence should not be understood simply as an externally imposed style—and thus ideology—on local filmmaking. Rather, it involved a complex process of active appropriation and reinvention, mediated by a set of local contexts informed by the particular social, political, and economic conditions of Hong Kong at the time. As discussed earlier in the book, the escalating levels of film violence were part of a larger trend towards sensationalism in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, which sought to redefine itself amid a rapidly changing sensory environment associated with the city’s burgeoning urban-industrial modernity. Yet the violent images were not simply a means of generating sensory excitation but a vehicle for articulating and intervening in the profound social fractures caused by the twin processes of modernization and colonialization. It is important to recall that the late 1960s was a period of great upheaval in Hong Kong society, one that witnessed not only increasing social unrest culminating in the 1966–1967 riots, but also growing crime rates among adolescents and young adults. These social disturbances and crises were not isolated events but need to be seen as arising from a confluence of problems confronting Hong Kong at the time: successive waves of refugees from China and the strain this brought on social resources; insufficient social services and welfare provisions within a colonial system; lack of wealth redistribution in spite of rapid economic expansion; the virtual nonexistence of political participation. Entering into the 1970s, with the colonial government’s more accommodating policies and a renewed emphasis on economic development, Hong Kong saw another period of rapid growth. This led to growing prosperity and confidence, but the economic dynamism also fostered—or strengthened rather—a capitalist subjectivity fixated on materialistic gains and on the ruthless pursuit of success. Such adverse repercussions of Hong Kong’s colonial-capitalist social formations as detailed above produced a context of social contradictions and antagonisms to which filmmakers felt compelled to respond, not only by reaching for higher levels of film violence but also by ascribing to the violence a variety of meanings. In the films of Chang Cheh, for instance, the images of violence and death served a range of purposes: as a means to individual and 36. The popularity of the Zatoichi films can be seen in the way its central protagonist, a blind masseur and swordsman, became an object of parody in Wang Tianlin’s Mad, Mad, Mad Swords (Shenjing dao, 1969).

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social regeneration (The Assassin); as an affirmation of male bonding against social change (Vengeance!); and as a critique of the capitalist system ruled by greed and by the ethics of competition and conquest (The Boxer from Shantung; Blood Brothers).37 It is precisely such local levels of meaning-making and sensory-affective mobilization that rendered the intake of American and Japanese screen violence an instance of creative transposition rather than a case of passive copying. Yet attempts to draw on foreign ideas and styles and recast them as localized idioms for articulating and negotiating the complex experience of Hong Kong’s colonial-industrial modernity were not always successful, as can be seen in Shaw Brothers’ failed efforts to develop a new trend of films based on the mukokuseki akushun, or “borderless action,” of Nikkatsu, Japan’s oldest film studio. In this connection, it is worth pointing out that many of the Japanese directors hired by Shaws in the late 1960s had close ties with Nikkatsu, and one reason for this is that Nikkatsu’s films were thought to be closer in both style and sensibility to Hong Kong movies— the Shaw Brothers’ brand of Hong Kong movies, to be specific.38 I take this to mean, in part at least, the emphasis on youthful, rebellious masculinity characteristic of Nikkatsu productions, particularly its action films featuring the studio’s roster of matinee idols like Ishihara Yujiro, Kobayashi Akira, and Shishido Jo. This new masculine image, as I have argued, served as a key template on which Chang Cheh created his yanggang heroes.39 But no less importantly, the attractions of Nikkatsu’s films also resided in their glamorized depictions of a modern, borderless world: in an effort to attract young audiences who were increasingly accustomed to Western cinematic and cultural influences, Nikkatsu began producing action movies that drew on an array of foreign sources, from jazz music and Western-style fashion to a wide range of film genres such as the Western, film noir, the gangster movie, and the French New Wave. Distinctly hip and cosmopolitan, these hybrid, cross-genre potboilers unfolded in a fictional cinematic universe that, while bearing little resemblance to contemporary Japanese reality, conjured up a fantasy and imaginary modern world—a world full of speed, excitement, stimulation, and restless energy and seemingly without borders.40 While the impact of this “imagined modernity” on Hong Kong cinema was more noticeable in youth musicals and crime and spy thrillers than in martial arts films,41 37. See Chapters 1 and 3 of this book for a more extended analysis of the socially symbolic meanings of ultraviolence in Chang’s films. 38. See Law et al., “Transnational Collaborations,” 139. 39. For more discussion of Ishihara Yujiro’s influence on Chang’s films, see Chapter 3 of this book. 40. For a good introduction to the Nikkatsu action films, see Mark Schilling, No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema (Surrey: FAB Press, 2007). 41. It is worth noting that many of these musicals and crime thrillers were helmed by the hired Japanese directors and were frequently remakes of their Japanese films. Nakahira Ko’s Diary of a Lady Killer (Lieren, 1969), for instance, is a remake of The Hunter’s Diary (Ryojin nikki), which he made for Nikkatsu in 1964, while Inoue Umetsugu’s Hong Kong Nocturne (Xiangjiang huayue ye, 1967) has its origins in his earlier film Tokyo Cinderella Girl (Jazu onparedo 1954‒nen: Tokyo Shinderera musume) from 1954.

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there were signs that Chang Cheh, in an effort to move beyond period swordplay movies, tried (without much success) to go into the direction of “borderless” action films. This can be observed most clearly in The Singing Thief (Dadao gewang, 1969) and The Singing Killer (Xiao shaxing, 1970)—both musical thrillers where hardboiled action is mingled with charming song numbers within an imaginary world of flashy European and American cars, stylish mansions and villas, and glittery nightclubs bathed in dazzling primary colors. The problem with the films, however, is that they were only able to replicate the surface allure of a “borderless” modern world and failed to probe the underlying tensions and ambiguities associated with the modern, colonial-capitalist society of Hong Kong. Consider, for instance, The Singing Thief, which follows Poon (Jimmy Lin Chong), a diamond thief-turned-singer, on a journey to discover who the culprit is for the series of diamond burglaries implicating him as the perpetrator. With its opening scene in which Poon performs a song in a chic, brightly colored nightclub bedecked with massive plastic diamonds hanging from the ceiling, the film immediately draws the viewers into an engrossing spectacle of glamorous modernity— an imaginary universe that informs and unifies much of the film (Figure 5.1). In such a make-believe world, the characters, too, are primarily fantasy figures, and a major part of this fantasy is precisely their identification with the modern. In the film, we can spot exceptionally trendy fashions: Poon dresses in a black Nehru jacket with a multicolored scarf around his neck in one scene, and dons a red short-sleeved shirt and matching tight red shorts in another. His lover Darling (Lily Ho) appears in even more chic outfits, including a blue strap dress with yellow flowers across the bust line. She also drives a red convertible and lives in a lavish villa complete with its own exercise room (with a long hanging swing), a home theater of sorts, and a fashionable living room with an enormous circular sofa and red candy striped wallpaper. The cinematic style of the film is equally “modernist,” with a constantly roving camera, odd camera angles, a quick editing pace, and moments of New Wave-ish mannerism. This last aspect is most clearly seen in a scene where Poon and Darling are watching—on a big screen at Darling’s villa—a black-and-white video of Poon’s nightclub performances; after a few exchanges, Darling suddenly pulls out a pistol and shoots at Poon’s image on the screen (Figure 5.2). All these invocations of the modern were supposed to appeal to a new postwar generation eager to make a break with tradition in a rapidly modernizing Hong Kong, but the lukewarm box office of The Singing Thief suggested that the attempt was not a success.42 The film failed in part because it was only able to create the look, the surface texture, of an imaginary modern world, but had very little to say about the lived 42. The film grossed about HK$650,000, which placed it at 24th place in the year’s total box office. See “Xianggang dianying piaofang 1969 (zong piaofang)” [Overall box office statistics of motion pictures in Hong Kong, 1969], accessed December 5, 2015, http://www.angelfire.com/home/bobic/HK_Movies/Total/hk1969a-b5.html.

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Figure 5.1 An imagined modernity: the opening sequence in The Singing Thief (1969)

Figure 5.2 New Wave influence in The Singing Thief (1969)

experiences and structures of feeling associated with Hong Kong’s colonial-capitalist modernity—something that Chang’s martial arts films, partly through their use of violence as an allegorical device, were able to address and respond to. As an action musical, The Singing Thief does contain some fairly brutal fight sequences (e.g., the ambush at the crematorium and the final battle in a deserted film studio). But in a film whose major goal is to design and produce a fantasy world of deterritorialized modernity—a world that is beyond the reach of its viewers’ everyday experience— violence also seems to be disembedded from any meaningful context and thus loses its capacity for allegory. In other words, it has become a pure signifier, with no external reference but itself.

Inter-Asian Connections As much as we have stressed the foreign influences on 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films, it is no less important to take note of the countercurrents, that is, the reverse impact of the films on cinemas and cultures around the world. What

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is at stake, then, is the multidirectional nature of transnational cultural flows; the two-way process in which Hong Kong martial arts cinema absorbed and refashioned the ideas and styles from American, Japanese, and other foreign films, and in turn exerted a major influence on action movies from different parts of the world. Another way to put this is that Hong Kong martial arts cinema has always been marked by a propensity to “cross over”—not only geographical boundaries but also social and cultural ones—appealing to viewers from different backgrounds, whose languages, aesthetic preferences, moral beliefs, and social values do not only differ from those of the filmmakers but remain for the most part unknown to each other. In this section, I consider more closely the circulation of Hong Kong martial arts films in East Asia (and the transnational film connections in the region in general), focusing in particular on a recurrent figure—the physically impaired hero or heroine—in East Asian action cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. Before the international kung fu craze in the early 1970s, Hong Kong martial arts films had already established a strong regional presence. The long-running Wong Fei-hung film series, for instance, was popular not only in the local Hong Kong market but also among Cantonese-speaking audiences throughout Southeast Asia. Likewise, given that Shaw Brothers had long established a vast network of theaters in Singapore, Malaysia, and other Southeast Asian countries, its martial arts films—and films of other genres, for that matter—were also widely circulated and found a receptive audience, both Chinese and non-Chinese, in the region. In Taiwan, too, where the film market was dominated by Hong Kong’s Mandarin-language productions in much of the 1960s and 1970s, the martial arts pictures of Shaws attracted a lot of interest and were often huge local box office hits. They also had a major impact on local filmmaking trends: for instance, following the example of Shaws, the Taiwan film industry made its own attempt to launch a new, grittier, and sensational kind of swordplay film in the late 1960s. Leading the trend was Union Film Company, which produced, among other titles, Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen—two masterpieces by King Hu following his departure from Shaw Brothers in 1966. The rise of homegrown martial arts films, not to mention the continuous influx of Hong Kong imports, quickly turned the genre into one of the most prominent in Taiwan cinema, and a number of Hong Kong filmmakers, including Huang Zhuohan and later Chang Cheh, took advantage of the new opportunities and started making martial arts films there.43 This intensified the flows of capital and talent between the two film 43. Huang Zhuohan founded First Films in 1967, a company registered in Hong Kong but based in Taiwan, where it rose to prominence as the fourth largest Chinese-language film production company in the 1970s. As for Chang Cheh, he went to Taiwan and established Chang’s Film Company in 1973. Though not openly acknowledged at the time, the company was in fact an affiliate of Shaw Brothers, presumably set up with funds that the latter could not take out of the territory. Under this new company, Chang managed to direct or oversee production on nearly twenty films between 1973 and 1977, including many Shaolin kung fu films such as Men from the Monastery (Shaolin zidi, 1974) and Five Shaolin Masters.

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industries and bore witness to the close interconnections of Hong Kong and Taiwan martial arts films in the period. Meanwhile, the modernization of Shaw Brothers (by way of the introduction of Japanese techonologies, talent, and rationalized production methods) discussed earlier had made the studio one of the foremost players in the region. With increasing confidence and ambition, the company sought eagerly to open up new markets beyond the traditional ones in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Japan was no doubt the most sought-after market in the region, but it was also the most difficult one to break into, especially given the condescending attitudes towards Hong Kong cinema among many Japanese filmmakers, critics, and viewers. In fact, it was not until the massive box office success of Enter the Dragon in late 1973 that a Hong Kong film—or  a Hong  Kong–Hollywood coproduction rather—succeeded in capturing the attention of Japanese viewers. The success of the film and the posthumous popularity of Bruce Lee helped bring an influx of Hong Kong imports to Japan, but the trend did not last very long. According to one source, a total of twenty-eight Hong Kong films (most of them being kung fu movies) were released in Japan in 1974, but the number quickly dropped in the subsequent years: five in 1975, six in 1976, four in 1977, and only two in 1978.44 Still, Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest, and other Hong Kong companies made significant inroads into expanding their market reach in Asia, and a particularly intriguing case in this regard was South Korea.45 The connections between the Hong Kong and Korean film industries can be traced to the late 1950s, when Korean Entertainment and Shaw Brothers—or Shaw and Sons as it was called then—jointly made Love with an Alien (Yiguo qingyuan/Igugjeong-won, 1958), a romantic melodrama codirected by Tu Guangqi, Chung Chang-geun, and Wakasugi Mitsuo. But despite the film’s success in Korea, it flopped badly in Hong Kong and other Asian countries, thus leading to a halt in further coproduction projects.46 It was only when Shaw Brothers struck a partnership deal with Shin Films—the largest production company in Korea at the time—in the early 1960s that cooperation between the two sides was

44. See Leung Cheuk Fan, “The Lure of the Exotic—Hong Kong Cinema in Japan,” in Border Crossings in Hong  Kong Cinema, 156. But despite the sharply diminished presence of Hong Kong martial arts films in Japan by 1975, I should point out that their impact might be stronger than assumed and can be seen in the way the films became domesticated within the Japanese film industry. For instance, prompted by the success of Enter the Dragon and the lasting popularity of Bruce Lee in general, Toei decided to make its own “Bruce Leestyle” martial arts films, of which the three-part Street Fighter series (1974) featuring Chiba Shinichi (a.k.a. Sonny Chiba) was the most successful. Also of note is the Sister Street Fighter series (1974–1976), a spin-off of Chiba’s films obviously but with a female lead modeled very much on Angela Mao and other female action stars in Hong Kong cinema. 45. From now on, “Korea” will be used to refer to “South Korea” unless indicated otherwise. 46. See Cho Yong-jung, “From Golden Age to Dark Age: A Brief History of Korean Co-production,” in  Rediscovering Asian Cinema Network: The Decades of Co-Production between Korea and Hong Kong, ed. Yong-Kwan Lee, Moon-Yung Huh, Young-Jung Cho, and Dosin Park (Seoul: PIFF, 2004), 16.

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revived.47 At first, the coproductions consisted mainly of historical epics such as Yue  Feng and Choi In-hyeon’s The Last Woman of Shang (Da Ji/Dalgi, 1964) and Ho Meng-hua and Im Won-sik’s The Goddess of Mercy (Guanshiyin/Daepokgun, 1967). But when the “new school” martial arts films of Shaws started appearing in the mid1960s and became hugely popular in Korea,48 Korean film companies shifted their focus and sought to capitalize on the emerging trend through imports, coproductions, and the making of homegrown martial arts pictures. The popularity of Hong Kong martial arts cinema in Korea continued with the shift from swordplay to kung fu in the early 1970s, thanks to the charisma of Bruce Lee but also to the anti-Japanese sentiments of many kung fu films, which tapped into what has been called the lingering “Korean resentment towards things Japanese.”49 In addition to the rise of Korean-style kung  fu films (such as taekwondo action films), coproductions—or imports masqueraded as coproductions, as we are about to see—between Hong Kong and Korea remained strong throughout the 1970s; for instance, a total of thirty-one such coproductions, most of which belonged to the martial arts genre, were made in 1978 alone.50 The mutual benefits involved in these collaborative efforts were many and diverse: for Hong Kong production companies such as Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, cooperation with their Korean counterparts offered opportunities to open up a hitherto underexploited market and provided access to the country’s abundant supply of open natural landscapes and ancient Buddhist temples necessary for historical epics and period martial arts films.51 Moreover, the collaborations facilitated exchange of professional manpower. A good example is Chung Chang-wha, a Korean filmmaker who made a number of martial arts and action films in Hong Kong—first for Shaw Brothers and later for Golden Harvest, from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s.52 Golden Harvest also turned out a number of films featuring Korean martial arts, most notably Hapkido (Heqi dao, 1972) and When Taekwondo Strikes (Taiquan zhen jiuzhou, 1973), both directed by Huang Feng, and John Woo’s The Dragon Tamers (Nüzi taiquan qunying hui, 1975). In many ways, the inclusion of Korean martial arts, performed not simply by real-life Korean masters (Jhoon Rhee, Hwang In-shik, Ji Han-jae) but by Hong Kong actors and actresses (Angela Mao, Carter Wong) who 47. See Law et al., “Transnational Collaborations,” 141. 48. Among the two biggest hits were Come Drink with Me and The One-Armed Swordsman, both of which attracted more than 200,000 moviegoers . See Law Kar, “Korean and Hong Kong Interflows in the 1950s and 1960s,” in Rediscovering Asian Cinema Network, 35. 49. Quoted in Law et al., “Transnational Collaborations,” 139–40. 50. See Daiwon Hyun, “Hong Kong Cinema in Korea: Its Prosperity and Decay,” Asian Cinema 9, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 39. 51. See Ae-gyung Shim and Brian Yecies, “Asian Interchange: Korean–Hong Kong Co-productions of the 1960s,” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 4, no. 1 (2012): 19–20. 52. For more discussion of Chung Chang-wha’s career in Hong Kong, see Aaron Han Joon MagnanPark, “Restoring the Transnational from the Abyss of Ethnonatinal Film Historiography: The Case of Chung Chang Wha,” The Journal of Korean Studies 16, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 249–84.

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spent months training in the specific styles, was used as a way to distinguish the films from the many kung fu movies crowding the market at the time. For their part, Korean film companies used coproductions as a way to respond to and take advantage of the changes in film policy introduced by Park Chung-hee’s government in the 1960s. Under the second revision of the Motion Picture Law in 1966, for instance, the number of foreign film imports was strictly limited, and since coproductions were treated as local films, they became a convenient way to bring in popular Hong Kong movies without regard to the import quota system, not to mention they could also be exempt from the tariffs levied on imported products. At the same time, under the influence of the Park government’s export-driven economic policy, exporting local films abroad was among one of the criteria used in granting the lucrative quotas for importing foreign films. Coproductions, which were regarded as domestic films, were one of the easiest ways to meet the export requirement.53 It is worth noting, though, that many of these so-called “coproductions” contained no real collaborative efforts but involved simply deceptive attempts—inserting a few scenes with Korean faces and putting in alternative credits showing Korean names in a wholly Hong Kong film, for instance—to satisfy coproduction requirements. Such practices were carried out with apparent consent from the Hong Kong companies involved, which considered these “fake coproductions” just another way to sell their films to a new and growing market.54 What should be evident by now are the complex transnational linkages characteristic of East Asian martial arts cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. As discussed earlier, the Japanese samurai films exerted a major influence on Hong Kong’s “new school” martial arts movies, which in turn became highly popular and distributed extensively in Taiwan, Korea, and many countries in Southeast Asia. But instead of simply focusing on the industrial aspects, I want to explore the larger social and ideological dimensions of these regional film flows and exchanges. Specifically, my discussion will center on a recurrent trope—heroes and heroines with physical deformities or impairments—in East Asian martial arts films of the 1960s and 1970s. In Japan, this trend of physically impaired action protagonists was perhaps best exemplified by the legendary blind swordsman figure in the Zatoichi series, which first appeared in 1962 and racked up a total of twenty-five films before finally running out of steam in the early 1970s.55 The Zatoichi films also spawned a number of blatant knock-offs, including the Crimson Bat series (1969–1970) based on the character of a

53. For more discussion on the South Korean film policy in the 1960s, see Park Ji-yeon, “Korean Motion Picture Policy and Industry in the 1960s and 1970s,” in A History of Korean Cinema: From Liberation to the 1960s, ed. Yi Hyo-In, Jung Jong Hwa, and Parl Ji-yeon (Seoul: Korean Film Archive, 2005), 150–93. 54. On this phenomenon of “fake coproductions,” see Shim and Yecies, “Asian Interchange,” 23–25. 55. It is worth pointing out that there was also a Zatoichi television series that ran for four seasons—a total of 100 episodes—between 1974 and 1979.

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blind swordswoman.56 Also of note is Tange Sazen, a one-eyed, one-armed character who originated in a serial novel running in a newspaper during the late 1920s. The character, a samurai who is mutilated as the result of a betrayal and then starts leading the life of a nihilistic ronin, became so popular with the public that films depicting his adventures quickly appeared, among them those by Ito Daisuke (Tange Sazen: Dai-ippen, 1933; Tange Sazen: Kengeki no maki, 1934) and by Yamanaka Sadao (Tange Sazen: The Million Ryo Pot/Tange Sazen yowa: Hyakuman ryo no tsubo, 1935). Other film adaptations have come out since, among them Gosha Hideo’s Tange Sazen: The Secret of the Urn (Tange Sazen: Hien iaigiri, 1966) and Yasuda Kimiyoshi’s Lady Sazen and the Drenched Swallow Sword (Onna sazen nuretsubame katategiri, 1969). The Zatoichi series—and the Crimson Bat films and Tange Sazen films to a lesser extent—did not only appeal to Japanese viewers; they were also highly popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong and became the objects of imitation and appropriation for many local filmmakers. An early example is Jin Han’s Three Blind Female Spies series (1965–1966) from Taiwan:57 in one of the film’s posters, it is mentioned that the female spy protagonists “match the blind swordsman of Japan” (pimei riben mang jianxia)—an obvious reference to the eponymous character in the Zatoichi series and a sign of his popularity in Taiwan at the time. A more prominent case is The OneArmed Swordsman, a record-breaking box office success that cemented the dominance of Hong Kong martial arts films in both local and regional markets. While there might be a more proximate source—in the form of Yang Guo, the protagonist in Jin Yong’s highly popular martial arts novel The Return of the Condor Heroes (Shendiao xialu, 1959)—for the film’s iconic one-armed protagonist, the influence of the Zatoichi series can be discerned in the way the films established and made popular the trope of physical impairment in martial arts cinema, thus providing the impetus for using characters with anomalous bodies in the first place. The same one-armed swordsman character would emerge again in Chang Cheh’s Return of the One-Armed Swordsman and, most interestingly, in Yasuda Kimiyoshi’s Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman (Shin Zatoichi: Yabure! Tojinken/Mangxia dazhan dubei dao, 1971), a coproduction by Toho and Golden Harvest in which two action protagonists with physical impairments—the Japanese blind swordsman played by Katsu Shintaro and the Chinese maimed hero played by Wang Yu—are brought together. In addition to these examples, other Hong Kong and Taiwan martial arts films with physically anomalous heroes and heroines in the period include: Jin Han’s 56. The four films in the series are: Matsuda Sadatsugu’s Crimson Bat: The Blind Swordsman (Mekura no oichi monogatari: Makkana nagaradori, 1969), Matsuda’s Trapped, the Crimson Bat (Mekura no Oichi jigokuhada, 1969), Ichimura Hirokazu’s Watch Out, Crimson Bat! (Mekura no Oichi midaregasa, 1969), and Ichimura’s Crimson Bat – Oichi: Wanted, Dead or Alive (Mekura no Oichi inochi moraimasu, 1970). 57. There are three films in the series, namely, Three Beautiful Blind Female Spies/Yandie san mangnü (1965), Three Beautiful Blind Female Spies 2/Mangnü dixia siling (1966), and Three Beautiful Blind Female Spies 3/ Mangnü da taowang (1966).

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Golden Sword and the Blind Swordswoman (Mangnü jinjian, 1970), The Crimson Charm, New One-Armed Swordsman, Wu Ma’s Deaf Mute Heroine (Longya jian, 1971), One-Armed Swordswoman, and Crippled Avengers. Korea, too, produced an array of martial arts and action films with physically impaired protagonists, among them Im Kwon-taek’s Returned Left-Handed Man (Doraon oensonjabi, 1968) and One-Eyed Park (Aekkunun Bak, 1970), Im Wonsik’s Armless Swordsman (Pareomneun geomgaeg, 1969), An Da-ho’s A Blind Eye (Wonhan-ui aekkunun, 1969), Park Woo-sang’s The Blind Swordsman (Maeng-in daehyeobgaeg, 1971), Sin Yeong-il’s A Blind Swordsman (Jug-janggeom, 1974), and Lee Doo-yong’s Returned One-Legged Man (Doraon oedali, 1974) and its sequel, Returned One-Legged Man 2 (Sok doraon oedali, 1974). But unlike their Hong Kong and Taiwanese counterparts noted above, the Japanese connection of these Korean films was indirect at best. This is due to Korea’s lingering hostility to Japan, its past colonizer, and despite the official normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1965, all cultural imports (including films) from Japan were banned in Korea until the 1990s. Thus, the inspiration for the handicapped heroes and heroines could not possibly have come—at least not directly—from Japanese films; rather, the more substantial influence came from Hong Kong and Taiwan. In fact, what some have called the “martial arts craze” in Korea in the 1960s and 1970s was triggered by Chinese-language martial arts novels and films—first by the martial arts fiction from Taiwan, which was translated into Korean from the early 1960s on and became highly popular among Korean readers, and later by the “new school” martial arts films from Hong Kong.58 Among the early film hits was, not surprisingly, The OneArmed Swordsman, which directly influenced Armless Swordsman and other Korean martial arts films with physically anomalous characters mentioned above. How do we understand this proliferation of physically impaired protagonists in martial arts films from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea? A narrow explanation would concentrate on the industrial aspect and see the trend simply as a means to capitalize on what had proven to be commercially successful: as the Zatoichi films became popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan, local film producers picked up the trend and turned out films centered on characters with physical disabilities. And once these martial arts films from Hong Kong and Taiwan—most notably The One Armed Swordsman—became box office successes in Korea, the same process of copying and appropriation was repeated. While this account is accurate as far as it goes, it fails to address the deeper questions at stake: Why, for instance, were martial arts films with physically impaired heroes and heroines found appealing by viewers from across the 58. For more discussion on the impact of Chinese-language martial arts fiction and cinema on South Korea in the 1960s, see Sangjoon Lee, “Martial Arts Craze in Korea: Cultural Translation of Martial Arts Film and Literature in the 1960s,” in East Asian Cinema and Cultural Heritage: From China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, to Japan and South Korea, ed. Yau Shuk-ting, Kinnia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 173–95.

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East Asian region in the first place? What was the allegorical significance of these handicapped characters in different national and geopolitical contexts? To answer these questions, we need to broaden our view and explore the socially symbolic meanings associated with the impaired or disabled body. On one level, it is frequently noted that the popularity of martial arts and action films is grounded in their ability to provide marginalized peoples a fantasy of empowerment and triumph against evils and injustices. Protagonists with physical defects fit particularly well into this imaginary emancipation because their corporeal imperfections render their powers even more exceptional and unique. Yet other meanings can be read into these handicapped action figures as well. For no matter how powerful and capable these characters might be, their impaired bodies connote a sense of lack and incompleteness that, when read symptomatically, conjures up the underlying strains, fissures, and even traumas in society. Put otherwise, as a recurrent trope in East Asian martial arts and action films of the 1960s and 1970s, physical impairment was not just a commercial gimmick to exploit and capitalize on previous box office successes; more importantly, it needs to be read allegorically, as a sign that made perceptible—and thus thinkable—the complex historical forces at work in different East Asian countries. In the Japanese context, for instance, these historical forces encompassed in part the lasting psychological devastation of atomic bombings, which literally produced a mass of deformed bodies. To be sure, no Japanese martial arts/action films of the period described or addressed the nuclear event directly, and I am not suggesting that the recurrent figure of a physically flawed hero or heroine served as an opaque, indirect depiction of the hibakusha (the surviving victims of the atomic bombs). Yet this does not mean that we cannot find in the films/figure what David Deamer calls “traces”—i.e., “symptoms and figures of filmic historical memory appearing against a backdrop of cinematic forgetting”—of the nuclear legacy.59 Such traces, however, brought to light only one aspect of a society that was undergoing rapid changes; there were other and more proximate forces, among them the emergence in the late 1950s and 1960s of a cynical and rebellious young generation who, despite or rather because of Japan’s postwar economic recovery, was resentful at Japan’s powerful oligarchy and its American masters, and who felt alienated with the oppressive values of mainstream society. It was precisely these feelings of disillusionment and dissent, reflected not just in law-breaking youths and idle spendthrifts indulging in excessive sex and leisure but in the upheaval of student protests and riots, that the transgressive films of the taiyozoku (“sun tribe”) and the Japanese New Wave, in their different ways, sought to capture and respond to.60 59. David Deamer, Deleuze, Japanese Cinema, and the Atom Bomb: The Spectre of Impossibility (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 122. 60. For a good introduction to the taiyozoku phenomenon, see Deborah Shamoon, “Sun Tribe: Cultural Production and Popular Culture in Post-War Japan,” E-ASPAC 1 (2002), accessed October 17, 2015, http://aspac.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Shamoon_Deborah_Sun-Tribe-Cultural-Production-and-

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These developments also deeply affected chambara films of the 1960s, which reflected the cynical and even nihilistic attitudes of frustrated youths by becoming more openly critical of hierarchy, power structures, and injustice. From Kobayashi Masaki’s Harakiri to the trend of zankoku (“cruel”) samurai films such as Imai Tadashi’s Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai and Revenge (Adauchi, 1964), the new chambara films were generally studies of individuals resisting and even rebelling against vested power, and used abject violence (graphic brutality; the horror of extreme physical mutilation) to condemn oppressive societal norms. The Zatoichi series, in a more mainstream but no less effective way, also constituted part of this new trend in Japanese chambara films during the 1960s. The level of gore, for instance, was increasingly cranked up (particularly after Katsu Productions took over the series in 1970), and despite being less overtly allegorical as in some other films of the period, graphic violence may still be seen as harnessed to criticisms of the injustices of society. Throughout the series, Zatoichi is merciless in taking down crooked yakuza bosses and corrupt government officials (while himself being cut, bruised, and maimed in the process), thereby underlining his solidarity with the abused and the disenfranchised. In fact, like the people he is defending or avenging for, Zatoichi is himself an outcast, his marginalization brought about not only by his low social position (an itinerant gambler and masseur occupying the bottom rung of society) but also by his physical defect (his inability to see). Thus conceived, Zatoichi’s blindness takes on a new meaning; it needs to be seen not simply as a biological condition but rather as a symbol embodying the sense of lack and disenfranchisement felt by many young people in Japan during the period. That this handicapped character is also a superb fighter no doubt signals a desire to be healed and restrengthened— and an attempt, on the part of the film industry, to tap into both the frustrations and aspirations of disaffected youths. On the other hand, in Chang Cheh’s legendary The One-Armed Swordsman, the impaired body of the central character has a rather different symbolic significance. To begin with, the film was made in 1967 and is thus historically linked to the Cultural Revolution in China on the one hand, and to the Cultural Revolution–inspired riots in Hong Kong on the other. While Hong Kong, as a British colony, was long cut off from China and had followed its own course of development, the violent events in the late 1960s had the effect of further alienating the colony from the mainland and played a key role in precipitating a new distinct Hong Kong identity, one shaped not so much by nationalist identification as by the capitalist ethics of competition and success and by a hybrid, cosmopolitan culture. Put otherwise, the emergence of a local Hong Kong identity was predicated, in part at least, on the increasing separation—politically, socially, and culturally—between Hong Kong and mainland China. Popluar-Culture-in-Post-War-Japan.pdf. On the Japanese New Wave, see David Desser, Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).

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Similarly, the titular hero of The One-Armed Swordsman is able to forge a new selfidentity and to start over again—not only finding his true love but also mastering a new style of swordsplay and transforming himself into a superb fighter—after breaking ties with his long-time martial arts school and losing one of his arms as a result. In this sense, the film can be read allegorically as a harbinger of the emergent Hong  Kong identity; an identity that, like the one-armed hero in the film or the broken blade he has trained himself to use, is grounded in a fundamental break or fracture. In Chapter 1, I borrowed René Girard’s concept of sacrificial violence to discuss The Assassin, a film Chang Cheh made in the same year as The One-Armed Swordsman. My specific argument is that the death of the film’s central character, while depicted in an extremely gruesome way and tied in with acts of physical mutilation such as self-disembowelment and self-blinding, is nonetheless imbued with a strong sense of meaning and purpose, and serves as a means of individual and social regeneration. A similar reading, I would argue, can be made of The One-Armed Swordsman; in other words, physical violence in the film, as attested to by the way in which the eponymous hero has his arm brutally cut off, can be conceived as a regenerative force that not only triggers the formation of a new identity in the character but also reflects a broader aspiration, on the part of the director and some segments of the population, for Hong Kong to make a break with the past and move to a new direction, i.e., the path towards colonial-capitalist modernity. But yet, as I also indicated in the chapter, rapid modernization and economic growth brought to the fore the ills of capitalism to which sacrificial or regenerative violence no longer seemed a sufficient response. Thus we see physical mutilation, while still an important motif, acquire a very different tone and almost diametrically opposite meanings in many of Chang’s films in the 1970s. In the climactic battle of The Boxer from Shantung, for instance, the death of the film’s gangster protagonist, depicted as a long, excruciating process of brutal physical ordeals, is almost completely emptied of meaning and leads to a void that serves as a devastating critique of a monolithic, greed-driven capitalist system that leaves little room for individual choice or agency. In the case of Korean martial arts/action films, the symbolic meanings associated with physically impaired protagonists are deeply rooted in the historical experiences and contemporary realities of the country. On the one hand, as Kim Soyoung points out, injured veterans from the Korean War and the Vietnam War begging for money on the streets were a common sight in Korea in the 1970s, and handicapped characters with exceptional powers thus had an powerful—if ironic—resonance with viewers at the time.61 On the other hand, given the partition of Korea after World War  II, 61. Kim Soyoung, “Genre as Contact Zone: Hong Kong Action and Korean Hwalkuk,” in Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, ed. Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li, and Stephen Chan Ching-Kiu (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 107.

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it comes as no surprise that the physically impaired hero or heroine would also resonate with Korean audiences as an allegorical stand-in for a fractured nation. This is especially clear with the Returned One-Legged Man series, which puts taekwondo, an indigenous Korean martial art, front and center in its fight scenes. Taekwondo is a combat style centered on (high) kicking, and legs thus carry a strong symbolic significance and serve as a kind of national marker. The figure of the one-legged fighter, then, was no simple knock-off of the one-armed swordsman character from Hong  Kong, but represented rather a conscious attempt to invoke the trauma of a divided nation. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the two One-Legged Man movies, like many other Korean martial arts/action films of the period, are set in 1930s Manchuria, and they show the handicapped heroes fighting with Japanese gangsters and joining the Korean independence army at the end. This adds another major dimension to the films: Japan’s historical colonization of Korea and its traumatic effects on the Korean people. Indeed, in the second film of the series, it is a group of hired thugs from Japan who cut off the hero’s left leg after he has a dispute with a Japanese gangster. And while the protagonist in the first film breaks his leg himself in remorse for accidentally causing the death of his lover’s brother, a later scene shows him being tortured by the henchmen of a Japanese gang leader, his legs being repeatedly hit by a wooden pole (Figure 5.3). In both cases, the injuries incurred to the body—to the leg specifically—are closely linked to Japanese aggression, and this gives the trope of the impaired body/leg extra and more specific symbolic resonance: it serves not just as a figuration of a divided nation but as a site restaging the oppression and suffering of Korea under Japanese colonization.62

Figure 5.3 The impaired leg as allegory in Returned One-Legged Man (1974) 62. I should note that this use of bodily anomaly as a colonial trope was not something new but can be traced, as Kyeong-Hee Choi has shown, to Korean literature during the period of Japanese rule. See Choi, “Impaired Body as Colonial Trope: Kang Kyŏng’ae’s ‘Underground Village,’” Public Culture 13, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 431–58.

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Ultimately, however, these allusions to history—the partition on the one hand, and anticolonial struggle on the other—were not simply about the past but reflected contemporary efforts to use nationalism as a means to mobilize people for modernization. As is often pointed out, the 1960s and 1970s were a period of profound transformation in Korea when the entire society, under the military government of Park Chung-hee, strived to make industrialization and economic development a national initiative. In this process, nationalism served an important ideological function by turning the people into national subjects and rallying them for state-led modernization.63 In Korean films of the period, this nationalist ideology frequently took the form of anticommunism (e.g., Shin Sang-ok’s Red Muffler [Ppalgan mahura, 1964] and Lee Man-hee’s The Wild Flowers in the Battle Field [Deulgughwaneun pi-eossneunde, 1974]), but it could also be grounded on a discourse of remasculinization as in the One-Legged Man series: the renewal of Korean masculinity profoundly undermined by the traumas of Japanese colonization and the national partition. In Korean cinema, this male crisis was most clearly articulated in melodramas such as Yu Hyun-mok’s The Stray Bullet (Obaltan, 1961), where all the main male characters are positioned negatively or ambiguously as agents of action and/or bearers of the gaze.64 Unlike the troubled and often emasculated males in this and other Korean melodramas of the 1960s, the One-Legged Man series—and many martial arts and action films of the 1970s—presented strong male figures that epitomized the ideology of masculine nationalism actively embraced by the Park government in the period.65 That the eponymous heroes in the series were able to assert their masculinity despite their physical defects, which can be taken as alluding to Korea’s traumatic past, made them a particularly apt model for the nation’s official image as a rapidly modernizing society, an industrial powerhouse that had overcome the devastation and poverty of the past. As a recurring figure in East Asian martial arts films of the 1960s and 1970s, the physically impaired hero or heroine highlights the transnational film interactions in the region and offers a space for inter-Asian comparisons. This figuration of bodily anomaly, as my discussion above shows, was not simply motivated by commercial considerations; rather, it served as a socially symbolic sign capable of articulating and negotiating a range of historical processes—colonialism and postcolonialism, the Cold War, modernity and modernization, and so on—in different national and geopolitical contexts. 63. For a good introduction of Korea’s state-led modernization, see Kim Hyung-A, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee: Rapid Industrialization, 1961–79 (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). 64. See, for instance, Eunsun Cho, “The Stray Bullet and the Crisis of Korean Masculinity,” in South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and National Cinema, ed. Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005), 99–116. 65. For more discussion on this masculine nationalism in Korean cinema of the 1970s, see Kyung Hyun Kim, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 16–17.

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Minor Transnationalism on a Global Scale From the beginning of the 1970s, the commercial and cultural impact of Hong Kong martial arts cinema was no longer confined to Asia but extended to almost every part of the globe. In this final section of the chapter, I discuss the international kung fu film craze that emerged in the early 1970s and argue that the phenomenon was not as short-lived as is generally thought, and that the continual impact of Hong Kong martial arts films can be seen in its evolution into a global subculture (often through some “minor” production and distribution/exhibition strategies), and in the way it was domesticated and integrated into preexisting genre structures of film industries around the world. Despite their strong regional presence in East and Southeast Asia, Hong Kong martial arts films did not become generally known to viewers in other parts of the world until a group of kung fu movies successfully broke into new international markets in the early 1970s. Signs of the breakthrough could first be seen in Western Europe—especially Italy, where companies were aggressively picking up kung fu pictures from Hong Kong, seeing in them a timely substitute for the waning Spaghetti Western boom. A craze was thus created, which then spread and moved to the United States. In 1973, as David Desser points out, no less than fifteen Hong Kong martial arts films found their way onto Variety’s weekly list of top fifty box office draws, and six of them landed at the top spot and held it for at least one week. This unprecedented success of Hong Kong imports in the American market, according to Desser, did not come out of the blue but was rather a complex phenomenon growing out of a confluence of factors: the central role played by Warner Bros., which initiated the kung fu film craze in the United States by releasing Chung Chang-wha’s King Boxer (a.k.a. Five Fingers of Death) (Tianxia diyi quan, 1972) and then coproducing Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee’s first (and only) Hollywood film; the consonance of the martial arts film with the existing blaxploitation market; the long history of Asian martial arts in American cinema; and the increasing interest in things Asian owing to massive and continued exposure to Asia, not least the troubling experiences associated with the Vietnam War.66 But whatever the reasons, the success of Hong Kong martial arts films in the crucial American market gave local companies a strong impetus to globalize, to move beyond their dependence on the traditional regional markets. Before long, kung fu films had grown into a global phenomenon and circulated in almost every corner of the world, including Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East. Most critics, however, claim that this kung fu craze was no more than a fleeting phenomenon, and that it started to decline rapidly following the death of Bruce Lee 66. See David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong, 19–43.

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in 1973. Not that the Hong Kong film industry did not try to keep the lucrative trend alive, but many of these efforts consisted simply of small, fly-by-night companies churning out cheap quickies for fast profit. The resulting films, many of which were made exclusively for export purpose, were thus of an inferior standard, with hardly any production values except scene after scene of mindless action. The sense of these films as being “trash,” as something of shoddy quality, was further abetted by the fact that they were frequently dubbed—often hastily and badly—when shown in overseas markets. While such dubbing was, and still is, viewed as part of the charm of the movies, this kind of camp reception simply reinforced the near-automatic critical dismissal of the films. Added to all of this is the tendency of Hong Kong martial arts films to be reedited—shortened by cutting out the nonaction scenes—by foreign distributors. This, in turn, led local producers to further discount story or characterization and to focus on the only thing that really mattered, i.e., non-stop physical action. It  is true that martial arts films continued to be released around the world, but in the United States at least, they became almost exclusively the province of grindhouse theaters and drive-ins. And they were also, not unusually, paired and shown together with blaxploitation films, European Westerns, horror movies, and other forms of exploitation cinema, thus further accentuating the trashy image of the genre.67 The more established companies (such as Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest) took a more ambitious approach by speculating on possibilities for international coproductions or higher budget English-language productions aimed at international markets. Trying to repeat the success of Enter the Dragon, Golden Harvest—even with the premature death of Lee and with Warner Brothers pulling back from the coproduction projects that had been planned—continued to search for opportunities for international coproductions. A case in point is Brian Trenchard-Smith’s The Man from Hong Kong (1975): with Wang Yu and George Lazenby as the leads, this Hong Kong–Australian coproduction created a new record for the highest-budgeted Hong Kong film at the time of its release and clearly attested to the global ambitions of Golden Harvest.68 Shaw Brothers, too, despite its generally more conservative stance, started to embark on a string of international coproductions from 1973 on, seeking to capitalize on the unprecedented worldwide success of King Boxer and other kung fu films in the period. Several coproduction deals with European and American companies were signed, resulting in a string of films such as Virgins of the Seven Seas (Kuei Chih-hung and Ernst Hofbauer, 1974), The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (Chang Cheh and Roy Ward Baker, 1974), The Stranger and the Gunfighter a.k.a. Blood Money (Anthony Margheriti, 1974), Shatter (Michael Carreras, 1974), Supermen against the Orient (Bitto Albertini, 1974), Supermen against the Amazons (Alfonso Brescia, 1975), as well as Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (Charles Bail, 1975). 67. Ibid., p. 36. 68. For an in-depth discussion of the film, see Morris, “The Man from Hong Kong in Sydney, 1975,” 235–66.

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Another way for Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest to expand into the global market was through financing and investing in English-language films with primarily Western actors and locations in an attempt to appeal to American viewers and draw interest from distributors around the globe.69 Shaws’ attempts in this vein can be observed in projects like Taipan (announced in 1974 but left uncompleted), Roland  Neame’s Meteor (1979), and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), but it was Golden Harvest that pursued this strategy in an aggressive way, seeking to build up its international distribution network by acquiring Cathay Films—a British company that distributed films throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, albeit not, symptomatically, in the United States. In 1977, Golden Harvest completed and released the first Hong Kong–financed English-language film, Robert Clouse’s The Amsterdam Kill, followed shortly by Sidney J. Furie’s The Boys in Company C (1978), a film about the Vietnam War shot in the Philippines. With the hiring of Ron Dandrea in 1979, who had had extensive experience in worldwide financing of film production as vice president of global entertainment at the Bank of America, the intention of Golden Harvest to become a major global production company could not be clearer. Plans of another six international productions were announced in 1980, which would result in films such as Clouse’s The Big Brawl (1980), Jackie Chan’s first starring role in a Hollywood production, as well as Hal Needham’s The Cannonball Run (1981) and Brian G. Hutton’s High Road to China (1983).70 But despite all their efforts, both Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest faced major obstacles in their endeavors to open up the international market. With few exceptions,71 the majority of the aforementioned international coproductions and self-financed English-language films existed at the margins of the global film marketplace and failed to generate any long-term interest. A large part of the problem had to do with the fact that the Hong Kong companies could not afford to establish a wide international distribution network, and the foreign distributors which they were forced to rely on often viewed their films as marginal and thus unworthy of serious attention. While international coproductions could potentially provide better access to markets through distribution arrangements with the foreign partners, this did not always work in reality, for Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest lacked any ongoing

69. While only a few of these international productions can be considered martial arts/action films, most of them do contain action elements or combine action with other genres. 70. See Mike Walsh, “Hong Kong Goes International: The Case of Golden Harvest,” in Hong Kong Film, Hollywood and the New Global Cinema, ed. Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 170–71. 71. One such exceptional case is The Cannonball Run (1981), a Golden Harvest–financed action comedy starring Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, and Farrah Fawcett. The film grossed US$160 million worldwide—on an investment of $20 million—and was one of the year’s top ten highest grossing films. Another, less striking example is High Road to China (1983), which took in almost US$30 million and was the 27th highest grossing film of 1983.

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production relationship with a major foreign (and especially American) company, and their coproduction partners were for the most part small independent studios that did not have a lot of resources. At the same time, the emergence of the blockbuster phenomenon put further constraints on the global ambitions of the Hong Kong companies. As has frequently been noted, the American film industry recovered from its recession in the late 1960s and early 1970s by turning to a mode of high-budget productions with wide commercial appeal and immense spending on marketing and promotion. The trend, then, was to release fewer but more expensive films (Jaws; Star Wars). As production costs for American films skyrocketed in the second half of the 1970s and beyond, Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest realized that they, too, needed to pump up their investments in order to compete. Yet all such efforts turned out to be a losing game in that the companies simply lacked the financial resources to make their products competitive on a global scale.72 While this narrative of Hong Kong martial arts cinema’s failed globalization attempts is true to a large extent and gives us crucial insights into the complex dynamics in international film production and distribution, it is problematic for a number of reasons. First, as I argued at the beginning of the chapter, cinematic transnationalism takes a number of different forms, and while Hollywood blockbusters ruling box offices worldwide is one evident example, the relegation of Hong Kong martial arts films to grindhouses, drive-ins, and other “minor” exhibition venues (in  the American market at least) does not mean that they can be dismissed as a transnational cultural force. Rather, even in such a marginal position the Hong Kong imports were able to maintain a hold on some segments of the American audience, and would eventually work their way onto television screens—either through “Kung Fu Theatre” or programs of a similar name—and, on a global level, to the medium of video, which became an increasingly widespread mode of film consumption from the early 1980s on.73 Home videos are particularly important in thinking about the global impact of Hong Kong or Hong Kong–based martial arts/action films. This is so because they represented a relatively inexpensive and thus cost-effective way to release (and re-release) low-budget films on a global scale, and the presence of a rapidly expanding video market served to bring about a new form of action film production. Meaghan Morris has called this new form the “direct-to-video” mode, which from about mid-1980s to early 1990s constituted a vast but hitherto ignored industry based largely in Asia, with Hong Kong as one of its creative centers.74 72. Ibid., 171; 173–74. 73. For more discussion on Hong Kong martial arts cinema’s migration to American television and its foray into the global home video market, see Man-Fung Yip, “Martial Arts Cinema and Minor Transnationalism,” in American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows, ed. Lisa Funnell and Man-Fung Yip (New York and London: Routledge, 2015), 89–94. 74. Morris, “Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema: Hong Kong and the Making of a Global Popular Culture,” Inter-Asian Cultural Studies 5, no. 2 (August 2004): 181–99.

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Furthermore, the impact of Hong Kong martial arts cinema can also be observed in the ways aspects of the genre were incorporated and assimilated into the preexisting genre structures of different international film industries. In American cinema of the 1970s, this domestication process manifested itself in blaxploitation films; according to Desser, the success of Gordon Parks, Jr.’s Super Fly (1972), a black action movie influenced by Asian martial arts, saved Warner Brothers from near-bankruptcy and gave the studio a good sense of martial arts’ appeal to (young) black audiences. With the rise of the kung fu craze in 1973, Warner Brothers started making serious efforts to incorporate aspects of Hong Kong martial arts films into the blaxploitation genre.75 The most obvious example in this regard was Clouse’s Black Belt Jones (1974), but the trend can also be observed in films such as Parks, Jr.’s Three the Hard Way (1974) and a group of movies featuring tough (and glamorous) black female fighters, among them Jack Hill’s Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), and Jack Starrett’s Cleopatra Jones (1973).76 On the other side of the Atlantic, too, the conventions of Hong Kong martial arts films were actively appropriated and incorporated into various local genres. A particularly intriguing case is My Name Is Shanghai Joe, an Italian Western directed by Mario Caiano in 1972. A close analysis of the film allows us to rethink the transnational history of action cinema from a non-American-centric perspective, and to identify a key global appeal—the fantasy of transnational racial and class solidarity—of Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Set in the late nineteenth century, My Name Is Shanghai Joe tells the story of Chin Hao (Chen Lee), a Chinese immigrant who seeks to start a new life in America. Not surprisingly, this is not an easy goal, and Chin is continuously antagonized by bigots who call him all kinds of racial slurs and make his life difficult. But despite the widespread discrimination, Chin manages to find a job as a cowboy after leaving San Francisco for Texas. He soon finds out, however, that it is not cattle but Mexican slaves that he is moving. He also discovers that a prominent lawyer, Stanley Spencer, is behind all this. He reports Spencer to the police, and Spencer, on his part, hires a group of bounty killers to track down Chin and take him out. Along with this main narrative line, there is also a subplot that deals with the romantic relationship between Chin and a Mexican woman called Cristina. As an amalgamation of two “minor” action genres—the Spaghetti Western and the kung fu film—what stands out immediately in the film is its hybrid form and mode of address. Such hybridization, I hasten to add, was not something new; in fact, most of the internationally coproduced martial arts/action films of Shaw Brothers and

75. See Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze,” 24. 76. In this connection, it is worth mentioning that the Hong Kong imports that broke into the American market in 1973 included a number of kung fu films that starred the female action star Angela Mao. Hapkido, for instance, held the top spot on the Variety chart for the week of September 19 whereas Deadly China Doll (Heilu, 1973) did the same for the week of October 10.

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Golden Harvest mentioned earlier were marked by a palpable mix of stars, genres, and styles.77 Such a strategy was, to some extent, commercially motivated and served as a means to bring together the strengths of the individual companies involved and to make the films appealing to different viewers. In reality, however, the situation was often more complex, and the different elements might actually act against each other and render the films problematic in terms of cross-cultural reception. A good case in point is Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman. In its attempt to bring together (and capitalize on) two famous martial arts film heroes, one from Japan and the other from Hong Kong, the film was confronted with the question of which character should prevail in the end. To meet the different expectations of Japanese and Hong Kong viewers, two different endings were made: for the Japanese distribution, the Japanese blind swordsman Zatoichi wins, whereas the Chinese one-armed swordsman wins in the version released in Hong Kong.78 Another example is The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, which combines martial arts cinema and the gothic horror associated with the film’s British coproducer, Hammer Films. While the two genres can be said to share certain basic affinities—both seek to bring about intense physical sensations, for instance, and aim at a similar type of downmarket audience— this does not follow that a film mingling them would necessarily bring a crossover of viewers. On the contrary, for most people at the time, having zombie-like vampires attack on horseback and fight in kung fu was certainly a bizarre and awkward idea. In My Name Is Shanghai Joe, the amalgamation of different generic elements is less jarring and more organic, partly because the Spaghetti Western and the kung fu film are both action genres and share some basic features. The emphasis on action—especially ultraviolent action—is one example: there is a considerable amount of bloodspattered violence in the film, whether it involves guns (a Mexican slave is repeatedly shot as he hangs helplessly from a rope) or bare hands (one of the bounty killers has an eye gouged out by Chin). Yet something more appears to be at stake than this shared propensity towards explicit violence. Take, for instance, the battle between Chin and an oriental fighter near the end of the film. The scene is a good example of the film’s hybrid mode of address: in many ways, the battle plays like a standard showdown in a Spaghetti Western, marked with some of the genre’s most characteristic elements such as the bare dusty frontier town setting, the close-ups and extreme close-ups on

77. The Stranger and the Gunfighter, for instance, is a mixture of Spaghetti Westerns and kung fu films, of guns and fists, with a cast that features Lee Van Cleef and Lo Lieh (of King Boxer fame). Both Shatter and The Man from Hong Kong, on the other hand, attempted to position the martial arts film within the genre of the police or spy thriller and had obvious connections to the James Bond films. In fact, George Lazenby, a former James Bond himself, costarred with Wang Yu in The Man from Hong Kong. Supermen against the Orient is another fascinating case: an incongruous and often hilarious mix of martial arts and Italian superhero movies, specifically the long-running Three Fantastic Supermen series that first started in 1967. 78. It is not clear whether the different endings were planned from the very beginning, or the Hong Kong distributor, that is, Golden Harvest, reedited the film and changed the ending on its own.

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faces, and the long stand-off. On the other hand, the influence of martial arts cinema is not difficult to see either, showing itself not only in the unarmed combat (including some airborne fighting) but in the motif of body mutilation as well, including a shocking moment in which Chin cuts off the hand of his opponent, who cauterizes his wound by shoving his bloody stump into an open fire. A closer look at the scene, however, reveals a more complex, even self-reflexive structure. The duel can be divided into a number of different stages, each of which focuses on a different fighting method or style—hand-to-hand kung fu combat, dagger throwing, Japanese-style swordplay, and guns; it ends (almost surrealistically) with Chin catching a bullet with his bare hand and then driving his hand through his foe’s chest (Figures 5.4 and 5.5). The inclusion of these different action styles is interesting, not because of some facile notion of hybridization but rather due to the fact that it draws attention to a different way of understanding transnationalism in action cinema, one that does not take an American-centered perspective but highlights the complex interactions between a number of non-Hollywood (and mostly “minor”) action genres: Japanese samurai films, Euro-Westerns, and Hong Kong martial arts cinema.79 Hollywood, in this conception, is not the dominant force as is usually thought, but rather one among many nodes in the global action film network. Like Euro-Westerns in the second half of the 1960s, Hong Kong martial arts films built a strong international presence during the early 1970s (and beyond) and played a key role in shaping other action films, especially those in the “minor” mode. And their cross-cultural appeal can be attributed not simply to the dazzling spectacle of choreographed action, but to the imagining of a transnational racial and class solidarity—a utopian vision that seems to have shaped My Name Is Shanghai Joe as well. To illustrate this point, let me turn to another key aspect of the film: the ways in which Chin, the film’s central character, is represented. Similar to the revisionist cowboy figures in Spaghetti Westerns, Chin is also an outsider—an immigrant—who comes to a new place looking for economic opportunities. But unlike the former, many of whom are cynical opportunists and have a wavering sense of ethics, Chin is much less morally ambiguous and has no hesitation choosing justice over money. This does not mean, however, that he is a fighter for the wronged and the wretched from the beginning; rather, he is just an average man at the outset, someone who is trying to make an honest living in a harsh world. Despite being constantly insulted and ill-treated—whether it is a stagecoach driver making him sit on the roof or a group of cowboys promising to loan him a horse but instead unloading their guns at him—he remains mostly calm and collected, and does not resort to the use of force

79. Japanese samurai films are important in this scheme because Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, the first film of the famous “Dollars” trilogy that brought Spaghetti Westerns into the international spotlight, is very much modeled on—and some would say copied from—Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

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Figures 5.4 and 5.5 An amalgamation of action styles in My Name Is Shanghai Joe (1972)

until necessary. But all this changes when Chin unwittingly joins a group of slave traffickers and witnesses, to his horror, a bloody massacre of Mexican slaves during a botched pick-up. He tries to save an injured slave, but is caught and forced to fight with a bull with his hands tied. He manages to kill the bull and escape, and his innate sense of justice leads him to report the gruesome crime to the law enforcement. From this point on, any hope for a peaceful life is smashed; with a string of vile bounty killers coming after him, Chin has no choice but go on a righteous killing rampage while trying to escape to Mexico with Cristina, a Mexican woman with whom he has developed a quasi-romantic relationship. Overcoming great difficulties, the two of them successfully cross the border and come to Cristina’s home village, where Chin is treated with respect and dignity—he is even called “señor” by a young Mexican waiter, prompting him to remark that this is the first time in a long while that he has not been referred to as “chink,” “slanty eyes,” or one of those derogatory names that have been thrown at him by the Americans. The ties, however, do not last long and are ultimately transcended by a higher ideal. As Chin is about to leave the Mexican community at the end of the film and bids farewell to Cristina, he explains the reason for his departure in this way:

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Similar to the traditional Western hero, Chin chooses to leave and not to stay in one place or community, thereby abandoning the prospect of an interracial romance as well as the opportunity to return to settled life. Yet this parallel turns out to be deceptive, for instead of representing the American ideal of free, rugged individualism, what Chin embodies is something diametrically different—a figure symbolizing the unity of seemingly unrelated groups (Chinese immigrants, enslaved Mexican workers, and other “victims of injustice,” as Chin puts it) brought together by shared experiences of oppression (Figure 5.6). The common adversary is, of course, America; not the America, as Chin notes bitterly at one point in the film, that he came for, but a perverted one ruled by bigots and slavers. This alliance with the oppressed, as has often been suggested, also informed the films of Bruce Lee and many kung fu movies of the 1970s, and explains to a large extent their global appeal, especially with viewers from marginalized and disenfranchised groups who could readily identify with the subjugated characters in the films. To be specific, some of these films appealed to the racially oppressed by theatricizing ethnonationalist conflicts, while others spoke to the economically exploited through the valorized depiction of working-class heroes who fight and triumph over villainized capitalists. Both these aspects can be found in My Name Is Shanghai Joe: the film clearly presents the American West as a place of rampant racism where Chin, the non-white and non-American “Other,” is subject to constant ridicule and discrimination, but it also emphasizes issues of economic oppression such as the enslavement of Mexican workers. In fighting for the victims of these injustices, Chin serves as a unifying agent and embodies a transnational racial and class solidarity that, even more than the characteristic kung fu action, best epitomizes the “Hong Kong influence” in the film.

Figure 5.6 A figure of transnational racial and class solidarity: Chin Hao (Chen Lee) setting off at the end of My Name Is Shanghai Joe (1972)

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Even after the kung fu craze in the early 1970s, Hong Kong martial arts films continued to have, in the rest of the decade and beyond, a key impact on cinemas and cultures around the world. This was brought about, however, not by dominating box offices worldwide but rather as a form of global subculture, disseminated through “minor” exhibition outlets such as second-run theaters, urban grindhouses, driveins, and later, the home video market. A continuous, albeit oblique, influence was also made possible through a domestication process. Long before The Matrix and the Kill Bill series, then, the unique action style as well as the transnational racial and class imaginary of Hong Kong martial arts cinema had already been assimilated into the genre structures of various foreign film traditions. Exemplifying a case of minor transnationalism, Hong Kong martial arts films of the 1970s provides a model for considering transnational action cinema from a broader, non-American-centric perspective.

Epilogue

An underlying premise of this book is that Hong Kong martial arts cinema from the mid-1960s through the end of the 1970s, marked by new aesthetic and thematic directions as well as by new practices of transnationality, is best conceptualized as a cultural counterpart and response to processes of modernization and modernity that were shaping the former British colony. But despite its specific time focus, the issues explored in the book have broader significance and are useful for understanding martial arts films of more recent times. Without doubt, Hong Kong continued and intensified its march towards urban-capitalist modernization throughout the 1980s, the 1990s, and beyond. The pace of growth—economically, socially, and demographically—showed no signs of slowing during the period. On the one hand, the population expanded from 4 million in 1970 to 6.7 million in 2000. On the other hand, although the economy underwent a process of restructuring in the 1980s when the “Open Door” policy of post–Cultural Revolution China and other factors resulted in the relocation of Hong Kong’s industrial sector to the mainland and triggered its transition from labor-intensive manufacturing to finance- and service-oriented industries, the city continued to enjoy great prosperity and had by the mid-1990s established itself as one of the world’s foremost centers of international trade and finance. Rapid growth spawned more transportation, shops, infrastructure, entertainment, and commodities. As a result, the city became more congested, frantic, and noisy—in short, perceptually busier and more intense—than ever before. Meanwhile, gender relations and identities were also in constant reformulation as both men and women tried to negotiate the changing social, economic, and political contexts of Hong Kong. Similar to the larger society from which it emerged, Hong Kong martial arts cinema, too, has continued its modernization process since the late 1970s. This can be seen in (at least) three new trends of development: first, the rise of the actionadventure film with contemporary urban settings, which came to take the place of traditional kung fu movies commonly set in the late Qing and the early Republican periods. Jackie Chan, for instance, moved away from period kung fu films to modern action comedies (Wheels on Meals/Kuaican che, 1984; Dragons Forever/Feilong mengjiang, 1986), cop movies (Police Story/Jingcha gushi, 1985; Police Story 2/Jingcha

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gushi xuji, 1988), and Indiana Jones–style adventure films (Armour of God/Longxiong hudi, 1987; Armour of God 2: Operation Condor/Feiying jihua, 1991). Sammo Hung, who in the late 1970s and early 1980s made a number of highly successful period kung fu pictures, also sought to keep up with the times by making contemporary action comedies such as Winners and Sinners (Qimou miaoji wu fuxing, 1983) and The Owl vs. Bombo (Maotouying yu xiao feixiang, 1984). Historical kung fu films, then, were relegated to the margins of the local film industry throughout the 1980s, but with the success of Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China (Huang Feihong, 1991) and its sequels, they made a comeback in the early 1990s, albeit in distinctly modernized forms characterized by the ample use of advanced wire work and by the adoption of a more contemporarily dynamic cinematic style. The second trend pertains to what has been called “gun-fu.” Identified most closely with—but not limited to—the “heroic bloodshed” films of John Woo, this trend integrated gunplay with elaborate action choreography, reimagining traditional martial arts battles with swords and blades as gracefully choreographed modern gunfights. What resulted was a type of stylized, even mannerist, action film new to both Hong Kong and the West, one that has had an enormous influence on popular filmmaking around the world. Last but not least, the modernization of post-1980 Hong Kong martial arts cinema manifested itself in the swordplay movie, specifically, the attempts to integrate high-tech visual and special effects into the often mythological and supernatural imaginary of the subgenre. One of the earliest examples of this trend is Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Shushan jianxia, 1983), a groundbreaking work that produced dazzling martial arts spectacles by combining Hollywood’s sophisticated technologies of the digital motion control camera, mechanically assisted animation, and optical compositing with locally established traditions such as wire-work choreography.1 In some important aspects, these modernized martial arts and action films moved away from the cultural imaginary of their predecessors in the late 1960s and 1970s— an imaginary, as I have stressed throughout the book, firmly grounded in a specific configuration of colonial-industrial modernity. A case in point involves what can be called the “technologization” of Hong Kong martial arts cinema and, by extension, the “virtualization” of the action body—i.e., its reconfiguration from a vehicle of concrete power and concerted effort to a mere “medium” for high-tech visual and special effects. This “technological turn,” as I have argued elsewhere, is closely intertwined with the changing sensory environment and experience of Hong Kong society over the past two to three decades. As Hong Kong transitioned from an

1. For more discussion on the film’s assemblage of visual and special effect technologies and its impact on Hong Kong cinema, see Andrew Schroeder, Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), chapter 3.

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industrial to a postindustrial information society during the 1980s and 1990s, the sensory-perceptual mode of its everyday life also went through profound changes, shifting from a “solid” and embodied experiential order (associated with manual labor and machine speed) to one characterized by lightness, fluidity, and disembodiment (as witnessed in intellectual and affective labor, electronic speed, and other emergent social/cultural phenomena). This new modality of sensory experience has paved the way for a new type of martial arts film, one that continuously churns out powerful sensory stimulations but is at the same time “lighter” and more “fluid,” and increasingly marked by a “virtualization” of effort and embodiment not unlike the predominant social-experiential condition of the time.2 While this propensity for effortless and disembodied action can be seen in the revisionist kung fu films of the 1990s with their airily choreographed combats aided by advanced wire work,3 the trend found its most evident manifestation in those magical swordplay movies relying extensively on spectacular but yet “light” and “immaterial” effects—digital or otherwise—over concrete physical action. From Zu: Warriors and Ching Siu-tung’s A Chinese Ghost Story/Qiannü youhun series (1987–91) to Andrew Lau’s The Storm Riders (Fengyun, 1998), Tsui’s The Legend of Zu (Shushan zhuan, 2001), Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, and more recently, Oxide and Danny Pang’s The Storm Warriors (Fengyun II, 2009) and Cheang Pou-tsoi’s The Monkey King (Xiyou ji zhi danao tiangong, 2014), martial art films packed with high-tech special effects have further ratcheted up the speed and intensity of on-screen action, but the shifts are as much qualitative as quantitative. By this I mean that the experiential impact of these films, compared to their predecessors from the 1960s and 1970s, is not only more intense but also, more importantly, has a fundamentally different quality to it: while the earlier martial arts movies tended to highlight the physical materiality and tangible labor of the body, the contemporary effects-laden ones are fast, flashy, but seemingly without any concerted bodily effort. In other words, no longer conceived and depicted as a vehicle in which concrete labor is concentrated, the body of the action hero or heroine has become increasingly subservient to the lightness and effortlessness of fantastic effects and digital sensations. 2. Man-Fung Yip, “The Effortless Lightness of Action: Hong Kong Martial Arts Films in the Age of Immediacy,” in Martial Arts & Media Culture, ed. Tim Trausch and Stefan Kramer (Los Angeles: Bridge21 Publications, 2017). 3. Just consider the famous ladder fight between Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li) and Master Yim (Yam Sai-koon) at the end of Once Upon a Time in China, or the scene in Corey Yuen’s Fong Sai-yuk (Fang shiyu, 1993) where a full battle is waged atop the heads and shoulders of an awestruck crowd. While less visibly mediated by special effects as in their wuxia counterparts, contemporary kung fu films do make ample use of wire work (and more conventional techniques such as editing) in the hope of overcoming the limitations of human embodiment and making the martial arts action more effortlessly graceful. In these films, which have often been called “wire-fu,” the “real” no longer pertains to sheer corporeal performance, but is something, as Ackbar Abbas argues, “co-produced” by the action stars/stuntmen and special effects. See Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 31.

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Another development that seems to have moved Hong Kong martial arts cinema beyond its unique cultural imaginary in the 1960s and 1970s involves the genre’s changing practices of transnationalism. As noted in the last chapter, Hong Kong martial arts cinema has a long history of transnational circulation and consumption that can be traced to its very beginning. While limited largely to Taiwan and Southeast Asia at the outset, the overseas market network gradually expanded, thanks to the kung fu craze in the early 1970s, to almost every corner of the world, including not only the United States and Europe but also Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. With its increasing worldwide presence, Hong Kong martial arts cinema—the kung fu subgenre in particular—firmly established itself as a popular form of global screen entertainment and propelled action stars such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to international stardom. It also actively interacted with action movies from other film industries to produce new hybrid texts and new modes of collective identification and belonging. But for all its global reach, Hong Kong martial arts cinema of the period existed primarily at the margins both industrially and aesthetically, tending towards a mode of “minor” filmmaking characterized by its poverty-row budget, its exploitation tactics, its emphases on the body and on physical sensations, as well as its ideological affinity with working-class and urban minority audiences. Additionally, it eschewed by and large a “vertical” conception of transnational cinema based on the binary schema of domination and resistance, and was engaged more with “horizontal” transnational exchanges through processes of translation and hybridization. All this distinguished the genre from the hegemonic Hollywood blockbusters and turned it into an instance of what can be called “minor transnationalism.” In recent years, however, a reversal has no doubt occurred in the hitherto minor or marginal status of the martial arts film genre. This, in turn, has paved the way for a new modality of transnationalism—what I am calling here transnationalism in the “major” or blockbuster mode—in Chinese-language martial arts cinema. The mainstream success of movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, which launched the big-budget martial arts film as a force competing with Hollywood both within and beyond the Chinese-language film market, clearly reflected such shifts. But signs of change can be traced to an earlier period—to the late 1980s and early 1990s specifically—when several Hong Kong action auteurs, including John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam, achieved international cult status through the burgeoning video market and in colleges and the repertory circuit. Not surprisingly, the films of these Hong Kong directors found their most ardent champions in leisure-craving adolescents and young adults who were actively looking for alternative entertainment options, but they were also able to capture the imagination of a new generation of young filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, whose passion for Hong Kong (and Asian) movies has been much publicized. With its expanding audience base, Hong  Kong martial arts and action cinema gradually attracted the attention of

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Hollywood executives, who began looking for ways to tap the commercial potential of this emergent trend. It is precisely against this background that Woo went Hollywood and made his American debut with Hard Target in 1993, and other Hong Kong film talent such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Yuen Woo-ping, Ching Siu-tung, and Donnie Yen soon followed suit.4 The profile of Hong Kong cinema continued to grow, and eventually to a point where it began to define aspects of Hollywood filmmaking. Without question, films such as Face/Off, Brett Ratner’s Rush Hour (1998), The Matrix, and the Kill Bill series are all shaped by Hong Kong’s unique action aesthetics in one way or another. It is to a large extent this growing mainstream visibility of Hong Kong–style action that had paved the way for the success of Crouching Tiger and other Chineselanguage martial arts blockbusters. Despite all these changes, however, contemporary Hong Kong martial arts films are by no means a total break from their counterparts in the 1960s and 1970s; on the contrary, there are arguably as many continuities as ruptures. For instance, even with the technological turn of Hong Kong martial arts cinema noted above, the solid and tangible corporeality of the genre did not simply disappear but has remained a vital (if less dominant) feature, as witnessed by the high-impact, high-risk stunt work characteristic of the films of Jackie Chan. Indeed, with the emergence of an array of hardhitting martial arts and action films over the past decade, among them Benny Chan’s New Police Story (Xin jingcha gushi, 2004) and Invisible Target (Naner bense, 2007); Wilson Yip’s S.P.L. (Sha po lang, 2005), Flash Point (Daohuo xian, 2007), and the Ip Man/Ye Wen series (2008; 2010); and Dante Lam’s Unbeatable (Jizhan, 2013), it is possible to speak of the resurgence of the hard, effortful body and the return of a more embodied viewing experience. This is not to say that the films are entirely free from visual and special effects, but the majority of the fights do lie within the realm of physical possibility, seeking to strike a balance between credibility (archival, cinematic, and corporeal authenticity), fantasy (the urge to overcome the constraints of human embodiment), and sensationalism (the pursuit of powerful sensory-affective effects). The renewed corporeal emphasis, I hasten to add, is not simply a stylistic matter but has larger social and ideological meanings. The trend first emerged at a time when Hong Kong was rebounding from a string of crises, including the 1997 Asian financial collapse and its after-effects, the dotcom meltdown in 2000, and the SARS epidemic outbreak in 2003. In this context, the resurgence of the body as a locus of tangible power and effortful action—an idea that harks back to the allegories of labor and the laboring body that underpinned the capitalist imaginary of many

4. On this “mini-exodus” of Hong Kong filmmakers to Hollywood, see Steve Fore, “Home, Migration, Identity: Hong Kong Film Workers Join the Chinese Diaspora,” in Fifty Years of Electric Shadows, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1997), 126–34.

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martial arts films of the late 1960s and 1970s5—can be taken as a conscious attempt to reclaim the past and to reaffirm the ethics of hard work and ascetic effort widely considered the driving force for Hong Kong’s postwar economic success. Far from a mere victim in the age of global technological modernity, then, the body has continued to provide a vital horizon for Hong Kong martial arts and action films, constantly evolving and bearing new forms and meanings vis-à-vis the changing experiential and socioeconomic contexts in which the films were made and consumed. Continuities within Hong Kong martial arts and action cinema over the past decades may also be seen in the area of gender representations. The intense emphasis on male bonding in many of Chang Cheh’s films, for instance, was reexamined and expanded in the “gun-fu” movies of John Woo—from A Better Tomorrow and A Better Tomorrow II (Yingxiong bense II, 1987) to The Killer, Bullet in the Head (Diexue jietou, 1990), and Hard Boiled (Lashou shentan, 1993).6 This comes as no surprise, since Woo was a protégé of sorts to Chang, serving as his assistant in The Boxer from Shantung and Blood Brothers. Woo has long acknowledged Chang’s influence on his works; in fact, Bullet in the Head was conceived as a loose remake of Blood Brothers, both films focusing on the erosion and ultimate disintegration of the once closely knit bonds between three sworn brothers. In Blood Brothers, as has been discussed earlier in the book, the collapse of the brotherhood ideal can be read as a response to a perceived crisis in hegemonic masculinity, a crisis attributed to the profound social changes—a ruthless capitalist order driven by greed and self-interest and the increasing social power of women—associated with a rapidly modernizing Hong Kong. This “masculinity-in-crisis” discourse can also be used to understand Bullet in the Head, although the crisis in this case was sparked by a more specific historical cause. As Woo himself pointed out, Bullet in the Head was made as a response to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and its devastating impact on the psychology of Hong Kong people. The many scenes of extreme brutality and suffering in the film, set in a tumultuous Hong Kong and war-ravaged Vietnam during the late 1960s, were not only a barely veiled reference to the tragic events in the Tiananmen Square, but also stood as an apocalyptic vision of what the future might hold for Hong Kong, thus mirroring the pent-up doubts and fears many people had over Hong Kong’s imminent return to China.7 In exploring the besieged ethos of male loyalty and honor in a corrupt

5. I discussed extensively these allegories of labor and the laboring body, especially in relation to the star image of Bruce Lee and the idea of ascetic training in Lau Kar-leung’s films, in the first chapter of this book. 6. On the importance of male bonding in Woo’s films, see Jilian Sandell, “Reinventing Masculinity: The Spectacle of Male Intimacy in the Films of John Woo,” Film Quarterly 49, no. 4 (Summer 1996): 23–34; and Julian Stringer, “‘Your Tender Smiles Give Me Strength’: Paradigms of Masculinity in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow and The Killer,” Screen 38, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 25–41. 7. For a more in-depth discussion along this line, see James Steintrager, “Bullet in the Head: Trauma, Identity, and Violent Spectacle,” in Chinese Films in Focus: 25 Takes, ed. Chris Berry (London: British Film Institute, 2003), 23–30.

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and violent world, Bullet in the Head, like Blood Brothers (and other films) before it, demonstrates clearly that the dominant masculine order is by no means fixed or stable, but has always existed in complex and contradictory relationships with various social forces and configurations of power. The woman warrior figure, too, has persisted over the years, albeit not without revisions or changes. Michelle Yeoh, before gaining international fame with her brilliant performance in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, had already established herself as a popular action queen in a string of films, including Corey Yuen’s Yes, Madam! (Huangjia shijie, 1985); David Chung’s Royal Warriors (Huangjia zhanshi, 1986) and Magnificent Warriors (Zhonghua zhanshi, 1987); Stanley Tong’s Police Story 3: Supercop (Jingcha gushi 3: Chaoji jingcha, 1992); and Yuen Woo-ping’s Tai-Chi Master (Taiji Zhang Sanfeng, 1993) and Wing Chun (Yongchun, 1994). In all these films, as Lisa Funnell notes, Yeoh’s physical abilities were “prominently showcased” and constituted “an important dimension of her star identity.” Funnell goes on to argue that as Hong Kong action cinema is “a male-dominated space,” it was essential for Yeoh to “prove herself as a skilled fighter of comparable quality to Hong Kong’s action men in order to appeal to local or regional audiences.”8 All this means that Yeoh’s star image, at that stage of her career at least, was firmly grounded in what may be called female masculinity—a gender identity that, as I have discussed earlier in the book, constitutes a double-edged sword. For the female appropriation of hegemonic masculine norms, while empowering and even potentially subversive at some levels, also risks reinforcing those norms as the overriding standards and turning the masculinized female subject into a mere duplicate of her male counterpart. In Police Story 3, for example, Yeoh’s dynamic performance, while widely praised and seen as rivaling that of her male co-star, Jackie Chan, frequently involved daredevil stunts (such as jumping from a moving van onto a car and landing a motorcycle on a running train) modeled on those that had established Chan as the leading action star in Hong Kong. This sense of Yeoh being a female copy of Chan becomes even more evident in the film’s end credit sequence, where outtakes showcasing Yeoh’s multiple failed attempts at perilous stunts and the injuries she suffered as a result replicated the “blooper credits” popularized by Chan’s films of the 1980s, including the first two entries of the Police Story series. No matter how powerful it might appear, then, the masculinized image of Yeoh in Police Story 3 adheres closely to the model provided by Chan, thus reinforcing and amplifying the latter as the dominant norm in the process. In many of her films (including Police Story 3), Yeoh portrays characters who not only showcase exemplary physical prowess but also maintain a largely masculine 8. Lisa Funnell, Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014), 39–40.

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appearance (e.g., wearing masculine clothes and little or no makeup). But there are also cases in which her femaleness and feminine appeal are foregrounded alongside her physical abilities. This can be seen in some of the female-cop movies she made during the mid- to late 1980s, but the most conspicuous example is no doubt Johnnie To’s The Heroic Trio (Dongfang sanxia, 1993). In the film, the character played by Yeoh is a female fighter with extraordinary powers, but she is also a physically attractive woman who wears makeup, has long stylish hair, and often dresses in seductive costumes—notably, a red sleeveless catsuit that draws attention to her figure. This juxtaposition of feminine charm and masculine strength is again not something new, but can be found in earlier martial arts films such as Come Drink with Me and The Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan. But unlike those earlier films, which can be said to challenge conventional features of femininity (erotic appeal; the quality of “to-be-looked-at-ness”) by turning them into a threat (Intimate Confessions) or at least a mask that serves to meet the needs of different situations (Come Drink with Me), the overt femininity of Yeoh’s character in The Heroic Trio is hardly problematized; it is simply taken as “natural” and thus fails to produce a critical distance from which to (re)negotiate the idea of womanliness. In many ways, this persistence of a fixed, naturalized notion of femaleness is the predicament which many modern women find themselves in: no matter how they have ascended in social position, strong, assertive women are still often expected to appear (if not also act) in conventionally feminine ways, just as Yeoh’s character is presented as simultaneously masculine and feminine, both in action and on display. Indeed, it can be argued that the heroine’s erotic allure is not simply a marker of her female identity, but rather helps to reduce her active masculine connotations and to alleviate the subversive or destabilizing potential associated with her appropriation of hegemonic masculinity. Last but certainly not least, Hong Kong martial arts cinema has remained a characteristically transnational genre that lends itself readily to cross-border circulation and consumption. It is true that the unique Hong Kong action–style, thanks to the migration of local film professionals to Hollywood and the direct appropriation of the style by American filmmakers, has attained a global prominence never before seen. The sensational success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon paved the way for a spate of big-budget, effects-laden Chinese-language martial arts films that sought to assert China’s cultural prominence and compete with Hollywood on a global scale. But despite the growing “blockbusterization” of the martial arts film and the shift to a more hierarchical conception of cinematic transnationalism defined in terms of domination and resistance, the kind of “minor” transnational practices examined earlier in the book have not completely disappeared; they constituted a significant trend throughout the 1980s and 1990s and have remained a considerable force even to this day.

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A good case in point is the trend of Hong Kong companies filming and financing English-language martial arts films, with primarily Western actors and/or locations, in an effort to appeal to American viewers and draw interest from distributors around the world.9 Leading this trend was Golden Harvest, which from the late 1970s to the early 1990s had produced more than twenty English-language films for the international market, including such box office successes as Hal Needham’s Cannonball Run (1981) and Steve Barron’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990).10 But despite the occasional hits, these attempts to venture into the American/global market through English-language films did not always work. Part of the problem is that Golden Harvest tried to establish itself as a major global film producer, but its limited resources did not allow it to produce, on a consistent basis, the kind of big-budget movies that would compete with Hollywood blockbusters. Distribution was another problem: in the absence of its own theater network within the United States, Golden Harvest had no choice but to rely on one of the major American studios to handle the distribution of its films—which was not always done properly because most of the films were deemed marginal and not competitive.11 Despite these challenges, other Hong Kong companies followed suit and started producing their own English-language martial arts films, albeit with more practical expectations. Take, for instance, Seasonal Film Corporation: founded by Ng See-yuen in 1975, the company had concentrated on making Chinese-language movies, and was responsible for bringing into being Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master—the two films that catapulted Jackie Chan to stardom—before seeking to globalize itself and branching out to English-language productions in the mid-1980s. Its first, and most successful, effort in this endeavor was Corey Yuen’s No Retreat, No Surrender (1986). Yet the film, despite its global aspirations, was made on a slender budget and did not have any major stars or big-name director in the credits.12 It was also unabashedly hybrid, a mélange of Hong Kong–style action, Bruceploitation, and overt allusions to American films, from John G. Avildsen’s The Karate Kid (1984) to

9. For more discussion of this little-discussed trend, see Yip, “Martial Arts Cinema and Minor Transnationalism,” in American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows, ed. Lisa Funnell and Man-Fung Yip (New York and London: Routledge, 2015), 86–100. 10. Not all of these films belong to the martial arts or even action genre, but many do, including Robert Clouse’s The Amsterdam Kill and The Big Brawl, James Glickenhaus’ The Protector (1985), Clouse’s China O’Brien series (1990), and the aforementioned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its two sequels from 1991 and 1993, respectively. 11. For a discussion of the issues facing Golden Harvest’s English-language films, see Mike Walsh, “Hong Kong Goes International: The Case of Golden Harvest,” in Hong Kong Film, Hollywood and the New Global Cinema: No Film Is an Island, ed. Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 173. 12. It is worth mentioning that Jean-Claude Van Damme did play the villain in the film, but he had just started his acting career and was a relatively unknown performer at the time. The director, Corey Yuen, was a respected action choreographer in Hong Kong, but he was virtually unknown in the West.

Epilogue

195

Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV (1985).13 These “lacks” and “deficiencies,” however, must be considered in relation to the specific production context of the film. No Retreat was never meant to be a blockbuster success; rather, the film was a low-budget genre effort seeking to capitalize on the fast-growing home video market at the time. In this respect, No Retreat was a tremendous success. Despite its limited theatrical release and relatively modest theatrical gross (US$4.6 million) in the United States, the film sold very well in the global video market, and it is to a large extent the various video (and later DVD) releases and re-releases over the years that helped propel the lowbudget film into a martial arts cult classic.14 Similarly, the film’s hybrid textuality and modes of address need to be taken not as a creative flaw but as a conscious effort— at a time when the kung fu craze of the 1970s had faded—to reinsert Hong Kong action back into the American (and thus global) popular imagination, even if that means passing as a American movie and remaking the martial arts genre for white, mainstream cultural needs.15 Yet another and more obscure example of Hong Kong’s English-language martial arts films is the so-called “cut-and-paste” ninja movies associated with IFD Films and Arts as well as Filmark International.16 IFD was founded by Joseph Lai in 1973, and Filmark was set up by Thomas Tang, who used to be a partner with Lai in IFD before leaving the company and forming his own in 1986. Together, IFD and Filmark turned out over 100 films during the 1980s and early 1990s, many of which can be classified as “ninja films”—a genre popularized in the United States and other parts of the world following the success of Menahem Golan’s Enter the Ninja (1981). Made on extremely low budgets and often released straight to video, these Hong Kong ninja films are most (in)famous for their “cut-and-paste” approach—that is, the practice of recycling footage from one or more obscure Asian films to which the companies had bought the rights, combining it with new footage featuring ninja characters (usually

13. The Bruceploitation aspect of the film can be most clearly seen in its use of a fictional Bruce Lee—or his phantom rather—as the martial arts muse for the downtrodden protagonist. As for its borrowings from American cinema, the film draws from The Karate Kid not only the underdog story of a humiliated teenage boy but also the figure of a benign Oriental muse who empowers the teenager. The influence of Rocky V is more limited but no less clear; it manifests itself in the Cold War allegory played out in the opposition between a white American working-class hero (i.e., the film’s “underdog-to-champion” protagonist) and a Russian villain associated with an organized crime syndicate. 14. Spurred by the success of the film, Seasonal went on to make six more English-language martial arts films, many of which received no theatrical release and went straight to video. These six films are Corey Yuen’s No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder (1987); Lucas Lowe’s No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (1990), The King of Kickboxers (1990), and American Shaolin (1992); as well as Leung Siu-Hung’s Superfights (1995) and Bloodmoon (1997). 15. Yip, “Martial Arts Cinema and Minor Transnationalism,” 96–97. 16. For more discussion of IFD’s films, see Yip, “Dragons, Ninjas, and Kickboxers: The Minor Transnational Action Films of IFD,” in Exploiting East Asia, ed. Ken Provencher and Mike Dillon (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017).

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played by little-known Caucasian actors17) and ninja-fighting sequences, and then dubbing over the images to create a final product. As one would expect, such a method often resulted in films with madly incoherent plots and style, but it also lowered production costs and allowed small cash-strapped companies to make several movies with the budget of one. In a rapidly changing global media market where there was a huge and growing demand for low-budget martial arts and action films owing to the rapid rise of home video as a mass culture industry, this fast and cheap production method proved to be a viable strategy and set the Hong Kong ninja films onto a consistent production path during much of the 1980s. More recently, the digitalization of media technologies has helped bring the films to a new generation of viewers. Not only have DVDs and YouTube videos made the films more accessible than ever before, but internet connectivity has also facilitated people to circulate and obtain information about them. This brought about a kind of virtual community connected by blogs as well as by fan sites and forums, and the ensuing cult interest on the films was strong enough to spawn a parody web series in 2012.18 Other examples can be given, but it is clear from the above that Hong Kong martial arts cinema has always maintained a close and dialogical relationship with broader social changes in the city, especially those pertaining to its rise as a modern industrial and later postindustrial society. Considering that Hong Kong has evolved into a very different society over the past two and three decades, it comes hardly as a surprise that contemporary martial arts films also differ from their predecessors in the 1960s and 1970s in important ways. Yet the ruptures, as we have seen, are not absolute, and many continuities and influences can still be found. Thus, in providing an in-depth look at the complex intersections of martial arts cinema and Hong Kong modernity from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, this book is able to shed light on a hitherto underexplored area of research and to bring a new perspective and a new context to studying more recent martial arts films.

17. One exception is Richard Harrison, who starred in quite a number of IFD’s ninja films in the early to mid1980s. Harrison, despite not being a famous star, did make a name for himself through his many appearances in European B-movies (sword and sandal films, Spaghetti Westerns, and the like) of the 1960s and early 1970s. 18. Ninja the Mission Force (http://neonharbor.com/titles/ninja-the-mission-force/), as the web series is called, pays homage to IFD’s ninja films and follows their notorious “cut-and-paste” style by splicing original ninja footage with redubbed scenes from unrelated films in the public domain. The series first appeared in 2012, followed by a second season in 2013. Both seasons have since been released on DVD.

Filmography

The 14 Amazons/Shisi nü yinghao (Cheng Kang, 1972) The 36th Chamber of Shaolin/Shaolin sanshiliu fang (Lau Kar-leung, 1978) All Men Are Brothers/Dangkou zhi (Chang Cheh, 1975) American Shaolin (Lucas Lowe, 1992) The Amsterdam Kill (Robert Clouse, 1977) Armour of God/Longxiong hudi (Jackie Chan, 1987) Armour of God 2: Operation Condor/Feiying jihua (Jackie Chan, 1991) Armless Swordsman/Pareomneun geomgaeg (Im Won-sik, 1969) The Assassin/Da cike (Chang Cheh, 1967) Beach of the War Gods/Zhanshen tan (Wang Yu, 1973) Bells of Death/Duohun ling (Yue Feng, 1968) A Better Tomorrow/Yingxiong bense (John Woo, 1986) A Better Tomorrow II/Yingxiong bense II (John Woo, 1987) The Big Boss/Tangshan daxiong (Lo Wei, 1971) The Big Brawl (Robert Clouse, 1980) Black Belt Jones (Robert Clouse, 1974) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) A Blind Eye/Wonhan-ui aekkunun (An Da-ho, 1969) The Blind Swordsman/Maeng-in daehyeobgaeg (Park Woo-sang, 1971) A Blind Swordsman/Jug-janggeom (Sin Yeong-il, 1974) Blood Brothers/Ci Ma (Chang Cheh, 1973) Blood Money a.k.a. The Stranger and the Gunfighter (Anthony Dawson, 1974) Bloodmoon (Leung Siu-Hung, 1997) Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) The Boxer from Shantung/Ma Yongzhen (Chang Cheh, 1972) The Boys in Company C (Sidney J. Furie, 1978) A Brave Girl Boxer in Shanghai/Shanghai tan Ma Suzhen (Fu Qinghua, 1972) Broken Oath/Po jie (Chung Chang-wha, 1978) Bullet in the Head/Diexue jietou (John Woo, 1990) Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai/Bushido zankoku monogatari (Imai Tadashi, 1963) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) Cannonball Run (Hal Needham, 1981) Challenge of the Masters/Lu Acai yu Huang Feihong (Lau Kar-leung, 1976) China O’Brien (Robert Clouse, 1990) China O’Brien II (Robert Clouse, 1990)

198

Filmography

The Chinese Boxer/Longhu dou (Wang Yu, 1970) A Chinese Ghost Story/Qiannü youhun (Ching Siu-tung, 1987) A Chinese Ghost Story II/Qiannü youhun II: renjian dao (Ching Siu-tung, 1990) A Chinese Ghost Story III/Qiannü youhun III: dao dao dao (Ching Siu-tung, 1991) Cleopatra Jones (Jack Starrett, 1973) Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (Charles Bail, 1975) Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973) Come Drink with Me/Da zuixia (King Hu, 1966) The Contract/Maishen qi (Michael Hui, 1978) Crazed Fruit/Kurutta kajitsu (Nakahira Ko, 1956) Crimson Bat: The Blind Swordsman/Mekura no oichi monogatari: Makkana nagaradori (Matsuda Sadatsugu, 1969) Crimson Bat—Ochi: Wanted, Dead or Alive/Mekura no Oichi inochi moraimasu (Ichimura Hirokazu, 1970) The Crimson Charm/Xuefu men (Huang Feng, 1971) Crippled Avengers/Can que (Chang Cheh, 1978) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon/Wohu canglong (Ang Lee, 2000) Deadly China Doll/Heilu (Huang Feng, 1973) The Deadly Duo/Shuang xia (Chang Cheh, 1971) The Deaf and Mute Heroine/Longya jian (Wu Ma, 1971) Delightful Forest/Kuaihuo lin (Chang Cheh, 1972) Diary of a Lady Killer/Lieren (Nakahira Ko, 1969) Dirty Ho/Lantou He (Lau Kar-leung, 1979) Disciples of Shaolin/Hongquan xiaozi (Chang Cheh, 1975) Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962) Dragon Inn/Longmen kezhan (King Hu, 1967) The Dragon Tamers/Nüzi taiquan qunying hui (John Woo, 1975) Dragons Forever/Feilong mengjiang (Sammo Hung, 1986) Drunken Master/Zui quan (Yuen Woo-ping, 1978) The Duel/Da juedou (Chang Cheh, 1971) Empress Wu/Wu Zetian (Li Han-hsiang, 1963) Enter the Dragon/Longzheng hudou (Robert Clouse, 1973) Enter the Ninja (Menahem Golan, 1981) Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) The Fate of Lee Khan/Yingchun ge zhi fengbo (King Hu, 1973) Fist of Fury/Jingwu men (Lo Wei, 1972) A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964) Five Shaolin Masters/Shaolin wuzu (Chang Cheh, 1974) Flash Point/Daohuo xian (Wilson Yip, 2007) The Flying Dagger/Feidao shou (Chang Cheh, 1969) Fong Sai-yuk/Fang shiyu (Corey Yuen, 1993) For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965) Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, 1974) From Russia with Love (Terence Young, 1963) Games Gamblers Play/Guima shuangxing (Michael Hui, 1974) Gate of Hell/Jigokumon (Kinugasa Teinosuke, 1953)

Filmography

199

Girl with a Thousand Identities/Feizei hong meigui (Lu Bang, 1967) The Goddess of Mercy/Guanshiyin/Daepokgun (Ho Meng-hua and Im Won-sik, 1967) The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) The Golden Buddha/Jin pusa (Lo Wei, 1966) The Golden Swallow/Jin yanzi (Chang Cheh, 1968) The Golden Sword/Longmen jinjian (Lo Wei, 1969) Golden Sword and the Blind Swordswoman/Mangnü jinjian (Jin Han, 1970) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966) The Great Killing/Daisatsujin (Kudo Eiichi, 1964) Hapkido/Heqi dao (Huang Feng, 1972) Harakiri (Kobayashi Masaki, 1962) Hard Boiled/Lashou shentan (John Woo, 1993) Have Sword, Will Travel/Baobiao (Chang Cheh, 1969) Hero/Yingxiong (Zhang Yimou, 2002) The Heroic Ones/Shisan taibao (Chang Cheh, 1970) The Heroic Trio/Dongfang sanxia (Johnnie To, 1993) High Road to China (Brian G. Hutton, 1983) Hong Kong Nocturne/Xiangjiang huayue ye (Inoue Umetsugu, 1967) House of Flying Daggers/Shimian maifu (Zhang Yimou, 2004) The House of the 72 Tenants/Qishier jia fangke (Chor Yuen, 1973) The Hunter’s Diary/Ryojin nikki (Nakahira Ko, 1964) I Am Waiting/Ore wa matteru ze (Kurahara Koreyoshi, 1957) Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan/Ainu (Chor Yuen, 1972) The Invincible Fist/Tieshou wuqing (Chang Cheh, 1969) Invisible Target/Naner bense (Benny Chan, 2007) Ip Man/Ye Wen (Wilson Yip, 2008) Ip Man 2/Ye Wen 2 (Wilson Yip, 2010) Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) The Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen, 1984) Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2004) The Killer/Diexie shuangxiong (John Woo, 1989) King Boxer a.k.a. Five Fingers of Death/Tianxia diyi quan (Chung Chang-wha, 1972) The King of Kickboxers (Lucas Lowe, 1990) The Kingdom and the Beauty/Jiangshan meiren (Li Han-hsiang, 1959) Knockabout/Zajia xiaozi (Sammo Hung, 1979) Kung Fu Girl/Ti wa (Lo Wei, 1973) Kung Fu Hustle/Gongfu (Stephen Chow, 2004) Lady Sazen and the Drenched Swallow Sword/Onna sazen nuretsubame katategiri (Yasuda Kimiyoshi, 1969) Lady Whirlwind/Tiezhang xuanfengtui (Huang Feng, 1972) The Last Message/Tiancai yu baichi (Michael Hui, 1975) The Last Woman of Shang/Da Ji/Dalgi (Yue Feng and Choi In-hyeon, 1964) The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (Chang Cheh and Roy Ward Baker, 1974) The Legend of Zu/Shushan zhuan (Tsui Hark, 2001)

200

Filmography

Love Parade/Huatuan jinchu (Doe Ching, 1963) Love with an Alien/Yiguo qingyuan/Igugjeong-won (Tu Guangqi, Chung Chang-geun, and Wakasuki Mitsui, 1958) Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan/Ainu xinzhuan (Chor Yuen, 1984) Ma Su Chen/Ma Suzhen bao xiongchou (Ding Shanxi, 1972) Mackenna’s Gold (Lee Thompson, 1969) Mad, Mad, Mad Swords/Shenjing dao (Wang Tianlin, 1969) Madame White Snake/Byaku fujin no yoren (Toyoda Shiro, 1956) The Magnificent Concubine/Yang guifei (Li Han-hsiang, 1962) The Magnificent Trio/Biancheng sanxia (Chang Cheh, 1966) Magnificent Warriors/Zhonghua zhanshi (David Chung, 1987) Man of Iron/Chou lianhuan (Chang Cheh and Pao Hsueh-li, 1972) The Man from Hong Kong (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1975) The Man Who Causes a Storm/Arashi o yobu otoko (Inoue Umetsugu, 1957) The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999) Men from the Monastery/Shaolin zidi (Chang Cheh, 1974) Meteor (Roland Neame, 1979) The Monkey King/Xiyou ji zhi danao tiangong (Cheang Pou-tsoi, 2014) My Name Is Shanghai Joe/Il mio nome è Shangai Joe (Mario Caiano, 1972) My Young Auntie/Zhangbei (Lau Kar-leung, 1981) The New One-Armed Swordsman/Xin dubei dao (Chang Cheh, 1971) New Police Story/Xin jingcha gushi (Benny Chan, 2004) No Retreat, No Surrender (Corey Yuen, 1986) No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder (Corey Yuen, 1987) No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (Lucas Lowe, 1990) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Peter Hunt, 1969) Once Upon a Time in China/Huang Feihong (Tsui Hark, 1991) The One-Armed Swordsman/Dubei dao (Chang Cheh, 1967) One-Armed Swordswoman/Nü dubei dao (Jin Shengen, 1972) One-Eyed Park/Aekkunun Bak (Im Kwon-taek, 1970) The Owl vs. Bombo/Maotou ying yu xiao feixiang (Sammo Hung, 1984) Painted Faces/Qi xiaofu (Alex Law, 1988) Police Story/Jingcha gushi (Jackie Chan, 1985) Police Story 2/Jingcha gushi xuji (Jackie Chan, 1988) Police Story 3: Supercop/Jingcha gushi 3: Chaoji jingcha (Stanley Tong, 1992) Princess Yang Kwei Fei/Yokihi (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1955) The Private Eyes/Banjin baliang (Michael Hui, 1976) The Promise/Wuji (Chen Kaige, 2005) The Protector (James Glickenhaus, 1985) Raining in the Mountain/Kongshan lingyu (King Hu, 1979) Rashomon (Kurosawa Akira, 1950) Red Muffler/Ppalgan mahura (Shin Sang-ok, 1964) Return of the One-Armed Swordsman/Dubei daowang (Chang Cheh, 1969) Return to the 36th Chamber/Shaolin dapeng dashi (Lau Kar-leung, 1980) Returned Left-Handed Man/Doraon oensonjabi (Im Kwon-taek, 1968) Returned One-Legged Man/Doraon oedali (Lee Doo-yong, 1974) Returned One-Legged Man 2/Sok doraon oedali (Lee Doo-yong, 1974)

Filmography

201

Revenge/Adauchi (Imai Tadashi, 1964) Rickshaw Man/Muhomatsu no issho (Inagaki Hiroshi, 1958) Rocky IV (Sylvester Stallone, 1985) La roue (Abel Gance, 1923) Royal Warriors/Huangjia zhanshi (David Chung, 1986) Rush Hour (Brett Ratner, 1998) Sanjuro (Kurosawa Akira, 1962) Sansho the Bailiff/Sansho dayu (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1954) Season of the Sun/Taiyo no kisetsu (Furukawa Takumi, 1955) Seven Samurai/Shichinin no samurai (Kurosawa Akira, 1954) Shaolin Martial Arts/Hongquan yu yongchun (Chang Cheh, 1974) Shaolin Temple/Shaolin si (Chang Cheh, 1976) Shatter (Michael Carreras, 1974) The Singing Killer/Xiao shaxing (Chang Cheh, 1970) The Singing Thief/Dadao gewang (Chang Cheh, 1969) Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow/Shexing diaoshou (Yuen Woo-ping, 1978) Special Agent 009/Tejing 009 (Nakahira Ko, 1967) The Spiritual Boxer/Shenda (Lau Kar-leung, 1975) S.P.L./Sha po lang (Wilson Yip, 2005) Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) The Storm Riders/Fengyun (Andrew Lau, 1998) The Storm Warriors/Fengyun II (Oxide and Danny Pang, 2009) The Stranger and the Gunfighter a.k.a. Blood Money (Antonio Margheriti, 1974) The Stray Bullet/Obaltan (Yu Hyun-mok, 1961) Sugata Sanshiro (Kurosawa Akira, 1943) Sugata Sanshiro (Uchikawa Seiichiro, 1965) Super Fly (Gordon Parks, Jr., 1972) Superfights (Leung Siu-Hung, 1995) Supermen against the Amazons (Alfonso Brescia, 1975) Supermen against the Orient (Bitto Albertini, 1974) Sword of Doom/Daibosatsu toge (Okamoto Kihachi, 1966) Tai Chi Master/Taiji Zhang Sanfeng (Yuen Woo-ping, 1993) Tange Sazen: Dai-ippen (Ito Daisuke, 1933) Tange Sazen: Kengeki no maki (Ito Daisuke, 1934) Tange Sazen: The Million Ryo Pot/Tange Sazen yowa: Hyakuman ryo no tsubo (Yamanaka Sadao, 1935) Tange Sazen: The Secret of the Urn/Tange Sazen: Hien iaigiri (Gosha Hideo, 1966) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Steve Barron, 1990) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (Michael Pressman, 1991) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (Stuart Gillard, 1993) Temple of the Red Lotus/Jianghu qixia (Xu Zenghong, 1965) Three Beautiful Blind Female Spies/Yandie san mangnü (Jin Han, 1965) Three Beautiful Blind Female Spies 2/Mangnü dixia siling (Jin Han, 1966) Three Beautiful Blind Female Spies 3/Mangnü da taowang (Jin Han, 1966) Three Outlaw Samurai/Sanbiki no samurai (Gosha Hideo, 1964) Three the Hard Way (Gordon Parks, Jr., 1974) Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965)

202

Filmography

Tiger Boy/Huxia jianchou (Chang Cheh, 1966) Tokyo Cinderella Girl/Jazu onparedo 1954‒nen: Tokyo Shinderera musume (Inoue Umetsugu, 1954) Tora! Tora! Tora! (Richard Fleischer, 1970) A Touch of Zen/Xianü (King Hu, 1971) Trapped, the Crimson Bat/Mekura no Oichi jigokuhada (Matsuda Sadatsugu, 1969) The True Story of Wong Fei-hung I: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame/Huang feihong zhengzhuan shangji: bianfeng mie zhu (Wu Pang, 1949) Ugetsu (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953) Unbeatable/Jizhan (Dante Lam, 2013) Vengeance!/Baochu (Chang Cheh, 1970) Virgins of the Seven Seas (Kuei Chih-hung and Ernst Hofbauer, 1974) The Warlords/Touming zhuang (Peter Chan, 2007) Watch Out, Crimson Bat!/Mekura no Oichi midaregasa (Ichimura Hirokazu, 1969) The Water Margin/Shuihu zhuan (Chang Cheh, 1972) The Way of the Dragon/Menglong guojiang (Bruce Lee, 1972) Wheels on Meals/Kuaican che (Sammo Hung, 1984) When Taekwondo Strikes/Taiquan zhen jiuzhou (Huang Feng, 1973) The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) The Wild Flowers in the Battle Field/Deulgughwaneun pi-eossneunde (Lee Man-hee, 1974) Wing Chun/Yongchun (Yuen Woo-ping, 1993) Winners and Sinners/Qimou miaoji wu fuxing (Sammo Hung, 1983) Yes, Madam!/Huangjia shijie (Corey Yuen, 1985) Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema/Nansheng nüxiang (Stanley Kwan, 1996) Yojimbo (Kurosawa Akira, 1961) Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman/Shin Zatoichi: Yabure! Tojinken/Mangxia dazhan dubei dao (Yasuda Kimiyoshi, 1971) Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain/Shushan jianxia (Tsui Hark, 1983)

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Index

Note: Page references in italics refer to illustrations. Abbas, Ackbar, 75–76, 149n8, 188n3 Adauchi (1964), 172 Aekkunun Bak (1970), 170 aesthetics, concept of, 18 Agata Yoji, 157n27 Ainu (1972), 139–44, 193 Ainu xinzhuan (1984), 139, 142 Albertini, Bitto, 177 All Men Are Brothers (1975), 93 Allen, Joseph R., 118 American Shaolin (1992), 195n14 The Amsterdam Kill (1977), 178, 194n10 An Da-ho, 170 Arashi o yobu otoko (1957), 92n18 Armless Swordsman (1969), 170 Armour of God (1987), 187 Armour of God 2: Operation Condor (1991), 187 asceticism, 47–49 Asian financial crisis (1997–1998), 1n1, 190 The Assassin (1967): ethics in, 93; violence in, 38–40, 70, 162, 173; yanggang aesthetic and male bonding in, 35, 92, 98. See also Chang Cheh At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (Yau), 75 Australia, 152n14, 157–58n28, 177 authenticity, concept of, 67 Avildsen, John G., 194 Bail, Charles, 177 Baker, Roy Ward, 177 Banjin baliang (1976), 108n40

Bao, Weihong, 117 Baobiao (1969), 98 Baochu (1970), 70, 93, 98–101, 162 Barron, Steve, 194 Baumgarten, Alexander, 18 Bazin, André, 81 Beach of the War Gods (1973), 27, 159 Bells of Death (1968), 154 Benjamin, Walter, 62, 64 Berlin Film Festival, 157–58n28 Berry, Chris, 9 A Better Tomorrow (1986), 8, 191 A Better Tomorrow II (1987), 191 Biancheng sanxia (1966), 93, 98, 156, 159 The Big Boss (1971), 32, 79, 145 The Big Brawl (1980), 178, 194n10 Black Belt Jones (1974), 180 Blade Runner (1982), 178 blaxploitation films, 153, 176, 177, 180 A Blind Eye (1969), 170 A Blind Swordsman (1974), 170 The Blind Swordsman (1971), 170 Blood Brothers (1973): ethic of competition and conquest, 162; male bonding in, 93, 101–4, 191, 192; screenplay, 6; use of the zoom, 69–70, 72–73. See also Chang Cheh Blood Money (1974), 177 Bloodmoon (1997), 195n14 the body: and aesthetics, 18, 64; asceticism and, 47–55; and capitalism, 24, 31, 33, 38n35, 43–47, 190–91; film genres of, 64–65, 150; imbrication with

216 technology, 79–80, 187; male heroic, 20, 24; and national identity, 25–26; and realism, 63; of the spectator, 56, 65; trope of impairment, 168–75; violence and, 34–47 Bonnie and Clyde (1967), 156 Books and Swords, Gratitude and Revenge (novel), 6 Bordwell, David, 69n30, 80, 82n57, 83, 159–60 The Boxer from Shantung (1972): imitations of, 130; John Woo and, 191; plotline and themes, 42–47, 49, 102, 162, 173; violence in, 156. See also Chang Cheh The Boys in Company C (1978), 178 Brando, Marlon, 90, 91, 155 A Brave Girl Boxer in Shanghai (1972), 130n27 Brescia, Alfonso, 177 Broken Oath (1978), 118 Bronson, Charles, 91 Brown, Bill, 32 Brownell, Susan, 25 Buck-Morss, Susan, 18 Buddhism, 123 Bullet in the Head (1990), 101n34, 191, 192 Burch, Noël, 138 Burning of the Red Lotus Temple series, 117 Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai (1963), 160, 172 Bushido zankoku monogatari (1963), 160, 172 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), 151n13, 155 Butler, Judith, 135n37 Byaku fujin no yoren (1956), 157 Caiano, Mario, 22, 180 Can que (1978), 70, 170 Cannes Film Festival, 157–58n28 The Cannonball Run (1981), 178, 194 Cantonese-language films: budgets and production values, 150n11; class orientation, 31n19, 57n2; female stars and characters of, 86, 122; “Jane Bond” films, 122–23; local flavor, 5–6; new directions in 1960s and 70s, 62; opera

Index films, 133; revival of, 108; use of special effects, 66. See also Mandarin-language films capitalism: and asceticism, 48, 49; and the body, 24, 31, 33, 38n35, 43–47, 190–91; and class confrontation, 32–33; and comedy, 111; ethics of, 42n41, 162; and gender roles, 21, 86, 103–4; and imperialism, 30n16; and modernity, 14, 21; and speed, 77; and subjectivity, 17, 18, 30, 31, 89–90, 161; and violence, 45–47, 57n3, 173 Carreras, Michael, 177 Cathay Cinema. See Motion Pictures and General Investment (MP & GI) Cathay Films, 178 Celestial Pictures, 9n14 Cha, Louis. See Jin Yong Challenge of the Masters (1976), 106–8 Chan, Benny, 190 Chan, Jackie: contemporary, urban settings of films, 186–87; discourse of training in films of, 50; early films, 8, 194; graceful movement in films of, 132; Hollywood films, 178, 190; international stardom, 189; Michelle Yeoh as female counterpart of, 192; training at China Drama Academy, 50n50, 117n3; and xiaozi figure, 110 Chan, Peter, 101n34 Chan Po-chu, 86, 122 Chang, Michael G., 88 Chang Cheh: “borderless action” films, 163–64; cinematic techniques, 80–81; “class descending approach,” 31n19; coproductions with European and American studios, 177; on eclecticism of Hong Kong cinema, 154; female characters in films of, 127; focus on discourse of training, 50; focus on male bonding, 93–95, 98–104, 105, 191; on gender relations, 94–95, 101; imitators, 1, 130; Japanese influence on, 158, 160; and John Woo, 101n34, 191; and Ni Kuang, 6; notion of beizhuang in films of, 39; on number of shots per film, 82; Shaolin kung fu films, 8,

Index 50, 68, 69–71, 80–81; Shaw Brothers productions, 6–7, 66, 91; Taiwanese productions, 165; violence in films of, 35, 37–47, 69–71, 89, 104, 156, 161–62. See also The Assassin (1967); Blood Brothers (1973); The Boxer from Shantung (1972); One-Armed Swordsman (1967); yanggang aesthetic Chang’s Film Company, 165n43 Cheang Pou-tsoi, 188 Chen Honglie, 125 Chen Kaige, 9 Chen Kuan-tai, 25, 42, 70, 89, 101, 106, 107 Cheng Kang, 80, 115n1 Cheng Pei-pei, 115, 125–36 Cheung Wood-yau, 87 Cheung Ying, 87 Chiang, David, 24, 42, 89, 98, 99, 101 Chiang Nan, 44 Chiao, Roy, 83 Chiao Chiao, 39 Chiba Shinichi, 166n44 China: in competition with Hollywood, 193; feminization of, 25, 88; imperial examination system, 96; and Japan, 27n7; as locus of authentic Chineseness, 149; migrants from, 96–97; refugees in Hong Kong from, 15, 36, 41, 49, 76, 98; relation to Hong Kong, 29–30, 172, 186, 191 China Drama Academy, 50n50, 117n3 China O’Brien series (1990), 194n10 The Chinese Boxer (1970), 27, 51, 106n38, 159 A Chinese Ghost Story films (1987–1991), 188 Ching Li, 44, 102 Ching Siu-tung, 188, 190 Choi In-hyeon, 167 Chor Yuen, 8, 108, 139, 142 Chow, Raymond, 7n12 Chow, Rey, 149 Chow, Stephen, 1, 188 Chua Lam, 158–59 Chung, David, 192 Chung Chang-geun, 166 Chung Chang-wha, 12, 27, 118, 167, 176 Ci Ma (1973). See Blood Brothers (1973)

217 cinema: and the body, 64–65; construction of transsensory world, 56; and modernity, 3, 62; transnationalism in, 146–53 cinematic techniques: of authenticity, 67; “burst/pause/burst” structure, 83; for conveying speed, 75–84; for creating “sensory realism,” 13, 62, 64, 65–74; for depicting training, 51, 52; emphasis on quick, sudden strokes, 160; framing of Bruce Lee, 33, 35; for portraying violence, 39–40, 45–46; rapid editing, 81–82; slow motion, 156; under-cranking, 80; zoom, 72–73, 80–81 Cleopatra Jones (1973), 180 Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975), 177 Clift, Montgomery, 91 Clouse, Robert, 79, 178, 180, 194n10 Coffy (1973), 180 Come Drink with Me (1966): box-office success, 167n48; female cross-dressing in, 133, 134; and Hollywood Westerns, 154; as “new school” martial arts film, 7; sensory realism in, 68–69; and woman warrior figure, 117, 125–27, 132, 193. See also Hu, King comics, 121–22 Confucianism, 86, 87, 89, 119, 133 Connery, Sean, 90n13, 91, 155 contact zones, concept of, 153n15 The Contract (1978), 108n40 Coppola, Francis Ford, 145 Crazed Fruit (1956), 92n19 Crimson Bat series (1969–1970), 168–69 The Crimson Charm (1971), 130n27, 170 Crippled Avengers (1978), 70, 170 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), 9, 116–17, 125, 145–46, 189, 192, 193 Cultural Revolution, 16, 30n15, 172 Da cike (1967). See The Assassin (1967) Da Ji (1964), 167 Da juedou (1971), 101 Da zuixia (1966). See Come Drink with Me (1966) Dadao gewang (1969), 163

218

Index

Daepokgun (1967), 167 Daibosatsu toge (1966), 160 Daiei Film, 157, 159 Daisatsujin (1964), 160 Dalgi (1964), 167 Dandrea, Ron, 178 Dangkou zhi (1975), 93 Daohuo xian (2007), 190 Daoism, 83, 123 Deadly China Doll (1973), 180n76 The Deadly Duo (1971), 101 Deaf Mute Heroine (1971), 170 Deamer, David, 171 Dean, James, 90, 91, 155 The Deer and the Cauldron (novel), 110n43 Deleuze, Gilles, 63, 148n5 Delightful Forest (1972), 93 Desser, David, 10, 28, 176, 180 Deulgughwaneun pi-eossneunde (1974), 175 Diaoyutai Islands, 26–27, 30 Diary of a Lady Killer (1969), 162n41 Diexie Shuangxiong (1989), 8, 191 Diexue jietou (1990), 101n34, 191, 192 Ding Pei, 139, 143 Ding Shanxi, 130n27 Dirty Ho (1979), 111–14 Disciples of Shaolin (1975), 42n41, 44n42 Doane, Mary Ann, 138–39, 141 Doe Ching, 61 Dongfang sanxia (1993), 193 Doraon oedali (1974), 22, 170 Doraon oensonjabi (1968), 170 dotcom meltdown (2000), 190 Dr. No (1962), 91, 151n13 Dragon and Tiger Vie in the Capital (novel), 6 Dragon Inn (1967), 47, 68, 133, 154, 165 The Dragon Tamers (1975), 167 Dragons Forever (1986), 186 Drunken Master (1978), 109, 194 Dubei dao (1967). See One-Armed Swordsman (1967) Dubei daowang (1969), 93, 169 The Duel (1971), 101 Duohun ling (1968), 154

Empress Wu (1963), 157 Enlightenment, 14 Enter the Dragon (1973), 79, 108n40, 145, 146, 166, 176, 177 Enter the Ninja (1981), 195 Ernü yingxiong zhuan (novel), 118 European cinema, 22, 162, 180

Eagleton, Terry, 18 Eastwood, Clint, 90, 155, 161

The Game of Death (1973), 32 Games Gamblers Play (1974), 108n40

Face/Off (1997), 8, 190 Fang shiyu (1993), 188n3 Farquhar, Mary, 9 The Fate of Lee Khan (1973), 82n57, 154 Fawcett, Farrah, 178n71 Feidao shou (1969), 127 Feilong mengjiang (1986), 186 Feiying jihua (1991), 187 Feizei hong meigui (1967), 135 Femina Hong Kong (magazine), 121 Fengyun (1998), 188 Fengyun II (2009), 188 Filmark International, 195 First Films, 165n43 Fist of Fury (1972), 27, 32, 35, 43, 128–30, 155, 159 A Fistful of Dollars (1964), 155, 182n79 Five Fingers of Death (1972), 27, 176, 177 Five Shaolin Masters (1974), 50, 97n30, 105, 165n43 Flash Point (2007), 190 Fleischer, Richard, 151n13 The Flying Dagger (1969), 127 Fong Sai-yuk (1993), 188n3 For a Few Dollars More (1965), 155 Foucault, Michel, 48, 54 The 14 Amazons (1972), 80, 115–16n1 Foxy Brown (1974), 180 French New Wave cinema, 162 From Russia with Love (1963), 151n13 Fu, Poshek, 10, 11–12 Fu Qinghua, 130n27 Fu Sheng, Alexander, 110 Funnell, Lisa, 192 Furie, Sidney J., 178 Furukawa Takumi, 92n19, 158

Index Gance, Abel, 81 Gao Yuan, 127 Garcia, Roger, 113, 114 Gate of Hell (1953), 157n26 Ge Lan, 86 gender: in Daoist and Buddhist traditions, 123; female cross-dressing, 25, 88n7, 133–34, 136–37; female masculinity, 125–36, 192; figure of the eunuch, 47; homoeroticism, 25, 94, 100; and modernization, 5, 14, 17, 19, 85, 186; performativity, 135n37. See also men; women; yanggang aesthetic Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Butler), 135n37 Girard, René, 37, 173 Girl with a Thousand Identities (1967), 135 Glickenhaus, James, 194n10 globalization, 75–76, 148 The Goddess of Mercy (1967), 167 The Godfather (1972), 145 Godzich, Wlad, 120n12 Golan, Menahem, 195 The Golden Buddha (1966), 61–62 Golden Harvest: and Cheng Pei-pei, 125; creative structure, 7–8; international coproductions, 166–68, 169, 177–79, 194; as modern, innovative company, 13; overseas markets and distribution networks, 152, 194. See also Shaw Brothers The Golden Swallow (1968), 35, 127, 158 The Golden Sword (1969), 127 Golden Sword and the Blind Swordswoman (1970), 170 Goldman, Harvey, 48 Gongfu (2004), 1, 2, 9, 146, 188 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), 155 Gosha Hideo, 159, 169 The Great Killing (1964), 160 Great Leap Forward, 15 Gu Long, 8 Guangdong Province, 15 Guanshiyin (1967), 167 Guattari, Félix, 63, 148n5 Guima shuangxing (1974), 108n40 Guomindang, 11

219 Hammer Films, 181 Han Yingjie, 83 Hansen, Miriam, 3–4 Hapkido (1972), 118, 167, 180n76 Harakiri (1962), 160, 172 Hard Boiled (1993), 191 Hard Target (1993), 190 Harootunian, Harry, 14 Hassan, Robert, 76–77n43 Hattori Ryoichi, 157n27 Have Sword, Will Travel (1969), 98 He Guan. See Chang Cheh He Lanshan, 12, 157 Heilu (1973), 180n76 Heqi dao (1972), 118, 167, 180n76 Hero (2002), 9, 146, 189 The Heroic Ones (1970), 80 The Heroic Trio (1993), 193 High Road to China (1983), 178 Hill, George Roy, 151n13, 155 Hill, Jack, 180 Ho, Lily, 123n21, 139, 143, 163 Ho, Sam, 31n19, 122 Ho Meng-hua, 167 Hofbauer, Ernst, 177 Hollywood cinema: appropriation of martial arts genre, 8–9, 145–46, 190, 193; female roles in, 123; film budgets, 145n1, 179; as global cinema, 147; influence on martial arts films, 7, 13, 22, 61, 77–78n47, 81, 153; influence on MP & GI films, 12; male stars of, 90–91; Production Code, 155; relation to Hong Kong cinema, 148, 151–52, 182; and vernacular modernism, 3–4; violence in, 155–56, 162; Westerns, 35–36, 151, 154, 162 (see also Spaghetti Westerns) Hong Kong: articulation of Chineseness, 11; as a British colony, 30, 41, 110n43, 121, 149, 151; Chinese refugees in, 15, 36, 41, 49, 76, 98, 161; consumer culture in, 60–61; crime and violence in, 36–37, 71, 109, 161; film industry in, 5, 7n12, 22, 49, 75; identity, 17, 18–19, 24, 29–30, 31, 172–73; as intensified sensory environment, 56–57, 59–61,

220 62–63, 187–88; 1967 riots, 16, 30, 36, 38, 40, 71, 161, 172; population, 16n30, 59, 61n13, 90; reception of films, 146, 151n13, 159n32, 161, 169, 170; recession of the 1970s, 108–9; working conditions of labor class in, 58–59. See also modernization Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Abbas), 75 Hong Kong Industrial Products Exhibition, 60 Hong Kong Movie News (magazine), 90 Hong Kong Nocturne (1967), 61, 162n41 Hong Xian, 118 Hong Xiguan, 105–6n37 Hongquan yu yongchun (1974), 105, 106 House of Flying Daggers (2004), 9, 146 The House of the 72 Tenants (1973), 108 Hsu Feng, 115 Hu, King: elliptical cutting technique, 73, 82; embrace of “sensory realism,” 7, 68–69; female characters in films of, 115n1, 117, 125–27, 132, 133; figure of eunuch in films by, 47; and Hollywood Westerns, 154; Japanese influence on, 158, 159; Taiwanese productions, 165. See also Come Drink with Me (1966) Hu, Nancy, 142 Hu Peng, 5n8, 66 Hua Mulan, 118–19 Huang Feihong (film series), 8, 66, 187, 188 Huang Feihong biezhuan (novel), 5n8 Huang Feng, 118, 130n27, 167 Huang Qiying, 105–6n37 Huang Zhuohan, 165 Huangjia shijie (1985), 192 Huangjia zhanshi (1986), 192 huangmei diao musicals, 10, 12–13, 25n2, 86, 133 Huatuan jinchu (1963), 61 Hui, Kara, 115, 132n34, 135 Hui, Michael, 108 huiguan, 96–97 Hung, Sammo, 8, 50, 110, 117n3, 187 Hunt, Leon, 56, 67 Hunt, Peter, 151n13 The Hunter’s Diary (1964), 162n41

Index Hutton, Brian G., 178 Huxia jianchou (1966), 6–7, 35, 66 Hwang In-shik, 167 I Am Waiting (1957), 92n18 Ichimura Hirokazu, 169n56 IFD Films and Arts, 195 Igugjeong-won (1958), 166 Im Kwon-taek, 170 Im Won-sik, 167, 170 Imai Tadashi, 160, 172 Inagaki Hiroshi, 157n26 India, 157–58n28 Indonesia, 152 Industrial Revolution, 14, 76 Inoue Umetsugu, 12, 61, 92n18, 158, 162n41 Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972), 139–44, 193 The Invincible Fist (1969), 93 Invisible Target (2007), 190 Ip Man series (2008, 2010), 190 Ishihara Shintaro, 92n19 Ishihara Yujiro, 91–92, 162 Italian Westerns, 22, 153, 155–56, 161, 176, 180–85 Ito Daisuke, 169 James Bond films, 91, 122–23, 145n1, 151n13, 154, 181n77 Japan: colonization of Korea, 170, 174; as economic threat, 30; occupation of Diaoyutai Islands, 26–27; reception of martial arts films in, 146n3, 157–58n28, 166; trope of physical impairment in, 171–72 Japanese cinema: chambara films, 160, 172; influence on martial arts films, 7, 13, 22, 61, 148n5, 153, 156–61; martial arts films of, 166n44; mukokuseki akushun films, 162; New Wave, 171; number of shots per film, 81–82; production efficiency, 77–78n47; Shaw Brothers’ recruitment of personnel from, 12; and Spaghetti Westerns, 182n79; taiyozoku films, 171; violence in, 160–61, 162, 172; and yanggang aesthetic, 90, 91–92, 162

Index Jaws (1975), 145n1, 179 Jazu onparedo 1954-nen: Tokyo Shinderera musume (1954), 162n41 Ji Han-jae, 167 Jianghu qixia (1965), 6, 65–66, 117 Jiangshan meiren (1959), 157 Jie Pai Guan (Beijing opera), 156n24 Jigokumon (1953), 157n26 Jin Han, 169–70 Jin pusa (1966), 61–62 Jin Shengen, 130n27 Jin yanzi (1968), 35, 127, 158 Jin Yong, 6, 110, 169 Jingcha gushi (1985), 186 Jingcha gushi 3: Chaoji jingcha (1992), 192 Jingcha gushi xuji (1988), 186–87 Jingwu men (1972), 27, 32, 35, 43, 128, 159 Jizhan (2013), 190 Johnny Guitar (1954), 154 Jug-janggeom (1974), 170 Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (Deleuze and Guattari), 148n5 The Karate Kid (1984), 194–95 Kato, M.T., 28 Katsu Productions, 172 Katsu Shintaro, 169 Kill Bill series (2003–2004), 9, 185, 190 The Killer (1989), 8, 191 Kim Soyoung, 173 King Boxer (1972), 27, 176, 177 The King of Kickboxers (1990), 195n14 The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959), 157 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 118 Kinugasa Teinosuke, 157n26 Knockabout (1979), 110–11 Kobayashi Akira, 162, 172 Kobayashi Masaki, 160 Kongshan lingyu (1979), 82 Korean cinema, 153, 166–68, 173–75 Korean Entertainment, 166 Korean War, 15, 173 Kracauer, Siegfried, 62 Ku Feng, 98 Kuaican che (1984), 186 Kuaihuo lin (1972), 93 Kudo Eiichi, 160

221 Kuei Chih-hung, 177 kung fu, 7, 10, 29, 32, 47 kung fu films: brotherhood bonds in, 20, 84, 93–104, 191; “Chineseness” of, 10, 29, 153–54; comedies, 8, 108–11, 114; and dance, 132–33, 136; female characters in, 115–44; figure of the xiaozi in, 110, 114; global audiences, 145, 189; and “gun fu,” 187, 191; Korean, 167–68; master-disciple relationships in, 20, 85, 104–14; as “minor” cinema, 148, 150–53, 176–85; modernized forms, 8; period settings, 7; plotlines, 78; and regional economic competition, 30–31; Shaolin, 49–55, 101n32, 109, 165n43; and Spaghetti Westerns, 180–85; themes of self-empowerment, 26, 28, 43, 47–48; use of “real kung fu,” 7, 66, 71–72. See also cinematic techniques; martial arts films; swordplay films; violence in film Kung Fu Girl (1973), 125, 127–33 Kung Fu Hustle (2004), 1, 2, 9, 146, 188 Kuomintang, 11 Kurahara Koreyoshi, 92n18 Kurosawa Akira, 91, 157n26, 158, 159, 160, 182n79 Kurutta kajitsu (1956), 92n19 Kwan Tak-hing, 106 Kwok Wah Lau, Jenny, 123 Lady Whirlwind (1972), 118 Lai, Joseph, 195 Lai, Sufen Sophia, 119 Lam, Dante, 190 Lam, Michael, 25 Lam, Ringo, 189 Lam Sai-wing, 5n8 Lantou He (1979), 111–14 Lashou shentan (1993), 191 The Last Message (1975), 108n40 The Last Woman of Shang (1964), 167 Lau, Andrew, 188 Lau Kar-leung: female characters in films of, 135; martial arts pedigree, 105–6n37; mixing of stylistic approaches, 74n36; Shaolin kung fu films, 8; techniques

222 used in action scenes, 72, 81; training and master-disciple relationships in films of, 50, 51–54, 105–8, 111–14 Lau Kar-wing, 106 Law, Alex, 50n50 Lazenby, George, 177, 181n77 Lee, Ang, 9, 116–17, 145 Lee, Bruce: body image, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32–34, 50; and Chinese identity, 29, 32; collaboration with Hollywood, 145, 176; cross-cultural appeal, 145–46, 150, 166, 184, 189; death, 109, 176–77; directorial techniques, 73–74; female counterparts, 117–18, 128–31; and Golden Harvest, 8; as “hero of modernization,” 33; martial arts prowess, 71, 72, 79; modern film invocations of, 1, 194, 195n13; training methods, 27n8, 34n27 Lee, Chen, 180 Lee Doo-yong, 22, 170 Lee Man-hee, 175 Lee Wai-chun, 121 The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974), 177, 181 The Legend of Zu (2001), 188 Leone, Sergio, 155, 161, 182n79 Leung, Benjamin K.P., 137, 138 Leung Siu-Hung, 195n14 Li, Jet, 8, 188n3, 190 Li, Siu-leung, 29, 119–20, 133–34 Li Han-hsiang, 157 Li Lihua, 86 Li Xianglan, 157 Liang Yusheng, 6 Liaozhai zhiyi (Pu Songling), 115n1 Lieren (1969), 162n41 Lin Chong, Jimmy, 163 Lin Dai, 86, 157–58n28 Lin Shirong, 105–6n37 Lin Tsui, 123n21 Ling Po, 86, 117 Lionnet, Françoise, 148–49 Liu, Gordon, 51, 53, 107, 111 Liu Zhan, 105–6n37 Lo, Kwai-cheung, 29, 130, 131, 140, 150 Lo Lieh, 89, 181n77 Lo Wei, 27, 32, 61–62, 125, 127, 128

Index Loke Wan Tho, 12 Longhu dou (1970), 27, 51, 106n38, 159 Longhu dou jinghua (novel), 6 Longmen jinjian (1969), 127 Longmen kezhan (1967), 47, 68, 133, 154, 165 Longxiong hudi (1987), 187 Longya jian (1971), 170 Louie, Kam, 86–87 Love Parade (1963), 61 Love with an Alien (1958), 166 Lowe, Lucas, 195n14 Lu Acai, 105–6n37, 107 Lu Acai yu Huang Feihong (1976), 106–8 Lu Bang, 135 Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan (1984), 139, 142–43 Ma Su Chen (1972), 130n27 Ma Suzhen bao xiongchou (1972), 130n27 Ma Yongzhen (1972). See The Boxer from Shantung (1972) Mackenna’s Gold (1969), 151n13 Mad, Mad, Mad Swords (1969), 161 Madame White Snake (1956), 157 Maeng-in daehyeobgaeg (1971), 170 The Magnificent Concubine (1962), 157 The Magnificent Trio (1966), 93, 98, 156, 159 Magnificent Warriors (1987), 192 Maishen qi (1978), 108n40 Malaysia, 152, 165 The Man from Hong Kong (1975), 177, 181n77 Man of Iron (1972), 42n41 The Man Who Causes a Storm (1957), 92n18 The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), 145n1 Mandarin-language films: “Chineseness” in, 29; embrace of sensory realism, 7, 61, 66; female characters in, 122; female stars of, 86; male characters in, 87; overseas markets, 165; target audiences, 6, 31n19, 57n2, 87. See also Cantoneselanguage films Mangnü jinjian (1970), 170 Mangxia dazhan dubei dao (1971), 169, 181 Mann, Susan, 95–96 Mao, Angela, 115, 118, 132n34, 166n44, 167, 180n76

Index Maotouying yu xiao feixiang (1984), 187 Margheriti, Anthony, 177 martial arts films: anti-Japanese sentiment in, 26–27, 30, 128, 167; authenticity in, 67–68; as body genre, 64–65, 190; budgets, 145, 150, 189; class confrontation in, 32–34, 53, 150; cultural nationalist readings of, 2, 4–5, 9, 11, 25–26, 28–31; Englishlanguage, 194–95; global and regional audiences, 8–9, 13, 165–66, 189; global blockbusters, 8–9, 145–46; history of genre, 4–9; on home video, DVD and online platforms, 179, 189, 195, 196; as “minor” cinema, 146–53, 189; sensory realism of, 20, 57, 63–74, 155; sex in, 47, 57, 102; “technologization” of, 187–88; transnational practices and politics, 19, 21–22, 146–53, 164–85, 189–90; trope of physical impairment in, 168–75. See also Cantonese-language films; cinematic techniques; kung fu films; Mandarin-language films; swordplay films; violence in film martial arts literature: figure of the xiaozi in, 110n43; Guangdong School, 5; “new school,” 6; notion of jianghu in, 44; trope of physical impairment in, 169; women warriors in, 115–16n1, 118 Martin, Adrian, 79, 82 Marx, Karl, 59 Massumi, Brian, 63 The Matrix (1999), 9, 185, 190 Matsuda Sadatsugu, 169n56 Matsuo Akinori, 12, 158 McQueen, Steve, 90 men: brotherhood bonds among, 20, 84, 93–104; homoeroticism, 25, 94, 100; master-disciple relationships among, 20, 85, 104–14; and physical impairment trope, 175; roles in earlier films, 86; threatened by women, 86, 98, 119–20, 144, 191. See also gender; women; yanggang aesthetic Men from the Monastery (1974), 165n43 Men in Groups (Tiger), 95n23 Menglong guojiang (1972), 32, 47, 72–73, 83

223 Meteor (1979), 178 Metz, Christian, 138 Mifune Toshiro, 91 Ming dynasty, 133 minor transnationalism, 148–49 Mizoguchi Kenji, 157 modernity, concept of, 14 modernization: and the capitalist ethos, 24, 36; and economic rivalry with Japan, 30; and the experience of time, 76–77; and gender roles, 121, 123–24, 136, 137, 191; and intensification of sensory experience, 58–61; and the rise of martial arts films, 2, 17; and social transformation, 15–18; and ultraviolence, 57n3, 161–62 The Monkey King (2014), 188 Moore, Roger, 145n1, 178n71 Morris, Meaghan, 51, 104, 159, 179 Motion Pictures and General Investment (MP & GI), 12, 122, 157n27 Muhomatsu no issho (1958), 157n26 Mulvey, Laura, 138 Murayama Mitsuo, 158 My Name Is Shanghai Joe (1972), 22, 180, 181–85 My Young Auntie (1981), 135, 136 Nakahira Ko, 12, 62, 92n19, 158, 162n41 Naner bense (2007), 190 Nanguo dianying (magazine), 7n11 Neame, Roland, 178 Needham, Hal, 178, 194 Nemuri Kyoshiro series, 159 The New One-Armed Swordsman (1971), 101, 170 New Police Story (2004), 190 “new school” martial arts films: figure of the woman warrior in, 117; Hollywood models for, 154; Japanese influence on, 161, 168; popularity in Korea, 167, 170; sensory realism of, 6–7, 65–68 Newman, Paul, 90, 155 Ng Cho-fan, 87 Ng Ho, 111 Ng See-yuen, 71, 82, 194 Ni Kuang, 6

224 Nie Yinniang, 118 Nie Zheng, 92 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 33–34, 48 Nikkatsu Corporation, 159, 162 ninja films, 195–96 Nishimoto Tadashi, 12, 157 No Retreat, No Surrender (1986), 194, 195 No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder (1987), 195n14 No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (1990), 195n14 Norris, Chuck, 27n8, 32, 72–74 Nü dubei dao (1972), 130n27, 170 Nüzi taiquan qunying hui (1975), 167 Obaltan (1961), 175 Okamoto Kihachi, 160 Okinawa Reversion Treaty, 27n7 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), 151n13 Once Upon a Time in China (film series), 8, 187, 188 One-Armed Swordsman (1967): discourse of training in, 50–51, 106n38; graphic violence in, 69, 70, 160, 173; imitation with female protagonist, 130; influence of James Bond films on, 154; Japanese influence on, 160; master-disciple relationship in, 93, 100; reception in regional markets, 167n48, 169, 170; screenplay, 6; trope of physical impairment in, 172–73; yanggang aesthetic, 35. See also Chang Cheh One-Armed Swordswoman (1972), 130n27, 170 One-Eyed Park (1970), 170 opera: and action choreography, 68, 109, 132; decline in films of, 62; female cross-dressing in, 25n2, 86, 119–20, 134; and notions of “Chineseness,” 10; and violence in kung fu films, 156n24 Ore wa matteru ze (1957), 92n18 Ou Wei, 128 The Owl vs. Bombo (1984), 187 Painted Faces (1988), 50n50 Pak Yin, 86

Index Palmer, Augusta Lee, 123 Pang, Danny, 188 Pang, Oxide, 188 Pao Hsueh-li, 42n41 Pareomneun geomgaeg (1969), 170 Paris, 157–58n28 Park Chung-hee, 168, 175 Park Woo-sang, 170 Parks, Gordon, Jr., 180 Peckinpah, Sam, 156 Penn, Arthur, 156 Po jie (1978), 118 Police Story (1985), 186 Police Story 2 (1988), 186–87 Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), 192 Ppalgan mahura (1964), 175 Pratt, Mary Louise, 153n15 Prince, Stephen, 156 Princess Yang Kwei Fei (1955), 157 The Private Eyes (1976), 108n40 The Promise (2005), 9, 146 The Protector (1985), 194n10 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber), 48 Pu Songling, 115n1 Qi xiaofu (1988), 50n50 Qiannü youhun series (1987–1991), 188 Qimou miaoji wu fuxing (1983), 187 Qing dynasty, 27n7, 97, 133 Qishier jia fangke (1973), 108 Raine, Michael, 92 Raining in the Mountain (1979), 82 Rashomon (1950), 157n26 Ratner, Brett, 190 Ray, Nicholas, 154 Records of the Grand Historian (Sima Qian), 38, 92 Red Muffler (1964), 175 Redford, Robert, 155 The Return of the Condor Heroes (1959), 169 Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (1969), 93, 169 Return to the 36th Chamber (1980), 52–54 Returned Left-Handed Man (1968), 170 Returned One-Legged Man (1974), 22, 170, 174

Index Returned One-Legged Man 2 (1974), 170, 174 Revenge (1964), 172 Reynolds, Burt, 178n71 Rhee, Jhoon, 167 Rickshaw Man (1958), 157n26 Riviere, Joan, 137–38, 141 Rocky IV (1985), 195 Rodriguez, Hector, 68 Romance of the Three Kingdoms (novel), 94 La roue (1923), 81 Royal Warriors (1986), 192 Ruan Lingyu, 88n6 Rush Hour (1998), 190 Russell, Catherine, 40, 41, 45 Ryojin nikki (1964), 162n41 Salaff, Janet W., 59, 124 San guo yanyi (novel), 94 Sanbiki no samurai (1964), 159 Sanjuro (1962), 160 Sansho dayu (1954), 157n26 Sansho the Bailiff (1954), 157n26 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak, 1, 190 Scott, Ridley, 178 Season of the Sun (1955), 92n19 Seasonal Film Corporation, 194, 195n14 secret societies, 97 Sek Kei, 40 Seven Samurai (1954), 157n26, 159 Sha po lang (2005), 190 Shangguan Lingfeng, 115, 133 Shanghai, 6, 11, 15, 87–88 Shanghai cinema, 4, 6, 26, 88, 115, 116, 117 Shanghai tan Ma Suzhen (1972), 130n27 Shaolin dapeng dashi (1980), 52–54 Shaolin Martial Arts (1974), 105, 106 Shaolin sanshiliu fang (1978), 51–52, 109 Shaolin si (1976), 105 Shaolin Temple (1976), 105 Shaolin wuzu (1974), 50, 97n30, 105, 165n43 Shaolin zidi (1974), 165n43 Shatter (1974), 177, 181n77 Shaw Brothers: budgets and production values, 150n11, 179; and Chang Cheh, 6–7, 66, 91; cultural nationalist output, 10; efforts to develop mukokuseki

225 akushun films, 162; film library, 9n14; “Jane Bond” films, 123n21; joint productions with Japanese companies, 157, 162; joint productions with Korean companies, 166–68; joint productions with Taiwanese companies, 165n43; as modern industrial organization, 11–12, 13, 77, 166; official publication, 7n11; overseas markets and distribution networks, 152, 157–58n28, 165–66, 177–78; sensory realist films, 57, 61–62. See also Golden Harvest; “new school” martial arts films Shenda (1975), 81 Shendiao xialu (1959), 169 Shenjing dao (1969), 161 Shexing diaoshou (1978), 109, 194 Shi Jun, 133 Shichinin no samurai (1954), 157n26, 159 Shih, Shu-mei, 148–49 Shiji (Sima Qian), 38, 92 Shima Koji, 158 Shimian maifu (2004), 9 Shin Films, 166–67 Shin Sang-ok, 175 Shin Zatoichi: Yabure! Tojinken (1971), 169, 181 Shisan taibao (1970), 80–81 Shishido Jo, 128, 162 Shisi nü yinghao (1972), 80 Shuang xia (1971), 101 Shuihu zhuan (1972), 93 Shuihu zhuan (novel), 92 Shujian enchou lu (novel), 6 Shushan jianxia (1983), 187, 188 Shushan zhuan (2001), 188 Siao Fong-fong, 86, 122, 135 Sima Qian, 38, 92 Sin Yeong-il, 170 Singapore, 152, 165 Singer, Ben, 62, 64 The Singing Killer (1970), 163 The Singing Thief (1969), 163–64 Sino-Japanese War, 27n7 Sister Street Fighter series (1974–1976), 166n44 Siwang youxi (1973), 32

226 Six Dynasties period, 118n5 Slotkin, Richard, 35 Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978), 109, 194 Sobchack, Vivian, 64 Sok doraon oedali (1974), 170 South Korea, 166–68, 173–75 Southern Screen (magazine), 7n11 Spaghetti Westerns, 22, 153, 155–56, 161, 176, 180–85 Special Agent 009 (1967), 62 Spielberg, Steven, 145n1 The Spiritual Boxer (1975), 81 S.P.L. (2005), 190 Stallone, Sylvester, 195 Star Wars (1977), 179 Starrett, Jack, 180 The Storm Riders (1998), 188 The Storm Warriors (2009), 188 Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Pu Songling), 115n1 The Stranger and the Gunfighter (1974), 177, 181n77 The Stray Bullet (1961), 175 Street Fighter series (1974), 166n44 STYLE Hongkong (magazine), 121 Sugata Sanshiro (1943), 159 Sun Yat-sen, 97 Sun Yue, 82 Super Fly (1972), 180 Superfights (1995), 195n14 Supermen against the Amazons (1975), 177 Supermen against the Orient (1974), 177, 181n77 Sword of Doom (1966), 160 swordplay films: artificiality, 66; “Chineseness” in, 10, 26, 29; female stars of, 117; and Hollywood Westerns, 154; as “minor” cinema, 148, 151; and Peking opera, 132; period settings, 7; plotlines, 78; revival in the early 1960s, 6; Taiwanese, 165–66; use of digital technology, 187, 188. See also kung fu films; martial arts films; violence in film taekwondo, 167–174 Tai-Chi Master (1993), 192 Taiji Zhang Sanfeng (1993), 192

Index Taipan (incomplete), 178 Taiquan zhen jiuzhou (1973), 167 Taiwan: articulation of Chineseness, 11, 149; cession to Japan, 27n7; as market for Hong Kong cinema, 152, 165; as market for Japanese cinema, 169, 170; martial arts fiction from, 6, 170; martial arts films from, 165–66, 169; reception of Crouching Tiger, 145 Taiyo no kisetsu (1955), 92n19 A Tale of Heroic Lovers (novel), 118 Tang, Thomas, 195 Tang dynasty, 118 Tange Sazen films, 169 Tangshan daxiong (1971), 32, 79, 145 Tarantino, Quentin, 9, 189 Tasker, Yvonne, 28, 132 Taussig, Michael, 58, 64 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), 194 Tejing 009 (1967), 62 Temple of the Red Lotus (1965), 6, 65–66, 117 Teo, Stephen, 11n19, 132, 154 Thailand, 1n1 13-Dot (comic), 121–22 The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), 51–52, 104, 109 Thompson, Lee, 151n13 Three Blind Female Spies series (1965–1966), 169 Three Fantastic Supermen series, 181n77 Three Outlaw Samurai (1964), 159 Three the Hard Way (1974), 180 Thunderball (1965), 151n13 Ti Lung, 24, 70, 89, 98, 99, 101 Ti wa (1973), 125, 127–33 Tiananmen Square massacre (1989), 191 Tiancai yu baichi (1975), 108n40 Tianxia diyi quan (1972), 27, 176, 177 Tieshou wuqing (1969), 93 Tiezhang xuanfengtui (1972), 118 Tiger, Lionel, 95n23 Tiger Boy (1966), 6–7, 35, 66 tiyu movement, 25–26n4 To, Johnnie, 193 Toei Company, 159, 166n44 Toho Co., 157n27, 169 Tokyo Cinderella Girl (1954), 162n41

Index Tomlinson, John, 76, 78 Tong, Stanley, 192 Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), 151n13 A Touch of Zen (1971), 69, 82, 83, 115n1, 132, 165 Touming Zhuang (2007), 101n34 Towa Pictures, 157n27 Toyoda Shiro, 157 Trenchard-Smith, Brian, 177 The True Story of Wong Fei-hung I: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (1949), 66 Tsubaraya Eiji, 12 Tsui Hark, 187, 188, 189 Tu Guangqi, 166 Tung Wai, 72 Uchikawa Seiichiro, 159n32 Ugetsu (1953), 157n26 Unbeatable (2013), 190 Union Film Company, 165 United Artists, 156 United Kingdom, 15 United States, 27, 29, 176, 177 Uyehara, M., 79 The Valiant Ones (1975), 82n57 Van Cleef, Lee, 181n77 Van Damme, Jean-Claude, 194n10 Variety (magazine), 176, 180n76 Vengeance! (1970), 70, 93, 98–101, 162 Venice Film Festival, 157n26 vernacular modernism, 3 Vietnam War, 173, 176, 178, 191 violence in film: as critique of capitalism, 104; as element of sensory realism, 57, 70–71; in Hollywood productions, 155–56, 162; regenerative, 34–47, 161–62, 173; and yanggang aesthetic, 89 Virgins of the Seven Seas (1974), 177 Vojković, Sasha, 123 Wachowski, Lana, 8–9 Wachowski, Lilly, 8–9 Wakasugi Mitsuo, 166 Wang, Jimmy. See Wang Yu Wang Ping, 100 Wang Tianlin, 161n36

227 Wang Yu: anti-Japanese sentiment in films of, 27; in Chang Cheh films, 38, 92; directorial projects, 106n38; Englishlanguage films, 177, 181n77; Japanese influence on, 159; in Lau Kar-leung films, 81; as male action star, 24, 89, 92, 118; as one-armed swordsman, 69, 100, 160, 169 The Warlords (2007), 101n34 Warner Bros., 145, 176, 180 The Water Margin (1972), 93, 101 The Water Margin (novel), 92–93, 94, 95 The Way of the Dragon (1972), 32, 47, 72–73, 83 Weber, Max, 47, 48 wenyi pian (melodramas), 86 Wheels on Meals (1984), 186 When Taekwondo Strikes (1973), 167 The Wild Bunch (1969), 156 The Wild Flowers in the Battle Field (1974), 175 Williams, Linda, 64 Wing Chun (1993), 123 Winners and Sinners (1983), 187 Wohu canglong (2000), 9, 116–17, 125, 145–46, 189 Wollen, Peter, 77 The Woman Warrior (Kingston), 118 women: cross-dressing, 25, 86, 88n7, 119, 133–34, 136–37; earlier centrality in films, 5, 7, 21, 85, 86, 88; exclusion from male bonding relationships, 95, 101, 102–3; and “female masculinity,” 21, 125–36, 166n44, 192–93; film representations of modern, 122–23; gender performativity and masquerade, 136–44; growing social power of, 5, 17, 21, 86, 98, 144, 191; in the labor force, 59, 120; and modernity, 14, 116, 120–21; nüxia or warrior woman figure, 5, 7, 21, 85, 115–44, 192–93; reception of martial arts films, 25; traditional roles, 119, 124. See also gender; men Wong, Carter, 167 Wong Fei-hung, 105–6n37, 107 Wong Fei-hung films: local Cantonese flavor in, 5–6; as a male protagonist, 87, 89;

228 master-disciple relationship in, 93; realism and authenticity in, 66, 68, 72; regional audiences, 165; revival with Jet Li, 8, 187 Wong Kin-yuen, 83 Wong Siu-lun, 41–42 Wonhan-ui aekkunun (1969), 170 Woo, John: and Chang Cheh, 101n34; and “gun-fu” genre, 187, 191; Hollywood films, 8, 190; international cult status, 189; Korean martial arts in films of, 167; on yanggang aesthetic, 89. See also Chang Cheh; violence in film Wu Ma, 170 Wu Zetian (1963), 157 Wuji (2005), 9 Xia Meng, 86 Xianggang yinghua (magazine), 90 Xiangjiang huayue ye (1967), 61, 162n41 Xianü (1971), 69, 82, 83, 115n1, 132, 165 Xiao shaxing (1970), 163 Xin dubei dao (1971), 101, 170 Xin jingcha gushi (2004), 190 Xinhua Film Company, 157n27 Xiyou ji zhi danao tiangong (2014), 188 Xu Feng, 69, 82 Xu Zenghong, 6, 65–66, 117, 160 Xue Han, 68 Xuefu men (1971), 130n27, 170 Yam Sai-koon, 188n3 Yamaguchi Yoshiko, 157 Yamanaka Sadao, 169 Yang, Cynthia, 115 Yang guifei (1962), 157 Yang Zhiqing, 126 yanggang aesthetic: American and Japanese influences on, 90–92, 154–55, 162; characteristics, 89–90; and graphic violence, 35, 69; John Woo’s reinvention of, 8; and male homosocial relationships, 20–21; marginalization of female characters, 7, 88, 117, 127; stars associated with, 24–25, 89 Yasuda Kimiyoshi, 169

Index Yau, Esther, 75–76 Ye Wen series (2008, 2010), 190 Yen, Donnie, 190 Yeoh, Michelle, 8, 115, 116, 132n34, 192–93 Yes, Madam! (1985), 192 Yiguo qingyuan (1958), 166 Yingchun ge zhi fengbo (1973), 154 Yingxiong (2002), 9, 146, 189 Yingxiong bense (1986), 8, 191 Yingxiong bense II (1987), 191 Yip, Wilson, 190 Yojimbo (1961), 91n17, 182n79 Yokihi (1955), 157 Yongchun (1993), 123 You Min, 86 Young, Terence, 91, 151n13 youth films, 122 Yu, Candace, 142 Yu Hyun-mok, 175 Yu Suqiu, 115, 117 Yu Zhanyuan, 117n3 Yuan dynasty, 133 Yue Feng, 154, 167 Yue Hua, 126, 139 Yuen, Corey, 188n3, 192, 194, 195n14 Yuen Woo-ping, 8, 109, 123, 190, 192 Zajia xiaozi (1979), 110–11 Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman (1971), 169, 181 Zatoichi films, 159, 160–61, 168–69, 170, 172 Zhang Shankun, 157n27 Zhang Yimou, 9 Zhang Zhen, 117 Zhang Ziyi, 116, 132n34 Zhangbei (1981), 135, 136 Zhanshen tan (1973), 27, 159 Zhao Lui, 87 Zhi Shan, 105–6n37 Zhonghua zhanshi (1987), 192 Zhu Yuzhai, 5n8 Zhuge Qingyun, 6 Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), 187, 188 Zui quan (1978), 109, 194