Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (3 page)

All those residents and visitors were probably entertained via the Peking Opera, a traditional form of theater that combined music, singing, acting, mime, acrobatics, and choreography (both dancing and kung fu). Arising in the 18
th
century, and fully developed in the 19
th
, it revolved around a set repertory of increasingly familiar romantic, comedic, dramatic, and martial plays which were judged by the quality of the exacting, nuanced, performances, as well as the complex and colorful make-up and costumes. Peking Opera, now also referred to as Beijing Opera, established theatrical traditions which remain influential in Chinese cinema.

In Peking Opera there are great heroes, but also great villains. In Chinese history, one great villain was the British East India Company. It wanted the wealth that China reserved, so to open its shipping lanes, they sent opium. Once introduced, it could not be gotten rid of. A booming smuggling trade sprang up, and the demand was so great that it even strained national silver supplies. The leaders in Peking and the walled city of Canton said they wanted opium out. England wanted the silver that opium brought. In 1841 the British attacked.

By 1846 China was open to the British, the French, and the Americans. Anti-foreign feelings swelled in Chinese hearts, leading to some very nasty goings-on … what with British heads impaled on spikes and all. The central areas of anti-Anglo feelings were Kwangtung and Canton. Pirates and bandits were everywhere, taking white people’s heads. In 1857 the British and French occupied Canton and started moving toward Peking. The Russians joined them.

By 1860, things that had come to a head came to a boil. There were Taiping rebellions and Muslim rebellions marking political and religious unrest. The more confusing things became, the more widespread was the corruption. All the out-lying areas (Nepal, Burma, and the like) were falling under British control. Meanwhile, Japan was getting into the act, coming into conflict with China over the sovereignty of Korea. Things got so bad between China and the “gweilos” (foreign devils) that the government leased Hong Kong to the British for ninety-nine years to serve as an import-export way station. It was basically a liaison between the fractious powers.

Things boiled over in 1900. This was the infamous boxer rebellion, where a zealous army of anti-foreign revolutionaries depended upon what they called the “Righteous and Harmonious Fist” to face down the gweilo guns. You can imagine how well that turned out. A form of “concerted effort” toward a goal of health and balance was monkey-kinged by the blind hopeful into a mythically invulnerable form of self-offence.

Actually, it’s little wonder. For centuries, kung fu students had been internalizing and personalizing handed-down knowledge, making alterations as needed for their own size, shape, and temperament — as well as that of their loved ones. The Ling family fashioned ling gar (Ling Family Fist). The Hung family designed hung gar (Hung Family Fist). A woman named Wing Chun developed, well, guess what, to suit herself and her friends. The Chen family and Yang family, among others, devised their personal variations on taichi (which, in itself, means “balance”).

On the inside, astonishing things were happening. But, on the outside, all the unknowing, unhappy, people could comprehend was that amazing things could be accomplished if you just followed the right teacher. The insecure and self-hating amongst them used that desire to their own advantage. On June 20, 1900, all-out war was declared for “support of the Ch’ing and extermination of foreigners.” By 1901, China was no longer under its own rule and the populace who could be humiliated were humiliated.

For the next decade, China suffered all manner of indignity: foreign intervention, civil war, and Japanese invasion, among others. Finally, in 1912, the Republic started to take shape. The National Assembly was created, populated by mostly revolutionaries. But just because they were revolutionaries didn’t mean they were any less insidious than their power-hungry ancestors. Dirty deeds were the order of the day. Yuan Shih-k’ai convinced the Assembly to declare him president, then promptly disbanded the Assembly and instituted a dictatorship.

But Yuan died in 1916, and members of the government battled amongst themselves to see what sort of country China would become, imperial or democratic. When the smoke cleared, there was the Nationalist party and the Communist party. By 1922, most of the influencing nations agreed to allow China to find its own way, and from there on in, it became a battle between Chinese regions — mostly north and south.

China’s story was full of “no-win” scenarios. There were many times during its eras when both sides of an issue were “right,” allowing modern filmmakers to picture all kinds of heroes: Ming, Ching, Manchu, Shaolin, or others. The 1930s were equally rich in stories. The Nationalists had established a new order, which lasted from 1928 to 1937, even though they warred with the Communists most of the time.

What brought them together was an outside enemy: the Japanese. For years, the Japanese ravaged China, committing atrocities that the Chinese still can’t quite comprehend, let alone get over. This has always been a vital aspect of Chinese kung fu movies: hatred of the Japanese. It wasn’t until relatively recently that a Japanese was pictured in a favorable light in a Chinese movie. For the most part, they are pictured as the worst kind of cowardly, arrogant, dishonest, and foul creatures imaginable.

By 1939, things had stalemated somewhat. The Allies threw in some five hundred million dollars to aid China in her fight. Sadly, the fight wasn’t just with the Japanese; it also continued between the Communists and the Nationalists. On December 7, 1941, that all changed again: Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. America was angry now, which didn’t help the Nationalists. As World War II dragged on, bringing poverty and inflation with it, the reigning Nationalist government fell completely out of favor.

Once the war ended, Chinese civil war raged until 1949. It was Chiang Kai-shek
versus Mao Tse-tung
, and Mao won for the Communists. October 1, 1949 marked the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, while Great Britain still ruled Hong Kong until 1997 (the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and created the Republic of China, which still has a troubled relationship with the mainland). So, now that we’ve established where all the kung fu films’ stories come from, we can get down to the history of the movies themselves.

Up until the last few decades, the kung fu film story was really the Hong Kong kung fu film story — the People’s Republic didn’t really make a bona fide non-propaganda action epic until 1981. Although many films were made in Thailand, the Philippines, and most especially Taiwan, few were of any note. In fact, I once recognized a Taiwan movie star working as a busboy in a California restaurant. He remembered appearing in about seven hundred movies in the twelve years he toiled as an actor. That was more than a movie a week! When I asked him what he was doing working as a busboy, he replied, “The pay is better.” So you can imagine the quality of those seven hundred movies. There were exceptions, of course, but those will be dealt with in good time.

In any case, there seems to be a slight disagreement concerning which was the first Chinese kung fu movie. The Hong Kong International Film Festival lists it as
Thief in the Car
(1920).
Martial Arts Movies
magazine listed it as
Monkey Fights Golden Leopard
in an article by James Seetoo. This was a 1926 silent film about the Monkey King, taken from
Journey to the West
.
However, most English-speaking fans of the genre consider it to be
The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple
(1929). It hardly makes any difference, really, since the 1930s and 1940s were rife with nebulous martial arts-influenced films. The one thing they all reportedly had in common was that the kung fu wasn’t very good.

These movies all shared an artificiality that reduced the effect of whatever kung fu was included. Even so, the films from 1920 to 1949 are interesting in terms of how they relate to the later movies, and for how their colorful titles compare to their somewhat staid presentation. For instance, there was
How Wu
Song Killed His Sister-in-Law
(1927),
Bloody Fights
(1933), and, most importantly,
The Adventures of Fong Sai-yuk
(1938) … important because this latter film is the first to feature credited kung fu choreographers (Ho Si-kit and Ng Mei-lo).

We’ll be seeing a lot more from Fong Sai-yuk, but, in the meantime, the reason movies were being made at all was that Hong Kong was westernized. That is, they were more modern and less restricted than their mainland Chinese comrades. These areas were also overpopulated, and stricken with all manner of social ills that progress can create. Therefore, they were in far more need of entertainment. Up until 1949, this entertainment was highly stylized theater and cinema, mostly based on ancient traditions, presented in a Peking Opera-esque manner — much in the way that early American sound movies were little more than filmed stage plays.

But then a director named Hu Peng heard about a healer and kung fu teacher named Huang Fei-hong (aka Wong Fei-hung). Born in 1847 (and died in 1924), Huang Fei-hong was the son of one of the famous Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (a group around which several movies have been made). Other than the fact that he practiced medicine, was expert in many forms of kung fu, and excelled at a sport-contest called lion dancing, not much is known about the fellow.

Wu Pang rectified all that by starting a marathon film series that comprised eighty-five feature films over a twenty-year period.
The Story of Huang Fei Hong, Parts One and Two
(1949) was only the beginning of a phenomenon which was to become the foundation of the modern kung fu film. Up until then, most movie martial arts feats were totally ludicrous and completely inaccurate (a problem that still afflicts most bad kung fu movies, namely most of those that appeared in the United States following Bruce Lee’s death).

Men leaped higher than trees, women flew through the air for hundreds of yards, and fighters did endless somersaults. The actors in the Huang Fei-hong movies insisted on realism in the all-important action scenes. For the first time, kung fu was the heart of the film, not just a peripheral ingredient. The need for accuracy became vital in order to honestly portray the leading character’s life. It also didn’t hurt that the lead actor was so similar to the character he portrayed.

That actor was Kwan Tak-hing. Born in 1906, he became an actor in Cantonese opera, but more importantly, he was an accomplished lion dancer and martial artist. He initially studied Hung boxing, which goes several steps further than hung gar. While the latter melds two forms — the tiger and crane styles — Hung Fist, as it is also called, melds all five Shaolin animal styles with the horse, elephant, and lion techniques. From there, Kwan became a proponent of the white crane style. All these styles are based on the human body and mind, as well as the way animals defend themselves.

As the films progressed over the decades, Kwan became proficient in all the areas Huang himself was known for. Huang seemed dedicated to mastering the most esoteric, difficult skills — such as the Iron Wire and Tiger Vanquishing Fists as well as Huang’s trademark “Shadowless Kick,” which Kwan seemed to delight in showing throughout the series. Kwan himself was the creator of what is now known as the Omni-Directional Gangrou Fist.

So director Wu had the character and the actor. And while the honorable legend of Huang and the charming personality of Kwan were vital, it took more than those to make the series a success. First, these were pictures about a beloved personage in happier times, so they became a nostalgic preserver of particular pastimes, such as “vying for firecrackers” — another sport-contest in which a bunch of red sticks were fired into the air so different kung fu school teams could battle for possession when they fell. Whichever team held the most sticks at the end of the tournament won.

But vying for firecrackers paled in comparison to the pride felt by the school that won the lion dancing
contests. A hallmark of Chinese life, these tournaments pitted teams of athletes who performed with ornate, colorful Chinese Lion costumes. It is the skill of the dancers beneath the costume that imbues the rippling dragon-like body and heavy, puppet-like lion head of the outfit with character. Maneuvering this lion in competition with other lion dancers can call for the greatest skill a martial artist possesses. In this area Kwan was a master, making the many Huang movies that involved lion dancing a visual delight.

But the nucleus of the Huang Fei-hong films was kung fu ... and not just the external, martial variety. Unlike his contemporary film series competitor, Fong Sai-yuk
(aka Fan Shiyu), a hot-tempered Shaolin renegade, Huang Fei-hong was first and foremost a healer, who spread wisdom and traditional Chinese medicine from his famed school/clinic known as Po Chi Lum
. Although he would be disappointed in his students whenever they were undisciplined, he rarely angered and would always teach that the highest form of kung fu was not to fight.

Of course, his many envious, greedy villains would always force the issue … to the delight of audiences who preferred the real thing to the artificial, theatrical feats portrayed in years past. For the record: there were apparently five basic Kwangtung schools of kung fu teaching at the time — the Hung, Liu, Cai, Li, and Mo Schools. They taught the ten major fist forms, based on the movements of the crane, elephant, horse, monkey, leopard, lion, snake, tiger, and tiger cub. In addition, there was training utilizing the eighteen legendary weapons of China, which included staffs, spears, and swords. From there the possibilities seemingly become endless.