HKUST SOSC005 March 11, 2005 Mirana May Szeto Hong Kong Everyday Culture: Film & Literature

1. HKUST SOSC005 March 11, 2005 Mirana May Szeto Hong Kong Everyday Culture: Film & Literature

2. Lai Man-wai黎民偉 The Lai brothers made China’s first narrative short film “Zhuangzi Tests His Wife” (1931) China’s first feature-length film “Rouge” (1924), first newsreel, scenery film and documentary. He made “War Against the Warlords” (1921-8), the only film record of the campaign. He joined the Xingzhonghui and Tongmenghui, & participated in the 1911 revolution.

3. China Sun (Minxin) 1923: • Lai, is a pioneer in Hong Kong/Chinese cinema. He established the first Chinese Film Studio in Hong Kong and introduced foreign film technology to Hong Kong. • Founded Hong Kong’s first Chinese-owned theatre “New World.” • Spread filming activities to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and all of China.

4. Liberated Modern Man: • Activist in “people’s theatre” – started the troupe Ching Ping Lok (清平樂) to spread the ideas of revolution. • Believe in liberated sexuality and equality between the sexes. • First man to play a female role in Chinese film and worked alongside his wife in his entire career.

5. The modern wuxia novel and film: • During the Republican period (1911-1949), the modern wuxia novel came into being in popular culture, when in high culture, the May 4th Movement since 1919 pressed for modernization and the total rejection of traditional Chinese culture. • A new May 4th literature evolved, calling for a break with Confucian values. • In popular culture, the xia emerged as a parallel symbol of personal freedom, defiance to Confucian tradition, and rejection of the Chinese family system. As a literary form of popular protest, wuxia films and literature were banned at various times during the Republican era (1911-1949 in mainland China).

6. Competition between the Northern School & the Southern School of wuxia fiction & film: The Northern school centered in Beijing followed the traditional approach of the storyteller & the classical novel. These works focused on traditional values & were based in realism & set in historical contexts. The Southern school, centered in Shanghai was influenced by western literature and the New Literary Movement. These works were more adventurous in both form and style, were more cosmopolitan in character, as well as more mass media and film friendly. Even further south, the Guangdong (including Hong Kong) wuxia novels were even more ingenious & savor a kind of indigenous quality.

7. The earliest wuxia filmsThe first martial arts films ever made were made in Hong Kong: The Nameless Hero, starring the first famous martial arts star Zhang Huichang (張慧冲), directed by Zhang Shichuan (張石川), 1926; The Hero of Guangdong, 1928, starring the famous martial arts film actress Wu Lizhu(鄔麗珠), cross-dressed to play a male role; and The Burning of Red Lotus Monastery, directed by Zhang Shichuan, 1928. Their popularity started a trend. 250 wuxia films were made between 1928 to 1930 - nearly 60% of the Chinese film industry’s output at the time.

8. The Hong Kong school: The Communist banned wuxia novels & films in China. The political censorship also prevented any literature and film made in Hong Kong & Taiwan to enter Communist China since early 1950s. Thus the second prominent phase of the wuxia genre was launched in mid-1950s Hong Kong & Taiwan. Representative writers include Jin Yong (金庸). His contemporaries include Liang Yusheng (梁羽生), who introduced the concept of the hero as an intellectual, and Gu Long (古龍) who viewed the xia as a solitary ascetic.

9. Once Upon a Time in China Tsui Hark, director/producer/ scriptwriter, Once Upon a Time in China I & II, Hong Kong, 1991, 1992.

10. 黃飛鴻 • Wong Fei-Hung (Cantonese romanization) Huang Feihong (Mandarin romanization) Wong Fei-Hung (1847-1925) was a historical Cantonese martial arts master and herbalist, the son of one of the Ten Tigers of Guangdong 黃騏英, (Wong Kei-Ying in Cantonese romanization), a title which he inherited. He was a kungfu master of the Southern Shaolin Temple school, who also invented his own styles later in life.

11. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung He was famous for his Tiger Crane Duel Style虎鶴雙 形, Five Form Fists五形拳, Gong Character Tiger Subduing Fists工字伏虎拳, Five Elements Fists五行 拳, & Five Men Eight Diagrams Club五郎八卦棍. He also inherited the 嶺南白鶴派 Lingnan White Crane School of martial arts (Lingnan meaning south of the Nine Dragon Mountain, which is where today’s Hong Kong is). Thus, at the center of his Po Chi Lum herbal medicine institution(寶芝林, Bao Zhilin Precious Herb Forest) was the ancestral alters of the White Crane Masters and the couplet:

12. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung 百載前傳仙武術, 千年後教佛功夫(Hundred Years of Immortal Martial Arts Inherited, Thousand Years of Buddha’s Kungfu Taught), and also the inscriptions 寶劍出匣 (匣sounds the same as 俠 ,xia) & 芝草在林 – together meaning “when the precious sword emerges, precious medicines are also present” (i.e. at Po Chi Lum).

13. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung • In the 1940s, a writer with the pen name Woshi Shanren started serializing martial arts novels about the hero, which got adapted into film since 1949 and has stayed a mythological staple of Cantonese cinema. • It was first adapted into film by the director Hu Peng(胡鵬), with the assistance of • Nianfo Shanren (念佛山人), who was actually the Guangdong boxing novel master Xu Kairu (許凱如), • Master Chen Hanzong (陳漢宗), a Hong Style Shifu (洪拳師傅) and herbalist, as well as • Wu Yixiao (吳一嘯), a martial arts novelist and scriptwriter.

14. 黃飛鴻 Wong Fei-Hung In the early blossoming of kungfu films in Cantonese cinema in Hong Kong, this Wong Fei-Hung figure was represented as a highly respected elderly patriarch and folk hero in a self-contained traditional Chinese community. The issue of China’s modernization and relation to the rest of the world is ignored.

15. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung He represented the Confucian Xia virtues of 仁愛 benevolence, altruism, love, 和平 peace, 義 truthfulness and loyalty, 忍 tolerance and forbearance in face of insult, and 恕 forgiveness. He emphasized that kungfu (martial arts) is ultimately practiced for the benefit of health. He forbid his students from using it to bully others or get one’s way and cause trouble and tension in the community. He taught students to be large-hearted and tolerate insults whenever possible. To him, a true master should be magnanimous in using his skills. He did not allow the use of force unless in the event of urgency in the protection of the community & of justice for others. Even when he subdued the criminals or bullies, he never try to kill them. Rather, he always resort to forgiveness and try to educate and give the other a second chance.

16. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung • This local hero is so beloved that the film series went on from 1949 to1970, spanning 80 episodes, 59 directed by Hu Peng(胡鵬). • Guan Tak Hing (in Cantonese, Guan Dexing in Mandarin, 關德興), (b.1906 d.1996) – was the actor reincarnating Wong Fei-Hung and representing his image in the cultural memory of Hong Kong. Guan was also skilled in kungfu and was a master in playing warrior roles in Cantonese opera.

17. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung Guan (關德興) went on to play the figure of Wong in 87 films and 13 TV episodes. He was noted in the 1994 Guinness Book of Records for playing the same role 100 times. He was a righteous hero also off-stage, being revered as a “patriotic artist” in his resistance to Japanese invasion of China between 1931-1945, and was renowned for his generous contributions and lifelong career in philanthropy.

18. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung Although Guanwas a Chinese patriot, he lived most of his life in Hong Kong, the British colony, where martial arts & Cantonese opera could still thrive. Queen Elizabeth II could not help knighting him with the MBE in 1981 (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for his remarkable artistic and charitable contributions.

19. Tsui hark &Jet Li’s Wong • is unlike • Guan’s • Interpretation: • Guan’s Wong Fei-Hung was a patriarch never represented with wives, concubines and girlfriends. He was sexless & upright, just like most traditional master xia and righteous authority figures in martial arts novels, presiding over a brotherhood of disciples and xia. Guan has this lean-faced serious look that switches only to stern benevolence, very unlike the baby-faced handsome Jet Li. Director-writer Tsui Hark gave Jet Li’s Wong a fictional girlfriend Aunt Yee with a convincing and mutual love affair.

20. 黃飛鴻Wong Fei-Hung In the film, Wong Fei-Hung is faced with the questions: 1) What is the place of kungfu in the modern world of technology? 2) What should Chinese nationalism be like? 3) How should patriotism be exercised? How should we save China from the duel evils of Western invasion and local exploitation? What are to blame for our suffering? 4) Where should the Chinese hero stand in face of Western technology’s challenge to Chinese traditional knowledge, skills and philosophy?

21. Bucktooth Sol 牙擦蘇 (Ah So in Cantonese romanization): The original Ah So in the old film series was a local bumpkin. In Tsui’s film, this figure becomes a British trained medical student who speaks excellent English but stammers badly in Cantonese. His stuttering is a cultural symptom of his discomfort at being treated as someone foreign in his supposed “native country,” which was not where he was raised and educated. He has to deal with the alienation in a Sino-centric China, where there is no empathy for ethnic Chinese people of multiple cultural & national backgrounds.

22. Bucktooth Sol: This impediment in Chinese speech and reading however, does not deter him from coming to Wong to learn traditional Chinese medicine. His mother tongue, English, also made him very effective in helping Wong negotiate with the foreigners in China. His presence as a Westernized person is also not portrayed as threatening like other Westerners. Wong can maintain this composure in face of his Western technology and knowledge because of the clear master/disciple relation that Ah Sol submits to. Ah Sol even willingly becomes his foreign language mouthpiece, giving him face and stature in front of foreigners.

23. Fu (Ah Foon in Cantonese romanization): • He comes from the countryside to Fo Shan city to earn fame and fortune by learning superior martial arts skills from Wong so that he can literally fight his way to prestige (打出名堂). Compared to Wong, who has everything, Fu is a nobody. • His nothingness is a generative force of desire for power, prestige, money, women. He is the incarnation of capitalist opportunism and entrepreneurial spirit, the double-edged sword of China’s modernization.

24. Fu (Ah Foon): • In the course of the film series, he will become Wong’s disciple, but also falls in love with Aunt Yee and act as a sort of quasi-competitor that Wong need to win over. It is a competition between 2 kinds of Chinese men. • He empathizes with other’s exploitation. He is supposed to work as a Cantonese opera apprentice but was made to patch the roof. He was bossed over and bullied by the local gangsters ready to assert dominance over any new comer.

25. Fu’s (Ah Foon) looks in the film: 1) He looks down from the roof & sees Aunt Yee in Victorian dress and hat taking photos of other actors. Without seeing her face, he was surprised that a foreigner was speaking Chinese. He falls to face Aunt Yee and her new technology, who stares back with surprised innocent big eyes. 2) Then he sees the naked back of Master Wu (Iron Robe Yim), who comes from the north and is now a desperate street performer. Fu is stunned by his great skills at breaking several spears with his bare throat, and is also stunned by the fact that he needs to crouch to pick up the few coins tossed down by the bystanders.

26. Fu’s desires: • His desires cause his fluctuating loyalties. • His fluctuating loyalties pose the question: • How should Chinese modernization go? In terms of heartless capitalist opportunism or something else?

27. The film’s implications about the present Hong Kong: • In the time the film is about (1890s- early1900s), Britain has taken Hong Kong as a colony. Japan has taken Taiwan as a colony. • In the time the film is made (1990s), Hong Kong was still a British colony, but at the point of returning to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Since the time China and Britain discuss the fate of Hong Kong in 1983 to the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, it is clear that China opposes democracy in Hong Kong and proves to be as oppressive a colonizer as the British has been. An implied comment on the Deng Xiaoping dynasty through comments on the Qing dynasty.

28. The film’s implications about the present China: • Inevitably, China is opening up to the world again but with a lot of problems. Generalized anti-corruption movements and democracy movements emerge due to the corrupt bureaucracy and the unchecked exploitation of workers and the peasants in 1989. It ends in the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989.

29. The film’s implications about the present China: • Think about Fu, the gangsters, Master Yim as the converts to opportunism and the lure of capital in the big cosmopolitan cities. • The present China: • One biggest horror of the period: the state encouraged everyone to expose, denounce and persecute each other, including one’s parents, teachers, family and friends. This breaks the trust between all human relations. Right after that, China, still recovering from poverty and ruin, is thrown into the other heartless jungle logic of all against all – The Capitalist Revolution after the breakdown of human relations in the Cultural Revolution.

30. Technology in the film: • We usually think of technology as applied science, as a tool, like money. Its uses and abuses depend on us, the user. However, as in science fiction, we know and we contemplate the horrifying dangers and fascinating possibilities of science and technology in the hands of human beings. Not only that, technology, like money can also take on a life and logic of its own, beyond the comprehension and control of human beings.

31. Kungfu as technē-logic: • In this sense, Kungfu is a technology, a technique with a logic, a philosophy of its own. It is a technology of the body and mind guided by a tradition of Chinese philosophy about the relation of the human body, mind, emotions, desire & social relations to nature. • Kungfu is a technē-logic, a philosophical and physical way of using, framing, doing, understanding, making, cultivating, revealing the essence and potential of the human body. • The films we study can be studied for the beneficial and dangerous ways of using kungfu as a technology – as a technē-logic.

32. Kungfu as technē-logic: • If used well, informed by beneficial philosophical guidance in one with the Dao of nature, kungfu cultivation improves psychological and physical health and extends life. • If used with a bad logic, of revenge, greed, thirst for power, lust for victory and so forth, it brings death, ruins health, wrecks lives and communities.

33. The irony of kungfu as a Chinese technology: • It is ironic that • when kungfu as physical combat and martial technology loses its relevance as an effective form of Chinese national defense against Western invasion and technological prowess • it becomes the showcase of the only recognizable and admired form of Chinese technology in the West, now understood as an art and an object of national pride and heritage, • such as in the muscle and sweat skills of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.

34. The irony of kungfu as representative of “Chineseness” in the multicultural hybrid inventions of Bruce Lee’s kungfu: • Bruce Lee names his style Jeet Kune Doo – literally “The Tao of the intercepting fist.” • His style synthesizes any skill functional and effective, regardless of cultural, national, sectarian boundaries. • He wrote to a friend in 1969 saying:” I’ve lost faith in the Chinese classical arts – though I still call mine Chinese – because, basically, all styles are a product of ‘land swimming,’ even the Wing Chun school. So my line of training is more toward efficient street-fighting with everything goes.”

35. The irony of kungfu as representative of “Chineseness” in the multicultural hybrid inventions of Bruce Lee’s kungfu : • He mastered the southern Cantonese rapid punches kungfu with Wing Chun master Yip Man & mastered also northern legwork. He learned boxing & fencing, judo, Filipino martial arts, wrestling, karate & Thai boxing. He trained in Western manners, using a punching bag & devoted hours to rope skipping to enhance his bantamweight style. He studied Mohammed Ali’s footages. • He emphasized the synthesis of skills across cultural boundaries and resisted the domination of a single tradition.

36. Lee resists national purity in his kungfu: • Lee: “If you have only 2 hands & 2 legs nationalities don’t mean anything. We must approach it as an expression of oneself.” That is American individualism or Hong Kong pragmatic individualism more than Confucian fidelity to tradition. • If his style is to be considered “Chinese,” then “Chineseness” has to be understood as an open, constantly changeable and porous idea, making it as ambiguous as the multicultural background of Bruce Lee.

37. The multicultural background of Bruce Lee: • He was born in 1940 in San Francisco to a Chinese father and a Eurasian mother and was taken to Hong Kong a few months later. There he started as a child film star in Hong Kong Cantonese films, learned dancing & became the Hong Kong cha-cha champion. He got into too much trouble and fighting in Hong Kong, and was sent back to the US for college. His own purpose for hi time in the US is to earn fame and fortune. He opened his own kungfu schools, became a controversial teacher, and staged tournament demonstrations of his famous skills. He lost the starring role in the Kungfu TV series and returned to Hong Kong to launch a colossal kungfu film career with Golden Harvest that would help him become famous across cultures and races & re-enter the US scene with a bang.

38. Yuen Woo Ping, dir, Drunken Master, Hong Kong, 1978, starring Jackie Chan.

39. Combat is serious duel for survival & defense. Intense. Hero is invincible throughout & keeps his almost immortal stature. Assumed to be the best fighter right from the start. Kungfu is already achieved when he shows up as master. Bruce Lee films sell him as an individual kungfu master of superhuman skills. Combat is like a street brawl & comic prank. Tone: light. The hero begins as a naïve, precocious, mischievous anti-hero, an ordinary guy of flesh & blood. Must learn discipline, stamina & techniques to win. Kungfu is earned by enduring hard work as an apprentice. Jackie Chan films sells him not as a kungfu master, but a hardworking stuntman with superior kungfu skills & command of film technology. Comparing Bruce Lee & Jackie Chan:

40. Famous for his clean winning fights & invincible, superhuman body. Never show any awareness of pain. Emphasizes his singular personal achievement. Makes his name by his real, excruciating injuries of the outtakes & flubbed stunts shown in the closing credits. Emphasizes team work, foregrounds his co-workers’ contributions as a stunt team. How to be the next dragon and not clone Bruce lee? “Instead of kicking high like Bruce Lee, I kick low. He plays the invincible hero, I’m the underdog.” Comparing Bruce Lee & Jackie Chan:

41. Jackie Chan’s kungfu comedies: • Unlike the proper display of traditional styles and clear adherence to tradition in the northern swordplay martial arts films, Chan’s Cantonese (sourthern) kungfu films parody traditional styles, contain entirely fabricated styles, sly commentaries on the traditional belief systems, slapstick routines, gross-out jokes and verbal comedy built around anachronisms, puns and references that could be crude and vulgar.

42. Jackie Chan’s kungfu comedies: • Chan’s genre transformation parallels the transformation of Hong Kong from a colonial backwater to a rapidly modernizing fast-paced urban capitalist city by the 1970s. The Cantonese turn also targeted the growing local born and Cantonese population, distinct from the previous refugee generation from different parts of China. • This new genre embraces a value system different from the traditional xia culture, foregrounding pragmatism, cynicism, personal ambition, rebelliousness against conformity, ruthlessness, acquisitiveness and quick-witted adaptability irrespective of cultural traditions and norms.

43. Jackie Chan’s kungfu comedies: • This new genre embraces a value system not unlike mainstream capitalist work ethic everywhere, one also embraced by Hong Kong culture. The HK Tourist Association have made him practically the poster boy of Hong Kong. He defines a new kind of heroism that stresses boundless determination and good-humored willingness to suffer and work for future victories. • Jackie Chan is even more market oriented and pragmatic than Bruce Lee about his kungfu. He never sought to found his own style. Instead, he calls his approach “chop suey” and one that is aimed at making entertaining movies. This does not mean Chan’s feats does not require extremely impressive skills of kungfu and acrobatics.

44. The “Nüxia” (女俠)?

45. History of Female xia: • In the earliest Chinese mythology, dated from the time of matriarchal forms of society, it was the female goddess Nüwa (女媧) who created men from yellow clay and filled up the imperfections of the sky with precious stones she created. • The only one who can read the celestial book of all knowledge is the goddess of knowledge, strategy and war, Xuannü of the Nine Heavens (九天玄女). Women were believed to be the bearer of all knowledge. Huang Di, the legendary founder of the Chinese won his place because Xuannü decides to help him with her supreme knowledge.

46. History of Female xia: cont. • However, later in history, male jealousy drove drastic rewritings of her story, turning Xuannü more and more into a decorative beauty and object of sexual fantasy. The ultimate male fantasy of conquering the mother of all knowledge is to sexually dominate her. Thus, the term Xuannü and also Shennü (celestial female) ended up becoming the idioms for prostitutes.

47. However, the more women are oppressed in Chinese culture, the more fascinating the independent female xia becomes: • Legends, mythology, local county and province chronicles, personal biographies, the arts and even official history have abundant numbers of female xia stories. • Just in xia literature alone, Chinese scholar estimates that a third of the texts features a female xia protagonist and more than half of them achieve supreme victory alone or with the help of female mentors. • The male helper theme is less frequent the further back in time we look.

48. Types of female xia - they all tend to be especially intelligent • 1) Free-spirits (豪俠, haoxia): rise above the concerns of traditional taboos & duties, like chastity & motherhood to pursue their aspirations & lovers of their dream. They elope, kill, fight their way through to freedom. They fall in love with other xia irrespective of social expectations. Examples: Piaomu(漂母), wife of Zhang Er (張耳妻), the Maiden of Qi(齊女), Zhuo Wenjun(卓文君), Liang Hongyu(粱紅玉)etc. • 2) Wandering Xia (游俠, youxia): they typically help the weak and eliminate local bullies & corrupt officials, help others revenge and right the wrongs, safe people from hunger and other calamities, steals from the rich to help the poor etc., & we have a legion of them. They come and go in mystery & of their own free will.

49. Types of female xia: continued • 3) The swordswoman (劍俠, jianxia) more famous because of the superior fighting skills over everyone in the story. • 4) The avenger (義俠, yixia) who might start off as a daughter, wife or mother who is wronged and sets out to use her brains and other skills to revenge and eliminate evil people at the same time.

50. 5) The trained martial artists(武俠, wuxia): they are usually kidnapped children or victims of family trauma rescued by a female master of martial arts often in the form of a Taoist or Buddhist nun or a prostitute, who took them in and train them for revenge. The Deaf- Mute Heroine Ainu Types of female xia: continued