CUT-THROAT STRUGGLE FOR AN INVALUABLE TREASURE

A review on the 1980s’ Wushu cinema in the People’s Republic of China ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

Every martial artist has their own unique story of how they became addicted to the sport. As with most guys of my generation, my first big influence was Bruce Lee. Nothing extraordinary here. My poor mom had to take me to every single Bruce Lee picture that came to town, even the phony ones (back then, minors still had to be accompanied by an adult to be admitted into a chopsocky).

After Bruce came Jackie Chan . We kids just went bananas for “ The Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (蛇形刁手)” and“ Drunken Master (醉拳)”. Mom didn't, but she had to watch them anyway.

 Butthat was pretty much it. Jackie & Bruce. Bruce & Jackie. There was the occasional Shaw Brothers flick in our local small-town theaters (we had two!),but I couldnever really warm up to the repetitive stories about revenge, flying guillotines, revenge, bizarre fighting styles, and revenge. The wooden acting and ill-fitting wigs of Ti Lung & Co, in addition to horrific dubbing, did the rest. Bruce Lee was still the man, after all (Jackie hadn't done "Police Story", yet)! And I sure as hell didn’t fancy androgynous dudes with braids flying about like a flock of chimney swifts in my testosterone movies.

But then, in the mid-80s… the epiphany!!! Strangely enough, the conservative German television channel ZDF of all stations bought the rights to a handful of martial arts films, most of them co-productions between the People’s Republic of?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Chinaand the British crown colonyHong Kong. They made a big fuss about it in the papers, claiming that all the actors in those pictures were real-life martial arts masters and everything had been shot on location in the Mainland of China, for example in the famous Wudang mountains or the original Shaolin monastry in Henan. No big deal today, but a SENSATION

at the time!

These Gongfu movies were aired in the middle of the night and so I taped them with a now antique VHS video recorder. The first movie I watched was “Wudang(武当)", with two leads I had never heard of:   

                                          Lin Quan ( 林泉) and  Zhao Changjun ( 赵长军) .

Well, at that point I had already seen many of the world’s best martial artists perform, but just a few minutes into the movie I could hardly believe my eyes. No wires, no flying people, no bullshit… just incredibly skilled martial arts wizards doing their thing. Dayumm, in most of the HK period flicks I knew, they’d always used quick motion to make the somewhat robotic fights look more impressive. But those Mainland Chinese guys, they were so freakin’ fast that they needed slow-mo, just so the audience could grasp and appreciate the pure beauty of the action. Killer!

Right away, I was hooked.

About the same time, the East German TV station DDR 1 – with its close political ties to China -  also broadcast several examples of Mainland Chinese Wushu cinema: “ The Shaolin Temple (少林寺)"and “ Kids from Shaolin (少林小子)", among others… all the actors’ voices now dubbed with plainly audible East German accents! This way, a totally unknown Chinese boy called Li Lianjie ( 李連杰) - a professional Beijing Wushu Team member and national Wushu all-round champion - was first introduced into the hearts and minds of martial arts audiences on both sides of the inner German border.

In the West we could get East German TV programs too, but they were generally so boring and full of ludicrous propaganda that nobody ever watched them (not even the East Germans). This all changed. All of a sudden, droves of Western martial arts enthusiasts were glued to the TV screen, entirely spellbound by “ Die Brueder vom Shaolintempel”…

My video collection was growing.

Over the years I have been hunting for all the Wushu movies that were produced inChinaduring this brief but exciting period in the 80s. The country was opening up to the rest of the world, promoting Wushu as a means of cultural exchange and a national sport (some say, already with an eye on the Olympics).

Many great Wushu champions made their mark as actors in those films; some are still around, alive & kicking, others have passed away, many went abroad and became teachers… and the boy Li Lianjie changed his name to Jet Li somewhere along the way and turned into one of the greatest action stars martial arts cinema has known.

With the dawn of the 90s and the New Wave of campy sword & sorcery pieces, stunt-orientated action comedies & ultra-violent gangster yarns fromHong Kong, old-fashioned martial arts fare like the Shaolin Temple Trilogy began to fade as fast as it had soared.

I would like to review the best Wushu movies from those days, introduce and recommend them to all of you Wushu & chopsocky hounds out there. You may know some or even most of them, but I’m sure you can find one or two unknown treasures among them.

I'll post the 1 st part of this series soon… before you can say: “南拳王之气壮山河".

Enjoy!