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When foreign audiences gasped at the gravity-defying fight scenes in director Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), they probably didn't know that China has been producing similar kung fu films such as The Burning of Red Lotus Temple, since 1928.

 

Directed by Zhang Shichuan and produced by the Star Film Studio in Shanghai, The Burning of Red Lotus Temple started kung fu fever in Chinese cinema. The fever has been running high right up to the present day, and even the fifth-generation directors, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, have started churning out kung fu films such as Hero and The Promise.

 

Adapted from Xiang Kairan's bestseller, Tales of the Outlaws, the film tells how a group of chivalrous heroes defeat the evil monks of the Red Lotus Temple, and then fight each other in a scramble for supremacy. Hong Gu, the heroine of the film, is portrayed as a superwoman, who, with her outstanding martial arts skills, can easily mount the clouds and ride the mist. With peerless courage and beauty, Hong Gu is a match for any of Hollywood's cowboys.

 

In spite of the shabby equipment of the time, cameraman Dong Keyi fired his imagination and created special effects including the flying person. Hu Die, the pretty actress who played Hong Gu, was hung high above the ground by a thin steel wire fixed around her waist, with a giant fan to make her skirt flap in the "wind." With a huge mountain-river painting in the background, Hu "flew" like a bird, smiling all the time, even though she was probably scared to death.

 

It is a long tradition for ordinary Chinese to adore heroes, who are omnipotent and invincible, suppressing the evil and supporting the weak. They are regarded as "saving stars" for the downtrodden.

 

In the 1920s and 1930s, only a few Chinese had studied modern science, leaving most still believing in gods and ghosts. With the help of the magic power of chivalrous heroes, the little man could do what he could not in real life. That was why The Burning of Red Lotus Temple was such a hit, and altogether 17 sequels were produced from 1928 to 1931 to cater to the voracious appetites of audiences.

 

The second wave of kung fu fever began in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1960s with the third on the mainland in the 1980s with such representative films as Mysterious Buddha (1980), Shaolin Temple (1982) and Magic Whip (1986), and continues to the present day.

 

(China Daily March 27, 2006)