Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (2 page)

Preface

Picture identifications (clockwise from upper left):

Kwan Tak-hing in
Dreadnaught
;
The Shaolin Temple; Peking Opera
; Kwan Tak-hing as Huang Fei-hong; Dat Mo; Kwan Tak-hing fights Li Hai-sheng
in
The Magnificent Butcher
.

This is all hearsay. Chinese history in general, and kung fu history in particular, is notoriously questionable. Since many (I daresay most) think of kung fu as a martial art, the contentiousness that dogs the question of “who, or what, is better,” extends to the system’s source and inspiration as well. Although the Chinese culture, arguably, created written history, as well as, unarguably, many other cultured pursuits, you’d think that the creation of kung fu would be well documented.

You’d be right, and wrong. There’s a reason the yin-yang symbol is so identified with kung fu pursuits — because the “right” answer is usually a flowing mix of several answers. Just as in life, kung fu is a series of “ands” rather than “ors.” On the one hand, kung fu history is extremely well-documented … after the fact, by many whose intentions might not have been the most objective. On the other hand, kung fu creationism is full of fascinating, fun fables of wise masters and philosophic students.

Ultimately, the ancient admonition of “learn mother nature, learn human nature, learn your own nature, and then you are truly ready to learn kung fu,” extends to the study of its origins as well. There are certain immutable truths in terms of these natures, and a strong, smart, serene, and steady, generations-long, study of how we move and why we act the way we do would naturally lead to a time-tested system of self-improvement, health, and knowledge … with the ability to consummately defend ourselves coming as an unavoidable side effect.

Thankfully for this volume’s existence, China had such a generations-long era to create this study, and, once created, the inclination to develop it, and, perhaps, more importantly, personalize it. Not surprisingly, other countries and cultures also found much to appreciate in human/mother nature, but most of them seemed to decide to use it against others and/or to greedily better their positions, as opposed to improving themselves. Thus was martial arts born.

However, “kung fu” does not translate as “martial arts.” The simplest, generally accepted, translation is “hard work.” A more ornate definition that I appreciate is just about the only thing the misbegotten
Forbidden Kingdom
(2008) got right. There, Jet Li
’s “Silent
Monk” character states that kung fu is a “concerted effort toward a specific goal.”

Each student then gets to decide: what is that specific goal? A few chose wisely. Seemingly most decided the goal was to defeat others. As the young Bruce Lee
character says in
Ip Man
2
(2010) when asked why he wanted to learn wing chun
: “To beat up people I don’t fancy (he is told by the venerable title character to come back when he was older, and, hopefully, wiser).” So, with that ego-stroking decision as foundation — which acknowledged human nature without really challenging it — several industries were created: kung fu schools, and more pertinently to this endeavor, kung fu movies.

“The problem with kung fu,” Fred Weintraub
, producer of
Enter the Dragon
(1973) told me, “is that it is fantasy. Once someone shoots someone else, everybody understands it. That’s reality. But when somebody does fantastic martial arts, that’s fantasy. You never see that in life. You never see that on the news. What you see is people shot and run over. When you’re working in martial arts, you’re working in fantasy.”

Things have changed in the decades since he made that statement, but it still has more than a kernel of truth for our technology-soaked world. To better understand kung fu, it’s helpful to better understand the country that created it. Considered the oldest cultured civilization, evidence of Chinese societies dates back to 7000 B.C. But their ancient period dated from around 2500 B.C. to about 200 B.C., during which time they grew accustomed to invasions of every kind, not to mention revolutions, insurrections, intrigue, and war. Even then, there were already great martial legends: Fu Hsi, the Hunter; Shen Nung, the Farmer; and Huang Ti, bringer of fire and music. Already Chinese history was full of complexities, complications, and conflicts.

Meanwhile, however, toiling almost unnoticed by the powers that be, there were family and village elders who were putting their life-long studies of mother nature and human nature to increasingly good use. Somewhere, someone was discovering that if he, or she, put a finger, or needle, on one spot it could cause personality-changing pain. But if he, or she, put that finger, or needle, just a hair’s breath to one side or another, it could ease pain.

Galloping out of the ancient era was the Han dynasty, which stretched about four hundred years — from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. Within hard-won governing walls, a certain ruling logic was in effect: a leader was chosen from the ruling family, and other members of the same family succeeded that person when he died. Simple to decide, hard to enforce. The Chinese had big families, and the infighting to become leader was ornate and often deadly.

Also, craziness wasn’t restricted to the royal family. Constant wars were being waged to take over China from both outside and inside. Different families wanted to create their own dynasties, and different Chinese wanted to create different Chinas. Even so, Chinese government was becoming more structured at the end of the Han dynasty. The central government was located at the capital, with a chancellor, an imperial chancellor, and a commander-in-chief advising the emperor.

Out in the field, as it were, were nine ministers of state, each supported by a staff of directors and minions. In addition, there was the Department of Agriculture and Revenue, and the Lesser Treasury. Throughout this organization were various officials, secretariats, and even eunuchs. None of these people were immune to the emotions that are the stuff of great motion pictures such as lust, greed, pride, and envy.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, some people sought mental and physical peace in the pursuit of Taoism
and Confucianism
. Scholar/philosophers Lao-tze
and Confucius
may have been contemporaries in the fourth or fifth centuries, but both apparently developed a way of life that emphasized simplicity, humility, harmony, wisdom, and the acceptance of both human and mother nature in an insightful, personal, forgiving manner. The two may have even found it sadly amusing how followers and politicians would ultimately attempt to put the two philosophies in conflict to see which would become the more influential.

Back on the other side of the tracks, the Han emperor gave parts of the country to his relatives as kingdoms. Agencies and armies were everywhere, especially because warring nomads in central Asia, called the Hsiung-nu, kept attacking from the north. As 200 A.D. neared, things just got worse and worse. China was divided, and dynasties came and went with alarming frequency. Because of this, the period from about 250 A.D. to 600 A.D. was known as the Six Dynasties.

Now there was a mess. Although Taoism promoted simplicity and Confucianism spotlighted ethics and education, both were reinterpreted by followers, users, and abusers to fit their means, ends, and times. And the times were turbulent. Then came Buddhism, an Indian system of behavior founded on enlightenment and the desire to eliminate suffering by eliminating desire. There was much more room for abuse and corruption of this creed than the less difficult teachings of Lao-tze and Confucius. The basic problem with eliminating desire, of course, is that it can’t be done, because it’s part and parcel of human nature.

But within the seeds of this mess blossomed the
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
, a Chinese novel written by Luo Guanzhong, based upon the turbulent years at the end of the Han Dynasty, when the kingdoms of Shu, Wei, and Wu vied for supremacy — lasting from around 170 A.D. until the uniting of China in 280 A.D. As influential to entertainment as this huge book was, even more potent was the creation of “Jiang Hu,” initially mentioned by a poet somewhere in the 9
th
century, but cemented, like the
Romance
, in the 14
th
.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
can be wildly compared to
Gone with the Wind
, in that they concentrated on civil strife within their respective countries — only the Chinese epic was far longer and served as source material for far more plays, books, poems, and movies. Jiang Hu, however, was a concept — an alternate universe of “rivers and lakes” (its exact translation) roughly relatable to America’s “wild west” … only this “wild east” was full of swordsmen and women all vying for power, lust, love, and happiness in a “martial art world.”

Beyond this simplicity, Jiang Hu can also be fully recognized by fans of comic books, which predominantly exist in the “Marvel Universe (Spider-Man, Iron Man, et al)” and the “DC Universe (Superman, Batman, et al)” — which are recognizable variations of America, only filled with flying, swinging, individually costumed superheroes. Such was also the case in Jiang Hu’s martial art world, complete with esoterically named, outfitted, skilled, and weaponed supra-heroes. This creation led to thousands of “wuxia,” aka “heroic chivalry” stories, and hundreds of movies.

Outside the writers’ windows, however, the Sui and T’ang dynasties (approximately 600 to 1000 A.D.) were really picking up the action. The Sui dynasty reunited northern and southern China, but collapsed from overextending itself. The T’ang dynasty saw the creation of the Shaolin Temple, and, thereby, semi-officially marked the sorta start of kung fu. Of course, kung fu, in many forms, was already well established. The more militant kind was alluded to in artifacts as far back as 2700 B.C. Confucius, the son of a soldier, was supposedly well versed in battle.

But outside the temple walls all sorts of court intrigues were going down, resulting in many lives being ruined or ended. Several of the emperors were truly perverse and depraved, creating all sorts of situations the Shaolin monks could fight. Life went on as usual in the royal court, with everyone stabbing each other in the back, front, side, or wherever a blade might fit. Everyone jockeyed for power, including the courtesans and concubines. One, Empress Wu, was so good at power games that she rose from being just one of the emperor’s women to deposing the rightful heir to become empress herself.

None of this happened — not the reunifications or deposings — without all manner of bloody complications. Empress Wu managed to hold on until she was eighty years old and then handed the empire over to a rightful heir, but he was poisoned by his wife, who tried to become Empress herself. She, however, was outclassed by Wu’s daughter, who got her brother to the throne, and tried to run the country through him. She, in turn, was foiled by her brother’s rightful heir, who took over in a coup that resulted in her “suicide.”

Things improved considerably (at least as depicted in modern cinema) with the coming of the Sung dynasty. The Sungs united a deeply fractured China, known as the Ten Kingdoms, into a Northern Sung and a Southern Sung. The Northern Sung consolidated and instituted reforms (which didn’t quite take). The Southern Sung had a sophisticated political structure, which led to legal problems and clerical corruption. Overpopulation didn’t help either. Already the Chinese numbered in the millions.

Then there was Genghis Khan. He led the Mongolian horde, who had decided to take over China. The Northern Sung made a deal with the Mongols, and for forty years, waited until the time was right to take out the Southern Sung. Khan’s sons, Mangu and Khublai, marched down in 1250, and, by 1268, Mangu was dead and Khublai was attacking. Within a dozen years the Mongols controlled the entire Chinese empire.

Thus began the Yuan dynasty, a less-than-one-hundred-year reign marked by resistance fighters and espionage. It was not a happy time. Most Asians are deeply concerned about their pride — their “face” — and this era marked a great loss of face. All that changed in the mid-1300s. Bad government led to rebellion. The Mongols were pushed north, and the Ming dynasty started in the south.

There were clan intrigues, gang battles, threatening western Mongolians, threatening far eastern Manchurians, threatening Japanese, and internal warlord conspiracies. There was also
Journey to the West
, a landmark novel published anonymously sometime in the late 1500s. It told of a Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk’s pilgrimage to India, but featured a scene-stealing character who was to become a cornerstone of Chinese kung fu fables: the Monkey King.

Otherwise known as Sun Wukong, he is a mischievous, clever, rebellious anthropomorphized simian who has a way with the kung fu pole. His powers and character so delighted so many that he has since been the source for adventures in every entertainment medium, from Peking Opera through cartoons to movies. He was certainly a great character with which to escape from the trials and tribulations of Ming Dynasty life.

Things came to a head in the mid-1600s, when the Manchus combined with bandit leaders to take over China and institute the Ch’ing (aka Qing) dynasty. This was yet another roughly three-hundred-year reign that created great change, and magnificent fighters to survive those changes. It contained at least one, if not several, Shaolin Temple destructions, forcing the surviving monks to create new kung fu forms. It was also a time of remarkable foreign contacts. The early Ch’ing emperors had relations with Russia, Tibet, Turkey, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea. They also had some trouble with Rome and Christianity.