Movie Primer: Shaw Brothers Studio

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy


I’ve been working my way through films produced by Shaw Brothers Studio, and man, do I have a way to go. They produced over 1,000 of ‘em in the course of their history, including the first Asian talkie in 1930, the year Runme and Run Run Shaw founded their production company. Several books detail the inner workings of their studio and prolific output, but here’s a thumbnail:

Once upon a time in Shanghai, a wealthy textile merchant named Shaw Yu Hsuen had six sons. In the late 1920′s, son number three, Runme, and the youngest, Run Run, followed in the footsteps of their brother Runje, who started a silent movie studio. But Runme and Run Run found working in Shanghai, what with the threat of the Communists coming, difficult, and so moved to Singapore. There they began producing films with an eye on the international market.

Long story short: they struggled, paid their dues, and eventually achieved success. In 1957, the brothers expanded their studio and moved to Hong Kong. They purchased 46 acres of land between the sea and a mountain and established Shaw Studios. During its heyday, in the late 1960s, Shaw Studios contained a village both literally and figuratively. About 1,500 workers lived in four dormitories, making it possible to build sets for temples, palaces, gardens, and yes, towns complete with streets and alleys, within hours. They even constructed a plaster replica of the Great Wall.

With up to twelve films in production at any given time, Shaw Brothers Studio was singlehandedly the Hollywood of Hong Kong. It operated like a classic film studio, with actors signed to long contracts, groomed and trained through apprenticeships and schooling, and then shuttled from film to film as needed. As with Howard Hawks or Alfred Hitchcock, filmmakers who placed a signature stamp on films within the American studio system, Shaw Brothers had auteurs among their directors, most famously King Hu, Lau Kar-leung, and Chang Cheh (whose Five Deadly Venoms is a personal fave, though yet to appear on this blog).

Also like a classic Hollywood studio, stories of intrigue and infidelity abound. Lau Kar-leung, for example, supposedly had an affair with starlet Kara Hui, when Hui was a teenager and Lau significantly (uh, make that grossly) older.

While this blog only concerns itself with Shaw’s kung fu films, they produced period pieces, musicals, and melodramas, and in the 70′s co-produced golden grindhouse fare like Dracula and the 7 Golden Vampires and Superman Against the Orient. They even had a hand in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner!

Shaw Brothers exists to this day, though largely as a television production company. The heyday of their movie making extended from the early 1960′s to the mid-1970′s, though they produced a steady flow of films into the mid-1980′s. Runme died around that time, but Run Run still lives, and his second wife, Mona Fong (who produced over a hundred Shaw Brothers films), runs the company.

Putting theory into practice…

Two of the most beloved, classic Shaw Brothers films are King Hu’s Come Drink with Me and Lau Kar-leung’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Both films artfully convey smart and engaging stories, with unique martial arts aesthetics. Come Drink with Me shows a more theatrical, almost dance-like kung fu, and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin focuses on strength, speed, and old-school sparring.

For a later era Shaw Brothers film that combines kung fu with comedy, check out My Young Auntie.

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The image of the Shaw Scope logo comes from The Bucket Hall of Fame

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Things Aren’t Always As They Seem

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

Come Drink with Me, King Hu, Hong Kong, 1966

Good and Evil clash in battles set to the percussive rhythms of the Peking Opera, captured in fluid long takes, beautiful widescreen compositions, and the vivid color palette of Shaw Scope. Over the top, yes. But engaging too, and visceral, epitomizing my love of the genre.

Cheng Pei-pei, an effete, delicate actress whose feline movements reflect her background as a ballet dancer, anchors the production as Golden Swallow. (Last seen here as the aged villain Jade Fox in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) Bandits have captured Swallow’s brother, the governor’s son, hoping to exchange the boy in exchange for their execution-bound leader. Swallow shows up to save her bro and bring justice upon any who stop her, and with what style! Her wide belts and brimmed hats leave her ready for a night on the town, once she washes the blood off her blades.

The bandits know of her skills, and so wait till she’s alone in a dining hall before approaching her. Their fight builds with the slow rat-a-tat-tats of banging woodblocks, to which the bandits step in time, encircling her table. Just as Golden Swallow reveals she’s carrying twin short swords in her boots, Drunken Cat, the village bum, shows up for a refill of wine. He seems like the requisite kung fu comic (or in most cases, not so comic) relief, a foil to the hard edge and bloated egos of the warriors.

But what’s this? At first Drunken Cat, who resembles a Chinese Ken Burns, secretly assists Swallow during key moments of the fight. Then, in a clever sequence where he sings clues to the bandit’s whereabouts to Swallow in public, he demonstrates he’s smarter than he looks. The game finally ends when he starts splitting rocks with his hands and bending the wind to his will. Drunken Cat is in fact the Drunken Master (or Drunken Hero), a martial artist with superhero capabilities who’s a bit in decline, and a sot.

Drunken Cat proves essential to Golden Swallow’s quest. When the bandit baddie Sleekface (all kung fu movies should have such memorable names as this one!) poisons her with a dart to the breast, Drunken Cat carries her to safety, then sucks the poison from the wound in a surprisingly un-sexual scene. (As in A Touch of Zen, King Hu keeps the physical passion between his characters largely implied.) Cat is a classic character, as pleasurable to behold as Golden Swallow. He is, like many things in life, not what he seems.

You could say the same about me. For years I swore never to have kids, and now here I am, a stay-at-home dad who keeps a column about his experiences. This didn’t happen all in one take. My life’s plot twisted over the course of some months, at the age of 28, when I decided to move to China to teach. Alone.

My girlfriend, in honor of the colorful names at play here let’s call her Rosethorn, remained in Brooklyn with our cat, in the apartment we had shared for five years. She wanted to join me, but I said no. I needed to venture by myself into the wilderness, as it were, in an exile that jeopardized our relationship — no light matter, as we met in our late teens and kindled our love over the course of a decade.

Rosethorn wanted to get married and start a family – something I knew early on, but only as an abstraction, a “one of those days” thing off in the distance. Like building a house and owning chickens: a pipe-dream. Until she neared thirty and decided the time had come.

As a teenager I decided never to have children. Sometimes I told people this led me from my corporate job to teaching, since I could get a fix of kid energy and then, at the end of the day, go home to be an adult. Rosethorn told me I had to decide if having children with her could be in the plans, or if she should move on to find someone who shared her goal. There were no ultimatums. She made clear she wanted us to stay together. But the discussions felt laden with an urgency they lacked in the past. I knew she meant what she said.

Part of me – that part which cops to traditional misogynistic attitudes about relationships “tyin’ me down,” and all that other macho crap – thought perhaps space away might help me cut ties. As if, from the other side of the world I might see how little our life together meant. But that was a small part, a part that talked tough but fled when I looked at it too close, otherwise I’d have seen the fragile, unsure little boy that lurked behind its bluster.

Another part wanted to live a dream I had of living abroad before making a life change like marriage and kids. But that too stayed submerged. I thought only of realizing my adolescent goal before turning thirty, when I might be “too old.” Age wasn’t really holding me back, of course. I just found it easier to think about my age as opposed to having a family.

Either way, going abroad seemed like something I must do. And I wanted to go back to China, which I had visited a year before on a study trip with other teachers. The country’s energy – so much in flux, so many ideas of government and economy and style and manner thrown together – infatuated me. As soon as I came home from the tour I talked of returning.

I found a private school in Shanghai, only a few years old, through a veteran teacher on a recruiting trip. She talked up the staff and the professional environment, as well as the compound where all of the American teachers lived. It sounded like the right fit for me, looking for a school in which to spread my wings.

Oh, but it was not. I hated the place. The living compound, a gated community a good forty-five minutes from the vital bustle of downtown Shanghai left this long time New Yorker isolated and lonely. The majority of my American neighbors turned out to be evangelical Christians in China on a mission. The school hid a religious bent, as the head and founder, a wealthy Taiwanese businessman, built churches and schools as part of a plan to spread the Good Word. The culture shock overwhelmed me, isolated as I was not only from my country, but from most of the other expats I met.

I had plenty of time to wander the streets, or the confines of my small apartment, and think about what a mistake I had made. Not that I needed all that time. From my first night there, when I found Rosethron had sneaked a gift-wrapped edition of Curb Your Enthusiasm into my suitcase, I knew I had left behind my best friend and true love. It just took me several miserable months full of low points to gather the courage to accept that I could be a father. That a life starting over, out of fear of the emotional intensity of parenthood, wouldn’t be worth living. Especially not at a cover-missionary operation in the suburbs of Shanghai.

So, to borrow a phrase my former colleagues would’ve used, this horrible experience turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Just like Drunken Cat proved an essential, intriguing part of Come Drink with Me, though he at first appeared to be an idiotic, distracting story element.

Sometimes, things don’t turn out the way we think they will based on how they appear. And that can be all for the good.

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Photos of Golden Swallow from DVD Beaver, photo of Drunken Cat and Golden Swallow from Far East Films

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Don’t Forget to Have Fun

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

My Young Auntie, Lau Kar-leung, Hong Kong, 1981

At the first Hong Kong Film Awards, Kara Hui won best actress for her role as the young auntie, and no wonder—she kicks ass in high heels and a slinky tight dress! All while protecting her modesty, and preventing her new perm from getting ruffled.

Hui’s the heart of this film, all soft sex appeal, then goofy comedian, then adept warrior with balletic grace. Often, she’s all of these things within one scene, inhabiting the screen with just as much elan and power as Bruce Lee, though to entirely different effect. The lady’s funny, and the movie mines that, weaving a comedy of manners and romance around kung fu set pieces.

Tai-nan (Hui), is like a daughter to the rich, old man who gave her a home. On his deathbed, he marries her, so that she can oversee his estate. He wants his nephew to inherit everything, but his evil brother wants it all for himself. (Cue maniacal laughter!)

The Confucian hierarchy means that Tai-nan, a teenager, is now considered a family elder – the second aunt. Predictable, yet legitimately funny, humor arises from this role reversal, with her nephew turning out to be more than twice her age.

Other amusing clashes come. Auntie, a country bumpkin, has never seen a light bulb before, but the nephew lives in Westernized, urban Canton, full of blinking neon tubes. The nephew’s son, a student from Hong Kong who has rechristened himself Charlie and often breaks into Pidgin English, finds Auntie both ridiculously provincial and hot, hot, hot!

Tai-nan and Charlie joke, spar, and share simmering glances in a subplot of Shakespearean proportion that takes over the middle of the movie. The comedy culminates in a masquerade ball that pits French foils (wielded by The Three Musketeers in poofy shirts and Miami Vice sunglasses) against Chinese swords, with Gordon Liu strutting around in a curly blonde wig and crooning schmaltzy, Brazilian-style love ballads. It’s a goofy and surreal romp that encapsulates what drew me to live and teach in Shanghai for most of a year. In contemporary China, West and East mix with uncanny results.

Amid all this fun, the evil brother (ha ha ha!) steals the will, kidnaps Auntie, and a more traditional kung fu movie closes the film. A shame, really, as Hui fades from focus, and the movie loses its vim.

A loss of vim, vitality, fun — what parent hasn’t felt this way? And what parent-to-be hasn’t dreaded it happening to them?

A fear perpetuated by the Baller versus Breeder mentality, as if adults without children party all the time, while parents brim with resentment because they no longer have a social life. When my wife began telling friends she was pregnant, one told her that he’d see her in eighteen years, when she becomes “normal” again.

I mean, listen: It’s true. Kids cut down on your ability to just pick up and go, or at least they add new concerns – issues of timing and prep work that weren’t a factor before. But that doesn’t mean life stops being fun! Not right away, anyway.

Those first few months, it’s easy to hit bars, restaurants, and social outings with the babe stowed in a carrier. I remember several dinners out where Felix slept the entire time, and picnics where friends passed the little butterball around, a smile stretched across his fat cheeked face. Any place with a ceiling fan meant bliss, as he’d zone out looking at the spinning blades while we carried on as ever, if perhaps a bit more exhausted than before.

I hear what you’re saying – what about the tears, the fuss, the infinite infant horrors? Your ears will be much more attuned to your newborn’s cries than other people’s, and every fuss and complaint seems ten times bigger to the parent than to strangers. Trust me. During our last train ride back from visiting Grandma, I saw new parents on eggshells as their baby mewed and cried. Yet she quieted down quickly whenever a boob passed before her mouth.

Meanwhile we’re sitting there with a toddler going gorillas—kicking, scratching, belting out “no train, home!” a mere twenty minutes into the two plus hour trip. People shot us looks, then scanned about for other seats. I would’ve given anything to be in the shoes of those newbies.

And yes – I know. I’m looking at the infant months with toddler glasses. The up at all hours feedings and the anxious-making newness of it all – not fun, really. But by comparison, not bad, either.

Because when mobility hits, when the lungs develop the capacity for high-pitch shrieks and your child’s shitty “this bar is dark, stinky, loud – borrrrring” personality comes to the fore, then we must put away adult things. Unless you’re a sadist. Or a masochist.

Our little guy presents such a challenge with sleeping and tantrums that not only is going out to a restaurant or bar a drag, unless the grandparents are on hand to lie with him all night we don’t get out for dates at all. When social invitations come, we take turns, either my wife or I attending while the other stays at home with tot. Even quiet nights in aren’t fun in the old sense of the word – he takes more than an hour to pass through the entire bedtime routine, eating into our quality time. Some weeks my wife and I hardly see one another without him present.

What’s a dad to do? All you can do is redefine fun.

Tap into your inner toddler. Take off your clothes and dance around the house to mindless pop. Run through sprinklers. Chase your child around the house with your hand twisted up all funky, screaming that The Claw is going to get him. These are all things that work for me, anyway. Find your own.

Resist adopting an either/or mentality. Instead, make a cocktail, pop a beer, pour a glass of wine, then sit down with a pile of blocks and let loose. Don’t be shy about kissing in front of your kid. Show them that you and your partner love each other. There will come a time later for grown up pleasures, should those still appeal. (My wife claims she doesn’t miss going out that much, she prefers a quieter social life than me.)

Don’t make the mistake that My Young Auntie does—letting a crazy, manic energy develop and then stifling it in favor of a revenge action plot line that shuttles the brightest part of the film, Kara Hui, to the wayside. No. Keep a sense of your old fun self and be a parent too. Get silly and laugh and keep your spirit light.

Sometimes, with a toddler around, all you can do is laugh at the craziness.

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Keep It Simple, Stupid

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

Legendary Weapons of China, Lau Kar-leung, Hong Kong, 1982

No matter how hard they train, human bodies can not repel bullets.

This sounds axiomatic, unless you’re a Magic Boxer. The Boxers, a secret confederation of kung fu clans that use voodoo dolls, flash powder, and a lot of David Blaine style slight-of-hand (“Now it’s a cape—now it’s a sword!”), hope to repel China’s firearm wielding Western invaders. They believe that, just as they teach themselves to swallow hot sticks of incense, they can become bulletproof, even as squadrons of strong young men end up dead from gut shots during training. Supermen they are not.

Li Gung (played by director Lau), the leader of a provincial branch of Boxers, sees through the bullshit and disbands his warriors to live happy lives, or at least to live. The other clans worry his defection will weaken the cause and hand him a death sentence.

But the Magic Boxers can’t even get a simple assassination right. A bunch of killers converge on Li Gung without coordinating their efforts. They don’t know of one another’s existence, just as they have no description of Li, other than he’s an old man adept in all eighteen of China’s legendary weapons. All eighteen! But how does one suss that little party trick out?

Three Stooges-like mishaps and hilarity ensues. You know how Moe always made as if to poke Curly’s eyes? Here, eyes really get plucked.

The problem is, no one listens to Li Gung, who’s not a traitor so much as a purist. His message? China has these eighteen legendary weapons and they kick ass. No need for pyrotechnics, Kewpie dolls, or shooting Buddha statues loaded with explosives from your back—as one assassin does. No need for devotees to demonstrate their loyalty by ripping off their own testicles. Seriously, guys. No need to do that at all.

The film proves his point, as a hand-to-hand fight between Li Gung and an assassin played by Gordon Liu far outshines the mega-battle at the film’s climax, in which all eighteen weapons make an appearance (keep a checklist handy), from razor-sharp Crescent Moon Spade to deadly stick. Even straight-up fists make the cut—pushing the definition of what’s a weapon, I think.

In a former life, when I worked as a web producer for Hearst magazines, a mentor introduced me to the concept of K.I.S.S. “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” he’d say before meeting to pitch an idea to a client, or when designing the architecture of a site. And man, I’ve thought of that adage again and again as a parent, just as I did when listening to Li Gung talk about keeping kung fu old school.

Listen:

My wife and I both grew up children of working class parents, back when a thrifty family could live off of a working class wage in this country. (I’m dating myself, I know.) Leaving lights on garnered me a sharp reminder that Dad didn’t own the electric company. School clothes came from a small rotation of outfits. Eating out at a restaurant that had more than one fork at each setting only happened a couple times a year.

To this day, neither my wife or I shop much. Quite the opposite. Every so often we enjoy paring down our possessions—putting those books we rarely open out on the stoop, making rags from the clothes that we’ve worn to threads. We have favorite knick-knacks and what-nots just like anyone else, but in general strive for a yogic non-attachment to things we don’t use or connect with. Less is often more. And I hate dust—it sets my allergies off.

Of course, babies require a lot of stuff. Especially in the beginning, when you have nothing besides hopes and dreams and anxieties about the new life on the way.

When preparing for Felix’s arrival, we tried as hard as we could to curb our buying. Which was hard, because while need or utility guides some purchases—like diapers or stroller—how do you decide what, or how many, books or toys to get? Or even blankets, onesies, or furniture? Even for spendthrifts like us, early pregnancy jitters led to some impulse buys.

So we got smart. We culled maternity registries, trying to steal product ideas, sure, but also figuring out what we considered essential, what would be nice to have, and what we could do without.

Our list in hand, we joined a listserv where people offered gently used or extra products either on the cheap or for free. We had no qualms about borrowing things or accepting donations from friends with older kids. And, being in Brooklyn, when we spotted a good find on the street, we snapped it up. There’s no shame in reusing things, even if they bear some scrapes and scoffs.

As a result, during his two plus years of life, we’ve bought this kid only a few new pieces of clothing to wear. Nearly everything he dons came second hand or as a gift. Ditto for books and toys.

It’s not like he knows the difference. Just the other day he came running inside, holding a water wheel toy to play with in the paddling pool. “Mama found on the street,” he said.

To him, this was as good as new. A present from the universe.

He never had a changing table. As an infant we put a plush pad that a friend lent us up on a desk. We set the desk next to his crib, until I realized, when my wife was still recovering in the hospital, that she’d need it closer. I tapped my inner kung fu warrior and moved a bunch of furniture around, rearranging our bedroom so that she wouldn’t have to leave the bed in order to change him. We ended up keeping this arrangement for the first month or two, as it helped having everything in one room. It was easier.

Try to keep things as simple and streamlined as possible when it comes to preparing and collecting things for you child. Figuring out how to care for the baby, and how to adjust your life to parenthood, will be challenging enough. As much as possible, remember Li Gung. Live a happier life by doing away with the bullshit and pyrotechnics!

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*Gender-bending alert: Add this to the list of films that features an awesome woman warrior who disguises herself as a man. In a great reveal, the lovely and lethal Kara Hui puts a fighter in an arm lock and he ends up copping a feel. Busted!

Guess which one's a woman in disguise


**For another take on Legendary Weapons of China, check out this essay that reads the film as a critique of the kung fu movie genre as a whole. It lauds director Lau Kar-leung as the kung fu Godard.

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Photo of warriors and weapons from Total Film, others from some weird torrent site.

Posted in Baby, Kung Fu, Prenatal | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Master Parent Sun Te, A Model of Adaptation

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Lau Kar-leung, Hong Kong, 1978

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, the ultimate montage movie, offers the same pleasures as middle school sleepovers circa early Nintendo, when one person played Super Mario Brothers while the other watched, egging them onward, vicariously reveling in their victories. I remember rejoicing at the end of one such all nighter, “We beat the game!” when in fact I hardly touched the controller.

That’s how affecting the middle section of this film is, when Sun Te (the amazing Gordon Liu), excels through the Shaolin Temple’s kung fu training program, mastering skills in progressively challenging chambers. The Shaolin monks teach the basics via torturous feats of strength and endurance. In one, Sun Te schleps buckets of water up a steep flight of stairs with knives attached to his underarms—when his arms buckle in exhaustion, he slices his ribs! Later he learns fighting skills and, it being a Buddhist temple and all, develops spiritually, though the film (thankfully) spares us a meditation montage.

In fact, Sun Te never makes it to the final chamber, where fighting occurs only in words, on a spiritual plane. He’s booted out after arguing with the abbot that Shaolin should open their school to the Han hoi polloi, abused by the ruthless Manchu invaders.

Ouch -- don't drop that bucket!


The once scholarly Sun Te sought kung fu to exact vengeance against the Manchus, but attaining it changes him. He becomes less impetuous as he grows in skill, and seemingly less angry. He presents a model of fatherhood. Simply replace chambers with months of infant development and those buckets of water with dirty diapers and there you have it—a series of trials that develops new muscles, deepens perspective, and changes your life, literally and emotionally, forever after.

He’s like bamboo—strong, stronger than anyone would think or expect, and yet flexible. He adapts to each chamber, acquiring the new skills it demands, with a quickness. Motivated by those countrymen in desperate need of militarization, he is ever dedicated to his practice.

As you must be as a new parent. Who knows what tribulations you will face in the first year of parenthood? Even the things you know change—relationships, for example, like that between you and your parents, the people you’ve known the longest.

By the time we got around to having a child, I had settled into a fairly consistent pattern with my mom and dad, seeing them on certain holidays and a couple of times a year for visits. They knew something was up when my wife and I came to see them outside of this schedule. Still, we tried waiting to tell them the news—that she was pregnant—until dinner. But my parents walk for exercise, and on an afternoon jaunt, my wife became winded. “Can we just tell them now?” she asked, unable to keep up.

My parents reacted to the news with excitement, obviously, and tears. And then came the strong stuff, the too-strong stuff. Like my mom thanking us for completing her life—a heavily loaded statement, as if she were involved somehow in the emotional calculus of my wife and I deciding to have a child.

Or, at least, that’s how it read to me. Like, I imagine, most new parents-to-be, we felt a range of emotions about the pregnancy, and were wading into the waters slow. Especially me. This huge life change was one I never expected to have happen.

Which perhaps explains why, when my wife woke me up one September morning saying “I’m pregnant,” my first reaction was “Get the f@%k out of here.” And then, “I’m gonna need some time before I can respond to this emotionally.” (In my defense, the only news I want to hear upon waking is “coffee’s ready.” I’m not a morning person.)

In the face of my measured response, my parent’s over-enthusiasm made me pull away. I decided that not much should change between me and my parents once the baby was born.

As the fetus grew, I heard the way my parents talked about my son-to-be, and realized it was foolish, and selfish, to think that his birth only affected me. Sure, a baby impacted my life in more immediate, intimate ways—I would be the one living and raising him, after all. But their family was expanding too.

While I might not always appreciate how my parents expressed their love, closing them off entirely, not recognizing that the baby changed our relationship, would be acting out of the fear of losing control. A worry that stemmed, in part, from being on the receiving end of my paternity story for so many years – hearing the details as they trickled out, bit by bit, from my parents’ reticence mouths – rather than a player in that story.

I had promised, when deciding to become a father, that those anxieties wouldn’t plague me anymore. And so sometimes, when my they gushed with “you complete me” statements, I just let it go. Other times, like when they wanted to buy my son things that I didn’t think he needed, I told them “thanks, but no thanks,” straight-up and direct. They heard me, and by the time my wife came to term, these requests, and the over-loaded statements, diminished. In fact, we felt comfortable asking them for help with the baby’s homecoming.

I’ll never forget the photos my mom and dad took before my wife and I arrived home with our son from the NICU. They each took turns holding a “Welcome Home Felix” sign they made in front of our gate, their faces open and sensitive, expectant. My mom stayed with us those first few days we had him home, doing chores around the house, holding the baby while we rested and showered, providing gentle encouragement when we worried about something small. It was a lovely transition, as our family added a generation.

Felix sees my parents every month or so. Not as often as they would like, surely—we don’t live down the street. But frequently enough that when asked, “Who loves ya babe?” he replies, “Mama, Daddy, Pop-pop, Nana, Grandma.”

He whispers the names in quick succession, almost as if it’s one word.

These people are his world. And if I had drawn lines based on what I thought I knew, Nana and Pop-pop might be distant figures, seen only two or three times a year. But I kept my eyes, mind, and heart open, and so the relationship between my parents and I changed with grace, rather than bumps. Behavior Sun Te demonstrates whenever he realizes that he’s yet to master a challenge, or figure out how to defeat a more powerful opponent.

A Master Parent, like Sun Te, recognizes the new realities that come with having a child, and adapts accordingly.

Posted in Birth, Kung Fu, Prenatal | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Movie Primer: What is Wuxia?

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

A new feature on Kung Fu Daddy – Movie Primer entries will introduce you to actors, terms, or other aspects of the movies covered here. First off: a basic definition of the wuxia genre.

Defying gravity, slicing horses in half, literally moving mountains (or at least huge chunks of them), wuxia warriors are the superheros of martial arts cinema.

Their powers come from harnessing qi, the Taoist term for life-force. Though fantastical, these abilities stem from a cultural belief that Chinese fighters once knew secret skills which today’s martial artists can no longer access. All wuxia movies are period pieces, usually set during ages of social upset, like the changing of imperial dynasties.

Literally, the term breaks down to wu – martial or armed – and xia – chivalric or honorable. This grossly translates to swordsman, though the protagonist doesn’t always wield a sword, and especially in recent wuxia films, you’re as likely to see women warriors as men.

The warriors belong to Jianghu – the “martial arts world” – full of hermits, nomads, mystics, and other marginal members of society. In other words, the misfits and losers. Often, the hero seeks to escape this world, only to find himself sucked back in, or else he regrets the way of life it enforces on him.

Wuxia warriors live by a strict moral law – called xia, again, confusingly– a code of ethics built around righting wrongs and seeking vengeance that has nothing to do with the rule of law. In fact, government officials and generals often epitomize corruption, while the wuxia hero fights for what’s right despite great peril and sacrifice – like Robin Hood, or a Wild West good guy. Villains have no regard for honor, betraying their friends and taking advantage of defenseless commoners, either for wealth, power, or both.

Many within Jianghu owe allegiance to a school – the most common by far being Shaolin. Schools almost always represent good, with the members practicing Buddhism and living in seclusion. As the students purify and discipline the mind, deepening the connection between it and the body, they develop their extraordinary powers.

On film, these stunts get carried off with the aid of wires and harnesses – sometimes called wire-fu. Nowadays, computers erase the wires in post-production, but you can sometimes catch them in the shots of older (or cheaper) films.

Putting Theory Into Practice…
One of the more realistic wuxia film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon makes for a solid introduction to the genre. Crazy, magical wuxia include The Bride with White Hair and my personal favorite, Swordsman II. For a full list of wuxia I’ve covered, click here.

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Photo of Jet Li from Love HK Film, Zhang Ziyi from Television Tropes and Idioms, and Shaolin Monks (actual monks!) from Spiked Nation

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Follow the Middle Road

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee, International Coproduction, 2000

What’s not to like about this movie?

It has beautifully composed shots and a plot with the surprising complexities of a paper flower, full of betrayals, thievery, and frustrated lovers. Ok, I’ll admit, I lean toward martial arts movies with more gore, but the fights, choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping (last featured here in The Matrix), exhilarate none-the-less, as the camera spins along with the warriors in dizzying flight. A festival award winner and also popular hit, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon provides a great introduction to wuxia films for either the novice or the unenthusiastic. In other words, it’s a violent date movie.

Its most impressive stunt is that it works so well while doing so much. Some of its locales – abandoned compound, bamboo forest – reference King Hu’s A Touch of Zen, but where that movie crammed too much in, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon finds the right balance. In a way, the title, taken from a proverb about surface expectations belying a secret truth, could refer to itself. It looks like a genre movie, but explores relationships in a Confucian society with deft touches.

A quick lesson: put very simply, Confucius saw order and harmony as coming through reciprocation – the Golden Rule. In families, this translated to a tight patriarchal system. Your dad took care of you as a kid, so you listen to your dad.

Jen (the exquisite Zhang Ziyi), the governor’s daughter in public and a gifted swordswoman in secret, wants none of this. She’s wild, a warrior at heart. Her father wants her to enter into an arranged marriage and play bureaucrat’s wife, but she says – not in these words, exactly – “f@%k that!”

She steals The Green Destiny, the powerful sword of famous warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat), and heads off alone to kick ass and burn the candle at both ends. Of course, Li Mu Bai pursues. He was about to retire, and would like to have his sword resting on an official’s mantelpiece rather than in undisciplined hands, spilling more blood.

Li is the picture of a good Confucian. For years, he repressed his love for Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeow), the former fiancee of Li’s best friend, slayed in battle. Li, a model BFF, felt it improper for him to get with his dead buddy’s girl. Though highly respected as a warrior, Li Mu Bai finds himself, at the end of his career, full of regret for the love that could have been. While Jen, chasing her own star with no regard for others, is arrogant and selfish, unlikeable. It’s hard to root for either of them.

Rather than joining forces and balancing one another out, Jen and Li Mu Bai turn out to be diametric opposites; neither can survive the other’s influence. If only they had gone a less extreme path! Something I often wish for myself not just as a parent, but a person.

I tend to see the world in extremes. When I get sick, even with a common cold, I convince myself I’ve contracted something fatal, imagining my congestion growing into consumption, and me drowning in phlegm while friends and family gather at my bedside to lament my untimely loss. I’m the worst patient in the world.

As Felix passes through developmental stages, I find myself doing something similar – failing to recognize that a stage will pass.

Listen:

We threw a Halloween party around the time Felix turned five months old. At the shindig, a friend hoisted Felix – dressed as a cow (my wife and I were cowhands) – up by two hands and walked him around like a puppet. He sported a big grin; we all laughed. We had no idea what a momentous event this would turn out to be.

After that night, Felix held his hands up to signal he wanted to be walked about. It got so it never seemed he put them down! By Thanksgiving he had become so surefooted in my grip, my family all said the same thing. “Won’t be long now till he’s walking.”

Perhaps this is overly Confucian of me, but I trusted their assessment. You know, grandparents and great-grandparents speak with a certain amount of authority. Because they’ve raised kids before, and generally have more experience with life, their advice comes imbued with the power of law, their take on things seem true. Turns out they’re stabbing around in the dark just as much as I am.

Because they repeated the “won’t be long now” refrain at Christmas too, and all throughout the winter. But no matter how adept Felix stepped with his hands in mine, he refused to try walking on his own.

When spring came, we traversed the playground as pair, siamese father and son, connected at the hands, a pair of circus freaks. I encouraged, pleaded, and at times cursed at him under my breath as we moved from sliding board to swing set. “Please kid. Let go. Daddy’s back is killing him!”

I worried that Felix would never break free, that he depended too much on me and my wife, that his lack of desire to detach signified an unwillingness to explore the world on his own. I looked at other babies out there on the playground, toddling or crawling around independently – because at this point he could crawl, though rarely did – and couldn’t imagine that would ever be my son. At night, I’d whine about it to my wife while nursing a drink and rubbing my sore lumbar, strategizing on how to wean him from my hands.

And then, one day, which I don’t even remember very well, he let go on his own. No, he didn’t suddenly take off, not at first. But a few weeks later he did.

When my parents used to fret about me, a close friend used to tell them, “You never saw a five year old heading off to school who…” needed a bottle, or a pacifier, or still slept in a crib, or whatever made up my mom and dad’s anxiety du jour. It’s true. As parents, we react and tend toward extremes, stressing about problems that will work themselves out, and perhaps even making the problem worse through our focus on it.

Remember, Li Mu Bai never tasted love because of his sense of duty, while Jen rejected every relationship – even Li’s offer to train her – because she didn’t want to bow down to anyone. Both went too far and ended up frustrated. Don’t do the same. Follow the middle road and seek a balanced response to your child’s developmental hiccups.

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Photo of Zhang Ziyi via Ancient Chinese Series, of Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien via My Opera

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Magical Kung Fu Gender Benders: A Theory

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

If, when writing about Swordsman 2, it sounds like I’m fascinated with The Invincible Master Asia, that’s because I am. I see a connection between Asia and the Siamese Twins from The Bride with White Hair. Both—or I guess I should say the three of them, since the twins count as a pair—have magical powers far beyond all other warriors, no matter how sage.

My theory is that their abilities stem from their gender duality. The Taoist principle Yin represents the female force, and Yang the male. In this system, heterosexuality can be understood as the search for gender completion. But the Siamese Twins are both male and female, and so too is Asia, a castrated man who transforms into a woman the further she/he/it? develops power. These characters are whole in a way no man or woman alone can be, and there’s something magical about that, and powerful.

(Both of these films star Brigitte Lin, which may also explain my fascination with them!)

If anyone knows anything else on the subject of gender and magic in Chinese culture, or kung-fu movies that feature similar gender bending characters or themes, please pass them on.

And for a hint into where my interest in this topic comes from, check out my recent essay on The Good Men Project, Ballad of the Barrette Boy. For a time in college, I played around with gender as well. Not sure if it made me any more powerful, though. But it was fun.

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Image of siamese twins from Hong Kong Cinema View from Brooklyn Bridge

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Don’t Be So Damn Serious All the Time

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

Swordsman II, Ching Siu-tung and Stanley Tong, Hong Kong, 1992

They say that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and invincible power requires the ultimate sacrifice a man can give: his testicles.

Or so it goes in Swordsman II, a movie chock-full of wire effects and gore, gypsy ninjas that (a la Duel to the Death) burrow underground like moles, countless fantasy moves that the warriors, for some reason, announce as they fight – “Sword Power!” “Essence Sucking Stance!” – and one old kung fu master bitter as hell after he’s hung on meat-hooks for six months in a rat-infested dungeon. Well, who can blame him.

The old master was usurped as the head of the Sun-Moon Sect by his brother, Master Asia, after the power-hungry Asia learned the secrets of The Sacred Scroll. The thing is, doing so required castrating himself. As Asia’s martial artistry improves—he learns how to control the forces of nature and, more impressive at parties, speak without opening his mouth—he transforms into a beautiful woman. After attempting, literally, to mask his metamorphosis, he embraces his inner queen, applying makeup, embroidering, and speaking in a higher register.

Even writing about The Invincible Master Asia, as the character comes to be called, poses a challenge. Do I refer to Asia as him or her? He’s played by Brigitte Lin, as capable as she was in The Bride With White Hair at depicting a character both mighty and vulnerable. The problem is, Asia is no longer male, but not fully female either. In the pursuit of victory, Asia lost his humanity.

Her would-be boyfriend Ying (Jet Li) wants nothing of it. He hopes to leave martial arts behind for a secluded life on picturesque Mt. Ox. He tells Asia, “We are born into a trouble world. … Others may prefer power and kingdom, but I much prefer drinking and getting drunk.”

Not a bad decision, and one a harried parent should keep in mind. Especially these days, when so much of childrearing has become over-laden and serious, what with high-stakes testing and our culture’s fast pace.

But it’s difficult to remember, easy as it is to boil every problem between parent and child down to a power struggle.

Listen:

For months my little guy took two naps, one in the morning around nine or nine-thirty, and another in the late afternoon. Until about ten months, when he began resisting this routine. He’d struggle to go down in the morning, not falling asleep till close to eleven, and then I’d wake him early so he could have his afternoon nap. Only, he wouldn’t. He’d fight and cry and gnash his binkie against me in frustration rather than rest.

I gnashed right back, struggling as I was (and am) to get as much writing work done when he’s out for the count, and also in need, like every parent, of a breather from the incessant demands of parenthood. For a couple of weeks I bitched to my wife about his nap resistance, while trying all sorts of techniques—rocking him to music for hours, napping him earlier or later, changing the feeding schedule—in order to maintain the status quo.

I assumed he was messing with me, opposing my authority on purpose, saying no to a nap that he really needed only to buck the system. Yes, that’s right: though not yet a year old, I saw the whole thing through a political rather than developmental lens.

After two weeks I gave up. I decided—at my wife’s insistence—not to worry so much about his sleep schedule. Instead, I attuned to Felix’s signals and started his nap when he began to show signs of sleepiness. To no one’s surprise but my own, he turned out to need only one nap a day, smack dab at noon.

Uh, duh, right? If only I had kept Ying’s advice in mind, going the easy way, letting my son guide me to his needs, instead of getting bound up in authority and routine. Sometimes the best strategy is to relax. And as Ying said, a soothing drink along the way doesn’t hurt either.

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Image of Asia as a woman via Le film etait presque parfait, as a man via Homerun

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Heart Over Head

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Kung Fu Daddy

A Touch of Zen, King Hu, Taiwan, 1971

Never has a title been so misleading: what sounds like a short, peaceful film is in fact a sprawling three-hour epic of violence.

All starts straightforwardly enough. Ku, an unambitious scholar hounded by a shrewish Tiger Mom, discovers that his quiet provincial town harbors three fugitives on the lam from a corrupt eunuch. Ku falls hard for one of them, the beautiful Miss Yang. He puts his theoretical knowledge of military history to practical use, devising a slick ruse drawing on ghost stories and superstition that enables his paramour and her buddies to defeat the eunuch’s troops.

So far, pretty cool. But after a movie’s worth of plot, the focus shifts to the smoky-eyed Miss Yang, who resembles Ms. Scarlet from the ’80s era edition of the board game Clue. That damn eunuch won’t leave her alone! He continues pursuit, a monastery full of Buddhist kung-fu experts join the mix, and the story’s realism gives way to magic. In the end, the narrative ditches both Ku and Miss Yang, as an evil general and the monastery’s abbot duel it out in a trippy, color-saturated sequence full of Buddha imagery. It’s unclear who wins, the real-politick or the religious-mystic.

While I’ve written elsewhere about the pleasures of over-indulgent works of art, here I felt unsatisfied. Chockfull of awesome set pieces, most notably an iconic fight in a bamboo forest, A Touch of Zen tries too hard to be more than a kung-fu film. Well-made, no doubt, but it favors theme over character. I love a story with smarts, as long as it has heart.

Unfortunately, I often fail to practice this with my son. Take, for example, my response to his sleep resistance.

Listen:

I’ve told you before, the little tyke doesn’t sleep well. Though he used to wave my wife and I goodnight with a smile, around eighteen months he started doing everything he could to stall us from leaving him alone. After trying other tactics, we fell back on what had worked for us in the past: letting him cry it out.

On our second night, I heard loud bangs coming from his room not long after leaving him in tears. After the rapports, his screams rose in urgency and volume. Thinking our upstairs neighbors the source of the noise, I rushed up to comfort him. As I came closer to his door, I made out a word from his hullabaloo. “Hurt.”

He turned out to be banging his head against the side of the crib on purpose, then screaming “hurt,” probably because he knew we’d react. (“Hurt” was one of the earliest words he learned.) After only a few minutes of this behavior, a black and blue bump stood out like a third eye from his forehead.

Throughout the night he kept up the headbanging. I stayed up with him for hours, explaining that he had no reason to fear sleep or hurt himself for attention. Instead, I’m sure my attention sent the opposite message. If you bang it, they will come.

A few days later, we had an appointment to see the doctor for shots. I hoped our pediatrician, an old-school disciplinarian with a practical, parent-centric approach, would have good advice for us. He once told us that no amount of crying would ever hurt a child. I fully expected, and hoped, to hear that we should just leave Felix to bang it out on his own, that he would learn not to hurt himself without intervention on our part.

My wife wanted the same, but in the meantime, she found that Felix would fall asleep just fine if she laid down with him on our bed. It required a lot of time on her part, but didn’t result in any bruises, and if she slept with him till dawn it guaranteed the tyke got a full night’s rest.

I had discovered the same thing at nap. When his sleep terrors manifested during the day, I began co-napping with him, rising (ideally) to do work once he conked out. With me next to him, he resumed taking nice long siestas.

But I resisted this practice at bedtime, worrying about him becoming spoiled, and resenting his demands. He had our attention all day. Now he needed us at night too?!

When the pediatrician heard about our new sleep routines, he raised his eyebrows. “This is not a good habit,” he said.

But to my surprise, he told us to carry on. Felix’s incessant headbanging might cause him not only physical but psychological harm. As long as we kept encouraging him to sleep alone, at some point he would begin to. No kid wants to sleep with their parents forever.

At first, my spirits dropped upon hearing this. Then I realized what a douche I had been. I wanted Felix to conform to my idea of what his sleep patterns should be. I never thought of the emotional upset he was experiencing, the intense separation anxiety. I approached the problem as one that could be solved with reason and repetition and calculation, instead of as a human situation which would work itself out in its own time and way.

Often in life, logic and reason solve our problems. But not necessarily so when parenting, or storytelling either. One should know when to move from the heart first, and let the head follow.

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Photos via shareseeking.com

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