King Hu’s A Touch of Zen

The New Hong Kong Cinema #7

by Stephen Teo

A Touch of Zen is one of the first Chinese-language films to gain recognition in an international film festival (the Grand Prix at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival), creating the generic mould for the “crossover” success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000. The film has achieved a cult status over the years but little has been written about it. This first book-length study of the classic martial arts film therefore redresses its critical neglect, and explores its multi-leveled dimensions and mysteries. One of the central features of the film is the enigmatic knight-lady (xia nü) whose quest for revenge leads her to cross paths with a poor scholar whose interest in military strategy seals their alliance. Teo discusses the psychological manifestations and implications of this relationship and concludes that the film’s continuing relevance lies in its portrait of sexuality and the feminist desires of the heroine. Teo also analyzes the film’s form as an action piece and the director’s preoccupation with Zen as a creative inspiration and as a subject in its own right. As such, he argues that the film is a highly unconventional and idiosyncratic work which attempts to transcend its own genre and reach the heights of universal transcendence. Teo grounds his study in both Western and Chinese literary sources, providing a broad and comprehensive treatise based on the film’s narrative concepts and symbols.

Genres: Film

196 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Stephen Teo is currently associate professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

He has done significant research work in the field of the Hong Kong cinema, and his research areas include other Asian cinemas, revolving around subjects of genre theory, film history, auteur studies, cultural studies, national cinema, and investigations into the literary and visual aspects of film theory.

Reviews

[Chet]

Teo is in the anti-communist camp but contra the method of pretending that the anti-communist film canon is apolitical, Teo at least he has the integrity to admit he likes this movie because it is "anti-authoritarian" and anti-CPC. That reading is fleshed out in chapter 4, the most interesting chapter for my research purposes.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so glad that I read this book, because although I am a huge fan of King Hu, I am often left confused by his films’ endings or impatient with their beginnings. I always feel like I’m watching a master, but also feel that his cinematic language is too literate and simply beyond me. This book explains certain themes in Hu’s work, providing historical background on the film’s source material (particularly the overt homosexuality which Hu turns latent or codified in the film) and discussing in depth the economic forces which enabled Hu to make “Dragon Inn” and “A Touch of Zen” with nearly unlimited restrictions. The author examines each major section of the film in sequential order, and for each sequence draws heavily upon another academic’s writing on Hu or the film.

The author credits the “Dragon Inn” as opening world-class Taiwanese filmmaking to the world, competitive at the very least with Hong Kong product. This was the intention in bringing King Hu to Taiwan in the first place to virtually build the Union Studio, including a backlot ancient Chinese town. The author also believes that the belated success of “A Touch of Zen” at the 1975 Cannes film festival laid the groundwork for the later Taiwanese New Wave, although I disagree with that, as the Taiwanese film industry went through many changes between 1975 and 1983, with the industry collapsing and reforming at least once during that period. By its 1975 international triumph, it was already a time capsule. In the middle of production in 1970 the wuxia genre (sword fighting) began to give way to kung fu (weaponless fighting), and by 1975 wuxia was a novelty. Hu wisely incorporated kung fu at the end of the film, framing it as even more enlightened to be able to fight with only one’s own body.

The main character, Gu Shengzhai, is not just the standard hen-pecked son of a single mother who eventually proves his fighting prowess. Rather, he fancies himself a modern Zhuge Liang, the intellectual military strategist of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, and as such, he does not fight so much as plan battles. Ironically, his destiny will be parenthood instead – a rather ordinary outcome for a wuxia film! Yang Huizhen, on the other hand, despite being an incredible female fighter who avenges her father and strives to reach her immortality through zen…eventually is told (according to the author, in gesture during the zen finale) that her karma is to be fulfilled as a mortal on earth instead. This is in line with most of her narrative, and that of archetypal heroic females, of repressing her drives while negotiating their fulfillment in patriarchal society.

I first saw this film while snowed in during a Colorado blizzard in 2003. It was the old Tai Seng DVD, which until 2015 was the best version available. The disc’s dual layer malfunctioned and started me at the beginning of Part 2, with the fight in the bamboo forest. I had no idea what was happening. After an hour and a half, the DVD ended. I was even more confused. I tried playing it again (I had a lot of time to kill, as I was stuck in a blizzard alone), and this time it played from the beginning. I was actually glad that I had seen the second half first, so that I could better figure out the plot from knowing where it was going. It is too slow to be a traditional wuxia film, and also too dense and “unconventional in its intricate attention to detail and narrative digressions into other generic traditions.” It is a worthwhile endeavor, but I recommend watching the film, reading this book, and then watching it again. You really won’t regret it!

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is beautifully and cogently written Teo is simply a wonderful writer (and a meticulous researcher) and has been studying the Hong Kong film world for years and the "New Hong Kong Cimema Series" format of one film = one book gives him all the room he needs to tell a detailed story from several differnt angles.