Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Wuxia Way

World-renowned director Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) is perhaps the most well-known Chinese movie internationally of the decade. Adapted from a wuxia (loosely translated as “martial arts heroics”) novel by Wang Dulu, the film boasts an international cast with Chow Yun-Fat (Hong Kong), Michelle Yeoh (Malaysia), Zhang Ziyi (China), and Chang Chen (Taiwan). With its massive success internationally, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is responsible for ushering in to the Western world the genre of wuxia.

The film follows the trials and struggles of three main characters: Li Mubai, a famous swordsman on the brink of retirement; Yu Shulien, Li’s good friend and love interest; and Jen, the rich daughter of a governor being delivered for an arranged marriage. While the scope and content of their problems vary greatly, there is one underlying theme that threads all three of their fates: that is, the issue of honor and duty.

Li and Yu, although sharing mutual romantic sentiments, find themselves bound from acting upon these actions by honor. Yu was Li’s good friend’s widow, and as such, Li cannot on good conscience reveal his feelings for her. Just when Li is on the brink of retiring from the jianghu (the world of the martial artists) thereby enabling him to share a life with Yu, rumors of Jade Fox arise and his yearning to avenge his master prevent him from doing so. Li, in this way, is a prime example of someone whose sense of duty is so great that he would forsake his own desires for the sake of doing what is honorable. He is representative of the old style of martial artists—those who believe that power without honor is meaningless. This truth is especially evident when he tosses the priceless sword Green Destiny off a waterfall, even though he has spent the whole movie up until now trying to retrieve it. He is not concerned with the objects of power so much as he is with the honor behind it. His death at the end perhaps signals the end of an era filled with heroes such as he.

On the other hand, Jen represents the next generation of rebellious youth. She rebels not only against society’s conventions and her duties as a daughter (i.e. falling in love with a bandit and running away from her arranged marriage) but also against the conventions of jianghu. Whereas Li fights for his principles and the greater good, Jen fights for herself: her own desires, her own benefit. For all her rashness however, she is probably the character that many in the audience can probably relate to. She knows her place in society and her struggle to do what is right by society’s standards is palpable. Yet she is also a free spirit and ultimately finds it impossible to do anything short of what her heart demands of her. In the end, having seen the error of her reckless ways, Jen is still unable to conform to society’s constraints. Instead, she jumps off the side of the mountain in a tragic echo of the story Lo mentions earlier in the movie, that one with a pure heart who makes a wish will not die but have that wish fulfilled.

While the wuxia genre has proliferated in Chinese diasporas worldwide since the 1960s (via the novels by authors like Jin Yong and Gu Long) and even moreso during Hong Kong TVB’s golden era of wuxia dramas (often themselves adaptations of novels by above-mentioned authors), it was not until the advent of such internationally acclaimed movies as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that this genre of entertainment came into wider public conscience. Previous to Crouching Tiger, the most well-known kung-fu movies beyond Chinese audiences were probably Jackie Chan’s multitude of slapstick action movies that reigned over the 1990s (e.g. Rumble in the Bronx, Police Story). However, while entertaining, these did not carry with it any sense of being films to be taken seriously, nor do they call attention to Chinese filmmaking. They are also not part of the wuxia genre, one that previous to Crouching Tiger remained virtually untapped for non-Chinese audiences.

What is it about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that, despite being a totally unknown genre of film and takes for granted things that are completely foreign to most of the audience (i.e. the transfer qi as a form of healing, or even more frustrating, the social reasons behind why Li could not honorably be with Yu), nonetheless brought on such international success? I believe that it is because the film, although deriving from a Chinese novel and comprising of definitively Chinese concepts of honor, society, and love, is nonetheless obviously geared toward consumption by Western audiences. For instance, the fighting scenes appeal to the sense of exoticism that Chinese martial arts exerts on the West. The choreographing makes it so that they are not so much fighting as they are partaking in a series of elegant dance steps. Contrast this style with that of popular versions of wuxia films in the decades previous. None of these films/dramas depicted their fight scenes with such grace and beauty; indeed, more often than not, they resembled violent brawls more than anything. Why the decision to make the fight scenes so aesthetically pleasing then? It is because such elegance portrays an image of martial arts, and in turn, Chinese culture, that is more appealing to global audiences.

The success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon brings up an interesting question: where do these wuxia heroes fit into the Western conception of genres? They’re not superheroes like Superman or Batman, but neither are they normal everyday people (like the sharpshooters of Westerns). Crouching Tiger confronts the West with the need to create a new understanding of Chinese martial arts films. With movies such as House of Flying Daggers and Hero following in the footsteps of Crouching Tiger, it is indeed time for Western audiences to make a whole new niche for the wuxia genre.