New! Queens of Wuxia: Hong Kong’s Martial Arts Actresses 1948-1966

One of the joys of classic Hong Kong action cinema has always been its utter indifference to gender conventions. Wuxia (swordplay) movies, rooted in epic-length novels that meander through a hundred chapters before finding resolution, require plot twists piled upon plot twists. They take place in an off-kilter world where nothing is what it seems, the world of crouching tigers and hidden dragons. The actors may, in the style of the old opera troupes, be men playing women or women playing men. They may appropriate mannerisms and mindsets associated with the opposite sex and weave them into a characterization. Oral traditions from the martial arts world, tales of female masters, helped to subvert conventional assumptions about physical strength. These films certainly opened up a wide range of roles for action heroines in post-World War II Hong Kong. The downside was that the genre was so marginal that there rarely was time to rehearse or reshoot.

Left: Wu Lizhu in HEROINE RIDES AGAIN (1949). Right: A young Yu So-chau in opera costume.

Wuxia and kung fu movies had a loyal audience but one without deep pockets – a martial arts film only made money if it was made cheaply. Action stars, stunt performers, and choreographers in the boom years would make as many as two films each week! Martial arts directors and fight choreographers worked regularly with women in fighting roles. In at least a few cases, those women were their wives or daughters, working in the family business. From Wu Lizhu and Chin Tse-ang, war-scarred veterans of the Shanghai film industry relocated in Hong Kong, and Yu So-chau, daughter of Jackie Chan’s sifu and a major star in her own right, to Connie Chan Po-chu and Josephine Siao Fong-fong, teen swordfighters dear to the hearts of Cantonese-speaking moviegoers in the 1960s, and King Hu’s ethereal leading lady Cheng Pei-pei, there were always actresses deemed “Queen of Wuxia.”

I’m a big fan of the really old Hong Kong movies, the ones that come on VCD with no English subtitles. It’s fun to see so many women in action roles. But if you go looking for the films I cover here, be forewarned. The kung fu and swordplay in these old movies can be disappointing for modern viewers. It can be too “soft” or slow. All too often battles are won by magic, with rays of light shooting from palms or swords courtesy of special effects hand-drawn on the film. If the fight crew was running low on imagination and everyone was tired, it shows. But every once in a while, they’ll pull off a really sharp fight scene, one with long takes and a lot of back-and-forth with swords or sticks or more exotic weapons. And it’s still a little slow, because they probably had just one day to rehearse, and they didn’t want to hurt each other. But they were trying something a little more complicated than usual. It’s hard to keep a volley of strikes and counters going for a dozen or more exchanges without a break, with no editing. These folks are all pros.

Of the women I listed above, I suspect Wu Lizhu is the only real martial artist among them.
I’ve seen two of her movies, GREEDY NEIGHBORS (1933) and BLOODSHED IN A BESIEGED CITADEL (1948), and she looks like a brawler. I think opera-trained Yu So-chau is elegant and has impeccable sword technique. I haven’t seen any of her films from the first dozen years of her career. I’d love to track down the ones she made with Kwan Tak-hing or Shek Yin-tse in the 1950s. I’m about to repost the old entries on Yu, and the review of THE GODDESS’ SWORD (1963), which starred Yu So-chau and Connie Chan Po-chu. That film is particularly significant for anyone interested in a feminist slant on the history of kung fu movies – the choreographer was a woman who taught Chinese opera with an acrobatic and combat focus. Her school in Hong Kong trained quite a few stunt performers of the next generation. Her name is Fan Fok-fa. I hope to post more information about Madame Fan and her opera school soon.

Tags: Hong Kong movie history, kung fu movie history, swordswomen, Wi Lizhu, Yu So-chow