The Queen and I: A Tribute to Cheng Pei-pei

While Mark has been busy upgrading this site, I’ve been going over some of Cheng Pei-pei’s early work for the Shaw Brothers studio. One of the selections was an old favorite of mine, THE LADY HERMIT (1971). When I first came to Boston almost 30 years ago, I started taking tai chi classes from Master Bow Sim Mark, and one of her students got me a job as a projectionist in Chinatown. The theaters there showed double features from around noon to midnight. One of the films would be brand new, and the other was second or third release. The very oldest films we ever screened around that time were a handful of huangmei diao musicals from Shaw Brothers – I particularly remember LADY GENERAL HUA MULAN (1964) with Ivy Ling Po.

Shortly after I completed my training as a projectionist, I was working 10-12 hour shifts at both the Star and China theaters. The Chinatown theaters were non-union, and in the late 1970s a number of women worked there. I remember at least three others, all non-Chinese. I guess they were there to avoid the hassle of joining the union, which had only recently opened to women and, according to rumor, required an apprenticeship at porn theaters in Boston’s old Combat Zone. But I was there for the kung fu movies and the window into Chinese culture. About one or two months after I started working at the Star, we showed a double feature that rocked my world. It was Lau Kar-leung’s SHAOLIN MANTIS (1978) paired with Cheng Pei-pei’s LADY HERMIT.

A lot of anticipation had built up for SHAOLIN MANTIS. The trailer we had been running for a month or so showed Lau and his cast training and rehearsing for the fight scenes. David Chiang was the star, and it’s one of his best roles. The story is exceptionally powerful, with a gut-wrenching twist at the end. Lily Li and Cecilia Wong represented for the ladies in a solid kung fu cast that tore into the superb choreography by Lau. But as good as SHAOLIN MANTIS was, LADY HERMIT was a revelation. It took one of the most fundamental kung fu movie plots, that of a cocky young fighter finding a wise master, and gender-reversed it. Shih Szu is a charming young woman but she’s also blunt to the point of rudeness and very proud of her fighting skills. Her goal is to dominate the martial world, so she’s determined to find the legendary Lady Hermit and become her student. Cheng Pei-pei is, of course, the Lady Hermit, in hiding to recover from wounds incurred in battle with a deadly foe. Lo Lieh is the love interest, pining for the sifu while the student persistently flirts with him. When Shih Szu, in a fit of jealousy, storms off to confront the villain, the Lady Hermit must rescue her headstrong student. The film ends with the Lady Hermit renouncing worldly fame (and marriage) and setting off for new adventures.

Well, people, I thought I was a feminist, but this film blew the top of my head off! I never knew that anything like this existed. As it turned out, THE LADY HERMIT was more the exception than the rule. Even the other films Cheng Pei-pei made at that time rarely achieve this level of pure empowerment. COME DRINK WITH ME (1966) is similar in tone but with more emphasis on her character’s romantic involvement with Yueh Hua’s Drunken Cat. In THE JADE RAKSHA (1968), she plays a rather coarse and violent vigilante. She falls for a swordsman, played by Tang Ching, but loses him to a hyperfeminine rival. In THE SHADOW WHIP (1971) and THAT FIERY GIRL (1968), she plays younger characters with a girlish demeanor. Cheng was an astoundingly beautiful young woman, and to my mind, her best roles are the ones where she plays serious or even “masculine” characters. Adding stereotypically feminine mannerisms to all that loveliness was overkill. On the other hand, no kung fu actress was ever better at projecting quiet dignity.

According to an article in the Hong Kong Movie News from January 1970, titled “Cheng Pei-pei’s Film Farewell,” THE LADY HERMIT was supposed to be the “final screen appearance” of the “Queen of Swordswomen.” Cheng Pei-pei embodied the ideal nuxia, or swordswoman, of her era, just as Wu Lizhu, Yu So-chau, Connie Chan, and Josephine Siao had earlier – and just as Zhang Ziyi does now. A good nuxia actress has be be both graceful and strong, or at least able to mime strength. One of the most appealing aspects of these Chinese stories of the jianghu, or martial underworld, is that all martial artists are equal as far as social status, gender, or age go. The only ranking that counts is in kung fu.

As a martial arts neophyte, I was fascinated to see how women portrayed physically powerful roles in many of these genre films. Not all of the actresses had the athletic training to carry off the roles convincingly. One of the things I realized from watching kung fu and wuxia films repeatedly was that if the actor or actress can do the movement, you see their face in the shot as they perform it. Otherwise it’s a stunt double. I have nothing against doubles – they generally provide the most expert kung fu in the film – but it does undercut the illusion to some degree.

The fight scenes in THE LADY HERMIT don’t break any new ground for the time. Both Cheng and Shih are stunt-doubled occasionally, mostly for jumps. The most exciting thing about Cheng Pei-pei’s fighting is her sincerity. In this film and in others like JADE RAKSHA, she imparts a feral energy to her movement. Her actual fighting is pretty soft – I have to say she fights like the dancer she originally was trained to be. But she’s right in there, selling the combat with the ferocity of her body language and expression. Again, no one has ever equaled the sheer gracefulness of her movement, even when she’s hellbent on annihilating the bad guys.

I’ll be back soon with more on the films of Cheng Pei-pei.