Fong Sai Yuk
Fong Sai Yuk: A Hero by Any Other Name
I'm willing to bet that if you ask a typical American person what comes to their mind when you say "Chinese folk hero," they'll probably respond Mulan or most likely nothing at all. Maybe you'll get some joker who'll say Bruce Lee. This isn't to say that Bruce Lee isn't a hero; he is immortal, thanks to the fact that all martial arts magazines run articles on him every single month (or that there've been gosh-knows-how-many documentaries made about). So maybe Bruce Lee will join the ranks of some of the other martial artist folk heroes of China, the which include Wong Fei-Hung, Hung Hey-Kwun, Fong Sai-Yuk, and heck, we can maybe throw in Chang Sanfeng for the ironic fact that Jet Li has played all four of these guys in different movies.
About five years ago, I did a research paper on Asian folk heroes. Out of all of the people (Japanese and Chinese) that I included, Fong Sai-Yuk was the hardest to find information on. Two of the aforementioned guys (Chang Sanfeng and Hung Hey-Kwun) are pioneers in two famous Chinese styles. I'm tempted to say that Wong Fei-Hung was the Bruce Lee of his day and the most famous exponent of Hung Gar. Fong Sai-Yuk, while a proponent of Hung Gar, doesn't seem to be quite as well-known as the others...at least in English-language websites. While surfing the internet for information on him, it seemed that he was more popular for the movies about him featuring Jet Li than about the real man.
What I can piece together about his life is as follows: His mother was a very talented martial artist. She taught him martial arts when he was young and he seemed to have had a lot of talent. Once source said that he won a death match as a young teenager. He later went to the Shaolin Temple to study as a layman, alongside Hung Hey-Kwun. Like his contemporary, Fong was an anti-Qing dynasty patriot. So when the Manchurians burned down/purged the Shaolin Temple, Fong and his colleagues were marked for death. From what I've read, Fong was killed at the hands of Pak Mei, a Shaolin traitor and proponent of the "White Eyebrow" style.
Like most folk heroes, Fong Sai Yuk's life has been immortalized by the large number of movies made about him. And like most movies made about folk heroes, the adventures and stories tend to be more ficitional than real. I've seen four movies about Fong Sai Yuk myself. Coincidentally, the movies belong to two different two-part series that paint an almost totally different picture of Fong's life.
The first two movies are a two-part Mainland-filmed series called Young Hero of Shaolin*. The movies were made in the mid-1980s, an era in which the Chinese made some very impressive classical martial arts films using a large cast of wushu students. As most fans of the genre know, Jet Li was the most well-known actor to come out of these films. This series, while not starring Jet Li, is still impressive in terms of quality martial arts and scenery, the two things that Mainland films tend to excel at.
The first film follows Fong's early life and training as a martial artist. On the day of Fong's birth, an evil priest and his student, Rae Pon (sounds like Raekwon from the Wu Tang Clan) come to the Fong estate to raise trouble. So Fong's mother and her master, a Shaolin nun, intervene and give those two some lessons in "pratical religion." The priest swears revenge on the family, prompting Fong's mother to teach him kung fu. After a near-fatal encounter with the priest years later, Fong Sai Yuk is sent to Shaolin to learn Shaolin kung fu.
At first, Fong is a mischievous little jerk who likes to screw around with everyone. But he has natural talent and begins to progress and steadily improve in his studies. In addition to his butt-whooping skills, he goes from being an arrogant prick to a pretty charitable guy. After honorably leaving the Shaolin Temple (which involved the Luo Han "Nazi" Formation...hehehe), Fong Sai Yuk finds himself involved in a corrupt martial arts tournament run by none other than Rae Pon, who's now a corrupt official.
The sequel takes place some time (months?) after the first one. Both Fong Sai Yuk and his colleague Wu Wai Kin (who had a small, supporting role in part one) have both left Shaolin Temple. On their way back to Wai Kin's home, they both get into a lot of random fights. Meanwhile, Wai Kin's family is being terrorized by a rival named Dragonhead, who's in league with the local Qing official, Chang Bill. Bill (hehehe...Bill) has orders to destroy Shaolin and (for whatever reason) Fong Sai Yuk, so he enlists the aid of the Wu Tang clan. On top of that, a rival of Fong Sai Yuk, Lu Tai-Pang, is in town and wants revenge on Fong for having killed his brother, Tiger Lu (whom I suspect was Raekwon from the last movie).
So Dragonhead and Wu Tai-Pang kidnap Wu Wai-Kin's sister. This is done to a) set a trap for Sai-Yuk and Wai-Kin and b) provide a concubine for Chang Bill. A trap is set at the sacred mountain of Pak Mei in the form of the "Golden Formation," a contingent of dozens of Wu Tang monks armed with razor-sharp cymbals. So our heroes and their colleagues get into an incredibly long 30 minute climatic fight which includes a post-climatic fight(!) against Pak Mei.
Historically speaking, at least according to the information I have, these movies are fairly accurate. Well, maybe it'd be better to say that they include some of the more important events. The first movie doesn't really take on a lot in the story department, mainly his training in the Shaolin temple. I suspect that Wu Wai Kin, Sai Yuk's colleague, is a real person. In the first movie and another series that I saw him in, he's portrayed as being inferior to Sai Yuk. Interestingly enough, in the second film, Wu Wai Kin is shown as being every bit as good as Fong Sai Yuk. The part that they left out of this movie was Hung Hey-Kwun, he also was Sai Yuk's colleague at Shaolin. Neither him nor the Hung Gar style are ever mentioned. The other important factor that the first movie (and the second one) includes is Fong Sai Yuk's kung fu mother. Her having trained him as a child is included in the first film, and according to what I've read, really did happen.
The second movie is a lot more wild (and incoherent), but does include some important historical events. Fong Sai Yuk really did take on Pak Mei in a duel. I believe that Wu Tang really did team up with the Manchus in order to destroy Shaolin, although the purging of the Shaolin Temple isn't portrayed in this film. However, the two movies tend to focus on Fong Sai Yuk's quest for justice rather than portraying him as having taken a specific anti-Qing dynasty stance (in spite of the fact that the main bad guys are Qing officials).
Like most Mainland Chinese films, the films' calling cards are the Chinese scenery and authentic wushu fight scenes. The second film provides a lot more of both than the first one does, especially in the scenes at Pak Mei's sacred mountain. Most of the action in the first film is relegated to the second half, the two notable fight scenes being Fong's "exit exam" taking on the aforementioned "Luo Han Formation" (which looks awesome from aerial views) and a random duel set on 10 feet high poles. The latter brings to mind the climatic fight from Yuen Woo-Ping's Iron Monkey, the difference being that this one doesn't use wires.
YHOS part 2 has way more fighting than the first one. Actually, it has more fighting than coherency, although that isn't much of a problem. Random fights break out during the first half of the film to establish the characters (there are more supporting characters in the second one than in the first one) and their skills. Then once the character relationships are established and the conflict is set up, the story is moved forward by more fights until the exhausting 30 minute climax. Like a Hollywood blockbuster, "more" is the key word in the second film. More one-on-one fights, more group fights, more mass battle scenes, etc. The battle with the "Golden Formation" makes Part 1's "Luo Han Formation" look small by comparison. It's an epic-scale fight sequence that must be seen by any fan of the genre. It'll take your breath away.
As far as the quality of the fighting is concerned, the words "rough around the edges" come to mind. This isn't to say anything negative about the fights, because it's a pleasure to see a lot of talented wushu stylists duke it out with little special FX assistance. The fights don't quite have the same polish that its Hong Kong counterparts had (esp. in Woo-Ping's, Sammo's , and Lau Kar-Leung's work). However, the fights are fast and never look overchoreographed. What prompted me to make that remark at the beginning of the paragraph was the inclusion of some special tricks to "enhance" the fighting, namely some undercranking, a few wire tricks, and some weird camera tricks (including "insect-o-vision" in the second movie). They look really awkward and at times rather silly. However, the complaint is a small one, especially taking into account the quantity of high quality fighting that are in both movies, especially the second one.
Summing everything up, the first movie is a rather standard martial arts movie and the sequel is like an over-the-top Hollywood blockbuster sequel. The first movie has some good scenes, some nice scenery, a few good historical touches, but isn't anything special. The sequel doesn't always make sense. Imagine an epic-scale historical kung fu movie with a lot of characters, a convoluted plot, and then some guy (possibly on crack) editing it. That's basically what YHOS Part 2 amounts to. But if you can look past all that AND the very stilted (albeit funny) dialogue, you'll find enough authentic fight scenes to please any fan of classical "chop-sockey."
*-The second film was released as part of the "Wu Tang Clan" series under the title "Iron Man." Both versions seemed to have been cut extensively, although I don' know if this is the fault of the American distributors or the Chinese filmmakers.
Fong Sai Yuk: A Hero by Any Other Name (Part 2)
So the Young Hero of Shaolin series was a semi-accurate take on Fong Sai Yuk's life. It wasn't entirely accurate, but some of the more important events and characters were included. More importantly, the two films show that the Mainland Chinese are indeed capable of making some impressive films. In 1993, several years after these movies were made, two more movies were made about the life and times of Fong Sai Yuk. Once again, a Mainland Chinese actor would take the role as the great martial artist. However, the results would be a lot different from the two other movies. If watched together, one would think that they weren't even about the same person.
In Fong Sai Yuk, Jet Li takes on the role as the great hero. In a twist that differs somewhat from history, Sai Yuk hasn't trained at Shaolin, but has learned everything he knows from his mother (Josephine Siao). The movie starts off with Sai Yuk winning the affection of a lovely young lady named Ting-ting (Michele Reis...it's pronounced "Hayce" and means "Kings" in Portuguse). Ting-ting is the daughter of Tiger Lu, who, in order to win the favor of the Cantonese people, sets up a martial arts tournament for his daughter's hand. Well, Sai Yuk and his mother get involved and there's a whole lot of comic hijinks and mistaken-identity subplots that come up (one website said that such is a cinematic law of Chinese filmmaking).
Well, the second half of the movie gets more serious as we discover that Sai Yuk's father is a member of the Red Flower Society, an anti-Qing band of patriots. Unfortunately, the evil governor Or Yee-Tor (Zhao Wen-Zhuo) is on to them. After a conflict at Tiger Lu's estate, Sai Yuk's father is captured and Sai Yuk and his family go into hiding. Sai Yuk finally decides to risk his life to return to town to take on the Qing governor.
The second film, Fong Sai Yuk 2, begins some time (months? a year?) after the first film. Fong Sai Yuk and his wife Ting-ting are now members of the Red Flower Society. Fong his having problems with Yu (Kai Chi-Wah), a treacherous member of the society. In a mission to discover a secret letter made out to the head of the Red Flower Society, Sai Yuk finds himself fighting samurais and courting a Manchurian princess, much to Ting-ting's dismay.
Once again, the comedy is interrupted in the last third by Yu's treachery. Yu blackmails the head of the Red Flower Society into allowing him to take control. He kidnaps Sai Yuk's mother and starts killing the more loyal members. Fong Sai Yuk finally has to take action to save his bretheren and his mother from the corrupted members of the society.
On the whole, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this film isn't all that historically accurate. But then, I don't imagine that was the original point of the film. If you notice, no mention is ever really made of Shaolin or Fong Sai Yuk's contemporaries. In these movies, Fong Sai Yuk has learned kung fu from his mother (which he calls "The Invisible Magic Fist" in the international dub). The Red Flower Society really did exist, and Fong Sai Yuk was supposedly a part of it. The fact that Fong Sai Yuk had a kung fu mom (her role is greater in these two movies than in the Young Hero of Shaolin films) and that he was part of the Red Flower Society are probably the two major historical facts of these two films.
If not historically accurate films, what kind of films are these? These are Corey Yuen movies. If you seen enough Hong Kong movies, you should know how most Corey Yuen films tend to be. A typical movie directed by this guy will start seriously with some decent action, have a middle section filled with humor, and then will get serious leading up to an action-filled climax. Oh yeah, and almost all of his movies have at least one tragic death scene in them. Never fails. Yes, Madam, Righting Wrongs, Bodyguard from Beijing are examples of this. The two Fong Sai Yuk movies are no exceptions. Corey Yuen's films tend to drag a lot during the non-fighting sections, but these films, the first movie moreso than the second, are a lot better-paced and don't seem to drag as much in the middle.
Now what make these two films so loved (especially the first movie) is the fact that they stand as great example of multi-genre films. The first movie is a very good mix of comedy (slapstick and situational), romance, tragedy, and kung fu action. The second movie is much the same, although it often seems to go a little farther on both extremes. I'm tempted to say that both films are almost parodies of period-piece movies (both films spoof Once Upon a Time in China in one way or another). The films have several anachronisms in it, like the sunglasses, the sports competition, etc. (bear in mind that Fong Sai Yuk lived in the 18th century). So it's pretty clear that Corey Yuen wasn't trying to make a historically-sound movie as much as he was trying to make an entertaining movie.
The Fong Sai Yuk movies were made in the early 1990s, which was one of the more prolific years of the "wire-fu craze" which had been kicked off by Once Upon a Time in China two years earlier. This movie uses a lot of wires to enhance the abilities of the performers and create some memorable (if unbelievable fight scenes). These films followed suit and choreographers Corey Yuen and Yuen Tak (who both studied with Jackie Chan at the Chinese Opera School) provide a number of wire and non-wire fight scenes from both films. Corey Yuen never has a set style of choreography. In these movies, the emphasis tends to be intricacy and use of environment, rather than sheer skill.
Most of the big budget wire-fu films have at least one scene that etches itself into martial arts movie history. In the first movie, it's Jet Li's duel with Sibelle Hu (best known for her numerous girls n' guns movies). In this fight, they fight each other while running on the tops of heads of a crowd of people. It's an imaginative fight, combining some "Wow" moments, good choreography, and physical comedy at the same time.
In a climatic scene that far surpasses the first movie, Fong Sai Yuk 2 ends with a long, two-part climax. In the first part, Jet Li blindfolds himself and, armed with about 10 samurai swords, runs down an alley taking out almost the entire Red Flower Society. This leads to the climax, in which he has to fight Yu and his lackeys on a mountain of benches while trying to prevent his mother from hanging. While it does often look somewhat absurd, it's a testamento to the ingenuity of the Chinese's ability to choreograph an object/environment-driven fight scene.
While the first movie has a lot of wire-fu, most of it is seen in the (disappointing) finale between Jet Li and Zhao Wen-Zhuo. But the fights leading up to it tends to be more realistic and ground-based, which is good. Watch for the cool scene in which Sai Yuk takes on the Qing soldiers with just some rope. I'm a sucker for a good rope dart/Chinese chain fight scene. On the contrary, the second movie tends to use a lot more wires in the pre-climatic fight scenes than the first movie. However, there are a few decent scenes, including a kung fu cat fight between Michele Reis and Amy Kwok and a rare fight scene for Corey Yuen (he rarely fought in movies after the classic chop-sockey days).
The movies aren't perfect. My major complaint about the first movie is the climax. You have Jet Li and Zhao Wen-Zhuo, both Mainland wushu stylists, both actors having played Wong Fei Hung (although Zhao didn't start until the next year), going at it and you'd hope the result would be an all-out wushufest. Instead, the climax is an all-out wire-fu fest, which disappointed me. I would've loved to have seen both of them doing some real "money moves" on each other.
The other complaint is a common complaint about most Jet Li movies. It's that he doesn't really have a lot of romantic chemistry with his leads. As much as him and Ting-ting love each other in the first movie, all they do is kiss each other on the cheeks. The second movie has the same problem. Romance is just not Jet Li's strong point.
Comparing these movies would probably produce the following comparisons:
Authentic Wushu vs. Creative Wire-Fu
(Relative)History vs. Anachronistic Fantasy
Classic Chop-sockey vs. Multi-genre storytelling
Mainland Unknowns vs. Jet Li and company
Serious plot vs. slapstick comedy
I suspect that genre fans and purists may be more intrigued by the Mainland films than Jet Li's efforts. However, most casual action fans and moviegoers will probably find the Jet Li/Corey Yuen collaborations easier to watch and enjoy, since they are good example of a little something for everyone. In the latter, Jet Li also proves how versatile of an actor he can be. His other folk hero roles tend to be really serious, but here he plays Fong Sai-Yuk as a serious and humorous character, depending on the situation. In any case, both sets of films are enjoyable on their own terms.
