WU XIA LESSONS

I have been deriving a lot of pleasure and some inspiring lessons from my recent deep immersion in the wu xia pian (films and the even more melodramatic TV series.)  Wu xia is the Chinese sword and sorcery genre, and can be set anytime from pre-Qin to post-Qing, and that's a lot of territory indeed. Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon (Qing Dynasty, you can always tell from the hair styles) was perhaps the first wu xia pian to have great broad commercial appeal in the West, but it was nothing new, and is not my favorite of the genre.

Even though the wu xia is topically mythical, (and spiritually inspiring like The Lord of the Rings) you still can learn a lot of history, culture and language (despite the bizarre subtitles) from these productions -- or at least that's how I justify my time spent with these extravagant historical TVB maxi-series, sometimes running upwards of 30 hours.  (Also I have contributed significantly to the local economy, particularly the Dragon Gate Bookstore in Chinatown, my favorite video purveyor.) And moreover, in a Jungian sense, myth is just another kind of truth.

Unabashedly escapist, there is something delightful in these films which are devoid of anything that smacks of modernity** -- cell phones, computers, broadcasting, fast food, cars, or dry cleaners (for all those silk robes). Right now I am in the midst of Twin of Brothers, set in the early Tang dynasty and filmed in mainland China with gorgeous sets, actors, costumes and horses.

Wu xia has the same moral and nostalgic appeal found in gunslinger Westerns (think Shane or Paladin), Arthurian legend, and BBC/Masterpiece Theatre costume dramas of Restoration, Romantic, Victorian, Edwardian England. And Shakespeare.  The constants are romantic characters (human nature) in beautiful silk clothes that stay clean without dry cleaning.  And tea.  And wine.  And weapons.  And the yin and yang of  duplicity and honor.

In the wu xia there is a lot of romantic and erotic tension, but in a Confucian way...so chaste.  I am familiar with the delicate metaphorical treatment of sexual relationships and activities peculiar to some films coming out of Mainland China...but these Hong Kong wu xia dramas are even less explicit (even though there are plenty of Hong Kong movies that are extremely violent and pornographic).   Confucian values in the stories place tremendous modesty and self control on the characters, who may feel great love and lust for each other --but ultimately the restraint sometimes leads to unfortunate unrequited love.  In some cases, though, and it's usually the women, who are generally strong, the characters have larger committments to their fathers or shifu (sifu/sensei).


Central to the wu xia genre is the shifu /student relationship, something a little unusual for 21st Century Americans to grasp.  We have supplanted it with manager/employee relations in our workplaces, (shifu as boss or supervisor) but lacking completely the spirit and devotion, the larger purpose.  No martial arts manuals or magical swords and projections of qi for us, we have management tools and processes and procedures and regulations and Excel to accomplish our missions.  How dull and uncreative.  How I would love a sword to carry to meetings, a beautiful embellished dao to lay on my desk instead of a cell phone. (No, I am not hinting at workplace violence, just workplace power and magic...and a little romance.) How wonderful it would be to simply gather my qi and project it across a conference room table and then just fly away.

In the meantime, I have 25 more episodes of Twin of Brothers to enjoy.  Pity this one doesn't have Vincent Zhao or  Power Chan in the cast.

**Although there is a scene I must revisit...the good guys are escaping on a boat on a river, probably the Yangtze, and in the background, on the shore there is what appears to be a crane assembly for a container ship. A little fuzzy and out of focus, but there it is.