I'm going to post sections as I get done revising them. Thoughts and suggestions are most welcome (somehow, my footnotes have turned into lowercase roman numerals?).

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Arthouse Wuxia
Jonathan Walton & Shreyas Sampat

This piece recognises a new sub-genre in Chinese cinema, the “arthouse wuxia” film. After providing a short overview of the development of wuxia and the adoption of arthouse techniques, we look at the defining characteristics of arthouse wuxia and explore one method of recreating this sub-genre in roleplaying.

Dreams of flying swordsmen leaping across rooftops and lakes, warrior women with swift blades and defiant spirits, evil sorcerers and valiant officials, nomadic horsemen charging down from the steppe, noble hearts, overwhelming passions, supreme martial skills, duty, honor, and love that can’t be denied: where do these things come from? The Chinese tradition of wuxia (“woo shyah”), stories of martial heroes who uphold justice and dispose of evil, has been a part of popular art and entertainment for thousands of years. However, with the international attention recently attracted by Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) & House of Flying Daggers (2004), wuxia has, for the first time, gained a large following outside of East Asia.

In the course of wuxia's own “journey to the West,” the genre itself has changed a great deal, to the point that these new international wuxia films, infused as they are with techniques and interests adopted from Western cinema, form a new sub-genre distinct from the traditions from which they came. These films are part of a continuing conversation and negotiation that is taking place between Hong Kong and Hollywood, between the chief East Asian and American filmmaking traditions. This fertile territory, here in the middle groundibetween cultures, provides new opportunities for roleplayers and game designers: a new brand of action drama that doesn't sacrifice drama for the sake of action. However, recreating the feel of recent wuxia films can be a formidible task, especially since they depend on immaculate imagery and emotional complexity. We hope this article provides background and suggestions that will be helpful in your own attempts to process wuxia and give life to your own epic adventures.

I. A Brief History of Wuxia

During the chaos of the Warring States period, the political philosopher Hanfei Zi (d.233 BCE) labeled bandit vigilantes one of the Five Vermin plaguing his kingdom, complaining that “swordsmen gather bands of followers about them and perform deeds of honor, making a name for themselves and violating the decrees of the five bureaus.”ii A hundred years later, Sima Qian, classical China’s greatest historian, devoted an entire chapter of his historical record to youxia (wandering heroes), writing: “Today’s traveling vigilantes, their actions are not always just and righteous, but their words are true, their actions resolute, and their promises sincere.”iii

Regardless of the true motives of these swordsmen, people quickly began to view xia vigilantes as heroes instead of fame-seeking ruffians. These peasant fighters were obviously not the high-flying magical martial artists that would later develop in popular fiction and cinema. Typically, they had no formal training, relying on experience gained through banditry and the clashes and scuffles that characterized daily life. Youxia were simply people who took up a sword and used it as best they could, whether out of compassion for others or their own self-interest, only to have their deeds subsequently glamorized or vilified. Thus are oral traditions born. The idea of a hero or group of heroes riding across the countryside and laying down the law, destroying evil and promoting virtue, was especially appealing in those times of political instability.

The first known example of xia fiction is Yandanzi (“Prince Dan of Yan”), which was written by an anonymous author during the late Eastern Han period (25-220).iv Serving as the direct inspiration for Chen Kaige’s movie The Emperor and the Assassin (Jing Ke Ci Qin Wang, 1999), the story tells of Prince Dan’s failed attempt to kill the Qin Emperor and the subsequent death of his noble assassin, Jing Ke. Again, this was no martial arts epic but a tragic tale of a swordsman struggling in vain against a tyrannical government. It wasn’t until the artistic outpouring of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) that a pinch of wu (martial arts) got added to the established tradition of xia fiction, creating something resembling modern wuxia.v Even then, it took centuries for the genre, influenced by the great epics of Chinese literature, such as Outlaws of the Marsh (1610) and Journey to the West (c. 1550), to grow more epic, more popular, and, eventually, more supernatural.

Tianjin-based storyteller Shi Yukun wrote the first true wuxia novel, Three Heroes and Five Gallants (San Xia Wu Yi, 1879), based on the promptbook scripts used by himself and other performers.vi Critical to the novel, as well as much of the wuxia fiction of this era, was the collaboration of two different kinds of xia, swordsmen and upright officials. Tang Yunzhou’s novel Seven Swordsmen and Thirteen Heroes (Qi Jian Shi San Xia, 1894), in which the heroes are able to control the weather and grow soldiers from beans, ushered in a new age of supernatural wuxia literature, coming to a peak after the Republican revolution of 1911.vii It was at this time, too, that wuxia first seized the imagination of the general public. Wuxia serials ran in every major newspaper during the 30’s and 40’s. Famous novelists with real literary credentials tried their hand at penning epic martial arts tales, including Wang Dulu, who wrote the series of novels that inspired Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.viii

Literature was not the only medium to embrace martial vigilantes. In fact, it is unlikely that traditional Chinese drama would have achieved such incredible popularity without the infusion of action provided by the wuxia tradition. Wuxia-based plots and characters first began appearing on the opera stage in the 19th century.ix Taking the first step towards bringing these tales to life, opera became a major source of inspiration for the later development of wuxia cinema and even became a training ground for future silver screen stars such as Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung, and Corey Yuen, all of whom trained together at the Beijing Opera School. Additionally, the opera stage is where fight choreography truly developed, as centuries-old routines were broken apart and mixed together to interact in an intricately staged dance. Martial artists began training not for personal development, exercise, or self-defense, but for performance. By the time movies cameras made their way to China, wuxia heroes had been living their lives on the stage for nearly 100 years. They were ready.

The first wuxia film, Zhang Shichuan’s 27-hour extravaganza Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery (Huo Shao Hong Lian Si, 1928), was released in Shanghai in eighteen parts between 1928-1931,x leading to a series of similar works financed by companies on the mainland and Hong Kong. However, with the Japanese invasion, war of resistance, subsequent civil war, and eventual Communist victory in 1949, the future of wuxia on the mainland became uncertain. The genre was seen as a glorification of the injustices and backwards thinking of China’s feudal past. Production of wuxia literature did not stop, of course, but moved its operations to Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s early wuxia films were an explosion of action and dirt-cheap special effects, but these slowly gave way to more realistic films influenced by Japan and popular trends in wuxia literature.xi The Shaw Brothers’ studio figured heavily in this later movement and their films would go on to influence other martial arts filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino. Wuxia filmmaking peaked in the late 60’s and early 70’s, only to decline until the coming of Tsui Hark at the beginning of the 80’s. His films New Legend of the Zu Mountain Swordsmen (Xin Shu Shan Jian Xia, 1983) and especially A Chinese Ghost Story (Qian Nü You Hun, 1987) marked the return of wuxia in a major way.xii

During this time, Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s policies of Reform & Opening led to an economic and cultural rebirth on the mainland. The so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese film directors graduated together from Beijing Film Academy after it reopened in 1978, having, for the first time, formally studied Western directing and cinematography. Key figures such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige filmed melodramatic tragedies influenced by Western film aesthetics and Chinese emotional sensibilities. Drawing power from their own experiences during China’s nightmarish Cultural Revolution period (1967-1969/76),xiii the Fifth Generation won Chinese and international attention for the mainland film industry.

The development of a new form of “arthouse wuxia,” the form in which the genre would explode across Western consciousness, started in the mid-90’s with Wong Karwai’s The Ashes of Time (Dong Xie Xi Du, 1994). Unlike the Fifth Generation directors, Wong Karwai came from a background in design and still photography,xiv not movie-making. Striking out on his own, he created films that depicted moods instead of delivering straightforward narrative. His first two films, As Tears Go By (Wang Jie Ka Men, 1988) and Days of Being Wild (A Fei Zheng Zhuan, 1991), developed the style of cinematic montage that would come to full fruition in The Ashes of Time and its companion film, Chungking Express (Chong Qing Sen Ling, 1994), which was created during Ashes’ long post-production.

Though The Ashes of Time is based on the novel Eagle-Shooting Heroes (She Diao Ying Xiong, c.1959) by Jin Yong, an icon of highbrow wuxia literature, Wong Karwai spends most of the film questioning the major tropes of the genre, especially the xia swordsman as the epitome of masculine virtue. The film supports a rather impressive cast, including Brigitte Lin, Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, and Tony Leung, who together create a look at the less-than-glamorous problems of burnt-out heroes. Ashes, is a wuxia movie in which the martial element (wu) is subdued and the heroes (xia) are impressively unheroic, leaving a fascinating emotional slowburn, unquestionably grounded in the genre but exhibiting few of its defining characteristics.

It is impossible to talk about the modern rebirth of wuxia without mentioning The Matrix (1999). Directed by the Wachowski Brothers, this tale of a secret sci-fi distopia under the skin of the world raised the stakes for all action cinema. Many critics have suggested that the movie is not especially original, regurgitating concepts from wuxia, cyberpunk, messianic millennialism, modern philosophy, and male power fantasies (inept loser turns out to be the enlightened, ass-kicking savior of the world). However, though The Matrix was unquestionably derivative,xv the resulting stew it delivered was surprisingly potent, leaving even the Wachowski Brothers incapable of repeating their initial success.

While The Matrix got Western directors excited about making martial arts movies, leading to such bizarre concoctions as Christophe Gans’ wuxia-influenced colonial-era French horror movie Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loups, 2001), the Chinese industry was less jazzed. After the box-office failure of The Ashes of Time, Hong Kong seemed to put it’s trust in expensive, special-effects laden entertainment films, such as A Man Called Hero (Zhong Hua Ying Xiong, 1999), a mediocre adaptation of a famous wuxia comic series, and Tsui Hark’s The Legend of Zu (Shu Shan Zheng Zhuan, 2001), a mostly computer-generated remake of his earlier Zu film. This move would combine with the growing popularity of comedies parodying wuxia, such as Stephen Chow’s God of Cookery (Shi Shen, 1996), and later lead to his spectacular box office smash, Shaolin Soccer (Shao Lin Zu Qiu, 2001). However, Chinese wuxia films remained, for all the advances in computer gimmickry, fairly traditional. In the end, it would be the mainland that would push things in new directions.

The development of contemporary wuxia was given a shot in the arm by Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Wo Hu Cang Long, 2000), thank to its unprecedented international success and the powerful artistic vision of Ang Lee. Hoping to “blend the two dominant forms of Chinese filmmaking, the feminine operatic melodrama [developed by the Fifth Generation directors]… and the martial arts adventure,”xvi Ang Lee took the arthouse wuxia that Wong Karwai had first explored in The Ashes of Time and pushed in new directions. Centered around strong female characters, structured like a family drama and devoted to creating powerful imagery, Crouching Tiger is rather different from the wuxia cinema that came before, drawing on Western filmmaking techniques and Ang Lee’s own experience addressing women’s issues in Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin Shi Nan Nü, 1994) and Sense and Sensibility (Li Xing Yu Gan Xing, 1995).

After Crouching Tiger, it didn’t take long for the most prominent and eclectic member of the Fifth Generation, Zhang Yimou, to dip his toes in arthouse wuxia. After suggesting Zhang Ziyi, the then 19-year-old dancer and actress to Ang Leexvii and watching her success in Crouching Tiger and Kim Sungsu’s impressive Sino-Korean joint venture Warriors (Wu Shi, 2001), Zhang Yimou jumped into the new sub-genre himself, with the massively epic Hero (Ying Xiong, 2002) and the more subdued House of Flying Daggers (Shi Mian Mai Fu, 2004), both of which followed the new content and filmmaking precedents established by Ang Lee. Though greeted with mixed feelings by Chinese audiences, both Hero and Flying Daggers were well received in the West, leading to increasing criticism that Zhang Yimou had “sold out” for more money and a chance at repeating Ang Lee’s Oscar win.

Whatever the complaints, arthouse wuxia had found another staunch supporter in Zhang Yimou. Trained as a cinematographer and already famous for such films as Ju Dou (Ju Dou, 1990), Raise the Red Lantern (Da Hong Deng Long Gao Gao Gua, 1991), To Live (Huo Zhe, 1994), Keep Cool (You Hua Hao Hao Shuo, 1997), and Not One Less (Yi Ge Dou Bu Neng Shao, 1999), Zhang took every opportunity to make up for his own inexperience in the making action movies, hiring top notch actors and martial artists, drenching his films in sound and brilliant colors, focusing on emotional conflict and inner turmoil, hiring one of the best action choreographers in the business, giving the spotlight to powerful female characters, and gaining the support of Western movie studios.

Interesting, very interesting.

I'm not qualified to comment on this level of stuff, actually. It's very brave in dwelving into pure art history to that degree, with nary a hint of roleplaying in there. Continue in that vein. I'll sit in judgement when you post some more and we see the ties to roleplaying.

I just got my hands on PTA yesterday. (I'm in a self-inflicted hermitage in the north, where games come only seldom.) I won't go into how much of a disappointment the book was in general, but Pagoda was a pretty nice game. How would you see the article in relation to Pagoda and Refreshing Rain (if I remember the name of Shreyas's game correctly)? Supplementary, exposition, competing or what?

Eero wrote: How would you see the article in relation to Pagoda and Refreshing Rain (if I remember the name of Shreyas's game correctly)? Supplementary, exposition, competing or what?