Heroines in Hong Kong Martial Arts Movies (I)

The 50s

Any kid who grew up in Hong Kong in the 60s knows who Miss Yu So Chow is. She is the daughter of the Martial Arts teacher of action stars such as Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. She is also the Big Sister of Martial Arts movies in the 50s and 60s, a unique genre of movies initiated from Hong Kong and has subsequently became a world famous symbol of the little island's entertainment industry. When people think about India, they think of Bollywood, when people think about Hong Kong, they think of Martial Arts (or Kung Fu) movies. However, most movie audience around the world had their first experience of Hong Kong Martial Arts movies from the 70s when Bruce Lee entered the scene, not too many realize that the history of Martial Arts movies started two, three decades before Bruce Lee was even born.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in Hong Kong in the early 60s. Like many parts of the world, television was a new medium for us then. For the first time ever, entertainment such as early Martial Arts movies made in the late 50s were brought right into our homes. Kids around my age started to be exposed to a great deal of these early black-and-white action adventures that were combination of Western cinema techniques, Chinese opera choreography, special effects and sometimes even opera singing. These movies became part of the childhood of my generation. 

Most of these action movies were primitive in today's standards, but they were full of fantasies and imagination. Heroes go off to icy North Pole in search of certain elusive plants to save his loved ones who are injured by the evil villains, monstrous giant creatures like eagles or cranes that would guard sacred treasures from trespassers, heroes often get thrown and left to die in deep valleys only to be saved by the secluded Martial Arts masters who later pass on the superior Martial Arts techniques to the heroes. And upon their return, the heroes would defeat the villains (hey wasn't that the story line for "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back"?). Basically always about good and evil. However, just telling the stories straight wasn't entertaining enough for the movie audience back then. Some smart Hong Kong movie-makers in the 50s (probably even as early as the 40s) thought of a new way of kicking the story-telling up a notch...they added skillfully choreographed action sequences into the formula. The most logically way of doing that in a relatively safe and economical manner was to incorporate already trained Chinese opera performers into these movies. Unlike Western operas, tradition Chinese operas often tell epic historic stories that involve battles between warlords. Most of the Chinese opera performers, male or female, would have already received their basic action training. It's part of the curriculum. People usually go where there is money to be made. These performers entered the movie industry naturally and became the pioneers of future stuntmen and stunt-women.

Incidentally in Chinese history there are old legends of women fighters who would go to war against invaders in order to protect their country and families, eg. Mulan. With this background in mind, Chinese movie-goers in the 50s and 60s were familiar with women who could fight and protect themselves. When movies told stories of female action heroes, the audience embraced these characters as part of their culture, their history, without any doubt or suspense of disbelief.

Strangely enough sexual discrimination wasn't prevalent in these action movies. Female heroes were just as important to the plots and were adored by the audience just as much as their male counterparts. Usually the male heroes had their certain unique Martial Arts skills, the female heroes would have just a different set of Martial Arts skills. In quite a few of these movies, the male and female heroes need to collaborate in their Martial Arts skills at the end to form the ultimate power to defeat the villain. The man couldn't do without the woman, and vice versa. The philosophy of "Ying" and "Yen" was widely applied and accepted. Compared with the mentality of Western cinemas, Hong Kong Martial Arts movies were way ahead in the concept of political correctness in this regard.