Once Upon a Time in China

Once Upon a Time in China (Chinese 黃飛鴻, Wong Fei-hung) is a Hong Kong feature film by director and producer Tsui Hark, which premiered in Hong Kong on 15 August 1991. It was made by Golden Harvest, Paragon Films and Film Workshop and runs 134 minutes. The story is set in Foshan in the late Qing dynasty. Wong Fei-hung, played by Jet Li, runs the Po Chi Lam clinic there while foreign powers press on China: French sailors and a fan listing the unequal treaties appear right at the start. The title character is a real figure of Chinese martial arts. Wong Fei-hung is associated with the Hung Ga style, the shadowless kick and drunken fist; his father Wong Kei-ying was one of the Ten Tigers of Canton. The action scenes were prepared by a team of choreographers, Yuen Cheung-yan, Yuen Shun-yi and Lau Kar-wing. Jet Li comes from wushu; we did not find evidence in the sources that he trained Hung Ga. At the 11th Hong Kong Film Awards in 1992 the film won the award for best action choreography and Tsui Hark the award for best director. English Wikipedia credits the film with starting a wave of historical martial arts films in the first half of the nineteen-nineties, and in 2005 the Hong Kong Film Awards Association ranked it among the 100 best Chinese-language films. It was followed by a number of sequels; Jet Li starred in the second and third instalments (1992, 1993) and in Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997).

Martial arts in this work

Fact and fiction

The real Wong Fei-hung lived from 1847 to 1925. He opened the family Po Chi Lam clinic in 1886 in Canton, in the Ren'an district, where he practised acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine; the film places his clinic in Foshan. Wong mastered Hung Ga and, according to English Wikipedia, systematised its prevailing form; his teaching was spread mainly after his death by his students Lam Sai-wing and Leung Foon. He was not one of the Ten Tigers of Canton and is called the Tiger after the Ten Tigers. Because he believed photography shortens life, only one verified photograph survives; every screen portrayal is therefore a reconstruction. The image of him before this film was shaped by the actor Kwan Tak-hing, who played him in more than 70 films from the nineteen-forties to the nineteen-eighties.

People and martial arts

• Wong Fei-hungthe real person the work is about
• Tsui HarkDirector
• Yuen Cheung-yanFight choreographer
• Yuen Shun-yiFight choreographer
• Lau Kar-wingFight choreographer
• Jet LiActor — as Wong Fei-hung· Hung Gar (portrays the art on screen)

Awards

• Won · Hong Kong Film Awards, Best Action Choreography (Yuen Cheung-yan, Yuen Shun-yi, Lau Kar-wing) (1992)
• Won · Hong Kong Film Awards, Best Director (Tsui Hark) (1992)