The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is a Hong Kong film from 1978 directed by Lau Kar-leung for the Shaw Brothers studio. The screenplay was written by Ni Kuang, and the production was led by Mona Fong and Run Run Shaw. Gordon Liu plays the lead, and Lo Lieh plays General Tien Ta. A young student, Liu Yu-de, gets involved through his teacher in the local resistance against Qing dynasty rule. The uprising is crushed, the students' families are killed, and the wounded Liu hides in the Shaolin temple, where he asks for training so that he can fight the oppression. The film builds on training divided into chambers, each of which develops one skill: balance and lightness, strength of the arms and wrists, eyesight, strength of the head, footwork, fighting with sabre and staff. The thirty-fifth chamber represents enlightenment and mastery of the Buddhist sutras. According to English Wikipedia, it is a very loosely fictionalised story of San Te, a traditionally told Shaolin disciple from the Qing dynasty era. The director and the lead actor both trained Hung Ga in the lineage of Wong Fei-hung. The Wu-Tang Clan debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) took its title from the film, and member Masta Killa took his name from the alternative title Master Killer. The Harvard Film Archive called the film an eager rendition of the traditional spread of Shaolin martial arts; Time Out ranked it 22nd in 2014 and Complex ranked it 5th in 2021 in their lists. It was followed by the sequels Return to the 36th Chamber (1980) and Disciples of the 36th Chamber (1985).

Martial arts in this work

Origin

Lau Kar-leung grew up in the lineage of Wong Fei-hung: his father Lau Cham was a disciple of Lam Sai-wing, and the son practised Hung Ga with him from the age of nine. Before his directing career he choreographed Hong Kong films about Wong Fei-hung in the nineteen-sixties, and at Shaw Brothers he worked as head choreographer, among others with director Chang Cheh. He professed the aim of improving martial arts through films, limited wire tricks and trampolines, and insisted on realistic movement; English Wikipedia states these principles about his work in general, not explicitly about this film. Gordon Liu, whose real name is Sin Kam-hei, practised Hung Ga at a school founded by Lau Cham, was his godson, and derived his professional name from the surname Lau; he was not, however, adopted by the Lau family. Lau Kar-leung offered him the role, and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin became his breakthrough lead role.

Fact and fiction

We did not find the division of training into chambers in the sources as the actual layout of the Shaolin monastery; English Wikipedia calls the film a very loose fictionalisation. According to it, the real San Te lived at the start of the eighteenth century, trained under the monk Zhi Shan and stayed at the Xichan monastery; the name 三德 means Three Virtues. The evidence about him is sparse, however, and the sources disagree on the dating; the article on the film places him in the seventeenth century. The film credits the main character with inventing the three-section staff sanjiegun. There is no historical evidence for a single inventor of this weapon: it developed as a more complex version of the two-section staff, and folk legend links it without evidence to Emperor Zhao Kuangyin around 960. Hung Ga, which the film's makers trained, traces its tradition to Hung Hei-gun, a disciple of the monk Jee Sin Sim See; we did not find a link between San Te and this style in the sources.

People and martial arts

• Lau Kar-leungDirector· Hung Gar (real practitioner)
• Gordon LiuActor — as Liu Yu-de / San Te· Hung Gar (real practitioner)