HOLY ROBE OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE

Mu Mian Jia Sha ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

木棉袈裟

After a long break,I’ve eventually managed to come up with the second installment of my ramblings on Mainland Chinese Wushu flicks of the 80’s.

This time I would like to introduce a movie in many respects similar to the one I’ve elaborated on previously.came out in 1985 , a year afterfeaturing LiYanlong’s Hebei Wushu

Team河北武术队  buddyXu Xiangdong徐向东in the leading role.

                                                         Xu Xiangdong... or Donnie Lee?

This colorful little mid-budget actioner is filled with awesome old school Wushu performances, although the humorless plot gets pretty cheesy and almost unbearably melodramatic at times, not shying away from an ending that’s nothing more than a blatantrip-off.

But fortunately, as with most other Mainland Chinese martial arts productions of that era, the movie offers superb  fights & training sequences galore with plenty of top-notch Wushu champions in nearly all major parts & even in the smallest roles:

Xu Xiangdong (also credited as Hsu Hsiang-dong, Chui Heung-tung and sometimes as, huhm… Donnie Lee) was a multiple national champion at the time and his Eagle Claw鹰爪拳featured briefly in the movie has always been regarded as one of the best & is still well-known and highly praised today.

His female co-star Lin Qiuping林秋平(Lam Chau-ping, Mandy Chow) used to be Chinese National Taiji太极拳Champion for 8 years in a row… one of the most famous exponents of this event ever, and her teammate from the Fujian Wushu Team福建武术队, Wu Qiuhua吴秋花(national broadsword刀术& Nanquan南拳champion), played a small role as one of a horse trader’s bubbly daughters.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdOWzh2YIAk

Many fans will recognize a very young Yu Rongguang于荣光as the villainous Wudang thug Tian Yuan. This is actually his first appearance on the big screen & it should be noted that he was one of the few actors that didn’t actually have a Wushu background (which is damn amazing, looking at his spectacular fight performances in this movie). He was a professional acrobat , though, and picked up the fighting moves and tricky choreography with considerable ease. The role was actually offered to him because of his strikingly good looks…smart & downright prophetic casting, for once.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzdoioxTQXo

The plot:

Well, sadly this film is not going to win an academy award in the best original screenplay category. It’s mainly one of the countless “ ” movies with the usual (albeit above average) training sequences & a somewhat lame the-good-guy-never-gets-the-girl theme thrown in.

Yu Rongguang plays assassin/mole Qi Tian Yuan , hired to infiltrate the?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Templeand bring down the whole Shaolin monky business from the inside.

While the overzealous mercenary kicks abbot ass, a horde of marauding soldiers storm the monastery, inflicting bloody mayhem on everything sporting an orange habit & a bald head.

A small group of monks, however, manage to escape with… guess what… yep, the Holy Robe of the Shaolin Temple, the one artifact that Tian Yuan needs to rule the Buddhist martial arts cradle once and for all.   

Renegade monk Hui Neng joins forces with high-kicking horse trader’s daughter Lin Ying , and both head for the legendaryWudangMountainwhere they aim to study Internal Gongfu, gearing up for the final battle with bad egg Tian Yuan.

Gloss:

After wrapping , Lin Qiuping kept competing in national & international Wushu tournaments until 1989. After graduating from theBeijingSportsUniversityshe followed long-term boyfriend Li Yanlong first toGreat Britain& then toGermany, where they eventually got married in the early 90’s. Both of them have become German citizens by now.

Owing to the success of Lin Qiuping has been offered many action movie roles, but she has turned them all down, preferring a quiet family life to the stressful & often loopy film business. During a recent rerun ofon Chinese television channel CCTV, she gave a live interview fromGermanyover the phone. In 2007 she was guest of honor – alongside Jet Li - at the 9 th Wushu World Championships inBeijing.

                                                  Taiji icon Lin Qiuping

Yu Rongguang is still a much demanded leading man inHong Kong. He’s the star of Yuen Woo-ping’ s袁和平popular Iron Monkey 少年黃飛鴻之鐵馬騮and was most recently seen in Jackie Chan’ sand Daniel Lee’s.Some reviewers find him to be one of the most underrated actors inHong Kongcinema.

                                            Yu Rongguang in Iron Monkey

Xu Xiangdong, too, is back in business. After working for the Chinese Wushu Research Institute in Beijing and a short stint as an employee of the Chinese embassy in Mauritius (yes, you read that correctly) he has returned to the Chinese capital, where he is now working as an actor & martial arts choreographer, mainly in Chinese TV productions (e.g.).

I met him at a martial arts show inSwitzerlandin the mid-90’s, where he & former teammate Li Yanlong brought down the house with their breath-taking 2-men-set-sparring choreography (which they hadn’t actually performed in 10 years or so).

For reasons still not quite clear, supporting actress & Chinese National Wushu Team member Wu Qiuhua later had a severe nervous breakdown while working as a coach inEurope. She has completely recovered and - after successfully heading her own wushu school inSingapore for many years - she now resides in the U.S. with her husband and their 2 kids.

Other titles for

Director: Xu Xiaoming徐小明

Action Director: Xu Xiaoming

Producer:Han Peizhu韓培珠

Film company:Golden Principal Film Company嘉民娱乐有限公司

Starring:Xu Xiangdong (as Hui Neng), Lin Qiuping (as Lin Ying), Yu Rongguang (as Qi Tianyuan), Wu Qiuhua (as Lin Ying’s sister)