Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

[King Bob]

Oddly there was no thread for this, so I'll have to start one. Watched it again last night, many years after first seeing it. Still thrilling and enjoyable.

The main thing I noticed this time was that, apart from the action sequences, it very much reminded me of David Lean's work (although Doctor Zhivago is his only film that I've seen multiple times).

DM - in the fight where Michelle Yeoh uses all the different weapons, she ends up with a (bronze?) short staff. Is that a standard weapon?

And I think at some point after this was made, Ziyi Zhang might have had some work done to narrow her nose a little bit, but I'm not sure.

[Drunk Monk]

DM - in the fight where Michelle Yeoh uses all the different weapons, she ends up with a (bronze?) short staff. Is that a standard weapon?

You mean that knurled rod that Michelle uses before the fight moves to swords? That's a bian. It's usually translated as 'hard whip' which is somewhat literal. We used to carry them. 




It's a common weapon in Chinese art because it is often wielded by door guardians or temple guardian images. It's uncommon as a modern Kung Fu practice, although I do see it from time to time. It's rarely practiced anymore. Lam Sifu had an unusual variation of this that had a guard like a sai, but the same knurled rod. He trained those in pairs. The single ones are extremely heavy (the one pictured above was over 5 lbs, which is a lot for a one-handed weapon). I saw a massive cast iron one on Wudangshan (Wu-Tang mountain) in one of the mountain peak temples. That must've weighed a ton.

[King Bob]

That's it. And your explanation also clued me in that Wudang that they keep mentioning in the film is also Wu-Tang. Was that monastery destroyed or suppressed at some point? (I could look that up, but I'll just ask instead.)

5 lbs is a lot! My Indian clubs are 1 lb. and even with that it took me a while to learn to control the torque when swinging.

[Drunk Monk]

Pretty much every temple in China was destroyed or oppressed at some point in history. Wudang is one of the source points of Tai Chi. It's often placed in opposition to Shaolin. Wudang is a major Daoist temple, where Shaolin is Zen Buddhist. 

Yeah, the bian is hella heavy. Chinese Kung Fu is into absurdly heavy weapons. It's an absurd exaggeration stemming from legendary heroes who were credited with wielding heavy weapons. The patron saint of Kung Fu, Lord Guan, had a lance that was over 100 lbs. It's good exercise at the very least. 

RE: Indian clubs - some connect that tradition to Gada, which were these ridiculously heavy maces. Hanuman wields one.

[King Bob]

The other story on Indian clubs is that they come from Persian Meels, heavy clubs used by wrestlers to train, brought into India by the Mughals.

[Drunk Monk]

Those stories are somewhat connected.

[King Bob]

Back to the movie, in the teahouse fight, there's a guy with two clubs like that.