The Difficulty of Difference: Rethinking the Woman Warrior Figure

Despite the dominance of yanggang martial arts films and the growing

masculinization of Hong Kong cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it is important

to keep in mind the continuing presence of films featuring sword-wielding and/or fist-

fighting heroines as protagonists. As is well-known, one of the distinctive features of

Hong Kong martial arts and action films has been, and continues to be, the prominence

given to the figure of the woman warrior. More than other film industries, Hong Kong

cinema has developed and sustained a vital tradition of powerful action heroines, whose

origin could be traced to the Shanghai martial arts films of the late 1920s and early

1930s.When the martial arts genre was revived in Hong Kong in the late 1940s, the

woman warrior figure was also given a new lease of life, and the next few decades

witnessed the appearance of numerous actresses—Yu Suqiu, Zheng Peipei, Hsu Feng,

Shangguan Lingfeng, among others—who captivated the viewers with their portrayals of

chivalric warriors marked by exceptional martial skills. Even with the rise of the kung fu

film in the early 1970s, a subgenre whose violent, intensely physical fighting style might

seem to put women at a disadvantage, the woman warrior tradition did not simply go

away. On the contrary, as the examples of Angela Mao Ying and Kara Hui clearly

demonstrated, there was no lack of tough female fighters in kung fu films—a trend that

would continue, in the 1980s, with the modern action thrillers featuring Michelle Yeoh

and Cynthia Yang.

There is no question that the woman warrior figure has played a significant role in

Hong Kong cinema, but what, one might ask, does this tell us about the gender dynamics

in Hong Kong martial arts/action movies and in the broader Hong Kong society as a

whole? At one level, the prominent position accorded to women warriors in Hong Kong

cinema serves to call attention toa long history of the nüxia (“female knight-errant”)

figure in traditional Chinese literature and culture, and her reincarnation in the cinematic

medium could be taken as a mere continuation of these well-established representations.

While there is some truth to this view, especially giventhat the nüxiapian, or films

featuring leading female knight-errant character(s), are often adapted from past legends,

folk tales, and literary works,1

the fact remains that the screen incarnationsof the nüxia

and other female fighting figures display certain unique characteristics that need tobe

considered in their own terms. For instance, the cinema as an audiovisual medium, with

its intrinsic (and ever-growing) power of representation, has given the woman warrior an

immediacy and intensity that renders her all the more powerful as a figure of

identification. Moreover, the time frames in which the cinematic nüxia flourished—late

1920s Shanghai; postwar Hong Kong, especially in the 1960s and 1970s—were key

periods of Chinese modernity in which the socio- economic conditions of women

underwent profound changes. In the case of Hong Kong, these transformations

manifested themselves in various aspects, including higher education attainment, growing

job opportunities, as well as increasing financial independence and thus freedom from

family interests on one hand, and intensifying struggles with traditional roles and

responsibilities on the other. The divergent and often incompatible forces confronting

Hong Kong women put them in a conflicting position between independence and duty,

freedom and constraint; a position, as we will see shortly, also shared by numerous

women warriors in Hong Kong cinema at the time. While this clash—or uneasy

coexistence at least—between transgressive self-determination and adherence to

traditional (patriarchal) norms had distinguished the Chinese woman warrior from the

outset, it took on particular resonance and spoke to the complex experiences of women,

especially those of the younger generation, in modern Hong Kong.

My goal in this chapter is to critically examine, against the context of women‟s

rising social position and changing self-identities, the representations of swordswomen

and female kung fu fighters in late 1960s and early 1970s Hong Kong films. How are we

to understand the juncture between these tough fighting heroines on screen and the

process of redefinition and renegotiation operating in relation to gender roles and

expectations in society? Did the woman warrior offer, by virtue of her martial prowess

and her ability to destabilize gender boundaries, an empowering figure for women in a

more liberal society? Or was she merely a fantasy image conjured up by men in the

service of Confucian patriarchy? In taking a closer look at these questions—and many

others—I hope to highlight the social relevance and cultural significance of the woman

warrior figure in Hong Kong cinema and bring a more nuanced understanding of the

different, and often conflicting, meanings associated with her.

The Ambivalent Image of the Woman Warrior

For many Western viewers, what is notable and fascinating about Ang Lee‟s Crouching

Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) lies not only in its eye-catching and gravity-defying action

choreography, but also in its unique portrayal of powerful female characters who fight

men as equals. Despite their very different personalities, both the dutiful Yu Xiulian

(Michelle Yeoh) and the impetuous and rebellious Jen (Zhang Ziyi) share one thing in

common: extraordinary combat skills that give the characters a degree of strength and

toughness not generally associated with women. Yet those who are more familiar with

the Chinese-language martial arts genre would point out that such imposing female

characters are not something new, and that they represent only part of a long tradition of

cinematic nüxia that can be traced to the late 1920s, to the martial arts film craze in early

Shanghai cinema. As pointed out by Zhang Zhen and Weihong Bao, films featuring a

nüxia protagonist, which drew on both American serial-queen adventures and the more

traditional forms of Chinese culture, constituted a major subgenre in early Shanghai

martial arts cinema. In these nüxia films, the heroines are typically endowed with

amazing bodily techniques, such as flying or leaping over walls or across chasms, that

enable them to assume the role of avenger for an unjust death in the family and/or

guardian of a community under external threat. In embodying technologized freedom,

social autonomy, and even transcendence, these nüxia figures offer the viewer an

empowering image of a modern woman that poses, potentially at least, a challenge to

gender representation within the symbolic order.2

The woman warrior figure has also established a major position in Hong Kong

martial arts films from the beginning. One of the first female action stars emerging in

Hong Kong was Yu Suqiu, who appeared in numerous low-budget Cantonese swordplay

movies throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.3

Yet it was arguably the Shaw Brothers

studio, with its trend of “new school” martial arts films, that established a new image of

the female knight-errant and turned the nüxia figure into a cultural icon around the mid-

1960s. Apart from King Hu‟s Come Drink with Me (1966), which I will analyze more

closely in the next section, another early example of this trend was Temple of the Red

Lotus (Xu Zenghong, 1965). The film consciously drew on the Burningof the Red Lotus

Temple series in late 1920s Shanghai and was notable not only for its portrayal of a

swordswoman (Ivy Ling Po) with outstanding martial skills, but also for its depiction of a

righteous family in which all the female members are highly accomplished fighters. The

overt presence of powerful female characters remained a characteristic feature of many

Shaw Brothers martial arts films, a trend that was only gradually weakened in the late

1960s and early 1970s, when the yanggang trend popularized by the films of Chang

Cheh, Bruce Lee, and others steered the local cinema into a more distinctly male-oriented

direction. Even then the woman warrior figure did not simply disappear; in the midst of

Bruce Lee, Wang Yu, and other male action stars was, for example, Angela Mao Ying,

who starred in a host of classic kung fu films, including Lady Whirlwind (1972) and

Hapkido (1972).

From a larger historical perspective, we can also identify a number of literary and

theatrical predecessors to the many woman warrior characters in Shanghai and Hong

Kong cinema. One famous example is Hua Mulan, a filial daughter who dresses as a man

and joins the army in place of her ailing father, fighting numerous battles alongside male

comrades for many years before returning home.4

Other examples abound, notably Nie

Yinniang and Hong Xian in Tang chuanqi (prose romances), the women generals of the

Yang family, and He Yufeng/Thirteenth Sister in the Qing novel Ernü yingxiong zhuan

(A Tale of Heroic Lovers). On the surface, this proliferation of formidable women

warriors may invite a kind of feminist interpretation in which discourses on female

empowerment and liberation take precedence. And it is indeed not uncommon for these

fighting heroines to be perceived as taboo-breaking figures who pose a subtle

intervention into stereotyped gender representations. For instance, countless reinventions

and re-imaginings of the Mulan story over the centuries, in a wide variety of genres such

as drama, novels, movies, and TV sitcoms, have established the legendary woman-

turned-warrior as a cultural icon and a figure of empowerment for numerous Chinese

girls and women. Among those who were inspired by Mulan‟s martial exploits was the

renowned Chinese-American writer, Maxine Hong Kingston: in her semi-

autobiographical novel, The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,

Kingston recounts her childhood fantasy of living the life of Fa Mu Lan—yet another

version of the Mulan legend, albeit a significantly modified one that also incorporates the

stories of other Chinese warriors, both male and female. What we find in this retelling is

an elaborate portrayal of a hybrid woman warrior figure who, in fighting not only for her

family but also for her village, her country, and for all women, offers a heroic model for

Kingston in her endeavor to create a new Asian-American feminist identity.5

In many ways, however, the progressive connotations of the nüxia figure are more

apparent than real, subordinated ultimately to the Confucian moral codes of filial piety

and chastity and thus to the traditional role as daughter-wife. For instance, it has been

pointed out that the various recountings of the Mulan story, including the most recent and

culturally most diverse ones, are not primarily stories of female empowerment but rather

“tales of domestication.” This return to domesticity is not only reflected in the trope of

“homecoming” and the conventional familial bliss that greets Mulan‟s arrival home; it is

also signaled by the tendency, shared by most, if not all, versions of the story, to conclude

with Mulan‟s resumption of her feminine self—the shedding of her male disguise and an

almost voyeuristic attention to her (renewed) womanly appearance as well as her now-

revealed beauty.6

A similar subordination of female agency and subjectivity can also be

observed in the dichotomous characterization that marks the character of He Yufeng inA

Tale of Heroic Lovers. On the one hand, the heroine, as Thirteenth Sister, is a wandering

nüxia who abides by the xia codes of righteousness and chivalry and who is set to bring

justice to her wrongly accused father. Although her embrace of knight-errantry may be

seen as being motivated by the code of filial piety, it at least makes her a model of

courage and heroism that challenges the conventional expectations of women as meek

and submissive. But once the injustice done to her father is avenged, the raison d’etre for

her unorthodox way of life is no longer there, and it comes hardly as a surprise that she

ends up fulfilling the role of a virtuous wife. As Sufen Sophia Lai explains the shift

succinctly:

Before her marriage, Thirteenth Sister‟s chivalrous character and unusual

deeds were defined within the principles prescribed for knights-errant; she was

allowed to transgress the gender boundaries set up by Confucian orthodoxy. From

a patriarchal viewpoint, once her father‟s unjust death was avenged and her

mother deceased, the heroine no longer had any acceptable reason to continue her

chivalry. Therefore, her alternatives besides marriage were a nunnery or death,

both of which she considered. We may say thatthe choice of marriage is a

symbolic death of the woman warrior, whose domestication transforms her back

into the role dictated by Confucian doctrine.7

Likewise, in his study of cross-dressing in Chinese opera, Siu Leung Li contends that the

theatrical representation of the woman warrior figure, while unique in its widespread

presence in the general repertoire, “is repeatedly imbued with layers of gender politics...

in which womanas the Other is often subordinated in one form or another.”8

The

disruptive force accorded to the woman warrior is said to be constantly undercut by the

Confucian value of filial piety (for the family) or loyalty (for both the husband and the

country), or simply by the notion that the female fighter is merely a substitute for the

male, as man‟s complementary opposite. This, Li suggests, reflects a persistent attempt to

reassert control on the part of the threatened male subject. In other words, rather than a

subversive figure who poses a stern challenge to patriarchal authority, the woman warrior

represents more a symptom of male fears about the rise of female power—andis thus

often reduced and represented, in a primarily male discourse, as “a potential same-to-be,

a yet-not-the-same.” However, for all the strategies of control and discipline, Li is quick

to point out their limits, arguing that the normative regulatory ideal can never complete

its materialization of “sex” through reiteration of regulatory norms. The recurrent

subjugation of women warriorsin Chinese opera—as well as in Chinese fiction and drama

—is as much a sign of the necessary incompleteness of patriarchal control as a reflection

of its power. What emerges from this view is thus a more complex image of the woman

warrior figure; an image which, with its dialectic of empowerment and subjugation, is

capable of causing a fissure in the discursive space and calling into question the

hegemonic patriarchal norms.9

The ambivalent image historically embodied by the woman warrior is precisely

what has enabled this iconic cultural figure to be reinterpreted and reinvented in different

times and places and ensured her repeated appearance over the centuries. Just as the

traditional nüxia figures, in both literary and theatrical forms, are marked with multiple

meanings pertaining to the specific gender politics in premodern China, the women

warriors in Hong Kong martial arts films are also complex cultural representations

shaped and controlled by diverse forces. From an institutional perspective, the changing

viewer demographics of Hong Kong cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s

represented one such force: with the introduction of free broadcast television in 1967, a

sizable number of older viewers were lured away from the big screen and turned to

television to watch serial dramas and re-runs of old Cantonese films. Paralleling this

trend was the rise of a new generation of young audiences born after the war, who not

only had an insatiable appetite for sensory stimulation but were also more liberal toward

issues related to gender and sexuality. In such a context, it is only natural to assume that a

different kind of film would emerge to meet the demands of this new, and increasingly

crucial, audience constituency. Films featuring youthful, independent-minded, hard-

fighting women warriors represented a particularly intriguing example, although it is

important not to discount the traditional, less progressive aspects that continued to shape

and constrain these female characters.

More broadly, it is also possible—necessary indeed—to link the representations

of women warriors in the martial arts genre to the contending gender discourses

associated with a rapidly developing modern society. As Hong Kong went through an

intense process of industrialization and modernization in the 1960s and 1970s, the social

and economic advances that marked the development of the city in turn brought

important changes to the ways in which women‟s roles and identities were redefined. On

the one hand, with Hong Kong‟s rapid growth in manufacturing, there were increasing

job opportunities because of escalating demand for labor, which createda context for

women‟s greater participation in the labor force. According to statistics, labor force

participation rate for women had jumped from 36.8% in 1961 to 42.8% in 1971 and

49.5% in 1981.10

More importantly, not only did women achieve more visibility in the

labor force, but they also played a critical role in the economic success story of Hong

Kong. Just like the situation of China today, the rapid rise of Hong Kong as an export-

oriented manufacturing center was to a large extent accomplished by the backstage labor

of underpaid female factory workers. Therefore, rather than being a mere symptom or

effect of modernity, women should be seen as a principal cause for its development.

While most of these women laborers were factory workers who had to toil away in

obscurity, there were also, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, growing numbers of

successful career women in society to foster the perception that the social status of

women was indeed changing.

At the same time, as an increasingly modern and Westernized society under

colonial rule, Hong Kong started embracing more liberal ideas that destabilized and

subverted, at least partially, the patriarchal norms and practices of traditional Chinese

society. Polygamy, for instance, was officially abolished in 1971, while the policy of six-

year compulsory education (first introducedin 1971 and extended to nine years in 1978)

facilitated higher education attainment for women. Another sign (and consequence) of a

more liberal social climate involving questions of gender and sexuality was the

proliferation of new images of women in the realm of mass culture. On the one hand, the

period witnessed the rise of numerous middle-brow women‟s magazines, such as STYLE

Hongkong and Femina Hong Kong, which actively promoted the image of an

independent, professionally successful woman as a symbol of emancipation and an icon

of modernity.11

At a more grassroots level, a new female image could also be observed

in the trend of women-oriented comic books that emerged in the mid-1960s. Epitomizing

this trend was 13-Dot, the first major comic in Hong Kong created by a woman illustrator

(Lee Wai-chun) and targeted especially at female readers. Its title character, loosely

modeled on Richie Rich in the famous American comic of the same name, is the teenage

daughter of a millionaire. She is pretty and compassionate, has an acute sense of fashion,

and uses her immense family fortune to bankroll wild adventures, to learn skills such as

bullfighting and ballet dancing, and for charity. In creating a female character who is not

only chic and trendy but also has a strongly independent and adventurous spirit, 13- Dot

helped generate and disseminate a modern, Westernized image of femininity to many

young women in Hong Kong.12

As one of the most popular forms of mass entertainment at the time, the cinema

provideda site where the new female images associated with the burgeoning urban-

industrial modernity of Hong Kong were most clearly seen. As early as the late 1950s and

early 1960s, Motion Picture and General Investment Co. Ltd., then one of the leading

studios in Hong Kong Mandarin cinema, turned out a host of films that explored

women‟s complex relationship with modernity, focusing in particular on the trope of

“crossing borders”—not only geographical borders but also social, moral, and emotional

ones.13

The normally conservative Cantonese cinema also made a concerted effort, from

the mid-1960s on, to modernize its representations of women; in doing so, it brought to

prominence a new generation of female stars—most famously Chan Po-chu and Siao

Fong- fong, who captivated the (predominantly young female) audience with their fresh

and fashionable appearance, their diverse talents (dancing, singing, kung fu fighting), as

well as their portrayalsof independent-minded women taking the lead in opposing

injustice, striving for free love, and/or challenging social and traditional moral barriers.

Two genres in particular attested to these visualizations of strong, self-determining

female figures in Cantonese cinema. On the one hand, the second half of the 1960s saw

the rise of the “youth film” (qingchun pian), a popular genre whose major themes

revolved around the modern trappings of youth culture (dance halls, clubs, bars, Western

fashions, rock ‟n‟ roll music, and even sex and drugs) and the problems associated with

modernized but alienated youths caught in a society in flux. In its attempt to capture the

thoughts and actions of young people in a rapidly modernizing Hong Kong, the youth

film put into circulation images of a new generation of men and particularly women who,

driven by their youthful estrangement and sensationalism, were not afraid to express their

frustration and enjoy the freedom of youth.14

Another example, one that has a closer

connection to the martial arts film and its representation of the woman warrior figure,

involves what Sam Ho calls the “Jane Bond” film. First introduced around the mid-

1960s, this unique genre was for the most part modeled after the imported James Bond

films and centered on an action heroine who is smart and intelligent and whose

exceptional fighting skills enable herto overpower male opponents. It was precisely this

fantasy of physical and intellectual superiority that made Jane Bond such a gratifying

figure for women audiences at the time, many of whom were taking advantage of Hong

Kong‟s economic development and enjoying a level of freedom and confidence hitherto

unfound in the city.15

To this list of unconventional and potentially subversive female figures one must

also add the female knight-errant and other woman warrior types central to the martial

arts genre. Although such female fighters had been a regular fixture in Hong Kong

cinema since the late 1940s, they took on enhanced prominence from the mid-1960s on,

embodying a distinctly “modern” image— physically active, bold and independent in

spirit, and full of youthful energy—that mirrored the shifting identities and aspirations of

many Hong Kong women of the younger generation. This, at least, was part of the

popular discourses disseminated at the time. For instance, a film columnist expressed

dissatisfaction with the ways women were typically depicted as weak and dependant in

Hollywood films. Hong Kong movies, by contrast, were deemed superior as they often

featured female characters who could confront powerful enemies head-on and did not

have to depend onmen.16

This idea of the woman warrior as an icon of female

empowerment has continued to shape the views of many recent critics. Augusta Lee

Palmer and Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, for example, have argued that popular genres such as

the action film often reveal an unexpected complexity in terms of their portrayals of

women and are in many ways “more permeable to a renewed vision of gender than

supposedly progressive and postmodern art films.”17

Similarly, in her book-length study

of Yuen Woo-ping‟s Wing Chun (1993), Sasha Vojkoic explains how the proliferation of

commanding women warriors in Hong Kong martial arts and action films reflects the

influence of the more egalitarian gender imaginary in Daoist and Buddhist thoughts and

undercuts the mode of thinking propounded by dominant patriarchal structures.18

Yet these apparent changes in the socioeconomic roles and popular cultural

representations of women need to be examined more carefully. Critics, for instance, have

frequently cautioned against an overly simplistic view on the social impact of Hong

Kong‟s accelerated development on women. The mere fact that more and more women

became paid laborers and were engagedin extra-domestic work does not necessarily mean

that they were “emancipated.” On the contrary, there is ample proof that women

continued to be disadvantaged and marginalized—both in pay and in job segregation—

not to mention the fact that they also tended to occupy, whether as wives or as daughters,

a subordinate position at homes.19

There were many reasons for this persisting inequity

in gender relations; one of them had to do with the lasting effect of traditional Chinese

patriarchy in modern Hong Kong. Given that a large portion of Hong Kong population at

the time consisted of recently arrived immigrants, many of whom were originally from

rural China, it is hardly surprising that they were still strongly attached to traditional

Chinese morality, of which patriarchal familism represented a key element. The

importance of family in social and economic lives was further abetted by the particular

political economy of Hong Kong at the time, namelya colonial-capitalist system which,

with its stiff competitiveness and impersonality as well as lack of social welfare, tended

to throw people back on the family as a shelter. Thus, as Janet Salaff and others have

shown, most working women in modern industrial Hong Kong, before marriage, lived

with their families and contributed most of their earnings to them—not only to help with

general household expanses but also to meet the personal needs (such as educational

expanses) of other, usually male, family members. Also, being daughters, they were not

usually given much say in family decisions and had to carry the double burden of paid

employment and housework— a situation that would often continue even after they got

married, that is, if they did not have to give up working for the sake of house-keeping

and/or childrearing.20

Similarly, there is also a more complex dimension to the new, modern images of

women disseminated in the realm of popular culture. The socially symbolic meanings

that emanated from these images might serve to contradict the dominant patriarchal order

and entailed the need for its adjustment and even reversal, but they could also support and

reinforce it, thereby turning into its ideological vindication. This ambivalence was

particularly borne out by the woman warrior figure in the martial arts genre. Despite her

fighting ability and independent spirit that could be taken as subversive of conventional

gender attributes to a female subject, the woman warrior was not in a position to totally

disregard roles of devoted daughter and wife, and to entirely reverse the prevalent

perceptions of women as inferior to and dependent on men. At the same time, the image

of a physically and mentally tough female fighter, while entailing an ability to exert

power and autonomy, was in many ways a mere copy of dominant masculinity that

continued to serve as a symbol of omnipotence and authority. Responding to and

participating in the heterogeneous gender and sexual ideologies connected to Hong

Kong‟s modern industrial society, the woman warrior reflected an amalgamation of

ideas, desires, and values that both enhanced and obstructed the possibility of new

becomings. To clarify and substantiate my argument, I will explore more closely in the

next section the varied meanings contained in such female fighting figures, using as

examples some of the films featuring Zheng Peipei, one of the most famous female action

starsin late 1960s Hong Kong cinema.

Desperately Seeking Difference: The Female Masculinity of Women Warriors

Zheng Peipei, who is best known in the West for her portrayal of the evil Jade

Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was one of Hong Kong cinema‟s most

important female action icons in the second half of the 1960s. Lauded as “Queen of

Martial Arts” (wuxia wanghou) by local media, Zheng starred in more than a dozen

martial arts films from 1966 to 1970, before getting married and leaving Hong Kong for

the United States. Upon her return in 1973, she joined Golden Harvest and took part in a

couple of kung fu films—including Kung Fu Girl (Lo Wei, 1973), which will be

discussed in more detail later in this section.

The film that propelled Zheng to fame was Come Drink with Me (King Hu,

1966), one of seven films that launched the so-called “wuxia offensive” of Shaw Brothers

—that is, the studio‟s ambitious effort to establish a new Chinese action cinema in the

mid-1960s. In the film, Zheng plays Golden Swallow, a highly skilled swordswoman

dispatched by the Governor—her father— to rescue her captured brother from a band of

outlaws led by Jade-Faced Tiger (Chen Honglie). The character impresses not only with

her youthful energy and confidence (Zheng was barely 20 when she made the film); even

more interesting are her near-fantastic feats of martial prowess, which are displayed early

on in the film. In the legendary scene at the tavern, Golden Swallow is shown to be

harassed by a group of unsavory thugs sent to negotiate with her about the releaseof her

brother. The scene is carefully shot, and the action perfectly choreographed, to emphasize

the outstanding martial skills of the female knight-errant. At one point, a goon hurls a

mass of coins at her, who deftly intercepts them with a mere chopstick. In order to depict

this remarkable feat in a credible way without diminishing its preternatural power, the

director relied on a very simple trick: we see, in a single continuous shot, Golden

Swallow move her hand swiftly in the air and then stick into the table a (prearranged)

chopstick with copious coins strung on it. That the whole action is depicted in one

unedited take, but at a speed too rapid for the viewer to register (and see through the

artifice) fully, is precisely what makes it appear both otherworldly powerful and

eminently believable.

But despite the awe-inspiring image embodied by Golden Swallow and the fact

that she is generally seen as the most intriguing character in the film, it does not mean

that she representsa simple celebration of women‟s power. On the contrary, there are

copious signs that her agency is constantly compromised and undermined. For one thing,

Golden Swallow is positioned in a very close relationship to the prevailing social and

patriarchal order symbolized by her Governor father, her deeds reflecting her position

both as his official agent (to bring the band of outlawsto justice) and as his daughter (to

rescue the captured brother). In this sense, it can be argued that she fights not so much for

women‟s freedom and independence as for the perpetuation of men‟s authority and

power. This re-inscription of male dominance is further reinforced by a narrative

structure in which the focus changes abruptly, at about midway in the film, from Golden

Swallow to the drunkard beggar Fan Dabei, the film‟s male protagonist played by Yue

Hua. Even in the first half of the film, when it is Golden Swallow who seems to represent

the main narrative agent, Fan already serves as a sort of guardian angel to her, assisting

her and saving her whenever she is in danger. It is he, for instance, who tricks her away

from her room one night and secretly helps her avoid being ambushed. He also tips her

off to the whereabouts of the outlaws so that she is able to trace them down. As the

narrative continues to develop, Fan effectively takes over the role of the protagonist,

whereas Golden Swallow is relegated to a secondary position, acting merely as a foil to

his skills. This becomes particularly evident in the final battle with the renegade monk

Liao Kong (Yang Zhiqing): not only does Fan rescue a defeated Golden Swallow, but he

is also the only one who possesses the skills needed to defeat Liao.

The turning point that marks this shift of narrative focus occurs in the scene where

Golden Swallow, under the guise of a young maiden going to pray, penetrates a temple

and battles the outlaws who have held her brother hostage. During the brawl she is

wounded by a poisoned dart; she barely escapes but is too weak to go any further. At one

particularly symptomatic moment, we see the exhausted heroine gradually lose

consciousness, which is represented cinematically by a swirling point of view shot that

seeks to put into images her subjective sensation of dizziness and disorientation before

she collapses altogether. A similar scenario can also be found moments later, after the

female knight-errant is rescued by Fan and taken to his mountain retreat. As the heroine,

irritated by Fan‟s mocking remarks about her impulsive nature, decides to leave without

completely recovering from her injuries, a series of subjective shots showing various

distorted images—an alternately in and out of focus landscape; the water of a stream

changing to a weirdly greenish color—are again used to signify her frail conditions. In

both cases, the female knight- errant‟s diminished power is suggested by the negation of

her normal vision—a not insignificant fact if we take into consideration the subtle little

shift of gaze, which may be seen as a sign of heightened alertness and mental focus, that

has distinguished the heroine in combat situations. In endowing the female knight-errant

with this vigilant gaze and ultimately dispossessing her of it, Come Drink with Me seems

to raise and underline a recurrent argument in feminist film criticism, which is that the

woman as subject of the gaze is an impossible sign that needs to be controlled and

contained.

This ultimate taming of the woman warrior was not something unique to Come

Drink with Me and could be observed in many other martial arts films at the time. Take,

for example, The Golden Sword (Lo Wei, 1969), one of numerous films that saw Zheng

Peipei cast as a leading female knight-errant character. In the film, Zheng plays the role

of a dirt-smeared, cross-dressing vagabond who is endowed with exceptional martial

skills and belongs to a group of chivalrous beggars—a collection of Robin Hood types—

whose mission is to steal from the rich and give to the poor. This, at least, is how the

character is portrayed in the beginning, before she meets the swordsman Bai Yulong

(Gao Yuan) and eventually falls in love with him. After they get married, the once free-

spirited and formidable woman warrior is transformed into an obedient wife who drops

out of view for long stretches in the second half of the film. In other cases, the characters

portrayed by Zheng are not even particularly skilled fighters who can act on their own or

at least form an equal partnership with the male heroes. Rather, the narrative would

constantly seek to contain them by stressing their dependency on men and reinforcing

their inferiority. In The Flying Dagger (Chang Cheh, 1969), for instance, Zheng‟s

character—a young swordswoman who has incurred the wrath of the Green Dragon

Clan‟s powerful leader by killing his villainous son—has to be saved repeatedly by the

film‟s male hero, with whom she also has a romantic relationship. Another revealing

example is The Golden Swallow (Chang Cheh, 1967). Ironically, in spite ofthe film‟s

title, which refers to the same female knight-errant character played by Zheng in Come

Drink with Me, the focus is for the most part shifted away from her. Indeed, as a mere

romantic object for the film‟s two male protagonists, the heroine is reduced to a major

but passive narrative figure—a figure to be fought over rather than actively fighting.

While woman warrior characters continued to appear during the late 1960s and

early 1970s, there is no doubt that their position became more and more marginalized

amid an increasingly male-dominated Hong Kong cinema, a trend best epitomized by the

rise of yanggang martial arts films associated with Chang Cheh and Bruce Lee. It was in

many ways the domination of this “macho” trend in the local cinema, and the lack of

opportunities for actresses as a result, that led to Zheng‟s decision to quit the film

industry in 1971. She made a comeback with Kung Fu Girl in 1973, but despite the

leading role she was given in the film—a role that was consistently active in the narrative

and provided the actress with abundant opportunities to showcase her physical skills—

there was also a sense that the powerfully transgressive image embodied by the character

was nothing but an illusion, that the action heroine was simply a copy of her male

counterpart.It is this critical position that I want to explore further below.

The story of Kung Fu Girl is set in the tumultuous period of mid-1910s China,

when Yuan Shikai, the President of the Chinese Republic, was to ratify a treaty that

would give away partsof northern China to Japan‟s control. This shameful act of

appeasement met with fierce resistance and provoked many people to come out publicly

against Yuan. In the film, Zheng Peipei plays Xiaoying, a patriotic woman warrior who

volunteers to join a group of revolutionaries and helps them find the whereabouts of their

incarcerated leader Cai. To achieve her mission, Xiaoying poses as the long-separated

sister of Captain Lei (Ou Wei), who works under Commissioner Wu (played by the

director Lo Wei himself) and was responsible for making the arrest of Cai (and other

dissenters). The impersonation plan works in the beginning, with Xiaoying gaining

valuable intelligence and helping to thwart Lei‟s attempt to attack the revolutionaries‟

hideout. Her true identity, however, is eventually discovered, and she has no choice but to

fight her way out, even at the cost of her own life, to save Cai. While Kung Fu Girl

presents a strong female character who fully commands the narrative and is able to fight

in hand-to-hand combat better than her (mainly male) opponents, this does not

necessarily entail a subversion of traditional gender boundaries and definitions. Made at a

time when kung fu films dominated the local and regional markets and Bruce Lee had

attracted a huge following both at home and abroad, Kung Fu Girl was no doubt

conceived as a project seekingto capitalize on the widespread popularity of the genre as

well as the charismatic action star. More specifically, there are in the film numerous

references to Fist of Fury (1972), an enormous box office success also directed by Lo

Wei and produced by Golden Harvest. A clear, if generalized, example of such

intertextual referencing lies in the anti-Japanese nationalism that pervaded and

characterized both films: just as Fist of Fury exploited the increasing anti-Japanese

sentiments of Hong Kong people at the time by depicting Bruce Lee as a formidable

Chinese hero who fights against evil Japanese opponents, Kung Fu Girl also followed a

similar approach in imagining and imaging a tough and larger-than-life woman warrior

against Japanese imperialist invaders (and their Chinese collaborators).

There are other, more specific connections between Kung Fu Girl and Fist of

Fury. Sets, for instance, are often reused and recycled, as when the backroom and garden

of Hongkou Dojo, in which Bruce Lee (as Chen Zhen) fights the Russian wrestler and the

katana expert Suzuki near the end of Fist of Fury, are remade into the setting for the

climatic battle between Xiaoying and the Japanese consul Sano (Shishido Jo) in Kung Fu

Girl. The connections between the two films are further reinforced by the resemblances

that mark some of their action sequences. Just as Fist of Fury, at a key moment in the

fight between Lee and the Russian wrestler mentioned above, uses a kind of slow motion

ghosting effect to underscore Lee‟s quirky hand movements, Kung Fu Girl also resorts to

the same technique, the only difference being that Xiaoying is making motion with her

leg rather than with her fists. Other examples abound: an oft-mentioned image from Fist

of Fury, for instance, has Lee delivering a spectacular flying kick that sends Suzuki

soaring out of the room through a sliding shoji door. In a similar way, at the end of her

fight with Sano, Xiaoying also makes a leaping kick that bursts through a shoji door and

hits her Japanese opponent in his head, leaving him dead instantly.

Yet it is arguably in their respective endings that the most important similarities

between the two films can be found. As is well-known, the powerful last shot of Fist of

Fury shows a defiant Lee charging and making a flying kick at a line of armed Japanese

soldiers. The particular setup of the shot, with the camera placed in the position of the

firing squad (and thus directly in front of Lee), is clearly devised to bring out, and to let

the viewer better experience more forcefully, the audacity of Lee‟s character as he meets

his death head-on. The shot ends with a freeze-frame of Lee suspended in mid-air, with

the ricocheting sound of gunshots hinting at the ultimate fate of the hero. In halting the

flow of time and thus liberating the hero from a splintered death, the freeze- frame

functions as a symbol of defiance and even transcendence, elevating the image of death

to an allegorical sign. Similarly, the ending of Kung Fu Girl is also staged and shot in

such a way that accentuates a sense of death-defying determination in Xiaoying‟s

sacrifice: after the heroine has killed Sano and succeeded in freeing Cai, she finds herself

surrounded by a squadron of law enforcers armed with rifles and guns. The rest of the

scene alternates shots of a fearless Xiaoying walking defiantly toward Commissioner Wu

and the armed officers, and images of the latter as seen from her perspective. Gunshots

are heard, and despite the painful expressions on Xiaoying‟s face, the heroine refuses to

go down. As throbbing music swells in the soundtrack, the film cuts to an extreme long

shot of Xiaoying still standing firmly, the only sign of her tragic destiny being the

crimson color (symbolizing blood) dripping down from the top of the image. While

perhaps not as overtly dramatic as the corresponding moment in Fist of Fury, the ending

of Kung Fu Girl evokes a similar effort to allegorize death and to provide a symbolic

space in which one is able to witness a process of regeneration through violence.

In a sense, there is nothing extraordinary about these acts of copying and

imitation, which reflect in many ways the derivative nature of popular filmmaking—that

is, the tendency to repeat, with minor variations, what has been proven as commercially

successful. This strategy may be seen throughout the history of mainstream cinema and

commercial entertainment: as the films of James Bond became international hits during

the 1960s, for instance, there emerged a plethoraof film and TV imitations that featured

both male and female secret agents with Bond-like skills and accessories.21

The same

pattern also manifested itself in Hong Kong cinema, as witnessedby the appearance of

many so-called “Chinese James Bonds” (like Zhang Chong and Tang Jing) and the rise of

the “Jane Bond” figure noted above. From this perspective, it comes hardly as a surprise

that when the kung fu films of Bruce Lee were going strong in the beginning of the

1970s, filmmakers would start exploring the possibility of a tough female fighter.

According to this line of thought, it is not simply Kung Fu Girl that can be seen as copied

from Fist of Fury. More specifically, the hard-fighting female warrior played by Zheng

Peipeiin the film is also best understood as a duplicate or virtual image of Bruce Lee (and

other kung fu heroes); a “spillover,” as Kwai-cheung Lo terms it, of the excessive

masculinity that pervaded Hong Kong cinema from the early 1970s on. Conceiving the

woman warrior as a mere imitation, however, does not necessarily entail a sense of

falsehood or inferiority. A better way to look at Zheng‟s character, and other women

fighters in Hong Kong cinema, is that they embody what Lo refers to as “female

masculinity”: a case of masculinity without men; a complex gender identity capable of

simultaneously reinforcing and transgressing the patriarchal norms from within.22

On the

one hand, by assuming the function as central protagonist in the action narrative and

taking on qualities (such as strength, activity, and toughness) historically associated with

men, the figure of the woman warrior seems to pose a challenge to the prevailing gender

structure in which the terms “male” and “masculine” are inextricably linked together.

Furthermore, it is not exclusively the connection between masculinity and men that is

affected; the masculine mask worn by the woman warrior could also destabilize

conventional gender schemas assigned to a female subject and produce multiple

potentialities out of which new forms of female image and identity can be actualized.

Despite, or rather because of, the gap that splits up what a woman is supposed to be in

real life—a daddy‟s girl; a dutiful and submissive wife or attractive girlfriend—from the

image of a bold, transgressive woman warrior on the screen, it is possible to read this

contradiction “in a subversive sense of tension” in which the female fighter is not just a

copy-image but “possesses an actual efficiency of its own that sets in motion the process

of re-articulation of sexual relations by way of its politicization.”23

Yet it can also be argued that far from about empowering women, the image of a

masculine woman warrior only serves to strengthen the hegemonic meanings of

masculinity, which is still regarded as the norm, the defining standard for justifying and

legitimizing the principles of inter- and intra-sexual hierarchy and subordination. In the

words of Lo:

Multiplying/pluralizing masculinity in different alternative versions, even by inventing

“female masculinity” for women... would never really pose a significant challenge to the

established notion that is fundamentally left unquestioned. Indeed, multiplicity or

pluralization only helps make the ideology of masculinity stronger and more powerful,

turning it into a stable origin or foundation exempted from any radical deconstruction. A

gay masculine female, by the standards of the patriarchal norm, is far less intimidating

and repulsive than a straight feminized male because the former differs little from the

mainstream notion of masculinity. 24

Put otherwise, in spite of the dissociation between social constructions of masculine

identity and biological maleness, the ideology of masculinity remains at stake for sexual

politics because it can convey symbolic values and thus becomes a target which different

groups, including women, seek to appropriate and redefine for their own purposes.

Even more than Zheng‟s previous swordplay movies, Kung Fu Girl seems to epitomize

this notion of female masculinity, for as a kung fu film it requires the female protagonist

to take ona more “masculine” fighting style—a violent, hard-edged style of unarmed

combat concentrating on power and force. I have noted above Zheng‟s imitation of the

famous flying kick associated with Bruce Lee; more generally, we can also see her

involved in many demanding sparring scenes, all of which highlight contact fighting and

accentuate the body as a lethal weapon. This female appropriation of a

masculine/muscular fighting style has the effect of undermining the essential relationship

between codes of masculinity and femininity and their respective sexes, thus creating a

symbolic space where the traditional gender boundary is increasingly blurry and flexible.

Onthe other hand, the masculinized woman warrior, defined through her aggressive,

Bruce Lee-style kung fu fighting, could also serve to sustain and reinforce the dominance

of violent masculinity by perpetuating it as a measure of hierarchy and differentiation.

At this juncture, however, I want to take a step back and sound a cautionary note

against overemphasizing the masculine aspects of the martial arts action in Kung Fu Girl

and losing sight of its equally vital feminine dimension. It is noteworthy in this regard

that Hong Kong martial arts films have long tended to emphasize agility and acrobatic

skills over sheer muscular power. This is particularly true with the wuxia or swordplay

films of King Hu, which are known for their deep affinities with Peking opera (and other

classical Chinese arts such as landscape painting).As the director himself noted, “I have

no knowledge of kung fu whatsoever. My action scenes... come from the stylized combat

of Peking opera. In fact, it‟s dance.”25

Conceptualizing cinematic martial arts not as

“real” fights or combats but rather as dance—a subtle choreography of body movement

based on the performing style of Beijing Opera and the rhythm and beat of its score—

allows for a certain amount of feminine sensuality to the action sequences and transforms

them into sublime spectacles of the human body in motion comparable to musical

numbers at their best. This probably explains why Hu showed a strong interest in the

female knight-errant figure and granted her a key position in many of his films,

particularly Come Drink with Me and A Touch of Zen (1970-71). What attracted him

was precisely the grace and beauty, the sensual physicality, which an actress could better

bring to the action scenes.26

While this feminine, dance-like nature of cinematic martial arts is most clearly

manifested in the swordplay movie, it is a characteristic that has also marked the kung fu

film, despite the predominant perception of the latter as a genre being identified with

violence and aggression. This is precisely what Yvonne Tasker suggests when she argues

that the martial arts film, by which she means primarily the kung fu subgenre, has to do

as much with the graceful sensuality of bodily movement as with the violence of the

body. She is quick to point out, however, that this notionof sensual physicality does not

entail the feminization of the martial arts hero. Rather, what she wants to emphasize is

the idea of cinematic martial arts as a “feminized art form,” that the martial arts

performance in film, as with dance, “offers the possibility of occupying a feminine

position that involves... an explicit location of the male body on display.”27

In this sense,

the redefinition of the martial arts genre from swordplay to kung fu might result in a more

masculine/muscular approach to combat and action, but the shift was by no means

absolute and the feminine grace and sensuality of the martial arts “dance” remained

essential to the kung fu film. In Kung Fu Girl, this dance-like choreography can be seen

at work not only in the rhythmic structure, derived in part from Peking Opera, oscillating

between swift and powerful strikes and graceful pauses.28

It is also evident in the way

the film (twice) depicts, in elegant slow motion, Xiaoying doing a mid- air somersault

reminiscent of theatrical acrobatics in her battle with Sano. It is precisely moments like

these that call attention to the feminine tropes associated with the film‟s martial arts

action and forces us to rethink its complex gender meanings.

Another manifestation of female masculinity, in Kung Fu Girl as in many other

Hong Kong martial arts films, involves the practice of female cross-dressing or

transvestism. When Golden Swallow first appears and turns up at the inn near the

beginning of Come Drink with Me, she is dressed as a man and is (mis)recognized as

such by the other characters. In King Hu‟s Dragon Inn (1967), we find a similarly cross-

dressed heroine (Shangguan Lingfeng), who maintains a male appearance throughout the

film. This, it should be pointed out, is not something to which the film gives much

emphasis. On the contrary, the notion of cross-dressing seems so taken for granted that it

requires no special attention—except for a brief moment when Xiao Shaozi (Shi Jun),

who alongside a band of patriotic warriors is fighting to protect the children of an

unjustly executed minister, accidentally discovers the heroine‟s true gender identity and

seems visibly surprised by it. In the case of Kung Fu Girl, the adoption of male dress

serves a special pragmatic function: as Xiaoying overhears Captain Lei‟s plan to launch

an attack on the revolutionaries, she slips into the guise of a coal seller so that she can,

without anybody recognizing her, go to the rebels and pass on the news to them.

From a historical perspective, it is evident that this cross-dressing tradition in

Hong Kong martial arts cinema, and in such genres as huangmei diao and Cantonese

opera films, is rooted in a long history of female transvestism in Chinese theatrical acts.

In fact, the first fully developed Chinese theater, which emerged during the Yuan

Dynasty (1271-1368), favored female players and frequently had them cross-dress to

impersonate male characters. According to Siu Leung Li, the alien rule of the Mongols

during the Yuan period, whose intrusion into Han-Chinese culture had at least partially

and temporarily suspended the hegemony of orthodox Confucian ideologies, was key to

the formulation of a Chinese theater whose performing conventions became deviant

exceptions in the theaters of subsequent periods. The fall of the Yuan Dynasty and the

restoration of orthodox Confucian values during the Ming and Qing periods resulted in

more conservative ideologies regarding gender and sexuality. In the theater, we see a

reinforcement of hierarchical sexual ordering in two closely connected practices: the

male monopoly of the public stage and the restriction of female performers to the private

sphere; and the prohibition of mixing players of different sexes in any performance

context. Paradoxically, however, it was to a large extent this desire to separate the two

sexes that brought about a female transvestite theater, in the form of the all-female

private troupe, that radically problematized rather than created stabilized sexual and

gender boundaries. The tradition of female players and female cross-dressing eventually

returned to the public stage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—a period

when the social position of women was fundamentally redefined within a rapidly

changing modern society; since then, it has assumed an increasingly important role, as

attested to by the success and popularity of the (almost) all-female regional Yueju opera

in our times.29

For Li, female cross-dressing in Chinese theater, by virtue of its ability to effect a

crossing and mixing up of genders, has always represented a destabilizing and even

subversive force ina patriarchal society. The transvestite acts of the women warriors in

Hong Kong martial arts films also show a similarly transgressive potential in

accentuating the malleability and perfomativityof gender, especially when we consider

these acts as part of a larger trend of gender (and identity) play. In Come Drink with Me,

there is a particularly revealing example where Golden Swallow, dressed as a young

maiden, goes to a Buddhist temple and tries to save her kidnapped brother. At the film‟s

diegetic level, when the woman warrior appears in female dress following her initial

disguise as a male swordsman, she is also apparently “cross-dressing,” performing with

the aid of overtly feminine costume an “artificial” identity which is in fact her own. This

“reverse” cross- dressing can be interpreted in two different ways. On the one hand, as I

have already indicated above, the scene at the temple marks the point in the film‟s

narrative where Golden Swallow gets hurt and loses her function as a narrative subject—

a function which she is never able to regain even after she has entirely recovered from her

injuries. In other words, it is exactly at the moment when the woman warrior resumes her

female identity that her power over the events is lost and displaced to her male

counterpart.

Yet a different reading is also possible. The fact that Golden Swallow is able to

shift her “sexes” and takes on both a masculine and a feminine mask with ease suggests a

certain negation of a rigidly conceived gender system and serves to denaturalize and thus

destabilize the notions of masculinity and femininity as essential, God-given categories.

It is often noted that women are more inclined than men to cross gender boundaries, and

that sexual mobility is a distinguishing feature of femininity in its cultural construction.

But instead of considering this a sign of women‟s inferior status in society, which

presumably makes it easier, and advantageous, for them to slip into the disguise of men

and assume the position of the other (and more powerful) sex, we should perhaps see this

fluidity as revealing a performative understanding of gender, a conception that

understands gender as mutable in its very performance.30

This discourse of gender

performance is exactly what we see manifested in Golden Swallow, in the way she

performs both the masculine and the feminine in order to achieve specific goals, in

accordance to the needs of the situations. Femininity and masculinity in this context, just

like female and male clothing, can be “put on” or “taken off” at will, independent of the

corresponding sexes. In this sense, the performed gender identities of the swordswoman

—fluid, nonessential, and tactically chosen—entail an undermining of the binary gender

structure and help to generate, through that destabilization, a more flexible system within

the imaginary space of the cinema.

More generally, this performative play with gender may be understood as part of a

broader phenomenon of role-playing, of assuming roles with very different traits and

characteristics. A good case in point is The Flying Red Rose (1967), where the Jane Bond

character played by Siao Fong-fong appears in ten different masquerades—a feat heavily

promoted in advertisements as well as in other publicity materials. Similarly, in Lau Kar-

leung‟s My Young Auntie (1981), Kara Hui plays a young kung fu heroine who assumes

a range of different roles at various points of the film: in the beginning, she is a dutiful

martial arts student who marries her ailing master so as to prevent the latter‟s family

fortune from falling into the hands of his wicked younger brother. In doing so, she

assumes the unlikely position of the family‟s matriarch, an “elder” figure to her master‟s

beloved nephew (played by Lau Kar-lueng himself), who is actually old enough to be her

father. At the same time, despite her revered position in the family and her largely

traditional outlook, there is also a more adventurous and mischievous side to Hui‟s

character. Mocked by her westernized grandnephew as a country bumpkin, the young

matriarch goes through a radical makeover and transforms herself, however awkwardly,

into a sexy, modern-looking woman in heels and a body-fitting qipao dress; she even puts

on a bubbly blonde wig and impersonates an eighteenth-century princess during a

masquerade party. Added to all these roles—family head, country bumpkin, modern girl,

and sex symbol—is, not surprisingly, that of a woman warrior, a nüxia in the traditional

unisex “martial arts” dress.

For film critics and moviegoers, this ability to play multiple roles, including

gender-crossing ones, is often taken as evidence of a talented performer.31

On a broader

level, it also constitutesa sign, as does cross-dressing, that shows one‟s identity is not

fixed or immutable. Such emphasis on multiple and flexible identities can be seen as

revealing the needs of women, in Hong Kongas in many places, to appear as different

persons in different situations, a necessity demanded by a modern society in the grip of

conflicting values, pulling in separate directions at the same time. The changing personas

could also feed fantasies of hidden sophistication: when Golden Swallow appears as a

young woman and goes to the bandits‟ hideout in the Buddhist temple, the overtly

feminine appearance, with its connotations of fragility and delicateness, in fact masks a

powerful woman warrior who can fight for what she wants and conquer all obstacles. On

the other hand, we see in My Young Auntie the generally tough and tradition-minded

heroine transform herself into a seductive modern girl who attracts many male admirers;

and even with her skin-tight outfit, she is still able to fight them off. These examples are

clearly reflective of a widespread fantasy, shared by copious factory girls and other

aspiring female workers in Hong Kong, that a woman often holds more promise than her

mere façade suggests, and that beneath the surface appearance frequently lies a more

gifted and versatile being.

Masquerade Politics: Performative Femininity and Gender Play

Female masculinity, as I tried to show above, provides a useful framework for

understanding the woman warrior figure in Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Yet it is also

clear from the previous discussion that this notion of the woman warrior as a copy or

imitation of her male counterpart is more complex than is generally noted and should be

taken with caution. For example, the shift toward an increasingly violent and muscular

combat style, a shift particularly evident in the kung fu film, was in many ways

incomplete and went hand in hand with a more feminine conception of cinematic martial

arts as dance. Also, the significance of female transvestism, the tendency of female

warriors to cross-dress as male fighters, lies not so much in the identification with male

authority as in the performative power of gender play—an idea that encompasses not

only female cross-dressing or gender swapping but also a range of other gender

performances.

One such form of gender performance, one that seems to be at the opposite end of

female masculinity discussed above, involves the practice of masquerade. In the essay

“Womanliness as a Masquerade,” Joan Riviere presents a case study of an American

businesswoman who, after virtuoso public performances, was compelled to coquettishly

engage male colleagues. From this, Riviere puts forth a theory of masquerade, which

refers to the propensity of a woman to flaunt her femininity, producing herself as an

excess of femininity in order to mask the possession of masculinity and to staff off

reprisals of her appropriation of masculine power. In Riviere‟s theory, then, masquerade

constitutes a norm of femininity, but a curious one that indicates through its very

contradictions the difficulty of any concept of femininity in a patriarchal society.

Femininity functions only as a disguise designed to cover up the woman‟s appropriation

of masculinity; a deception designed to placate a potentially vengeful father figure.32

Within the context of a rapidly modernizing and industrializing Hong Kong in the 1960s

and 1970s (and beyond), this idea of masquerade acquired a special significance. While

growing job opportunities, higher education attainment, and a more liberal social

environment enabled women to occupy more prominent social and economic roles, there

were still many longstanding prejudices and stereotypes that forced them into particular

acts of role-playing. As Hong Kong sociologist Benjamin K. P. Leung suggests, career

women in Hong Kong were frequently “forced to play and reconcile contradictory roles.

On the one hand, they had to prove themselves worthy of the position of authority; on the

other, to make life easy for themselves, they were obliged to live up to men‟s

expectations that women are soft, gentle, and vulnerable. To resolve the dilemma, many

chose to rely on feminine charm.”33

Similar to the businesswoman examined by Riviere,

the intentional display of femininity here functions first and foremost as a reaction-

formation; an anxiety-ridden compensatory gesture that makes femininity dependent

upon masculinity for its very definition and existence.

Drawing on Riviere‟s ideas but taking them into a markedly different direction,

Mary Ann Doane conceives masquerade not simply as a compensation for the assumption

of a masculine position but more importantly as a mask that has the effect of

defamiliarizing traditional images of women and disarticulating male systems of

viewing.34

This idea of feminine masquerade is clearly embodied in the figure of the

femme fatale, who often flaunts her femininity and plays out her sex for particular gains,

evading and even subverting the law in the process. Such a female figure, while adhering

to patriarchally defined attributes of femininity such as sexual appeal and the quality of

“to-be-looked-at-ness,” also defamiliarizes these same qualities by turning them into a

threat, a source of active feminine strength. As a form of gender play, masquerade is not

as recuperable as transvestism, which can be readily understood as a means of gaining

power and mastery, on the part of the woman subject and in a world marked by sexual

inequality, through the simulation and assumption of a male identity. Masquerade, by

contrast, remains in many ways a mystery because it is not clear why, given the

problematic status of the female sex in a man‟s world, a woman would want to wear a

feminine mask and foreground her feminine features. One possible answer appears to be

this: in conceptualizing femininity as a mask that can be worn or removed, the

masquerade hints at the lack of a feminine essence and thereby engenders a critical

distance from which to engage with the idea of womanliness itself.

For Doane, the ability of the masquerade to generate a distance from a fixed,

essentialized femininity, especially one stipulated as closeness and proximity itself, has

radical implications for a consideration of female spectatorship. Unlike Laura Mulvey,

who has famously defined the structure of the gaze in mainstream cinema as

characterized by an active-male/passive-female dichotomy,35

Doane suggests a different

way of conceiving the screen-spectator relationship, one that is based on the opposition

between proximity and distance. More specifically, she invokes Christian Metz and Noël

Burch and argues that a distance between the film and the spectator is the essential

precondition for voyeuristic desire in the cinema. For the female spectator, however, this

necessary distance or gap is missing because of a certain “over-presence” of the woman‟s

image (larger than life, glamorous, objectified and fetishized) in the cinema. Added to

this is the pervasive tendency, among many feminist theorists, to identify a feminine

specificity in terms of closeness and presence-to-itself. Such recurrent elaboration and

positioning of femininity as proximity and presence has important consequences for

conceptualizing female spectatorship: the female spectator, deprived of the distance so

crucial in structures of seeing and the visible, can only be the subject of the gaze by

adopting a masculine position in relation to the cinematic sign; or she can identify so

closely with the image that she finds herself in a masochistic position of

overidentification. Not satisfied with both these scenarios, Doane sees the promise of

masquerade precisely in its potential to recover that missing distance from the image. “To

masquerade,” as she argues, “is to manufacture a lack in the form of a certain distance

between oneself and one‟s image”; the conception of femininity as masquerade thus

attributes to the woman the distance, the alienation needed for an alternative mode of

looking.36

…

1 To take two prominent examples, King Hu‟s masterpiece, A Touch of Zen (1969), is adapted from the

story “Xianü” (“Chivalrous Lady”) collected in Pu Songling‟s Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange Stories from a

Chinese Studio), whereasThe 14 Amazons (Cheng Gang, 1972), which features a predominantly female

cast, draws its materials mostly from the famous legend—and its countless retellings and reinventions—

about the Yang family women generals of the Northern Song Dynasty.

2 See Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896-1937 (Chicago and

London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 226-35; Weihong Bao, “From Pearl White to White Rose

Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927- 1931,” Camera Obscura 20,

no. 3 (2005): 193-231.

3 It is worth mentioning that Yu‟s father, Yu Zhanyuan, was the founder of the famous China Drama

Academy and Beijing opera teacher of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, among others.

4 Derived from history or legend of a northern non-Chinese people, the Mulan story found its first written

form in a poem known as “Mulan shi” (“The Poem of Mulan”), which is believed to date from the late Six

Dynasties or early Tang period.

5 Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (New York: A.

Knopf, 1976), chapter 2.

6 For a more detailed discussion on this Confucian/patriarchal ideology operating in the Mulan story, see

Joseph R. Allen, “Dressing and Undressing the Chinese Woman Warrior,” Positions 4, no. 2 (Fall 1996):

343-79.

7 Sufen Sophia Lai, “From Cross-Dressing Daughter to Lady Knight-Errant: The Origin and Evolution of

Chinese Woman Warriors,” in Presence and Presentation: Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition, ed.

Sherry J. Mou (New York: St. Martin‟s Press, 1999), p. 102.

8 Siu Leung Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), p. 89.

9 Ibid., pp. 106-7.

10 Thomas W. P. Wong, “Women and Work: Opportunities and Experiences,” in Women in Hong Kong,

ed. Veronica Pearson and Benjamin K. P. Leung (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 50.

11 One major way in which the magazines disseminated these new female images was through their regular

profiles and interviews with successful career women in Hong Kong. Among the women featured included

the managing director of a local advertising agency; a young fashion designer who received her training in

London and started her own boutique in Hong Kong; and a one-time actress who became Director of

Asian-American Cultural Affairs in Los Angeles.

12 Wendy Siuyi Wong: Hong Kong Comics (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), pp. 77; 83.

Apart from 13-Dot, there were also a host of other comic books that reflected the rapidly shifting images of

women at the time. They included Sweet and Gentle, Miss Silly, and Ms. Carefree, the last of which

features a sexy female protagonist strongly influenced by imported television programs such as Charlie’s

Angels.

13 For a discussion on this idea of border-crossing and its relationship to the modern situation of women,

see Mary Wong, “Women Who Cross Borders: MP & GI‟s Modernity Programme,” in The Cathay Story,

ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), pp. 162-75.

14 On this genre of “youth film” and its socio-cultural context, see Poshek Fu, “The 1960s: Modernity,

Youth Culture, and Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity,

ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 71-89.

15 See Sam Ho, “Licensed to Kick Men: The Jane Bond Films,” in The Restless Breed: Cantonese Stars in

the Sixties, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: The Urban Council, 1996), pp. 40-6. It is important to note that the

Jane Bond film was not exclusively a product of Cantonese cinema. Shaw Brothers, at about the same time,

also produced a number of female espionage and spy films featuring Lin Tsui or Lily Ho, although these

efforts never quite caught fire and were put into the shadow by the studio‟s growing focus on the martial

arts genre.

16 Chai Wawa, “Yintan ruozhe” [The weaklings of the silver screen], Yinhe huabao 208 (August 1975):

60.

17 Augusta Lee Palmer and Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, “Of Executioners and Courtesans: The Performance of

Gender in Hong Kong Cinema of the 1990s,” in Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in

Transcultural Asia, ed. Jenny Kwok Wah Lau (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2003), p. 204.

18 Sasha Vojkovic, Yuen Woo Ping‟s Wing Chun (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp.

1-21.

19 On the persistent subordinate position of women in modern industrial Hong Kong, see Wong, “Women

and Work: Opportunities and Experiences,” pp. 47-73.

20 See Janet Salaff, Working Daughters of Hong Kong: Filial Piety or Power in the Family? (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1995).

21 Examples of film and TV imitations of the James Bond movie franchise included Licensed to Kill

(1965) and the film series featuring the superspy character Matt Helm, as well as TV series such as I Spy

(1965-68) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68). Female detectives or spies who directly imitated the

Bond ideology of a sexy, dynamic, and independent professional included, among others, the title character

of Honey West (1965-66), Agent 99 in Get Smart (1965-69), and April Dancer in The Girl from

U.N.C.L.E. (1966-67).

22 Kwai-cheung Lo, “Fighting Female Masculinity: Women Warriros and Their Foreignness in Hong

Kong Action Cinema,” in Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong (Hong

Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), pp. 137-54, esp. pp. 137-44. Also see Lo, “Copies of Copies in

Hollywood and Hong Kong Cinemas: Rethinking the Woman-Warrior Figures,” in Hong Kong Film,

Hollywood, and the New Global Cinema: No Film Is an Island, ed. Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam

(London and New York, Routledge, 2007), pp. 126-36.

23

Lo, “Copies of Copies in Hollywood and Hong Kong Cinemas,” p. 130.

24 Lo, “Fighting Female Masculinity,” p. 138.

25 See Koichi Yamada and Koyo Udagawa, A Touch of King Hu, translated into Chinese by Li He and Ma

Sung-chi (Hong Kong: Zhengwen she, 1998), p. 68. The English translation is mine.

26 This is perhaps why Zheng Peipei was chosen to star in Come Drink with Me in the first place, for

Zheng had been trained in ballet for six years and displayed a nimbleness and agility crucial to the kind of

martial arts performance required by Hu. More generally, it is also noteworthy that a training background

in dancing also distinguished many later female action stars, from Angela Mao and Kara Hui to Michelle

Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi.

27 Yvonne Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema,” in

Race and the Subject of Masculinities, ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel (Durham and London:

Duke University Press, 1997), p. 320.

28 According to David Bordwell, this rhythmic, “pause-burst-pause” structure is a pattern of staging and

filming action scenes characteristic of Hong Kong action films. See Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular

Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 221-31.

29 Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera, pp. 40-64; 191-97. 184

30 It is important to point out that the notions of gender performativity and gender performance as I am

using them here differ in significant ways from those conceived by Judith Butler in her book Gender

Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990). Whereas

Butler seeks to limit the agency of the subject by emphasizing the discursive production of gender through

reiterated acting, and by locating the subversive potential of gender performance not in the individual‟s

will but in the unintended effects that expose the failure of the dominant discourse to ever fully legislate its

ideals, my approach gives a greater role to the individual‟s power to perform or play with genders in a

conscious way.

31 For her dazzling performance in My Young Auntie, for instance, Kara Hui was awarded Best Actress at

the first Hong Kong Film Awards.

32 Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” in Psychoanalysis and Woman: A Reader, ed. Shelley

Saguaro (New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 70-8. The essay was originally published in

1929.

33 Benjamin K. P. Leung, “Women and Social Change,” in Women in Hong Kong, p. 34.

34 Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” Screen 23, nos. 3-4

(September- October, 1982): 74-87.

35 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn, 1975): 6-18. 189