Kung Fu Fantasies and Imagined Identities

Abstract

We were already starting to melt at seven o’clock on a July morning in Shanghai. On the Pudong side of the river, in and around a metal warehouse complex adjacent to the ferry pier, the day’s filming was about to begin on Flatland, a kung fu television series set in Shanghai in the year 2010. Crewmembers sipped coffee and slowly set up. Everyone tried to preserve his or her energy as the blistering heat of Shanghai summer overtook the coolness of the morning air. Stanley Tong and I pushed hands a little next to one of the vans. Tong was a coproducer on this joint Chinese-Hong Kong-U.S. project. He was also one of the most famous stunt coordinators in the Hong Kong film industry, a former full-contact kickboxer, a long-time taijiquan practitioner, and the director of Jackie Chan’s first big hit in the United States, Rumble in the Bronx.

X

At the sight of the blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

—Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.