A Touch of Zen

A Touch of Zen
Film poster
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	俠女
Simplified Chinese	侠女
Literal meaning	Chivalrous woman
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xiá Nǚ
Directed by	King Hu
Written by	King Hu
Produced by	Hsia Wu Ling-fung
Starring	Hsu Feng Shih Chun Bai Ying Tien Peng Roy Chiao
Cinematography	Hua Hui-ying
Edited by	King Hu Wing Chin-chen
Music by	Wu Ta-chiang Lo Ming-tao
Production companies	Union Film International Film Production
Distributed by	Union Film (Taiwan) Golden Harvest (HK)
Release dates	10 July 1970 (1970-07-10) (Part 1, Taiwan) 18 November 1971 (1971-11-18) (Part 2)
Running time	180 minutes
Countries	Taiwan Hong Kong
Language	Mandarin
Box office	HK$678,321 (Hong Kong)

A Touch of Zen (Chinese: 俠女; pinyin: Xiá Nǚ; lit. 'Chivalrous woman') is a two-part wuxia film written, co-edited and directed by King Hu, originally released in 1970 and 1971. Its screenplay is based on a classic Chinese story "Xianü" in the book Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling. The film is set in the Ming dynasty under the dominance of eunuchs and explores a variety of themes including the transcendence of dichotomies, Zen Buddhism, feminism, conservative female roles, and the ghost story.

The film was produced in Taiwan and funded by the Union Film Company. Because the director Hu was a filmmaker in the Shaw Brothers Studio before moving to Taiwan, the emergence of the film established the international visibility of the Hong Kong New Wave. At the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, the film was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won the Technical Grand Prize award, the second-ever Chinese-language film to win an award at the festival.

Although filming began in 1968, A Touch of Zen was not fully completed until 1971. The original Taiwanese release was in two parts in 1970 and 1971 (filming was still ongoing when the first part was released) with the bamboo forest sequence that concludes Part 1 reprised at the beginning of Part 2; this version has a combined runtime of 200 minutes. In November 1971, both parts of the film were combined into one for the Hong Kong market with a runtime of 187 minutes.

In 2014, hosted by the male lead Shih Chun and funded by the female lead Hsu Feng, the film's 4K restoration project was initiated. The restored version film, with a total runtime of 2 hours and 59 minutes, was re-screened in the "Cannes Classics"section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot

In a remote mountain village in Ming China, Gu Sheng-zhai is a well-meaning but unambitious scholar and painter, with a tendency towards being clumsy and ineffectual. A stranger, Ouyang Nian, arrives in town and agrees to his portrait painted by Gu, but his real objective is to bring a female fugitive back to the city for execution on behalf of the East Chamber guards. The fugitive, Yang Hui-zhen, is befriended by Gu, and together they plot against the corrupt Eunuch Wei who wants to eradicate all trace of her family after her father attempts to warn the Emperor of the eunuch's corruption. His daughter fled, with generals Shi and Lu. The saintly and powerful Chan Buddhist Abbot Hui Yuan intervened to protect them, and they spend two years at his monastery where he teaches them self defence.

Ouyang, Yang and her friends are all superior warriors. Ouyang has a special flexible sword that bends and that he can wear within his belt, making him seem unarmed.

Gu has sex with Yang. Upon doing so, he is no longer the naïve bumbling innocent, but instead becomes confident and assertive, and when Yang's plight is revealed, he insists on being part of it – and even comes up with a fiendish "Ghost Trap" for the East Chamber guards. Ouyang is killed in a fight in a bamboo forest, and they use his signature seal to lure the East Chamber guards into the trap. This is a plan to use a supposedly haunted site to play tricks on the guards to make them believe they are prey to the undead. General Lu dies in the "Ghost Trap" battle.

In the aftermath, Gu walks through the carnage laughing at the ingenuity of his plan until the true cost of human life dawns upon him. He sees Abbot Hui and his followers arrive to help bury the dead.

After the battle, Gu is unable to find Yang, who he is told has left him and does not want him to follow her. He tracks her down at the monastery of Abbot Hui, where she has given birth to a child by Gu and become a nun. She tells Gu that their destiny together has ended and gives Gu their child. Later, when Gu and the child are tracked down by Xu Xian-Chen, the evil commander of Eunuch Wei's army, Yang and General Shi come to Gu's rescue. Abbot Hui and four of his monks also arrive to fight Xu. After Xu fakes repentance in order to surprise attack Abbot Hui, a battle begins in which Xu is killed and Yang, Shi, and Abbot Hui are all badly injured (the latter bleeding golden blood).

The film ends with the injured Yang staggering toward a silhouetted figure, presumably Abbot Hui, seen meditating with the setting sun forming a halo around his head, an image suggesting the Buddha and enlightenment.

Cast

• Hsu Feng as Yang Hui-zhen (楊惠貞), the main protagonist, a female knight-errant.
• Shih Chun as Gu Sheng-zhai (顧省齋), a scholar and painter who later becomes involved in Jianghu.
• Roy Chiao as Abbot Hui-yuan (慧圓), a Chan monk
• Bai Ying as General Shi Wen-qiao (石問樵), who assists Yang to escape when disguising as a blind person
• Xue Han as General Lu Ding-an (魯定庵), who protects Yang when disguising as a doctor of Traditional Chinese medicine
• Tien Peng as Ouyang Nian (歐陽年) who works for the Eastern Depot
• Cao Jian as Xu Zheng-qing (徐正清), local magistrate
• Zhang Bing-yu as Sheng-zhai's mother
• Wang Rui as Men Da (門達)
• Miao Tien as Nie Qiu (臬逑), one of Mun Ta's advisors
• Han Ying-chieh as Chief Commander Xu Xian-chun (許顯純)
• Wan Zhong-shan as Lu Qiang (魯強)
• Jia Lushi as Yang Lian, Yang Hui-zhen's father
• Cheung Wen-men as Tao Lung
• Liu Chu and Gao Ming as the Magistrate's men

Notable stunt actors who appeared in the film included Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Lam Ching-ying and Chan Wui-ngai.

Origin from Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio)

The plot of this film is adapted from the short story "Xia nü" (The Heroic Maid) in Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio). The original story's title also serves as the film's Chinese name. The original story roughly tells of a poor but talented scholar named Gu who lived in Jinling. Unwilling to leave his elderly mother, he made a living selling calligraphy and paintings, and was yet to marry at twenty-five. A mother and daughter moved in across the street. The old lady was deaf; her daughter, eighteen or nineteen, was strikingly beautiful but stern. Seeing their poverty and the girl's filial devotion, Gu's mother proposed marriage, suggesting the families live as one. The deaf mother agreed, but the girl remained silent and seemed unwilling.

Learning that the girl's family had run out of grain, Gu's mother had him take them some rice. The girl accepted the rice without thanks. Afterward, she often came to help at Gu's house, acting much like a daughter-in-law would, yet she remained cold throughout.

When Gu's mother developed painful sores, the girl tirelessly cared for her and was unbothered by the mess. The mother was deeply moved and said she wished for a daughter-in-law like her. The girl comforted her, praising Gu's filial devotion, but the mother worried about having an heir. When Gu entered, his mother urged him to repay the girl's kindness. But she responded that they were merely caring for each other's mothers, so thanks weren't needed.

One day, as the girl returned home, she smiled radiantly at Gu. He followed her inside, and they lay together. Afterward, she warned him, "Only this once." When he tried to be intimate again, she turned cold.

Several months later, the girl's mother died. Gu helped arrange the funeral. The girl was now alone in her house, but Gu's attempts at intimacy failed. A few days later, in his mother's room, the girl told Gu she was eight months pregnant. She declared that due to her unusual identity, the child would be raised by Gu's family after birth. They must tell others it was adopted and never mention her. Though puzzled, Gu's mother was overjoyed at the prospect of a grandchild and made preparations as the girl instructed.

Over a month later, the girl gave birth to a son. A few days after that, deep in the night, she arrived carrying a leather bag to bid farewell. She explained she had joined with Gu to repay his kindness in caring for her mother (not for the intimacy), and because he was too poor to marry, she had given him an heir to continue his lineage. Now, her great vengeance was complete, and her purpose fulfilled. The bag contained the head of the man she had endured three years to kill to avenge her father (a former Sima who had been framed, leading to their family's ruin). She urged Gu to raise their son well, telling him that, while he himself was short-lived and of modest fortune, their son would become great. With that, she vanished into the darkness like lightning.

As the girl foretold, Gu died three years later. His son passed the national examination as Jinshi at eighteen and cared for his grandmother until her passing.

Production

Adaptation

King Hu was heavily inspired by the original story of Xia Nü from Liaozhai zhiyi ; however, the anthology was written by Pu Song-ling who was a poor and unaccomplished scholar and his literature frequently depicted his bitterness from failing imperial examinations. As a result, the screenplay took King Hu six months to write. He arranged the credit of Liaozhai Zhiyi as the first title card right after the company logo in the film, even before the film title. In Pu Songling's original story, the male scholar does not pursue being a knight-errant and the separation between wen and wu. However, the film modifies the character's attributes and instead leads the scholar to adapt knight-errant and restore the country from the corrupted dominance of the eunuchs.

Development

A Touch of Zen was shot in Taiwan by King Hu and was funded by Taiwanese production company Union Film Company. In his book on the film, Stephen Teo suggested that the film has roots in Hong Kong cinema, noting the bulk of both Taiwanese and Hong Kong actors and crew members. With Hu's idea of invoking traditional Chinese culture in his films, A Touch of Zen contains Beijing opera scores and references to Chinese poetry like Li Bai's well-known poem "Drinking Alone in the Moonlight".

The bamboo forest sword fight, a ten-minute confrontation, is said to have taken twenty-five days to shoot. It is choreographed by Han Yingjie, a former Beijing opera actor and the action director of A Touch of Zen. Hu explained proudly of the trial and error he went through in the creative process and concluded that he had put together many scenes in less than eight frames challenging the "golden rule" of cinema. Hu's commitment to the bamboo forest duel is further reflected in its formal construction, as the bamboo duel has been described as "a phenomenology of Zen Buddhism in cinematic terms," where rapid, disjunctive edits of bamboo, swords, and human forms are intercut with contemplative pauses.

King Hu wanted the film to have entirely authentic sets, props, and costumes, so he could achieve the supernatural theme. He played a large role in set design because the set designers didn’t completely understand his vision. In addition to this struggle, many scenes were shot out of sequence because the season in the script did not align with the current season when filming. Hu also did not have enough funding to thoroughly execute his vision and was forced to split A Touch of Zen into two parts by the publishing house after incurring high filming costs.

Cinematography

Director Hu adopted the classic techniques of montages, including eye-line matches and shot-reverse-shot. He also used jump cuts to create the speed of motions in action effects and applied blocked shots as his signature on evacuating the space before actions take place. Hu also creates "the glimpsing effect" (also called point-of-view shot) to provide a new perspective to audiences. "The glimpsing effect" allows the audience to see the perspective of Gu.

Music and Sound Design

The film's soundscape, crafted by Wu Da‑jiang (吳大江) and Lo Ming‑tao (羅明道), integrates traditional Beijing–opera percussion ("luogu") with ambient silence, enhancing the spiritual mood and dramatic tension. In his essay, Brian Eggert emphasizes that "percussive rhythms give dancelike physicality to swordfights, while deep reverberating strings accompany the Zen monk characters," creating a musical structure that parallels Hu's cinematic editing rhythms. Scholar Eggert notes this alignment of sound and movement reflects Hu's ambition to "utilize film language" by treating combat as visual music.

Themes

Transcendence of dichotomies

The function of knight-errantry alludes to civic values (wen) and martial conducts (wu) in the discourse, arising reflections of experiences and justice beyond dichotomies between wen and wu, good and evil. The director Hu develops an individual perspective of what nation is and transcends the limited dialectics of a totalitarian regime versus a more benevolent government.

Zen Buddhism

The theme of Buddhism is in opposition to Confucianism and offers the ideas of transcendence and redemption. Scholar James Steinstrage considers that the unambitious scholar Gu's involvement in Jianghu and the unexplained motivation of Yang Huizhen's sexual intercourse with Gu lead to absurdity and vacuity, which matches the concept of emptiness in Zen Buddhism. Paradoxically, the Zen ideologies are not profound in the film and the translated film title A Touch of Zen can be a marketing strategy to attract Western audiences and recall exoticism. On the other hand, film commentator Tony Rayns, in his commentary in Criterion Collection's home video release, considers the second half of the film involving Zen monks the origin of the title.

In Rayns' final analysis, A Touch of Zen is a sentient art object that comes from the singular mind of King Hu. As an audience, we appreciate the film because we engage with it as an object rather than emptying our minds of the object for Zen contemplation or meditation. A Touch of Zen is a masterful work and as such, it is unforgettable. Indeed, if Zen is to be understood as an experience that is both conscious and unconscious, the enigma inherent in A Touch of Zen can only be resolved by exposing oneself to the film more than once, followed perhaps by increased meditation. Such is the artistic irony of the work that, when we come out of the cinema (our return to the conscious world, so to speak), its final images of abstract conceits of truth and existence, reality and illusion, mind and matter, remain etched in the mind — and at the moment that we watched these images, they gave us the possibility of a Zen transcendental experience through cinema.

Feminism and conservative womanhood

The film presents Xia Nü Yang in the paradoxical image of female roles. She delivers a son to continue Gu's family line as a traditional mother and help fulfill Gu's filial piety, revealing the dominance of patriarchy in society. From a feminist perspective, she also has the initiative to end her relationship with Gu and reject the feudalistic values of women's obligation to men. This concept of feminism involves a split, between biological and psychic drives on the one hand and the law of the patriarchy on the other. Though Yang's actions are dependent on the law and invariably submit to it, her actions are also a sign of her discipline and courage in the execution of her feminist ideals.

The ghost story

Based on the fact that Director Hu's interests in a Chinese genre shengguai (which means gods and spirits), the haunted house as the setting and death traps jiguang suggest Gu's encounters and ally with the supernatural ghosts. The film adopts the motifs of "Liaozhai gothic", including the goldenrod and alarm system that alerts the unexpected visitors in the haunted house.

Scholarship and beauty

The film depicts the romantic relationships between a scholar, Gu, and a pretty female knight-errant, Yang, referring to the classic theme of scholar and beauty Caizijiaren in Chinese literature.

Reception

Box office

A Touch of Zen failed at the box-office when it was released in two parts in Taiwan in 1970 and 1971. The film only ran one week in the cinema and failed because of its themes of ambiguous sexuality and feminist sensibility. In 1971, the film again failed to receive recognition with its release in Hong Kong due to the overwhelming success of Bruce Lee's movie The Big Boss. The film grossed HK$678,320.9 in Hong Kong. It was not until the full three-hour version was revived for a screening at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival that A Touch of Zen gained wide attention.

Review and criticism

Gina Marchetti considers that the genre of the film as wuxia is a new emergence in the Hong Kong New Wave and writes, "although produced in Taiwan after Hu had left Hong Kong, the international accolades for this film brought the "new" cinema of Hong Kong much greater visibility, while providing an art house alternative to the enormous international popularity of Bruce Lee."

For the Criterion Collection author David Bordwell wrote, "The story is simple, but the treatment is complex. No Shaw film would have delayed the basic exposition so cunningly. And no Shaw film would have presented heroic swordplay through the eyes of a secondary character. Yet by building the plot around Gu, Hu creates a protagonist-as-witness."

Writing for the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, academic Héctor Rodríguez noted of the film, "In that film...the director's use of elliptical cuts, diegetic insert shots, and other strategies of visual fragmentation allows characters to float magically through the air across long distances, to reach impossibly high altitudes in a single superhuman leap, and to change direction miraculously in midair."

In his book, King Hu's A Touch of Zen, academic Stephen Teo wrote that, "this final reduction of the mythical female knight-errant figure into human status is meant to provoke us into a philosophical understanding of ourselves. The subject of Buddhist transcendence is Hu’s way of delivering the ultimate critique of the genre’s raison d’être which is the audience’s wish-fulfilment for heroes to save them from their own vulnerability."

In another journal, Teo builds upon this interpretation, arguing that the film's stylized violence is not designed for spectacle, but instead acts as a "mythical expression through which the legitimacy of power and authority is questioned". Specifically, he interprets Hui Yuan's final gesture, defeating Xu with a touch before transforming into Buddha, as "an exhortation to transcend [a] history of violence". Thus offering a philosophical and spiritual critique of mortal conflict.

In recent decades, A Touch of Zen has received renewed scholarly attention from East Asia. David Bordwell has praised its synthesis of opera choreography with cinematic form, stating that "no filmmaker has been more distinctive and exhilarating than King Hu" in adapting stylized movement into film form. Furthermore, the film is discussed as a landmark in Taiwan's art‑cinema movement, embodying national identity, classical aesthetics, and political resonance within the Mandarin‑language film industry.

Accolades

The film was awarded the Technical Grand Prize and nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. It became the second Chinese-language film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival and the first wuxia film to win at an international film festival.

At the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards various Asian film critics, filmmakers and actors voted for the top Chinese films from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. A Touch of Zen was listed at 9th place on the list. In 2011, the Tapei Golden Horse Film Festival had 122 industry professionals take part in the survey. The voters included film scholars, festival programmers, film directors, actors and producers to vote for the 100 Greatest Chinese-Language Films. A Touch of Zen was listed at 15th place on the list.

In 2021, The Daily Star ranked A Touch of Zen 4th on its list of the greatest short story adaptations, writing "Influencing future classics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, there is perhaps no greater film as influential and as underappreciated".

Home media

A Touch of Zen was released on DVD for the North American market on 10 December 2002, by Tai Seng Entertainment, with only King Hu's biography and filmography as extras. The film was also released on PAL DVD for the British market on 28 July 2003, by Optimum Releasing (now StudioCanal UK), as well as for the German market on 10 April 2008, by KSM GmbH as part of their "King Hu Collection". The film was released on PAL DVD in France on 1 September 2004, as simply Touch of Zen by Films sans Frontières (Films Without Borders), which has both French and English subtitles.

After the film's 4K restoration in 2015, the film's first Blu-ray release was by Eureka Entertainment for the Masters of Cinema series, released on 25 January 2016, for the British market, which also includes a DVD edition of the film. Both editions include a select scene commentary by critic Tony Rayns, the film's theatrical trailer, and newly translated English subtitles, as well as a 36-page booklet which features director King Hu's statement from the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, a 1975 interview with the director by Rayns, the short story the film was based on, eight characteristics of "the swordswoman" in King Hu's films, and archival images. A limited-edition version of the Blu-ray and DVD adds a 2012 documentary about King Hu and a new essay by filmmaker David Cairns.

On 19 July 2016, American home video company The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray and DVD using the same 4K restoration also used by the Masters of Cinema release. Both the Blu-ray and DVD include the 2012 documentary about King Hu, new interviews with the actors Hsu Feng and Shih Chun, filmmaker Ang Lee, and film scholar Tony Rayns, the theatrical 4K re-release trailer, and newly translated English subtitles, as well as a leaflet containing a new essay by film critic and theorist David Bordwell and King Hu's notes from the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. The new Blu-ray and DVD cover and interior poster (combined with the leaflet) was illustrated by Greg Ruth and designed by Eric Skillman.

External links

• A Touch of Zen at IMDb
• A Touch of Zen at the Hong Kong Movie DataBase
• A Touch of Zen at Rotten Tomatoes
• Ang Lee on King Hu - A Touch of Art - interview with Ang Lee about King Hu and his movie A Touch of Zen (video, 13:35 mins)