Iron and Silk

Mark Salzman is an American writer. After college he went to China. He had two aims. One was to study wu shu. The art is better known in the west as kung fu. The other was to teach English. What he lived there became a book. The film was adapted from that book. Salzman plays himself in it. He had no training as an actor. His teacher Pan Qingfu plays himself as well. Pan said nobody else could take the part. What Salzman lived through happened in Changsha, in Hunan. The film, though, was shot in Hangzhou, in Zhejiang. Vivian Wu and Hangcheng Dong appear in the ninety two minute film, a Japanese and American production Shirley Sun finished in 1991.