Once Upon a Time in China II

The second film in Tsui Hark's Wong Fei-hung series. Wong Fei-hung was a real person: a physician and martial artist of the late nineteenth century. The series places him at the centre of China's encounter with the West. Here Wong travels to Canton for a medical conference and is caught between two fires. On one side is the White Lotus sect, which wants everything foreign destroyed, the language, the medicine, the books, and feeds itself on superstition. On the other is the pressure of the foreigners and the local administration. Wong rejects both, and the political question sits exactly there: is there a third way between xenophobia and submission. Sun Yat-sen appears in the story; the revolutionary movement is only beginning. Jet Li plays Wong Fei-hung. Facing him is Donnie Yen, and their fight with wet cloth at the end is counted among the most watched sequences in Hong Kong action cinema. Yuen Woo-ping arranged the fights. One of the strongest links in the series for anyone who likes Hong Kong action and fight choreography. It is possible to start without the first film; the narrative largely closes on itself.