Cheng Pei Pei

[GeneChing]

See also CHENG PEI-PEI: Hong Kong's First Queen of Kung Fu Film (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=333)by Craig Reid


Forever Young and Restless: an interview with actress Cheng Pei-pei

Movie legend Cheng Pei-pei reminisces about her days at Shaw Brothers, working with director King Hu, and how she’s managed to stay a major figure in Chinese-language media.

by Brian Hu

Date Published: 05/12/2010

Born in Shanghai, made in Hong Kong, and matured in Los Angeles, Cheng Pei-pei has been, like those wandering heroines that brought her international fame, an adaptable drifter with a warrior’s tenacity. From her early years as Shaw Brothers’ up-and-coming star doing genre pictures, to her box-office breakthrough in King Hu’s 1966 Come Drink with Me, to her television work in Los Angeles, to her film comeback in Stephen Chow’s Flirting Scholar and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Cheng Pei-pei has managed to stay one of the most likeable and breathtaking stars in the Chinese-language world. And as she’d put it, her success has been a result of resolve against challenge -- and a good amount of luck. That her glowing smile still betrays that of a teen idol doesn’t hurt either.

Cheng Pei-pei’s life traces many of the turns of Chinese cinema in the past 50 years. She was among the generation reared by the powerhouse studio Shaw Brothers, became a young star during Hong Kong culture’s youth revolution of the late 1960s, left Hong Kong at a time when producers went independent and studios decentralized, and found work in television when the medium rose in regional and diasporic importance. And just as Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema began to nostalgically look backward in its appropriation of genres and themes, Cheng Pei-pei found some of her most memorable roles as an embodiment of Chinese cinema’s past glamour.

Today, Cheng Pei-pei is ready to pass on the torch to her children, including young stars Eugenia Yuan and Marsha Yuan. Cheng was in Los Angeles for the area premiere of Michael Aki’s Strangers (which stars Eugenia) at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, and for a special screening of Come Drink with Me at the University of Southern California. Asia Pacific Arts caught up with Cheng Pei-pei to talk about the world of Shaw Brothers from the perspective of somebody who rose from the studio’s training school to become one of Hong Kong cinema’s top box office draws.

Interview with Cheng Pei-pei (http://asiapacificarts.usc.edu/w_apa/showarticle.aspx?articleID=15155&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1)
April 30, 2010
Los Angeles, CA

Asia Pacific Arts: You arrived at Shaw Brothers in 1963?

Cheng Pei-pei: I signed a contract with Shaw Brothers in 1963. Before that, in 1962, I trained in Shaw Brothers’ Southern Drama Group for a whole year. So when we graduated, we signed a contract.

APA: What was the training school like?

CPP: It was not like a real school, but it was very serious, unlike some of the training schools now which are not serious at all. We had a lot of classes. All day on Saturday and Sunday. Five days of classes a week.

[GeneChing]

continued from previous post

APA: What kind of classes were there?

CPP: They taught us how to speak lines, how to act, how to move your body.

APA: Who were the teachers?

CPP: King [Hu] was one of the teachers as a guest. I don’t remember what he taught though. But sometimes directors and actors would come and teach when they had time. Ku Wen Chung was our principal. He was a famous actor and a director of Cantonese movies.

APA: I know Shaw Brothers sent a lot of actors and actresses to Japan to study. Did they bring Japanese teachers to the training school?

CPP: That’s a little bit different. First of all, they actually only sent a few to Japan. The first three were Chang Yen, Chin Ping, and Hsing Hui. I was in the second batch. They were really young at the time -- 13 or 14 -- so Shaw Brothers thought they would need some training in dancing and singing. I don’t know how long they were there -- maybe one of two years. I was in the second batch. After Come Drink with Me, King Hu wanted me to go with him to Taiwan for Dragon Inn. The thing is, though, that I couldn’t because I had signed a long contract. So the studio asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to go to Japan to train. At that time, I’d already done Hong Kong Nocturne so I had some contact with Japanese dancers and choreographers, so that’s why I wanted to go there. The company was very nice and asked who I wanted to bring with me, so I brought Ching Lee and my sister-in-law from Taiwan.

After that, I don’t think Shaw Brothers really brought people to Japan anymore. In the years after I married, Shaw Brothers become more like a factory. During my period at Shaw Brothers, the studio was still experimenting [with their actors], so it was much better. Later on, when I returned to Hong Kong to interview old actors for the Celestial Pictures documentaries on Shaw Brothers, I was surprised to find that many of them had to do seven movies at a time -- some as a main characters, some in smaller parts. They would do many costumes pictures at once, and they wouldn’t even have to change their hairstyles, they’d just run to the other sets to do another film. I never did that. The most I did was two at once. That was a lot, to me, already. When I did Come Drink with Me, I did another film at the same time -- Princess Iron Fan maybe. I remember King Hu gave me a special chair, because he knew I was tired from the other film, and so I could relax until it was time for me to shoot. I don’t understand how they could do seven movies at a time.

APA: Did the generation before you -- like the Lin Dai generation -- have to do so many films?

CPP: They did even fewer that we did. They were already big stars and made a lot of money. Twenty to fifty thousand dollars per film. That was a lot of money. We started from $400. Compared to them, it was very little. They became so big, so the company wanted new people, which is why we had the Southern Drama Group. So at that time, Shaw Brothers was very willing to give us parts or let us play leads. We had a lot of chances. It was very easy for us to get parts.

APA: Did you get to know the older actors and actresses?

CPP: Because I did The Lotus Lamp, I got to know Linda Lin Dai very well. I did some films with Peter Chen Hou, so I knew Peter and his wife [Loh Ti]. Ling Po was also around the same time. But we were too young for them. They thought we were little brats. I remember Yeh Feng’s husband of the time, Ling Yun, never talked to us. Years later, he told us they looked at us as so young. Of course, he was married to the prettiest of them all.

APA: You said that at the beginning, it was very easy for you to get roles because they were trying to build up the younger generation. I’ve been watching your films before Come Drink with Me and noticed that you did a lot of different kinds of films.

CPP: Right, they didn’t know which kinds of roles fit me, so before Come Drink with Me I had a lot of chances to do different kinds of movies like The Lotus Lamp. I did musicals, James Bond movies, and classical stories like Princess Iron Fan. They just wanted to try and see which one could be a hit for me. And it was Come Drink with Me which really hit the market.

APA: On the set of Come Drink with Me, did you feel like you had found your calling?

CPP: I’m not really sure. I was very surprised that I was doing martial arts because I was a dancer, which is quite different. Because I was a dancer, King Hu thought I could do martial arts. I didn’t know if I could do it or not, but I don’t succumb to adversity. I wanted to beat all the boys. If boys could do it, I could too. Maybe that’s a reason I pushed myself to do it. I remember the girls would hurt themselves when they practiced. Hsing Hui hurt her nose when Chin Han hit her. She said she wouldn’t do it anymore to protect her pretty nose. I didn’t care, and that’s another reason I was able to do martial arts movies. It was a success. It was a hit.

Run Run Shaw had wanted to burn the movie, because it was very different from other films in that period of Hong Kong movies. There were no nice costumes in it. At that time, nice costumes were colorful and flashy. The movie also didn’t have girls aside from me. In the end of the film, they put in ten girls because there weren’t enough girls in it. They actually shot two different endings. The other ending has King Hu and Peter Chen Hou as brothers who come to help me. Run Run thought it was a joke to use Chen Hou, who had never been in a serious movie. At that time, comedy and drama were separate and you couldn’t do both kinds of films at the same time. And so they cut that ending. The ending used now is actually the second ending.

APA: It seems like everyone knew there was something different about this movie, be it good or bad.

CPP: It was also different in the way they shot the fighting. We’d had martial arts for years, but it’d always been simply like the recording of martial arts on stage. King Hu used different angles and editing to make it more real. That was something they probably couldn’t accept. It was too new. But maybe because it was different, people loved it.

APA: So as an actor, was it confusing to work given these new techniques? Or did the director explain everything?

CPP: I was very young at that time. I just listened. I’m good at listening. I was very obedient. Whatever he said, I did. Because I did ballet, I could move however he wanted. He told me how to use my energy, because energy works differently in martial arts and in dance. He helped me a lot, though I think that this chance was given to me a little too early. If it had been later on, I would have been a better actor. When I watch Come Drink with Me, I only see King Hu, I don’t see myself. I only see the directions he gave to me. He was very short, and I’m very tall because I have long legs. He was always trying to get me to bend my legs lower. He would tell me to get as low as he could. He hated that I had long legs. He wanted my costumes to cover my legs. He said that long legs don’t show power.

APA: You’ve worked with a lot directors who made wuxia films. How did King Hu differ from Ho Meng-hua or Chang Cheh?

CPP: Actually the biggest difference is that the other directors didn’t direct the action parts; they had action directors. Even for Chang Cheh: Lau Kar-leung did everything. Chang Cheh was asleep. King was different. He created everything. [Action director] Han Ying-chieh just followed what he created. See the difference? He knew what he wanted. Maybe he couldn’t physically do it, so Han Ying-chieh did the physical parts. But King Hu’s the one who created all of the fighting. Ang Lee, even though Yuen Woo-ping was there, wanted to do it himself. That’s why I think Ang Lee and King Hu were similar. Ang Lee could have been like the other directors too, because Yuen Woo-ping was there and he had been working 30-40 years. When I did Come Drink with Me, he was there already! His father was in it, so he probably had a small part. But Ang Lee didn’t really listen to him. He thought, “Maybe you’re right, but why not try it my way?” He wanted to challenge him. I think that what King did was even more difficult, because he was the first one to do it. Nobody knew what it was going to look like when it came out. But he thought it was the right way.

[GeneChing]

continued from previous post

APA: How did King Hu compare with the other directors in non-action scenes -- like drama scenes?

CPP: The drama scenes were not that different. King very much followed history. He loved the Ming Dynasty, so he thought everything should be correct. Even the clothes, the materials, had to be like the Ming Dynasty. Now, nobody cares what dynasty it is; everything is the same. Not for King. He wanted everything. For instance, [in Come Drink with Me,] why were those two small knives in my boots? He knew that the character would have to hide it, because he knew that at the time, people couldn’t bring knives around in the open. So he knew of these kind of details of reality.

APA: Was he also interested in how a woman might act in the Ming Dynasty? Did he care about those kinds of details?

CPP: I think he was more concerned with the details of governance, and how people of different ranks dealt with each other. He never did any love stories. His personal life was like that, in that the love letters he wrote to girlfriends were not very expressive. There were no “I love you’s.” He thought those things were too personal. It’s actually very Chinese, like in Crouching Tiger, where Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh couldn’t even touch each other.

APA: Did you feel the same way about someone like Chang Cheh?

CPP: Chang Cheh was very different. Chang Cheh was actually very literate, but you couldn’t tell in his movies, though it shows in the lyrics he wrote for the “Alishan” song. Of his movies, Golden Swallow has the best writing. I can’t say he’s as literate as King Hu, but he was. It just doesn’t show in his movies.

APA: Why do you think that was?

CPP: He was more commercial. He was also very much a “man.” He wanted fighting that was ugly.

APA: If his films are so manly, how did he direct a female actor like yourself?

CPP: Well that’s why his films had no female actors at all.

APA: Except for you.

CPP: Yeah I had a big part. Although I’m pretty manly too. [laughs]

APA: Did he direct you as if you were a man?

CPP: No. He thought he knew women really well. He thought that if I did these roles, no man would want to marry me. He would tell me to have my hair down. And the way that he shot Wang Yu looking at me was very sweet. But usually girls were just there as girls.

APA: Some of his movies didn’t even have women in them.

CPP: There was no need. It was very different from King, who did a lot for women. I was very lucky. And that’s why I’m able to keep getting parts in movies like Flirting Scholar and Crouching Tiger. It’s as people say: to be a star or an actor means getting lucky. You have a chance, and you catch it. [My daughters] Marsha and Eugenia may be better actresses than me, but it’s too bad that they didn’t have my luck. Maybe one day, you never know.

APA: Can you say something about films like Ho Meng-hua’s The Jade Raksha?

CPP: Ho Meng-hua and Lo Wei were so different. They were storytellers. King Hu was not a storyteller; he was an art film director. But they were storytellers, and were so unique in doing that. With [Ho Meng-hua’s] The Lady Hermit, they tried to create the actress Shih Szu as the next Cheng Pei-pei. I thought that was a very bad idea -- to have somebody be the second somebody. It was the same with The Lotus Lamp. They wanted me to be the next Ling Po. Although in real life, Ling Po was much more feminine than me, in the movie I was still much more feminine than Ling Po [who was famous for playing males].

APA: And The Lotus Lamp was one of Lin Dai’s last movies, and they were trying to create the “new Lin Dai” as well.

CPP: That was even worse. They took her to Japan to change her face. Lin Dai had gotten plastic surgery in Japan, so they went to the same doctor. But even plastic can’t look the same.

APA: When did Inoue Umetsugu’s Hong Kong Nocturne happen?

CPP: It must have been shortly after Come Drink with Me. I remember King Hu wasn’t happy about my being in [Inoue Umetsugu’s] Operation Lipstick. He said, “Why did that Japanese director make you like that? Why did he make you wear so little and then have you sway around like that?” [laughs]

APA: So did a lot of the Shaw Brothers director not like the fact that the Japanese directors were coming to make films at Shaws?

CPP: Yeah. They really didn’t like it. They didn’t understand why if we already had so many directors, they should bring directors from Japan.

APA: Why do you think they brought the Japanese directors?

CPP: From my understanding, as with the fact that the older stars were getting too big and so they needed new actors, Run Run Shaw thought that the “four big directors” (Yueh Feng, Doe Chin, Lo Chen, Lee Han-hsiang) were getting too big. Especially after Lee Han-hsiang and King Hu left, he felt that he could get other directors who could be on schedule and on budget. Inoue Umetsugu was able to quickly make two movies with me in them.

APA: So you felt that they were more efficient as well?

CPP: Of course, but it’s because the studio always gave them first priority. A musical [like Hong Kong Nocturne] is very difficult, because there needs to be rehearsals. And the studio provided everything like the sets. They didn’t favor the Hong Kong directors. Also, Inoue had already done Hong Kong Nocturne before in Japan. So people always said that of course the shoot would go well because it was his second time making it.

APA: Did you get a lot of opportunities to speak with Inoue? Did he give you a lot direction?

CPP: He couldn’t, because he couldn’t speak Chinese.

APA: Right. So how did that work?

CPP: We had a translator there all the time. Many years later, I met Inoue at the Tokyo Film Festival. I was with Marsha, who looks a lot like I used to. Inoue looked at her and said, “Cheng Pei-pei! How come you look the same!” [laughs]

APA: Wasn’t it hard to work with a director you couldn’t speak with?

CPP: Well, not really. Especially because there was a script. Of course it’s not the same though. Operation Lipstick was more difficult because it had so much action. Actually I’m very happy with the all of the choreography in Hong Kong Nocturne.

APA: Was it shot by Nishimoto Tadashi?

CPP: Nishimoto Tadashi was with Shaw Brothers a long time. My first film, The Lotus Lamp, was shot by him. So he actually learned some Cantonese. He was very nice. He became very Hong Kongese. Come Drink with Me was him too. I did a lot of films with him. At that time, you could tell if a film was big by what director of cinematographer was assigned to it.

APA: Were there any cameramen who were famous for making the actresses more beautiful?

CPP: Yan Jun’s cameraman was very good. But his films looked better for black and white. For color films, Nishimoto was the best.

APA: At that time, did other studios like Cathay try to buy out your contract?

CPP: Not Cathay, but United.

APA: Did Lee Han-hsiang try to recruit you when he went to Taiwan?

CPP: Not at that time, but later, in the 1990s before he passed away, he went to America for a heart operation. I was doing real estate in America. So I showed him houses. And for each house I showed him, he made up a story. Every day I showed him a house, he made up a story. He told me that I could be more than a martial arts actresses and that he wanted to show people that I really could act. So in the last film he did, I had a part.

APA: In the 1970s, a lot of Hong Kong producers went to Taiwan. Were you part of that generation?

CPP: No. In that generation, I produced my children. [laughs]

APA: So you had moved to L.A. before that?

CPP: Yeah. Jimmy Wang Yu [who moved to Taiwan,] would tell me at that time that I could make a lot of money. They all made a lot of money during that kung fu craze.
APA: Did they try to get you to go back?

CPP: They did. [points to her children sitting in the room] But their father wouldn’t let me. [laughs] But maybe it was good.

[GeneChing]

last continued piece

APA: In the 1970s, kung fu films had fewer and fewer roles for women.

CPP: That’s why I say I’m lucky. I was right on the line. Bruce Lee would have affected me. When Bruce Lee arrived, actresses started to have very small parts. It’s a good thing I left when I did, otherwise I might never have left.

APA: I remember that when I grew up in L.A., you had a television show here. Can you talk a little about how you got into television?

CPP: Way back in the end of the 1970s, I did something called Health Dance for TVB in Hong Kong. They wanted to create a Jane Fonda of the East, and they thought I was the best person because I was a dancer, so the moves would be easy for me. They also knew I was married and had children. They thought I could create a Chinese way to choreograph what we called “health dance.” So I went to Hong Kong to do that and Taiwan to promote it. So I was the first one to bring something like aerobics for the east. My main responsibility was to train the teachers. I was working seven hours a day teaching the public and the teachers. I had a lot of energy.

So then I started to work more closely with TV. Around then, I started to do more talk shows, like Your World in Taipei. Because I had my son, I came back [to the U.S.] and did more shows. But I think I was too early. I was too smart. [laughs] At that time, the market was too small, and the Chinese were too much of a minority. It was difficult to make money from advertising. At that time, the biggest program was a cooking show. But I wanted to do better things, so I did some documentaries. This was inspired by King Hu’s Igo Ono project. So I did a travel show in the United States about how Chinese Americans survived for a hundred years here. It was a big series. It was a very early production. I wanted to do it, so I did it. It’s my personality. But I also went bankrupt and lost my marriage. And so I went back to doing movies like Flirting Scholar, because it was easier. I was very lucky to have a chance to do that. I wasn’t sure I could do it, because I wasn’t very familiar with moleitou humor. My agent told me that since Stephen Chow was so famous, I should do it. And so I watched all of his movies and learned what moleitou was, and I figured I could do it.

APA: So that was your first time returning to Hong Kong in a while?

CPP: Yes, though I had down a few other things like Painted Faces, Health Dance, and other telefeatures, including one with Leslie Cheung. I’m lucky to have been able to work with everybody. Flirting Scholar actually made me big in mainland China. They still play it on TV every other month.

APA: At this point in your career, is there any role you’d like to do?

CPP: I would like to play a Buddhist nun. I’m very familiar with nuns because I’m a Buddhist, so I think I could do a good job, and let a nun become very human.

Special thanks to Sangjoon Lee for additional questions.

[GeneChing]

Some Cheng Pei-pei news


Hong Kong Martial Arts Star Cheng Pei-pei Joins Ivan Sen's 'Goldstone' (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hong-kong-martial-arts-star-800301)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/675x380/2015/06/china-lion.jpg
Cheng Pei-pei

by Clifford Coonan
6/5/2015 12:55am PDT

Hong Kong veteran Cheng Pei-pei, often called "The Queen of Martial Arts," has joined the cast of Ivan Sen's outback noir thriller Goldstone, which is currently shooting in Queensland.

The contemporary western thriller is written and directed by Indigenous filmmaker Sen, whose previous credits include Mystery Road and Toomelah, and is produced by David Jowsey, who produced both those projects, and Greer Simpkin, who exec produced The Code and The Secret River.

Cheng has been in over 50 feature films, many of them for Shaw Bros and including some of the biggest wuxia films of the 1960s, such as King Hu's 1966 classic Come Drink With Me. She played Jade Fox in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the first time she played a villain.

Also featuring in the movie are Aaron Pedersen (The Fear of Darkness, Mystery Road), Alex Russell (Chronicle, Cut Snake), as well as Jacki Weaver, David Gulpilil, David Wenham, Aaron Fa’Aoso and Tom E. Lewis.

Read More Beijing Film Fest: China’s Fosun Signs Veteran Exec Shan Dongbing to Run Expansion of Film and TV

Cheng's family emigrated to Australia when she was young, while she stayed in Hong Kong to be an actor.

"My career has taken me all around the world, to many countries but this is the first time I have come to work in Australia, to my family's home. It means a lot to me," she said.

Goldstone is being made by Bunya Productions, in association with Screen Queensland and Screen Australia, and it will be distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Transmission Films, with international sales by Arclight Films.

"It was a truly great moment when the iconic star of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema arrived in Goldstone, a most iconically outback Australian location, to work with acclaimed director Ivan Sen," said Jowsey.

Screen Australia's Head of Indigenous, Penny Smallacombe, said: "Cheng Pei-pei's screen presence will not only be a fantastic addition to a significant Australian story by an award winning Indigenous filmmaker, but it also promises to deliver a story that reflects multicultural Australia."

[Jimbo]

When Cheng Pei-Pei moved to L.A. in the early '70s, she studied Tang Soo Do with Chuck Norris for a time. Then she went back to HK to get into the then-current fad of KF fighting movies, but with less success than in her first run as a swordswoman.

She had a brief but fierce empty-hand fight against well-known Taiwanese KF movie villain/stuntman Peng Kang in Lady Piranha (a.k.a., Lunatic Frog Women) in the early '80s. As brief as that fight was, there was a marked improvement in Pei-Pei as an onscreen fighter compared to her heyday at Shaw Brothers, even if the movie itself was nowhere near the quality of her older ones.

[GeneChing]

Cheng Pei Pei deserves her own indie thread from Come Drink with Me (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?51089-Come-Drink-with-Me).

The trailer is embedded on THR so you'll have to follow the link.

'Meditation Park' Trailer: Sandra Oh Helps Cheng Pei Pei Discover the World (Exclusive Video) (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/meditation-park-trailer-sandra-helps-cheng-pei-pei-discover-world-video-1036102)
6:52 PM PDT 9/6/2017 by Ashley Lee

Mina Shum's drama centers on a devoted immigrant wife and mother who takes charge of her own life after learning of her husband's infidelity.
Sandra Oh helps Cheng Pei Pei try a few new things in the trailer for Meditation Park, which The Hollywood Reporter debuts exclusively.

The drama stars Cheng as a devoted wife and mother who is forced to reassess her reverence for her husband after she finds another woman’s underwear in his laundry. She embarks on a journey of self-discovery by engaging with the world around her — something her husband has always discouraged. Oh plays her daughter, alongside Tzi Ma and Don McKellar.

Mina Shum wrote and directed the film, which features insight into the experiences of first-generation immigrant women. For example, the trailer previews the world in which the wives are expected to be confined: "First, we obey our fathers; then, our husbands. When they're gone, we obey ourselves."

Meditation Park will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Mongrel Media is handling the film's sales and will be releasing it domestically in Canada.

[GeneChing]

Chinese martial arts screen legend Cheng Pei-Pei stars in Mina Shum’s Meditation Park (http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/film/chinese-martial-arts-screen-legend-cheng-pei-pei-stars-in-mina-shum-s-meditation-park-1.23192632)
Vancouver filmmaker made latest film in her own neighbourhood
Julie Crawford / North Shore News
MARCH 6, 2018 08:52 AM

http://images.glaciermedia.ca/polopoly_fs/1.23192637.1520357390!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/facebookogimage_560_292/mina-shum.jpg
Mina Shum
Director Mina Shum (left) and actor Sandra Oh talk over a scene on the set of Meditation Park. The film opens on March 9 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas.
Photo SUPPLIED

Producer/writer/director Mina Shum will participate in a Q & A after the 7:25 p.m. shows of Meditation Park at Fifth Avenue Cinemas on Friday and Saturday, March 9 and 10.

The heroine of Mina Shum’s Meditation Park is the great Cheng Pei-Pei, but we don’t learn her character’s name until 30 minutes into the film.

Before that, she is called “old woman” (a dubious endearment if ever there was one) by her husband Bing (Tzi Ma) and “mom” by daughter Ava (Sandra Oh). It’s not until after finding a pair of skimpy underwear in her husband’s suit pocket that our devoted wife and mother finds the courage to venture out of her Vancouver home and apply for a job: “I’m Maria,” she says proudly.

“Yeah, that was very deliberate,” says Shum, of the major turning point for the character. “She’s so proud when she says her name, it’s her stepping out and making an identity for herself. It’s an English name, probably not her real name – her husband probably decided it for her years ago – but she owned it.”

For the 40 years since they emigrated to Canada, Maria has been entirely dependent on her husband; she’s in her 60s when she finally finds the courage to step into the community and poke at her boundaries. She meets up with a feisty group of Chinese widows who sell their backyard parking spaces to fair and hockey patrons in their East Van neighbourhood. She learns to ride a bike. And she develops an unlikely friendship with Gabriel (Don McKellar), her parking-shark neighbour across the street.

Clearly, a journey of self-discovery can happen at any age. “I hope so,” says Shum. “Maybe I’m making the film for my more mature self: I’m constantly re-inspired, re-invigorated, obsessed with something, coming of age over and over again.”

This is Shum’s fifth feature film. Her first, Double Happiness, starred Oh as a young Chinese-Canadian woman rebelling against the cultural confines of her strict parents. Here Oh’s character finds herself firmly in the sandwich generation, working and caring for young children and trying to meet the emotional demands of aging parents. “That’s certainly an avatar from my life,” Shum, mother of an 11-year-old son, admits. “You’ve never enough: there’s not enough me to spread around. But we need to be gentler with ourselves in terms of what we think we can accomplish.”

Shum admits that she wasted a lot of time trying to be “everything to everyone” but finds that now she is more at peace with her imperfect self. “Sometimes my hair’s not combed, and sometimes I’m wearing nice clothes,” she laughs. “You can’t get around people making assessments of you.”

In the few decades since her first film, the definition of what a Chinese filmmaker looks like has also changed: “I’ve been working toward expanding that. I’m not limited to the notion of what a female, Chinese filmmaker is the way I was when I made Long Life (2002’s Long Life Happiness and Prosperity), back when someone called up my agent and assumed I didn’t even speak English...”

Shum wrote the script with her friend Oh in mind (not long after Oh’s 10 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy) and “she read it and loved it.” But Shum was hesitant to approach Don McKellar because of some of the similarities between Gabriel, his character, and circumstances in McKellar’s own life. “Don lost his wife about eight years ago, and I was worried we were delving into personal territory,” she says. Gabriel and Maria forge a friendship despite a language barrier; McKellar had a neighbour whose husband died around the same time as the actor’s wife passed away. “Don shared that his neighbour was Portuguese and didn’t speak English well and they didn’t have much to say, but they would have tea every day at 3 o’clock.”

She already knew Tzi Ma (Arrival) as “the visiting husband” who used to visit wife Christina Ma on the Long Life set. But the real coup was getting Cheng Pei-Pei to be in the film. “Before there were female role models, there was Cheng Pei-Pei,” says Shum. Cheng “was kicking butt” in the martial arts films of the ‘60s and ‘70s, films like 1966’s Come Drink With Me. By the time she appeared as Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Cheng had long since earned the sobriquet “the queen of swords”.

“Yep, I can’t go back now: I just have to work with legends from now on, that’s all,” Shum jokes.

Her actors’ recognizability presented challenges during the Chinatown shoots. “We’d be rehearsing and there would be a lot of ‘Cheng Pei-Pei, we love you!’ and that was lovely, because often it was women the age of her character,” says Shum. Other reactions were harder to predict, like when a female shopper in a fishmonger scene kept ruining the take because she wanted to buy fish. “She just really needed her grouper,” Shum laughs.

Meditation Park is shot not only in Shum’s home town, but in her neighbourhood. “I could walk home for lunch, sit and think about the afternoon … my home office became my trailer,” she says. When the scene called for a snow shovel, “we just ran back to my house.” It’s a vibrant little village, she says, one with block parties, Applepalooza in the park, holiday lights. “I think it’s a reaction to smart-phone addiction, this desire to gather,” she muses. “I know my neighbours, and that’s really great.”

When it comes to friendliness, Hollywood North gets a bad rap, she says. Shum did an experiment, “partly to get myself out of my shell,” walking from her house to Hastings Street, saying hello to each and every person she met. “I had people who didn’t speak English who giggled, people who thought I was crazy, but mostly people said hello.”

It’s OK if they don’t say hi back, it’s not personal, Shum insists. “We’re very afraid in some ways, it feeds capitalism very well to be afraid. But the only way we’ll survive is to be embrace each other… All my films, it’s simply that. My work is an antidote to that.”

Meditation Park opens March 9 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas.

I wonder what kind of distribution this might get.

[GeneChing]

First major female martial arts star, Cheng Pei-Pei to be honored at CAAMFest (https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/First-major-female-martial-arts-star-Cheng-12883215.php)
By G. Allen JohnsonMay 2, 2018 Updated: May 4, 2018 6:42pm

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/72/74/67/15453693/5/920x1240.jpg
Cheng Pei-Pei stars with Sandra Oh in Mina Shum’s family drama, “Meditation Park.” Photo: CAAMFest Photo: CAAMFest Cheng Pei-Pei stars with Sandra Oh in Mina Shum’s family drama, “Meditation Park.”

From the moment she entered that inn and took a table in the middle of the room with steely confidence amid dozens of leering men — then dispatched them in an epic fight with a fury unseen in cinema up to that point, 19-year-old Cheng Pei-Pei was a star.

The year was 1966, and “Come Drink With Me,” directed by the great King Hu, was the first major martial arts movie to have a woman as the central action star, paving the way for Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and many others. And this was 13 years before Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character in “Alien” broke ground in Hollywood as an action heroine.

Cheng would become one of Hong Kong film company Shaw Brothers’ biggest stars, starring in not only action films but also musicals, comedies and dramas at a time when Hong Kong was known as Hollywood East. She has been working steadily ever since, and at 71 she has a new film and is being honored as CAAMFest’s Spotlight award recipient.

“I was so surprised,” Cheng said by phone from Hong Kong, noting she has never received that type of award there after all her years in the industry. “I am so honored. It is my honor to come to San Francisco.”

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Cheng Pei-pei swashbuckles in the landmark 1966 martial arts film "Come Drink With Me." Photo: CAAMFest Photo: CAAMFest Cheng Pei-pei swashbuckles in the landmark 1966 martial arts film "Come Drink With Me."

Cheng is no stranger to the Bay Area — it’s where two of her four children live. Harry Yuan is a National Geographic Channel host and filmmaker, and Jennifer Yuan Martin is an actress. She has two other daughters, both actresses — Marsha Yuan is based in New York and Eugenia Yuan, who has a recurring role in the just-premiered season three of “Into the Badlands,” is based in Los Angeles.

All will attend the festival, where Cheng will sit for an hour-long conversation and present three of her films, including her new movie, Mina Shum’s “Meditation Park,” co-starring Sandra Oh; the film that started it all, “Come Drink With Me”; and its 1968 sequel, “Golden Swallow” (Cheng is the title character).

Cheng’s most famous film in the West was the Oscar-nominated box-office hit “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000), Ang Lee’s homage to Hu’s films, in which she was the villainous Jade Fox — proving that she still had the martial arts moves even into her 50s.

That she became known as a martial artist still amazes her.

“It was very difficult for me, because I knew nothing about kung fu or martial arts. In the beginning, I was just a dancer,” she said. “King Hu saw my performance on the stage one day, and he thought I could be Golden Swallow....

“Before ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’ Chinese directors never thought I could do the bad guy. I’m too nice! Now I have a lot of young fans. Now every generation in a family is my friend. Not only do the grandmothers love me, but the granddaughters too!”

“Meditation Park” proves she still has the dramatic chops, too. Cheng plays an immigrant housewife in Vancouver who feels like an afterthought to her super-busy daughter (Sandra Oh) and to her husband (Tzi Ma), who prefers drinking and playing cards with his buddies — and may have an affair going on the side — to spending time with her.

Her solution? She wants to find her first job and learn to be more self-sufficient. And learn how to ride a bicycle, which proved to be as big a stunt as any martial arts move.

“They didn’t believe me,” Cheng said of the filmmakers’ reaction that she didn’t know how to ride. “They said everyone in China knows how to ride a bike. I said I’m not from China, I’m from Hong Kong, no need to ride a bike!”

G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BRfilmsAllen


Spotlight award: Actress Cheng Pei-Pei will be interviewed onstage at China Live at 7 p.m. May 14, and will present three films at AMC Kabuki: “Come Drink With Me” (1966), 9 p.m. May 14; “Meditation Park” (2017), 6 p.m. May 15, “Golden Swallow” (1968), 9 p.m. May 15. www.caamedia.org.

I would love to attend this but it's probably too close to the 2018 Tiger Claw Elite Championships (http://www.tigerclawelite.com/). :(

[GeneChing]

She adds a lot to the Badlands but these are the final episodes.


Into the Badlands Casts Daughter of Martial Arts Legend as Sunny's Sister (https://screenrant.com/into-badlands-sunny-sister-actor/)
BY NICHOLAS RAYMOND – ON APR 15, 2019 IN SR ORIGINALS

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Sunny's sister, Kannin, made her first appearance on Into the Badlands in the latest episode, played by Chinese-American actress and former Olympic gymnast Eugenia Yuan. Interestingly, Yuan has deep connections to the martial arts genre, and not just through her own work in movies. Yuan is the daughter of Cheng Pei-pei, a martial arts legend known to many as the "Queen of Swords", and the first major female martial arts star.

Sunny's sister is one of the season's most important mysteries. Earlier in Into the Badlands season 3, Sunny was told that he had a sister named Kannin who helped him escape from Azra several years ago. Despite his efforts to learn more about her, Sunny has been unable to find out what happened to her after Azra was destroyed by the Black Lotus. After being captured by the Black Lotus in "Black Lotus, White Rose", Sunny finally reunites with his sister, who has been a member of the secret cult since she was recruited as a child.

The actress who plays Kannin is no stranger to the martial arts genre. Eugenia Yuan has appeared in a handful of martial arts films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and The Man with the Iron Fists 2. Her mother, on the other hand, is a kung fu icon who starred in dozens of martial arts movies in the 1960s and '70s.

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Chinese actress Cheng Pei-pei rose to stardom in 1966 with her role as Golden Swallow in King Hu's Come Drink with Me. In Come Drink with Me, Cheng Pei-pei's Golden Swallow is a one-woman army who effortlessly wipes out a large number of swordsmen in an effort to rescue her brother. The film is widely regarded as one of the best and most influential kung fu films of all-time. Come Drink With Me served as the inspiration for Ang Lee's Academy Award-winning classic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which featured Cheng Pei-pei as the villain, Jade Fox. At 72, the actress is still active in the industry, and will next appear in Disney's Mulan in 2020.

Her work is credited with revolutionizing the martial arts genre. Before Come Drink with Me, kung fu films typically featured male actors in the lead roles. Cheng went on to play the main character in several films in the years that followed, including The Lady Hermit, The Jade Raksha, The Lady of Steel, and several more. Over the years, her warrior woman image earned her the title of "Queen of Swords". Her work in the industry has also set the standard for other female martial arts stars, such as Michelle Yeoh. The link between Into the Badlands' Eugenia Yuan and this martial arts legend is easy to miss, but it provides a fun connection between the AMC series and a legendary pioneer of kung fu cinema.

THREADS
Into The Badlands (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67844-Into-The-Badlands)
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