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Special feature

Wong Fei-hung Films and Vernacular Modernism in 1950s Hong Kong

Yu Chang
p. 7-18

Abstract

This paper explores the rise of the Wong Fei-hung film franchise, which has produced more than 100 films since 1949, and its role in articulating and mediating modern experiences for audiences in 1950s Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and beyond. Utilising rare sources and the theoretical framework of vernacular modernism, the paper situates the franchise within the Cold War context. It highlights how these Cantonese-language films about the heroic deeds of a late-Qing martial artist provided nuanced interpretations of modernism that contrasted with modernist narratives of ideologically driven films produced by pro-CCP and KMT studios in Hong Kong. Set in Guangdong, the hometown of many Overseas Chinese, the Wong Fei-hung films employed cinematic elements that resonated with the rise of mass consumerism and modernism in diasporic Chinese communities during the 1950s. Although early Wong Fei-hung films were viewed as outdated by the 1970s, they expressed a modern sensibility from a vernacular perspective that transcended Cold War ideological binaries.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 27 September 2024. Accepted on 12 December 2024.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on March 2026.

Outline

Introduction
The rise of Wong Fei-hung films in Cold War Hong Kong
From wuxia to kung fu: The realism of Wong Fei-hung films
Global film markets, star personae, and cultural hybridisation
Adoption of new film technologies and the demise of the franchise in the late 1950s
Concluding remarks

First lines

Introduction

Wong Fei-hung 黃飛鴻 (1850–1925) was the legendary late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century martial artist from Guangdong Province who has inspired a prolific film series in Hong Kong, with more than 100 movies featuring the real-life martial artist since October 1949. Past scholarship by prominent Hong Kong film scholars such as Yu Mo-wan 余慕雲, Law Kar 羅卡, and Ng Ho 吳昊 has focused on these martial arts (wuxia 武俠) films as a genre, analysing their stylistic and thematic evolution (Yu M. 1980; Law Kar, Ng, and Cheuk 1997). Early Wong Fei-hung films mainly targeted Cantonese-speaking audiences in Hong Kong, South China, and the Chinese diasporic communities in Southeast Asia. Some of these films were also dubbed in other Chinese dialects, including Hoklo (taiyu 台語) in Taiwan (Yeung 2024: 234). For example, How Wong Fei-hung Vanquished the Bully at a Long Dyke (Huang Feihong zhangdi jianba 黃飛鴻長堤殲霸, 1955) was advertised in Min Sheng Daily News 民聲日報 in August 1955 as an “auth...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Yu Chang, Wong Fei-hung Films and Vernacular Modernism in 1950s Hong KongChina Perspectives, 140 | 2025, 7-18.

Electronic reference

Yu Chang, Wong Fei-hung Films and Vernacular Modernism in 1950s Hong KongChina Perspectives [Online], 140 | 2025, Online since 01 March 2026, connection on 18 April 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/17757; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/13ptc

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About the author

Yu Chang

Yu Chang is a life member of the Hong Kong Collectors Society and a former lecturer in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada (changyu1210@gmail.com).

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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