Daughters of jianghu: female heroism in Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin and Ash Is Purest White

ABSTRACT

In A Touch of Sin (2013) and Ash Is Purest White (2018), Jia Zhangke experiments with a genre cinema that caters to a bigger audience than the director’s previous films have enjoyed. Both films integrate an investigation of pressing social issues with the style of jianghu chuanqi (tales of the extraordinary), foregrounding the spirit of wuxia (martial arts chivalry). Exceptionally, women are the dominant characters of the narratives. This essay analyzes Jia’s feminist appropriation of the wuxia genre and discusses the director’s use of images of legendary nüxia (female knights-errant) to update and revitalize the genre. The rebellious spirit and moral strength of the heroines of the films demonstrate the director’s imaginative responses to social problems in recent years.

KEYWORDS:

• Female knight-errant
• jianghu
• Jia Zhangke
• wuxia
• Chinese film

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and warm encouragement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Literally, jianghu means “rivers and lakes”, but it is usually used figuratively in Chinese culture. The Jianghu rhetoric first emerged in Zhuang Zhou’s (369-286 BC) “Xiaoyao you” (wandering where you will) in The Book of Chuang Tzu, and its figural meaning as “unrestrained freedom” has been applied frequently in literature since Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD). Jianghu can also be understood as a society which is opposite to the royal or imperial court, operating under its own rules. The extensive use of the word jianghu in contemporary spoken and written Chinese may be attributed to the popularity of the martial arts genre, known as wuxia, a combination of two Chinese words: wu (martial) and xia (chivalry or knight-errant).

2. Wudang is a school of martial arts established by a Taoist martial arts master named Zhang Sanfeng (1247-?) who is renowned for developing Tai Chi. Based on the Taoist ideals, wudang school promotes such qualities as softness, quietness, emptiness, and harmony.

3. Wuxia writing has been divided into the old school (jiupai) and the new school (xinpai). See Lin Po-chun 2019.

4. Some people tend to associate Ash Is Purest White with Hong Kong gangster cinema, represented by such directors as John Woo, Johnnie To, and Andrew Lau; however, this essay discusses this film under the analytic frame of wuxia tradition in order to highlight its link with the fantastic premise and philosophy of wuxia. The heroine embodies the emphasis on chivalry, justice, and righteousness that characterizes wuxia.

5. The Hong Kong gangster film series Young and Dangerous includes an entry entirely devoted to a woman gangster: Portland Street Blues (1998; directed by Raymond Yip). It centers on the life experience of Sister Thirteen (Sandra Ng) of the Hung Hing triad.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Sichuan University (Innovation Spark Fund of Sichuan University 2019hhs-21).

Notes on contributors

Lidan Hu

Lidan Hu received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Edinburgh in the UK and is now teaching in the English Department of Sichuan University in China. Her current research interests include gender and film.