CTL3535 Searching for Cultural Identity: Reflections upon Cultural Politics and Policy Instructor: Prof. CHING, May Bo
Group Project – “Ip Man” and Chinese-ness
Group 1 Chan Suet Yi, Yuki (53030534) Chan Wan Ki, Kiki (53035230) Chau Yan Yi, Suyi (53028121) Lee Pak Ka, Sophia (53041917) Law Kam Ho Richard Charles (53030964)
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Table of Contents
Cover Page .............................................................................................................................. 1 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3 Findings and Analysis Story Plot ........................................................................................................................... 4-5 Dialogue ............................................................................................................................ 6-8 Theme .............................................................................................................................. 9-10 Setting ........................................................................................................................... 11-12 Survey ........................................................................................................................... 13-19 References ........................................................................................................................ 20-21
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Introduction Our group has chosen to look into how Chinese culture is represented in the 2008 film series Ip Man (葉問), the Donnie Yen Ji-Dan (甄子丹) version, directed by Wilson Yip Wai-Shun (葉偉信). We chose to study Wilson Yip’s version of Ip Man but not other Ip Man titles, such as the one directed by Wong Kar-Wai (王家衛) which features Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (梁朝偉) as Yip Man, nor the one with Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (黃秋生) version directed by Herman Yau Lai-To (邱禮濤) because Wilson Yip’s version was released the earliest. Both Wong Kar-Wai’s and Herman Yau’s Ip Man were released in 2013, 5 years after the release of Wilson Yip’s version. Ip Man is a semi-biographical martial arts film based loosely on the real life of Yip Man, a Wing Chun (詠春) martial arts master and the master of the world famous martial arts artist Bruce Lee. The first film focuses specifically on the life of Yip Man during the Second Sino-Japanese War in Foshan (佛山). The second film focuses on Yip Man’s life after he moved to Hong Kong, where he later started Wing Chun classes and trained Bruce Lee. Wilson Yip’s Ip Man series has received widespread acclaim from both local film critics and audiences. This popular film series, we believe, to some extent reflects the popular view on Chinese culture, as the film series is centred on the theme of Chinese martial arts, with some elements of nationalistic sentiment, thus we are interested to see how Chinese culture is represented is such a successful (in terms of popularity) film series. In this report we will analyse Ip Man’s story plot, dialogue, setting and theme to see how the film series has infused Chinese elements into the film and presented Chinese-ness. We have also conducted a small scale survey to investigate how the public thinks of the “Chinese culture” portrayed in Ip Man and we will show our findings in this report. Regretfully we could not contact and arrange an interview with any production crew or anyone who has been involved in the production of the film series, therefore most of our analysis is based on materials we have found from secondary sources such as online videos, database, news articles and other online articles.
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Story Plot This part investigates how Chinese culture is represented in Ip Man’s story plot. With special attention paid to the imaginary scenes added to the story plot and the intentions of adding these scenes. In an interview with a Chinese magazine (Wei, 2009), Wilson Yip, the Director of the film series, reveals much about the story of Ip Man. Ip Man is a semi-biography based mostly on the life of Yip Man, a real life Wing chun master. Wilson had the idea of making Ip Man because he viewed Yip Man as a very good model representing Chinese martial arts culture. He believed Ip Man will be a very good film hero in reflecting Chinese virtues such as persistence to hardship, loyalty to friends, family and country, and renyi (仁義), which roughly translates as “kindness and morality” in English. According to Wilson Yip, he wanted to create a film about a real person, instead of a fictional hero, and the changes an ordinary would undergo when facing adversity. He wanted to show how Ip Man transformed from an ordinary person to a hero under the circumstance to audience. (Wan, 2009) In the film, Ip Man bitterly endured hardships in life as the invading Japanese took away his house during the Sino-Japanese War and forced his family to move to a shabby place and him to work in a coal factory. In real life, however, Yip Man never worked in a coal factory. (Wang and Kang, 2009, 33-35) This part was probably added to portray Ip Man as a legendary heroic figure. While Yip Man did live in Foshan and fought with Japanese soldiers at the period of the Sino-Japanese War, the incident was presented differently on screen. (Wang and Kang, 2009, 33-35) In the film the Japanese General Miura challenged Ip Man for a fight. In reality, Yip Man was invited to be a Wing Chun tutor for the Japanese soldiers, an offer which he declined. He later left Foshan because he believed one’s “minzu qijie” (民族氣節), in English “loyalty to the nation” or “national spirit”, was the most important. (Xia, 2009) One of the most highlighted scenes in Ip Man 2 is the scene where Ip Man fights with the English boxer Taylor “The Twister” Milos, a contemptuous and racist boxer. In the film Taylor, called “Whirlwind”, was a British boxing champion and despised Chinese martial arts. Ip Man was chosen to be the representative of Chinese martial arts, accepted Taylor’s challenge and won the fight. However according to an interview (Li, 2010) with Yip Man’s son, Yip Chun, his father Yip Man never fought with the Japanese and the fight with the British boxer Taylor Milos never happened at all, as his father, according to him, disliked solving problems with violence. Instead of telling the audience the true story of Yip Man, Ip Man presents Yip Man to the audience as an honourable man of integrity who would never yield in front of 4
national enemies and brutes. Ip Man is presented as a modest Chinese who would never yield to challenges in life and try his best to protect the nation’s pride and dignity. The Director has inserted scenes of Ip Man fighting with foreigners to make the story more exhilarating and to incite nationalistic sentiments.
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Dialogue Film dialogue gives a film substance. What the characters say and how they say it are crucial to our understanding of the film. As Sarah Kozloff puts it in her book Overhearing Film Dialogue, film dialogue “involves functions that go beyond narrative communication into realms of aesthetic effect, ideological persuasion and commercial appeal.” (Kozloff, 2000, 33) Through analysing the dialogue in Ip Man, it is not hard to find that Confucianism and traditional Chinese wude (武德), martial morality, are embedded in the film to present Ip Man as a virtuous Chinese. In the scene where Master Liao challenges Ip Man and gets defeated, ideas of wude and ren (仁), benevolence, can be found in their dialogue. The conversation proceeds as follows:
IP MAN: Thank you for letting me win, Master Liao. MASTER LIAO: Thank you for the lesson. I've learnt a lot. IP MAN: Same here. Same here. MASTER LIAO: Today's closed door sparring... Master Ip... IP MAN: Don't worry, it'll never leak out. MASTER LIAO: Thank you very much.
After these lines Master Liao silently walks away and Ip Man keeps his promise not to tell others about the fight. The basis of Chinese martial arts is laid on the ground of ren in Confucianism. A man of ren, ji yuli er liren, ji yu da er da ren (己欲立而立人 ，己欲達而達人), according to James Legge in English it is “wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others.” (Chinese Text Project, 2006) Respecting others and willing to advice or take advice from others are the basic practices of ren in martial arts. In the aforementioned scene, both Master Liao and Ip Man show their modesty and willingness to learn from each other: even though Ip Man has won the fight, he did not boast his victory over Master Liao.
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In the sequel there are quite a lot of lines demonstrating martial morality and ren as well. For instance, Ip Man tells Twister, a British boxing champion that despises Chinese martial arts and is later defeated by Ip Man on stage, that the Chinese tradition of burning incense during the fight “represents our modesty which is inherent to the Chinese culture.” At the end of the sequel, Ip Man gives a speech after he defeats Twister: “by fighting this match, I'm not trying to prove Chinese martial arts are better than Western boxing. What I really want to say is, though people have different statuses in life, everybody's dignity is the same. I hope that from this moment on, we can start to respect each other.” When Ip Man trains one of his martial art protégés, Leung, Ip Man tells him “I want you to learn Chinese martial arts because they incorporate Chinese spirits as well as self-cultivation. It's important to be neutral, striving not to strive (貴在中和，不爭之爭).” The Chinese term zhong ( 中), neutral, originates from the Chinese Classic Zhong Yong (《中庸》). Zhong is a state of equilibrium and harmony; while the idea of “striving not to strive” is first introduced in another Chinese Classic Tao Te Ching (《道德經》), the Text of Morality: “Because he does not strive, no one finds it possible to strive with him.” (Chinese Text Project, 2006)
Ip Man gives lesson to Leung on Chinese martial arts spirit
Ip Man gives a speech after he defeats Twister
Most of Ip Man's lines are plain and simple; without using any rhetoric, the messages can be delivered to the audiences directly. As the film director, Wilson Yip, said in an interview, he intentionally added those lines to moralise the audience. (Ju, 2010) Through deploying those film dialogues, he wanted to introduce the core values of Chinese martial arts to audience. In the Chinese context, practicing martial arts 7
(wushu) is not a ultimate purpose but a means to stop a conflict (止戈為武): preventing a conflict is more important than ending one. We can also conclude from the film dialogues in Ip Man that Chinese martial arts is a system that embodies profound Chinese philosophies, and that martial arts artists should strive for martial ethics instead of dominance. The ideology behind the film dialogue is mainly adopted from traditional martial arts spirits, which in turn are ideas from Chinese Confucian classics. Such an adoption has already made the film very “Chinese”. Dialogues in the films, on the other hand, show the director's understanding of “Chinese-ness”, as he thinks the Ip Man series in some ways represents China. (Celestial Movies, 2009)
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Theme This part investigates Chinese themes embedded in the Ip Man films. In general Ip Man’s central themes, as evidenced in its story plot and dialogue, are martial morality, Confucianism and nationalism. Martial morality & Confucianism Similar to other big Chinese martial arts film titles such as Wong Feihung and Huo Yuanjia, Ip Man too emphasizes martial morality and good virtues such as righteousness and benevolence. When Jin Shanzhao, another martial arts master in the film, challenges all other martial arts masters in Foshan, unlike others who accepted Jin’s challenge and fought with Jin, Ip Man refuses to be involved in this meaningless competition because Jin’s intention is to prove he is the best martial arts master of all in Foshan. Ip Man believes that we should learn martial arts to protect and defend ourselves, but not harming others and showing off.
Ip Man rejects Master Jin’s challenge
In the film, before the Japanese invasion, Ip Man does not take any apprentice, this is emphasised through showing Ip Man repeatedly refusing his friend Zhou Qingquan’s request of taking him as his protégé. However, Ip Man changes his stance when the Japanese invades, causing destruction and chaos in China. Ip Man begins to teach workers at a cotton factory how to defend themselves after a robbery.
Ip Man trains workers at cotton factory self-defence
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Another central theme in Ip Man is Confucianism, at the climax of the first film, when Ip Man fights with Miura, a Japanese general. Ip Man says “wude, ye jiushi ren, tui ji ji ren” (武德，也就是仁，推己及人) in English it translates as “Martial morality is equal to benevolence and putting yourself in another’s place.” This shows Chinese martial morality is closely related to Confucianism as the very basis of Confucianism is ren (仁), benevolence. (Feng and Yin, 2013, 50) Throughout the film there are signs of Confucianism ideas. For instance, Ip Man never looks down on other kinds of martial arts, he never shows contempt of Master Liao even he has defeated him in a fight. On the contrary, Jin Shaozhao despises all other forms of martial arts and would like to prove he is the best by defeating all the others. This shows the Confucian idea of he er bu tong (和而不同). The meaning of this phrase is better explained in this classic quote “junzi he er bu tong, xiaoren tong er bu he” (君子和而不同，小人同而 不和), in English it reads “The gentleman aims at harmony, not at uniformity; the mean man aims at uniformity, not at harmony.” (Confucius. and Ames et al. 1998) Nationalism As evidenced in Ip Man’s story plot, the filmmakers deliberately create fictional scenes of Ip Man fighting with foreign masters in both Ip Man and Ip Man 2. In the first film Ip Man, the main antagonist is the Japanese General Miura; whilst in the sequel Ip Man 2, the main antagonist is the British boxer Taylor Milos. It is interesting that the main antagonists in both films are from nations that were at war with China: the Japanese fought with Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War; Great Britain invaded China in the Opium Wars and China signed several unfair treaties with Great Britain. The fighting scenes in Ip Man and Ip Man 2 show Ip Man fighting “national enemies”, defending national pride at the nation’s darkest time. Nationalism is used to evoke excitements and emotions in Ip Man.
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Setting The production team also tried to show the Chinese identity through careful construction of the mise-en-scène in Ip Man, including its set design, film stock, and costumes.
Streetscape of Foshan in the first Ip Man film
For the set design, according to a behind-the-scenes video clip, one of the actors in the film, the artistic directors took reference from old pictures of Foshan and reconstructed a highly believable Foshan streetscape, such as placing some 4000 signboards to give audience a sense of authenticity, recreating the streets of Foshan during the 1930s. Apart from the exterior of the buildings their interiors were also very finely decorated to make the whole environment unmistakably Chinese.
Grey colour palette
As for the film stock, black, white and grey colour tones were used in the film to contrast Japanese and Chinese in the first film: the Japanese are shown in white while Chinese are shown in black. This opposite pair of colours helps to differentiate Japanese (the aggressor) from Chinese (the defender). The grey tone is used to build up tensions and highlight the agitating emotion.
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Ip Man wearing Changpao in the fight with General Sanpo
In the film, Ip Man always wears a plain Changpao (镡�). The kind of Changpao Ip Man wears presents him as a traditionally educated Chinese, an embodiment of the spirit of modesty, intelligence, mastery of martial arts and Chinese Confucian thinking (Zhao, 2009).
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Survey We started an online questionnaire on 12th November and it ended on 30th November, at the end in total 174 people answered our questionnaire. We designed this survey with the aim of collecting public opinion on how Chinese identity is represented in the Ip Man film series. There are 15 questions in the survey. A list of all 15 questions is as follows:
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The result we have gathered is as follows:
Most of the respondents (85%) are from the age group of 19 - 29 (young adults), most of them either say Ip Man is fair (40%) or somewhat successful (48%) in portraying Chinese culture. When asked why do they think so, most of them point out the film series has incited local people's interest in Chinese martial arts and has made Donnie Yen, the actor who plays Ip Man, very well known among local and international audience. Only a very few of the respondents say Ip Man is unsuccessful in doing so (3%), pointing out Ip Man is a scripted biography of the real martial arts master Yip Man and is quite “commercial�.
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More than half of the respondents (54%) say Ip Man has “no effect at all” on increasing their sense of identity as a Chinese, some explained that although the setting and theme are quite traditional, they do not see a very strong connection between Ip Man and national identity; one-third of the respondents (33%) say Ip Man has “slightly increased” their sense of identity as a Chinese, they think that “the virtues of Chinese martial arts shown in the film have made them proud of their Chinese identity”. For the question of how much their understanding of Chinese martial arts has increased after watching the film, around two-third (69%) say “slightly increased” because the film series has shown finely edited scenes of practicing Wing Chun, this helps the traditional martial arts appear “exciting” and “interesting to watch”.
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When asked which scene from Ip Man has incited their nationalistic sentiment, onethird (34%) responded the Sino-Japanese War, a quarter (25%) chose Ip Man fighting with Miura. When asked what virtues they think have been shown in Ip Man, one-fourth (25%) of the respondents chose “virtues of Chinese martial arts”. The next item is “persistence to difficulties” (18%). Most respondents reply the question of “most memorable scene” with the scene where Ip Man fights with the Japanese soldiers single-headedly; some of the respondents believe the scene is trying to incite nationalistic sentiment, some says the scene shows the virtues of Chinese martial arts, a few respondents think the scene shows Chinese people’s persistence to hardship.
When asked what kind of message they think Ip Man is trying to convey, the respondents gave varied answers, it is difficult to list out all of the responses therefore we only extracted some of the comments.
Summary One of the greatest limitations we were aware of when we design the survey is that most of the respondents would be our peers, or students from our age group, as the only viable form of promotion open to us is through online social networking platforms, in particular Facebook. Therefore, it should be noted that the result of the survey does not necessarily reflect the general opinion, but the result shows more or less how people of our age group (i.e. young adults, 19 - 29) views the Ip Man film series.
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The result corresponds with our analysis of Ip Man, the scripted scene of Ip Man fighting with Japanese soldiers single-headedly helps to incite audience’s emotions and nationalistic sentiment. Although most respondents say Ip Man has not helped to increase their sense of identity as a Chinese, and most of them are positive in saying Ip Man helps them to understand Chinese martial arts more. Moreover, quite a number of respondents also point out Ip Man films show the virtues of Chinese martial arts, in other words, wude (ćŚĺžˇ), martial arts morality.
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References Celestial Movies. “Director to director: Ip Man Wilson Yip.” (《津津樂導》葉問 葉 偉信 獨家訪問) YouTube video, 2009. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTxIdQ20708. Accessed on 1 Dec 2013. Chinese Text Project. “Lunyu: yongye.” (論語: 雍也) 2006. Retrieved from http://ctext.org/analects/yong-ye/zh?en=on. Accessed on 1 Dec 2013. Confucius., Roger T Ames and Henry Rosemont. The analects of Confucius. New York: Ballantine Pub. Group, 1998. Fabe, Marilyn. Closely watched films. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Feng, Xin and Bichang, Yin. “Humanistic Foundation and Ethnic Significance of Traditional Wushu Moral Values.” Journal of Wuhan Institute of Physical Education 47, no. 9 (2013). Kozloff, Sarah. Overhearing film dialogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Li, Li. “Yip Chun recounts the true life of Yip Man.” (葉準還原真實葉問︰父親從 不講大道理) Yangcheng wanbao (羊城晚報), 17th May, 2010. Retrieved from http://big5.ycwb.com/ent/2010-05/17/content_2521657.htm. Accessed on 1 Dec 2013. Lu, Hong-Bao. “Discussing the Chinese Culture reflected in Ip Man.” (試論《葉問》 折射出的中國文化) Film Literature no. 20 (2012). Qu, Jing-Yu. “Box-office hit Ip man 2: Wilson Yip moralises the audience through the character.” (《葉問 2》票房過億 葉偉信借角色說教) Qingnian bao (青年 報), 5th May, 2010. Retrieved from http://www.why.com.cn/epublish/node4/node30307/node30315/userobject7ai221 222.html. Accessed on 1 Dec 2013. Turner, Graeme. Film as social practice. London: Routledge, 1999. Unknown. “Behind-the-scenes: Foshan Main Steet and Wuguan Street in Ip Man.” YouTube video, 2008. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp3oUJ6MF5w&noredirect=1. Accessed on 1 Dec 2013. Wan, Jia-Fei. “Interview with Wilson Yip: Ip Man is an ordinary person.” (葉偉信問 答 葉問也是個普通人) Dajiang Weekly (大江周刊), 2009. Wang, Yan and Peng Kang. “The Mentor of Bruce Lee - the legendary Ip Man.” (李 小龍的恩師——葉問傳奇) Chuancheng (傳承), no. 1 (2009). 20
Wei, Qiong. “Ip Man too short, 10 years too long - Exclusive Interview with Wilson Yip.” (《葉問》太短 十年太長——獨家專訪葉偉信) Shijie dianying zhi chuang (世界電影之窗) no. 1 (2009). Xia, Sheng. “Handsome and Quiet: The True Life of Martial Arts Master Ip Man.” (長相斯文不愛說話 武學大師葉問真實人生) People's Daily, 9th January, 2009. Retrieved from http://culture.people.com.cn/GB/40462/40464/8647589.html. Accessed on 1 Dec 2013. Yi-Nan, Shi and Xin-Yi, Zhu. “The Story Behind the Film Ip Man.” (電影《葉問》 背後的故事) Tianxia Wuling (天下武林), 2009. Retrieved from http://www.21wulin.com/wulin/chuantong/nanquan/3985.html. Accessed on 1 Dec 2013. Zhao, De-Kun, “Honglu pianxue ,yuanmo leisheng – Cultural reading of the film Ip Man.” (紅爐片雪,淵默雷聲——電影《葉問》的文化解讀) Journal of Yibin University (宜賓學院學報) no. 7 (2009).
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