This article argues that the concept of wuyi 武意 (‘martial ideation’) forms the aesthetic core of kung fu cinema. Rather than focusing on the expressive amplification of emotion, martial ideation negotiates action and stasis through stabilization and eventually reaches a state of tranquillity. In The Grandmaster (Wong, 2013), such an ideational experience is sketched through the Buddhist notion of guan 觀 (‘perspicaciousness’). Perspicaciousness is embodied by three ways of ‘seeing’ in the mise-en-scène, including ‘listening bridge’ in martial arts performance, ‘looking back’ in narrative structure and ‘visioning’ in theme. In this light, Wong’s kung fu debut treats the southern hand-to-hand combat tradition not as a spectacle, but as an embodied knowledge that links kung fu practice with Chinese aesthetics and philosophy.

; authenticity) and shizhan ( ; combativity), represented by the series of kung fu films featuring Kwan Tak-hing as the legendary Wong Fei-hung and the martial arts action films of Bruce Lee respectively. Despite kung fu cinema's claim to 'realism' since its conception in the 1949, there is a strong suppression of wu the martial) in the genre's action aesthetics due to the elevation of wen ( ; the literary and the artistic) in traditional Chinese culture. By exposing the inherent contradictions within kung fu cinema and incorporating of combative action aesthetics derived from Bruce Lee's martial arts philosophy and wing chun principles -what I call kuai ( ; speed), hen ( ; brutality), and zhun ( ; precision), the series presents new possibilities of wu and offers a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese kung fu.shizhan, zhenshi, wen-wu, kung fu cinema, martial arts action, authenticity, action aesthetics.

This article argues that the reinvention of Chinese martial arts through new media art practices reveals new aesthetic potentialities not readily available in the conventional cinematic medium. While martial arts cinema has captivated the global audience with visual and visceral excitements, most notably through the new-style wuxia films of the 1960s and the kung fu craze of the 1970s, it focuses on representational strategies characteristic of imaginative irreversibility and passive immersivity. The former refers to the rigid segregation of reality and fantasy that discourages the possibility of reversal, whereas the latter describes the immersive wuxia and kung fu spectacles as a disembodied experience, contrary to the core of martial arts learning and practice. To address the above issues, martial arts-inspired new media artworks, such as susuan pui san lok's RoCH Fans & Legends (2015) and Jeffery Shaw, Sarah Kenderdine and Hing Chao's Lingnan Hung Kuen Across the Century (2017), look for alternative approaches to represent martial arts imaginations for the goals of preserving an intangible cultural heritage and promoting an intellectual reflexivity. In so doing, not only do the new media artworks help to reposition Chinese martial arts as an everyday art form via conventional art spaces worldwide through the transnational and transregional flow of cinema, but they also establish the subtle connection between traditional martial art and contemporary art in the context of globalization.

This article argues that Bruce Lee revolutionized kung fu cinema not only by increasing its authenticity and combativity but also by revealing its inherent connection to wuyi (武意), or martial ideation. Martial ideation refers to a specific negotiation of action and stasis in martial arts performance which contains a powerful overflow of emotion in tranquility. Since the early 1970s, Bruce Lee’s kung fu films have been labeled “chop-socky,” offering only fleeting visual and visceral pleasures. Subsequently, several studies explored the cultural significance and political implications of Lee’s films. However, not much attention has been paid to their aesthetic composition—in particular, how cinematic kung fu manifests Chinese aesthetics and philosophy on choreographic, cinematographic, and narrative levels. In Lee’s films, the concept of martial ideation is embodied in the Daoist notion of wu (nothingness), a metaphysical void that is invisible, nameless, and formless. Through a close reading of Laozi’s Daodejing (道德經), it is possible to discover two traits of nothingness—namely, reversal and return—which are characteristics of Lee’s representation of martial ideation. The former refers to a paradigmatic shift from concreteness to emptiness, while the latter makes such a shift reversible and perennial via the motif of circularity. The discussion focuses on films in which Lee’s creative influence is clearly discernible, such as Fist of Fury (1972), The Way of the Dragon (1972), and the surviving footage intended for The Game of Death featured in Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (2000). These films shed light on the complicated relationship between the cinematic (action and stasis), the martial (Jeet Kune Do), the aesthetic (ideation), and the philosophical (Daoism). The goal is to stimulate a more balanced discussion of Lee’s films both from the perspective of global action cinema and Chinese culture.

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