A Touch of Zen

Courtesy of Taipei Film Archive
© Chinese Taipei Film Archive


Young scholar and portrait-painter Ku Sheng-chai lives alone with his mother in a small village in Northern China. Captivated by the mysterious maiden who has recently moved into the deserted military fort near his house, Ku falls for his beautiful new neighbor. He learns that her true identity is Yang Hui-chen, the fugitive daughter of a distinguished Ming Dynasty official executed by the dreaded eunuchs of Dongchang (Eastern Special Investigative Bureau). Helped by her father’s loyal followers, Yang escaped death and was sheltered by Abbot Hui Yuan in a Buddhist monastery where she acquired superior martial-arts skills.

She has now surfaced in this remote town waiting for a chance to avenge her father’s death, but Dongchang pursuers such as Ouyang Nian have also arrived and are ready to arrest Yang and her loyal cohorts. Drawing on his knowledge of military strategies, Ku devises a brilliant plan and helps Yang defeat a siege led by eunuch Men Ta of Dongchang.

Upon Ku and Yang’s victory against Men Ta and his troop, Abbot Hui-yuan arrives to perform rituals to comfort the spirits of the combat casualties. Leaving Ku and the secular world behind, Yang returns to the monastery, where she gives birth to Ku’s child. Ku travels across mountains desperately trying to locate Yang…

Adapted from Knight-Lady (Xia Nü), one of the five-hundred supernatural tales in the literary classic Strange Stories from a Chinese studio (Liaozhai Zhiyi) written by Pu Songling (1640-1715), A Touch of Zen is considered by many as the defining work of King Hu’s career. Originally released in two parts in Taiwan in 1970 and 1971, the film was a box office disappointment and remained unnoticed until it was awarded the Grand Prix de la Commission Supérieur Technique at Cannes Film Festival in 1975. An instant international sensation, A Touch of Zen elevated King Hu to an unprecedented level of worldwide recognition and acclaim unmatched by any other Chinese-language film director at the time. Filmed predominantly in Taiwan, King Hu took advantage of the island’s most scenic locations, and also elaborately constructed an entire Ming Dynasty village on Union Film Company’s Danan studio lot. Meticulously designed, beautifully photographed and rhythmically edited, A Touch of Zen is a ground-breaking martial arts epic that features stunning martial arts sequences including the memorable bamboo forest fight that inspired next-generation wuxia films like Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (2004).