In an age of cinematic secret agents and superheroes, there are few Chinese equivalents. Ultraman, the most popular hero among children, is Japanese. In this series we look at how Chinese heroes, real and imagined, are created and communicated.
To someone more familiar with the Western tradition, China appears to have few heroes. This confusion stems from two very different cultural understandings of heroism.
The spy novel secret agent, comic book superhero and Hollywood action hero all exist in a tradition that stretches back to The Iliad. Western heroes are typically physically exceptional: they may be stronger (like Hercules or the Hulk), better fighters (like Achilles or Lancelot), augmented with special technologies (James Bond, Tony Stark) or endowed with magical or pseudoscientific powers (Spiderman, Luke Skywalker). At the same time, they are often flawed, compromising themselves and their sides’ objectives with their super-sized appetites for power, sex or violence.
Chinese Heroes, by contrast, tend to be physically normal but morally, culturally or intellectually exceptional, often to the benefit of their families or the state. The term hero (英雄 or yīngxíong) more commonly refers to historical than mythical figures, while 超人 (chāorén, lit. “super man”) is reserved for Western-style superheroes.
Consider the following four kinds of Chinese hero.
1. Philosopher Teachers include Laozi, the founder of Taoism, and Kongzi (aka Confucius), the government official who wrote The Analects. While religious figures and administrators aren’t heroes in the West — the former is too sacred and the latter too profane — in China, they are.
2. Military Strategists include General Zhuge Liang (aka “Crouching Dragon”) and Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War. In the West, military leaders can be heroes, but they are often made heroic by deeds in battle, not by strategy alone. In China, smart strategy is heroic.
3. In both China and the West Altruists and Martyrs become heroes by serving others or putting themselves in harm’s way. In “The Ballad of Mulan”, the basis for the Disney film, Hua Mulan disguises herself as a man in order to take her father’s place in the army. Unlike tellings of, say, Joan d’Arc, the poem doesn’t mention any of Mulan’s deeds in battle. Of the 62 lines, half tell of her preparing to leave, and half of her coming back. The only line about the fighting itself — “Generals die in a hundred battles” — doesn’t mention her at all. Other altruists heroes include Lei Feng, a model citizen under Mao, and the protagonist of The Goddess, played by Ruan Lingyu, a prostitute who suffers repeatedly in her attempts to help her son.
4. Trouble makers and Anti-heroes such as Sun Wu Kang, aka the Monkey King, come perhaps the closest to Western heroes. The star of countless movies, cartoons and TV series, the Monkey King has superpowers such as the ability to change size and fragment into thousands of mini-Monkey Kings. More properly considered a god or demon, the Monkey King is a force of chaos. He’s disruptive and destabilising, a challenge to authority. Real world analogues such as Ai Weiwei and Han Han are seen as heroic in the West, but are less straightforwardly praised as such in China. Tennis player Li Na, however, is the most admired women in China, in part for stepping outside the state sports system.
Though there are some outliers, generally speaking the most heroic capacity in China is not for violence but influence. In his article “Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism,” CH Wang introduces the story of King Wen, which he calls “The Weniad,” placing it in the epic tradition. “The wrath of Achilles that leads to heroic action finds no equivalent in the Weniad,” he writes. “King Wen, nevertheless, practically took over China in the twelfth century B.C.”, supposedly “by his virtue”.
Contemporary ideas about Chinese heroism are also informed by the country’s repeated military defeats — losing to the British and the Japanese, for instance, during the 19th and 20th centuries. (The heroism of the defeated is something we further explore in our article about hurdler Liu Xiang.) This history, along with traditional Chinese ideas about heroism, also helps explain China’s current military tactics. Acts of cyber terrorism and the creation of new islands in the South China Sea are in keeping with a heroic lineage that respects cunning and influence over direct confrontation and military valour.
Where Chinese and Western definitions of heroism most closely align is in kung fu films. Ip Man and Bruce Lee are fighter-philosophers, capable of incredible heroic deeds thanks to their deep knowledge. They are both educated and action heroes, and both of them spent formative periods in Hong Kong, itself an amalgam of Western and Chinese culture.
Martial arts movies have since made their way into Mainland Chinese cinema, where the emphasis has again been placed on wisdom, often leading to heroic inaction. In Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002), an assassin played by Jet Li decides against killing the emperor to preserve stability. He chooses not to fight, but dies a hero.
Article by Sam Gaskin
To read more about Chinese heroism, click the links below.
Liu Xiang Retires
Why Chinese Advertisers Want us to be Brave Now
Uncategorized post by Sam Gaskin. Tags: Chinese Heroism
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