A self-translated and revised version of Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Zhuoyi Wang’s scholarly article, titled “Transforming the Liminal Hero: Border-Crossing Interconnections in The Taking of Tiger Mountain and Its Textual Pedigree,” recently appeared in Cinema and TV Culture (Yingshi wenhua, no. 22: 126-138, June 2020), a journal of Chinese National Academy of Arts.
The article offers a nuanced perspective on director Tsui Hark’s 2014 remake of the 1970 Maoist revolutionary opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, revealing its long historical dimension that generated complexity and subtlety in Tsui’s directorial approach. It argues that the remake embodies Tsui’s signature way of constructing alluring cinematic shapes for a liminal “Chineseness” that lacks substantial reference, consistency, and clear origin, but offers traces of identification for a diverse range of Chinese cultural, political, and ethnic subjects.
