In 1993, Jet Li parted ways with Jiahe Company after making three "Huang Feihong" films due to film remuneration problems.
Later, when Xu Ke went to visit the "Fang Shiyu" crew, through the introduction of martial arts instructor Yuankui, he took a fancy to Zhao Wenzhuo, who played the villain Of Nine Doors in the film, ordo, and immediately made a decision to let him take over the baton to star in "Huang Feihong 4".
20-year-old Zhao Wenzhuo, so he became the youngest adult Huang Feihong to play.
Xu Ke and Zhao Wenzhuo collaborated on two "Huang Feihong" films, namely "The Wind of the King" and "Dragon City Fighter", because Jet Li's version of Zhu Yu was in front, resulting in the box office of these two "Huang Feihong" films not as good as the previous works. However, Zhao Wenzhuo himself was favored a lot by this role, and thus entered the Hong Kong film circle.
A few years ago, Zhao Wenzhuo starred in the movie "Kung Fu Alliance" again as Huang Feihong, and also personally supervised two network movies "Huang Feihong's Heroes of the North and South" and "Huang Feihong's Anger in the Sea", but unfortunately these are shoddily made and have limited influence.
But it is not difficult to see that Zhao Wenzhuo's acting career is deeply influenced by the role of Huang Feihong.
Speaking of The Film and Television Works of Huang Feihong cooperated by Zhao Wenzhuo and Xu Ke, in addition to the two film versions, there is also a TV series "The New Biography of Huang Feihong" produced by ATV, although it was created by the original team of the film version, it has long been underestimated.
In this issue of "Forgotten Divine Drama", Fan Yingjun continues to talk about this TV series version of "Huang Feihong"——
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="18" > "The New Biography of Huang Feihong"</h1>
Once Upon a Time in China
The book continues the previous article: 25 years ago, Xu Ke and Zhao Wenzhuo, the original team made a drama version of "Huang Feihong", but unfortunately it has been underestimated so far.
The drama was the first work of the director Tsui Ke, who had already become famous in the Hong Kong film industry at that time, to return to the television industry after 17 years.
The total investment of the whole drama is more than 20 million Hong Kong dollars, all of which are filmed on film, and the martial arts scenes are magnificent. Zhao Wenzhuo and Shao Meiqi interpreted the new version of Huang Feihong and Aunt Thirteen respectively. The whole drama is divided into five units: "The Eight Heavenly Kings of Huang Feihong", "The Shaolin Story of Huang Feihong", "The Headless General of Huang Feihong", "Huang Feihong's Xinhai Revolution", and "Huang Feihong's Ideal Era".
The first three units have been told by fans before, and today I will continue to tell the story of the last two units.
The fourth unit is called: "Xinhai Revolution".
On the eve of the Xinhai Revolution, the local uprising movement in Guangzhou rose and fell, especially the sacrifice of the 72 martyrs of Huanghuagang, which had a huge impact on the society, and Master Huang also admired these benevolent people.
Admiral Li, the minister of war and government in Guangzhou, was ordered to suppress the revolutionaries, so he approached Huang Feihong, hoping to use Huang Feihong's influence to help the army mobilize the martial arts circles in Guangzhou to help the imperial court clean up the League.
Master Huang was a righteous man, and he categorically refused Theodore Li's request, thus offending the government.
Back in Baozhilin, Master Huang found that Aunt Thirteen was leading her apprentices to hand out leaflets to publicize the revolution.
Master Huang knew that the current situation was unstable, and the imperial court was encircling and suppressing the volunteers of the League, so he ordered the thirteen aunts and apprentices not to participate in these activities, but the result was misunderstood by the thirteen aunts and others, believing that Huang Feihong's thinking was backward and feudal.
At the same time, Admiral Li found a member of the rebel Alliance and learned that the head of the Alliance, Huang Keqiang, would come to Guangzhou to buy arms, which was obviously a big move.
At this time, the Qing court sent a secret spy, Wan Qianlang, to assist Admiral Li and track down the members of the League.
Admiral Li learned from the traitors that the person in charge of connecting with Huang Keqiang was Huang Feihong's uncle Su Qi'er. So he let Wan Qianlang disguise himself, pretend to be a revolutionary who had just escaped the pursuit, live in Baozhilin, and deceive the trust of the thirteenth aunt.
Under the deception of Wan Qianlang, the thirteen aunts and apprentices mistakenly believed that Master Huang had close contacts with the imperial court and no longer trusted him.
Just when Master Huang was alone and helpless, he actually met Su Qi'er, who came to Baozhilin in disguise to treat his illness.
No one expected that this Uncle Su was actually a woman dressed as a man.
After Su Qi'er contacted Master Huang, she found that Bao Zhilin had been monitored and suspected that there was an internal ghost.
So he calculated the plan and let the thirteenth aunt pass on the false news to Wan Qianlang.
Wan Qianlang designed to capture Su Qi'er, but he did not expect that the praying mantis catching cicadas and yellow birds was behind, and Master Huang arrived with Bao Zhilin's disciples, but instead disintegrated the secret agent's den.
However, the leader, Wan Qianlang, escaped, and Master Huang followed him all the way and found that Wan Qianlang had escaped into the Wenchang Temple in the nearby mountains.
Su Qi'er and others deduced that there might be other remnants of spies in the Wenchang Temple, and the traitors who had betrayed the Alliance before may also be among them. In order to prevent traitors from continuing to leak secrets, the secret service organization must be wiped out.
So the crowd set up a plan to lurk behind enemy lines.
First, Master Huang was asked to fake death, and then disguised as a horse bandit, falsely claiming to have killed a backbone of the Alliance halfway and obtaining important information from the corpse, so as to gain wan Qianlang's trust.
However, the old treacherous wan qianlang naturally did not easily believe it, but instead tried to test Master Huang in various ways.
Fortunately, Master Huang had the courage to recognize people and deal with the past one by one.
Under the cooperation of Master Huang and Bao Zhilin's disciples, Master Huang and others annihilated the secret service organization hidden in the Wenchang Temple.
However, Wan Qianlang and Admiral Li were still not dead-hearted, and when they learned that Huang Keqiang had contacted Su Qi'er, they immediately tore their faces and sent troops to surround and suppress Bao Zhilin, and Master Huang had to take the thirteenth aunt with him and risk breaking out of the siege with other disciples.
On the way, Master Huang encountered Wan Qianlang, who was blocking the road, and as a result, no one could defeat Master Huang in BGM.
Master Huang rushed to the dock and covered the evacuation of Su Qi'er and Huang Keqiang and other members of the Alliance from the dock.
But because of this, Master Huang was arrested by Admiral Li for the crime of treason.
On the day of the execution, Master Huang's disciples came to rob the court with gunpowder and killed them together.
However, Admiral Lee's pursuers were in hot pursuit, and the crowd was cornered and could only fight with their backs.
At this moment, the officers and soldiers sent an urgent telegram, which was actually the news of the success of the Wuchang Uprising.
Only then did Admiral Li realize that the times had changed, and Huang Feihong and others had finally waited for the arrival of a historic moment...
In Xu Ke's version of the film "Huang Feihong", Huang Feihong is not only a martial arts master and a generation of masters, but also a literati-style Confucian hero in the turbulent old society of the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, who on the one hand vigorously maintains traditional culture and has a conservative and old-fashioned side, on the other hand, he hopes to help the country at that time get rid of corruption and strive to embrace the new era.
In the drama version of "The New Biography of Huang Feihong", Xu Ke's adaptation and subversion are more bold, and Huang Feihong is no longer a cold-eyed bystander in the old era, but has personally experienced and participated in many major events in modern history.
In the movie "Huang Feihong 2 Boys Should Strengthen Themselves", Huang Feihong finally participated in the rescue of Sun Wen, and the drama version allowed Huang Feihong to meet Pan Dawei, a member of the League who collected the remains of the martyrs of the Guangzhou Uprising in history, and later became acquainted with the revolutionary founder Huang Xing (that is, Huang Keqiang in the play), and participated in the preparations for the Wuchang Uprising.
In terms of script, Xu Ke adheres to the nature of the old monster and plays more in the genre. In the story of Huang Feihong, the undercover elements of espionage warfare were boldly added, and the second half of the play huang Feihong's undercover Wenchang Temple paragraph is not difficult to see that it is borrowed from the plot design in "Lin Hai Snow Plain", and it can also be regarded as laying the groundwork for Xu Ke's filming of "Wise Tiger Mountain" twenty years later.
The fifth unit is called: The Ideal Age.
The opening of this episode has come to the early years of the Republic of China.
Huang Feihong returned from exile in Japan with his family and apprentices after the Wuchang Uprising.
The Xinhai Revolution was victorious, but will the ideal era of anticipation really come?
With doubts about the new Republic of China, Huang Feihong returned to Guangzhou with his family, and as soon as he arrived in the territory, he felt the change of the times.
The people were ordered to cut their braids, and the whole country was vigorously promoting new customs and new cultures.
Huang Feihong, who returned, felt strange and dazed by the sudden change.
On the way back to the city, Master Huang's family met Wu Mengzhen, a progressive female journalist, who was the former classmate of the thirteenth aunt when she stayed overseas in the West.
Master Huang reopened Baozhilin in Guangzhou City and took the initiative to cut off his braids, intending to serve as a folk example to usher in the new era.
Later, under the introduction of Wu Mengzhen, Master Huang met the local Guangdong overseer Qi Qi.
At that time, the Republic of China was founded, warlords were entrenched, and there were different currency circulation in various places, resulting in chaos in the private currency system and soaring prices.
In order to rectify the finances, Yuan Shikai's government ordered the introduction of a new currency in the south.
Qi Qi, the overseer of Guangzhou, was Yuan Shikai's confidant and was tasked with producing and issuing new banknotes.
At this time, Huang Qiying, who was dedicated to serving the country, took the initiative to stop the printing of money, and with the help of Wu Mengzhen, organized a Baozhilin silver number.
However, the issuance of new banknotes did not go smoothly, and successive years of war and chaos led to the lack of trust in new banknotes, and the issuance of new banknotes was not used.
At this time, there were also money printing groups controlled by foreign devils, spreading all kinds of counterfeit money in the market.
Master Huang then broke the counterfeit money group, and took advantage of Bao Zhilin's credibility to gradually gain a foothold and became a silver trumpet recognized by the government.
At this time, there was a flood in the Yangtze River, and Wu Mengzhen found Master Huang and proposed to exchange new banknotes for gold from the people, so as to buy grain and medicine from foreigners' trading houses to relieve the disaster.
Master Huang promised to come down, and in the process, he had more and more contact with Wu Mengzhen.
As a result, the thirteenth aunt was frequently jealous of Huang and Wu, but Master Huang was unaware of this.
At this time, the overseer Qi Qi Qi launched a bold pursuit of the thirteenth aunt, and in order to get close to the thirteenth aunt, he also hired her as an English teacher in Qi Province.
However, when the thirteenth aunt was a guest in the Qi Mansion, she unexpectedly discovered the ambiguous relationship between Wu Mengzhen and Qi Qi.
It turned out that Wu Mengzhen was Qi Qi's righteous sister, and the two served Yuan Shikai, Wu Mengzhen was ostensibly a reporter, but in fact she was a secret agent of Yuan Shikai, and she and Qi Qi still maintained an underground lover relationship, while guarding each other.
At this moment, Huang Feihong also found that Wu Mengzhen had purchased a large amount of baozhilin's gold not grain and western medicine, but arms.
The purpose of Wu Mengzhen's doing this was to help Yuan Shikai restore himself as emperor and raise armaments and materials.
Wu Mengzhen's plot was revealed, and Master Huang stopped trading and reconciled with Aunt Thirteen.
But what I didn't expect was that there was another force eyeing this batch of gold, the overseer Qi Qiqi.
It turned out that Qi Qi's true identity was actually a descendant of the Qing Dynasty royal family, pretending to be loyal to Yuan Shikai, but in fact wanted to use Yuan Shikai's strength to restore the country.
Qi Qi led a large army to surround Bao Zhilin and threatened Master Huang to hand over the gold.
On the eve of the crisis, Master Huang was persuaded by his father Huang Qiying to marry his thirteenth aunt Baitang, who had accompanied him for many years.
Early the next morning, Master Huang took the thirteen aunts with him, and in the name of returning to his hometown and provincial relatives, he lured away most of Qi Qi's men and horses.
Huang Qiying, on the other hand, took Pork Rong, Liang Kuan, and other disciples to secretly transport gold from the secret passage.
Huang Feihong engaged in a life-and-death battle with Qi Qi outside the city, and finally stabbed Qi Qi.
However, Wu Mengzhen drove to Master Huang, and the thirteenth aunt used explosives to kill Wu tong in order to save Master Huang.
The story ends with Huang Feihong holding the body of his thirteenth aunt.
So many people have been sacrificed, but the "ideal era" in everyone's heart has still not really arrived...
Regarding the life of Huang Feihong, it is basically impossible to examine, and even the "portrait of Huang Feihong" in many sources and documents has been confirmed by current scholars, which is confused with his son Huang Hanxi. The only certainty is that Huang Feihong is indeed a descendant of Hong Quan, and his father Huang Qiying is the apprentice grandson of Shaolin Lu Acai.
Unlike the image of the grandmaster on the screen with extraordinary dignity and prominent family lineage, the real Huang Feihong has been poor since childhood, and once followed his father Huang Qiying around selling art to survive. In history, there are no thirteen aunts, Huang Feihong, who was married four times, and the first three wives have died early.
The stage of Huang Feihong's life that he was slightly successful in his life was the days when he was a teacher in the army. It is said that Liu Yongfu, the leader of the Black Flag Army, was appreciated and stayed in the army, and went to Taiwan with the Black Flag Army to resist Japan. After leaving the army, Huang Feihong returned to Guangzhou to practice medicine and never taught martial arts again.
It was probably also the military experience of fighting against the invaders, which made Huang Feihong realize that traditional martial arts were almost useless in the new era.
Frustrated and frustrated repeatedly, in his later years, Huang Feihong began to indulge in gambling, and even wanted to borrow money from his apprentice Lin Shirong. Huang Hansen, the second son of Huang Feihong's true biography, was assassinated and tragically killed while working as a bodyguard in Wuzhou, Guangxi. Since then, Huang Feihong has become more depressed and no longer teaches martial arts to his sons.
In 1924, Huang Feihong's "Baozhilin" medical center, which he had worked hard to run for decades, was burned down during the war.
The following year, a generation of Hong Quan masters died in a state of misery and poverty, at the age of 77.
The life of Huang Feihong in reality is undoubtedly far from the image of the heroic and dry grand master on the screen. Today's grandmaster Huang Feihong's image, mostly derived from the novel story written by Lin Shirong's disciple Zhu Yuzhai, was interpreted into a Cantonese film by Guan Dexing in the 1940s, and since then it has been all the rage, and Guan Dexing alone has starred in 77 Wong Feihong films.
Almost in different periods, there are various versions of Huang Feihong film and television dramas, from teenagers to old age, from naughty boys to a generation of grandmasters, Huang Feihong's image has undergone many changes. In the 1990s, the success of Tsui Ke's "Huang Feihong" trilogy with Jet Li brought the prestige of this folk martial arts master to the peak.
In the long evolution of cinema, Huang Feihong has evolved from a simple martial arts master to a local hero in the hearts of Chinese audiences. In the Xu Ke version of the film, the image of Huang Feihong was further instilled with the ideology and spiritual attitude of the Eastern way.
The six "Huang Feihong" movies created by Xu Ke (counting the "Iron Horse Of Young Huang Feihong" as a prequel, and Wang Jing's "Iron Rooster Fighting Centipede" are not counted), plus this 22-episode TV series "The New Biography of Huang Feihong", can almost be seen as director Xu Ke borrowing Huang Feihong's realistic but highly fictional character image to reflect the changes of the entire nation in an era.
Therefore, the English name of the "Huang Feihong" series is called, Once upon a time in China, China's past.
The title is a tribute to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America", and in the eyes of director Tsui Ke, Huang Feihong's story is not only to tell an oriental martial arts story, but also to outline the appearance of beings who have "changed in thousands of years".
Whether it is a movie or a drama version, the story involves a traditional Confucian literati who resists, struggles, reflects and changes in the face of the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures in the era of the alternation of the old and the new.
In the drama version of "The New Biography of Huang Feihong", the stories of the five units, although the styles and types are different, completely present the transformation of Huang Feihong's ideological attitude.
In "Eight Heavenly Kings", Huang Feihong will fight for the ancestral tablet, which shows his adherence and insistence on feudal etiquette; in "Shaolin Story", Huang Feihong witnesses the antiquated system within Shaolin and realizes that only change is the only way out; in "Headless General", Huang Feihong sees the brutality of the Beiyang warlords and the incompetence of the Qing court bureaucracy, as well as the ignorance and superstition of ordinary people.
Therefore, in the "Xinhai Revolution", Huang Feihong resolutely chose to accept the Alliance, indicating the attitude of parting ways with the old era. However, the irony is that in the last chapter of "The Ideal Age", Huang Feihong cut off his braids, changed into Zhongshan clothes, and actively integrated into the new era, but in the end he found that the long-awaited ideal era was still obstructed and long.
In this sense, this "New Biography of Huang Feihong", as a derivative work of Xu Ke's film version, is more than the film version in terms of creative ambition and story pattern. Although the production is somewhat uneven because different directors are responsible for each unit of the story, the overall is a rather wonderful historical martial arts drama.