The Confucian knight-errant: A traditional Chinese masculine ideal in the wuxia film

While wuxia film criticism has extensively examined the macho-masculine archetype in the kung fu subgenre, there is a noticeable oversight regarding another vital type of masculinity: the scholar-type or Confucian knight-errant. Despite its divergence from the rugged gunfighter in Hollywood action genres such as the western, Confucian masculinity as a timeless ideal across Chinese genres also finds appreciation within the wuxia genre – a genre known for its dynamic action and a world akin to westerns’ supposedly merciless Social Darwinist frontier. Through a comparative lens on the iconic figure of the American cowboy, this article first identifies some crucial features of gender discourse in Chinese traditional culture through an interpretation of the two paradigms of complementary opposites – the yin/yang dichotomy and the wen/wu (‘cultural/military attainments’) dyad. Then, it explains how this traditional Chinese cultural ideal aligns with the wuxia genre’s thematic requirements, with a detailed analysis of two celluloid epitomes of the Confucian knight-errant in wuxia epics: Xiao Shaozi in King Hu’s Longmen kezhan (Dragon Gate Inn) (1967) and Chen Jialuo in Ann Hui’s Shujian enchou lu (The Romance of Book and Sword) (1987).