A Bandit in Baling = Ba Ling Qie Zei

In the late Qing Dynasty, veteran of the Taiping Rebellion, Liu Hedong runs a small sculpture shop with his daughter, Liu Yizhi at Baling. After the Taiping Rebellion failed, Liu only wants to have a quiet life with his daughter in the small town. However, a rich businessman, Mr. Yang came one day and asked Liu to duplicate a treasure of the town—Fan Zhongyan’s Travel Notes on Yueyang Building carved on twelve big wood pieces, placed in the Yueyang Building. Liu did that for Mr. Yang but later became suspicious of Yang’s purpose. He rushed to the Yueyang Building with his daughter only to find the authentic woodcarvings had been replaced by his work and the guard of the Building was killed. Liu reported this to the newly-appointed county magistrate, who ordered that all must be done to catch the thief. Liu, a kung-fu master himself, also tried to find the thief, but in the meantime, a couple of young ladies have been killed by darts that belonged to Liu. Liu was imprisoned, but was saved by his daughter together with a young man. They went to Mr. Yang’s boat and found the authentic woodcarving but were poisoned by an old man on the boat. It turned out that the thief was the county magistrate, who wanted to sell the woodcarving to foreigners. After a big fight, Liu with his daughter and the young man eventually killed the magistrate and Mr. Yang and saved the treasure.

Fan Zhongyan’s (AD. 989-1052, Song Dynasty) ‘Travel Notes on Yueyang Building’ is a very well-known prose and has a unique place in Chinese literature. Fan’s famous sentence in the prose, “one should be the first in his/her country to worry about state affairs, and the last to enjoy oneself” is widely quoted and has become the motto for many Chinese people.

The film well combines different genres such as suspense, martial arts and melodrama. The Pearl River Film Studio, based in Guangzhou, produced quite some commercially successful films and this is just one example. (3 stars - Yuxing Zhou; May 21, 2010)