Chinese Culture in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" by Ang Lee

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Crouching tiger, hidden dragon
Introduction
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is a 2000 Wu-Xia film directed by a top Chinese local film direct Ang Lee and written by Kuo Jung Tsa, Wang Hui-ling, and James Schamus. Through this movie, Ang Lee presents a high degree of cultural globalization and hybridation of Chinese culture. Set in a Qing Dynasty of China in the 18th century, the film revolves around a romantic story of martial arts about love, sword man, revenge, and traditional Chinese conflicts. Throughput the film, heroes and villains engage in fierce fights trying to kill each other over past slights. Nonetheless, the producer manages to strike a balance between Chinese culture and the western culture. Ang lee adopted a modern style of Chinese linguistic expression in his story narrative, and he does it in a way that attracts the eyes that would never have watched Chinese Wuxia.
Chinese Culture past and present
The movie presents Confucianism and freedom pursuit as key cultural thoughts. Confucianism, an ancient Chinese belief system is a subject of focus in the movie. Through key characters, the producer reiterates that Confucianism is founded on morality, sincerity, discipline, and hierarchy. But while focusing on the issue of Confucianism the film also brings out the difference between the past and present China. Chinese patriarchy highly dominated even to the 2000s when the movie was released. However, there is a new trend of people seeking freedom and resisting the oppressive Chinese patriarchy (Chang). Jen Yu and Lo “dark cloud” is the new voice in the society pursuing freedom whereas Li Mu Bai and Yu Lien are the force ready to guard and defend Chinese traditional heritage. Jen Yu is a feminist symbol in pursuit of freedom while resisting traditional Chinese hierarchy. Times have changed in China has presented in the movie whereby people are transitioning from the highly oppressive culture to a more open culture that gives voices to woman. Traditional Chinese films gave little room to women and only engaged men who fought entirely.
How Wuxia Style reveal itself in this film?
Wuxia is typically a genre of Chinese fictions concerning adventures of martial artists in ancient China. The film makes few homages to the earlier wuxia and reintroduces a new westernized version of wuxia. The initial versions of wuxia presented ...