Daoism and Diasporic Narrative of Taiwan Martial Arts Films in the New Millennium

Martial arts films create cinematic universes that encourage audiences to imagine Chinese culture and history. Through analyzing Ang Lee’s Wohu Canglong (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000) and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Cike Nie Yinniang (The Assassin, 2015), I argue that Taiwanese martial arts films have shifted away from the genre’s conventional narrative of the Confucian code of honor in the 1960s and 1970s to Daoist’s wuwei (no action, no achievement) in the new millennium. Engaging with Taiwan’s political context in relation to the Sinophone, this article goes beyond the genre study and explicates that Daoism offers Taiwan’s second-generation waishengren (people from foreign provinces) filmmakers a liminal space to search for their own diasporic identity in an ever-changing society.