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shaolin temple 2: shaolin kids

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The genesis of the storyline for Shaolin Kids was our own youthful mischief. The writers asked us actors about our experiences and we told them about what it was like to grow up in a wushu school. They took these anecdotes of playfulness and friendship, of teasing and tricks, and fashioned them into a narrative and set it in ancient times--boys representing Shaolin, girls representing Wudang. Actually, although the setting of the film is historical, it's not based in any particular historical period; this is fitting, because the stories themselves are timeless: about girls and boys training together and growing up together. I like to think that the film conveys that feeling of camaraderie and joviality.

The movie took about 10 months to film, which means the cast and crew experienced all the seasons again. And again, probably the most memorable thing about the movie was the weather. Shaolin Temple may have been too cold, but Shaolin Kids left me with my worst memories of heat. There's actually a rule in China that when the weather gets too hot, businesses and schools shut down. If the temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius (102?F), people have the right not to go to work. We were filming the movie in Hangzhou. One day, the weather forecast was 42?C. Everything else in the city had shut down, but we had to continue filming.

One of our favorite things to do was to cook eggs on the ground. Around noon, we'd crack an egg onto the ground, sit around it with our watches, and count how long it took for it to cook. Within a few minutes, it was ready to eat--guaranteed.

Not that any of us had much of an appetite. All we wanted was ice water. We'd walk around hugging our big bottles of cold water--we guzzled bottle after bottle of water, and then we'd go shoot our fight scene.

The weather was so blisteringly hot that even ordinary activities became hazardous. We soon found that whenever any of us took a fall and put a hand to the ground to push himself up, the heat of the ground would take off a layer of skin. So the crew had to water the ground constantly. Right before a take, they sprayed water all over the area to be filmed. We'd shoot a scene, and as soon as it was over, they'd start watering the ground again. Too hot. Imagine what it was like with the sun directly overhead. By my own reckoning, it must have reached 45?C (111?F) on some occasions. During fight scenes, it was not uncommon for one of us to go into shock from the heat. You'd be fighting, and suddenly somebody would topple over. Somebody would revive us and then we'd have to shoot the scene again. I don't think there was a single one of us who didn't have that experience.

I don't know why making movies was so hard back then. Really, I've often said that I could make three movies in the 90's with the energy I spent making one movie in the 80's! Who knew that making films would prove to be such a test of the will? Maybe it's because the style of filmmaking that was preferred back then made different demands on us. Because the directors liked to film entire fight scenes in a single shot, each take might last 30-40 seconds. They kept the camera in one place, without changing angles. This was to show that the actors' gongfu was real. Nowadays, of course, nobody uses real power in movie fighting. You'll never see more than two movements in a single shot before the director cuts to a different angle, pulls back, zooms in, etc.

There were other ups and downs to the experience of making Shaolin Kids, of course. For example, sometimes we would shoot in areas where running water was not available. So when we returned to our quarters at night, we would boil a big cauldron of water. Everybody would take a gourd and ladle out their share of hot water--and that was your bathwater for the day! We lived like the poorest peasants. I think actors today might have a hard time imagining the conditions we worked under.

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