Tigresses
Martial arts actresses Yuen Qiu and Angela Mao could be considered to be natural born rivals since they were born in the year of the tiger: 1950. Qiu was born on April 19 whereas Angela was born on September 20. From an international perspective, there was a time when both women could be considered equals. Angela was in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (1973) whereas Qiu was in Roger Moore’s The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). Both women even have similar faces. Despite being born earlier, it took longer for Qiu to become a lead actress despite attending the same Peking Opera school as Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. This is weird since she claimed that she only agreed to co-star in Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (2004) because Sammo was hired to be the fight choreographer.
Qiu likes to blame sexism for her lack of progression, but she just had a bad draw of the cards. When she was 22, she signed a contract to work for director Chu Mu’s company - Great Earth. Alongside Jackie, she appeared in two films directed by Chu: Not Scared to Die (released in January 1973) and The Heroine (released in April 1973). She was the star of the latter, but it bombed. It’s been suggested on Chinese sites that the reason why Yuen Qiu never made it to the big leagues was because she got married and had kids at a young age. Let’s take a look at Angela Mao, she was married at the age of 23 in January 1974 and gave birth to a girl in 1976. Maternity leave didn’t last long because she was on a roll in 1977 where she could be seen in nine films, and was even in another film that wasn’t completed.
By comparison, Yuen Qiu got married at 24, appeared in two movies which came out in 1975, and didn’t do any films until 1978 when she co-starred in a Korean film called Fury of Dragon. Angela Mao did so many movies that Yuen Qiu was relegated to doing TV work in 1976 and 1977. Angela’s luck of the draw was that most of her 1977 films were Taiwanese because she came from Taiwan, so she spoke Mandarin. After the completion of Broken Oath in 1977, the Golden Harvest film company theoretically could have hired Yuen Qiu to be her replacement. Lo Wei’s self-named film company could have used her for some of the films starring Jackie Chan, but Jackie was closer to Angela Mao and even they never starred together.
Both Yuen Qiu and Angela Mao had married men who worked for their companies. Angela was married to a senior executive at Golden Harvest whereas Qiu married an ordinary employee of Yangtze Productions. One of Qiu’s 1975 films was a Yangtze production. It’s known in English as The Black Dragon’s Revenge. It foreshadowed her other 1975 film which is known in English as The Nutty Crook but is known in Chinese as Black Dragon, Thief Father. Despite the implication of the title, it’s only the first movie that features an African-American actor. Also known as The Death of Bruce Lee, the Ron Van Clief movie was known in Chinese as Struggling Dragon, Fighting Tiger, Soul of Martial Excellence.
This rather clunky title was a way to reference two of Bruce Lee’s movies i.e. Enter the Dragon was known in Chinese as Struggling Dragon, Fighting Tiger whereas Fist of Fury was known in Chinese as Doorway to Martial Excellence. What makes it clever is that the Chinese words for door and fight have similar characters. The working title of Ron Van Clief’s movie was Dragon Plan. This movie has a connection to The Man With the Golden Gun in that it was the second time that Yuen Qiu did a movie with Charlie Chan. Ron’s movie began filming in April 1975 but it hasn’t been specified as to whether it was before or after Qiu turned 25 on the nineteenth day of that month. The significance is that on the audio commentary with George Tan, Ron Van Clief claimed that he dated Yuen Qiu.
Either he was lying or she was being unfaithful to her husband. If it’s true then they had a bumble fumble since a bumble bee is black and yellow. It should be noted that The Black Dragon’s Revenge was not released in Hong Kong cinemas. When it was finally released on VCD format, Ron Van Clief wasn’t on the front cover. The production must have been stigmatized because Yangtze Productions went on to make films outside of Hong Kong whether it be Taiwan, South Korea or Thailand. In an online Chinese article, it was mentioned that Yuen Qiu’s husband had been a clerk at Yangtze Productions for 8 months. Ron had been with the company for longer since he was cast in a small role for a 1974 film called Tough Guy.
On the aforementioned audio commentary, Ron claimed that Lau Hok-Nin was angry that a black man was the star of a Kung Fu movie. However, I think that it may have been because they had already worked together on Tough Guy. On a 1995 documentary titled Top Fighter, Ron Van Clief admitted that he would accidentally hit stuntmen during his foray into the world of martial arts filmmaking. This could have been the source of Lau’s ire. Either that or Lau was jealous of Ron dating Yuen Qiu. Interestingly, Lau and Qiu played a couple in a 1979 film called Dragon’s Claws. Also working on this film was Tony Lu Chun-Ku, who worked many times with Lau…especially on films made by Yangtze Productions.
Intriguingly, Tony and Lau worked on three films featuring Yuen Qiu’s sister: Candy Man Suet-Yee. At this juncture, I should point that Yuen Qiu is only a stage name. Her real name is Cheung Cheun-Nam. Her father was named Cheung Yuk-Shing. When people joined Yu Jim-Yuen’s Peking Opera school in Hong Kong, they were renamed with Yuen in their names e.g. Yuen Biao and Yuen Kwai. Back to the intriguing triumvirate between Tony, Lau and Candy. These films were all made for different companies in 1979 and released in 1980. Tony and Lau didn’t work together again until The Haunted Madam in 1986. I’m assuming that this was because the star of the film, Jason Pai Piao, was a close friend of the two.
Back to the trio, Lau Hok-Nin didn’t do any more films with Candy Man but Tony Lu did. Two of these films were Shaw Brothers productions directed by Tony: Lovers Blades (1982) and Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983). This is significant for two reasons - Tony married Yuen Qiu in 1985, yet none of Qiu’s Shaw productions involved her sister. Qiu was luckier with Tony than her mystery man since Qiu’s marriage to Tony lasted longer. It ended in 1995. Candy did so many movies for Shaw Brothers from 1978 to 1983 whereas Qiu only did five such movies from 1983 to 1985. This is important to note since 1985 was also when Shaw Brothers stopped making movies, so her marriage became rather convenient.
In fact, Yuen Qiu didn’t do anything film-wise until appearing in a 2003 anthology titled 1:99 Shorts. By contrast, Angela Mao took a hiatus in 1983 which lasted until 1990 and then retired for good after 1992. Let’s go back to Yuen Qiu’s first marriage. Her husband worked full-time for the company for several years after their wedding, but Qiu no longer worked for the company after The Black Dragon’s Revenge. In another Chinese article, it was stated that Qiu had been dating this man for eight months before they got married. No name has been given to this man, and he is described as being a foreigner. Reportedly, he knew that Qiu had some savings, so he cheated her of the money under the pretext of doing business.
After a few years of good times, he exposed his true nature when he squandered all that money. Besides mishandling money, he liked to fool around. Like Angela Mao, Yuen Qiu divorced in 1980. It’s strange that Qiu would have married this foreigner because she had already worked with her second husband in the seventies. Tony Lu Chun-Ku had worked with her on The Black Dragon’s Revenge and The Nutty Crook. When Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle revitalized her career in 2004, Yuen Qiu was 54 years old. Michelle Yeoh was 59 when her career was rejuvenated because of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Like Qiu, Michelle got to fight in a 007 movie where they help James Bond.
