General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

A Chinese Ghost Story II (倩女幽魂II：人间道)

A Chinese Ghost Story II (倩女幽魂II：人間道), also released as Sien lui yau wan II: Yan gaan dou, is a 1990 Hong Kong film directed by Ching Siu-tung and produced by Tsui Hark.¹⁷ A sequel to A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), it stars Leslie Cheung, who reprises Ling Choi-san, and Joey Wong, who plays Windy (Ching Fung), a different character from the ghost lover she played in the first film, alongside Jacky Cheung, Michelle Reis, Wu Ma, and Waise Lee.¹^•¹⁸ It opened in Hong Kong on 13 July 1990 and grossed HK$20,784,824, the sixth-highest of that year's Hong Kong releases.²^•³ It was followed by A Chinese Ghost Story III in 1991.⁵

Key fact	Detail
Original title	倩女幽魂II人間道 (Cantonese: Sien lui yau wan II: Yan gaan dou)⁴
Director / producer	Ching Siu-tung (director and action director); Tsui Hark (producer)¹⁷
Release	13 July 1990 (Hong Kong); 3 November 1990 (Japan)²
Hong Kong box office	HK$20,784,824, ranked 6th for 1990³
Principal cast	Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong, Jacky Cheung, Michelle Reis, Wu Ma, Waise Lee¹
Series position	Sequel to A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), followed by A Chinese Ghost Story III (1991)⁵

Spoilers

Plot and cast

The story picks up after the first film. The scholar Ling Choi-san (Leslie Cheung), having lost his ghost lover Sian, returns to a home village fallen on hard times and is wrongfully imprisoned; after escaping, he falls in with a young Taoist monk, Autumn (Jacky Cheung), and then with a band of rebels led by Windy (Joey Wong), a woman who looks exactly like his lost love, and her sister Moon (Michelle Reis).⁸ Windy's father, an official (Lau Siu-Ming), has been sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, and the group sets out to free him while contending with an Imperial High Priest (Lau Shun) and a corrupt general (Waise Lee).¹^•⁸

The demonic opposition is varied: a decomposing giant's corpse, a lord of hell who poses as the Buddha, and a climactic shape-changing monster.⁹ Unlike the first film, Joey Wong's character is a living woman rather than a ghost, and the film trades some of the original's ghostly atmosphere for comedy and action.⁷^•⁸

Production background

The film was made by Film Workshop, the production company Tsui Hark founded in 1984 with Nansun Shi, which had released the first A Chinese Ghost Story in 1987 among a run of hits including A Better Tomorrow and its sequel, The Killer, and The Big Heat between 1986 and 1989.⁵^•⁶ The Hong Kong Film Archive credits the 1987 film, and by extension its 1990 and 1991 sequels, with injecting Western special-effects technology into a Chinese period-fantasy setting.⁷

James Wong composed the music and Jacky Cheung performed the theme song.⁵

Reception and box office

In Hong Kong the film ran from 13 July to 10 August 1990 and grossed HK$20,784,824, placing sixth for the year behind All for the Winner, God of Gamblers II, and other comedies.³ At the 10th Hong Kong Film Awards it received nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Jacky Cheung), Best Editing (Marco Mak Chi-sin), and Best Action Design (Ching Siu-tung, Lau Chi-ho, and Wu Chi-lung).⁸

Critics generally treated it as an entertaining but lesser follow-up. Time Out judged that the international success of the first film gave the team new confidence, calling the sequel, "sheerly as a ride on a ghost train," superior to the original.⁹ The Melbourne International Film Festival program agreed that the sequel outpaces the original while noting only "vague hints of political allegory" beneath the genre filmmaking.¹⁰ Other reviewers found the plot less compelling than the first film's, lacking a dramatic drive equivalent to the original's quest, with the emphasis shifted toward comedy.¹¹ On IMDb the film holds a weighted rating of 6.8/10 from about 4,700 votes.¹²

Political reading

The film's title, "Human Way" (人間道), and its story of a corrupt court, wrongful imprisonment, and an evil priest masquerading as the Buddha have been read against the Hong Kong politics of 1990. A Taiwanese cultural-studies commentary describes the film as Tsui Hark's allegorical response to the June Fourth crackdown of 1989, with its lyrics and imagery lamenting a world without moral order.¹³ An audience review on Rotten Tomatoes makes the same reading, calling the film Tsui Hark's "thinly disguised response to Tiananmen Square" that criticizes authority while reflecting on hope.¹⁴

Scholarship on the series places the 1987, 1990, and 1991 films against the emotional politics of Hong Kong's pre-1997 transition, with the sequel's darkened world of corrupt officials and hidden loyalists extending the first film's vision of a disordered age.¹⁵ The Hong Kong Film Archive notes that the sequel reduces the ghostly romance of the original while continuing to express classical Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist themes through Western-style effects, opening a new chapter for the wuxia fantasy genre.⁷

Legacy

The film was followed by A Chinese Ghost Story III: Dao Dao Dao in 1991, again directed by Ching Siu-tung with Tsui Hark producing, which replaced Cheung's and Wong's characters with a new pair of leads.⁷ A 2011 remake of the original 1987 film, directed by Wilson Yip, extended the franchise under the same family title.¹⁶ The 1990 film remains available on streaming services and continues to draw a modest audience rating of 6.8/10 on IMDb.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026