{ "id": "epf7xyebn6", "slug": "the-fate-of-lee-khan", "title": "The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": 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works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.action-adventure", "label": "Action and adventure films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.action-adventure" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.action-adventure.martial-arts-films", "label": "Martial arts films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.action-adventure.martial-arts-films" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波) is King Hu's 1973 Hong Kong wuxia film about Han rebels trapping a Yuan-dynasty lord at the Spring Inn to recover a war map, starring Angela Mao, Li Li-hua, Hsu Feng, and Roy Chiao with Sammo Hung action direction.", "snippet": "The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波) is King Hu's 1973 Hong Kong wuxia film about Han rebels trapping a Yuan-dynasty lord at the Spring Inn to recover a war map, starring Angela Mao, Li Li-hua, Hsu Feng, and Roy Chiao with Sammo Hung action direction.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.action-adventure.martial-arts-films.yr-1943-1985", "markdown": "# The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波)\n\n**The Fate of Lee Khan** (迎春閣之風波, *Yingchun ge zhi fengbo*) is a 1973 Hong Kong wuxia film directed, co-written, and edited by King Hu, in which [Han Chinese](https://www.edgepedia.org/han-chinese) resistance fighters at the end of the [Yuan dynasty](https://www.edgepedia.org/yuan-dynasty) lay a trap for a Mongol lord at a frontier inn to recover a stolen war map.[1](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/88163--the-fate-of-lee-khan-widescreen/) • [2](https://www.biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=search&m_idx=37034&pyear=2018) It was the first film Hu made after returning to Hong Kong from Taiwan, produced under a two-picture deal with Golden Harvest, and it is the third of his unofficial \"inn\" films following *Come Drink with Me* (1966) and *Dragon Inn* (1967).[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) • [4](https://harvardfilmarchive.org/public/upload/print/66f1a6d23e693.pdf)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Original title | 迎春閣之風波 (*Yingchun ge zhi fengbo*)[1](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/88163--the-fate-of-lee-khan-widescreen/) |\n| Director and writers | Directed, produced, and co-written by King Hu, with Wong Chung (Wang Chong) as co-writer[5](https://fareastfilms.com/review/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) |\n| Production | King Hu Film Productions and Golden Harvest; filmed June to September 1972 in Hong Kong and Korea[1](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/88163--the-fate-of-lee-khan-widescreen/) • [6](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E8%BF%8E%E6%98%A5%E9%96%A3%E4%B9%8B%E9%A2%A8%E6%B3%A2/2565490) |\n| Release | Hong Kong premiere 6 December 1973; box office HK$1,091,063.40[6](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E8%BF%8E%E6%98%A5%E9%96%A3%E4%B9%8B%E9%A2%A8%E6%B3%A2/2565490) |\n| Running time | About 105 minutes (ACMI lists 01:44:00)[1](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/88163--the-fate-of-lee-khan-widescreen/) • [7](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/king_hu/) |\n| Principal cast | Li Li-hua, Angela Mao Ying, Hsu Feng, Roy Chiao, Tien Feng, Pai Ying, Han Ying-chieh[7](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/king_hu/) |\n| Action direction | Sammo Hung (Zhu Yuanlong)[7](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/king_hu/) |\n| Language | Mandarin[8](https://app2.atmovies.com.tw/film/fFone0611726/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot and setting\n\nThe story is set at the end of the Yuan dynasty, when Zhu Yuanzhang's anti-Mongol rebellion is at its height.[8](https://app2.atmovies.com.tw/film/fFone0611726/) The traitor Shen Tiansong offers the rebels' strategic war map to Lee Khan (Tien Feng), a powerful Mongol prince of the Yuan court, who travels with his entourage to Shaanxi to collect it, stopping at the Spring Inn, the Yingchun Pavilion.[2](https://www.biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=search&m_idx=37034&pyear=2018) • [8](https://app2.atmovies.com.tw/film/fFone0611726/) The inn's proprietress, Madam Wan ([Li Li](https://www.edgepedia.org/li-li)-hua), and the resistance fighters, including the woman warrior Hei Mudan (Angela Mao), lay traps, disguise themselves, and prepare to seize the traitor and recover the map; after Shen hands over the map he is captured alive, and a bloody battle of wits and blades follows.[6](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E8%BF%8E%E6%98%A5%E9%96%A3%E4%B9%8B%E9%A2%A8%E6%B3%A2/2565490)\n\nHu said the film was partly motivated by the [James Bond](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-bond) films: he wanted to make martial arts films about spies in historical Chinese settings, but with spies who were righteous rather than amoral.[9](https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3097272/angela-mao-takes-evil-princess-james-bond-inspired-martial) Critics have called it his most densely plotted and most complexly plotted work.[9](https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3097272/angela-mao-takes-evil-princess-james-bond-inspired-martial) Hu himself told an interviewer that he initially conceived it as a theater-like piece centering on interweaving intrigues, but the distributors and exhibitors insisted on fights.[10](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-hong-kong/richness-through-imperfection-king-hu-and-the-glimpse/236F793D026DD37EAD150C9FFD924A53)\n\n## Production background\n\nThe film marked King Hu's return to Hong Kong after seven years in Taiwan, a period that had produced his two most acclaimed works, *Dragon Inn* (1967) and *A Touch of Zen* (1971), both released by the Union Film Company.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) *A Touch of Zen* had been an overlong, unwieldy production with botched distribution and a cool public reception, and its financial failure made it harder for Hu to raise money.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) • [4](https://harvardfilmarchive.org/public/upload/print/66f1a6d23e693.pdf)\n\n**The Golden Harvest deal.** After leaving Union, Hu organized his own company, King Hu Film Productions (Gam Chuen Prod), and struck a deal with Golden Harvest, the studio founded by former Shaw Brothers producer Raymond Chow.[7](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/king_hu/) • [3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) Hu began shooting *The Fate of Lee Khan* and *[The Valiant Ones](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-valiant-ones)* (1975) back-to-back in 1972. Under the arrangement, Golden Harvest would distribute both films but keep rights only to whichever it judged more commercially viable; the studio chose *The Fate of Lee Khan*, while Hu retained *The Valiant Ones*.[7](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/king_hu/) • [3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/)\n\nThe choice of choreographer reflected the state of the genre. Hu's earlier films had been choreographed by Han Ying-chieh, who appears in this film as an itinerant begging musician, but Hu picked Golden Harvest's stuntman [Sammo Hung](https://www.edgepedia.org/sammo-hung) to bridge wuxia swordplay and the unarmed kung fu that [Bruce Lee](https://www.edgepedia.org/bruce-lee)'s arrival in 1971 had made dominant.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) There is plenty of swordplay, but as assailants are disarmed or their blades broken, the kung fu takes center stage.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/)\n\n## The inn films and visual style\n\n*The Fate of Lee Khan* completes Hu's unofficial inn trilogy after *Come Drink with Me* and *Dragon Inn*, and it pushes the inn setting furthest into the film's structure.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) The parallel arrangement of tables, the rooms converging on the central dining area, and the relationship between the upstairs and ground floors provide opportunities for sweeping action, gliding camera movements, and multilayered compositions, drawing attention to the relationship between the architecture and the characters' physical mobility.[11](https://concept-script.com/essays/HectorRodriguez_Chinese_Aesthetics_KingHu.pdf) In the first half Hu establishes the space, stakes, and character dynamics in a cluttered, often comedic frame; at the halfway mark Lee Khan's villain entry, heralded by three sets of henchmen, disrupts the established order, and the second half opens the image wide with depth-of-field play before the climactic skirmish moves outdoors, a stark visual contrast to the tight interiors.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/)\n\nEven among the inn films it is the most realistic: the only nod to wuxia magic comes in a handful of leaps, practical inside the inn but abstracted into quickly edited images of actors in mid-flight during the climactic battle.[12](https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/new-kinds-of-heroism-king-hu-s-the-fate-of-lee-khan-restored)\n\n## Ensemble and heroism\n\nThe film departs from the single-hero structure of *A Touch of Zen* and *Come Drink with Me* by using a collective hero, in which every member of the group matters as much as every other and no one leads the plot or the fighting for long.[12](https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/new-kinds-of-heroism-king-hu-s-the-fate-of-lee-khan-restored) Hu cast his regular players against type: Hsu Feng, heroic in *A Touch of Zen*, plays Lee Khan's steely-eyed sister Wan'er; Roy Chiao, the transcendent monk of that film, plays Khan's right-hand man Cao, a double agent for the Han rebels; and veteran star Li Li-hua, a recognized name since the 1940s, plays the inn's proprietress Madam Wan.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) The film was marketed domestically and internationally with Angela Mao front and center, and it was her only collaboration with Hu.[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/)\n\nThe women never relinquish the stage, leading the struggle from beginning to end, which film scholar Stephen Teo, author of studies of Hong Kong cinema, calls part of Hu's greatest legacy, the popularization of the female knight-errant figure in both wuxia and kung fu forms.[12](https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/new-kinds-of-heroism-king-hu-s-the-fate-of-lee-khan-restored) • [3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) In its emphasis on the collective and on active women heroes, the film stands apart from the male-body-centered kung fu cinema of Bruce Lee and Chang Cheh that dominated the early 1970s.[12](https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/new-kinds-of-heroism-king-hu-s-the-fate-of-lee-khan-restored)\n\n## Reception and restoration\n\nThe film premiered in Hong Kong on 6 December 1973 and earned HK$1,091,063.40, ranking 30th for the year in Hong Kong.[6](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E8%BF%8E%E6%98%A5%E9%96%A3%E4%B9%8B%E9%A2%A8%E6%B3%A2/2565490) • [13](https://kungfutube.info/4227) It is generally regarded as less iconic than *Come Drink with Me*, *Dragon Inn*, or *A Touch of Zen*, but reviewers have praised its narrative economy, its tension once Lee Khan arrives, and the contrast between the confined inn and the open-air finale.[14](https://www.silveremulsion.com/2016/05/27/the-fate-of-lee-khan-1973/) • [5](https://fareastfilms.com/review/the-fate-of-lee-khan/) A 2K digital restoration was released theatrically and on home video by Film Movement Classics and Eureka Entertainment in the late 2010s, and the film screened in the BUSAN Classic program of the 2018 Busan International Film Festival.[15](https://filmmovement.com/userFiles/uploads/films/the-fate-of-lee-khan/the-fate-of-lee-khan_presskit.pdf) • [2](https://www.biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=search&m_idx=37034&pyear=2018)\n\n## References\n\n1. [The Fate of Lee Khan [Widescreen], ACMI collection](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/88163--the-fate-of-lee-khan-widescreen/)\n2. [The Fate of Lee Khan, BUSAN International Film Festival archive (2018)](https://www.biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=search&m_idx=37034&pyear=2018)\n3. [Shea Gallagher (February 2025). The Fate of Lee Khan, CTEQ Annotations on Film, Senses of Cinema](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/cteq/the-fate-of-lee-khan/)\n4. [Harvard Film Archive notes on King Hu](https://harvardfilmarchive.org/public/upload/print/66f1a6d23e693.pdf)\n5. [Andrew Saroch (2015). The Fate Of Lee Khan (1973) Review, Far East Films](https://fareastfilms.com/review/the-fate-of-lee-khan/)\n6. [迎春閣之風波, 中文百科全書 film entry](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E8%BF%8E%E6%98%A5%E9%96%A3%E4%B9%8B%E9%A2%A8%E6%B3%A2/2565490)\n7. [Stephen Teo (May 2002). King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan and The Valiant Ones, Senses of Cinema](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/king_hu/)\n8. [迎春閣之風波 The Fate of Lee Khan, 開眼電影網](https://app2.atmovies.com.tw/film/fFone0611726/)\n9. [Richard James Havis (2020). Angela Mao takes on evil princess in James Bond-inspired martial arts film, South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3097272/angela-mao-takes-evil-princess-james-bond-inspired-martial)\n10. [Richness through Imperfection: King Hu and the Glimpse, The Cinema of Hong Kong (Cambridge University Press)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-hong-kong/richness-through-imperfection-king-hu-and-the-glimpse/236F793D026DD37EAD150C9FFD924A53)\n11. [Hector Rodriguez, Chinese Aesthetics and King Hu (essay)](https://concept-script.com/essays/HectorRodriguez_Chinese_Aesthetics_KingHu.pdf)\n12. [New Kinds of Heroism: King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan Restored, MUBI Notebook](https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/new-kinds-of-heroism-king-hu-s-the-fate-of-lee-khan-restored)\n13. [迎春閣之風波（1972）, KUNGFU TUBE](https://kungfutube.info/4227)\n14. [Will (2016). The Fate of Lee Khan (1973), Silver Emulsion Film Reviews](https://www.silveremulsion.com/2016/05/27/the-fate-of-lee-khan-1973/)\n15. [The Fate of Lee Khan press kit, Film Movement Classics](https://filmmovement.com/userFiles/uploads/films/the-fate-of-lee-khan/the-fate-of-lee-khan_presskit.pdf)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Martial arts films › Released 1943 to 1985*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-fate-of-lee-khan", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-fate-of-lee-khan.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-fate-of-lee-khan. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波)](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-fate-of-lee-khan)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-fate-of-lee-khan](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-fate-of-lee-khan). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-fate-of-lee-khan. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Fate of Lee Khan is King Hu's 1973 Hong Kong wuxia film about Han rebels trapping a Yuan-dynasty lord at the Spring Inn to recover a war map, starring Angela Mao, Li Li-hua, Hsu Feng, and Roy Chiao with Sammo Hung action direction." }