General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Fong Sai-yuk II (方世玉续集)

Fong Sai-yuk II (方世玉續集), also released as The Legend II, is a 1993 Hong Kong action-comedy film directed by Corey Yuen (Yuen Kwai) and starring Jet Li as the Chinese folk hero Fong Sai-yuk (Fang Shiyu). It is a sequel to Fong Sai-yuk, which was released earlier the same year, and it continues the comic adventures of the young kung fu fighter in 18th-century China.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	30 July 1993, Hong Kong²
Director / writers	Corey Yuen; screenplay by John Chan (Chan Kin-chung) and Jeff Lau³
Producer	Jet Li³
Lead cast	Jet Li, Josephine Siao, Adam Cheng, Michelle Reis, Amy Kwok, Corey Yuen⁴
Hong Kong box office	HK$23,013,797⁴
Language / format	Cantonese; shot on 35mm¹

Spoilers

Cast and characters

Jet Li plays Fong Sai-yuk, the young martial artist at the center of both films. Josephine Siao returns as his mother Miu Chui-fa (苗翠花), a role that is again pivotal; the Rotterdam catalog notes that she "steals the show" as Fong's dominant mother.¹^•⁴ Adam Cheng plays Chan Ka-lok, leader of the Red Flower Society, and Michelle Reis plays Ting Ting, Fong's wife.³ Amy Kwok plays Sun On-yi (安兒), the daughter of the Viceroy of Liangguang, and Corey Yuen himself appears as Li Kuo-pang, his mother's senior.⁴^•⁸ Ji Chunhua, who had played the villain in Jet Li's Shaolin Temple films, plays the antagonist Yu Zhen-hai.⁹^•⁴

According to IMDb trivia, Corey Yuen had wanted the Korean martial arts director and actor Won Jin to star alongside Jet Li, but other commitments prevented his participation.²

Plot

The story picks up where the first film ended. Fong Sai-yuk and his new bride join the Red Flower Society, a community that has cut itself off from the harsh Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty.⁶ The Society is trying to overthrow the Manchu emperor and re-establish the Ming dynasty.¹⁰

Fong is entrusted with seizing a secret document, a box carried by a band of Japanese warriors. He fails on the first attempt after a furious fight, and is persuaded to use his charms on the daughter of the man who owns the list, much to the annoyance of his loyal wife.⁶ In the Chinese-language synopsis, the ambitious second-in-command Yu Zhen-hai, resentful that leadership passed to Chan Ka-lok, repeatedly tries to have him assassinated; Fong publicly rebukes him and the two become enemies.⁸ When Fong finally manages the theft, after botching it once, he discovers that the Society's leader is really the emperor's brother, and the situation collapses from there.¹ A monk's early warning to Chan Ka-lok, that someone close to him means him harm while another close to him will save him, proves true as the traitor within the Society is revealed.¹¹

The secret of the box is uncovered by Yu Zhen-hai, who has Li Kuo-pang killed and Chan Ka-lok imprisoned and seizes the leadership himself. Fong, whose martial arts Chan had feigned crippling to protect him, returns once healed and defeats Yu in a final battle, after which Chan resumes command and Fong withdraws from the martial world with his mother and his bride.⁸^•⁷

Production and release

The first Fong Sai-yuk opened in Hong Kong on 4 March 1993 and earned about HK$30.7 million, one of Jet Li's most financially successful films.⁵ Director Corey Yuen gathered most of the main cast together again and started work on a sequel immediately; by the end of July 1993 Fong Sai-yuk II was in Hong Kong cinemas, premiering on 30 July.⁶^•²

The film was produced by Eastern Productions with Golden Harvest and Nova Media, and filming took place in China.² Studios listed among the shooting companies include Inner Mongolia Film Studio and Beijing Film Studio.⁴ The film had its international premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 1994.¹

Reported running times differ between sources: the Rotterdam festival catalog lists 100 minutes,¹ while IMDb, 1905.com, and one Chinese-language reference list 95 minutes²^•⁷^•⁸ and two other databases list 96 minutes.⁹

Action and reception

The film combines comedy and action in the manner of the first installment, and its finale is a huge fight staged on a pyramid of stools.¹ Reviewers have generally judged the action as strong: Far East Films called it a welcome slice of new-wave martial arts with sizzling action, while noting that the rushed subplots and abrupt switches between comedy and drama make it less smooth than its predecessor.⁶ Qwipster's review found it less funny than the original but praised the fight scenes and Josephine Siao's performance, calling the final confrontation awe-inspiring.¹² 1905.com records a rating of 8.1 for the film.⁷

Box office

Fong Sai-yuk II earned HK$23,013,797 in Hong Kong.⁴ It opened against the enormous success of Jurassic Park in the same season and still entered the year's top ten; it also outgrossed Jigong, released one day later, by more than HK$1 million, marking the first time Jet Li beat Stephen Chow in the same Hong Kong release window.⁵ The sequel earned less than the first film, which had taken about HK$30.7 million that March.⁵

Place in the Fong Sai-yuk film tradition

Fong Sai-yuk has been a recurring screen figure since the late 1940s, when the Fong Sai-yuk and Wong Fei-hung series established Southern Shaolin legends and Lingnan boxers as a mainstay of Chinese martial arts cinema.¹³ The Hong Kong Film Archive included both of Corey Yuen's 1993 films, with Jet Li and Josephine Siao as Fong Sai-yuk and Miu Chui-fa, in its "100 Must-See Hong Kong Movies" selection program.¹⁴ The pair has since been restored in 4K and released on 4K UHD and Blu-ray by 88 Films in the United Kingdom in 2024 and by Shout! Studios in the United States in 2025.⁴

References

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