General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Once Upon a Time in China III (黄飞鸿之三：狮王争霸)

Once Upon a Time in China III (黄飞鸿之三：狮王争霸) is a 1993 Hong Kong martial-arts film directed by Tsui Hark and the third entry in his Once Upon a Time in China series, with Jet Li returning as the Qing-dynasty folk hero Wong Fei-hung. The story moves the series from Guangdong to Beijing, where Wong becomes entangled in a government-sponsored lion-dance tournament, a Russian rival for the affections of Thirteenth Aunt (Rosamund Kwan), and a foreign plot against the diplomat Li Hongzhang.¹

Key fact	Detail
Directed by	Tsui Hark, who also produced and co-wrote the screenplay with Hanson Chan Tin-suen and Charcoal Tan¹
Starring	Jet Li (Wong Fei-hung), Rosamund Kwan (Thirteenth Aunt), Max Mok (Leung Foon), Xiong Xin-xin (Clubfoot Seven), Lau Shun (Wong Kei-ying)¹
Release	Premiered 24 December 1992 in Taiwan; opened in Hong Kong and the mainland on 11 February 1993²
Setting	Late Qing Beijing, built around the "Lion King" competition¹^•³
Hong Kong box office	HK$27,540,561 in 1993⁴
Reception	Douban 8.2/10 from 163,191 users (as of 5 September 2024); Tomatometer 63% from 8 reviews⁵^•⁶
Theme song	"男儿当自强"³

Spoilers

Plot

In the late Qing period, with foreign powers threatening China, the Empress Dowager Cixi encourages commoners to practice martial arts for national defense. To flatter her, Li Hongzhang stages an annual "Lion King" competition in which schools and societies fight for a trophy with lion heads in hand. News of the contest sets the major martial-arts factions arming themselves, and conflicts break out across the capital.³

Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li) travels to Beijing with Thirteenth Aunt (Rosamund Kwan) and Leung Foon (Max Mok) to visit his father Wong Kei-ying (Lau Shun). From an injury to his father he learns of the tournament, which is nominally meant to encourage martial training but in practice goads the martial world into fighting one another. The local strongman Chao Tien-pa wants to monopolize the contest and uses his enforcer Clubfoot Seven (Xiong Xin-xin) to eliminate rivals. Leung Foon, avenging Wong Kei-ying, accidentally breaks Clubfoot Seven's leg; abandoned by Chao, Clubfoot Seven is treated by Wong and, grateful to father and son, joins Wong's lion team. After a bloody battle in the tournament, they defeat all rivals and become "Lion King of China."⁷

Wong petitions Li Hongzhang to cancel the competition; Li ignores the petition, so Wong enters the contest himself to stop the schools from destroying one another, and wins the championship after fierce fighting.³ Alongside the tournament, Wong spars with a Russian rival, Tomansky (John Wakefield), for Thirteenth Aunt's affections and works to foil a foreign plot to assassinate Li Hongzhang.¹ The film closes with Wong's direct address to Li Hongzhang, asking whether a mere plaque can change the fate of the nation, a line that critics have continued to cite.⁵

Production

Tsui Hark's first two Wong Fei-hung films were set in Lingnan's Guangdong; for the third he moved the story to Beijing and rebuilt the series around large-scale lion dance, giving the franchise a new visual identity.² It was the first film in the series to be shot on location in Beijing, using the city's architecture to visible effect.⁸ Tired of Hong Kong locations, Tsui took the crew north, though he worried about shortages of equipment and skilled staff at an unfamiliar site and considered bringing his full Hong Kong production team.⁹

Lion heads and design. Having long heard of the reputation of the Li family's lion heads (黎家狮), Tsui Hark specified a batch of Li-family lion heads to be custom-made for the film.⁵ Art director Timothy Yip Gam-tim designed the lion figures of the competing schools so that the dance became a spectacle in itself, with lions that could breathe fire and launch hidden projectiles; Chinese-language commentary credits the film with making southern lion dance famous through cinema.¹⁰^•⁵

The crew included cinematographer Andrew Lau Wai-keung, editors Marco Mak Chi-sin and Angie Lam On-yee, martial-arts choreographer Yuen Bun, and composers William Wu Wai-lap and Tsui Hark himself.¹ Production companies were Beijing Film Studio, Golden Harvest, and Film Workshop.³

Release and reception

The film premiered in Taiwan on 24 December 1992 and opened in Hong Kong and the mainland on 11 February 1993.² Later theatrical releases followed in France (8 November 2000), Finland (2 October 2003), and South Korea (27 August 2015).³ Its Hong Kong gross of HK$27,540,561 appears in listings of the year's leading earners.⁴

Its commercial performance had an industry consequence beyond the gross: according to 1905.com, the film's release opened a new way of settling box-office receipts, described as "the first step of revenue sharing in Chinese cinema."⁹

Critical response has emphasized the spectacle. The lion-dance set pieces, combining fire-breathing pageantry with martial-arts combat, are described by the Criterion Collection as among the most visually spectacular achievements of the series.¹ Chinese-language reviews have singled out the opening close-up of a lion head and the varied lion designs of the finale, which gave the Wong Fei-hung series a new look through grand-scale lion dance.⁵ On aggregate measures, Douban users rate it 8.2/10⁵ and the Tomatometer stands at 63% from 8 reviews.⁶

Place in the series

The film is the third of Tsui Hark's 1990s Wong Fei-hung cycle, following Once Upon a Time in China (1991) and Once Upon a Time in China II (1992), and preceding Once Upon a Time in China IV (1993) and Once Upon a Time in China V (1994).⁹ Mainland audiences came to know the series largely through this third installment, which circulated in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland from late 1992 into early 1993.¹¹ A recurring critical reading holds that although Wong wins the lion-dance contest, the Qing court loses the country beyond the pageantry of the ceremony, tying the action climax to the series' theme of a dynasty unable to meet foreign pressure.¹²

Sources differ on the runtime: the Criterion Collection lists 111 minutes,¹ 1905.com lists 105 minutes,³ and Eye for Film lists 107 minutes.⁸

References

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