General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Wong Fei Hung Series

A Hong Kong–Chinese television film series produced between 1995 and 1996, Wong Fei Hung Series (黃飛鴻新傳, "New Biography of Wong Fei-hung") relates five tales of the Chinese martial artist and folk hero Wong Fei-hung, with each tale spanning four episodes and the whole amounting to 20 episodes.¹ It was produced by Tsui Hark and starred Vincent Zhao, Maggie Shiu, Max Mok, Lau Shun, Kent Cheng, Hung Yan-yan, Power Chan and Cheung Chun-hung in the leading roles.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original title	黃飛鴻新傳 (Wong Fei-hung Sin Zhuan)
Format	Five television films of four episodes each, 20 episodes total¹
Broadcast	The first part aired in 1995 and the remaining four in 1996¹
Production	Made by Film Workshop (電影工作室) with Tsui Hark as producer, shot on film stock; the first part aired in 1995 and the remaining four in 1996²
The five stories	The Eight Assassins (八大天王); The Suspicious Temple (少林故事); The Headless General (無頭將軍); The Final Victory (辛亥革命); The Ideal Century (理想年代)¹
Directors	One director per story: Lee Man-hong, Choi King-shun, Mak Tong-kit, Cheng Ki-shing, and Wu Ming-kai²
Lead actor	Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo, who also played Wong in Tsui Hark's fourth and fifth Wong Fei-hung films¹^•³

Spoilers

The subject: Wong Fei-hung on screen

Wong Fei-hung (1847–1925) was a Southern Chinese martial artist and healer, widely known as the grandmaster who developed the modern Hunggar boxing style. His life has been mythicized by hundreds of movies, publications, and television shows produced in Hong Kong since the Second World War, and his screen persona has continually transformed to address the changing political, social, and cultural realities of each postwar era.⁴ Since 1949 there have been well over a hundred feature films about him, numerous television series, radio dramas, and novels.⁵

Television entered the legend in 1976, when TVB produced a 13-episode Wong Fei-hung drama starring Kwan Tak-hing, the actor who had played the master in dozens of films. That series took a historical reading of the story, setting it in the politically turbulent early Republican period of 1915 to 1919 and sending Wong against foreign powers, Japanese spies, and corrupt officials rather than local bullies.⁵ This historical approach influenced Tsui Hark's film series Once Upon a Time in China (1991–1997), six installments starring Jet Li and, from the fourth film on, Vincent Zhao.³

The five stories

The Eight Assassins (八大天王). In the chaos of the late Qing, Prince Cheng, acting on Empress Dowager Cixi's orders, travels south to recruit the Foshan righteous fighter Wong Fei-hung into the service of the court; Wong politely declines. The offended prince then secretly recruits the Eight Heavenly Kings, a band of feared jianghu fighters led by the monk Jinghua, to deal with Wong.⁸

The Suspicious Temple (少林故事). The Hong Kong Film Archive-style catalog dianying.com lists this installment as a 218-minute Cantonese television serial produced in Taiwan, directed by Choi King-shun with screenwriters Leung Yiu-ming and Choi King-shun, classified as a wuxia serial on the themes of wuxia, Wong Fei-hung, and the Shaolin Temple, and rated IIA in Hong Kong. Its cast includes Vincent Zhao, Kent Cheng, Max Mok, Power Chan, Xiong Xinxin, Maggie Shiu, Lau Shun, and Wang Yu.⁹

The Headless General (無頭將軍), The Final Victory (辛亥革命), and The Ideal Century (理想年代). These three complete the run of four-episode stories. The titles of the last two place the action against the 1911 Revolution and the early Republican era, continuing the historical framing that Tsui had developed in his films.¹

Production

The Wong Fei Hung Series was Tsui Hark's first television project with the character. According to an interview with production designer Chiu Sung-bon published by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the 黃飛鴻電視電影系列, that is, the Wong Fei-hung Sin Zhuan television films, were produced in 1995 to 1996 by Film Workshop with Tsui Hark as producer, as period-piece anthology dramas shot entirely on film stock. Only the first part, The Eight Assassins, was broadcast in 1995; the other four aired in 1996.² Database listings differ on the dating: Moviefone gives a first airdate of January 1, 1995 and a last airdate of May 14, 1995 on the ATV network, produced by ATV Enterprises Limited,¹ while The Movie Database describes it as a 1996 Hong Kong series whose single season premiered on January 1, 1995.⁶ A People's Daily culture article likewise dates Tsui's first Wong Fei-hung television series to 1996.⁷

Each of the five stories had its own director: Lee Man-hong for The Eight Assassins, Choi King-shun for The Suspicious Temple, Mak Tong-kit for The Headless General, Cheng Ki-shing for The Final Victory, and Wu Ming-kai for The Ideal Century.²

Cast

Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo played Wong Fei-hung across all 20 episodes. The recurring cast listed for the full run includes Maggie Shiu Mei-Kei, Max Mok Siu-Chung, Lau Shun, Kent Cheng Jak-Si, Xiong Xinxin, Power Chan Kwok-Pong, Jacqueline Law Wai-Guen, Tai Bo, Derek Yee Tung-Sing, Kwan Yung, Elvis Tsui Kam-kong, Vincent Wan Yeung-Ming, James Pax, Lau Kar-Wing, Bryan Leung, Cheng Pei-pei, Elaine Ng Yee-lei, and Bowie Lam Bo-Yee, each credited for 20 episodes.¹^•¹⁰

Place in the Wong Fei-hung screen legacy

The series sits between two phases of the character's screen history. In the early 1990s Tsui Hark had reinvented Wong as a human being rather than a rigid icon, casting Jet Li as a naive young master learning to navigate a China flooded by foreigners, and later replacing Li with Vincent Zhao for the fourth and fifth films.⁵ The Wong Fei Hung Series carried that reinvention onto television with the same lead actor and the same producer, in an anthology format that let each story pursue a different historical episode. Wong Fei-hung has continued to appear in television dramas since, and the character remains one of the most memorable figures of Hong Kong popular culture.⁵

References

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