Liu Jialiang, a native of Guangzhou, can’t live without the word "martial arts" all his life. He and his father are both martial arts people, and their martial arts are well-known, and they have inherited the pulse of Huang Feihong. Here in Liu Jialiang, he is based on kung fu movies with extraordinary skill. On his way to success, Zhang Che is undoubtedly one of his nobles. When Zhang Che filmed "Three Heroes in Border Town" in his early years, Liu Jialiang was still working in Shaw. Due to the lack of good martial arts actors, Zhang Che at that time took a fancy to Liu Jialiang and others who were helping Teng Hung Hsu shoot new martial arts, which started the vigorous development of Liu Jialiang’s martial arts career.
The cooperation between Zhang Che and Liu Jialiang was exceptionally smooth at first, and classic works such as One-armed Knife were produced. Zhang Che completely gave the martial arts play to Liu Jialiang, and this trust and affirmation continued until the Taiwan Province studio. At this time, Liu Jialiang had the idea of directing his own film, and he had a conflict with Zhang Che and parted ways from now on. Since then, Liu Jialiang has re-entered Shaw and cooperated with Ni Kuang.
Later, under the direction of Liu Jialiang, the elements of comedy were developed from the pure drama in the past, from the budding application in "God Strike" to the series of "Drunken Boxing", which was completely popular in China. Liu Jialiang also took the opportunity to integrate his real martial arts style into his works. From the films such as Thirty-six Rooms of Shaolin, Master of Shaolin Tent, and Bagua Stick of Five Lang, it is not difficult to see that the realistic fighting pictures occupy a large space of the film, and one of the tricks and styles is extremely clear, as if it happened in front of people, which thoroughly analyzes the essence of martial arts to the audience and spares no effort to share martial arts books with the audience.
It is Liu Jialiang’s spirit of dedicating his martial arts to the big screen that makes him achieve great success in the field of kung fu movies. Even after the new millennium and Shaw’s suspension of production, he has always stood firm in the ever-changing entertainment circle.
However, Liu Jialiang, who is pragmatic and realistic in martial arts, is not always smooth sailing. He and Jackie Chan fell out in drunken master 2. Their discussion of drama is totally different. Liu Jialiang insists on a down-to-earth style, but in Jackie Chan’s view, he ignores artistic vision. Jackie Chan resolutely carried out his juggling style in the important shooting parts of the film, such as the ending and Lu Huiguang’s fighting, and overthrew all the completed action scenes planned by Liu Jialiang and filmed them again. In this way, the two naturally fell out completely.
In addition to Jackie Chan, Liu Jialiang and Jet Li also had a bad time. And this incident has deep geographical reasons. At that time, Hong Kong people looked down on mainlanders, and this discrimination broke out obviously when the two places cooperated for the first time with the Shaolin theme work "North and South Shaolin". Being in it, Jet Li was very angry and vowed never to cooperate with Liu Jialiang.
In Jet Li’s view, when co-producing "North and South Shaolin", the treatment of mainlanders and Hong Kong people in the crew was too far off the mark. Hong Kong people do less work but earn more. They earn hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, but they can get tens of dollars a day when they sleep on the ground, while mainlanders get a few dollars only when they are busy for a day. In this case, they will not have a sense of protest, so it is strange that they can still work normally.
What really touched the bottom line of Jet Li was a shooting of sunrise. Anyone who has taken part in filming knows that sunrise and sunset are the same, and the light changes very quickly, and every second counts, so it is extremely difficult to shoot, so the crew started work on the spot a few hours before sunrise. So when Jet Li and his party were informed by Li Jialiang that they would be on standby at 2 a.m. and had to wear headgear in advance, they didn’t feel strange, but they waited all night, but they didn’t see Li Jialiang. When the sun was shining, Li Jialiang came, and he just said airily that he couldn’t shoot, so he wouldn’t shoot. Jet Li was furious. This was obviously playing with them, and he never wanted to cooperate with Li Jialiang.
Therefore, it can be seen from the film that Jet Li’s boldness and ferocity revealed in the paper-making section seems to be venting his dissatisfaction to the crew. Although these grievances have really happened, they can’t hide Liu Jialiang’s great achievements in China Kung Fu films.
In Tsui Hark’s films, Liu Jialiang also played an important role. Although they had great differences when they partnered with Tsui Hark in the early days, Liu Jialiang’s fighting style as always was incompatible with Tsui Hark’s. Tsui Hark advocated ethereal art and paid attention to visual beauty, so he abandoned Liu Jialiang and used Yuan Heping. However, when they got back together in Seven Swords, Tsui Hark made Liu Jialiang play a realistic fighting design thoroughly in the film, which made people see that kind of realistic and exciting close combat in Seven Swords.
Liu Jialiang has been in the business for several decades, insisting on his original intention and never forgetting his original intention. He has carried the traditional and real martial arts through to the end and truly carried forward China’s martial arts, which is really worthy of our respect. Liu Jialiang passed away in the middle of 13th year. His life was wonderful, bumpy, brilliant and bitter, but in any case, as a master of China Wushu, he is always worth remembering.
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