Today's reality is that loyalties to state and flag are being called into question. War could break out at any time. The economy could collapse. It is a bleak scenario and, no matter what some leaders might have you believe, there are no clear, black-and-white solutions.

When it comes to China and its related territories, however, this uncertainty prevails at a time when the nation has also achieved great economic, social and political progress. One of the softer achievements, you could argue, is the re-emergence of the wuxia movie. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, released in 2000 and financed by Taiwanese, mainland Chinese and American money, became a global phenomenon. It made a star of Zhang Ziyi and picked up a Best Foreign Film Oscar along the way.

Hero, which opened in China on Dec 20 and is now the highest-grossing Chinese-language film there, has been pumped up by pan-Chinese economic muscle, with most of its US$31-million (S$53.6 million) budget coming from mainland Chinese and Hongkong investors. The film also represents China's bid for an Oscar this year. Its international audience is a post-Sept 11 world desperately in need of heroes. But its homeland audience - including the Chinese diaspora - also sees an extra resonance in the new movie's moral dialectic. While Hero's message is pacifist in spirit, it also endorses personal sacrifice and bloodshed 'for the greater social good'. It is a wuxia movie that puts a dark and aching existential spin on the traditional vengeance motif.

Crossroads

Some see it as a tacit, mournful endorsement of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, others as China's message to Taiwan that unification could be to the good of Greater China. Crouching Tiger may have all the rooftop fight scenes and inn ambushes of classic wuxia but its real battles are those of the human heart.

Its characters are at psychological crossroads - Li Mubai (Chow Yun Fat) is about to leave the pugilistic world after a life of repressed passion for Yu Xiulian (Michelle Yeoh). At the same time, Zhang Ziyi's young character is drawn to that same world partly because she wants to fly the coop of impending marriage.

Hero begins with a seemingly straightforward and traditional wuxia-movie mission to assassinate a tyrant.

However, along the way, it turns into something else, namely a consideration of the greater good and conflict about what it really means to be a hero.

Ultimately, both Crouching Tiger and Hero offer a revisionist take on the wuxia movie, in keeping with the grey politics of the world and China's political concerns. With their pondering of the nature of heroism, their beautifully elegant gestures, their emphasis on form rather than fight, the films seem to be emphasising the xia part of the term, wuxia. Wu refers to the martial arts, xia to the philosopher-warrior hero or his values. The traditional wuxia novels, on which the movies were based, also emphasised the xia aspect.

This is markedly different from the first wuxia movies that were released in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, these Mandarin movies were produced by the Shaw Brothers' film juggernaut, based in Hong Kong. In those days, it was en route to becoming an Asian economic tiger. At the same time, the roving swordsmen of the brothers' films were also a response to the violence sweeping mainland China, then undergoing the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

During that decade, artists, writers and members of the intelligentsia were persecuted and imprisoned.

The two directors credited for starting the wuxia trend, King Hu and Chang Cheh, were exiles themselves. Both were born in mainland China but left when the communists took power.

While King Hu's later movies, such as A Touch of Zen and Raining In The Mountain, had their fair share of ephemeral philosophising, Chang Cheh's films embodied the physical quest many have come to associate with the wuxia film. The quest was a tangible one - usually vengeance for family or clan killings - and generally ended in unequivocal triumph for the righteous. For example, in Chang Cheh's classic One-Armed Swordsman (1967), actor Wang Yu plays an orphan who trains himself to fight with one arm. He goes on to rescue his master and family from being killed by an enemy sect.

The wuxia genre has also struck a chord well beyond China and the Chinese people. Its intellectual and emotional wanderings suit the drifting, nomadic times of the world today, in which people are less likely to be tied to a specific country or ideology. The international success of Crouching Tiger has turned wuxia into the Chinese-speaking world's latest and most lucrative cultural export. With globalisation, Hollywood action heroes, such as those in The Matrix (1999), take their fighting stances from a hodge-podge of influences, including wuxia and Japanese anime.

Pen is Mightier

Martial art has long had its place in the mongrel Hong Kong action-film genre, with its cocktail of wuxia, gongfu (fist-fighting), guns, and now, digital effects. Adding to all this now is a yearning to believe in good 'old-world' values and the acknowledgement that the giant China sleeps no longer. Its mythology has taken on an added resonance and so have its heroes.

Wuxia heroes, regardless of which side they are on, display ideals. New wuxia movies recognise spiritual and moral strength. The quest has turned inward. Its hopeful message for a world in turmoil: The pen is as mighty as the sword.