? What generation are you talking about?
Nothing wrong in shaming those who owe a dead person money. Too many individuals take advantage of the kind nature of an individual. And it seems from the statement that the Widow is pledging it to a Charity in Lau’s name.
here’s some video coverage of the event itself.
I didn’t say there was anything wrong.
You project a lot on what I post here, ngokfei. Do you do that with everyone or is it just me? Whazzup with dat? 
The generation would be those of the first modern media celebrities. Those actors and artists that starred in early movies, they didn’t have a sense of where the genre would go. How could they? The notion of royalties were far from ironclad, so many of them don’t get nearly what they deserved for some of our most beloved classics. This situation reminds me of some of the financial issues that Gordon Liu is experiencing.
It’s not exclusive to martial arts movie stars at all. It’s even more prevalent in music. The early music producers had abusive contracts. Again, the media was just getting started a few decades ago…well, more than a few now, but no one new how big music or movies could get back then as those media platforms were uncharted. It’s astonishing how little some of the founding stars got paid to produce time-honored classics.
He completed his kungfull life, i hope we would have same.
A nice tribute
We have an obituary in our September/October 2013 issue. It’s short and to the point. We had a lot of obituaries in this issue.
What Hollywood could learn from the classic kung-fu films
Following the untimely death of director and actor Liu Chia Liang, Anne Billson pays tribute to a golden age of martial arts films.
By Anne Billson
7:00AM BST 16 Aug 2013
The death in June of Liu Chia Liang, after a two decade battle against cancer, seems to have gone virtually unnoticed by the mainstream media, which is a shame because he was only one of the best action directors and choreographers who ever lived. His work deserves to be celebrated – especially now, as a corrective to modern Hollywood’s unfortunate tendency to create action by chopping it into little pieces in the editing room rather than staging it in longer takes in front of the camera.
Along with Chang Cheh (who died in 2002), Liu Chia Liang was one of the most prominent directors during the heyday of Shaw Brothers studios, and a exponent of the popular Hong Kong synthesis of samurai movie, spaghetti western and wuxia (Chinese stories of chivalry and martial arts). He also appeared in many of the films, and as recently as 2005 worked as stunt director and actor on Tsui Hark’s Seven Swords.
He started learning kung-fu at the age of eight from his father, a martial arts master, and in 1965, at the age of 21, joined Shaw Brothers, where he began to collaborate with another director-to-be, Tang Chia, in choreographing action sequences, notably for the films of Chang Cheh. When Liu started to direct, his approach was very different from the solemn heroic bromance of Chang Cheh’s work; his films contain more humour (though the combat scenes are usually deadly serious), and even have fighting roles for women.
You don’t watch kung-fu films for the stories, which are usually some variation on avenging the death or defeat of a loved one or associate, and often involve elaborate training rituals in which the protagonist must hone his kung-fu skills. You watch them for the scenes of combat, which at their best can have grace and rhythm as glorious as the dance routines of Fred Astaire or the comic set-pieces of Buster Keaton. The great martial arts directors knew how to film a fight scene, with none of the excessive editing and pointless fancy camerawork you see in Hollywood action films today. The combatants and their moves are clearly visible, and despite the use of stylised sound effects and occasional use of wirework in some of the more extravagant leaps and tumbles, it’s the actors themselves, often trained in Chinese opera, whose acrobatic skills are on display. It’s all in the choreography, and Liu Chia Liang’s choreography was the very best.
Liu’s favourite leading actor was Gordon Liu, perhaps best known to western audiences these days for his appearances (as different characters) in both volumes of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. His first film for Liu Chia Liang was Dirty Ho (1976), in which he plays a prince who has to keep his kung-fu skills hidden – hence some dazzling choreography when he pretends it’s not him but a female lute-player who is doing the fighting.
The character Gordon Liu played in in Kill Bill: Volume 2 was Pai Mei, a white-haired priest who had already appeared as an out-and-out villain in Liu Chia Liang’s Executioners from Shaolin (1977), where he was played by perennial bad guy actor Lo Lieh. Pai Mei’s party-piece is the ability to retract his testicles into his groin, making him all but invincible in combat.
Gordon Liu’s next film with Liu Chia Liang was a kung-fu classic, became the actor’s signature role, and incidentally inspired American hip-hoppers the Wu-Tang Clan. In The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), he plays a young student who wants to learn martial arts at the Shaolin temple so he can avenge friends and family. The film is famed for its elaborate training sequences based on seemingly mundane tasks – without which we would never have had the “wax on, wax off” of The Karate Kid. Return to the 36th Chamber, the first of two sequels, followed in 1980, and is memorable for its astonishing use of bamboo scaffolding techniques in the fight scenes.
Atypically for a Liu Chia Liang film, Legendary Weapons of China (1982) incorporated supernatural elements in its story about the search for martial artists invulnerable to bullets. Liu Chia Liang (in the red) fights his real-life brother Liu Chia Yung (in the white), also a martial arts choreographer and director, and the results are spectacular. There’s a list of the legendary weapons themselves on Wikipedia.
My favourite Liu Chia Liang film, Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) is also atypical in that it’s less humorous than that of the director’s other films; the story starts with betrayal and a massacre, and it can’t have lightened the mood when one of the film’s stars, Alexander Fu Sheng, died in a car accident before the end of filming.
Gordon Liu, whose character survives the film’s opening carnage, seeks refuge with monks whose vows forbid them to kill - so they have devised a method of defeating marauding wolves by defanging them, a technique gleefully applied to the villains in this final showdown. Warning: this clip is particularly bloody. But the bad guys have behaved so nefariously they deserve everything they get in one of Lia Chia Liang’s most thrilling fight scenes.
Greetings,
Though short, the obit seemed a little rushed.
mickey
A great loss! He was one of the most professional of the actors out there and showed skill in many aspects. I find that his better work was against Jackie Chan as protagonist when he did the drunken kuingfu performance.
1 arrested as Hong Kong police probe urn theft after kung fu icon’s ashes missing
Force opens investigation into Mary Jean Reimer’s revelation concerning the suspected theft of the urns of her late husband, Lau Kar-leung
Reading Time:2 minutes
Published: 3:08pm, 4 Nov 2025Updated: 4:10pm, 4 Nov 2025
Anti-triad officers from the Hong Kong Police Force have arrested a man in connection with the suspected theft of urns from a columbarium in Sha Tin, the Post has learned, after containers holding the ashes of legendary kung fu master Lau Kar-leung were allegedly stolen.
A source said on Tuesday that officers from the organised crime and triad bureau had opened an investigation into actress turned lawyer Mary Jean Reimer’s revelation concerning the suspected theft of her late husband’s urns.
The source also said a man had been arrested in connection with the case and that legal proceedings had already begun.
00:13
A spokeswoman for Po Fook Hill in Sha Tin, surnamed Li, said that the columbarium had received reports of “individual” clients’ urns being stolen and had reported the matter to police. She declined to disclose the number of urns affected.
Lau Kar-leung was a kung fu master. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
“We have been cooperating with the police investigation, which is ongoing,” Li said.
On Monday evening, Reimer revealed in a video on her YouTube channel that Lau’s ashes had been stolen, saying she believed the theft took place between May and August this year.
“Simply put, Master Lau Kar-leung’s ashes have been stolen. It was stolen from the premises of Po Fook Hill,” Reimer said.
She said a staff member at Po Fook Hill had notified her of the theft in late August and linked her up with the force, with the former actress initially thinking it was a scam.
“It wasn’t until police asked me if Master Lau’s ashes were held in two rectangular boxes with his name on them. That is when I knew it’s real,” Reimer said.
According to Reimer, police got hold of the photos of Lau’s urns taken by the thieves.
“When police asked me if I would pay a ransom, I said no,” she said.
Actress-turned-lawyer Mary Jean Reimer says her late husband’s ashes have been allegedly stolen in a video on her YouTube channel. Photo: Mary Jean Reimer
When staff at the columbarium opened the compartments that had held Lau’s urns for police officers and Reimer, they found the cloths that had covered the urns scrunched up inside one compartment, with a pamphlet from Lau’s funeral remaining in other, according to the lawyer.
She claimed that there was more than one victim in the theft, adding that police had told her the chances of recovering Lau’s ashes were low.
The Post has reached out to Po Fook Hill for comment.
Lau, also a filmmaker, died in 2013 at the age of 76 following a two-decade struggle with lymphatic cancer. He was remembered by arts critics for redefining Hong Kong’s kung fu cinema and winning over audiences with the true story of the martial art.
Jess joined the Post in 2021 after graduating from the University of Cambridge with a degree in Human, Social, and Political Sciences, specialising in Politics and Social Anthropology.
