ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the history and memory of Shaolin martial arts heroes in Hong Kong. It argues that the increasingly global hegemony of American popular-culture heroes was countered by local hero figures and regional traditions of the heroic that take on particular urgency during actual or perceived social and political crises. While Western audiences were familiarized with Chinese martial arts traditions through a plethora of martial arts movies that were produced in the 1960s and 1970s, residents of Hong Kong in the 1980s and early 1990s turned to martial arts movies to soothe their anxieties about local industrial instability and the looming reunification with China. In the case of Hong Kong, local notions of heroism became a counterforce to globalization and postcoloniality, reminding people of the importance of local value systems that promise stability during eras of uncertainty.
