Chun Shih(I)

The slender square jawed debonair features that characterize Shih Chun also describe this 1960s era Taiwanese acting pioneer who upon his screen debut launched a star presence with a leading role alongside Taiwanese stars Shuangguan Lingfeng and Pai Ying in the late King Hu's early landmark hit 'Dragon Gate Inn' that would launch the path of parallel careers. Hu would almost immediately follow-up with Shih again by casting him as the iconic naive intellectual and momma's boy, a bumbling young scholar enchanted by the otherworldly charms of a beautiful but deadly young Ming Dynasty operative played by Hsu Feng in the Cannes Palm D'Or feature 'A Touch of Zen' elevating Shih's stature into the realm of international company. Shih Chun would collaborate with King Hu and his female muse Hsu Feng twice more during the late 1970s in the director's classically contemplative Buddhist-Taoist duet 'The Legend of the Mountain' and 'Raining in the Mountain'. Shih's screen credits would resume domestically with little fanfare through the 1980-90s upon retiring from acting in his native Taiwan although most recently his name would resurface once again in New Wave director Tsai Ming Liang's referential homage 'Goodbye Dragon Inn' alongside Shih Chun's original 'Inn' co-star and Tsai regular Mao Tien in 2003. Yet it would be his earlier collaborations with the legendary King Hu that would be his most profound and help shape his show business persona as the director's on-screen alter-ego and thus vicariously ours with the near passive screen persona that helped channel audiences back into a magical time of Chinese antiquity, often-times with Shih portraying the situational voice of challenged reason and threatened humanity in a chaotic tumultuous world rocked out of political, social and spiritual equilibrium.