[Chul-cheol Joo’s Locker] Poroporomi! Stephen Chow’s Most Heartbreaking Object: The Pandora’s Box in ‘A Chinese Odyssey’

Welcome to Stephen Chow’s world. If you’ve fallen for Chow’s movies after seeing the recent rerelease of 〈Kung Fu Hustle〉(2004), the next films I’d recommend are the two 1995 movies that die-hard Chow fans collectively call 〈A Chinese Odyssey〉: 〈A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box〉(hereafter 〈Pandora’s Box〉) and 〈A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella〉(hereafter 〈Cinderella〉). They are both the culmination of director Jeffrey Lau’s ambition—he helped make Chow a star with 〈All for the Winner〉(1990)—and a definitive showcase for Chow’s inimitable comedy. If his films can be divided broadly into contemporary stories such as 〈All for the Winner〉, 〈Tricky Brains〉, 〈Fight Back to School〉, 〈From Beijing with Love〉 and 〈King of Comedy〉, and period pieces such as 〈Justice, My Foot!〉, 〈Royal Tramp〉, 〈King of Beggars〉, 〈Flirting Scholar〉 and 〈Hail the Judge〉, then 〈A Chinese Odyssey〉 is the defining example of his period films—and, alongside 〈King of Comedy〉(1999), one of his most moving romantic dramas.

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“Pandora’s Box” (月光寶盒) literally means “a box of treasures bathed in moonlight.” Given the film’s English title, 〈Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box〉, the phrase also carries the meaning of “Pandora’s box.” In the film, it refers to a magical box that can turn back time. In 〈Pandora’s Box〉, Sun Wukong (Stephen Chow), punished by Guanyin, is reborn 500 years later as the leader of a band of mountain outlaws on Wuyue Mountain, known as Joker. He had refused to accompany Tang Sanzang (Law Kar-ying) to fetch the scriptures and tried to kill him after being tempted by the Bull Demon King’s promise of immortality to anyone who ate him. One day, two demons searching for Tang Sanzang appear: Spider Woman (Yammie Lam) and White Bone Demon (Karen Mok). Reborn as a human, Joker remembers nothing, but it turns out that 500 years earlier, when he was Sun Wukong, he and White Bone Demon had been lovers.

When they meet again, White Bone Demon is consumed by hatred for Sun Wukong, who abandoned her. Then the Bull Demon King arrives, and as the demons battle, Joker and White Bone Demon fall in love again. The deputy chief, Iron Fan (Ng Man-tat), also accidentally (!) falls for Spider Woman, and she becomes pregnant with his child. After a series of events, Joker discovers that he is Sun Wukong and sets out to find the “Pandora’s Box,” which allows time travel, so he can save White Bone Demon, who is about to kill herself. But after several attempts, he ends up 500 years in the past, where he meets Zixia (Athena Chu), the Fairy of the Spiders, who is also White Bone Demon’s teacher.

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The first film, 〈Pandora’s Box〉, is a kind of warm-up for the heart-wrenching love and pain of 〈Cinderella〉. So scenes that feel familiar from other Stephen Chow parodies unfold throughout. If 〈A Chinese Odyssey〉 as a whole is a parody of Wong Kar-wai’s 〈Ashes of Time〉(1994), the bandits in the opening scene—wearing shabby clothes and old hats, crouched on a sand dune watching passersby—are unmistakably reminiscent of Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung) and Hong Qi (Jacky Cheung) in 〈Ashes of Time〉. The two roles played by Brigitte Lin as Murong Yin, who asks Ouyang Feng to kill Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung Ka-fai) because he left her younger sister for another woman, also bring Spider Woman and White Bone Demon to mind. The waves Joker sometimes sees in his dreams resemble those in 〈Ashes of Time〉 as well. 〈Pandora’s Box〉 brings 〈Ashes of Time〉 into the story with striking directness. These details were possible because Wong and Jeffrey Lau were close friends who had even written scripts together when they were starting out.

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Jeffrey Lau also made a cameo. The burly actor who first appears in the film disguised as a grape and later turns up as Master Bodhi, an exorcist who isn’t much help, is Lau himself. Earlier, the production of 〈Ashes of Time〉 had dragged on indefinitely, which is why nearly the same cast was able to appear in Jeffrey Lau’s 〈The Eagle Shooting Heroes〉(1993). 〈The Eagle Shooting Heroes〉 was no mere cheap parody made by borrowing his friend’s actors. It was the film that came to the rescue by providing funds to finish 〈Ashes of Time〉, which was on the verge of being abandoned. Then 〈Chungking Express〉(1994), which Wong hurriedly completed in just a month out of desperation, provided the money for the post-production of 〈Ashes of Time〉. So although 〈Ashes of Time〉 began as the first production of Wong’s Jet Tone Films, it became his second film, following 〈Chungking Express〉.

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The line fans of 〈A Chinese Odyssey〉 cherish most is the incantation Stephen Chow shouts under the moonlight while holding the Pandora’s Box: “Poroporomi!” Apparently, it’s a playful Cantonese-style imitation of the Sanskrit “prajñāpāramitā” (般若波羅蜜), and it carries the Buddhist meaning of “crossing over suffering through wisdom.” Buddhism teaches prajñā, or wisdom, as the highest pāramitā—a virtue a bodhisattva must practice on the path to becoming a Buddha—and the best route to nirvana. In other words, it refers to the wisdom of awakening, gained through a bodhisattva’s practice, that allows one to recognize the truth and reach the far shore of nirvana. Of course, fans know these “facts.” But Stephen Chow fans have a special attachment to “Poroporomi,” the subtitle used in the 〈A Chinese Odyssey〉 films when they first came out on VHS long ago.

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Some fans reportedly sent complaint emails to the video distributor, insisting that translations must always stick closely to the original and asking it to replace “Poroporomi” with the precise term “prajñāpāramitā.” But “Poroporomi” isn’t all that far from the actual pronunciation. And in 〈Cinderella〉, the characters’ bodies are switched by a transformation spell: Zhu Bajie (Ng Man-tat) and the Fairy Zixia (Athena Chu) swap bodies, as do the Bull Demon King’s younger sister and Sha Wujing. Stephen Chow tries to kiss Ng Man-tat, then ends up retching. In a movie full of kisses, the incantation “Poroporomi” fits perfectly.

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I don’t know who the translator was, but I think it was a clever rendering made possible by being a Stephen Chow fan at the time. Longtime Hong Kong movie fans may feel a pang when Chow Yun-fat is called Zhou Runfa, which somehow brings Choi Bul-am’s laugh to mind, or when Leslie Cheung is called Zhang Guorong, making it feel as though you have to visit Seooreung on April 1. If, in the manga 「Slam Dunk」, Sakuragi Hanamichi—not Kang Baek-ho—said, “The left hand is just for support,” it might make you think the right hand should help, too. And if the school were called Shohoku High School, as in the original, instead of Buk-san High School, it might even feel as if your old school had been merged with another and disappeared. If 〈Pandora’s Box〉 and 〈Cinderella〉 are ever rereleased, like 〈Kung Fu Hustle〉, I hope Stephen Chow will hold up the Pandora’s Box and shout “Poroporomi!”—just as 〈Kung Fu Hustle〉 restored the name Pig Sty Alley to its original name, Kowloon Walled City.

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