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Tear Jerker / Once Upon a Time in China

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  • When Foon is trying to become Master Yen's apprentice, and Yen tries to discourage him by saying "What's the use of being a Kung Fu expert? Can't make a living.". At this point, Yen has just defeated a capable, renowned warrior, but at the end of the day he's on the street starving in the pouring rain and getting spat upon by prostitutes. He has a set of impressive skills that probably took a lifetime to master, but his abilities seem increasingly obsolete in the society he is living in. It makes his eventual turn towards villainy all the more tragic. He wasn't really a bad man, which you can see when he practically begs Foon not to desert him, but he considers himself backed into a corner such that working with the gangsters to build his own school and restore his status is his only respectable option.
    • His heartbreaking demise at the gunfire of the American mercenaries really hits home the tragedy of Westernization in China harder than anything committed to celluloid before or since.
    • In the same film, the massacre at the Chinese opera performance, made sadder by the Jesuit priest's Heroic Sacrifice to protect Aunt 13.
  • The abuse many Chinese go through in the film due to the Western Colonizers engulfing their way of way. Some are desperate enough to try leave and go to America for a new start, but are swindled, left to die if ill, and enslaved and treated like cattle upon arrival and are targeted for death if they try to return to China. Many Chinese women are in turn enslaved and sold in a sex trafficking ring by ruthless pirates to serve their new Western buyers.
  • The little girl in the second film who is a devotee to the White Lotus Society bravely tries to pull a You Shall Not Pass! in front of a gun, believing herself to be immune to bullets. The man wielding the gun desperately tries to get her to back down without firing the gun while the other White Lotus cultists press in around him. The girl ends up getting shot (accidentally), and it's not clear if she is saved in time.
    • The death of Lu Haodong in the same film, who, already gravely injured by General Yun-seut's bullets, takes the rest to save Wong and Foon from getting shot.
  • The death of Miao Sanniang in the fourth movie, not long after her Heel–Face Turn and she clearly holds feelings for Wong Fei-hung.

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