EVERY GROUP believes itself to be living on an isolated island of undisturbed ethnic purity—a non-stop tradition party. The sad news for racial prudes everywhere is that there aren’t, ethnically and culturally speaking, any islands.

We’re all crowded together, rudely elbowing each other yet freely borrowing and adapting interesting things—clothes, styles, attitudes, pop culture—from other tribes. For example, by now, everyone and her peg-legged grandmamma knows that the influential, pan-galactic rap group Wu Tang Clan got their name from The RZA’s love of martial arts films (specifically, 1983’s Shaolin and Wu-Tang). And every shopper at mega-mart Han Ah Reum knows that Korean hip-hop is a huge phenomenon in the Land of the Morning Calm. It’s this borderless network of influences that interests us, how things made for one culture can leap from place to place, creating unpredictable hybrids.

We’re diving into the deep end of the pool here. Fainter hearts would shy away and get back to less strenuous pastimes such as nude motocross and rattlesnake teasing. But we’re tough bastards and deep-end diving is precisely what we’re going to do as the months unfold. We’re going to explore what we call the Afro-Asian Matrix—that complex web of positive interactions and less-than-positive conflicts that make up this special little fragment of modernity.

And no, it won’t be all kung fu flicks, though that’s not a bad place to start (because everything goes better with kung fu).

Betamax and The Three Evil Masters (or, a bit of personal history)

As old timers and historians of technology know, Sony’s introduction of Betamax videotapes created an entirely new market for films previously only available to audiences lucky enough to be at the right place to see them. For kung fu film enthusiasts this “right place” might have been in front of a television to catch a Saturday afternoon show featuring a heavily edited version of a movie you’d heard rumors and whispers about or, if you were luckier, a visit to a movie theater—for example, in New York’s Chinatown—to catch a flick on the big screen with an appreciative audience. And the spectacularly lucky were in Hong Kong, getting the latest Shaw Brothers releases still hot from the oven.

Betamax changed all that. Suddenly, even a kid in West Philly with no connections (except to the Jordanian dude who opened what was probably the first downtown video rental store) and no plane fare to HK could watch Wang Lung-wei deftly swing a gaun dao, a blade-topped pole, across an opponent’s scalp. In films such as Three Evil Masters, elaborate costumes, astounding skill and, equally important, a new brand of cool (new at least to me and my circle of friends) were brought before the eyes and poured into the dreams of people far away from the filmmaker’s home base.

In those pre-Google days, gathering information about what films were out—and of those considered worthwhile by Chinese audiences—involved a lot of legwork. My three teenage friends and I would take bus trips to Philly Chinatown video stores to examine their stock as bemused clerks looked on.

All the box cover writing was in Chinese, of course. We looked for recognizable faces such as Lo Mang, Chen Kuan-tai and Chia Hui-liu and asked someone to translate the titles. Without a moment’s hesitation, we’d buy the un-dubbed Chinese versions and muddle through the plots as best we could. Later, when dubbed versions were available at the Jordanian guy’s store, we’d buy the same tapes again. All this work was evidence of a deep and durable sort of love.

And what inspired this love? I think it was that unique combination of incredible physical artistry (seen in the very best films like Avenging Eagle, Master Killer and 8 Diagram Pole Fighter) and Chinese cinema cool (as I’m writing, I have in mind actor Lo Lieh’s classic portrayal of legendary White Lotus Chief Pai Mei in Clan of the White Lotus, calmly dispatching his enemies as he strokes his snow white beard). We were 15, maybe 16, when these films came into our lives; still forming our ideas of what it meant to be men.

The cowboy myth was remote and overdone. Military machismo had yet to return to fashion and Blaxploitation and Hollywood action films—although entertaining enough and filled with moments in which crooked cops and stereotyped South American drug lords received their comeuppance at the hands of gun-wielding tough guys—lacked a grand heroic vision.

But in the Shaw films, the stakes were always high (at times, the very existence of China or, at least, the Shaolin Temple), the fighters were always unbelievably adept and the aura of tragic heroism hung heavily in the air. What more could you possibly want?

The Grand Summing Up (or, what Tarrantino knows)

One of the “special features” on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 2 DVD is a left-on-the-cutting-room-floor bit of movie magic called the “Damoe Deleted Scene.”

David Carradine, that absurdly clumsy “master” of kung fu (playing the Bill who must be killed), is walking beside Uma Thurman (who plays his girlfriend/protégé Beatrix Kiddo) down the dusty street of a Hollywood set designer’s vision of an authentic Chinese village. They’re laughing quietly and whispering to each other in that special way lovers who happen to be assassins do when they’re strolling through narrow alleys from which trouble might come at any moment.