Directed by Tsui Hark • 1993 • Hong Kong
Starring Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Max Mok Siu-chung

Jet Li’s third outing as the storied martial-arts hero Wong Fei-hung is an exhilarating celebration of Chinese culture peppered with a dash of international espionage. This time around, Wong travels to Beijing, where he finds himself drawn into the intrigue surrounding an epic lion-dance competition, spars with a Russian rival for the affections of his beloved Thirteenth Aunt (Rosamund Kwan), and fights to foil a foreign plot to assassinate the real-life Chinese diplomat Li Hongzhang. The eye-popping lion-dance set pieces—which combine vibrantly colored, fire-breathing pageantry with martial-arts mayhem—rank among the most visually spectacular achievements of the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series.