The passage in "A Touch of Zen" where the heroine Feng Hsu swoops down from the bamboo shoots can be regarded as an outstanding special effect design and lens editing in martial arts movies, and even influenced the subsequent "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" "Ambush on Ten Sides".
"A Touch of Zen" is a perfect combination of martial arts theme, drama aesthetics and oriental thinking. The character setting and action design of the film all follow the traditional Peking opera routines. King Hu is not the first director to borrow opera elements in movies, but he is the first and unique to integrate the programs and systems of traditional Chinese stage into video expression. "A Touch of Zen" combines the real historical background and the fantastic fantasy of "Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio" to present a plausible but unreal world. The pictures are poetic and picturesque. What is more fascinating are the beliefs and thoughts contained in the ethereal images. At the end of the movie, the image of the abbot is sublimated with the passing away, and the sun outlines his silhouette, exuding the light of divinity. This expression gives Western film scholars a concrete impression of the "beauty" and "divineness" of the East..
