It's about a Wing Chun master (Liao Fan, the grizzled detective in "Black Coal Thin Ice") from Canton who wants to establish his school and fame in the northern city of Tienjin.

It's adapted from a short story from Xu's anthology of wuxia short stories entitled Hiding behind the Blade (刀背藏身) (if anybody wants to practice their Chinese reading?). Most of these deal with the martial arts world in Republican China and two of them have already been adapted into movies by Xu himself with "The Sword Identity" in 2011 and "Judge Archer" in 2012. Also, his most famous novel has recently been adapted into Chen Kaige's new film "Monk Comes Down the Mountain" which is currently playing in China.

 

Xu Haofeng is probably best known in the West for being scriptwriter on Wong Kar-wai's "The Grandmaster," a role he secured when Wong Kar-wai was travelling around China interviewing martial art hermits, several of whom mentioned Xu Haofeng's name to him, and also due to several of Xu's exhaustively researched martial arts novels. Xu himself studied Taoism and the history of martial arts from two eighty-year-old masters for eight years after graduating from the Beijing Film Academy and seems to live and breathe martial arts culture. He has said with "The Master" he is trying to find a way to way to better reach the audience since his first two films were fascinating but very esoteric and difficult to get engaged with. If he can strike a delicate balance with this new film between his original ideas with a more engaging storyline and characters, it could be something very special.