CREDITS SHI MIAN MAI FU (aka HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS), 2004 dir: Yimou Zhang Takeshi Kaneshiro Andy Lau Ziyi Zhang

“Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes fifty miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below fifty, it blows up. What do you do?”

The literal translation of the title is Ambush from Ten Directions; for a while it was retitled Lovers, but was eventually marketed to sound like an old Hong Kong kung-fu picture.

Most of the film was shot near Lviv, western Ukraine, a location previously used for Jackie Chan’s First Strike.

Sets were built at Yongchuan, Sichun Province, in the bamboo forests of Tea Mountain and Bamboo Sea Scenery Park, near the city of Chongqing. To visit China’s 120-square km park, the largest primaeval bamboo park in the country, you take a two-hour flight from Shanghai to Chengdu, from where thereÕs a bus trip (approximately five hours) to the Bamboo Sea. ThereÕs the unique Bamboo Museum, and and a bamboo restaurant featuring dishes based on the local speciality.

Interiors, including the ‘Peony Pavilion’ brothel and the abandoned Buddhist temple in the bamboo forest, lensed in Beijing Film Studio (where films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill were previously filmed).