I thought it was just an idea invented for the movie: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But now I see it’s also being used in Hero. And it’s not explained how they came to be able to fly, like Superman, who was an alien or whatever. So do they draw on some Chinese traditions of storytelling, myths or religion – or is it that some people can just fly in China?
I think its just a ‘trait’ heroes have in China. Because it goes back farther than those movies- virtually any ‘wire-fu’ film you watch will have characters jumping and floating all over the place. It is also popular for Chinese heroes to have mastered some art so well that it looks like magic/superhuman.
So-called wire-fu movies draw on an ancient tradition of story-telling called Wu-Xia in which Kung-Fu masters have gained such mastery over their art and bodies that they can become as light as a feather.
Modern Chinese movies depicting such feats actually date back to the 1960s with the Shaw Brothers (note Quentin Tarantino’s nod to them at the beginning of the Kill Bill movies). King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (1969) is one of the earliest movies employing such gravity defying feats.
See this link for more than you ever wanted to know about the genre.
There’s not that much flying in the movie, and what there is, is indispensable to the plot. Geena Davis’s character first has to fly to California to accept a broadcast journalism award, but that’s only so she can fly back to New York and be on the plane that crashes, allowing the Dustin Hoffman character to open the door and save everybody before the plane explodes, stealing her purse in the process, and losing one of his shoes, the mate to which he gives to the Andy Garcia character, so when the other shoe is found Andy Garcia can step forward to claim the million dollar reward that the TV station is offering to “The Angel of Flight (whatever the flight number was)”. Should I put that into a spoiler box? Yeah, I guess I should. Hang on, let me go back.
You do know that your message does not appear in real-time, right? 
That is one of two things I know that I was pretending to not know. Can you think of what the other one is?
Hint: Check Lord Ashtar’s post following yours.
I really should start wearing clown makeup when I make a smart-ass post.
You mean you’re not?
:: d&r ::