# What's with the flying oriental people? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 3, 2002, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178 "2002-07-03T10:18:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Daerlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Daerlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daerlyn)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178/21 "2002-07-04T17:20:12Z")
[hijack]You mean **Crouching Stunt Guy, Hidden Guy-wire**? I liked the movie, but the action scenes were a little out there. One of my friends had this to say about: > [@](#): > > “I was really disappointed with **Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon** , because I saw no tigers or dragons. And then I realized: they’re crouching. And hidden!” ---
**Author:** ![Daerlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Daerlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daerlyn)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178/22 "2002-07-04T17:23:00Z")
[/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178/23 "2002-07-04T23:24:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JCHeckler \* > \*\*Here in the greater Washington DC area, GEICO insurance runs an ad wherein its agents are supposedly able to process claims extrordinarily quickly because of “ancient martial arts secrets of the Wu sha”. They are able to fly around the office and so forth. It’s stupid and, to me, offensive. \*\* What’s so offensive about it? Marc ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2002, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178/24 "2002-07-05T02:17:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Incubus \* > \*\*While this doesn’t explain the flying thing, one concept about how they can run/jump on water was that they had such precise balance/weight distribution that they clould step on tiny objects floating in the water (blades of grass, twigs, etc) without breaking the water tension. The same could be argued for being able to stand on a friggin leaf in a tree. \*\* The explanation for how they can fly is…they can’t. No one in _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ actually flies (well, there may be an exception at the end), but some of them are really good jumpers. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2002, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178/25 "2002-07-05T04:04:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lamia \* > \*\*The explanation for how they can fly is…they can’t. No one in _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ actually flies (well, there may be an exception at the end), but some of them are really good jumpers. \*\* Are you kidding? They spend the last five seemingly-interminable minutes swooping among the trees. I kept expecting an air-marshall to pull one of 'em over and demand pilot’s licence and registration. Well, not really, but I wish I’d said something like that at the time. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2002, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178/26 "2002-07-06T15:54:31Z")
I thought CTHD was superb on every level. I greatly admired all the terrific work that had gone into the incredible (literally) fighting and stunt sequences, both in terms of training, choreography and special FX harness/wire removal work, yet appreciation of these purely technical aspects didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the drama, the story or the delightful inter-action of the different characters. At the time it came out, I heard that various oriental (if such terms may be allowed) myths perpetuated the idea of martial arts masters so advanced in their training that they could levitate or jump so athletically as to be near-equivalent to flying. Besides, if you were a skilled warrior race, wouldn’t you want to perpetuate the most fearsome-sounding myths about yourself? As for the advertising industry… well, you can’t expect anything creative or original from that quarter. It is an industry about lying founded on lies, the greatest being that it involves any creativity. It doesn’t. It just involves plundering whatever ideas are lying around that the client will accept. In the ads mentioned, the agency has just played the client the CTHD vid and said “We’ll make something that looks almost as good as that”. They’re just playing around with the latest special FX technology. It was the same when ‘morphing’ first came out… every other advert had morphing in it. So much for ‘creative’ agencies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-flying-oriental-people/117178.md?page=1)