I remember that
movie. The exact line too. I forgot the name (it was something like
The Fighting Cook, direct literal translation from
Chinese), but the plot was indeed
cheesy, and involved a
damsel in distress, a budding talented
apprentice who is learning the way to
fight properly, and a
kung fu grandmaster who was
incognito, fearing
persecution from the evil
big bad guy and his
cronies. Standard
martial arts movie drill. It did have an interesting variation, involving
prostitution, a
noodle restaurant and how all the
cooks turned out to be first-class
martial artists in disguise, and a ridiculous
bodybuilder known as
Beefy who dressed in tight
leotards. Not bad for short-term
entertainment. The 1970's and 1980's
Hong Kong filming industry was
cheesy at its very best, save
Jackie Chan. He had
class.
The Chinese developed that reputation from the Western policy known as the Open Door Policy. The exploitative imperialists used the weakness of the Qing Dynasty for their own ends. The inability of the Westerners to distinguish between Koreans, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese also helped. Since there was more Chinese people than others, they made the assumption that all of them were Chinese.
In reality, the "weakness" derived from the government, not the people themselves. When you're starving and robbed blind from government taxes, you can't be too strong. We Chinese built half of America's first Missouri-California railway. I like how the Chinese were kindly asked to "fuck off" and get out of the photo of the twin railway connection in Promontory Point in Utah. Racists. Whites connected the Atlantic and the Pacific too, right?