Recently, I met Wu Jing in Los Angeles, where he was promoting the movie in advance of the Academy Awards. Wu is forty-three, with short, spiky hair, a strong jaw, and an air of pricklybravado. He was on crutches, the result of “jumping off too many buildings,” he told me, in Chinese. (He speaks little English.) “In the past, all of our movies were about, say, the Opium Wars—how other countries waged war against China,” he said. “But Chinese people have always wanted to see that our country could, one day, have the power to protect its own people and contribute to peace in the world.”
最近,我在洛杉矶采访了吴京,他在奥斯卡颁奖仪式之前推广这部电影。吴京四十三岁,蓬松短发,下巴强壮,气势凶悍。他拄着拐杖,用中文告诉我是“跳楼太多”的结果(他很少说英文)。他说:“过去,我们所有的电影都是关于,比如说鸦片战争,其他国家是如何侵略中国的。但是中国人一直想看到,我们国家有一天有能力保护自己的人民,为世界和平做出贡献。”