Jiang hu is a Chinese term for a mythical domain originally used to describe the world of martial arts experts and, lately, the shady province of the triads. But, in essence, jiang hus - or gong wu, in Cantonese - can exist in any level of society where bonds are formed and invisible conventions of hierarchy and etiquette pervade. In the jiang hu of the Hong Kong film industry such bonds are formed and such hierarchy exists. There are the big brothers/sisters and the young upstarts - and when both meet head-on sparks usually fly.
But producer Eric Tsang Chi-wai was banking on a creative explosion rather than a shower of sparks when he placed new director Wong Ching-po (Fu Bo) on the set for Jiang Hu with Andy Lau Tak-wah and Hong Kong's 'god of song' Jacky Cheung Hok-yau. Lau and Cheung had not worked together since 1988 when, as relatively new faces, they took the leads in Wong Kar-wai's As Tears Go By.
'I only do films with two kinds of people: new talents and the old masters who haven't been seen on the screen for some time and everyone misses,' Tsang says. With Hong Kong's small talent pool spread among the relatively large number of productions, it was hard to find two actors who had not worked together in the past decade. In As Tears Go By Lau was the two-bit hood climbing the triad ladder and Cheung was his follower who botched more jobs than he pulled off. In Jiang Hu, Lau is still the boss - this time the godfather of the Hong Kong mafias - but Cheung is no longer the bumbling sidekick.
'Our performances have matured,' Cheung says. 'The main issue was how to make the film different from As Tears Go By. If the roles were reversed it wouldn't have been a problem. It was a challenge to see how different we could make it. I think we used a more mature way of presentation. This guy Lefthand is not very suited to being the big boss of the triads.'
In Jiang Hu, Cheung plays a lean and mean ambitious No. 2 who does not intend to leave his promotion to top dog in the hands of other gang leaders. Lau, on the other hand, is big boss Hung. He wants to wipe his triad past away and start a new life with his wife and baby, but his impending 'retirement' brings the realisation that his trusted sidekick might be his most deadly enemy.
'I'm just the catalyst,' says Lau, who won best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards this month for Running On Karma. 'I'm not the lead character but the story wouldn't exist without me. The story is outstanding. The structure of the script opened up a lot of possibilities in the way it could be told. I was interested immediately and asked Chi-wai to get the director to explain how he was going to shoot it.'
