In May 2025, Lisa Lu became the oldest star to be honoured on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Lu, who had played leading roles shortly after debuting in television, came into her own in The Arch (1968). Not only did it win Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards, Lu’s subsequent performances in The 14 Amazons (1972) and The Empress Dowager at the invitation of Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers Studio pulled another couple of Golden Horse accolades. The Empress Dowager, moreover, gave her overwhelming popularity as a charismatic Empress Dowager Cixi.

In the 1970s, director Li Han-hsiang returned to Shaw Brothers to make The Empress Dowager and The Last Tempest, the earliest of a series on the matriarch and the Qing imperial court. The former is set in and around the First Sino-Japanese War. The pro-reform Guangxu Emperor and Weng Tonghe who advocated war, clashed with conservatives Cixi and Li Hongzhang who favoured peace. The lush epic dazzles with costumes, props and sets. Its characterisation and vivid depiction of court life also stand out. In particular, the confrontational scenes are full of dramatic tension, pointing to Li Han-hsiang’s mastery of mise-en-scene.

Li Han-hsiang (1926–1996, Hong Kong) was born in Jinzhou, Liaoning. Li joined the Hong Kong film industry in 1948. In 1955, he directed his debut film Red Bloom in the Snow. Soon after, he joined the Shaw Brothers where he directed The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959) and The Love Eterne (1963), both of which sparked a Huangmei opera craze in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He also excelled at making historical epics, such as Yang Kwei Fei (1962) and Empress Wu Tse-tien (1963).

In 1963, he went to Taiwan and founded the Grand Motion Pictures, producing large-scale period films such as A Maid from Heaven (1963) and Hsi Shih: Beauty of Beauties (1965). After the closure of the Grand Motion Pictures in 1968, he returned to Hong Kong two years late to form New Grand Films and produced The Legends of Cheating (1971), which started a trend of trickster films. In 1972, he rejoined Shaw Brothers, directing The Warlord (1972) starring Michael Hui, and later the Legends of Lust (1972), which blazed a trail for erotic films. Around the same time, he shot two Qing dynasty period dramas: The Empress Dowager (1975) and The Last Tempest (1976).

In 1982, he went to mainland China to collaborate with the Beijing Film Studio, producing The Burning of the Imperial Palace (1983) and Reign Behind a Curtain (1983).