The Ripple That Stirs!

Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung-Fu, has returned to Hong Kong, which he believes is suffering due the criminal operations of a mysterious crime lord calling herself Cursed Lotus. Sailing his junk into the local pier, Shang-Chi arrives in the region in the hopes of shutting down her operations and exposing her identity.[1][2] Once he has settled in, Shang-Chi decides to relax by fishing with a gourd, a challenging way to catch a fish.

That morning, Chow Yun Woo and his daughter Mai-Yin are walking by. Mai-Yin notices the peculiar way Shang is fishing and suggests that they makes friends with him. Chow Yun slaps his caughter across the face and tells her not to concern herself with fools. Her interested unabated, Mai-Yin hopes Shang-Chi sticks around long enough for her to get to know her.

Later that evening, Shang-Chi is staking out the hideout of the White Dragon gang in Hong Kong’s Western District, an operation that is working with Cursed Lotus. He’s surprised to see Chow Yun Woo show up and be granted access by the guard at the front door. Shang notices that Woo has the shakes and is sweating profusely because he is addicted to heroin, giving away the fact that he has come to buy more drugs. As Shang crosses the rooftop to find a window to spy through, he unknowingly knocks loose some grit that lands on the guard’s head. Hanging over the edge of the roof, Shang watches as Chow Yun meets with the White Tiger’s leader, Deng Ling-Xiao. Deng Ling only agrees to give Woo more drugs if he agrees to make a shipment for him to the nearby neighborhood Kwun Tong.

Shang-Chi is then caught by the guard, but despite having the element of surprise, he is no match for the martial arts master. After beating the guard into submission, Shang demands to know everything about the shipment to Kwun Tong. Once he gets the information he needs, he tosses the guard through the wall with a note pinned to him for the White Tiger. It reads “a pebble comes to stir the waters.” Deng orders his men to search for the intruder but by this time Shang-Chi is long gone. Suspecting that Chow Yun was responsible for bringing the intruder to his hideout, Woo insists that he did nothing of the sort and vows on the soul of his late wife to get the job done.

Meanwhile, Shang-Chi has returned to his junk for the night. The next day, his morning meditation is interrupted by Mai-Yin who has come to introduce herself to him.[3] However, he father soon shows up and threatens to kill Shang if he doesn’t agree to leave his daughter alone. Seeing how deeply addicted to drugs that Chow Yun is and vows that Cured Lotus will pay for this.

Later that night, after Chow Yun Woo leaves to make his delivery, Mai-Yin returns to visit Shang-Chi again. He decides to show the girl who to fish with a gourd. When she talks about hating her father, Shang tells her never to say such things about family. He then sits her down and shows her how to fish, using this as a teachable moment, telling Mai-Yin that nothing is impossible as long as you believe it can be done. Mai-Yin finds this silly but tries it anyway and, just as he had hoped, the tranquility of fishing causes the young girl to fall asleep. Putting her to bed, Shang-Chi vows to save her father before he irredeemably damns his soul. He then dives into the water of the nearby bay and swims after Chow Yun Woo’s ship, figuring he’ll catch up by the time he reaches the rendezvous point for his drug delivery.

Recurring Characters

Shang-Chi, Wild Tiger, Chow Yun Woo, Mai-Yin Woo

Continuity Notes

1. It’s later implied in issue #516 that Cursed Lotus is Shang-Chi’s sister Zheng Bao Yu. This is confirmed in the Shang-Chi profile in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #10. The reason for this vagary is explained below.

2. Shang-Chi mentions that he has been searching for Cursed Lotus since his encounter with the X-Men. This was in X-Men (vol. 2) #62-64.

3. Here, Shang-Chi refers to his father as the “unnamable one”, a reference to the licensing issues with the Fu Manchu character (see below). Fu Manchu is Shang-Chi’s father as explained in Special Marvel Edition #15. At the time of this story, Fu Manchu is believed to have died in Master of Kung Fu #118. However, he will turn up alive again in Marvel Knights #4.

Topical References

• In this story, Shang-Chi states that Hong Kong had just recently been restored as a Chinese territory. Hong Kong became a British colony in 1898 under 99 year lease that came to an end on July 1, 1997, a few months before this comic was originally published. References to Hong Kong being newly returned to China should be considered topical.

• One of White Tiger’s goons is passing the time playing a “Yamagatchi”, a parody of Tamagachi a handheld video game. It was a pet raising simulator where the player had to care for a virtual pet and keep it happy and healthy. This story was published at the height of the Tamagachi craze. While the brand is still around, it is not as ubiquitous as it once was, particularly outside of Japan. As such, references here should be considered topical.

• Chow Yun Woo is instructed to rendezvous with a freighter in Victoria Bay. This body of water was given that name after Hong Kong became a British colony. While it’s retained its name following the Chinese hand-over, I get the feeling that it will be renamed something else. Just going to toss this idea out there in case I’m right so I don’t have to rush to update this page.

Licensing Issues

In this story, Shang-Chi’s family members are given pseudonyms in this story. Fu Manchu is referred to as the “unnamable one” while Zheng Bao Yu is called “Cursed Lotus”. This is because these characters were from the Fu Manchu books written by author Sax Rohmer. Marvel licensed out the property from 1973 to 1983 for their Master of Kung Fu series. While Shang-Chi was an original character owned by Marvel, many of his supporting cast and foes were taken from the Fu Manchu novels written by Rhomer between 1913 to 1959.

Although many of Rhomer’s books have entered public domain (all of Rhomer’s work pre-1927 as of this writing in 2022), the Rhomer estate still has a trademark and copyright on Fu Manchu stories after this point. It’s all very complicated and I’m not a copyright lawyer, but basically whenever Marvel has mentioned these characters or featured them in a story following the end of the Rhomer license it has been used using pseudonyms, such is the case in this story.