China

I read the short story this story was based on in a collection of best American short stories.

It's about an elderly couple who went to the movies, and the husband got his first exposure to kung fu through a trailer. It blew his mind. He started reading up on martial arts. Soon, in spite of having a heart condition about which he would complain daily, he took a subscription to a martial arts magazine, then actually joined a daochang. His first workouts are brutal, but in actually going out and doing it, he proved to himself that he could. Soon he's changing his entire life, from diet to behavior, throwing punches while shadowboxing during his wife's TV shows every time there's a cut to build his reflexes, digging a hole in the back yard that gets deeper every time he can jump out of it. In the climactic scene, he's competing in a kumite and does a 20-foot horizontal flying jump kick.

It's one of the best martial arts stories I've ever been exposed to, ranking up there with the 36th Chamber.

The problem with this is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to find a short, publicly-funded independent film named "China"!