Day of the Dragon

A great guest cast, look at the credits for Lisa Lu, Phillip Ahn and Richard Loo.

As a teen in the 60's I remember watching this show when it was first aired. I watched again today on cable. I still remember the guest cast in some of the movies and tv shows they played in I watched as a young teen.

Lisa Lu, Phillip Ahn was portrayed in their normal good person role. Richard Loo portrayed again in a role that he played a bad guy as he portrayed in many of his appearances, movies and tv.

The episode begins when Little Joe wins a poker hand from two visitors while in Virginia City. Little Joe believes that one of the visitors had put up a horse on his bet, however the bet turns out to be a Chinese young girl name Su Ling. And needless to say, Ben is not happy when Little Joe brings the young woman to the house.

Su Ling was actually brought over to American by a war-lord named General Mu Tsung that is looking for her when she was basically kidnapped by the two visitors that were playing poker with Joe. It seems that the General has feeling for Su Ling and goes to lengths to find the young woman and wants her to return with him. But Su Ling not only has the Cartwright's but also is now working for a Chinese Doctor where she feel that she has finally found a place in a foreign country. When General Tsung finds out that Su Ling is living with the Cartwright, his knife toting buddies and himself will make the Cartwrights pay.

This episode is somewhat more interesting than the regular Chinese outsider visiting the Cartwright ranch. Instead of being introduced to a stage full of laundry cleaners or servant, this episode shows that Chinese people contributed to life in the rural west. Lisa Lu is excellent as the young Chinese girl that has more talent than just smiling at the camera which makes the episode better than expected.

I won't go over the plot, other reviewers have done a good job of that. I want to say this episode is impressive because of the non-stereotypical treatment of Chinese. The main character Su LIng (Lisa Lu), starts off acting submissive, but is clearly experienced and intelligent. I have a little vested interest in this because I lived in China, have a Chinese wife and four, half-Chinese children.

One point the other reviewers didn't mention was the bit of "Tom Sawyer" in Su Ling. There is a scene where she is happily watching the Cartwright brothers peel potatoes for her.

The other main Chinese character is, according to LIttle Joe, the best doctor in Virginia City. It is so nice to see both characters in non-stereotypical roles, both of which show intelligence and compassion. It did make me chuckle when Su LIng described American culture, specifically American "freedom", as "inscrutable".

As a little added bonus, it is great to see what a long career Lisa Lu has had, I greatly enjoyed her recent role as the grandmother in Crazy Rich Asians (2018).

Michael Landon wins from Mort Mills in a poker game a Chinese slave girl Lisa Lu. What Mills doesn't tell Landon is that he has stolen her from exiled Chinese feneral Richard Loo who wants her back. Loo kills Mills and is now going to the Ponderosa to press his claim.

What starts asa pretty funny episode turns quite deadly. Loo had quite a career in the 40s playing sinister Japanese chaacters. Loss is just as sinister here.

Rounding out the guest cast is Philip Ahn playing a Chinese doctor in Virginia City. As for Lisa Lu she scores well as the Chinese grl in a strange and wondrous new place called America.

Nicely told story.

In TV western series of the late 1950s and early '60s, there were occasionally episodes that involved Asian characters, either newly arrived Chinese workers or Japanese travelers in the years after Japan opened up to the west, and they employed some of the Asian and Asian-American actors then active in Hollywood. "Bonanza," of course, had a continuing Chinese character in Hop Sing, the cook for the Cartwrights, and he was played by Chinese-American actor Victor Sen Yung. In the "Bonanza" episode, "Day of the Dragon," unusual circumstances lead to a Chinese woman being installed as a servant in the Cartwright household and conflict arising from a Chinese warlord's claim of ownership of her. In a pre-credits sequence, Little Joe (Michael Landon) winds up unwittingly winning the woman after a card game with two shady characters traveling through Virginia City (Mort Mills and Harry Lauter) who had put her up as collateral without quite making it clear to Joe what they were intending. As the two men ride off, Joe realizes that he's now stuck with Su Ling (Lisa Lu), who had arrived in San Francisco with General Mu Tsung (Richard Loo), after leaving China under hasty conditions, and had been kidnapped by the two men and held for ransom, only to have the General pursue the men with due force, compelling them to flee east to Virginia City. Poor Little Joe doesn't know what to do with her and he takes her back to the Ponderosa in the hope that his father, Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene), will find a solution. Long story short: Su Ling winds up happily working for the Cartwrights, having finally found a degree of safety and security in this new country.

In the course of the episode, Little Joe introduces Su Ling to a Chinese doctor working in Virginia City, Dr. Kam Lee (Philip Ahn), who is impressed with the skills she learned from working at a mission hospital in China and offers her a job as his assistant. Soon, however, General Tsung and his men arrive in Virginia City looking for Su Ling and they eventually force a confrontation with the Cartwrights that leads to some violence and bloodshed. At some point, Su Ling has to make a choice based on what she wants and not on what others want from her.

Early on, it appears that Su Ling might be portrayed as a typically obsequious and subservient Chinese character, humbly referring to herself as "this worthless person" and addressing Little Joe as "Honorable Master," but it turns out that she's a lot more clever than such dialogue would have us believe. She's clearly playing the victim card so that the Cartwrights will allow her to stay and work in some relatively luxurious surroundings, given the comforts of the Cartwright home, the lush beauty of the land, and the proximity of Chinese countrymen close by. There is a scene between Su Ling and Little Joe where they discuss the meaning of freedom. Little Joe points to Su Ling's bird cage and the canary held within. Su Ling makes her point by opening the door of the bird cage and waiting as the canary refuses to fly out, but continues singing only after the cage door has been closed again. By the end of the episode, following the efforts of Mu Tsung to take her back and the offer of a job from Kam Lee, Su Ling finally has some real options open to her and begins to understand the benefits of freedom.

It's a very moving and touching episode and the scenes between Su Ling and the other characters are imbued with a high level of warmth and tenderness based on respect and avoidance of stereotype. What's significant here is that the Cartwright household traditionally has no women in it, yet they welcome a woman and offer her a place in it without demanding anything but honest labor in return. Women who got a foothold in Ponderosa in episodes of "Bonanza" typically wanted something out of the Cartwrights. Su Ling, however, does not represent a threat and it is clear by the end that she will always be welcome if she ever returns.

It's quite rewarding to see some of Hollywood's most prominent Asian actors of the time playing non-stereotyped roles with some layering to them. Even Loo's General Tsung, while clearly the villain of the piece, shows great affection towards Su Ling and clearly wants to marry her and take her back to China. It's obvious in their scene together that she doesn't regard him with fear. He does, in fact, represent a viable option. Ahn's Dr. Lee is an educated and cultured man and someone with obvious devotion to the Chinese community in Virginia City. The Cartwrights' respect for him reveals a level of enlightenment not often found in pioneering western communities. Lisa Lu carries herself with dignity and grace and creates a compelling and most memorable character within a typical hour of network TV in 1961. My only complaint is that there is no interaction between Su Ling and Hop Sing, even though they're in the same household. There's not even a single shot of them together. It would have been nice to have at least one scene of them conversing in Mandarin.

In the "Bonanza" third season box set released by Paramount, this episode comes with audio commentary by Lisa Lu. There are some fascinating behind-the-scenes tidbits and she describes what a great experience it was to work on the show, but I wish there had been an interviewer to guide the discussion and draw her out more with questions about what it was like for Asian performers in Hollywood at the time and an overview of her larger career.

Ms. Lu played a similar character in a 1962 episode of "Cheyenne," called "Pocketful of Stars," which I've also reviewed on IMDb.