The movie grabbed awards for best foreign film, best art direction, best original score and best cinematography.

Directed by Taiwan-born Ang Lee, and starring Hong Kong and Chinese mainland stars Chow Yun Fat and Zhang Ziyi, it is the seventh foreign-language movie, and the only Asian movie, to be nominated for best picture.

Besides winning the awards, it has become the highest grossing foreign language film ever in North America, and the first to break the US$100 million mark in box office revenue.

A number of local industry insiders have spoken highly of the film.

The achievement indicates Chinese movies are better accepted by the international community, said Zhang Yimou, a famous Chinese director.

"When I watched the movie for the first time, I thought it had the potential to compete in Oscars," Zhang said.

In the eyes of its supporters, the movie is a bridge linking Oriental and Occidental cultures. And its popularity among Western audiences is the beginning of a mutual communication between the two cultures.

However, in the eyes of other movie reviewers, it is not even a good film and its success at the Academy Awards is based on the fact that it caters to Western tastes and Hollywood's partiality for novelty - a charge once leveled at Zhang Yimou and his movies.

The charge is reasonable, considering the fact that the film evoked almost no response when it was released in China.

And movie fans showed little excitement when the movie was announced as the winner of the best foreign film award, though the award ceremony itself drew huge attention. Many netizens rushed to Sina.com, a top Chinese language portal, to get the latest news of the ceremony which caused temporary paralysis on the website.

"We have many kung fu films that are much better than Crouching Tiger, which is only an eye-opener for Western people," said a movie fan.

(Xinhua 03/27/2001)