Kung Fu (1972 TV series)

Kung Fu is an American action-adventure martial arts Western drama television series starring David Carradine. The series follows the adventures of Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin monk who travels through the American Old West, armed only with his spiritual training and his skill in martial arts, as he seeks his half-brother, Danny Caine.

Many of the aphorisms used in the series are adapted from or derived directly from the Tao Te Ching, a book of ancient Taoist philosophy attributed to the sage Lao-tzu.

Plot

Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine) is the orphaned son of an American man, Thomas Henry Caine (Bill Fletcher), and a Chinese woman, Kwai Lin, born in mid-19th-century China. After his maternal grandfather's death, he is accepted for training at a Shaolin monastery, where he grows up to become a Shaolin priest and martial-arts expert.

In the pilot episode, Caine's beloved mentor and elder, Master Po, is murdered by the Tongzhi Emperor's nephew with a firearm; outraged, Caine retaliates by killing the emperor's nephew, with everyone unaware that the man was reloading his weapon to attack him again. With a price on his head, Caine flees China to the western United States, where he seeks his family roots, and ultimately, his half-brother, Danny Caine. A recent tombstone dated 1874 in a season-three episode places the stories roughly between 1871 and 1875. In the pilot episode, a telegram dated 21 November 1873 indicates that most of the show's American story begins in November 1873.

Although it is his intention to avoid being noticed, Caine's training and sense of social responsibility repeatedly force him out into the open to fight for justice or protect the innocent.