"Kung Fu": TV Series, The Forbidden Kingdom

#56 (Prod #166268) "The Forbidden Kingdom"
Teleplay By: Norman Katkov (also #58)^*2*
Story By: David Michael Korn & Norman Katkov^*2*
Directed By:: Gordon Hessler (also #58)
First Broadcast: ABC, January 18, 1975
Guest Stars: James Shigeta (also #49), Clyde Kusatsu (also #8, 35 & 45-46), Adele Yoshioka
Regular Cast: David Carradine, Philip Ahn, Keye Luke, Radames Pera

While fleeing the Imperial troops after killing the royal nephew, Caine tries to escape into Tibet. And in the process he is helped, betrayed and loved by Po Li. (She was the mother of the son who turns up in the sequel movie of 1986 "Kung Fu: The Movie".)

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The Forbidden Kingdom
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"I can make another pot. Can I return to life a Shaolin priest?" - potter, on why he helped Caine at the cost of his shop

"'You go to your death.'
'My death is here. I must fly from it.'" - Caine

"I am sorry." - Caine

"My name is Kwai Chang Caine." - Caine, when someone keeps calling him 'Shaolin'

"Between him and you are a thousand soldiers with orders to kill you on sight." - to Caine on his situation

"'It is hard to think of you as a priest.'
'Yet I am.' - Caine

"I have no family. . . I am alone." - Caine

"I trust you." - Caine to Po Li

"Forgive me. . . I am not impatient. I am Kwai Chang Caine. I must leave the country." - Caine

"I am grateful." - Caine

"Will you be safe?" - Caine

"'Is there ever enough reason for betrayal?' - Po Li
'I do not know.'" - Caine

"I will not go. . . . Must not. . . . I must go another way." - Caine (speaking of not leaving via Tibet but via 'The Great Ocean')

"You know what your life will be like from now on?" - Caine

"'I owe some sort of atonement for what I did to you. For other things. Others will come this way fleeing the Emperor's^*1* wrath. They will need help.' - Po Li
'You may die.' - Caine
'This much I know, I will not die easily. And I will have much to remember.'" - Po Li

Caine has stopped shaving his head and wearing the robes of a priest here but in "The Chalice" when he's trying to get passage out of China, he is shaving his head and wearing his robes. He could, of course, have started doing so again after this story or maybe, he didn't get out of the country at that time and this is later and still later, he does get passage.

>This episode actually uses the Po family name first (one of the few times in the series that attempts are made to be accurate to Chinese names).

Since Caine's hair is just starting to grow out, this seems to take place within a few weeks or maybe a couple of months of the killing of the royal nephew, but could a man, mostly on foot get from Peking (Beijing) to the border of Tibet in so short a time? (This all assumes that he changed his clothes immediately after fleeing the scene of the killing so that guards looking for a priest, wouldn't find him as easily.)

Caine threatens to kill a soldier herein. Threats would generally not be thought to be in the basic arsenal of a priest, even if he wouldn't have carried out the threat (he never actually says he would kill the soldier).

The KF Book claims Caine 'escapes China' at the end of this episode but Anderson^*2* is mistaken, for Tibet is nowhere close to the sea by which Caine has to escape to have ended up in America and which he talks about heading for at the end of this story.