If Hong Kong cinema once seriously lagged behind that of the West, borrowing heavily from American plots and genres, today the reverse is true. Hollywood is giving Hong Kong cinema the eye -- seduced by its anything-goes, genre-crossing approach and the vast urban audiences it attracts. PNS editor Andrew Lam is a San Francisco writer and co-editor of "Once Upon a Dream," a collection of Vietnamese-American essays, poetry and art published by the San Jose Mercury News.

He tumbles, fights, falls on burning coals, drinks industrial alcohol, rolls down a mountain in a plastic bubble, jumps from the roof of one bus to another simply to cross Hong Kong's crowded streets and -- in the process -- entertains movie goers all over the world.

Soon Hong Kong film star Jackie Chan will somersault across a thousand screens in the United States with his newest chef d'oeuvre, "Rumble in the Bronx," released by New Line Cinema. And to ensure that his martial art skills and breathtaking stunts sink into American moviegoers' consciousness, Miramax Cinema will follow with the release of two more spectacular Chan classics: "Drunken Master II" and "Crime Story."

In sync with the new Far East craze, Fox will release John Woo's highly stylized action film "Broken Arrow" while Quentin Tarantino's new company, Rolling Thunder, is preparing to release Wong Kai-War's "ChunKing Express," a surreal movie about the directionless wanderings of two cops in the metropolitan jungle of Hong Kong.

Seemingly overnight, Hollywood, once standoffish towards the films, stars and directors of Hong Kong cinema, has had a change of heart. What happened to make America's dream factory turn its compass to the Far East?

For decades, Hong Kong cinema, with its poor film production and uninspired aesthetics, held little appeal. Then in the late 80s, along with the end of the Cold War and new revolutions in communications technology, Hong Kong's collective imagination seemed to shift.

Taking its cue from East Asia's free-wheeling economic ascendancy, Hong Kong movie making became unrestrained, irreverent. In "Super Cop" Jackie Chan plays a post-modern James Bond, a perfect symbol of the new cosmopolitan Asian. One moment he is escaping from a tribe of Amazon Indians in Brazil, the next he is fighting neo-Nazis in the Sahara. To celebrate his victory he dines with pretty women in Rome.

As if echoing the region's frenzied commerce, Hong Kong films today exude a no-holds-barred approach to action and gags, to the point of overload. In "Savior of the Soul," a romance-science fiction piece, futuristic cops resort to sword and martial arts to combat a warlock who can walk through bodies and into mirrors. In the comedy "Safari," an 18th century Chinese vampire accidentally gets dropped into a tribe of African bushmen, with a Taoist priest and his assistant in hot pursuit.

To viewers worldwide, Hong Kong's anything-goes mentality with its cross-over genres is delightful and astonishing, especially in contrast to the dreary and pessimistic European movies or the formulaic American action films. Yet far from being low-brow, Hong Kong films showcase a new generation of directors whose innovations have earned them the title of "New Wave." They offer clues to the new Asian character.

Tsui Hark's "Once Upon a Time in China," for example, portrays a hero no longer forced to operate on a pedestal of patriotic and Confucian ideals. Instead, he is a highly individualistic free thinker and pragmatist who looks undaunted to the future even as he accommodates himself to the changes the new world brings -- be they colonial power intrigues or shifts in dynastic rule.

In a region that boasts the largest middle-class urban population in the world, this is no small message. Just as East Asia shrugs off its post-colonial blues and awakens to an era of economic ascendancy and cultural renaissance, Hong Kong films have become the tellers of the region's new and optimistic narrative. "The fast pace and emotionality of Hong Kong cinema is undoubtedly closely related to the pace of city life," writes Li Cheuk-To, a Hong Kong film critic, "but it is also an inevitable result of the basic requirement that the mass audience must be kept entertained."

It is this desire to entertain that is finally reverberating in the West. American action films and TV shows borrow freely from Hong Kong films. Tarantino himself, Hollywood's hottest director after his highly energetic and violent "Pulp Fiction," admits to being an avid Hong Kong action movie fan, especially of films made by John Woo and Ringo Lam. Lam's "City on Fire," starring Chow Yun Fat, was the inspiration for Tarantino's breakthrough 1992 film, "Reservoir Dogs."

"More and more," says a Chinese American producer in Hollywood, "East Asians want to see their reflections on the silver screen." Soon China, with its 1.3 billion potential viewers, could dictate the kind of movies Hollywood makes.