Kill Bill

Chapter 8: The cruel tutelage of Pai Mei

In a flashback, Bill and the Bride, who is very much in love with him, sit by a campfire somewhere in China and Bill, who calls her "kiddo," plays his flute. He tells her about his kung fu teacher Pai Mei and his 'five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique.' The technique involves five blows administered to particular pressure points on the body with the fingertips. Thereafter, the victim's heart explodes after he or she takes five steps. Pai Mei did not teach Bill the technique because he does not show it to anyone.

At the foot of the stairs leading to Pai Mei's place in another part of rural China, Bill, who has just come down, informs the Bride that Pai Mei will take her as his pupil because he is lonely. Bill's bruised face shows that he was hurt but he refuses to say what happened. Bill warns her not to show any disrespect or disobedience to Pai Mei because Pai Mei will kill her -- "he hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and has nothing but contempt for women." She climbs the steps and quickly is humiliated by Pai Mei, who scorns her fighting skills and her ethnicity. He challenges her to land one blow on him while they engage in hand-to-hand combat and the Bride fails. Pai Mei threatens to chop her hand off with a single blow and declares that her hand belongs to him and she must strengthen it. Over the next several weeks, the Bride works hard (practicing martial arts forms and bringing buckets of water up the long, steep flight of stairs) and learns hard. She finds striking a blow with her fist to break a hole through a thick wooden plank at close range the most difficult skill.

Back to the present: still in the coffin, the Bride manages to remove her boots and the belt tying her feet together. She takes out a straight razor hidden in her boot and uses it to cut her hands free. She hits the coffin lid with her fist repeatedly. The lid becomes smeared with her blood but it finally cracks. She appears to swim up through the earth, and an arm emerges from the grave. The Bride crawls out. Covered in dirt, she walks into a diner, sits down and calmly asks for a glass of water.