Mark's brilliance was a living testament to the revolutionary notion that martial arts didn't just belong to the dudes. The concept of a woman studying martial arts at all was unconventional bordering on scandalous at the time, and like any number of tough women of the Seventies who had to fight hard to make it to the top, Mark's prodigious talent painted a target on her back at times. She stubbornly persisted though, and eventually Mark attracted the attention of one of China's martial art greats, Grandmaster Fu Wing Way, who took her in as his private pupil, according to NextShark. From the Eighties to the Nineties, Mark danced gracefully from accolade to accolade. In 1984, she brought home a gold medal at the inaugural International Tournament of Tai Chi. Just over a decade later, she'd be acknowledged internationally as one of the Kung Fu greats, and proclaimed 1984's Kung Fu artist of the year. Grainy videos of Mark at her prime are mesmerizing to watch. Gravity seems to give her a get out of jail free pass as she leaps and spins across the floor, always finding creative new ways to insert her fist, foot, or ornate pokey device right where her opponents are least expecting it. She is, quite simply, ridiculously cool.
But Mark wasn't just a great martial arts athlete. She was also an ambassador for the sport, and helped pave the way for the renaissance in martial arts appreciation to sweep through the US in the Eighties and beyond. Heck, you might even argue that she helped lay the cultural foundations that Donnie Yen's successful career would later be built on. Thanks, Donnie's mom!
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