Pei-Ling Zhang

**Pei-Ling Zhang** (chinese: **張培林**)is a main character in The CW's *Kung Fu*. She is portrayed by Vanessa Kai.

## Biography

### Early life

Pei-Ling was a skilled fighter, spiritual guide, and mentor to Nicky. She was one of dozens of monks that lived and trained in an all-female Shaolin temple in the mountains of Yunnan Province before dying at the hands of a mysterious assassin.

### Pilot

For three years, Nicky Shen, a one time Harvard University student was living in a monastery in China's Yunnan Province, hiding from the matchmaking trip her mother sent her on. She stopped talking to her family when she realized that the “culture trip” was just an excuse to pair her off in an arranged marriage of her choosing. Not long after she ran away, she was rescued by Pei-Ling, who runs the all-female warrior team training at the monastery.

During this time period, Pei-Ling mentors Nicky, teaching her everything she needs to know about fighting. But eventually she urges Nicky to make peace with her family and return home. She explains that she too had a difficult family life and that she doesn’t want Nicky to make the same mistakes she did.

That night, the monastery is lit on fire as raiders come after the warriors, but the women fight them off as Nicky desperately tries to get to Pei-Ling. As the fight rages, Pei-Ling faces Zhilan Zhang, the leader of the raiders and someone she seems to recognize. Zhilan incapacitates Pei-Ling and steals a mysterious sword from her.

As Nicky finally reaches Pei-Ling, Zhilan stabs Pei-Ling and vanishes. Nicky sobs as Pei-Ling begs her to retrieve the sword and dies.

After Nicky's reunion with Evan Hartley, her is interrupted by Evan's new girlfriend Sabine, Nicky takes this news poorly as she confides in a vision of Pei-Ling who appears to console her and encourage her to reconcile with her family.

### Silence

Sometime at night, Nicky is transported to the night Pei-Ling died, and she awakens terrified in her own bed. As it turns out, it was all a dream, including the nice breakfast.

As Nicky looks at a picture of the monastery she flashes back to her training with Pei-Ling. Pei-Ling defeats her, and she tells Nicky that her fear was taking over. She notes that a “right action cannot flow from fear.”

In the present, Nicky sadly puts the picture away. Staring at the wallet, she hears Pei-Ling’s voice tell her to help the girl. Nicky goes to the family restaurant, where Evan is eating his lunch.

Back in her room that night, Nicky meditates her way back to the monastery and tells Pei-Ling she misses her. Nicky tells Pei-Ling she was afraid to feel her grief, but now she feels better. Nicky says she doesn’t know what to do without her. Pei-Ling then tells her mindfulness will give her the clarity she is desperately seeking.

While Nicky and Evan talk, she thanks him for his help, and he in turn tells her they found out Zhilan is in Singapore. But more importantly, that Zhilan is Pei-Ling’s younger sister.

In the stacks at the library in San Francisco, Henry tells Nicky that he found the symbol. It’s a symbol for one of the families guarding each of the eight weapons, which makes Zhilan and Pei-Ling part of these guardians.

### Patience

After confronting Kwong's right hand man, Brett, Nicky reveals she knows the chemicals that affected Faye aren't from the factory but from him deliberately poisoning her while he personally sabotaged her union efforts. Brett locks Nicky in a storage closet as he calls in a hitman to deal with her; however, she recalls her training under Pei-Ling, and Nicky breaks free and easily subdues the assassin.

### Sanctuary

In one one of her flashbacks to her time at the monastery, Nicky recalls how Pei-Ling told her much she was changing.

Pei-Ling goes onto say how she has seen how Nicky was around the other women here, listening to their stories, appreciating the simple joys of practice, and of being.

She then reminds Nicky to not look for logic, where logic cannot live. Instead, to open her mind to the unknown.

In the present, Nicky tells Henry Yan, how Pei-Ling told her something, and that it goes beyond physics, beyond facts, and history. She admits that she didn't really believe her until now.

Thus Nicky has Henry look into every illustration of the sword they have found,because as Nicky recalls, the handle was smooth, when Pei-Ling showed it to her and it was also smooth when grabbed it.

### Rage

Back at home, Nicky talks to her hallucination of Pei-Ling about her true motivations for chasing the dagger. To which the hallucination of Pei-Ling proceeds to tell her that if anger is what is driving her, and if all she is feeling is rage, then the only possible result will be failure.

Later that night at the gala, Zhilan who is posing as Charlotte Yang, a curator from the Beijing national museum reunites with Nicky. The two young woman have a thinly veiled conversation about the dagger, in which Zhilan reveals she hired the men that Nicky and Henry fought. As Jin walks away, Zhilan threatens Nicky’s parents and Henry before patting Nicky down and taking the dagger. Previously believing Nicky to be dead, Zhilan says Nicky should take the second chance she’s been given and stop fighting Pei-Ling’s battles, citing how her sister isn’t worth the effort.

As Nicky angrily accuses Zhilan of killing her shifu, Zhilan reveals that Pei-Ling is a thief and a murderer. Zhilan goes onto claim that Pei-Ling murdered their father and stole The Sword of Liang Daiyu and then proceeded to hide out at the monastery in the Yunnan Province.

### Guidance

As Evan and Nicky seek refuge at Evan's hideaway just outside San Francisco. Once alone, Nicky angrily confronts a vision of Pei-Ling and demands to know the truth.

Elsewhere, Zhilan begins to recall her own memories of Pei-Ling, in which it was quite obvious that their father clearly favored her over Pei-Ling as a child, which made her older sister visibly jealous as she cared for her. Zhilan further remembers that ancient text that her father was studying matched the text scarred into Nicky's hand from the mystical jade sword.

While Zhilan reconnects with her uncle, she remembers the childhood trauma that set her apart from her sister forever: When their father attempted to sell the jade sword, a weapon passed down through generations of the family for the women to safeguard, and a scuffle between him and Pei-Ling lead to him accidentally being stabbed to death as Zhilan watched.

Blaming Pei-Ling for the death of her beloved father, Zhilan broke off her familial relationship with her as a heartbroken Pei-Ling took the sword and departed.

After Zhilan recalls her last conversation with Pei-Ling, two years before their fatal showdown, she learns that her uncle was secretly receiving money from Pei-Ling to raise her all along. Feeling betrayed, Zhilan angrily confronts him while revealing she was the one that murdered Pei-Ling before forcing him to tell her where his research on the weapons is located.

As Nicky returns home, she learns that her mother Mei-Li Shen secretly watched her daughter battle Drake and saw firsthand that she has claimed her martial arts destiny, revealing that Nicky is fated to reclaim the Jade sword, and is evidently linked to Pei-Ling and Zhilan as a long-lost family member, stemming all the way back to Liang Daiyu.

### Destiny

As Nicky and Jin Shen reveals that when Nicky was in the Yunnan Province in China, Mei-Li sent him to find her. He found her without Nicky knowing. When he saw how at ease she was in the monastery, he left her there without telling Mei-Li. He realized she finally belonged after talking with Pei-Ling Zhang. He says she was the real her, beautiful and powerful.

### Isolation

As Nicky is in the woods, Pei-Ling appears to her again and helps Nicky find a chest in the main room of a deserted cabin, which contains tapes of Mei-Xue talking, warning everyone about the power of the weapons and telling the listener that there’s more to find even if her journey is at an end.

## Personality

Pei-Ling lives on in Nicky’s memory as she evokes the lessons and skills her mentor taught her at the monastery, which leads her to learn things she did not know about Pei-Ling.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 ‘Kung Fu’: Vanessa Kai Joins the CW Reboot Series - Deadline