Hu Jintao faced great resistance. The first crisis of Hu's leadership happened during the outbreak of SARS in 2003. Following strong criticism of China for initially covering up and responding slowly to the crisis, he dismissed several party and government officials, including the health minister, who supported Jiang, and the Mayor of Beijing, Meng Xuenong, widely perceived as Hu's protégé. On 15 November 2002, a new Hu Jintao-led Politburo nominally succeeded Jiang. Although Jiang, then 76, stepped down from the powerful General Secretary and the Politburo Standing Committee to make way for a younger "fourth generation" of leadership, there was speculation that
King Hu heroine as the central protagonist. Leaving the Shaw Brothers Studio in 1966, Hu travelled to Taiwan, where he made another "wuxia" movie, "Dragon Inn". "Dragon Inn" broke box office records and became a phenomenal hit and cult classic, especially in Southeast Asia. This tense tale of highly skilled martial artists hidden in an inn was said to be the inspiration for Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) and Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers" (2004). In 2003, the award-winning Malaysian-born Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang made "Goodbye, Dragon Inn", a tribute to Hu, in which all the action takes place