When the highly respected film director Ang Lee decided to make his first film set in legendary China, he turned to Tan Dun for the score. Ang Lee's film was a successful attempt to give one genre of the popular martial arts film the highest production values possible. This genre is based on a type of novel called wu sha, which take place in a fantasy world where sword-wielding heroes, through their mastery of spirit, have elevated themselves metaphorically and literally, leaping so high and far that they practically fly. One of the most popular wu sha novels is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Wang Du Lu, written between the First and Second World Wars. Unlike other wu sha films, the story is driven by a complex web of emotions among the five main characters.

Tan Dun's music draws upon many Asian ethnic sources. The film includes virtually straight Chinese ceremonial and classical music, as well as an Eastern-flavored, but Hollywood-inflected love theme that comes to dominate the latter parts of the film. Each action sequence has its own very distinct style. The first major fight in the film, where a thief, in a spectacular aerial ballet, is pursued over the rooftops at night, is accompanied by Chinese drumming. The music accompanying a duel taking place in the tops of a bamboo forest has a haunting, floating sound.

There is a romantic flashback involving a robber chief named Lo, taking place in the Western desert that has some of the most sustained and intriguing music in the score, with a strongly Turkic style. At one point, a folk song in a Turkic dialect is sung.

The soundtrack was played by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (Western instruments), the Shanghai National Orchestra (Chinese), and the Shanghai Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Tan Dun. The score has a prominent solo part for cello, often played with Chinese glides and microtonal inflections. There is an especially effective track where the cello joins with the Chinese traditional fiddle, the erhu and the two instruments intertwine magically. There are additional Chinese instruments with solo parts, including the bowu, dizi, rewap, and hand drum. In its deft handling of all these musical influences, Tan Dun's score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was one of the most unusual and effective film scores of its time.

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