Heck, my college literature professor's wife tried to write a "Gothic Romance" - and was literally given a checklist with the number of times there had to be mysterious chains rattling, the number of times weather had to impact the story, where at least one mistaken identity had to happen, etc. Was like a four page list...
Though mixing Chinese Mysticism with Texan culture has been around since the sixties - there was one episode of Wild Wild West that did this, and it was a driving concept behind Kung Fu. Heck, Wild Wild West may have been one of the greatest genre-bending experiments in television history as it started as a mix of "James Bond-type Spy Stuff" and "traditional Western" blended with comedy, and folded in surrealist elements (half of the Doctor Miguelito Loveless stories), Asian cinema tropes, science fiction tropes (brain washing, some truly out-there weaponry, etc.), and probably paved the way for the similar but far more "controlled" (pun fully intended) Get Smart!.
And if you ever need proof that Sci Fi is not a genre, consider that Frankenstein: Or The Modern Prometheus is considered Science Fiction, as are the "Known Universe" stories of Larry Niven, The Fly (both movie versions and the novel), Star Trek, and the first 15 or so series of Doctor Who (before it crossed more into "Science Fantasy" and eventually became the "mostly Fantasy with some Sci Fi Trappings" it is today) and everything Robert Heinlein wrote, from his most "cartoonish" stuff like The Star Beast through his more philosophical stuff like Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough For Love, to his more surreal stuff like The Cat Who Walked Through Walls to his more straightforward tech-driven "hard sci-fi" of Starship Troopers.
