Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #武俠

Most recents (21)

A History of Hong Kong Wuxia Fiction《香港武俠小說史》by Chen Mo 陳墨, just released. Signed edition. Covers 70 authors by my count. Unfortunately, it's just book reviews, not a systematic history that explains development and political/social context.
#wuxia #武俠 #HK #香港
It's good information, but I was hoping for a deeper look into the history of wuxia fiction in HK like we got w/ Lin Baochun's Taiwan book. This is just an expansion of Chen Mo's earlier book from Aug.: A Grand Pageant of Classic Hong Kong Wuxia Works《香港武俠名家名作大展》
And given the broad scope of the book, since it covers so many authors, the reviews are not in depth, little analysis. Basically plot summary+some highlights or major flaws. His earlier book has longer reviews on the whole, but covers fewer works and authors.
Read 3 tweets
New editions of Jin Yong's wuxia novels coming out later this month (10.28.2022) in Taiwan. Here's the covers of LOCH, ROCH, and HSDS. These are reprints of the 2nd edition, the one most fans grew up on, the first time Jin Yong revised his work.
#wuxia #武俠 #JinYong #金庸
Some other covers (not sure of the release date of these). A Deadly Secret, Deer and the Cauldron (aka Duke of Mount Deer), and The Young Flying Fox (the one the recent drama is adapted from).
There's also a Jin Yong day calendar coming out the same day.
Read 3 tweets
"Dugu Nine Swords - Sun Moon Holy Cult Pt. 3" by Ripped to Shreds.

Yeah, it's Jin Yong death metal.
open.spotify.com/track/3MJPATw9…
#wuxia #武俠 #JinYong #金庸 #RippedtoShreds
Bandcamp link to album: rippedtoshredsdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/album/jubian
And lyrics to the song (from The Metal Archives): Image
And another Jin Yong/wuxia song from the same album:
"Scripture Containing the Supreme Internal Energy Arts That Render the Practitioner Invincible Throughout the Martial Realm"
open.spotify.com/track/1VVaNUaY…
Read 4 tweets
Ni Kuang 倪匡, Hong Kong #wuxia and #scifi novelist/screenwriter/lit critic, has passed away at 87. He created the One Armed Swordsman character and wrote many many Shaw Bros. films, as well as the popular Wisely scifi series.
art.ltn.com.tw/article/breaki…
#武俠
Ni Kuang, in addition to his own novels, also did some ghostwriting for Jin Yong and Gu Long. He also wrote one of the first books of "Jinology", the study of Jin Yong's work. He was a prolific writer and wrote the screenplays to many Shaw Bros films, such as The Avenging Eagle.
If you've ever watched wuxia or kung fu movies, you've seen Nu Kuang's work. He was even more well known for his science fiction writing. He wrote over 400 screenplays, and he wrote them not in standard format, but like a novel. He wrote over 300 novels.
Read 3 tweets
It's here! A History of Taiwan Wuxia Fiction《台灣武俠小說史》by Lin Baochun 林保淳 in two volumes. The limited blue booklet that comes with it has a few chapters excerpted from this book and the upcoming History of Hong Kong Wuxia Fiction by Chen Mo (Aug 2022)
#wuxia #武俠 ImageImage
Each volume is 600 pages, so altogether this is twice as long as the previous Developmental History of Taiwan Wuxia Fiction by Ye Hongshneg and Lin Baochun.
Here's a link for anyone who wants to purchase it: books.com.tw/products/00109…
There's other online sellers you can by from (such as Momo), but this is where I ordered it from and they are trustworthy (at least for domestic purchases). They do ship overseas.
Read 5 tweets
Putting together a post comparing the original opening of Legend of the Condor Heroes with the revised version, and have noticed even more mistranslations and cut passages in the official translation. =\
#wuxia #武俠 #JinYong #金庸
江畔一排數十株烏柏樹,葉子似火燒般紅
"Ten cypresses stand proudly along its banks, their leaves red like fire."

A cypress with fire-red leaves?!?! No. It's a Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera). Also should be "tens" or "dozens", not exactly "ten". Simple errors like this.
一件青布長袍早洗得褪成了藍灰
"in robes once black, now faded a blue-grey"

Black robe became blue-grey? it's bcuz 青 is blue, not black. It's right there in your own translation! Even in 青絲 referring to black hair, it's the blue glint or tint of light off of black hair.
Read 4 tweets
Wuxia author Qin Hong 秦紅 has just released a short story collection and a novella collection in ebook format (in Chinese):
novella:play.google.com/store/books/de…
short stories: play.google.com/store/books/de…
If you can read Chinese I highly recommend his work.
#wuxia #武俠 #fantasy
These were put out by Qin Hong himself. He is still around, though not in great health. That pic on the cover is pretty recent. He recently underwent heart surgery. He once invited me to his home and treated me to lunch and patiently answered by fanboyish questions...
I know he's wanted to put out his own official versions of his work for a while; there's many mistakes and false attributions on what few works of his are online already. So it's good to see him start doing this. Dunno what or how much more he plans to publish.
Read 4 tweets
More questionable translating from A Hero Born, vol.1 of LOCH. (pg. 199) "Chimpanzee"??? You know cause of all those chimps in CHINA. lol. (Chimps are native to Africa).
#wuxia #武俠 #JinYong #金庸
This is a martial arts move from the YUE MAIDEN swordplay, which should have been a tip off to what this meant. 白猿 refers to a famous Tang dynasty story. 猿 is often translated generally as "ape", but strictly speaking it's a gibbon.
Also seeing an unprofessional number of typos as I flip through this. I believe I have a first printing, so I dunno if they were corrected later but, whew.....
Read 6 tweets
The following is 4 pages of the first Jin Yong translation in Eng: Flying Fox of Snow Mountain by Robin Wu, printed in Bridge bimonthly in 1972 in 4 parts. These are excerpts from the color plates at the beginning of Chinese editions of Flying Fox.
#wuxia #JinYong #金庸 #武俠
The first page is obvious. After that the order is bald guy, two people with halos and horses, then woman's face.
Oh yeah, this is a translation of the 1st serialized edition, before Jin Yong had done any revisions.
Read 3 tweets
Checked out some Jin Yong books from the library. Biographies, an essay collection written by Jin Yong, and some books about his work from wuxia author Wen Rui'an.
#wuxia #武俠 #JinYong #金庸 Image
There's a book on the top by Shen Xicheng, former editor of Wuxia World Magazine. In it he talks about the Eng translations. Criticizes the titles of Book and Sword and Deer and the Cauldron, says once he read them he was "extremely extremely disappointed." So it's not just me!
Also mentions the new LOCH A Hero Born which was just set to come out at the time. Likes the title better ("though it's not a condor") and hopes it will be a success.
Read 5 tweets
Got the outline completed for my wuxia history article... ~165 entries O__O. Not including authors that will only be listed by name (since I don't anything about them).

The scope of this thing is daunting. And it barely touches contemporary wuxia webnovels.
#wuxia #武俠
Some of it will be spotty due to my lack of knowledge, but thankfully there are two monumental histories coming out this year: Lin Baochun's History of Taiwanese Wuxia Fiction in late April and Chen Mo's History of Hong Kong Wuxia Fiction in August. Those will help fill in a lot.
Here's a couple links to preorder Lin Baochun's book: books.com.tw/products/00109…
momoshop.com.tw/goods/GoodsDet…
Of course it's available at other retailers as well. Chen Mo's book hasn't been listed yet as far as I know.
Read 3 tweets
Past Affairs of the Martial World 武林舊事.
Some cool things: Deaf MC. One of the love interests is blind. New girl is intro'ed & is a tsundere; they fall out. But instead of dragging it on for half the novel, they talk it out and then become sworn brother/sister.
#wuxia #武俠
MC was terrible martial artist, now has gotten better, but family still thinks he's shit. & bcuz reasons he has to hide his skills from them. Also, though he is bad at skills he's taught, his understanding is deep and he is good at picking apart moves and teaching others.
Whole plot is centered on a big competition to determing the top 100 sword schools. Each one has to send one representative to take part of the tournament. This preparation is a major part of the novel.
Read 3 tweets
Where the novel Swords, Come! (aka Sword of Coming) got its title from (clip from Sword Snow Stride)
#wuxia #武俠 #武侠 #xianxia
This clip is from the just-finished drama Sword Snow Stride, based on the very popular webnovel 雪中悍刀行 (titled The Snowy Path of the Heroic Blade on NU). It's a wuxia/xuanhuan hybrid with some cultivation elements, but mostly focuses on political scheming/intrigue.
The drama adaptation is fantastic, highly recommended. The same author wrote the currently ongoing xianxia novel Swords, Come! 剑来 (Sword of Coming on NU), and this is scene is where that novel got it's title.
Read 3 tweets
So about this, I asked Lin Baochun, a wuxia scholar, if he knew exactly when Rusty Sword was published. Turns out it was May 11, 1961, making it definitely later than Jin Yong's ROCH. Funny thing is, the 1959 date I had for Rusty Sword came from his book lol...
#wuxia #武俠
That's how it is with wuxia research though. The few resources out there are not quite reliable enough, and it's very hard to find first editions of wuxia novels now to find out the exact dates of things (which is why I asked Lin Baochun)....
Dunno why the dating was wrong to start with, but I'm glad I asked first before I made a blog post about it. So turns out Gao Yong just copied Jin Yong, which makes sense since many authors did.
Read 4 tweets
Reading that Gao Yong novel I just got, "Rusty Sword". And there is a part that is very close to the Dugu Qiubai part of ROCH. "Rusty Sword" was published first. I think Jin Yong may have taken his idea for Dugu Qiubai from this "Rusty Sword" novel...
#wuxia #武俠
There's too many similarities: sword tomb, master desperately seeking someone who can defeat his swordplay, even the name 玄鐵劍 is the same. And it's magnetic (the Dragon Slayingh Sabre in HSDS is made from 玄鐵 and is also magnetic)...
#wuxia #武俠
Also the sword is much heavier than a normal sword.
Read 3 tweets
Birthday presents I got for myself: (1) A Survey of Chinese Wuxia Fiction Classics 中國武俠小說名著大觀 (2) 刀劍風雲 by Situ Yu (3) 沉劍飛龍記 by Zhang Menghuan (4) Six Harmonies Spear 六合槍 by Yan Pingle
#wuxia #武俠 #ChineseLit #Chinese
This one, by Zhang Menghuan, apparently once competed with Legend of the Condor Heroes for popularity back in 1957 when they were each initially serialized. I'm reading it now. #wuxia
Six Harmonies Spear by Yan Pingle is pretty new published Oct. 2020. Only in ebook format. Great artwork by the renowned artist Ye Yutong 葉羽桐
You can get it on Google Play Books: play.google.com/store/books/de…
#wuxia
Read 4 tweets
Ugh this kind of low-effort laziness makes me mad. Imagine a book about "understanding Chinese fantasy genres: a primer for wuxia..." where the author can't be bothered to discuss the most important concept of the genre (xia). And thinking such concept is "boring".
#wuxia #武俠 Image
While in the same book discussing the etymology & meaning of 修 cultivation (and becuz of over-reliance on Chinese-English dictionaries, getting part of the explanation wrong in the process; the 3 stripes in the character mean feathers, not stripes [see Shuowen Jiezi])
And BTW, xia does not necessarily mean heroes. Historically they certainly were not regarded as heroes. It's a unique concept that ought to be explained at least a little bit in an intro to wuxia. ffs....
Read 7 tweets
The 602nd installment of Smiling, Proud Wanderer. 1092 characters. So again, only ~1/3 of a modern webnovel chapter.
#wuxia #jinyong #webnovel #武俠 #金庸 Image
The 1st installment of The Deer and the Cauldron, Oct. 24, 1969. 813 Chinese characters. Image
1st installment of Legend of the Condor Heroes, Jan. 1, 1957. 902 characters. Image
Read 4 tweets
Library haul! Top left is a book about xia (left) and on the (right) is that history book I tweeted about the other day. the earlier version (though published in 2020, dunno why there is another version out this March; contents are the same) (continued...)
#wuxia #武俠 #books ImageImageImageImage
top right pic is Introduction to Wuxia Fiction by Lin Baochun (2019). The guy who wrote the paper I translated about wuxia tropes. Bottom left is Roaming the Jianghu (vol.1&2/4) by Zhao Chenguang. Am translating article about her now. (continued...)
bottom left is Overwhelming Sword (left, 2008) by Zhao Chenguang. She won a major awar for this one. And Sad Jianghu (2011, not sure about the sad part; that word can be translated various ways) by Sun Xuetong, another female mainland China #wuxia writer.
Read 8 tweets
ahhh i am fangirling right now!!! finally found the Wuxia 60 documentary (it was at the library) That pic is a manuscript from Qin Hong (one of the only wuxia authors I'm fortunate to have met) Image
i didn't even know the documentary had been released. the film company never mentioned its release on their FB page :/
turns out it was released in 2017!! ugh why did i never check the library??? well a new public library opened up here (and it is massive). so that's why i was checking out the library recently, searching the new site. and this documentary is 2hr long!!
Read 37 tweets
Nerw books! 2/6 books in a series reprinting classic scholarly wuxia works. Left is by Chen Mo & talks about Gu Long, Wolong Sheng, Wen Rui'an. Right is by Gong Pengcheng & talks about real life martial arts and relates them to wuxia.
#wuxia #武俠 Image
Last few years there's been more and more new books and reprints of older books on wuxia, esp. Gu Long and Jin Yong (since the latter passed away recently there's been a ton of new books about him and his work). The Chen Mo book has been out of print so nice to see it back.
Wen Rui'an is the author of the Four Constables series that was adapted to "The Four" film and its sequels.
Read 4 tweets

Related hashtags

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!