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.
The martial arts book has some info on Qingcheng, Kongtong, and Kunlun, which will come in handy for my forthcoming article on The Nine Major Martial Arts Sects

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More from @WuxiaWanderings

10 May
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
20 Mar
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
16 Feb
TIL that a lot of the common tropes of cultivation novels, like nascent souls and the process of transcending and becoming an immortal, tribulations, etc. were popularized by Huanzhu Louzhu in Sword Immortals of the Shu Mountains (Legend of Zu) (1932)
#wuxia #xianxia #webnovel
Also he had martial arts called "Eight Dragon Subduing Palms" (Jin Yong must have taken this to make his Eighteen), and the main character has a divine eagle companion (Jin Yong borrowed this for ROCH)
AND the primary protagonist, Li Yingqiong, is a woman! Didn't realize just how influential it was; pretty much every wuxia author who came after it was influenced by it in some way.
Read 5 tweets
10 Feb
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
7 Feb
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

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