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
The 1st installment of The Deer and the Cauldron, Oct. 24, 1969. 813 Chinese characters.
1st installment of Legend of the Condor Heroes, Jan. 1, 1957. 902 characters.
The last installment of Sword Stained with Royal Blood, Dec. 31, 1956. 914 Chinese characters. So LOCH began the very next day after "Royal Blood" finished. No rest period. #wuxia#jinyong#webnovel#武俠#金庸
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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
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....
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.
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
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.
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)
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!!