Thread by @WuxiaWanderings

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....

The book in question is Understanding Chinese Fantasy Genres by Jeremy Bai. Debating whether to do a full write-up on it. But tl;dr is AVOID. Full of inaccuracies, poorly researched, & does little to differentiate the 3 genres discussed

Some mistakes are simply the resul of not researching. Claims Gu Long was a huge fan of baijiu. He was actually famously a huge fan of brandy; 48 bottles of XO were placed on his grave when he died. This is a famous anecdote that's even on his Eng. Wikipedia page. smh

Blah I will stop here. I could go on for hours otherwise. Needed to vent though.

ok one more: he calls the translator of Mo Dao Zu Shi "some dolt of a translator" for translating shixiong as just "brother" while in the same section misinforming the reader about what shixiong means (has nothing to do / age as prev tweet mentioned). Glass houses and all that...