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Mar 15 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
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.
To clarify, his disappointment was about the translations as a whole, not just the titles.
Not pictured are two essays collections, one by Liang Yusheng, the other by Wang Dulu.

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More from @WuxiaWanderings

Wuxia Wanderings Profile picture
Mar 17
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 Image
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
Wuxia Wanderings Profile picture
Nov 5, 2021
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
Wuxia Wanderings Profile picture
Oct 4, 2021
Just finished the first iteration of a romanization system designed to help people who don't know Chinese learn how to pronounce it. Basically a crib for how to pronounce pinyin.
Ex. wuxia: ooh-shyah (NOT woo-shuh)
xianxia: shyen-shyah
Xiao Yan: Shyow-Yen
....
Will be looking to test this soon, see how easy/difficult it is for people to pick up. The idea is you pronounce it exactly as it's spelled. So "Lai" is L(eye)...in other words, L + the word "eye". Dunno how it will work out, but hopefully it can be honed into something useful.
Wanted something as a pronunciation aid for my wuxia/xianxia encyclopedic dictionary I'm working on, that's why I made this. The goal is to allow readers to feel confident they have a basic gist of how to say the names/terms in Chinese novels (or other lit).
Read 4 tweets
Wuxia Wanderings Profile picture
Jul 8, 2021
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
Wuxia Wanderings Profile picture
May 10, 2021
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
Wuxia Wanderings Profile picture
Mar 20, 2021
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

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