"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):

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 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.

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.

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...

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.

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 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!

Will be starting a column: "So You Want to Write Wuxia" giving info on various things one might need to know if they want to write wuxia or any other Chinese period piece (or fantasy based on traditional China). Basically sharing stuff I've researched over the years.
#wuxia Some will be specific to wuxia (ex. sects, schools, sword qi, whatever) and some just general Chinese stuff. Such as that trad. China was actually monogamous: a man could have only one "wife". And concubines were closer to maids than spouses, in that they were bought or rented.

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

https://twitter.com/WuxiaWanderings/status/1456271524197851147

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)....

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.

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

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])

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.

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)

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...)

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 :/

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 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.