My translation of Book 15 of Long Chengfeng’s Snowblade Vagabond series, The Tang Sect Crisis, is now complete. You can read it at the link below. Ebook downloads are also available on the page linked. Just click/tap the button below.
Today begins a new project that I hope to have completely translated in a month or so. It’s the fifteenth installment of Long Chengfeng’s Snowblade Vagabond series: The Tang Sect Crisis《唐門風暴》. Originally published in Wuxia World Magazine on November 20, 1978, issue #1012, this story deals with internecine strife within the Tang Sect, one of the most famous sects in wuxia fiction from Bai Yu to Liang Yusheng to Gu Long to Wen Rui’an. Here is Long Chengfeng’s contribution to Tang Sect lore, Snowblade Vagabond style!
Well I finally finished it, the first book in Long Chengfeng’s 50-book Snowblade Vagabond《雪刀浪子》 series. I’ve talked about Long Chengfeng before, and you can read a short description and context for the novel on the novel page, where you can also read the novel: https://wuxiawanderings.com/wuxia/long-chengfeng/snowblade-vagabond/
You can also download EPUB, MOBI, and PDF versions of the novel in one .zip file by clicking or tapping the button below:
I’m surprised this movie even exists. Light Chaser Animation 追光动画 previously brought us two movies about the legend of the White Snake (White Snake and Green Snake) and two movies adapted from characters/storylines from the Ming dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods: New Gods: Nezha Reborn and New Gods: Yang Jian. All fantasy/mythology films. Now for this outing they thought: Hey, let’s make an animated movie about the lives of two Tang dynasty poets!
That’s what Chang’an 长安三万里 (lit. 30,000 Miles to Chang’an) is, an animated movie about the lives of two Tang dynasty poets: Gao Shi 高適 and Li Bai 李白. You’d think, it being an animated movie, that there would be some wacky hiinks, maybe an escapade that stretches history to the breaking point, maybe having Li Bai on some swashbuckling adventure where he fights off the rebel An Lushan and saves the empire and the majestic thearch and his Precious Consort Yang are narrowly saved from the cluthes of death.
Nope. There’s no breaking of history. There’s no fantastic adventure. There’s not even any depiction of the majestic thearch (in this case that would be Xuanzong) or Precious Consort Yang at all, not any scene taking place in the imperial palace.
There’s no romance.
There’s no villain.
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It’s lychee1 season in Taiwan and the season is not a long one. I swear they’re only in season for like a week or two and then you can’t find them anymore, replaced by longans.2 Now longans are good, but they’re no lychee. Lychees have this floral flavor to them that is just unmatched. Longans are good, but they lack that floral note and have a lighter flavor. Those damn things seem to last the rest of the summer, while the superior lychee is here and gone.
The we bought recently are of the “glutinous rice ball” variety 糯米荔枝, so named because of their resemblance to sticky rice balls. These have seeds that are atrophies slivers, leaving more succulent flesh. Besides the normal “traditional” variety with its fullsize seed, there’s also the “jade purse” variety 玉荷包荔枝, which has a seed in between the size of the other two. They’re all good though.
Now that Unsheathed (aka Sword of Coming, aka Swords, Come!)《劍來》has launched an official translation on Wuxiaworld, I thought I’d translate the cultivation realm tables on the Chinese wiki (Baike) for the novel. Keep in mind that these are my own translations based on my own knowledge, research, and translation preferences. These are not the official translations of these terms, as the novel has not gotten far enough along for those translated terms to be published yet. So the translations here are unofficial and tentative. I have kept the original Chinese text here to make it easier for those who can read Chinese to compare and understand for themselves (and correct whatever mistakes I’ve made) and to make it easier for someone to locate a term if needed.
I have also included some footnotes explaining some of the concepts and terms as many of these exist in real life Daoist practice. I encourage you to read them if you’d like to better understand the underlying concepts behind Daoist cultivation.
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Webnovel readers are perhaps more familiar with the Tang Sect through the fantasy series Douluo Dalu《斗罗大陆》(aka Soul Land) by Tang Jia San Shao (唐家三少), but it has its origins in wuxia fiction dating back to the Republican period (1912-1949) and since has become a common sect used by many wuxia authors, such as Liang Yusheng 梁羽生, Gu Long 古龍, and Wen Rui’an 溫瑞安.
Yet although the Tang Sect is common in wuxia fiction, it is actually ostensibly based on a real person. The original source is a martial arts manual anthology written by Wan Laisheng 萬籟聲 in 1926 called《武術匯宗》Collected Schools of Martial Arts, in which Wan Laisheng compiled information about many different martial arts techniques he had learned. In this book he mentions “Elder Sister Tang” of Sichuan:
Read more有操五毒神砂者，乃鐵砂以五毒煉過，三年可成。打於人身，即中其毒；遍體麻木，不能動彈；掛破體膚，終生膿血不止，無藥可醫。如四川唐大嫂即是！
There are those who use Miraculous Five Poisons Sand, which is iron sand refined with five poisons and takes three years to make. When it makes contact with a person’s body, that person is poisoned. Their whole body goes numb and they can’t move. If it breaks the skin, pus and blood will ooze nonstop. There is no antidote. Elder Sister Tang of Sichuan is one such user [of this poison sand]1
The following paper by Meir Shahar reproduced below was originally included in the book Proceedings of the International Conference on Jin Yong’s Novels 金庸小說國際學術研討會論文集, 1999, Yuan-Liou Publishing. The book collects the papers presented at said conference. I have re-typeset it based on the original, except for fixing a few typos. All the footnotes are the same as in the original with the addition of two short notes I added for correction.
Martial-Arts Fiction and Martial-Arts Practice: The Concept of Qi in Jin Yong’s Novels1
Meir Shahar
Department of East Asian Studies
Tel Aviv University
In one of the climactic moments of Jin Yong’s 金庸 (1924-) Extraordinary Beings (Tianlong babu 天龍八部), Duan Yu 段譽, who is the novel’s principal protagonist, discovers inside a mysterious cave a jade statue of a divine maiden. Like Baoyu 寶玉, after which he has been fashioned, and with which his name resonates,2
Duan Yu is consumed by admiration to women, which he considers as superior to men. Perhaps for this reason, the discovery of the lifelike images touches the depths of his soul. Overcome with emotion, he kneels in front of it.
Inadvertently, Duan Yu’s romantic impulse transforms him into a martial-artist. This is because from his kneeling posture Duan Yu chances upon a tiny inscription on the maidens’ fee. It reads: “After kowtowing to me a thousand times, even if you experience a hundred deaths you will have no regrets.” All too happy to comply with the instruction and worship the lovely creature, Duan Yu prostrates himself on a small mat, which he finds spread in front of the statue. By the time he completes his prostrations, the mat is torn to shreds, revealing underneath it an ancient book, which endows Duan Yu with invincible powers. This sacred book contains the secret fighting methods of the “Free and Easy Sect” (Xiaoyao pai 逍遙派).3
In many ways this episode is characteristic of Jin Yong’s writing. Its plot is full of surprising turns, connecting as it does the veneration of beauty with hidden martial techniques. We find in it mysterious caves and sacred books, love and invincible fighting methods. Perhaps most significantly, the protagonist of this episode is, from the perspective of martial-arts fiction, an anti-hero: Duan Yu is, at least initially, much more interested in romance than in warfare.
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