Posted on by Lone Crane

Chang’an: More of this, please!

I’m surprised this movie even exists. Light Chaser Animation 追光动画《zhuī guāng dònghuà》 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《cháng’ān sān wàn lǐ》 (lit. 30,000 Miles to Chang’an) is, an animated movie about the lives of two Tang dynasty poets: Gao Shi 高適《gāo shì》 and Li Bai 李白《lǐ bái》. 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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Posted on by Lone Crane

The Blue Whisper, Mermen, and Ashes of Love

Recently I’ve started watching a couple xianxia romance dramas and have a few things to say about them. I started with Ashes of Love, which I never got around to watching back when it first came out. I like Yang Zi but hadn’t watched any of her dramas (meaning I liked her cause she’s pretty lol) but I’m a bit hyped for Immortal Samsara (whenever that’s coming out), so I thought I’d watch Ashes of Love first. Then I decided to give The Blue Whisper a chance. I’d seen a lot of tweets about it recently but I’m usually not into these kinds of shows to be honest, so I just went on. Anyway, I did give it a shot and I’m already hooked.

So let me talk about The Blue Whisper first, since I like it a lot more. The acting is too hammy in Ashes of Lovel; not a fan of the cutesy voices and everyone has their acting dialed up to eleven. Especially that celestial realm empress. Looks like her eyes are going to pop out of her head. Back it down a few notches, fellas.

The Blue Whisper is more to my taste. I have no idea where the English title comes from because the Chinese title has nothing to do with that. Maybe it will become clear later. The Chinese title is 驭鲛记之与君初相识, which I would translate as A Tale of Merman Taming: When I first Met You. 驭 (yu) means to control or to drive, as in drive a carriage or control an animal. Ride dragons. Control swords (sword kinesis). In the drama they use the word 馴 (xun) to talk about taming the merman, and tame is precisely what it means. So the “control” in the title to me has a more domineering feel to it than “tame”, which fits the tone of the drama, in my opinion.

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On the translation of Huang Rong as “Lotus” Huang

In Appendix III of A Hero Born, the first volume of the official English translation of Jin Yong’s Legend of the Condor Heroes, we get this note about Lotus Huang:

Lotus Huang is known to many fans by the pinyin transliteration of her name, Huang Rong. I wanted to translate her name as Lotus, however, as at this point in the story we the readers are let in on a secret that Guo Jing is not party to. As soon as we see her name written down, we know at once this “beggar boy” is, in fact, a girl — the character for “lotus”, “rong” 蓉 is far too girly to be used for a boy’s name. But due to the fact that there are several Chinese characters that could be pronounced the same way or similar, Guo Jing doesn’t pick up on this. We know that Guo Jing is barely literate in Chinese, so he can be forgiven for his mistake. He is an honest young man, but clearly not the most perceptive, and this moment in the novel is an important way in which Jin Yong develops Guo Jing’s character, while letting Chinese readers in on the joke. If I had kept Lotus’ name in the pinyin, we English readers would be left feeling just as dim as poor Guo Jing.

In the novel, as translated on pg. 275 of A Hero Born, the scene plays out like this:

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Posted on by Lone Crane

Rusty Sword, Scrawny Horse — Gao Yong

I recently acquired a new (old) novel, Rusty Sword, Scrawny Horse《銹劍瘦馬》by Gao Yong. Here’s a look at the first couple chapters.

Liang Chengyan (Lyahng Chung-yen, 梁承彥)1 is living with his wife and young daughter on a secluded cliff, having retired from the jianghu (jyahng-hoo, 江湖]). He has just returned home and is waiting for his junior brother,2 Tang Baizhou (Tahng B{eye}-joe, 唐百州), who is scheduled to make a rare visit. The two of them are fellow disciples of the Spirit Snake Swordplay 靈蛇劍法. Their master gave them each one half of the sword manual before he passed away.

But while he is waiting for his junior bro to arrive, two strangers show up instead: Diao Tianyi (Dyow Tyen-ee, 刁天義) and Diao Shuxian (Dyow Shoo-shyen, 刁淑嫺) of Diao Family Village, a famous sword school. They have come for the Spirit Snake Swordplay manual. A fight ensues, and just as Liang Chengyan is wounded, Tang Baizhou arrives and fends off the attackers, who flee. But the real danger is still close at hand.

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Tale of the Long Sword — Xiao Yi

Tale of the Long Sword《長劍篇》is a wuxia novel by Xiao Yi and published in 1982. The following is a translation of a plot summary and short review from A Critical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Wuxia Fiction《中国现代武侠小说鉴赏辞典》edited by Liu Xinfeng, Chen Mo, et al.

There was a drama adaptation of this novel in 2005 under the title 長劍相思 (Sword of the Outlaw) starring Chen Kun and Li Bingbing, but it seems to be very different from the novel.

Plot Summary

During the year of a great drought, The Great Bandit of Liaodong, Gold Wing, arrives at Linhuai Pass and sends and invitation to the richest family of the area, that of Mai Yujie and expresses that before the night of the Midautumn Festival, he will come demanding 10,000 taels of gold. Huang Tong, one of the hangers-on at the Mai estate, in order to repay his host’s generosity, stands up for and defends his host and is seriously wounded by Gold Wing in the process. Just at the critical moment, a teacher from the Mai Family ancestral hall, Guan Xueyu, strides out and engages Gold Wing and a life-and-death battle. Guan Xueyu’s real name is Yan Xue, the son of Yan Zhuiyun, the head of the illustrious Yan School within the martial world. He is wise and brave and is an incredible martial artist.

But he is still injured by Gold Wing’s “black finger” and narrowly escapes. Guan Xueyu happens to run into the mysterious figure Miss Feng (phoenix), who saves him and uses her school’s gold feather insignia to repel the enemy. Turns out that Miss Feng is the daughter of Feng the Seventh, the head of the powerful but mysterious Seven Finger Snowy Mountain Gold Phoenix Lodge. Feng the Seventh once saved Gold Wing’s life. Miss Feng falls in love with Guan Xueyu at first sight, and she uses her sect’s secret medicine to treat Guan Xueyu and the Mai family’s only daughter, Mai Xiaoqiao, who is a student at Mount Jiuhua. However, the two cannot be fully cured of their poisoning without the antidote from Gold Wing’s sect.

Guan Xueyu bids farewell to the Mai family and Mai Xiaoqiao sees him off in the morning; the feelings between them apparent but left unspoken. Guan Xueyu arrives in Ningguo prefecture and gets to know the local chivalrous characters Bao Yu and the young master of the Beggar’s Sect, Tong Bing. Again Guan Xueyu fights with Gold Wing, but his martial arts is still not strong enough and he is defeated again. At an inn, he becomes acquainted with the martial world master Hermit Jiang and receives snake blood from Jiang with which he gets rid of the remaining poison in his body. Guan Xueyu also finds out that Hermit Jiang is the ringleader of the jianghu’s dark path and is now plotting to steal government relief aid meant to help disaster victims in Linhuai Pass. Feng the Seventh and his daughter Miss Feng also have their eyes on the relief money, as does the Great Bandit of Liaodong, Gold Wing.

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Beatdown Cudgel — Liu Canyang

Beatdown Cudgel was published in 1974 and at only one volume, 262 pgs., it is one of Liu Canyang’s shorter novels, characteristic of his later period work. But it has everything Liu Canyang is known for: brutal violence; focus on the “dark path”, the underworld of society rather than a goody-two-shoes idealistic hero of the “light path”; a seasoned protagonist who is already a martial arts adept, who doesn’t need to find a master or esoteric martial arts manual to get strong and defeat his enemy. He can already defeat his enemy. Yet still with his own moral code he follows. Though elsewhere I have characterized Liu Canyang’s work as “grimdark before grimdark”, that’s not really accurate because morality in his novels is not grey, it’s just not idealistic. There is still a “good” and a “bad” guy, even though the good guy might, by society’s standards, be a “bad” guy. But he’s not a monster nor a completely selfish asshole. More Blondie (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) and less Caul Shivers (Best Served Cold). Liu Canyang has been placed alongside Yun Zhongyue in the subset of wuxia authors who write more “realistically”.

The protagonist of Beatdown Cudgel is Meng Changqing. His weapon is the Beatdown Staff, a black wooden cudgel, a little over four-feet long, with a dark red sheen to it, and scratch marks on the upper half part of it where sharp weapons seemed to have cut into it over and over over the years. Though I translated it as “beatdown” cudgel, the original Chinese, 煞威棒, refers to a real, historical rod used to beat suspects into submission after they have been arrested.

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