Posted on by Lone Crane

Lychees, Poetry, Xianxia, and the future of this site

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《nuòmǐ》荔枝《lìzhī》, 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《yù hébāo lìzhī》, which has a seed in between the size of the other two. They’re all good though.

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Posted on by Lone Crane

Unsheathed (Sword of Coming) Cultivation Realms

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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Posted on by Lone Crane

Outside of Time — Er Gen’s New Xianxia Webnovel

Today Er Gen began his new xianxia novel called Outside of Time《光阴之外》. You could also translate it as Beyond Time. The description of the novel, such as it is, is this:

Heaven and Earth is the guesthouse for all living things. Time is the sojourner of since time immemorial.

The difference between life and death is like the difference between waking and dreaming, diverse and confused and changing.

So then transcending life and death, transcending heaven and earth, what awaits us beyond time?

I also took the liberty to translate the first chapter, just so people can get an idea what it’s like. I don’t plan to translate any more of this novel, but who knows when (if?) anyone will translate it, so I thought I’d translate the first chapter anyway as a short teaser. Pretty interesting so far, actually.

Anyway, here it is:

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Posted on by Lone Crane

Xiao Se on Wuxia, Xianxia, and Fantasy

Xiao Se 蕭瑟, real name Wu Ming 武鳴 is/was a wuxia author in Taiwan during the 1960s. His first novel was《落星追魂》(Falling Star Soulseeker) in 1963, and he became well known with his other 1963 novel,《碧眼金鵬》(Blue-eyed Golden Peng-bird). He ghostwrote several times for Zhuge Qingyun and Wolong Sheng. His writing style has been described as easy and smooth.1 In 2003, Xiao Se ended his 30-year retirement and published a new wuxia novel,《霸王神槍》(The Divine Spear of the Hegemon King). From June 2008 to June 2009, he published his first sword transcendent 劍仙 (xianxia 仙俠) novel,《仙劍神刀》(Transcendent Sword, Divine Sabre). At the end of this ten-volume light novel, Xiao Se wrote an afterword in which he talked about about the sword transcendent genre and its relation to wuxia and western fantasy. I have translated that afterword in full below:

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Posted on by Lone Crane

New Translation Project: Sword Xia of the Shu Mountains

I’ve begun what hopefully will be a long translation project: the famous wuxia/xianxia novel Sword Xia of the Shu Mountains. Take a look at the novel page here: https://wuxiawanderings.com/sword-xia/. It’s also linked in the menu up top.

This is a long novel, 4.1 million Chinese characters in 309 chapters (plus 20 “sequel” chapters). I’m working on an essay about the novel and its influence on xianxia cultivation webnovels. I also need to make a bio page for the author, Huanzhu Louzhu.

Why this novel? Because it’s just too important, not only to the wuxia genre, where it inspired pretty much everyone, including Jin Yong, but also to the xianxia genre, as it was this novel that combined the Daoist quest for transcendence with Buddhist heavenly tribulations and the wheel of samsara reincarnation cycle. It’s got most of the major tropes in current xianxia cultivation novels, and it contributed to many tropes in the wuxia novels of the 50s, 60s, and 70s as well. To put this novel’s importance into perspective, it’s pretty much on a par with Lord of the Rings for the epic fantasy genre.

I’m looking forward to using this novel to explain many of the tropes of both wuxia and xianxia, and also some of the real-life Daoist practices with regard to the quest for transcendence. I don’t know if this novel will be suitable to modern readers’ tastes, but let’s just take it one chapter at a time. You can jump right to chapter 1 here: https://wuxiawanderings.com/sword-xia/sx-chapter-1/.