Got two new books today, wuxia of course. But this time they are young adult books:《江湖，還有人馬？》(Jianghu, Is Anyone There?) and《一箭之遙》(An Arrow’s Flight), both by Taiwan author 張友漁 Chang Yeou-yu. They are books 1 and 2 in her Who’s in the Jianghu series.
To be honest, I’ve never been interested in YA fiction (except when I was a kid, I guess). I’m 38. I know I know, adults can read it too. But I’ve never felt drawn to it. When I was a kid I read some of course, or maybe it was middle grade? I’m not really sure where all the stuff I read back then would be categorized now, but I remember in my youth reading books like The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Hatchet, A Day No Pigs Would Die, Shiloh (God I think I had to read that two or three times in different grades in school), Where the Red Fern Grows, The Giver, Charlotte’s Web, etc. I remember seeing someone on the bus reading Harry Potter, but I never had even the slightest interest in that. I also remember reading some sports books, baseball, basketball, and football, stories about a kid on a team, etc. I don’t remember what any of them were called.
But for the most part, when I was growing up I didn’t want to read about kids my age. I wanted to read about adults doing adult things because I couldn’t wait to be an adult. I would watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and play around in the living room with my toy M16 pretending to be him. Same with Rambo. In third grade after seeing the movie I found Jurassic Park on the book rack at Wal-Mart and read that because I was obsessed with the movie and all things dinosaurs. Took me about a month to get through it. A few years later I read its sequel, The Lost World in three days. In high school I used to hang out with my sister in the used bookstore she worked at, spening hours perusing the shelves of mass market paperback science fiction novels, which I was into at the time. Cover art has always appealed to me and I have always been susceptible to it.
It was the covers that drew my interest in these two wuxia novels. The first, Jianghu, Is Anyone There?, was first published in 2019 and won the 2020 Golden Tripod Award for children’s and young adult literature. It’s reprinted this month with a new cover, along with the new book in the series, An Arrow’s Flight. I got them packaged together; An Arrow’s Flight has a special dust jacket with a map printed on the back.
YA wuxia is interesting and a bit odd to me because wuxia fiction was always predominately read by middle schoolers and high schoolers in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in Taiwan. There was no separate classification for young adult fiction. Wuxia novels frequently feature young protagonists and are often coming-of-age stories. In fact, one of the classics of the genre, Quicksand Valley, was written by three brothers while they were still teenagers! The trio wrote about ten novels before going off to further their studies. One of them, Liu Chao-shiuan 劉兆玄, went on to become the premier of the Republic of China from 2008-2009.
Anyway, I got these books to see what the difference is from “adult” wuxia. One thing notable right away is the length. Each of these novels is just under 300 pages in one volume each. Wuxia novels are typically multi-volume affairs totally around 700-1000 pages, though there are shorter works (often called “novellas” even though they are around 200-300 pages; wuxia as a genre tends to run long).
I can’t really say much beyond that at the moment because I just started reading the first book. I did translate the first scene below to give you an idea. Now for the back cover copy of each book (note that the description for the second book has a spoiler for the first one):
Jianghu, Is Anyone There?
Cu Xiaopi, an orphan who grew up mending shoes; Kang Liang, the son of a steamed-bun shop owner. The two thirteen-year-olds grew up together in Ox Head Village, but this seemingly peaceful Ox Head Village is actually hiding a thirty-year-old legend: the inexplicable disappearance of a large iron pillar engraved with over 30 names led to the disappearance of the Ox Head Village’s jianghu.
One day, a bunch of strangers came to the village, all of them supremely skilled martial world masters. What great waves will they make here in order to recover the lost jianghu of times past? And as for Cu Xiaopi and Kang Liang, where is their jianghu?
An Arrow’s Flight
Cu Xiaopi defeated all the men of the jianghu at the big martial arts competition. He had not even stepped foot on the Thousand Mile Ancient Road, but his miraculous feat had already spread throughout the large jianghu. As a result, he is pursued by a fake constable, challenged to a duel by the “Shovel Sword” master Mo Zili, whom he has never met, and meets the enigmatic Master Xiuzhi and the beautiful melancholy girl Fei’er…
At the foot of Courtyard Mountain there are two villages, Wild Boar Cavern and Skyview Village. The villagers of both villages have been disputing over a piece of land for twenty years. Until a mysterious person shows up and shoot an arrow an impossibly far distance to interfere with a competition set up by the villages to decide the issue… Is this story true? Even Cu Xiaopi gets wrapped up among a series of strange, mysterious incidents.
In this jianghu, unusual people and strange events follow one after another, and pitfalls of human nature mount one by one. How will Cu Xiaopi, taking his first steps in the jianghu, confront the meaning of “xia” he has in his mind and what it means to make his “own” choice?
Both of these books feature illustrations by 林一先 (Lin I-Shian), and artist from Taipei. The author, Chang Yeou-yu, is from Yuli Township, Hualien, Taiwan. She’s been a children’s author for over twenty years. She won a Golden Bell award in 2000 for screenwriting, and the 2018 Gold Tripod Award for her novel《壞學姊》(The Senior).
Here is the first scene of Jianghu, Is Anyone There?
Jianghu, is anyone there?
The loud, clear yell resounded throughout the Twenty-One Peaks mountain range, startling several birds in the trees into taking flight.
Two youths wearing headcloths stood atop the highest boulder in the rocky area of the forest. The sturdier of the two, wearing a grey headcloth, cupped his hands around his mouth and called out to the distance, “Jianghu, is anyone there?”
The skinnier and weaker youth jumped down from the boulder and hoisted the firewood basket on the ground onto his back and looked up at the youth on the boulder. “Let’s go! Kang Liang, we ought to go home.”
“Cu Xiaopi, let’s leave Ox Head Village and go see the Eastern Capital, what do you say?” Kang Liang said, “There’s definitely a jianghu there.”
“But I like Ox Head Village, I like being with Master Cu.” Cu Xiaopi adjusted his red headcloth as he spoke.
“Jianghu, there’s no one! Someone come!” Kang Liang shouted again atop the boulder.
A grasshopper jumped in the grass and landed next to Cu Xiaopi. He noticed it and took interest. “Whether there’s anyone in the jianghu depends on whose jianghu it is. This grasshopper’s jianghu has frogs, flies, crickets, and chickens. A grasshopper’s jianghu is bustling with excitement.”
Kang Liang jumped down from the boulder and bent down to look at the grasshopper. “Cu Xiaopi, you left someone out, there’s also us! People are also in the grasshopper’s jianghu. This grasshopper eats our crops, and we have to send them to Western Paradise. With us in their jianghu, it’s fine not having a jianghu, isn’t it!”
Kang Liang reached out to grab the grasshopper, but its sickle scraped a bloody cut.
“Ah! This grasshopper strikes really fast, it’s got some skills. A jianghu master!” Kang Liang shook his hand and moved his eyes down closer to the grasshopper and once more reached out to grab it. Now he could clearly see as his hand approached the grasshopper, it quickly raised its back leg to swipe at Kang Liang’s hand. That little leg the color of withered grass had a row of pointy spines. It was those pointy spines that had got his hand just then. This time Kang Liang was quick in retracting his hand.
“That’s your weapon, huh? Now see what I can do.” Kang Liang took off his shoe and made ready to strike.
As he raised the shoe high, suddenly from behind a boulder came a man’s voice, “You’ve a loud voice, loud enough for Thunder Town to hear it.” A middle-aged man with a protruding stomach walked out from behind another boulder.
Kang Liang and Cu Xiaopi stood up straight and regarded the stranger. He wore an azure robe, his long hair neatly tied in a little round ball on the top of his head in the manner of a scholar.
“Why did you say just now that there’s no one in the jianghu?” the man asked Kang Liang.
“Ox Head Village’s jianghu disappeared.” Kang Liang put his shoe back on as he pointed toward the village. “It used to have one, but then it disappeared. Now only the grasshoppers have a jianghu.”
“You’re wrong, the jianghu never disappeared, or else why do people talk about the jianghu all day long?” The man said, “Just like a water jar. It’s always a water jar, it’s just that there’s not any water in it at the moment. The jianghu always exists.”
The man looked to the sky as if lost in thought. “But it looks like it will rain soon. The water jar soon will have water.”
Kang Liang and Cu Xiaopi looked up at the same time. The sky was so blue! Not a cloud in sight, how was it going to rain?
Mister, may I ask where you came from? Where are you headed?” Cu Xiaopi had never seen this person before. Usually merchants passing through Ox Head Village are hurrying on their way; they don’t have time for a leisurely stroll through the woods to enjoy the scenery.
“No hurry, we will meet again soon.” The man turned and headed back toward the woods. After a few steps he stopped suddenly and looked back at the two youths. “What you two said just now, the grasshoppers’ jianghu, mm, pretty interesting. I like that, grasshoppers’ jianghu. Haha, interesting.”
The two youths watched as the man disappeared into the woods.
