(no subject)
I used to periodically whine to flemmings that the great Chinese collective unconscious is a bureaucracy. After all, other countries' quest stories are about great kings and knights. China's great quest story, the Journey to the West, is essentially about trying to get around the bureaucracy of Western Paradise. And even hell has all the accoutrement of a bureaucratic administration, including guards that takes bribes.
But if I'm not being so flip I might say that the great Chinese collective unconscious actually is 江湖, that poetically named place which serves as the setting for all the wuxia novels. A Chinese author once said that all Chinese writers have a wuxia story to tell. I instinctively felt it was true, and this is why. The characters in the wuxia novels are not just limited the kungfu masters that appear in Americanized movies, but draws from every facet of history and tradition. Some of them, the unpredictable medicine man for one, perhaps comes from older traditions which have been subsumed. But even more than the characters are the reference to old knowledge which have been forgotten -- the frequent appearance of patterns from Book of Change which are half understood.
All of this blabbing is to say, if one day I can get Piglet's Chinese skill level to where he can read Jin Yong, I will be content. It's not that far-fetched, I think. I was able to read him pretty much by third grade, and I wasn't even very good in Chinese class. I'll let you know how it works out about in about ten year. ^_^
But if I'm not being so flip I might say that the great Chinese collective unconscious actually is 江湖, that poetically named place which serves as the setting for all the wuxia novels. A Chinese author once said that all Chinese writers have a wuxia story to tell. I instinctively felt it was true, and this is why. The characters in the wuxia novels are not just limited the kungfu masters that appear in Americanized movies, but draws from every facet of history and tradition. Some of them, the unpredictable medicine man for one, perhaps comes from older traditions which have been subsumed. But even more than the characters are the reference to old knowledge which have been forgotten -- the frequent appearance of patterns from Book of Change which are half understood.
All of this blabbing is to say, if one day I can get Piglet's Chinese skill level to where he can read Jin Yong, I will be content. It's not that far-fetched, I think. I was able to read him pretty much by third grade, and I wasn't even very good in Chinese class. I'll let you know how it works out about in about ten year. ^_^