(Untitled)

[paleaswater]

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

Comments

[rasetsunyo]

Ahhhh I never read a Jin Yong! Sad but true. Must pick up a Simplified Chinese version some day, dad's trad. copies were kind of scary and off-putting. Good luck with Piglet! :p

I don't know how much today's concepts of of 江湖 owes to modern wuxia novels or pop culture portrayals (probably a fair bit), but it does seem to be a diasporic kind of thing....?

[paleaswater]

*gasp* you have not read Jin Ying!? You must remedy that asap. :P I'd say, start with 神雕侠侣 or 射雕英雄传, but my favorite is 天龙八部.

It's interesting, but I suspect that I don't know the diaspora idea of 江湖. What do you think of when you see the word? My idea probably derives more from the Mainland culture. The way I see 江湖 is that is potential repository for almost every possible Chinese experience, and its conventions have subsumed h centuries of accumulated knowledge and culture. For example, the hero is almost always tested with some sort of a 阵， a kind of labyrinth, I suppose, and the principle of it almost always comes from I-Ching, which is in fact the oldest systematic attempt by the Chinese to describe the creation and workings of the world. And there are so many other examples of this sort as well.

[rasetsunyo]

I saw a lot of TV series/movie productions though, with running commentary from dad. Not really a substitute, I know, but it did colour the way I saw the whole 江湖 thing.

I think... HK movies. As much HK traid movies as wuxia flicks, and a lot more swashbuckling than accumulated knowledge and culture. It sounds terribly shallow compared to what you know it as, but my experience of 江湖 is very much through pop culture fluff.

[paleaswater]

HK series are pretty good too, especially the 80's adaptations. I cried so much over Andy Liu's Yang Guo. But yeah, they kind of drop the cultural elements. Jin Yong's 天龙八部 was supposed to be built around a very Buddhist view of humanity, but none of that case through the series, which still was smashingly entertaining though.

[shalimar1001]

个人最喜欢的还是90年代的香港武侠电影，非常有风骨有内容的电影题材，虽然也很夸张。
你看了《叶问》没有？这电影得到颇多好评。