120 Chapter Long Dream... - “A Dream of Red Mansions"
::brushes off the dust::
Hey! A livejournal! Who left this here...?
...
...
...
Oh... I did... ^_^;
Ahem! Not much of a return I guess. This would be about the point that I present the next fifty volumes of Erk's Adventures, or my opinions on the whole series of Dragon Ball Z beginning to end or some such, but in truth, I don't have much to say for my absence. Except that it might have been for the better. I don't know if I have what you might call 'loyal readers' but not sure they would have liked to have been subject to what would have been day after day and page after page of rants about "Romance of the Three Kingdoms."
...So, Liu Bei's shoe size aside, I have been well, just not active. However, my quick (read: way to long) fling with "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and all affiliated craziness has led me into the process of going through the remaining three classics. Right now, I'm nearing the end of book one of "A Dream of Red Mansions." (Not that anyone may care, but after that, I plan to hop to "Journey to the West" and finish with "Water Margin." Mostly because it was "Water Margin" that I was interested in before I even knew what the three kingdoms were, and I don't expect as of now to be impressed with "Journey to the West" thanks to Dragon Ball, Saiyuki, and all the other interpretations of the 'beloved' Sun Wukong. ...So, this way I'll have something to look forward to at the end of JttW.)
Speaking of "A Dream of Red Mansions" it seems to be the only title not 'tweaked' for the Japanese language. It's quite interesting, really.
...Ahem!
Assuming my research was not wrong (never know...) the Chinese titles of the classics are: (thanks to my computer acting up, I can’t use my spiffy software to actually ‘write’ them...)
San Guo Yan Yi - Romance of the Three Kingdoms (not literally, but, you know...)
Shui Hu Zhuan - Water Margin (among several other titles: Men of the Marsh, All Men are Brothers )
Xi You Ji - Journey to the West (took a bit to find this one out, worse to figure it out in japanese.....)
Hong Lou Meng - A Dream of Red Mansions (or ‘chambers’, or ‘dreams’ plural)
Now, what’s interesting is having these in Japanese:
San Goku Shi - It’s RoTK alright, but interestingly enough, the Japanese write it the ‘exact’ same way as the name of the actual historical records of the time. I can only assume it could get pretty confusing. A Japanese fan of Koei’s game series commented on their site that they could not understand why the English title of the book had ‘romance’ in it when the Japanese one did not even have something close. ^^
Sui Ko Den - Water Margin, not to be confused with Konami’s game series...Well, kinda, actually. That had “Genso” in the original title, distinguishing it from other games actually based on Song Jiang and his bandits.
Sei Yuu Ki - ....Alright, I will grant that it can be also pronounced ‘Saiyuki’ (the popular anime/manga series) but they are absolutely not written the same. It unfortunately took me four hours to figure that out. I have bad memories of this title.
Kou Rou Mu -..........I was sooo disappointed. For the most part, I thought the other titles all sounded pretty nice in Japanese, but this?? Totally unmodified, written using the exact same characters as the Chinese title (mostly, the other titles don’t match up perfect) and it sounds like ‘column’ when you pronounce it out loud.
Speaking of which, all the other classics seem to be pretty popular among the general populace, have nice names in Japan, and clever video games made off them. But not Red Mansions...
...But, then again, Jia Baoyu has yet to, say, go off on any life threatening adventure or really do much more than compose some adequate calligraphy and toy with Daiyu’s feelings. Maybe someone should make it into a dating game! ^^
Ahem! That was a decent rant/post wasn’t it? It’s pretty rare for me to go and revive any kind of ‘journal’ after it falls into disuse. We’ll see how long it can keep up, eh?
Hey! A livejournal! Who left this here...?
...
...
...
Oh... I did... ^_^;
Ahem! Not much of a return I guess. This would be about the point that I present the next fifty volumes of Erk's Adventures, or my opinions on the whole series of Dragon Ball Z beginning to end or some such, but in truth, I don't have much to say for my absence. Except that it might have been for the better. I don't know if I have what you might call 'loyal readers' but not sure they would have liked to have been subject to what would have been day after day and page after page of rants about "Romance of the Three Kingdoms."
...So, Liu Bei's shoe size aside, I have been well, just not active. However, my quick (read: way to long) fling with "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and all affiliated craziness has led me into the process of going through the remaining three classics. Right now, I'm nearing the end of book one of "A Dream of Red Mansions." (Not that anyone may care, but after that, I plan to hop to "Journey to the West" and finish with "Water Margin." Mostly because it was "Water Margin" that I was interested in before I even knew what the three kingdoms were, and I don't expect as of now to be impressed with "Journey to the West" thanks to Dragon Ball, Saiyuki, and all the other interpretations of the 'beloved' Sun Wukong. ...So, this way I'll have something to look forward to at the end of JttW.)
Speaking of "A Dream of Red Mansions" it seems to be the only title not 'tweaked' for the Japanese language. It's quite interesting, really.
...Ahem!
Assuming my research was not wrong (never know...) the Chinese titles of the classics are: (thanks to my computer acting up, I can’t use my spiffy software to actually ‘write’ them...)
San Guo Yan Yi - Romance of the Three Kingdoms (not literally, but, you know...)
Shui Hu Zhuan - Water Margin (among several other titles: Men of the Marsh, All Men are Brothers )
Xi You Ji - Journey to the West (took a bit to find this one out, worse to figure it out in japanese.....)
Hong Lou Meng - A Dream of Red Mansions (or ‘chambers’, or ‘dreams’ plural)
Now, what’s interesting is having these in Japanese:
San Goku Shi - It’s RoTK alright, but interestingly enough, the Japanese write it the ‘exact’ same way as the name of the actual historical records of the time. I can only assume it could get pretty confusing. A Japanese fan of Koei’s game series commented on their site that they could not understand why the English title of the book had ‘romance’ in it when the Japanese one did not even have something close. ^^
Sui Ko Den - Water Margin, not to be confused with Konami’s game series...Well, kinda, actually. That had “Genso” in the original title, distinguishing it from other games actually based on Song Jiang and his bandits.
Sei Yuu Ki - ....Alright, I will grant that it can be also pronounced ‘Saiyuki’ (the popular anime/manga series) but they are absolutely not written the same. It unfortunately took me four hours to figure that out. I have bad memories of this title.
Kou Rou Mu -..........I was sooo disappointed. For the most part, I thought the other titles all sounded pretty nice in Japanese, but this?? Totally unmodified, written using the exact same characters as the Chinese title (mostly, the other titles don’t match up perfect) and it sounds like ‘column’ when you pronounce it out loud.
Speaking of which, all the other classics seem to be pretty popular among the general populace, have nice names in Japan, and clever video games made off them. But not Red Mansions...
...But, then again, Jia Baoyu has yet to, say, go off on any life threatening adventure or really do much more than compose some adequate calligraphy and toy with Daiyu’s feelings. Maybe someone should make it into a dating game! ^^
Ahem! That was a decent rant/post wasn’t it? It’s pretty rare for me to go and revive any kind of ‘journal’ after it falls into disuse. We’ll see how long it can keep up, eh?