Xiao Au Jiang hu 2001

[sniffles]

she did say that she would castrate him if he didnt agree! i distinctly remember her saying that she would make him a eunuch if he didnt marry yilin. she gave him 2 options, either become a monk and marry yilin, or become a eunuch. lol. but i like that part of that episode! it was cute how he was tied up with yingying and they talked and everything

i think i only really liked liyapeng in this series, and it probably had something to do with the long hair. so i like it that he didnt shave anything, haha

In the book the castration threat is much more, well, threatening. She takes his clothes off and has a knife ready. He's also hanging from a rafter instead of sitting on the floor, then she dumps him on a table.

There's also a really cute scene after she brings in Yingying where they both look at each other and communicate by winking because she's rendered both of them mute. But that would have been really difficult to do for the tv show, not to mention looking a bit silly.

[ChineseChik525]

In the book the castration threat is much more, well, threatening. She takes his clothes off and has a knife ready. He's also hanging from a rafter instead of sitting on the floor, then she dumps him on a table.

There's also a really cute scene after she brings in Yingying where they both look at each other and communicate by winking because she's rendered both of them mute. But that would have been really difficult to do for the tv show, not to mention looking a bit silly.

whoa really? HAHA yeah, that would be kinda hard to show on film

[jiang bao]

I am about 7,8 yrs late to the party, but I am finally watching the series on dvd.

I don't like how they are sticking YY in almost every scene. Tian Bo Guang is miscast. Mr. Sun was good as H7G, but he has absolutely no screen presence as TBG. Zuo Leng Chan also has a belly (??)

Other than that, still miles ahead of that awful version with Dicky Ren.

[sniffles]

I am about 7,8 yrs late to the party, but I am finally watching the series on dvd.

I don't like how they are sticking YY in almost every scene. Tian Bo Guang is miscast. Mr. Sun was good as H7G, but he has absolutely no screen presence as TBG. Zuo Leng Chan also has a belly (??)

Other than that, still miles ahead of that awful version with Dicky Ren.

Actually, I like Sun Hai Ying as Tian Boguang. He's not very handsome, I'll admit, but he plays lecherous really well.

Yesterday I started watching Tian Long Ba Bu / DGSD 2003 and realized that one of the Four Evils was voiced by the same person who voiced Linghu Chong for this series. At one point I was really convinced that Li Ya Peng did his own voice in XAJH, but I've been proved wrong.

[sunnysnow]

Yesterday I started watching Tian Long Ba Bu / DGSD 2003 and realized that one of the Four Evils was voiced by the same person who voiced Linghu Chong for this series. At one point I was really convinced that Li Ya Peng did his own voice in XAJH, but I've been proved wrong.

He did his own voice in LOCH'03 though which turned out to be disastrous!

[Wanlie Tong]

I am about 7,8 yrs late to the party, but I am finally watching the series on dvd.

I don't like how they are sticking YY in almost every scene. Tian Bo Guang is miscast. Mr. Sun was good as H7G, but he has absolutely no screen presence as TBG. Zuo Leng Chan also has a belly (??)

Other than that, still miles ahead of that awful version with Dicky Ren.

When I watched this series I aanoyed my daughters by complaining about the changes from the book that were made. Introducing RYY too early and too often was one of my cheif complaints. Those compliants aside, I think it is the best series I have seen. I thought the cast was uniformily quite good especially Xu Qing.

[sniffles]

He did his own voice in LOCH'03 though which turned out to be disastrous!

I don't agree. Someone else could have dubbed him and done the same thing that everyone apparently finds so annoying. But mainly I hate that actors don't dub themselves all the time. I want to hear their real voices!

When I watched this series I aanoyed my daughters by complaining about the changes from the book that were made. Introducing RYY too early and too often was one of my cheif complaints. Those compliants aside, I think it is the best series I have seen. I thought the cast was uniformily quite good especially Xu Qing.

I can sort of understand why they brought her in earlier, though. If they'd followed the book Yingying wouldn't have appeared until a third of the way through the series.

[ChineseChik525]

Actually, I like Sun Hai Ying as Tian Boguang. He's not very handsome, I'll admit, but he plays lecherous really well.

Yesterday I started watching Tian Long Ba Bu / DGSD 2003 and realized that one of the Four Evils was voiced by the same person who voiced Linghu Chong for this series. At one point I was really convinced that Li Ya Peng did his own voice in XAJH, but I've been proved wrong.

i like him too! i agree - he plays "lecherous" very well

oh really? i dont remember that, haha. i really liked his voice in this series! haha. yeah his real voice is kinda... lol

He did his own voice in LOCH'03 though which turned out to be disastrous!

i agree.

[sniffles]

oh really? i dont remember that, haha. i really liked his voice in this series! haha. yeah his real voice is kinda... lol

I like his real voice. I like deep voices. And I guess I'll just never understand why everyone dislikes the way he played Guo Jing so much. I worked for several years caring for mentally retarded people and the way he talks as GJ doesn't seem "retarded" to me at all. But I'm not Chinese, and I'm originally from Texas where people talk even slower than other Americans, so people talking slowly seems normal to me.

[Wanlie Tong]

I can sort of understand why they brought her in earlier, though. If they'd followed the book Yingying wouldn't have appeared until a third of the way through the series.

I can understand why but I still didn't like it.

[sniffles]

I can understand why but I still didn't like it.

I sort of wish they had made her more bashful and easily embarrassed like the book version of Yingying, but I guess they wanted to appeal more to modern audiences who wouldn't understand all the restrictions about men and women touching.

[Suet Seung]

I sort of wish they had made her more bashful and easily embarrassed like the book version of Yingying, but I guess they wanted to appeal more to modern audiences who wouldn't understand all the restrictions about men and women touching.

In TVB's 1996 adaptation of the novel, Ying Ying and LHC fell down a cliff because neither of them wanted to take the pill that the shaolin monk gave them. But YY wanted LHC to take the pill; however, he threatened to jump off this cliff, if she wouldn't take the pill. So eventually LHC lost his balance and was falling and she tried to catch him, but they both fell and was caught on a tree branch before falling into a waterfall.

He saw her reflection (as she fell ontop of him) in the water and saw that she really wasn't a popo (an old lady) but a young lady, who is younger than him. She or he said something about if he calls her popo, she'd call him gong gong. They cleared up the misunderstanding of why that old man called her gugu.

In this version she looked shyly downwards now that LHC could see her face without the veiled hat or veiling of the curtains. So they were sitting by the waterfall, he suddenly kissed her on the cheek and her hand clenched her robes (clothes) and she slapped him. But yeah, you can see she was quite shy in this scene.

I'm telling you Sniffles, if you want to see an adaptation of XAJH that is much closer to the novel, you'd try this version out.

For me, I've watched many versions of the same JY novels because I love the stories so much.

[Ghaleon]

[Suet Seung]

Now, now Ganryu...we mustn't inconspiciously advertise the series on the Mainland version's thread.

[Ghaleon]

Now, now Ganryu...we mustn't inconspiciously advertise the series on the Mainland version's thread.

fine fine.

[sniffles]

In TVB's 1996 adaptation of the novel, Ying Ying and LHC fell down a cliff because neither of them wanted to take the pill that the shaolin monk gave them. But YY wanted LHC to take the pill; however, he threatened to jump off this cliff, if she wouldn't take the pill. So eventually LHC lost his balance and was falling and she tried to catch him, but they both fell and was caught on a tree branch before falling into a waterfall.

He saw her reflection (as she fell ontop of him) in the water and saw that she really wasn't a popo (an old lady) but a young lady, who is younger than him. She or he said something about if he calls her popo, she'd call him gong gong. They cleared up the misunderstanding of why that old man called her gugu.

In this version she looked shyly downwards now that LHC could see her face without the veiled hat or veiling of the curtains. So they were sitting by the waterfall, he suddenly kissed her on the cheek and her hand clenched her robes (clothes) and she slapped him. But yeah, you can see she was quite shy in this scene.

I'm telling you Sniffles, if you want to see an adaptation of XAJH that is much closer to the novel, you'd try this version out.

For me, I've watched many versions of the same JY novels because I love the stories so much.

That is definitely much closer to the book. But I like the way they handled it in the 2001 version. They substituted a restaurant with stairs for the slope, so LHC first has to climb up the stairs when he's trying to persuade her to take the pill, and then after he realizes she's Shen Gu he falls down the stairs.

I thought it was clever how they reworked what was in the book to suit the new setting. Plus I liked it when they were talking to each other on opposite sides of a closed door, and the camera moved up in a crane shot so you could see both actors on either side of the set wall instead of cutting back and forth between them.

I should check out the other version, too, though. I like seeing other adaptations too.

[Suet Seung]

That is definitely much closer to the book. But I like the way they handled it in the 2001 version. They substituted a restaurant with stairs for the slope, so LHC first has to climb up the stairs when he's trying to persuade her to take the pill, and then after he realizes she's Shen Gu he falls down the stairs.

I thought it was clever how they reworked what was in the book to suit the new setting. Plus I liked it when they were talking to each other on opposite sides of a closed door, and the camera moved up in a crane shot so you could see both actors on either side of the set wall instead of cutting back and forth between them.

I should check out the other version, too, though. I like seeing other adaptations too.

I guess that's the benefit in watching different versions/adaptations because we get to see the director/script or screenwriter's way of portraying the novel and the certain scenes. And there's always the acting that captures you.

[sunnysnow]

I don't agree. Someone else could have dubbed him and done the same thing that everyone apparently finds so annoying. But mainly I hate that actors don't dub themselves all the time. I want to hear their real voices!

I actually prefer the voices of professional dubbers (with the exception of a few) to the actors themselves because many actors who dub their own voice actually sound really out-of-place, awkward, exaggerated or inarticulate. Take the case of Huang Xiaoming vs Liu Yifei in ROCH'06. The former did his own voicing and made YG sound really exaggerated to the point of lunacy. Liu Yifei on the other hand, had an extremely professional dubber for XLN which greatly enhanced the overall portrayal of the character. Had XLN been dubbed by LYF herself or a less professional dubber, her XLN wouldn't have come across as that cool, refined and polished.

I think the worse cases in memory would have to be Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers" and Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" where all the leads actually dubbed their own voices for their characters. Non-standardized accents, poor pronunciation, too-modern-sounding voices etc totally killed the portrayals of the characters despite the good acting.

I really enjoyed Li Yapeng's portrayal of LHC but I just didn't like his portrayal of GJ, which i found really exaggerated (something like HXM's YG) and the bad dubbing made it worse. Even though I didn't like Zhou Xun's husky voice (which I find extremely weird-sounding for a character like HR), her brilliant acting sort of made up for it and I gradually got used to her voice as the series progressed though if possible I would still prefer a cuter and more cheeky-sounding voice for her character. The voices of GJ and HR in LOCH'03 really contribute alot to the overall portrayals of both characters because I watched a couple of episodes of the Japanese-dubbed version and I was amazed at how huge a difference both characters seemed (compared to the original chinese version) after they had their voices dubbed professionally. GJ was actually alot more tolearble in the Japanese-dubbed version.

[sniffles]

I guess it's just a difference in what I'm accustomed to. I'd never heard of such a thing as actors regularly having their voices dubbed by someone else until I started watching all these Chinese tv shows. In the US and UK, typically actors always dub themselves, so they are professional voice actors as well as professional screen actors. Initially I thought the only reason Chinese actors were dubbed was because they didn't speak the same language as everyone else in the cast. It took me a while to understand that that's just how it's usually done, especially in wuxia drama.

It disturbs me because I'm used to thinking of acting as the whole picture - the body language and facial expressions combined with the voice. Now it makes me wonder if I like an actor for the appearance or for the voice. I don't know how to separate the two. And it's annoying when I watch a different show and the same actor has a completely different voice.

At least all the voice acting on XAJH was well done. Sometimes I've seen shows where the voices chosen just didn't match the actor or character somehow. I can't believe that voice is coming out of that person. I like the voice acting for Linghu Chong in this series, but when I watched some of Tian Xia Di Yi the voice they chose for Li Yapeng's character just sounded wrong. It did suit the character, but it didn't suit the actor. Maybe I wouldn't have minded so much if had seen that series before I saw LOCH '03 and a couple of other shows where he did his own voice acting.

[Hoju!]

I agree with sniffles. I think of acting as encompassing not only the body language, gestures, etc but also how the lines are delivered at the time the scene is filmed. The voice acting portion is actually a very important piece to the total package. For example, many people have praised Carmen Lee in ROCH 95, but every time I see praises for her acting, I'm always tempted to ask if that person watched it in the original language (Cantonese, not redubbed after filming). Out of the well-known XLN portrayals, I liked Carmen Lee's acting the least. I know she was trying to sound cold and emotionless but her voice to me came across as... well, dull and listless. However, I happened to watch some ROCH95 clips in mandarin on Youtube, and it surprised me how the professional dubbing suddenly seemed to make her portrayal so much better.


Now, back on topic. I've been rewatching this, and I'm even more impressed than my first watch of it. The sword work is fabulous. While I like the action sequences and want them realistic so they are not distracting, I usually do not gravitate towards them, but I've found myself rewinding and watching some action sequences over again because I'm impressed with the choreography.

There's also something about the filming style in this that feels more "raw" than the more recent ZJZ productions. It adds to that "gritty" atmosphere that I think wulin should have.

(Lastly, I just wanted to throw in my agreement with the XAJH96 recommendation. As much as I really do think XAJH01 is a great adaptation, to me, XAJH96 does the best job capturing the spirit of the novel. Jacky Lui may not be handsome, but his portrayal of LHC is awesome.)