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Thread: Explaining Wuxia Fiction to Americans/Europeans

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    Default Explaining Wuxia Fiction to Americans/Europeans

    If you wanted to introduce Wuxia to an American/European friend, how would you explain it to him/her? Wuxia seems to be quite different from the normal American fantasy book, and it could be quite difficult to explain it to someone of a different culture, such as Americans/Europeans.

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    Senior Member Da Bao's Avatar
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    That is extremely hard... I've tried. I told my friends about RoCH, but they kept getting confused about the names... So in the end I had to make them a list of the characters and their roles. I even showed some American friends the reading rooms and they tried to read the novel. It was mostly the names that confused them. They ended up replacing the names like "OK... That Yang Guo guy is... Person #1 or Sam". I even told the kids in my homeroom class and they were interested and like the novel.

    Althought they like the novel, I find that the only other people I discuss the book or movie with are my Chinese or Vietnamese friends.
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    Senior Member PJ's Avatar
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    maybe start with some good wuxia movies or TV series.
    忽见柳荫下两个小孩子在哀哀痛哭,瞧模样正是武敦儒、武修文兄弟。郭芙大声叫道:「喂,你们在干甚麽?」武 修文回头见是郭芙,哭道:「我们在哭,你不见麽?」

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    Well, I guess one could just replace the names with something more American... a simple find & replace function would work well. Its not like the Americans would understand the meaning of the names anyway, so it wouldn't be that bad.

    I think the main difficulty is the culture difference... there are many concepts in Wuxia that are just totally strange and unusual to Americans. For example, they think that their magical fantasy, like LOTR, Harry Potter, Spiderman, etc, are perfectly understandable, yet when it comes to Wuxia and internal energy (especially Qing Gong), they seem to find it very unrealistic and hard to understand. There are also many times where Americans will not be able to understand our way of literature and what we think is nice, creative, beautiful, etc. For example, I mentioned Peach Blossom Island to some people, and they are like, "That's a gay name", or like, "What kind of weird name is that?" Whereas in Chinese, it sounds very nice.

    I guess we will never be able to have Americans understand our culture...


    PJ: A good TV series sounds like a good idea. However, I don't know if they would like to spend their time watching a long TV series by only reading the subtitles. I have never done anything like that myself, but I can imagine it would be rather boring if you can never understand the conversations.

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    Maybe we can have wuxia TV series with spoken english.
    Last edited by Extremer88; 03-24-06 at 03:29 AM.
    ..ext88

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    Senior Member danshu_'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Swordwiz

    I guess we will never be able to have Americans understand our culture...
    Thats bull, there are tons of n.americans interested in that stuff, otherwise there wouldnt be 100s of 1000s of kungfu schools everywhere.

    People would generally become big wuxia movie fans(like old SB wuxia, of which there are many more fans in n.america than china), then move into novels & tv series. you cant get somebody to read/watch wuxia unless they themselves love it and really want to, whether they're american or chinese or whatever. you cant force it, people have to get into that kind of thing themselves. lots of chinese hate wuxia & think qinggong is bullshit, we just had a thread on this. & look at the popularity of a wuxia movie like CTHD around the world. I say people from all over love wuxia!

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    For American people it might be easier for them to use English dubbed movies... but ENGLISH DUB SUCK!!! I once had this English movie, and all these peopel had Brittish accents this one women (I believe the character was Cheny Ying) has a MEXICAN ACCENT!! That's stupid!! It sounded horribly and it was just... just... YUCK!!

    And for the Americans thinking the names are "gay"... Some of the people in my school think that too. I just want to smack them, the name translated into English may sound horribly to them, but it's actually very fitting.
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    Danshu: Yes, there are many Kung Fu schools in America. However, rarely do you find an American that can understand the literature (and some exaggerated martial arts) part of Wuxia.

    Da Bao: I have always hated dubbed movies, the voice actors can never seem to do a good enough job to leave a good impression on me. I have watched many Chinese dubbed Korean TV series that I feel would have been better if it was just Korean with Chinese subtitles.

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    Senior Member danshu_'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Swordwiz
    Danshu: Yes, there are many Kung Fu schools in America. However, rarely do you find an American that can understand the literature (and some exaggerated martial arts) part of Wuxia.
    literature, you're right, its rare, but thats cause its not available in english, 'cept from this forum (even chinese tend to just watch the series though)

    as for wuxia movies and exaggerated martial arts, i disagree; i think there are tons, thousands upon thousands of fans in north america and europe

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    Moderator Ken Cheng's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Swordwiz
    I think the main difficulty is the culture difference... there are many concepts in Wuxia that are just totally strange and unusual to Americans. For example, they think that their magical fantasy, like LOTR, Harry Potter, Spiderman, etc, are perfectly understandable, yet when it comes to Wuxia and internal energy (especially Qing Gong)
    A large part of that is because such Western fiction as LOTR, POTTER, SPIDER-MAN, etc., are implicitly agreed to be completely fictional. They are not reality, but none of them suggest that they could be. In wuxia, however, there's almost an implicit suggestion that it all *could* be real (a suggestion reinforced by the setting of most wuxia stories in specific historical contexts). That sets off red flags of skepticism for many people.

    The ideas in wuxia aren't completely alien to Westerners, although they don't all fall under the same roof the way they do in wuxia. The chivalric code akin to wuxia code is evident in all medieval knight stories, and the inner power stuff was Westernized as "the Force" in STAR WARS. In some ways, the distinction between inner power and the Force is more nominal than substantial. The two are very similar in significant ways.

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    TommyH
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    Harry Potter, Spiderman, Lord of the Ring, Eragon, etc. are all part of the American and European way of wuxia. I doubt they'd ever understand wuxia like we do

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    Senior Member SolidSnake's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Cheng
    That sets off red flags of skepticism for many people.
    This assessment irregularly applied to me. I can read LOTR and Iliad but when I read books like Harry Potter I can not get past chapter 2. The bs is just too much to endure.
    Skepticism is one thing, another thing is 'the way the author tells the story'. I guess some authors were just really good at convincing when telling fictions.

    (Although I don't think LOTR, etc were really comparable to 20th century wuxia novels. I think they were more comparable to Journey to the West, etc)
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    This reminds me of the time when my Chinese teacher was showing the class Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the students were 90% Hispanic. They kept on laughing with all the flying and standing on leaves and the hairstyles! My teacher kept telling them "Oh, this is Chinese kung-fu." And then all the students would be saying, "This is so fake..yadayada." I put my head down the whole time because the flying was just getting ridiculous. I felt like smacking them for being so close-minded, but then I hated the movie anyway. I wish I could show them some real (by real, I mean JY or GL adaptations) with the hand-to-hand combat and better looking hairstyles.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yuet Thi View Post
    "Oh, this is Chinese kung-fu." And then all the students would be saying, "This is so fake..yadayada."
    Well, if I were around, I would comment "Not as fake as magic in Harry Potter or superpowers in DC and Marvels comics."
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    Unless you are talking to a sinophile, it tends to be pretty difficult.
    I've given up.
    别想把黑暗放在我的面前
    太阳已经生长在我心底
    不再有封闭的畏惧
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    As Chinese person born and bred in the USA, my first foray into wuxia was definitely tv shows and movies. It also helped that I learned Cantonese watching TVB. If not for the tv shows I would never be able to understand any of the English translations of the stories. Case in point is my current reading of Legend of Longsword Master and A Step Into the Past - at least I watch the TVB rewritten ASTP so I could grasp the existing characters, I get completely confused with the new characters and have to constantly reread. With Longsword, it is completely new to me - so very difficult to keep all the characters straight.

    I believe there is interest, just the building up of interest might not start from reading the translation. Accupoints and relationship to the body from JY's canon is pretty hard to understand. Watching someone get hit near the armpit and freeze for hours is quite entertaining.

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    I am not Asian, nor do I speak a single word of Chinese.. In fact, in real life I have never met a single person who even understands the meaning of word "wuxia", let alone know anything about it. I was exposed to wuxia when I first watched the LOCH 83 adaptation which was broadcasted in my country in native language .. I just fell in love with the series (it still remains my favorite adaptation of all time till this date), but I didn't know that it was based on the book.. Then I moved to USA and got exposed to sites such as youtube. I started googling for martial films and shows and one day I came across the page of LOCH in wikipedia.. That's when I realized that it was based on book by Jin Yong. Through google I also was able to reach spcnet.. That's when I also came to know the meaning of word "wuxia".. After then, what can I say? My madness just sky rocked !! I started reading discussions (although I never really bothered to participate) and available translations.. Even after all these years, my passion for wuxia hasn't gone down.. People around me don't understand this madness though.. When I read any wuxia story or watch martial art films, I have been asked several times by my friends, "Don't you have anything better to do?"

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    Junior Member Lie Ming's Avatar
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    americans? brits? hispanic? westerners?
    they tend to laugh at wuxia.
    they always compare it to MMA
    they also tend to mock how pansy pussies wired CGI faked the characters from wuxia are, not manly or real bloody enough like those MMA fighters.

    *as if their fiction movies not pansy pussies wired CGIed enough*

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