Edmund Lau: The Return of a Wuxia Master (thread renamed by Ken Cheng)

[Edmund Lau]

Hi Ken,

This is Edmund. Remember me? It's been years since I last posted anything. Oh, I miss those good old days at the Yushy Forum! Anyway, I was looking at your Annual Robotech/Condor Heroes thread and that brought back memories - I used to do Star Wars/ROCH, remember?

On the wuxia side of things, I've been catching up reading the 3rd edition JY novels and also rereading some Gu Long, Wen Rui-An, Huang Yi and Liang Yusheng stuff. Also watching the new CCTV JY adaptations. BTW, I seem to see your name everywhere these days - even at Taisheng VCD/DVD!

~ Edmund Lau

[GuGu]

Shouldn't this be PM'd?

[Edmund Lau]

I agree - it should've been a Private Message but I was really announcing my great "come-back" (for those who knew me previously), so it's more appropriate to do it on the main wuxia forum. Haha!

~ Edmund Lau

[PJ]

Hi there, I have heard of your name as one of the leading experts of Jin Yong fiction. I hope that you will find the time to participate in some of the discussions here. The forum can certainly benefit from your expertise, and I'm sure that I have much to learn from you.

-From a relative newbie

p.s. please do not follow Lanny's footsteps. He posted exactly 2 messages here before disappearing again for good.

[Edmund Lau]

Hi PJ,

Interesting that anyone consider me any kind of expert at all. I did come up with the Jin Yong Fanfic Site (that hasn't seen any updates in years!) and that's probably my sole contribution to the great cause that is wuxia fiction!

I knew Lanny years ago. He was at the Yushy Forum a lot circa 1998-2000. I was rather inactive by then already. Anyway, good to know you PJ.

~ Edmund Lau

[Suet Seung]

Welcome Edmund.

Apparently, PJ wants you married off to this forum and stay here till death do everyone part. Ha-ha

I'm not surprised you and Ken are friends because you both like to use your real name (I assume) as a username.

JY expert eh? Hopefully you can provide useful information to disprove some of those delusional *ahem* fans who think Huang Rong is on the same level of beauty as XLN.

[Edmund Lau]

Hi Suet Seung,

Thanks for the kind words. I do intend to stay on here - or else I wouldn't have started posting again. And yes, I am using my real name. Ken and I are also huge comic fans - and we post on other comic-related forums as well.

Again, not JY-expert. I read the books and watch the series just like everyone.

As for HR being as beautiful as XLN, that's really unlikely. My opinion:

From a purely literary point of view, JY was creating XLN as an ethereal beauty. Her beauty is more than just external or skin-deep. She was literally out-of-this-world. She literally lives apart from the world, not defiled in any way by human passions (thus, her ethereal youthfulness) or pain (hence, her detached innocence). She was as close to a fairy or some celestial being as you can possibly imagine. Note that we know absolutely nothing about her parentage or genealogy - almost like she was "immaculately conceived" even. It was only after falling in love with YG and more specifically after her rape that she started to understand pain and passion. Even so, there was always this "inhuman" aspect to her character/personality. To judge her actions based on "normal" human values/behaviour is unfair to her - hence her sometimes irrational choices; like leaving YG again and again or even the "16 years" message. She is idealized beauty - and thus a little "unreal".

HR, on the other hand, started with a little of that. But if XLN was an angel/fairy then HR was probably a demon/succubus (note how many people called her "yao nu" earlier on). She inherited a lot of her father's unorthodox/unconventional ("xie") ways. Her beauty was also somewhat of the mesmerising sort - thus GJ's teachers was angry thinking that he'd been seduced by this "yao nu". There is always an edge to her - even her intelligence/crafiness suggest something "serpentine" (the serpent being the craftiest of all the beasts of the field) about her. Note the way she deceived Mu Nianci. Even Wu Santong, after being tricked by HR, kept muttering to himself in ROCH that Jiangnan's people are not to be trusted (of course, he was prejudiced towards Lu Zhanyuan as well).

However, HR's character evolved over the course of LOCH-ROCH - primarily having to do with her marrying the strong-principled GJ and later becoming a mother. She was largely "humanized" in ROCH and lost a lot of her original "yao" flavour in LOCH. The only times her "yao" flavour really manifested in ROCH was the way she pretended to attack baby Guo Xiang in order to snatch her from Li Mochou (who, ironically, was very protective of the baby) and also when she feigned madness to trick Qiu Qianche (everyone around her was terrified looking at her "madness", almost like she was possessed). But even in those two instances, it was really her "motherly" nature manifesting itself to protect the young.

HR is not idealized beauty like XLN. She is more idealized womanhood and her growth/evolution is more interesting than XLN.

Hope the above helped.

~ Edmund Lau

[Ken Cheng]

Edmund,

First of all, WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!

Second, we've all missed you.

Third, it's great to have you back. I hope you plan to stay permanently. Goodness knows that we need more experts around since Athena and Laviathan aren't regulars anymore.

[Edmund Lau]

Hi Ken,

Haha! Good to talk to you again. As for where the HELL I've been (take your pick):

1) I was up in the mountain peaks perfecting my sword-skills. DGQB was there too. We sang Russian folk songs and watched the setting sun together every evening.
2) I signed up to join the Taliban but they rejected me due to my "weight" problem. Said I belonged to the bunch of "overweight" comic geeks rather than the Holy Jihad!
3) I was trapped in an alternate dimension. Hal Jordan rescued me after his "Rebirth".

Honestly, I was busy with a lot of things over the years (family, business, church, etc.) so much that posting in wuxia forums didn't seem to be the thing like it used to. Secondly, many people I used to know at the Yushy forums were no longer around as well (except you and Moin, of course).

Anyway, it's good to be back - planning to make new friends and to catch up with old ones. But everyone is saying I'm some "expert" or this-and-that. Makes me feel like a "qin-pui" - OLD, I mean! Hey, c'mon - don't they know that you're actually a year or two older than I am?

Later,
~ Edmund Lau

[Suet Seung]

A year or two older than you?

Geez, who else is in their early to mid-thirties here? I'm barely touching my mid-twenties.

[Ken Cheng]

Hi Ken,

Haha! Good to talk to you again. As for where the HELL I've been (take your pick):

1) I was up in the mountain peaks perfecting my sword-skills. DGQB was there too. We sang Russian folk songs and watched the setting sun together every evening.
2) I signed up to join the Taliban but they rejected me due to my "weight" problem. Said I belonged to the bunch of "overweight" comic geeks rather than the Holy Jihad!
3) I was trapped in an alternate dimension. Hal Jordan rescued me after his "Rebirth".

Honestly, I was busy with a lot of things over the years (family, business, church, etc.) so much that posting in wuxia forums didn't seem to be the thing like it used to. Secondly, many people I used to know at the Yushy forums were no longer around as well (except you and Moin, of course).

Anyway, it's good to be back - planning to make new friends and to catch up with old ones. But everyone is saying I'm some "expert" or this-and-that. Makes me feel like a "qin-pui" - OLD, I mean! Hey, c'mon - don't they know that you're actually a year or two older than I am?

Later,
~ Edmund Lau

Yeah, I'm Old Man River here. Old as dirt...but you still outveteran me in the Wuxia Forums posting area. I started in '99; I think you started at least two years prior to that.

As for where the HELL have you been, I'm guessing you were trapped in a parallel universe with Alexander Luthor and Superboy Prime, and returned because you saw what an infinite crisis we were experiencing in the Gwok Jing vs. Yeung Gor debate.

Seriously, your return is like Kal-L (the Golden Age Superman of Earth-Two) returning.

You mentioned that you've seen my name everywhere recently. That's the second time in twenty four hours that I've been told that I've become something of a small-time celebrity in Internet wuxia fandom circles (I've even been "interviewed" by Taiseng without my knowledge, apparently). The hilarious thing is that it's all news to me.

Oh, I've taken the liberty of renaming this thread into something more appropriate.

[Yeung Gor]

Since Moinllieon name came up, this is the perfect time for me to say, of all the years I been here, I have never seen him post. I mean I know he posts but for some odd reason I have never come across his postings so for a long time I thought that Moinllieon was an inactive account or Ken's second nick or something. haha

[Edmund Lau]

No Ken, you were actually at Yushy's even before me. I remember you criticizing my first post on LOCH for being too wordy! Haha!

No, not Kal-L - more like Kal-El (present Earth) but "One Year Later" because I was de-powered after the "infinite" barrage of "versus" threads.

~ Edmund Lau

[Suet Seung]

Since Moinllieon name came up, this is the perfect time for me to say, of all the years I been here, I have never seen him post. I mean I know he posts but for some odd reason I have never come across his postings so for a long time I thought that Moinllieon was an inactive account or Ken's second nick or something. haha

Mr. Moin is just special. He likes to come ( appear) and go ( disappear) "undetected" like a "black-cladded person in the night". He appears mostly in the Sports forum and appears occasionally in OD and WF.

[Edmund Lau]

I haven't talked to Moin in ages. Is he still involved in translation work?

~ Edmund Lau

[Ken Cheng]

Since Moinllieon name came up, this is the perfect time for me to say, of all the years I been here, I have never seen him post. I mean I know he posts but for some odd reason I have never come across his postings so for a long time I thought that Moinllieon was an inactive account or Ken's second nick or something. haha

Before your time here, Moinllieon was once a very active Wuxia Forums poster who could be found in the thick of discussions with Edmund, me, and several others (including the legendary Mindy). Alas, these are legends of yesteryear...

[Ken Cheng]

I haven't talked to Moin in ages. Is he still involved in translation work?

~ Edmund Lau

Not so much recently. He's still around, but never at the Wuxia Forums. You'll find him in the Sports and Open Debate forums.

Other things:

1. TristeCouer (I don't know if he was around when you were a regular) is now Candide and thinks he's a lesbian (don't ask).

2. Jason is no longer around (he and I have had some disagreements in recent years).

3. Mindy disappeared in 2001. Jason and I think she might be dead (the circumstances of her disappearance from wuxia discussion led to that unfortunate, but unconfirmed conclusion).

4. The Yushy Forum where we all first met crashed about a month ago and has not returned. I believe it's really, truly dead now (it hadn't been updated in years). In the final few months of its existence, I fought a losing war against bot SPAMmers there.

5. I'm currently the moderator of this SPCNET Wuxia Forum, and also serve as Super Moderator with overall oversight duties for SPCNET Forums.

6. I'm currently deeply embroiled in a holy crusade to get TVBI to release HSDS '86 on DVD in North America like they promised they would three weeks ago.

7. I'm posting in piecemeal excerpts a GUNDAM fanfiction that I wrote years ago (click on the link in my signature to read what I've posted so far).

8. Still single. Probably stay that way indefinitely.

9. Still haven't read the translations yet; vowed to start after LOCH, ROCH, and HSDS are *all* complete.

10. The Gwok Jing vs. Yeung Gor debate still isn't over - probably won't ever be.

[Ken Cheng]

No Ken, you were actually at Yushy's even before me. I remember you criticizing my first post on LOCH for being too wordy! Haha!

I did? I don't remember. I guess even back then, I was rough on the newbies.

No, not Kal-L - more like Kal-El (present Earth) but "One Year Later" because I was de-powered after the "infinite" barrage of "versus" threads.

~ Edmund Lau

I compared you to Kal-L because your return is like the return of a legendary, time-lost hero who was once the greatest of them all, but who had been forgotten with the passage of time...only to now return to save the universe in its darkest hour.

[Huang Rong]

Welcome Edmund.
JY expert eh? Hopefully you can provide useful information to disprove some of those delusional *ahem* fans who think Huang Rong is on the same level of beauty as XLN.

LoL, it seems that you're alluding to me, Sis?
I have no doubt that Edmund Lau is 10 or even 100 times more expert than me in terms of wuxia fiction *in general*. But his arguments in the *"HR - XLN" matter* don't convince me. You can believe it or not, in spite of lacking Chinese reading skill, I managed to find all the desciptive passages about HR, Yilin, Yue Lingshan, Ren Yingying n XLN's beauty in the 3 novels: Xiao Ao Jiang Hu, LOCH and ROCH. And they all *logically* lead to the most probable conclusion that: HR = XLN in terms of LOOKS!

[Ken Cheng]

One more thing: a few of the regulars (including Candide, who is the mastermind of the project) here have started a website called Wuxiamania/Wuxiapedia. It's still in development, but quite awesome so far. You should check it out.