When time-space goes wonky in wuxia...

[Ken Cheng]

When TVB makes up new scenes for their wuxia adaptations, they seem to sometimes forget where stuff is in China...or that the wuxia characters, for all their prowess, can't move at supersonic speeds (at least not for a sustained period of time). Consider these oddities from various 1980s TVB adaptations.

DGSD '81

1. Chung Ling and Ah Chi flee from the Liao Empire to get help in rescuing Kiu Fung, who has been taken prisoner by Emperor Yeh Lut Hung Gei. The girls first go down to Dali to recruit Deun Yu, then make a detour to Hsi-Hsia Kingdom to get Hui Juk.

Not that you can't make this journey, but it would take *months* for the round trip. I don't think that Kiu Fung was a prisoner for more than a few days at most.

LOCH '82

2. When Au Yeung Hak is molesting Ching Yiu Ga, Sheun But Yee decides to go back to the Chung Yeung Temple at Mt. Chung Nam to recruit her martial brother Yau Chui Gei to deal with Au Yeung Hak. The two Cheun Jen Sect Taoists then proceed to Mt. White Camel to confront Au Yeung Hak, only to learn that he wasn't the culprit (it was a plot by Wong Yung to get Luk Gwoon Ying and Ching Yiu Ga together). The Taoists then crash the wedding at Returning Clouds Manor in Gong Nam.

PROBLEM: it would take *months* to get from Gong Nam to Mt. Chung Nam to Mt. White Camel (in Turkestan) and then back to Gong Nam again. All these things, however, apparently happened in just one or two days!

ROCH '83

3. Mo 3 Tung and his two sons were nearing Passionless Valley, hoping to get the Passion Flower antidote for Yeung Gor. They came under assault by Passionless Valley guards and Gung Sheun Tze, and were overpowered and fled to Chung Yeung Temple, which, according to one of the Mo Brothers, was "nearby."

Um....Chung Yeung Temple was decidedly *not* close to Passionless Valley. Yeung Gor and Little Dragon Girl had just walked for days to get from the Ancient Tomb Compound (right near Chung Yeung Temple) to get to Passionless Valley.

These are things that TVB was probably hoping the audiences just wouldn't notice, but were the wuxia authors themselves ever this sloppy about the space/time that their characters had to travel between locales?

[smurf120]

My dad's favorite TVB rant is the wuxia people's ability to travel up and down mountains (ie. Kunlun, Wudang, ErMei, etc.) in the matter of seconds like they can ride an elevator. Also the poor messenger pigeons that need to fly from Gong Nam to Outer Mongolia.

But my personal favorite is the weekly Wuxia newsletter that goes out where all people from tiny towns hear all about the comings and goings and secret lives of the big heros - its better than the internet.

[mawguy]

maybe the cultivation of "hing goong" (levitational powers) somehow taps into universal wormholes...and all of a sudden, wuxia turns syfy. :P

[forgot password]

in my all-time favorite series CCTV's Xiao Ao Jiang Hu 2001, when lhc and co went up Mt Shaoshi to rescue RYY, it was still in springtime/summertime, well I'm not sure, but they were wearing thin clothes and weren't exhaling puffs of white air, there was even sunlight, but after saving her, when they'd descended to a lower place on the mountain, suddenly everywhere around them was snow?!