Great political debates of wuxia

[Ken Cheng]

Stripped to its essence, wuxia is about extraordinary feats of the fist, palm, kicking leg, and sword, but some of wuxia's most memorable moments involved no physical combat, opting instead for ideological and verbal sparring, particularly on the subject of who should wield power. Some of the most memorable engagements of this kind:

1). Jin Yong, LOCH: the debate between Gwok Jing and Genghis Khan at the end of the story about the terrible human cost of the Khan's glorious conquests.

2). Jin Yong, ROCH: a sort of continuation of the previous debate, this time between Gwok Jing and Genghis Khan's grandson, Prince Kublai, on the same subject.

3). Jin Yong, DOMD: a raucous argument between Wai Siu Bo and the One-Armed Nun (the former Princess Chang Ping of the Ming Dynasty) on how Qing Emperor K'ang Hsi, though a Manchurian foreigner, was a far more benevolent and virtuous ruler than any of the Ming emperors had ever been. Confronted by this point, the former princess was left speechless, realizing that it was true.

4). Gu Long, LUK SIU FUNG: the verbal duel between Yip Goo Sing and the unnamed emperor, which clearly determined who was better qualified to rule.

[Doc Kwok]

3). Jin Yong, DOMD: a raucous argument between Wai Siu Bo and the One-Armed Nun (the former Princess Chang Ping of the Ming Dynasty) on how Qing Emperor K'ang Hsi, though a Manchurian foreigner, was a far more benevolent and virtuous ruler than any of the Ming emperors had ever been. Confronted by this point, the former princess was left speechless, realizing that it was true.

Did not happen in the novel. The relationship between the nun and WXB (and Ah Ke for that matter) was far less rocky than portrayed in DOMD '84.

[Ken Cheng]

Did not happen in the novel. She realised that Kangxi was a benevolent emperor and that the Ming dynasty was gone forever of her own accord, during her last appearance in the novel.

It was a missed opportunity for Jin Yong that he might have wished he'd included if he'd viewed this scene from the 1984 adaptation. Wai Siu Bo quite pointedly listed the major sins of the various Ming rulers, and the former princess, though she surely knew about such failings among her ancestors, was at a loss when finally confronted with the reality that her some of her forebears had been complete bastards.

[Doc Kwok]

It has been many years since I have read the novel, and my memories have gotten mixed up . The scene where she self-realises is from the 1998 adaptation. In the novel, she just lets Li Zicheng go, accompanies WXB back and teaches him the lightness kung-fu on the way back, then disappears.

[Ken Cheng]

It has been many years since I have read the novel, and my memories have gotten mixed up . The scene where she self-realises is from the 1998 adaptation. In the novel, she just lets Li Zicheng go, accompanies WXB back and teaches him the lightness kung-fu on the way back, then disappears.

In the 1984 adaptation, the great argument takes place shortly after the One-Armed Nun's first appearance in the series. Wai Siu Bo had been afraid of her up to that point, but when she threatened to assassinate K'ang Hsi, WSB lost his cool (and, momentarily, his fear of her) and gave her the business on just how terrible her ancestors were and how K'ang Hsi was a far better ruler than any of the Ming rulers ever were. I thought the nun's silence was golden: she wanted to object, but she had NOTHING (because deep down, she knew it was true).

[pannonian]

In the 1984 adaptation, the great argument takes place shortly after the One-Armed Nun's first appearance in the series. Wai Siu Bo had been afraid of her up to that point, but when she threatened to assassinate K'ang Hsi, WSB lost his cool (and, momentarily, his fear of her) and gave her the business on just how terrible her ancestors were and how K'ang Hsi was a far better ruler than any of the Ming rulers ever were. I thought the nun's silence was golden: she wanted to object, but she had NOTHING (because deep down, she knew it was true).

The debate happens in the novel, but with different characters and in a different place. Some poets, whom Wei Xiaobao had saved from a corrupt official earlier, reappear at the end to ask him to become emperor. WXB refuses at least partly because he's seen how onerous the job is, lets them know that Kang Xi knows of them and their pro-people (and thus rebellious) pamphlets, and that Kang Xi actually agrees with what they say. He closes the argument by asking them if any of the Ming emperors were any better than Kang Xi, and the poets couldn't in all honesty say yes.

I liked the argument with the nun in the adaptation too, which was a genuine adaptation incident and not padding (since it includes the theme but condenses the characters).

[Trien Chieu]

when she threatened to assassinate K'ang Hsi, WSB lost his cool (and, momentarily, his fear of her) and gave her the business on just how terrible her ancestors were and how K'ang Hsi was a far better ruler than any of the Ming rulers ever were. I thought the nun's silence was golden: she wanted to object, but she had NOTHING (because deep down, she knew it was true).

You have to compare apple to apple. If you compare K'ang Hsi to Chu Yuen Cheung or Yongle, then K'ang Hsi isn't better. At near the end of the Ching/Qing Dynasty, the emperors were just as bad as the Ming's. The Nun should just try to assassinate K'ang Hsi to revenge for the victims of Yangzhou massacre. The Manchurian/Jurchen were so evil and they got away with genocide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangzhou_massacre

[tape]

I'm not a fan of Guo Jing's interaction with Kublai in ROCH. Kublai posed some decent questions with why he was working for a corrupt emperor who's citizens suffered while the Mongolians and the people they conquered weren't necessarily worse off. (If we look into the future with the Yuan dynasty, he wasn't wrong). Guo Jing then kind of gets angry and said they caused so much bloodshed etc etc and warns them to back off or they'll regret it.

It was much less thought provoking than his talk with Genghis Khan years earlier...it showcased Guo Jing's patriotism, but it didn't really make him look less one dimensional.

[Ken Cheng]

I'm not a fan of Guo Jing's interaction with Kublai in ROCH. Kublai posed some decent questions with why he was working for a corrupt emperor who's citizens suffered while the Mongolians and the people they conquered weren't necessarily worse off. (If we look into the future with the Yuan dynasty, he wasn't wrong). Guo Jing then kind of gets angry and said they caused so much bloodshed etc etc and warns them to back off or they'll regret it.

I'm not sure I understand your ongoing confusion with this issue. Gwok Jing *explicitly* responded to Kublai that he fought and bled not for the Sung emperor, whom he agreed with Kublai was a useless and unworthy ruler, but for the people of the Central Plains. Gwok Jing never ever fought for the Sung *regime*. Every adaptation has made this distinction abundantly clear. In fact, Gwok Jing's distinction between the two was the very crux of his argument. How people continue to turn this into, "Gwok Jing fought to defend the useless Sung emperor" is beyond me, because it's unequivocally not the case.

[tape]

I took Kublai's response as a challenge to Guo Jing for why he didn't fight for the people *before* the Mongolians invaded, and only decided to do so when military action was needed. He questioned Guo Jing to think about the Mongolian invasion to possibly be a good thing when all was said and done (war is inevitably bloodshed), and Guo Jing just exploded in anger. If he had at least considered that possibility, I would like the scene more.

The people were suffering long before the Mongolians invaded. The first passages of LOCH decades earlier starts with people lamenting the terrible, terrible rule. I think it was a legitimate question Kublai posed, and I think Guo Jing's response wasn't anything more substantial than "because war is bad".

I don't really find the scene confusing or anything like that, but I don't think it classifies as a great political or philosophical moment like the scene with Genghis was.

[Ken Cheng]

I took Kublai's response as a challenge to Guo Jing for why he didn't fight for the people *before* the Mongolians invaded, and only decided to do so when military action was needed. He questioned Guo Jing to think about the Mongolian invasion to possibly be a good thing when all was said and done (war is inevitably bloodshed), and Guo Jing just exploded in anger. If he had at least considered that possibility, I would like the scene more.

If Gwok Jing had considered that possibility, he'd be even more of a naive fool than he sometimes (and occasionally correctly) gets criticized for being.

The reason that Gwok Jing reacted angrily to Kublai's overture is that he knew, from the evidence of his own eyes, that it was complete b.s. Kublai insinuated that if the Mongols took control of the Central Plains, the Han people who lived there would enjoy safety and prosperity. Kublai made Gwok Jing an attractive offer, no doubt, but the offer was completely inconsistent with the reality of the Mongols' conquests all throughout their empire. Gwok Jing still had vivid memories of how the Mongols had slaughtered the civilians of Samarkand some twenty years earlier. When Gwok Jing called out Kublai on his b.s., he alluded to how, since the Mongol invasion of the Central Plains began, the rivers of the Central Plains had "run red with blood." I believe Gwok Jing was speaking figuratively in that instance, but given what I've read from history, it wasn't much of a hyperbole.

Gwok Jing called out Kublai because he had heard this pitch before from Kublai's grandfather; it had been insincere then, and it was insincere when Kublai offered the same terms again. Nothing had changed during the intervening twenty years as far as the Mongols' plans for the Central Plains were concerned. The Sung regime was inept, corrupt, and decadent, but it at least did not have the systematic enslavement and elimination of its own population in its plans.

As it turned out, Gwok Jing made the right call on the Mongols: the Yuan Dynasty produced even worse hardships for the population of the Central Plains than even the worst years of the Sung Dynasty, which is one of the reasons that it came to an end within a relatively short eighty-something years (compared to the Sung's three-hundred, combining the Northern and Southern eras). The Sung Dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven through the ineptitude of its leaders, but the immediate replacement was no improvement.

[tape]

I don't know if the Yuan dynasty in JY's world was necessarily worse. The civilians were in unrest in both, and in HSDS the people feared Mongolian soldiers, but it was no better in LOCH when innocent folk like the Yang and Guo family were slaughtered due to strong political figures.

I don't disagree with how Guo Jing reacted, and it is probably the appropriate reaction, but it does not invoke the same philosophical/emotional feeling that his conversation with Genghis did which is what I'm getting at. On film with all the heroic music and such it is a touching scene, but I found the text to be bland [compared to other *great* scenes].

[Ken Cheng]

I don't know if the Yuan dynasty in JY's world was necessarily worse.

It was pretty damn bad. Kublai himself was OK and might even make a list of top ten Chinese (though Kublai was obviously a foreigner) emperors, but every Yuan emperor after him was pretty inept. Yuan was by far the shortest of the more recent Chinese imperial dynasties, and its innate administrative and structural weaknesses led to its relatively quick demise.

The Mongols were terrific conquerors, but administration of a sedentary, agricultural/urban society just wasn't their strong point.

[tape]

You're probably right, but in LOCH you have blatantly corrupt officials, common people blatantly talking about the ineptitude of their government, and even the greatest heroes admitting that the ruling dynasty is reallly damn terrible.

In the Yuan dynasty of HSDS, the more prominent message is one of ridding the foreigners and restoring the ancestry. Like Stephen Chow's Royal Tramp movies jokingly allude to, it's much easier to rally people for the latter than to rally people to just rebel because of hardship.

Again, I don't disagree with what Guo Jing said in that scene, but I don't think it's particularly insightful. Isn't that what this topic is about?

[Ken Cheng]

Again, I don't disagree with what Guo Jing said in that scene, but I don't think it's particularly insightful. Isn't that what this topic is about?

The common theme of all four debates is "Who deserves to rule?" The one between Gwok Jing and Kublai boiled down to this:

Who deserves to rule?

Kublai: Not you Sungs.

Gwok Jing: Perhaps not, but not you Mongols either.

Kublai: You Sungs are incompetent and corrupt.

Gwok Jing: Wrong. Our leaders are inept, but not our people. Your intents are insincere: you claim that our people will live better under your rule, but one look around us...and your people's recent history in other parts of your empire, tells us that claim is false.

Kublai:....

That's boiling it down to its essence, and essentially, it's similar to the other three debates.

[Mandred Skavenslayer]

So you hold KH responsible for an atrocity that happened before he was born