My new Jianghu blog

Pinterest (let me know if you are the artist)

Dear readers, to accommodate the growing wuxia/jianghu posts I have on my personal blog, today I just published this new blogspot specifically for that topic. Called 'The Realm of Rivers and Lakes', with the blog address RiverAndLakeRealm, this blog is specifically for wuxia, jianghu or wulin posts, in particular those featuring Michael Miu Kiu Wai and Barbara Yung Mei Ling. 

As such, I have copied all Michael/Barbara related posts to this blog. All comments have been imported there too.  I've noticed some funny lay-out as well (e.g., the white-blocked paragraphs) which might have happened during the copying; I will fix those issues in weeks to come. I will also replace the old post hyperlinks with the new post hyperlinks from this blogspot.

The summaries of new MB-related posts will still be posted on my personal eclectic mix blog, but full articles are only posted here. Non-MB posts (e.g., if I want to write a summary on Return of Condor Heroes 1983) will only be posted in this Realm of Rivers and Lakes blog.

Note to those new with the 'Jianghu (江湖)', the literal translation is 'rivers and lakes', usually to convey the world explored by martial artisans or the wulin communities. There is a very interesting article by Helena Yuen Wai from the University of Hong Kong that explored this matter. Click here for said article. Abstract is below the break. I've read the paper; it was a very informative read. To learn more about "wuxia" (武俠) as a genre in ancient Chinese fictions, read One Second Spring's article on this matter (very interesting!).

Thank you for visiting my new site!



"Journey Across Rivers and Lakes"
by Helena Yuen Wai 
University of Hong Kong

Summary:

This paper sets out to explore the possibility as well as the impossibility of representing a seemingly untranslatable term: jianghu (江湖), which literally means “rivers and lakes” in the Chinese language. The paper discusses how the term evolves almost like an organic entity of its own, stretching from Chinese literature, cinema to the everyday use of the term as slangs and idioms. By looking at how the term is translated from one language to another, from an ancient context to a (post)modern context, and further away from one generation to another, this paper attempts to study the process of adaptation and translation beyond a linguistic scope, but towards a broader field of literary, cultural and film studies. The paper also examines how the process of translating, adapting and imagining jianghu can be deemed a manifestation of the Derridian concept of “supplementarity”.