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Post by caiyi on Jul 24, 2014 4:36:32 GMT
Also, in my print edition it has 大為不該 instead of 大不該為. I actually copied from the ebook and modified it while referring to the book. So, many I miss this part. Mine should be the same as your since same edition.
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Post by caiyi on Jul 30, 2014 5:24:28 GMT
Anyway, that scene you posted makes me interested to read the story. Why does he agree to marry her if he doesn't trust her? She's the lesser of 2 evils. She's from an evil Sect that murdered Fang Zhao Nan's sifu and sifu's wife. But, she also saved him a couple of times and she properly took care of his sifu's and sifu's wife corpse. According to her, her reason for doing this was to repay the kindness of Fang's sifu show to her biological parents. Fang couldn't fully trust her, but, the other option is even worse. The leader of the evil sect, who is her sifu, was going after the 'Blood Pond Map' which supposed to contain a martial art manual that is very powerful. She sent out 3 of the students to get it. Mei Jiang Xue and Fang Zhao Nan got the map but, Mei Jiang Xue didn't want to give it to her sifu. They need to get the map pass Mei's two even more ruthless sect sisters. The only way Mei could think of was for Fang to swallow the map and later Mei open his stomach to get it back. Mei offered to marriage kinda as a repayment for sacrificing Fang. Fang knew that great harm will come to wulin if Mei's sifu got the map, so, he agreed. I guess he agreed to the marriage to hold Mei more to her promise of saving his sect sister. Mei later thought of a way that needn't sacrificed her hubby.
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Post by siuyiu on Oct 30, 2016 1:26:48 GMT
have you made any progress with this, @caiyi?
i started reading the first bits because it's high time i delved into other wuxia authors. OMG, he's sooooooooooooooo long-winded! get.to.the.point. did they use to pay him by the word like they did charles dickens?! because that's what it feels like so far: a lot of filler. i normally love dialogue-heavy stories, but geez, the characters just yak and yak and yak!
i've stopped reading. i will need to carve out a huge chunk of time in order to even get through a chapter!
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Post by Lone Crane on Oct 30, 2016 2:06:20 GMT
have you made any progress with this, @caiyi? i started reading the first bits because it's high time i delved into other wuxia authors. OMG, he's sooooooooooooooo long-winded! get.to.the.point. did they use to pay him by the word like they did charles dickens?! because that's what it feels like so far: a lot of filler. i normally love dialogue-heavy stories, but geez, the characters just yak and yak and yak! i've stopped reading. i will need to carve out a huge chunk of time in order to even get through a chapter! Yeah, that's his typical style. Actually most wuxia suffers from being longwinded because most began as daily serials in newspapers. Wolong Sheng at one point was writing four different novels at once in different newspapers. And he was a self-acknowledged hack, he only wrote for the money and often waited til the last minute to send in his manuscripts for the day. So his novels suffer from 虎頭蛇尾 (starts out well but ends poorly for those who can't read Chinese). 天香飆, although a pretty good book overall, suffers from longwinded fight scenes. Like 20 pages of a fight scene, and in the end nothing happens; someone will show up and they will chat and then the fight breaks up and no one dies or suffers, the plot is not advanced one inch. Several instances of that in that novel. Although that book is like 1400+ pages, the plot is actually pretty simple. He also puts in way too many characters and then doesn't utilize them properly. But, when Wolong Sheng is at his best he's as good as anyone. He writes good characters and uses irony well and has interesting plots. It's a shame that his quality is so uneven, he could have been one of the all-time greats if he had put his heart into it more.
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Post by siuyiu on Oct 30, 2016 4:49:48 GMT
Lone Crane that's a real pity! so, which of his stories would you say is WLS at his best? we really need a thread of recommendations by author! i can give my recs for only 2 authors, sadly: JY & GL, since i've read several of their works. but i think even some starting point for newbies to wuxia fandom is a good something to work from!
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Post by Lone Crane on Oct 30, 2016 15:46:45 GMT
Lone Crane that's a real pity! so, which of his stories would you say is WLS at his best? we really need a thread of recommendations by author! i can give my recs for only 2 authors, sadly: JY & GL, since i've read several of their works. but i think even some starting point for newbies to wuxia fandom is a good something to work from! Only Wolong Sheng I've read all the way through is 《天香飆》, I'm reading 《飛燕驚龍》 right now, but only on the second chapter. I've read parts of several other of his novels. From what I've read in online forums in Chinese, these are Wolong Sheng's best works: 《飛燕驚龍》 - Flying Swallow Startles the Dragon - This is the one that made him famous, his third novel, but the first that he actually finished writing (first two were finished by other people). This is the novel that created the plot of all the major schools of the wulin fighting over a martial arts manual. Basically it was Smiling Proud Wanderer only about 8 or 9 years earlier, in that it's several schools fighting over one thing and they all fight amongst themselves for it. This also established one of Wolong Sheng's major characteristics: strong women, weak men. His women characters tend to be the smartest and most capable, while the man (who is still usually the main character) is pretty useless, relying a lot on others to get him out of situations. Even so, this novel is considered one of his best because the plot is interesting all the way through, the women characters are great, and it is a huge milestone for wuxia in general; it's one of the most influential wuxia novels ever written. 《玉釵盟》 - Jade Hairpin Oath - This one is considered by many to be Wolong Sheng's best novel. Again it concerns fighting over a manual, but it delves deeper into human psychology and Wolong Sheng's other main characteristic of having morally ambiguous characters. I don't know too much about the plot of this one, but this novel made Wolong Sheng the biggest name in wuxia at the time (at least in Taiwan, which was the mecca of wuxia in the 60s and 70s). The 1980 movie of this is up on youtube, don't know how well it follows the book. 《天香飆》 - Heavenly Whirlwind - Already talked about this one, but it goes even farther into moral ambiguity. The "bad guys" in this novel are Shaolin and Wudang, though it's not really fair to call them bad guys, more like just hypocrites. It's a revenge story with a female lead, Gu Hanxiang 谷寒香, perhaps the strongest wuxia fighter of them all (by the end of the book, that is. At the beginning she doesn't know any martial arts). Her transformation from innocent wife of a bandit to badass looking for revenge is engrossing, as well as he gradual realization that she can use her otherworldly beauty to control people; basically she uses her beauty as a weapon. This book is also great because it subverts your expectations at every turn. Like there's a character I just knew was going to end up being a bad guy, but he never did turn on the main characters. It didn't fall into cliche. There are too many characters that aren't used properly (like one guy, Zhong Yihao, who is in love with Gu Hanxiang. Could have been a great subplot since she ends up using him, but Wolong Sheng seemed to forget about this character as he stays in the background for most of the novel) and the fight scenes drag, but when Wolong Sheng is at his best in this book he is unmatched. What I mean is his depictions of the characters and his commentary on hypocrisy, and just the way he gradually develops Gu Hanxiang. There's also a twelve-year old fighter in this novel who brutally beheads people and has a quirk of laughing after he speaks. A great character that unfortunately isn't used properly either. Wolong Sheng didn't finish this book. The last third of the novel was written by Yi Rong. Many think Yi Rong did a good job wrapping it up, but the fight scenes drag more after he takes over and with little resolution, I also think Wolong Sheng would have handled the ending differently. Still, this novel is well worth reading, you just might have to skim the fight scenes (but then again fight scenes are my least favorite part of wuxia, so maybe others will like them. He does write them well). The dialogue is not longwinded, though, for the most part. 《無名簫》 - Nameless Flute - Another one with a smart woman side character, one reviewer put her over Huang Rong for intelligence. This is a story about stopping the bad guy from dominating the wulin, but is supposed to be a very suspenseful story. Everyone mentions this as one of their favorites. I've only read the first couple chatpers, but it starts out well. 《絳雪玄霜》 - Red Snow, Black Frost - Haven't read this one, but it's been talked about some in this thread already. Wolong Sheng personally picked this one for special publication in China (I forget the reason, some special series or something). 《素手劫》 - Delicate Hand Calamity - Another one where the last part was finished by Yi Rong. A mystery wuxia novel wherein some elders who always meet at a certain spot are found dead there, the mystery is what happened to them. Main character is a guy, but the real main character is the matriarch of one family. Story delves into her history and involvement with the plot. Don't want to give too much away. Some don't like the uselessness of the main guy character and therefore don't like how this one ends, but it's frequently mentioned as a fan favorite. 《天涯俠侶》 (Often split into two books: 《天馬霜衣》 and 《天涯俠侶》 ) - Hero Companions to the Ends of the Earth (lol, that's the best I can do translating that title) - Not as popular as some others, but those who reviewed it all liked it. Smart women and useless guy again, this novel is good because of its three main female leads who all have different personalities and talents, one of them is the main villain. Story is guy loses some special medicine (actually it gets stolen) and has to try to retrieve it. Gets caught up in other stuff (I forget the rest of the plot). 《雙鳳旗》 - Twin Phoenix Flags - Main character is a guy, but again the real main characters are two girls, who end up saving the day. Main guy, Rong'ge, has to catch some thieves who stole some goods, gets caught up in other stuff. Female bandit chief is one of the main characters, and another was a former prostitute. Don't know too much aside from plot details on this one. 《聖劍情刀》 - Sacred Sword, Sentimental Sabre - I don't remember the plot, but this one is very short, just under 200 pages in my copy. It's not online, though I plan to fix that. This one is a hidden gem, he wrote it for some smaller military publication or something and reprints are hard to find. Has a historical background and great plot and characters according to reviews I've read, only bad thing is it's too short, one reviewer wanted the story to be fleshed out more. But this is one of his better novels if the reviewers are right. I plan to scan this and send it to haodoo for their site as this book is hard to come by. This is Wolong Sheng's shortest novel (he does have at least one short story). 《飄花令》 - Drifting Flower Tally - I can't remember the plot of this one at that moment. I read half of the first volume and it was all right, the fact I can't remember anything from it is a bad sign, but it's often listed when fans name their favorites. I think the main bad guy is a woman, but I forget. 《翠袖玉環》 - KIngfisher Sleeves, Jade Bracelets - I think this one is about a women with a secret past or second life or something. I forget the plot but again it's usually mentioned as one of his better novels. Online this novel is usually listed as 《十二魔令》, it was reprinted under that title. 《搖花放鷹傳》 - Waving Flowers Release the Hawk? (not sure how to best translate this title) - Considered one of his best later works. I can't remember the plot, fighting over some object I think. 《金筆點龍記》 - Gold Brush Dots the Dragon - I've read the first chapter of this, was pretty good. Main character is a scholar candidate who at first doesn't know martial arts, then eventually becomes one of the greatest. This novel is notable for its ending which I don't want to spoil (unless you want me to) but this novel is not considered one of his 虎頭蛇尾 books. Another of his better later works. There are others of his with their good and bad points, but the above are the ones I most often see spoken well of. 《劍氣洞徹九重天》, one of his last works, was written with Li Liang I believe. Has a lot of sex in it, apparently, as was Li Liang's style. I've seen this one praised some, but never seen a detailed review of it. 《飛花逐月》 is another honorable mention I've seen listed as a favorite several times. This one was made into a TV serial as well. Story is about some mysterious group that emerges. I can give some recommendations for other authors as well, maybe a new thread would be better for that.
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Post by reinafu on Oct 30, 2016 16:39:35 GMT
I did find it on tudou, which is marginally better. I can pause it and let it buffer and then watch it. Mandarin version, which is helpful since I don't know Cantonese. www.tudou.com/programs/view/qadalsplsB0/The 1964 series is on youtube. Cantonese, no Chinese subtitles, though, so no luck for me. There is a 1964 series of The snow is red !!! Is it the same name ? Do oyu have the link, please ?
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Post by Lone Crane on Oct 30, 2016 16:45:34 GMT
I did find it on tudou, which is marginally better. I can pause it and let it buffer and then watch it. Mandarin version, which is helpful since I don't know Cantonese. www.tudou.com/programs/view/qadalsplsB0/The 1964 series is on youtube. Cantonese, no Chinese subtitles, though, so no luck for me. There is a 1964 series of The snow is red !!! Is it the same name ? Do oyu have the link, please ? Part 1: Part 2:
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Post by reinafu on Oct 30, 2016 16:51:11 GMT
Ah yes, it's The snowflake sword. I have it, but I hadn't realized that it's the same as The snow is red, which is a little bit normal, since I haven't watched this series as yet...
Thanks for the links, but there are actually 4 parts, if you look on th elist mentioned on the right of the youtube page.
Thank you very much for the quick answer !
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Post by Lone Crane on Oct 30, 2016 16:53:28 GMT
Also, here is the 1980 movie of Jade Hairpin Oath (based on Wolong Sheng's novel). These have English and Chinese subtitles:
Part 1:
Part 2:
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Post by Lone Crane on Oct 30, 2016 16:56:01 GMT
Ah yes, it's The snowflake sword. I have it, but I hadn't realized that it's the same as The snow is red, which is a little bit normal, since I haven't watched this series as yet... Thanks for the links, but there are actually 4 parts, if you look on th elist mentioned on the right of the youtube page. Thank you very much for the quick answer ! Oops! I just saw the other one to the right of the first video and assumed it was a two-parter, since that's what so many of them are. Thanks for the correction. Part 2: Part 3:
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Post by Lone Crane on Oct 30, 2016 17:04:06 GMT
There's also this adaptation, also from 1964:
Character names are changed, but apparently it's an adaptation of 絳雪玄霜
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Post by reinafu on Oct 31, 2016 11:08:00 GMT
This one is The killing sword. I didn't know that it was also an adaptation of this story, thanks for having mentioned it.
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Post by caiyi on Nov 28, 2016 6:00:22 GMT
have you made any progress with this, @caiyi? i started reading the first bits because it's high time i delved into other wuxia authors. OMG, he's sooooooooooooooo long-winded! get.to.the.point. did they use to pay him by the word like they did charles dickens?! because that's what it feels like so far: a lot of filler. i normally love dialogue-heavy stories, but geez, the characters just yak and yak and yak! i've stopped reading. i will need to carve out a huge chunk of time in order to even get through a chapter! Hi siuyiu. Sorry, didn't read much wuxia lately. Got myself into a comic book fever after watching many comic book adaptation movies. But, I've started watching 'Reincarnated' again (stop at episode 2 last time), so, it will definitely pull me back to wuxia. I didn't feel WLS was long-winded at in fact. In fact, I like his writing style more than Jin Yong's. He can create beautiful images with his writing and I feel his writing is more 'classical'. I'm up to chapter 14 for this novel. This chapter focus on Xuan Shuang and her grandfather. I'm look forward to knowing more about Xuan Shuang. This character get portrayed so negatively compared to her twin in the series.
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Post by siuyiu on Nov 29, 2016 0:09:40 GMT
have you made any progress with this, @caiyi? i started reading the first bits because it's high time i delved into other wuxia authors. OMG, he's sooooooooooooooo long-winded! get.to.the.point. did they use to pay him by the word like they did charles dickens?! because that's what it feels like so far: a lot of filler. i normally love dialogue-heavy stories, but geez, the characters just yak and yak and yak! i've stopped reading. i will need to carve out a huge chunk of time in order to even get through a chapter! Hi siuyiu . Sorry, didn't read much wuxia lately. Got myself into a comic book fever after watching many comic book adaptation movies. But, I've started watching 'Reincarnated' again (stop at episode 2 last time), so, it will definitely pull me back to wuxia. I didn't feel WLS was long-winded at in fact. In fact, I like his writing style more than Jin Yong's. He can create beautiful images with his writing and I feel his writing is more 'classical'. I'm up to chapter 14 for this novel. This chapter focus on Xuan Shuang and her grandfather. I'm look forward to knowing more about Xuan Shuang. This character get portrayed so negatively compared to her twin in the series. hooboy, comic books! that's a never-ending adventure! enjoy! which version of reincarnated--the movie, the old tv series, the revival tv series? i'm glad you're enjoying WLS's writing--please give a final review when you finish!
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