If you’re reading this article, I assume that you already know what wuxia is. If you don’t, check out my article that answers basic questions on wuxia.
When my uncle and my father recommended I take a look at some of the classic wuxia novels by Jin Yong, I’ll have to admit I was pretty skeptical initially. However, I know they didn’t recommend wuxia for no good reason, so I resorted to doing some research online.
The common consensus is that the best wuxia novels by Jin Yong, in no particular order, are The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, and The Deer and the Cauldron. Among the three, The Smiling, Proud Wanderer was the shortest, being composed of four volumes while the other two have five volumes, so I decided to start with this. My research also led me to finding out that the top wuxia authors are Jin Yong, Gu Long, and Liang Yusheng, but I’ll have to put the latter two on hold while I start with Jin Yong.
I’ll be honest here, before I read my first wuxia novel, I did not have high expectations for the genre. I’ve seen too many memes and jokes online of wuxia protagonists being some OP character who cultivated for years in the mountains and eventually developed the ability to instantly kill his opponent with one strike. He later gets into fights with random people he meets in the “jianghu,” all because someone looked at him the wrong way or said a single sentence wrong that the protagonist took offense to. Repeat this every chapter, change some names of who he’s fighting, and boom, you have a wuxia novel that for some reason thousands of readers flock to every day or week to check for the latest updates.
Admittedly, it took me a few months for me to get through my first wuxia novel, which I read in Chinese. Not necessarily out of boredom, but because I had to get used to the vocabulary for the first few chapters, which were sometimes pretty literary. However, around halfway through the first volume, I started picking up pace and was able to thoroughly enjoy the story without unknown characters obstructing the experience. I was able to finish the final volume within a few days, while the first volume took me a month or two of on and off reading.
I’m glad that my previous conceptions of wuxia were thoroughly debunked by reading a novel by Jin Yong. Sure, you have a protagonist that manages to learn a set of powerful sword stances from a reclusive hermit in the mountains. Every other chapter, you have a fight that gets described in vivid detail by the author for several pages. However, I’ve come to realize that there are much more to wuxia novels than simple fighting scenes. Between the training and fighting arcs, you have rich discussions on traditional Chinese culture, including history, literature, philosophy, and in one scene in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, the type of wine vessels that should be used when drinking different types of wine.
In fact, past a certain point, I realized that wuxia is merely a vehicle for Jin Yong to convey his thoughts and commentary on Chinese thoughts, values, and politics. Few people would likely want to read an essay that solely focuses on traditional Chinese ethics, but when you write an enchanting story where a protagonist has to struggle between deciding the correct ethical choice among several options, then you have a reader who starts contemplating these questions. In this sense, Jin Yong is not only a writer, but a teacher as well. For a further elaboration on how Jin Yong can teach us something about everyday life, check out my article on what the Dugu Nine Swords can tell us about specific knowledge.
Eventually, I started wondering: A lot of these classic wuxia authors lived decades ago, far away from the West. How relevant would their works be in the future? Would wuxia grow popular in the West?
As for the first question, I think the works of authors like Jin Yong would always have a certain degree of popularity, just like how J. R. R. Tolkien is with his The Lord of the Rings series. It might not be like late 20th century China where every other person on the street has read one of his novels before and can make numerous references to characters and plots in the books, but I’m sure people would have at least heard of his name and know a few of his books. After all, every year or so there’s a new remake of one of Jin Yong’s novels. Perhaps his works would even appear in Chinese textbooks in the future one day.
As for the second question, my answer will be less straightforward. Wuxia draws heavily from Chinese culture, and many of the characters base their decisions on a code of ethics that will sound foreign to a Western reader. Wuxia also commonly references parts of Chinese history that would be unfamiliar to those without a background in the subject. As a result, there are some obstacles present that might slow down the growth of wuxia in the West.
However, in recent years, Japanese media such as anime and manga have been flourishing, and Korean media such as K-pop and K-dramas have started growing in popularity as well. Chinese novels such as The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin have become bestsellers as well. I am optimistic that more and more people each day will find out what wuxia is, some of whom will start picking up books of the genre as well. Perhaps through reading wuxia, more and more people will start being interested in Chinese history and traditional Chinese thought.
The world of wuxia is a fascinating one. By reading a wuxia novel you are opening yourself to a completely different world from day-to-day life. Why not start reading now, and be amazed by what the genre has to offer?