|
About Wuxia Pian
A xia is a
knight-errant, who might come from any class, and wuxia involves knightly
chivalry. The Chinese concept of the knight-errant originates the fourth century
BC, but chivalric stories as we know them today go back to the Tang dynasty,
around the ninth century AD. Some were literary efforts composed by men of
learning, others were oral tales and ballads in colloquial prose or simple
verse. By the seventeenth century, these forms had become a flourishing
fictional genre concentrating on vagabond warriors who display outstanding
courage, honor, and fighting skills. Magical elements had also entered the mix,
so knights were often given superhuman powers -- flying, hurling balls of fire,
becoming invisible. Many stories played on the boundary between pure fantasy and
what might be barely possible for a supremely trained and gifted warrior -- not
really flying but the "weightless leap"; not being invulnerable but
being able, through control of breathing, to make one's body as hard as iron. To
enjoy the wuxia tale we must grant that supreme skill in martial arts
could give a fighter extraordinary powers.
|
