Reference material

[Mindcrime]

I know how difficult it can be finding decent books and even movies for research about classical China. If you need any help, I'd be happy to give you what I can or track it down - I'm over in Taiwan and go to Singapore or Hong Kong every couple months. There are some decent bookstores around that have obscure but generally quite useful books on ancient China, filled with info that is pretty close to impossible to find over there.

Chris Jones

[Tenzhi]

Heck, just reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Journey to the West (all fairly easily acquired in the states) ought to give you enough ideas to run with.

[GMSkarka]

There are quite a few online translations of wuxia novels, as well:

Jin Yong novels can be found here: http://spcnet.tv/jinyong/jyreadingroom.shtml

(includes The Demi Gods and Semi Devils, The Legend of the Condor Heroes, The Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber,The Smiling Proud Wanderer, The Book and the Sword and Sword of the Yueh Maiden)

Gu Long novels are here: http://spcnet.tv/gulong/glreadingroom.shtml

(includes Xiao Shiyi Lang aka Legend of the Deer-Carving Sabre orEleventh Son)

There are also some commercially available translations, mostly of Jin Yong's work, available via amazon. Look for "Louis Cha" (Jin Yong's english name).

GMS

[Mindcrime]

Jin Yong is great. I picked up his Fox Volent book in HK, translation done by Olivia Mok. I've also got a mess of Duke of Mount Deer graphic novels done by one of Taiwan's most famous artist. I love his stuff.

The guy who wrote Crouching Tiger is good too, but none of his stuff has been translated yet AFAIK. I'm reading the first 3 books in that series (still), which are called "Crane Frightens Kun Lun" (parts I-III) and enjoying them immensely.

Chris

[Pilgrim]

http://www.heroic-cinema.com/articles/wuxia.htm

A nice overview site with some good links here. Worth poking around through and exploring.

Trey

[GMSkarka]

The guy who wrote Crouching Tiger is good too, but none of his stuff has been translated yet AFAIK. I'm reading the first 3 books in that series (still), which are called "Crane Frightens Kun Lun" (parts I-III) and enjoying them immensely.

Simon & Schuster paid a multi-million dollar sum last year for the english rights to those novels, but I haven't heard a peep about it since.

GMS

[Mindcrime]

Simon & Schuster paid a multi-million dollar sum last year for the english rights to those novels, but I haven't heard a peep about it since.

I bet we won't see the English versions before the next movie. I'm guessing with translation and then packaging for the Western market, they've got their work cut out for them. The original series is almost 20 volumes in length, but, chinese books typically have about 1/3 the word count as western ones, so I can't imagine it would take them THAT long to translate them.

Chris