What would you do if you could freeze people with a touch?
Hey, bit of a different video today, because I’m planning something in the near future.
Today we talk about wuxia (武俠), which is a type of Chinese fantasy with a lot of
martial arts.
It’s a lot of attractive people flying around with swords using powers, and it’s amazing.
Give me your hand and let me guide you down this rabbit hole.
The genre started out as novels but spread into movies and TV shows
that made my younger years quite unproductive.
I could’ve started a business at 10, but I binged Chinese fantasy instead.
Worth it.
Wuxia means roughly martial arts heroes.
So the stories take place in ancient or medieval China.
In some stories, it’s a specific time period in history, and in others, it’s the author going,
“Look it happened back then okay?
Some time back then, what do you want from me?”
The characters in wuxia stories are these wandering heroes.
Think of the knight-errant in medieval European stories who go around saving fair maidens
and following their code of honor.
Like Don Quixote, but competent,
and had readers other than college students in Humanities class.
But these people are different from knights in that
they’re not dicks from the upper class.
Wuxia heroes are usually from the lower class.
They’re not rich, they don’t serve any lord.
They roam from place to place, living a romantic life not attached to any one spot for long.
Alright they’re homeless, okay?
The adventures of homeless people.
Although it’s weird, they don’t have stable jobs,
but you almost never see them have money problems.
The stories don’t go into that.
They’d enter a town, and then pop into the inn for some wine.
Dude, you got like 3 coppers in your pocket.
Like the errant knight, they had their own code of chivalry and it’s an important part
of the stories.
But before we go into that, let me talk about how freaking popular
these stories are in China.
The godfather of modern wuxia novels is Louis Cha, or better known by
his pen name of Jin Yong (金庸).
There was one author who wrote this type of novel before him, but Jin Yong really gets
the credit for creating this entire new genre of fiction back in the 1950s,
with its own rules and factions and themes.
The dude influenced every wuxia author that came after,
kind of like what Tolkien did for the fantasy genre,
or what Citizen Kane did for people who pretend to know what they’re talking about.
He owned a newspaper in Hong Kong and the advantage of owning a newspaper
was that you could put your books in it.
He serialized his books in his newspaper and other newspapers.
Jin Yong was a really political guy and he injects a lot of political themes in his books.
These were huge books by the way, some over a million words.
The typical English fantasy novel has, off the top of my head, 50,000 to 150,000 words.
He wrote his first book in 1955.
They became so popular that even today, decades later,
pretty much everyone in China and Hong Kong knows Jin Yong.
Kids still read them.
You can mention the name of a major character to any Chinese person and that person will
probably not know who it is because of your accent.
But yeah, most Chinese are familiar with major characters from Jin Yong’s novels.
They remake TV series based on his books like every few years, and he had a lot of books.
At least one series based on his books is ongoing in China or Hong Kong at any one time.
They’re basically the same stories but with different actors and special effects.
Hollywood saw that and thought it was brilliant.
Okay so these wuxia characters are part of this society or community called jianghu (江湖),
or the martial arts world.
You know how in that masterpiece of a movie, Twilight, Bella was a normal high school girl,
but when she met Edward she was introduced to this underworld of vampires and werewolves
that existed right under everyone’s noses?
The martial arts world is kind of like that, but with less depression.
It’s a society of people with kickass martial arts that exists alongside the normal world.
It’s called jianghu.
Martial arts world is a pretty good translation.
Sometimes people translate it as martial world, or underworld, but underworld implies something
bad or evil.
Sometimes people call it pugilist world, which...c’mon guys.
But one difference between this world and the world of vampires is that it’s not secret.
Normal people know that these heroes live among them.
The martial arts world lives outside the law.
It has its own rules and morality.
The jianghu code of chivalry has the usual values.
A hero should be righteous, honorable, chivalrous.
They should fight for justice.
Their word is their bond.
No fighting dirty, like going for the crotch.
Revenge is important.
If someone kills your master, duty dictates that you must kill the murderer.
People would understand and not get in your way.
Unless those people are disciples of the murderer, then they would go after you.
You can see how this causes issues.
They also have values that are unique to the martial arts world, that you don’t see with
knights or the samurai code of bushido.
You must do whatever your master tells you to do, even if he tells you to kill yourself,
or watch an episode of The Bachelor.
You must do it.
Your master is the person who teaches you martial arts.
He or she is like your father or your mother.
No, your master is probably above them.
You cannot learn martial arts from someone else unless your master allows it.
This is important because there are a ton of different schools of martial arts,
each with their own style.
You’re expected to stay within your master’s school.
It becomes your school.
Now these schools are not places you go to learn, then graduate to go out into the world
and become unsuccessful.
They’re more like clans.
You join a school and they’re your family now.
If they have beef with another school, congrats it’s now your beef too.
Shaolin is the most famous school.
Yep, that’s the Shaolin Temple.
You gotta be a monk to train there though, which is a bummer.
You can also leave the martial arts world.
You can do it just by going away and living a normal life,
only interacting with normal people.
Or if you’re someone famous, you can officially retire by having a washing of the hands ceremony.
Afterwards, all of the alliances, vendettas, and grudges you had with other fighters
are washed away.
It’s like filing for bankruptcy if you were never a college student.
You can live a normal life.
Other fighters won’t bother you and you can’t bother them.
It’s rare, but you can come back from retirement.
Sometimes a person retires but then returns years later.
Their grudges return with them though.
Alright, let’s talk about crazy fighting techniques and abilities.
Most people in the martial arts world have some fighting ability.
The thing everyone wants is to get stronger,
either by training really hard in their own style or by going around learning different techniques.
The highest honor is attaining the title of the strongest.
Here are core abilities and techniques that make up wuxia martial arts.
Fighting is one of them, obviously.
Some fighters don’t use weapons, they just use the arms and legs that mama gave them.
Others do have weapons, usually a sword, but you have people who specialize in all kinds
of weapons like a staff or a spear.
And then there are the crazy mofos who use weirder weapons like fans, needles, ink brushes,
and musical instruments.
Which brings us to qi energy.
Qi is this mystical force or energy within your body.
Naruto fans know this as chakra.
Wuxia fighters can’t do the crazy stuff that you see in Naruto, but by using their
qi they can do stuff that normal people would consider crazy.
It’s how some people can use common household objects as weapons.
They would infuse their qi into a banana or something and make it as sharp as a knife,
or turn the sound waves from a flute into waves of death.
These fighters usually have more qi than the average martial artist.
Qi is something a person can increase through training, like working out.
The more you train, the more qi your body can store.
This energy is used for all kinds of things, like to become super fast or super strong,
or even shoot energy beams from your fingers.
Qi is how unarmed fighters can go toe-to-toe with swordsmen.
You know how in Kill Bill, they had the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique?
If you’re hit with that, after taking five steps, your heart explodes.
My ex hit me with that technique during our breakup.
Wuxia fighters do a lot of that.
They’re called palm techniques where the fighter transfers qi into the palm
and hits you with it.
They can do this with a punch, but the palm is more common.
Depending on the power of the attacker, the force of a palm technique can fling you back
like a grenade or a rejection from your crush.
Another ability is qinggong (轻功), or lightness technique.
This is separate from qi.
These techniques center around movement.
They allow you to jump far almost like you’re flying, or run over water,
or just run really fast.
People would jump from roof to roof like they’re doing parkour, or escaping from the DEA.
In Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, there’s a scene where people are standing on thin
tree branches like they were light as a feather.
That’s qinggong.
And finally we have acupuncture point techniques.
In these stories, acupuncture points are real, and by striking specific points on an opponent,
you can cause his body to do all kinds of things.
Depending on which points you press, you can temporarily freeze a part of the body
or the entire body, you can kill someone, you can cause them to laugh or cry.
It can also be used for good, like to stop the bleeding when someone’s arm is cut off,
and believe me, someone’s arm will get cut off.
So all this is background to what I’m thinking of doing, which is
starting a regular live stream where I read one of my favorite wuxia stories.
I don’t know if you guys would like that, but we’re in lockdown.
What else you gonna do?
How many times you gonna watch Too Hot to Handle huh?
That’s enough.
Turn off the TV.
Alright, today’s quiz question is this: In the Heian Period, what was the name of
the city where the Oshu Fujiwara made their home?
Answer in the comments.
I’ll pick one winner from among the correct answers, winner gets one of these.
This is for US and Canada only.
Alright, so we have 2 new emperors this week, Boris Aurie and Diana Hata.
You guys are amazing.
We also have new patrons Allison, Lotta Leissner, Sarah Powell, and Lilli Korsman.
Thanks you guys.
Alright I love you, and spread the knowledge!