Wuxia

My cousin, an expert in Chinese literature and culture, has just been telling me about Wuxia, one of my favorite genres in literature and film. Films like Hero, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and House of Flying Daggers all follow this tradition: lots of martial arts, mythological references to a China that never existed, complicated characters who drift in and out of the book or movie, enriching it with their tangled stories. I knew this tradition derived from a popular literary tradition, but I didn't realize until recently that some of these novels, at least, have begun to be translated into English.



Now I've ordered a couple, by Gu Long and Jin Yong (otherwise known as Louis Cha), but in the meantime I can highly recommend a widely available western version that comes close to the genre, Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. It's a wonderful spin on the Watson-and-Sherlock Holmes pairing: Number Ten Ox, in order to save the children of his village from a heinous magical poisoning, enlists the aid of a wise and erascible philosopher (who has one slight flaw) to retrieve the antidote and unravel the mystery behind the poison. Their quest takes them on a visually stunning and hilarious tour of a mythological world and its characters. This was my favorite book of the year when I read it back in 2002 or so (although it was published back in the eighties), and it was pretty much the beginning of my devotion to the genre.

So, until I can get my hands on those translations, I guess I'll be rereading Hughart. Did I mention he wrote an entire trilogy on the duo?