‘We Han Chinese outnumber the Jurchen by more than a hundred to one. If the Imperial Court decided to employ honest and loyal men, our great Empire would prevail. With one hundred of our men against one of their worthless soldiers, how could the Jin army win?’
In the thirty third episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are looking at Legend of the Condor Heroes (射雕英雄传 / Shèdiāo Yīngxióng Chuán), the magnum opus of Wuxia grandmaster Jin Yong. Our guest is one of the translators working to bring it into English, Gigi Chang.
Condor Heroes is a huge entry in Chinese literature (both highbrow and lowbrow), and pop culture in general. In this first episode of the podcast’s Wuxia season, I begin to get to grips with this absolute behemoth of genre fiction.
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// NEWS ITEMS //
- Paper Republic’s Sunday Sentence 一周一句
- Deng Anqing’s Forty Days
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(忠肝义胆 / Zhōng Gān Yì Dǎn / Loyal liver, righteous guts)
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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //
- Mobikes
- ‘Qi Blasts’ in Street Fighter
- President Deng Xiaoping as Wuxia nerd
- The Assassin, dir. by Hou Hsiao Hsien
- Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel
- JG Ballard’s Miracles of Life, Yao Xueyin’s Li Zicheng 姚雪垠 李自成, Ma Ka-fai’s new book 马家辉 鸳鸯六七四
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The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 