Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin: A Modern Wuxia Tale
I had the pleasure of giving a talking at Genesis Cinema when A Touch of Sin came out in the U.K. Over decade later, for the Jia Zhangke season at the Garden Cinema this year, I return to take a look at the director’s expression of Wuxia stylistics in the setting of contemporary China.
Posted in Articles, Events and tagged A Touch of Sin, cinema, come drink with me, film, Jia Zhangke, king hu, opera, Wuxia
The Woo-Xia in The Killer: John Woo’s Modern Cinematic Wuxia
On the release of the 40th anniversary ultimate collection’s edition of John Woo’s The Killer, I take a look at the director’s creation of modern cinematic Wuxia storytelling.
Posted in Articles, Events and tagged action, essay, film, john woo, last hurrah to chivalry, the killer, Wuxia
The Legend of Mando part 2: the Way of Jianghu
In the first of this two-parter, I’ve explored how Din Djarin is the very model of a Xia, and how his quests mirror so many wuxia tales, but there’s much more to the series, and the universe of Star Wars that aligns with the Chinese genre.
Posted in Articles and tagged Chinese, fantasy, fiction, film, novel, Star Wars, The Mandalorian, Wuxia
The Legend of Mando Part 1: a Tale of Quests in New Republic Jianghu
Whenever I wax lyrical about the wonders of Chinese wuxia, of clans, intrigue and swordsmen, I’m often told that people in the West will have a hard time understanding it, and yet, when I sit with my geeky friends, they are more than happy to info dump about old Republics, the Jedi Order, bounty hunters and the shadow organisations of Star Wars. Western nerds, you have been enjoying Wuxia stories, for nearly 50 years.
The main reason I hadn’t originally made the connection, was that I was relatively late to the franchise. I didn’t grow up in a culture where Star Wars was this huge thing, and it wasn’t really till the sequel trilogy came out that I sat down and actually watched the thing, and with 2016’s Rogue One, starring Donnie Yenn and Jiang Wen, I began to see the parallels with the martial arts fantasies I grew up with.
I had originally planned to write this as a two-part piece, the first for May the 4th, and the second for the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu. But the more I delved into the expanded universe, animations and series, the more I found I had to say. In fact, I’d like to begin away from the swords and sorcery of the Jedi’s story, and look at just how Wuxia-coded The Mandalorian’s story is. For a start, it’s three (and a half) season saga, and the imminent film release give it that feeling of modern Wuxia series, which often run to 30+ episodes, giving plenty of room for character growth amongst the battles and betrayals.
Posted in Articles and tagged jianghu, SFF, Star Wars, The Mandalorian, Wuxia
Blades of the Guardians: Heroes for Hire
An amazing piece of Wuxia cinema that lends hope not just for a sequel, but for the future of the genre as a whole…
Posted in Articles, Events and tagged action, blades of the guardians, bounty hunter, choreography, cinema, film, manhua, preview, Wuxia, yuen woo-ping
A New Era of Wuxia: the Female Writers
The global popularity of Chinese historical fantasy has brought forward a new era of female writers. How did this revolution start?
Posted in Articles and tagged books, chinese drama, fantasy, female writers, literature, martial arts, novels, SFF, TV, Wuxia, Xianxia
Story Feast 2025: ESEA Futures
On the day of the Far Right rallies in central London on the 13th of September 2025, it felt momentous to be there to stand with my fellow East and Southeast Asian authors, and our diverse audiences at SOAS. It was a day packed with fantastic panels. On the ESEA Futures panel, we discussed how we first got into genre fiction, Western definitions of sci-fi imposed on ESEA literature and how legend and lore sit at an intersection between speculative genres. It was the first time I had spoken about Wuxia storytelling to an Anglophone audience in person, specifically discussing the differences and similarities in its speculative elements with similar fiction in the West.
Posted in Events and tagged Asian, authors, books, diversity, ESEA, festival, fiction, inclusivity, literature, london, POC, representation, SFF, speculative, Wuxia
Love and Sword: A Dream of Jianghu
Love and Sword (directed by Cha Zhuanyi, starring Xuan Lu, Gao Weiguang), is a Tencent wuxia romance series released earlier this year. Loosely a chuanyue (Chinese for isekai) story, its protagonist Fang Yi, a young woman in contemporary China, gets transported into a dream world after being in a road accident. The woman with whom she shares her name, whose body she ends up in, is one of the greatest fighters of the land. She is being held to ransom within an inch of her life, and rescued by the dashing swordsman Yanshao (literally “dashing youth”), on a white horse. They make a hazardous journey back to her clan. At first, our heroine is anxious to get home, but as she recovers fragments of traumatic memory of her world and bonds with the people of this one, she begins to like it here, rather a lot.
Sound like a typical wuxia story? Well, it’s meant to be. The show doesn’t hide the fact it’s a dynastic world of the wuxia imagination, adopting an only slightly more sophisticated title of “A Mere Dream of Jianghu” than the novel it’s based on “Sleeping with Yanshao”. And it delivers all the romance, excitement and mystery that we typically find in wuxia novels. This is precisely why I am writing about it, from its archetypal trappings, characterisation and tropey plot developments, we can see much of what makes wuxia storytelling popular, and learn about the genre in contemporary times. As an enthusiast who grew up with wuxia TV, went on the read the novels, and now write about it as an author, I’ll be tapping into my considerable research (recently more focussed and academic). Heads up that because I’m taking the story apart, there will be spoilers.
Posted in Articles and tagged chinese drama, fiction, jianghu, martial arts fantasy, novel, TV, Wuxia
Ni Kuang: An Orbituary
On July the 3rd 2022, renowned writer Ni Kuang, passed away, aged 87. He was one of the most popular modern classic Sinophone writers.
Posted in Articles, Events and tagged books, Chinese, culture, fiction, Ni Kuang, novel, orbituary, science fiction, Sinophone, Wisely, writer, writing, Wuxia
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: A Reaction
As a culture writer, a Chinese person, and a comics nerd, I’ve had a deep interest in the character of Shang-Chi, and the way he has been used over the last half century. I’ve written about him in the build up to Marvel’s first Asian led movie, but now that I have seen the film, and had a chance to really digest it, I’ve got a lot to discuss.
Posted in Events and tagged china, Chinese, cinema, comics, culture, film, Ghost Month, kungfu, Mandarin, Marvel, MCU, reaction, Shang-chi, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, wushu, Wuxia