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.

Mando isn’t the only character in his series that you could consider Xia. The returning bounty hunter Boba Fett, and his companion Fennec Shand (played by the great Mingna Wen) who initially appear to fulfil their own quests, recognise the values of Din, and whilst their first collaborations are a bargain struck to return Fett’s family armour to him, for the safety of the stolen child, Boba extends his help beyond the original deal, recognising Din as a fellow member of his clan, and the duty of honour that demands. The armour carries with it not only a familial tie, but an association with a wider culture, even if it was not one he was raised in. Shand’s path of Xia is her own, having formed an attachment to Fett after he saves her life on Tatooine, thus articulating a key concept in Wuxia fiction often overshadowed by bloody vengeance-seeking. The concept of enqing. This gratitude, or grace, inspired in the performance of an act of kindness. Often the Xia embark on quests to repay a debt of gratitude, going beyond equivalence, unconditionally aiding those who have earned their lifelong loyalty and protection, sometimes with a single act of good faith.

Like most Wuxia, The Mandalorian is a tale of filled with violence and combat, but it also leaves space for redemption, another important theme of the genre. This can be seen in trajectory of Greef Karga, the Bounty Hunters Guild master who sets up a trap to turn Din in, when he breaks the rules of his contract, but has a change of heart, his enqing to Grogu for saving his life outstripping his sense of duty to Guild or Client. Also, Migs Mayfield, the imperial sharpshooter sprung from prison to help locate the kidnapped Grogu. The mission to aid our band of heroes track down Moff Gideon’s ship, gives Mayfield the time to ruminate on the comrades lost on imperial missions, and his role in the Empire’s subjugation of the galaxy. When he is met with trust and kindness, he receives not only his freedom, but a sense that he can change his destiny, and be more than his kill count.

The most literal demonstration of the ‘face turn’ is in the murderous IG-11, an assassin droid turned bounty hunter that we first meet trying to kill Grogru. His evolution takes him from this to an armed protector of Grogu, and even after his “death”, he is repurposed as an exosuit for the child. Of course, few Jianghu can just reconnect their head (though there are probably some). IG-11’s story reaches its conclusion when he is rebuilt as the new marshal of Navarro, a fitting fate for an assassin-turned-hero, to “wash his hands in the golden bowl” and leave Jianghu, like so many characters in Wuxia, to name one of them, Liu Zhengfeng in The Laughing Swordsman.

So much of Wuxia is about forming your own alliances, and found families, because the misfits these stories usually focus on, are often orphan or outcasts. Guo Jing, the Condor Hero, was a Han refugee from the central plains who ended up settling with his mother on the grasslands where he was partially raised by Mongolian nomads. His successor, the protagonist in the next trilogy Yang Guo, was an orphan who grew up on the streets and as an adult, socially ostracised for his dead father’s crimes. As one of the few remaining members of a banished clan living in the shadows, The Mandalorian makes his own friends, who pretty much fall into the archetypal supporting characters of Wuxia. Kuiil on Arvala, the kind villager, ex-Shock Trooper Clara Dune, the badass sidekick who no longer believes in the system, magistrate and guild agent Greef Karga, the ally in officialdom, hangar manager Peli Motto, a rough but kind-hearted mechanic, who acts as the hub for black market goods and information, fulfilling the ‘shopkeeper’ archetype.

Even within the survivors of Din Djarin’s clan, the archetypes are reflected. The clan leader, The Amourer, serves as Din Djarin’s mentor and teacher, both the stern shifu and wise hermit; and Paz Visler the competitor and friendly foil. Wuxia stories often feature a fellow clan member who enjoys less preferential treatment. They push, vie and taunt the protagonist, but when push really comes to shove, rally round, acknowledging the strength of their ties, over their differences.

The wandering Xia not only makes his own friends, but his own path. The most important member of Djarin’s found family is Grogu. Nothing says carving out a path like having the sign of the Mudhorn engraved onto your armour, and being dubbed, “a clan of two”. The idea of the foundling is in fact, at the heart of this saga, which congregates the paths of three different foundlings, Din Djarin, orphaned during the Galactic Republic and raised by the Mandalorian sect Children of the Watch, Boba Fett, whose own line started with the foundling Jango Fett, his father, and Grogu, who was raised in the Jedi temple and hidden during the purge. Wuxia epics so often begin with a found child, whether misplaced, left in the wild, bequeathed, or in some way meddled with by the eccentrics of Jianghu (Guo Jing and Yang Kang, Xiao Yu and Hua Wuque). The trope allows a new face to be brought up in clans of celibate fighters or assassins, as well as providing the perfect set-up to facilitate the hero going on strange adventures without encumbering familial commitments, gossiping relatives or the obligation to produce an heir.

The abandoned child is usually a key instigator of narrative conflict, being invariably be hunted down, hated, or neglected by society with the exception of a few caretakers, until they are revealed to be a prophesised heir, chosen one, or in some way, a most powerful individual. Ultimately, children make great characters in Wuxia, because few creatures serve better as a squishy, cuddly reminder of what it’s all for, than a bright-eyed, innocent youngling, whatever the species, giving space for moral reflection, and the urge to protect. When I saw Yuen Woo-ping’s recent Wuxia hit film Blades of the Guardians, the parallels between Dao Ma and Mando, these eastern and western bounty hunting legends, and their adopted charges, Xiaoqi and Grogu, both the most utterly charming and winning of children, immediately sprung to mind.

Political power and the tension between dominant and subjugated nations is a timeless debate in Wuxia fiction. We need only to look the lives of Prince Duanyu of the border kingdom of Dali and Xiao Chuhe, deposed prince of Beili who befriends the lost prince of an antagonised border power, to find two popular examples from classic and contemporary novels. Mando’s disadvantaged background, as an adoptee of a nation whose planet was laid to waste by the Empire in The Night of a Thousand Tears is a typical one for the Wuxia hero. Over the course of the story, his support of the oppressed nation, by aiding the planet’s exiled princess (Bo-Katan) in reclaiming the Darksaber and returning to her rightful rule in Mandalore, is again, the typical trajectory of the Xia.

As per Wuxia fiction, the fights in The Mandalorian are a pleasure to see, and very Xia-coded, from single combat, to one against many, to the obligatory large pitch battle, when Din Djarin’s fellow clan members swoop in to rescue him against imperial troops, the ‘tavern showdown’ in the public houses, the back-to-back fight of Mando and Clara Dune, the badass break-in on Gideon’s ship by the unlikely team of Mandalorians, ex-New Republic soldiers and mercenaries. Din Djarin’s martial progress as a Xia takes the form of weapon upgrade, the spoils from every big battle forged into a new piece of armour, like the levelling up of Xia when they break through to the next stage of their technique or acquire new ones.

All this is merely the resonances with Wuxia found in a single show within the Star Wars universe, the approach of which been informed by the back and forth of Western and Eastern storytelling. Perhaps someone more deeply in love with cowboy films would focus on how it draws from John Ford or Sergio Leone, whose influences are also found in modern Wuxia films. None of this is to say that The Mandalorian steals from Wuxia, only that it’s part of the global conversation, which will in turn, impact Chinese productions. I will return to writing about the influences of Chinese genres on Star Wars, as I definitely want to dive into ideas of cultivators, apprentices, forbidden techniques and ‘magic’ weapons, with discussions of the Sith and Jedi.


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