Of Swords and Parasols

This is the last storyarc of this series, and probably the one with the simplest plot. Xin is a fox demon trying to earn her way into heaven by performing good deeds in a nearby town while living in the forest with her father and sisters. Along the way, she meets and falls in love with a scholar named Sheng, and the two take in a waif named Lu Er. For reasons I didn’t quite understand, Xin was opposed to admitting her feelings for Sheng, resulting in her sisters and Lu Er concocting all sorts of schemes to get them together. (My favorite was when one sister, Hu Mei, who had previously tried to eat Sheng, forced him to pretend she was attacking him so Xin would run to his rescue.)

This is one of those stories that starts all light and fluffy and then sideswipes you with torture and angst and people dying right and left. At one point, I was pointedly reminded that this came from the person who decided that Chinese Paladin, which basically started out a wuxia RomCom, should end with an angsty and broken Hu Ge wandering ancient!fantasy China with everyone he knew dead except for his newborn daughter, after he spent a while wandering through a garden, cradling his wife’s blood-drenched corpse. I’m happy to report, though, that this never reaches those depths, and actually ends happily.

I liked all the stories in this anthology series, but if I were to rank them, I’d probably go: Xia Nu, Lian Cheng, Huan Niang, and then Xin Shi Si Niang.

Within the first 10 minutes, this arc had a crossdressing heroine who had to learn to fight by spying on her father because he forbade her to learn, and she spends her crossdressing time hunting demons who prey on local women. She is accompanied by her friend who is Sekritly In Love with her and is totally fine with the crossdressing demonhunting, except that he’s her father’s subordinate, and it could get him in trouble.

Anyway, Mue is Our Heroine. As I mentioned, she is a crossdressing demon hunter. Unknown to her, her maid is a fox demon who was once married to a powerful local man and had a daughter, Yuefu, with him. When he banished her and told her she could never see their daughter again because she wouldn’t use her powers to make him more powerful in the government, she cursed him so that his wrongdoings would result in harm to Yuefu, who was the only person he cared about. So, basically, she’s Chinese fox demon Medea. When Mue learns the truth, they join forces to hunt demons. (Mue does not approve of the cursing, but there were other things going on.)

This is, I think, the only wuxia story where the heroine has been presented as the badass fighter, and she wasn’t eventually overshadowed by A Guy Who Wants To Be A Hero, or turned into the Damsel In Distress, but is actually allowed to maintain the lead hero status. There’s an unfortunate aspect where Mue falls in love with a doctor who tells her to “be more womanly” and likes to criticize oh, you know, everything about her (as opposed to the friend, Wukui, who thought she was awesome just the way she was) but he thankfully got over that by the time they started having a lot of scenes together, though I was never happy with that subplot. I may, however, love the arc forever and ever for the ending.

Yuefu and Wukui both die (Sorrow!) and Mue and the doctor, Xianggu, have drunken sex way later, which results in Mue getting pregnant. Mue is told that the only way she can defeat the main demon is if she sacrifices the baby and bonds its soul to her sword. She wins, heavily pregnant, without doing so, and resurrects Yuefu so that she and Xianggu can be together and raise the baby, because she knows that she’d never be happy settled down, and is meant to save people, so she heads off for a lifetime of adventures and saving people. I wouldn’t want to see it all the time, but it was an awesome reversal.

Liao Zhai Qi Nu Zi, or The Fairies of Liao Zhai is one of three relatively recent anthology series in which each story arc adapts a story from Strange Stories From A Chinese Studio, a collection of horror stories. I’ve seen the 2005 Strange Tales of Liao Zhai series, but not its nominal sequel. Because I can’t find it. I understand that the original stories reek with misogyny, but the anthology series, as I understand it, take some of the more female-centric stories, strip out as much of the misogyny as they can and rework them into (sometimes) more romantic, female-friendly storylines.

Lian Cheng is about Lian Cheng and Bin Niang, two young women who were friends when they were children, but became rivals when they grew up because their fathers hate each other. Lian Cheng is delicate and ladylike but has a serious snide streak when needed, and Bin Niang is a loud tomboy. Both fall in love with a scholar named Qiao Sheng, and suddenly, they have a new reason to hate each other. One of my least favorite setups, but the little I’ve heard of it beforehand promised me that the series was mostly about the relationship between the girls, and not their romantic rivalry. It’s about both, actually, but the romantic rivalry is really mostly an excuse for something new to fight about.

The supernatural elements come into play when Lian Cheng falls ill and can only be cured if she’s given medicine made from Qiao Sheng’s flesh. Bin Niang is struck by the same illness delivering the, uhm, “ingredient,” though, and so her father uses it in medicine for her and sends fake scholar-flesh to Lian Cheng’s family, resulting in Lian Cheng’s death. Lian Cheng then haunts Bin Niang, who is one of only two people who can see her.

This delved a lot more into the mythology surrounding ghosts than other Chinese series that I’ve seen have, and it was pretty fun. One thing I’ve noticed about Chinese ancient series is that they’re very prone to having female romantic rivals become friends (the reverse also happens, but that’s common in fiction from pretty much everywhere I’ve seen fiction from, whereas the female version is far less common). Qiao Sheng doesn’t become irrelevant in their dynamic as the series does continue to center around their relationships with him, but he does serve as an excuse for the status and changes in their relationship.

Overall, it was a bit melodramatic at times and there were a few cagey FX, but it was pretty fun.