Of Swords and Parasols

 I think I'm about to embark on a wuxia binge(sure, I only have 3 series waiting, but I could probably make that last a month)  As several people have friended me since I last watched wuxia(not that it's been that long) and some probably didn't know what I was talking about when I was posting, I have slapped together a wuxia guide-type post.

It ended up rather longer than planned, but is still much shorter than it could be. 

Here is wikipedia's entry on wuxia.



meganbmoore's much less informative but more succinct description:  Wuxia are coming of age adventure stories set in ancient and medieval China.  The heroes are (in my experience) usually young men raised in near or total seclusion, or who led simpler lives before starting on their adventures.  Most are motivated either by a need to fulfill a promise to a parent or master, or by revenge(or both.)  Though they don't always start out that way, they usually end up being one of the greatest fighter's of their time.  Romance always plays some role, but with varying importance to the plot.  Sometimes it will be a main focus, others, a more background thing.  Most heroes, though, have several girls in love with them throughout the series.  Some will love more than one girl(usually in succession, not simultaneously) and others (the good ones) will only love one girl throughout.  If a series has 2 major heroes, there will usually be at least one of each kind. Some wuxia are straight up fantasy, and others historical dramas.  Most, however, still have a touch of the fantastic, and all, even the most strictly historical, involve fantastical acrobatics, including impressive aerial feats(called "wire-fu.")

I'm not going to get into wuxia movies(except to say that Hero seems to be the most popular but, IMO, none come close to matching up to Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon) but most that have been released in the US in recent years-Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, etc.-are of the straight historical drama with amazing acrobatics variety.

1.  This must be done.  The cruelty must be shared.  Exhinits in order of increasing angst.


2.  I think Sun Fei Fei's fans have it in for her.  She's very pretty, but they keep saying she's "as beautiful as" or "Just like" Crystal Liu.  I think part of this is because Crystal's untranslated name is Liu Li Fei.  The problem is that when you start saying someone looks like Crystal, people start expecting borderline inhuman beauty, making "very pretty" a touch of a let down...


3.  Not drama, but movies.  I really wish HK would go back to the Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon style of cinematography.  All the wuxia movies the last few years(from about House of Flying Daggers on, I think) have been rather blindingly beautiful, but I prefer the simpler look of CT/HD.

4.  Back to dramas...it seems all mainland cdramas are wuxia or other ancient series.  Anyone know of any good modern ones?  (Preferably where the leads live)

5.  I think someone in costuming for The Legend and The Hero had it in for Fan Bing Bing.  Otherwise, they never would have put this on her head:



As you can see from her expression, she agrees with me.  Thankfully, she doesn't wear it the whole time(or so other pictures I've gathered tell me)

*wanders off to bed*

A Bao

Watched the last Liao Zhai story, A Bao(mentions that it stars Rainie Yang as the heroine, as she knows several on her flist really like her)  A Bao is about a veterinarian, Zi Chu(take a guess how hard it is for me to NOT say "Zhi Shu" here, ISWAK fans...) who sees the daughter of a wealthy family, A Bao, and falls in love with her after seeing her put an arrogant suitor in his place, and later sees displays of her intelligence.  As "luck" would have it, said suitor injured her pet bird, and the bird is sent to him to get it's wing fixed.  Eventually they're able to meet at a fair when he helps her maid(who brought the bird to him) and become friends(clearly headed towards more).  The rejected suitor(who, incidentally, is too obnoxious for words and deserves a far worse fate than he received), though, is unwilling to accept defeat and has his nurse mother(nanny equivalent, I assume) who is a sorceress place a curse on A Bao so that every day, her memory is reset to the morning she met Zi Chu, and so she doesn't remember him, even the few times she's able to regain her memories, she loses them againthe next day.  So every day, Zi Chu "meets" her and they become friends, and then the next morning, she's forgotten about him.

Eventually, of course, he's able to break the spell(with help) but not only is her father not happy with the idea of his daughter marrying a poor veterinarian, but the suitor is still having rejection issues.

Liao Zhai in general

With one exception(Painted Skin) the 6 stories in this volume of Liao Zhai(there are 500 Liao Zhai stories total, I believe, but there are 2 more series-one with another 6, the other with 4-coming out soon) are romances with supernatural elements. The stories don't feel remotely repetitive or formulaic to me(though I can see that Chinese Paladin drew heavily on these stories at times) but fell into 2 categories: two young lovers meet and fall in love, and then supernatural forces intercede to separate them and they have to conquer them, or a woman of supernatural origins falls in love with a mortal man and she has to protect him from both earthly and supernatural forces, while he tries to protect her and her humanity, such as it is, and save her from other supernatural forces coming to punish her.  Not EXACTLY the stories, but close enough to give you a general feel.

But, basically, they're supernatural, "True love conquers all'(or at least, tries its best) romances with a supernatural twist.  Also?  They almost all manage to get through the piles of angst dumped on them and end HAPPILY.  Which was a pleasant surprise because I was thinking I'd get maybe one happy ending out of the lot.

Anyway, very good series, much recommended.

Liar Game

My download tried to beat me, but hardsubs saved me.  I ADORED the best yet. 

winterspel posted a picspam, including the...uhm...visual highlight of the episode *whistles* yesterday.  But really, as usual, the whole thing was squee worthy.  I had(as most did, I'm sure) guessed who the real X was, and about the teams, already, but it was handled well, as was Akiyama's exposing it.  Also?  How awesome was it when he was exposing X and doing his superior, gloating bit and when he got to the part about how they were all greedy and untrusting he stops and turns to Nao and his voice, face, body language, etc. all change and he goes "You don't count.  I already know you're a special case." then goes right back to sticking it to X(and the other contestants) once he was through taking care of the important stuff.  *flails*  (Why don't I have a flailing icon?  Sigh...)  And the S&M conversation, and his face at her naivette(and hers during the whole thing) too perfect.  *almost couldn't care less about plot at this point*

 

It seems that I alternatively adore and like quite a bit but find a touch too odd for me the Liao Zhai stories(we'll see if the last story, A Bao, continues the trend) This one, like Xiao Cui(what IS it was these stories and heroines with "Xiao in their names?  Someone who knows more about such things should fill me in to any significance there)  Sets up a story of incredible cuteess, piles on tons of angst(romantic and otherwise) then gives you a happy ending.  In this one, a man named Tao Wang San wants to marry a rich girl named Qian Qian.  Before he can do so, he has to live in a haunted house  whose ghosts are supposed to be especially cruel and mischevious.  The ghosts are actually female ghosts(and one young boy who really serves no purpose except to let us know that they don't hate ALL men at the beginning of the story) ho all seem to have been wronged in the past, and the fact that men tend to sneak thier lovers into the house for trysts and make false promises there doesn't help their opinion.

Tao Wang San, however, treats the ghosts like people to respect and protect and soon earns their friendship, even-if strained-that of their leader, Qiu Rong- and they enter into a comfortable if unconventional domestic life and the ghosts help in in his pursuit of Qian Qian, even though Tao Wang San ang one of the ghost, Xiao Zie, have fallen in love(though he, of course, is completely oblivious to it and the only one who seems to be completely aware of it is Qiu Rong)  However, one day, Qian Qian, convinced Tao Wang San is keeping a mistress there(really, she's not all that far off...) discovers an old painting of Qiu Rong and Qiu Rong remembers that the reason she was at the house(the other ghosts came to her as a response to her loneliness and stayed) was because she was murdered by Qian Qian's ancestor, and her search for answers unintentionally leads to Tao Wang San being framed for murder.  And there the angst comes in.  The ending itself, though I was expecting it much earlier, was a touch trite, but hey, it needed a happy ending(at certain times, sad endings are just flatout mean)

Also, there I was, happily watching ep 4 of Liar Game and it just STOPPED about 15 minutes in and the files just won't join right.  This happened to me in ep 1, also.  *sulks and frets*  And it was going so WELL...the S&M convo alone...

Also, I'm thinking about placing a dorama order in the next day or two, if not tonight.  I'm looking at but can't get all of:

The fourth Liao Zhai story is a little more...uhm...complicated than the others.

Essentially, two judges of the underworld, Judge Lu and Judge Situ enter into a bet...Situ believes that a bad man is a bad man regardless of his intelligence, while Lu believes that most men are only bad because they're stupid, and that if they were made smart, they'd be good.  So the two choose a stupid man-Zhu Erdan-to give the heart of a smart man to make him smarter and see what happens.  Erdan is petty and cowardly and more than a little superficial, but is really neither good nor bad.  Lu gives him the heart of a scholar named Hong who had just died.  Earlier that day, Hong had gotten into a fight with a pharmacist and aspiring scholar, Bai Yang, and when Hong's body is found without a heart(Lu was coming back to put Erdan's heart in him so no one would know), Bai Yang is accused of killing him and arrested, so Lu asks Erdan to use his newfound intellect to free Bai Yang.

Before he became smart, Erdan met and became besotted with Xiao Man, Bai Yang's fiancee, and after he became smart, he became obsessed with her.  When he sees her being attacked, he asks Judge Lu to save her(dude, instead of running away, if you want to save her, just grab one of those rocks lying around and bash him over the head, seriously) Lu tells him that she's being punished for sins in her past life but managed to preserve her virtue in this one, but died in the process.  So Erdan asks him if he will put her head on his own wife's body because he thinks his wife is ugly(not as pretty as Xiao Man, no, but personally, I think he's just too picky) Lu can see that he made a mistake, but hopes that Erdan can still be made good, so he does it.  Xiao Man learns what was done to her, and escapes hell show she can return to earth and tell Bai Yang what happened, and after earthly courts fail to bring him justice, Bai  Yang goes to hell himself to plead their case before the King of Hell.

If I thought It was odd seeing Hu Ge going from bratty but well meaning swordsman Xiao Yao in Chinese Paladin to uber sweetie in Xiao Qian, this was  even odder seeing Bryan Wang go from the kind, smart and loyal(and at the end angsty and hot and fake!evil so that he can save his friends by destroying the villains from the inside.  *points to icon*) Jin Yuan in Chinese Paladin to the petty and evil Erdan in Judge Lu.  I love the guy, but he made a concerningly good villain.  I liked Bai Yang and Xiao Man a lot, as well as Erdan's wife, Shao Rong, who was happy as she was and miserable once she gets Xiao Man's head-she loved Erdan and learned her only wanted beauty, and she certainly didn't want beauty at the cost of another's happiness.  Bai Yang is a little too honest and straight forward for his own good, but he stands by his beliefs and never backs down, and Xiao Man...well, true, she was a good girl and studied her "Damsel in Distress" handbook quite thoroughly, but if her man is going to be too busy grieving to come bring her justice in her afterlife, then she'll just have to take matters into her own incorporeal hands.

Only 2 Liao Zhai stories left...then I have to wait for Strange Tales of Liao Zhai 2 to air, get subbed and become available to me(Liao Zhai 2 has Eddie Peng and Esther Liu-aka, the secondary OTP in Chinese Paladin-in the same story.  *wants them to be OTP again.  And live.  As humans.*)

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Ok, I THOUGHT I adored Xiao Qian, but it's no comparison to this one.  Of the three Liao Zhai stories, this one is the first "True Love conquers all" story(Xiao Qian was "redemption through true love") It also has some similarities to one of my favorite fairy tales, "The Snow Queen"  One day, a man seeking shelter from a storm sees a wounded fox and saves it.  Later, he learns that the fox is a female fox-demon, and she promises him that if he ever needs anything, to call her and she will help him in repayment for his kindness.  Thirty years later, the man, Wang, is a government official and has a grown son named Yuan Feng, who he loves very much.  Yuan Feng is very kind and sweet and good hearted, and very strong and a good fighter, but he is also very, very simple. Wang calls the fox-demon and asks her if she can make Yuan Feng smart, or if not that, help him to gain a good wife who will take care of him and not hold his simplicity against him.  The fox-demon has a daughter named Xiao Cui who, while very good with magic, is very childlike and she worries that Xiao Cui will fall prey to one of her enemies, and she sends Xiao Cui to Wang, thinking it will solve both their problems.

Xiao Cui and Yuan Feng  are married, and soon fall in love with the love of innocent children who are obviously meant to grow up and make babies, and they are cute on levels that should not be legal.  However, Yuan Feng wishes he were smarter so that he could make his father proud and Xiao Cui knows that he wants this and that if Yuan Feng were smarter, it would make her in-laws-who welcomed her like their own daughter-happy.  She falls prey to the schemes of a snake demon who is an enemy of her mother, who says she can help Xiao Cui make Yuan Feng smarter.

It does make him smart, but it also makes him cold and cruel, and places him under the control of the snake-demon(it also changes him from adorably cute to absurdly hott, but that's irrelevant).  Xiao Cui, though, like any good heroine is far from content to lose him without a fight, and she sets out to break the spell and get him back.

I have mixed feelings about the second Liao Zhai story.  On the one hand, the plot of Painted Skin was interesting and, if I'm honest, the acting and production are better than in Xiao Qian(though, to be fair, it's easier to have higher production values on an understated-visually-ghoststory than on a magic ridden romantic fantasy...same portion of funding goes a lot further)  The problem?  The short version is "no matter how it ended, the monster would have won."

Here's the basic set up.

At the beginning of the story, Chu Hui, the wife of a scholar and painter, Wang An Xu, fears that her maidservant was has been with her since they were young, is in love with her husband.  Worried the girl will try to seduce him, she frames her for theft so that it will seem she has no choice but to cast her out.  She planned to "forgive" the girl and take her back so that the girl's gratitude would keep her away from Wang, but that night, the girl drowns herself in a well out of  despair.  We soon learn, though, that Chu Hui apparently had cause to be concerned, as it seems they either were having an affair, or were about to.  Shortly after that, Wang encounters a woman who greatly resembles his deceased lover, San Niang, who he murdered while courting Chu Hui because she had his baby and wanted him to take responsibility for it.  The two become lovers, and one night when he sneaks over to visit her, he sees her painting her face to hide terrible burn scars and realizes that she's the ghost of his deceased lover who has come back for revenge.  The only other main character is Yi Ming, a relative of Chu Hui's who falls in love with sa Niang.  I'd rather like him, if it weren't for the fact that he doesn't see anything odd about selling paper made out of the skin of women(I mean, where did he GET the stuff, anyway?)


All that said, 12 episodes and 2(of 6) stories in, I'm VERY much liking this series.

I also watched ep 3 of Liar Game last night(the subs coming out so much later than the first 2 weeks was so hard and such a good reminder of why I usually wait until doramas are finished to watch)  And, well...just EEEEE!!!

I mean, come on, yeah, the thing has huge plot holes(though, I rather like the simplicity at times and the fdact that it always lays things out for us...makes the clever moves stand out more)  but how beyond adorable is the OTP, anyway?  Like when the second Nao starts to look lost, Akiyama's OTP sense starts tingling heads right over.  Oh sure, he stops himself as soon as he realizes someone else will fill her in-and stays almost exactly a foot behind her in case he's needed(staking his claim much?)  And of course, his gesturing for her to come over when she's wandering around fretting herself to death.  And I love that, even though we already KNEW, he flat out told her that the only reason he tracked down the meeting place was so he could get her out before she could get into trouble(and I dare anyone to tell me they didn't "EEEE!!!" when he said "lets get out of this mess together."-rough quote, but it was "let's get out of this together.")  And that look on his face after she told her his plan and she bolted off to get 6 more members was so "I need to just put her on a leash so I can keep her out of trouble"(though, of course, the fangirls wish he'd keep her out of that kind of trouble other ways) and then when she actually got 6 guys and he was all "how did you do that?"(they can't resist the kitty any more than you can, that's how)  Though, really, he shouldn't let the poor thing fret so much...I keep worrying she'll literally fret herself to death.  Have I mentioned lately that he's mastered the art protective hovering without invading personal space.

Side note:  The "bad chick"?  She also played the smart chick in constrast to Erica Toda's lovable(but very different) ditz in GalCir.  Of course, they ended up snarky BFF there, and I really doubt that'll happen here.

And finally, when the guy asked if Akiyama was Nao's boyfriend(see? NO ONE has any doubts about why the man is there) that girl protested WAY too much for anyone to ever believe her...if he'd been there, he would have been rolling his eyes and wondering why he didn't just cart her out of there at the start.

*scampers off to bed because she has to go to work in the morning*

*promises to try not to spam LJ so much tomorrow...err...later today*

Strange Tales of Liao Zhai, or Liao Zhai Zhi Yi , is a 36 episode cdrama about 6(6 episodes each) of 500 supernatural stories in a work by the same name.  The first of the 6 stories here is Xiao Qian.

In ancient China, a travelling medicine man  named Cai Chen makes a promise to children in a mountain village that he will find their teacher for them, who had left to earn money for the village and ask him to return.  Along the way he meets a beautiful woman named Xiao Qian, who is really a fox demon who uses men's lust and greed to lure them in and kill them.  Cai Chen, however, is very innocent and almost absurdly selfless, and when all his requests and dreams are for others, her own heart is awakened and she falls in love with him.  At the same time, a blind priest who was once married to a demon(and left her when he learned what she was) saves Cai Chen from several demons he meets along the way and sets out to save him from Xiao Qian, too.  However, Cai Chen and Xiao Qian are able to convince of their love, and that she can be good, and he resolves to help him.  Of course, we can't have a supernatural love story without a villain, and as punishment for failing to bring her souls, Xiao Qian's master(who is also the priest's former wife) married her to another demon, and Cai Chen and the priest set out to save her.

I liked this story quite a bit.  I like Hu Ge as Xiao Yao in Chinese Paladin, but didn't get the big deal about him there.  But here I do...Cai Chen is so different from Xiao Yao that I almost can't believe it's the same actor.  He's hopelessly naive, but very kind and good hearted, and brave without being foolhardy.  Xiao Qian, though evil at first, is a good foil for him, and also very likable.  The priest and his former wife are also very interesting, as is their story.

Visually, it reminds me a lot of Chinese Paladin(though not as bright) which really isn't surprising...it came out at about the same time, and several cast members are in it.  The visuals are stunning, and the special effects, while slightly campy at times, are very good for fantasy TV.

And yes, because it's a period cdrama, there is angstangstangst(though understated and not drowning) and death and doomed love and sidestories.

I don't know my opinion of the series as a whole yet, as each story has a completely different plot and cast, but I give this story a rec.