daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
This evening Central Texas was under a Tornado Watch, which became a Tornado Warning. Indeed, several tornadoes touched down, the nearest several miles away. We were fortunate this time as we only experienced heavy rains, but I feel badly for those whose homes were damaged or destroyed. At least there was no loss of life…
This morning a nice sunrise was casting a soft light over Sophie, and then in the evening, the sun gave the sky a colorful glow as it moved towards Asia.
I picked up a new book from the library and set it down on my desk. Within seconds, Yuzu was testing it out as a perch. Cats!
I’ve been enjoying the classic series Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong so much. I just started book four, A Heart Divided, which is the final book of the translated series. The story is so much fun!
The story is Wuxia, or ancient martial-arts heroes genre. Do you know the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? That is a good example of Wuxia.
When I started the first book, A Hero Born, I was a bit overwhelmed by the list of characters at the beginning. What was I getting myself into? But soon, I was caught up in the story, and the character list came in handy to refresh my memory.
I was very curious as to how they could describe the fast-paced action of the wuxia movies, but Jin Yong (and the book translators) do an amazing job of imaginatively describing and naming the different moves and it’s incredibly fun to follow along. I love the heroes, and love to hate the villains. My favorite character is Cyclone Mei, who is featured in the illustration above. She’s one of the villains, but… it’s complicated! 😀
I read the popular She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan, but didn’t enjoy the story or characters at all. The Legends of the Condor Heroes is way more my type of book.
There’s a Chinese television series from 2017 that I will watch after I finish the books. Besides spoilers, I don’t want my imagined versions of the characters to be influenced by the actors in the drama. I prefer to look to the illustrations (which are sparse) from the book.
For more info, you can read this article from Alan Yu at NPR about Jin Yong and his amazing series.
Okay, back to A Heart Divided!
This evening I watched the Chinese animated films White Snake 白蛇：缘起 and Green Snake 青蛇 back-to-back. I thought the animation in both was great, but enjoyed White Snake much more than the sequel.
The setting of White Snake’s ancient China was more appealing to me than that of Green Snake’s dystopian mish-mash city. White Snake was filled with stunningly beautiful scenes, whereas Green Snake was filled with non-stop action, which was hard to take for two hours.
I believe there will be a third movie in the series, but it looks like it’s going to jump a thousand years into the future… oh well.
As far as the plot of both movies, they were nothing special. I think the main draw for me is the beauty of the animation (where the first film really shined). But I am still hoping for a more interesting plot to tie up the series.
