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Crouching Sensibility Hidden Meaning

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Front-Ranger:
I loved the Monkey King story too, and wrote a screenplay of it when I was in college. I fantacized about doing an animated version, but that was before PIXAR et al. Monkey King would be better than Lion King, hands down. I'm not familiar with the Kuan Yin story, I thought Kuan Yin was the boddisattva of compassion, who gave up nirvana to help other people reach it. Do I have my personages all mixed up??

JennyC:
The Monkey King (a.k.a The Journey to the West (西游记)) has been considered one of the Four Great Classical Chinese Novels.  I actually never thought this one as a typical Wuxia novel, though it does have a lot of martial art elements in it.  There are animated versions of The Monkey King story done by Chinese and Japanese (I think).  Of course, they are no PIXAR quality.

As to the Kuan Yin story, I don't know which Wuxia novel may have Kuan Yin as the main character as Lee pointed out that "Kuan Yin was the boddisattva of compassion".  Kuan Yin appeared frequently in The Monkey King story though.

"Great Judge Bao" yeah, there are martial art TV series based on that.  And I have no idea on "a pauper with jade", guess that's where the translation really made a difference. :)

If you are seriously interested in Wuxia novel, you have to check out the works by Jinyong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinyong.  His novels are the classic among classic.  My personal favorites are "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils", "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer", and "The Deer and the Cauldron" (based on wikipedia translation)

starboardlight:
honestly, I would guess most of what I read were pulp novels. serials that people wrote more for money than for literary ambitions. Also as a child I read them just because they were fun and different. I really don't know a whole lot about wuxia genre, or what would qualify a novel as fitting into that genre. Like I said I read them long long ago as a child. I'd love to find English translations of the one you mentioned Jenny. I'll look them up.

The story about Kuan Yin, that I remember was about her life before ascending to become boddisattva. She was a beautiful woman except for the fact that there was a large birthmark that covered half of her face. The stories tells of her journey toward achieving compassion, through love and heartbreaks, war and peace, etc.

The pauper with a jade staff (again can't remember the title) was a story about a young orphan who was raised by a clan of beggars. They cultivated their own style of martial arts using canes, staves, and the tools of beggars. He eventually takes his martial art skills to the elite level, when he found a jade staff and a hidden manual. It was very popular in Thailand in the late 70's.

isabelle:
Hi Ray! Yeah, when I asked you if you'd seen this film, I didn't want to influence your judgement so I didn't say what I thought of it, but that IS what I thought: "Did I miss something?". This must be a case of culture shock, but I didn't dig it either, and just couldn't help laughing at those characters flying about! Sorry JennyC and Nipith  :-\

nakymaton:
I'm not Asian, and I didn't know anything about wuxia... and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is one of my five favorite movies ever. I think it's just absolutely beautiful: the landscapes, the score, the choreography, the acting, the story. It was the first movie that I left feeling like I absolutely had to see it again.

And nobody directs introverted characters like Ang Lee does.

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