Vanity Fair and City I (10)

Be loyal to your country, your people, your brothers and your lovers; defend them when they are offended; uphold the justice, help the weak, protect the poor; fight with the power and the rotten --- Those are eternal spirits between the lines of Louis Cha’s words & writing.

These days martial arts novels are not so popular, however, compared to other novels, they still possess something that can really move your heart.

When coming to martial arts novels, we always think of martial arts (or Chinese Gongfu). Yes, Gongfu is very important in martial arts novels. You can’t call a novel martial arts novel if there isn’t any description about Gongfu. However, we always miss the more important point. It is this point that makes martial arts novels evergreen.

In Chinese we call martial arts novels “Wu Xia novels”. “Wu” means martial arts while “Xia” means those eternal spirits. “martial arts novels” is not a perfect translation to “Wu Xia novels”, as it misses that more important point, just as many audiences and readers miss it…

Characters created by Louis Cha are not perfect heroes. They master the quintessence of certain Gongfu; they have all kinds of flaws; however, they have something in common, which is: be loyal to their country, their people, their brothers and their lovers; defend what they love; uphold the justice, help the weak, protect the poor; fight with the power and the rotten…

Back to reality…

Juliet was robbed by a robber when she walked to her office. Then a Hero appeared. That Hero fought with the robber and got Juliet’s things back. Juliet was so touched that she nearly cried when the Hero said it was nothing…

Then they became friends…then boyfriend and girlfriend…just like novel or movie.

However, only time can tell whether a person is a cruel wolf or a kind sheep. Later, that Hero beat Juliet. Juliet couldn’t believe it. Me either. I don’t know why a hero would turn into a wolf.

Juliet’s ex-boyfriend came. He always appeared when Juliet needed support. Juliet broke up with him because he didn’t want Juliet to work so hard and insisted that she should quit the job to stay at home, to enjoy, to relax, to be a vase. However, Juliet wanted to be an “independent female” so finally she left him…

Now things seemed to be a little ridiculous. The Hero was actually a wolf wearing a mask of sheep. The ex-boyfriend came to protect her when she needed. She was “independent” enough. Her ex-boyfriend begged her to be his girlfriend again. Juliet frowned to me and asked me what to do.

Funny. I said: “Be his girlfriend. He is good to you.”

“But how can I do that? If I promise to be his girlfriend again after this horrible thing, that can only demonstrate one thing, that is, I am weak and I need his protection. Oh then I will lose my self-esteem!”

“Don’t be silly.” I said. “You Are weak. You need him. If he is really good to you, it is ok to lose self-esteem.”

Then Juliet became the girlfriend of her ex-boyfriend. A happy ending.

Maybe only after we have experienced something can we distinguish true from false, good from bad and real heroes from wolves wearing the mask of sheep…