Does Not Obey the Laws of Physics

So this blathering brought on by thinking too much about Wuxia tropes and feeling a bit triggered by one guy yapping on Bilibili.

Context: I think there's not an insubstantial amount of people who think of the classic Water Margins (《水浒传》) as an Ur-Wuxia, or proto-Wuxia. And unsurprisingly, people who consider Water Margins part of the Wuxia genre tend to also admit that they just ignore the second half of the novel...for some reason.

And I have problems with this.

Any analysis of Water Margins that ignores half of the story and tries to focus only on the first half is erroneous. I mean, yes, you can argue that the author just gave up for the second half, but it doesn't change the fact that the second half is still canon and thus still need to be taken into account when critically examining the themes of the novel. Just as you can't really talk about Lord of the Ring themes by ignoring Return of the King, you can't talk about Water Margins by ignoring the second half where the outlaws reintegrate back to civil society.

In fact, I would argue that the reason Water Margins became a classic is actually because of the second half of the novel. For context, the first half of Water Margins depicts people from all walks of life being forced into becoming outlaws in Liangshan. Halfway through the book, after gathering all 108 characters to form a band of outlaw brotherhood, the group surrenders to the government and become re-incorporated into society. Yet, the government betrays the group by sending them off to die on absolutely hopeless military campaigns, and the ones who manage to survive are assassinated, with only a few who ran off to become outlaws again managing to survive the purge. This novel is not about celebrating the heroism of these fictional characters. Water Margins is ultimately a tragedy about the suffering of regular people under the imperial rule.

The contrast between the relative freedom and self-determination of outlaw life with the ruthless exploitation of government rule is what highlights the injustice of imperial politics. To claim that the 108 characters are "heroic" is deliberately ignoring that a lot of said characters are very regular people. They're a mix of thieves, bandits, bullies, delinquents, and a handful of upstanding members of society who nonetheless have their own flaws and problems. I mean, for fuck's sake, the tactician is named 吴用 (homophone for "useless"). This is not a coincidence! The fact that his miscalculations fucks over the resistance multiple times is also not an accident. The author is deliberately making these characters unheroic because they are just normal people shoved into a terrible situation. At its heart, Water Margins is about the tragedy of humans who want to make a difference but can't overcome their basic human foibles.

Unlike Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which pits practically god-like heroes against each other in a struggle to grab fate by the horns and re-direct the political structure toward their own vision of the future, Water Margins is very much about how helpless individuals are in the face of the all encompassing and organized government bureaucracy that is focused on maintaining the political control of the emperor over the country. Three Kingdoms tells the story from the perspective of the ruling class. Water Margins tells it from the perspective of the ruled. (I bring up Three Kingdoms because the author of Three Kingdoms was the student of the author of Water Margins and was involved somewhat in editing and re-publishing the later editions of Water Margins. And yes, there are multiple editions of Water Margins with changes made to some plot details and characterizations.)

So using a Three Kingdoms mentality, one that is concerned with heroes and rulers and statecraft, to understand Water Margins is fundamentally flawed. Water Margins is not celebrating heroes. It's sympathetic to the tragedy of the peasants. And by experiencing that tragedy, we might come to the conclusion that maybe no one, not even actual gods who descended from heaven and reincarnated into humans, can overcome the very human problems that causes social strife. Water Margins is deeply cynical and depressing, it doesn't really offer an answer to how to fix the problem, because the author probably doesn't have one. The influence of Buddhist thought is very obvious given the only solution the novel has to the vagaries of human society is...well, become a star in the sky. There might be brief flashes of momentary justice (as depicted in the first half of the the novel), but those flashes will ultimately be subsumed by the inherent unfairness of the social order. Humans are social creatures, but we will always prioritize ensuring our personal interest first and foremost.

As you can see, this theme is in direct contrast with the typical Wuxia ethos, where a hero is someone who uses their position of strength to protect those who are weak and by doing so are able to change the course of society's trajectory to one that is more beneficial and more just. If anything, Wuxia is a power fantasy, one in which the individual is able to overcome the inherent flaws of human nature. It's a very individualistic perspective of the world, one in which the individual can make meaningful changes. In addition, Wuxia is ultimately a pro-establishment genre. Because unlike Water Margins, where a rebellion is crushed by the uncaring state and all these flesh and blood characters are sent into a meat grinder to benefit the rule of an uncaring emperor, the Wuxia genre's hero actually makes a difference and is able to use their heroism to change how the people in government use their power, sometimes going so far as to being able to influence the emperor's ethics. Heroes, with their bravery and sacrifice, are able to inspire the ruling class to be better; and if they fail, they will simply get rid of the bad apples and put the good apples in charge.

Notice in Wuxia the hero never leads a rebellion, establish a new state system, and govern with egalitarian rule that protects the well-being of the most marginalized groups. The hero never seizes political power for themselves, because governance is not in their purview. They merely exist to be a good moral influence on the people with power. There is no smashing of the pre-existing power structure to establish more systemic equity. (This is also why I find Wuxia to be a very immature and escapist genre. Which is fine, we need brainless escapism to protect our mental health, but Wuxia as a genre is not equipped to deal with meaningful social commentary.)

In many ways, Wuxia and Superhero stories share a lot of similarities. They are all products of people who have extreme discontent with the powers that be, but aren't able to really see how the system itself is the source of the injustice and would rather blame the problem on bad people rather than a bad system.

Before you get on my case about how "racism" in modern usage refers to systemic bias by institutions towards individuals based on their membership in a particular race or ethnicity, I get it. That doesn't mean the word "racist" isn't still completely inadequate when talking about complicated ethnic and tribal tensions, nor the fact that the word stems from the concept of "race", which still retains the idea that people's sociological categorization can be justified using biological principles.

Ergo, "racism" still, in most people's minds and in most online discourse, refers to the "biological basis" of a claim to a certain in-group. And that concept is completely inadequate when talking about ethnic tensions.

Now I'm no expert on the subject, all I've got is my lived in experience, so I'm going to focus on talking about my personal experience of how Americans are completely incapable of understanding how minority works outside of their very race-conscious idea of People of Color. Specifically, I'm going to talk about Chinese-Americans and their inability to understand that "Chinese" is NOT AN ETHNICITY.

Chinese (中國人) is a very modern concept that sprouted up after the concept of nationalism: aka the Nation-State. Prior to the nation-state, there were no "Chinese" persons. Because Chinese refers to "people who belong to the nation-state of China". And the nation-state consists of, at the earliest conception, FIVE major ethnicities:滿(mǎn)、漢(hàn)、蒙(měng)、回(huí)、藏(zàng).

(I will use "Han" instead of 漢 for easier typing in the following texts.)

• Note the first: During conception, the first in on the list is a "minority" ethnicity (滿), because THEY WERE THE RULING CLASS, despite the Han being the ethnic majority.

• Note the second: 回 is a sinonized Muslim ethnic minority. Their physical features and even names are indistinguishable from their Han neighbors. Of course sinonization is a spectrum (just like gender!), but the majority of 回 people I've met IRL are basically visually indistinguishable from Han and do not practice the Islamic religion.

What I'm trying to get at is two points:

1. Not all minorities in China were "oppressed". In fact, China had two full dynasties of oppression by minorities of the majority (元、清).

2. You can't visually tell who is an ethnic minority. There's been too much genetic mixing through out history to draw the line between the majority and minority via bloodline "purity" genetics stuff. Even names aren't always recognizably different.

All of this is complicated by this political fact: In China (PRC), if you do not prove your parents are of a minority ethnicity, you are automatically registered as Han majority. In other words, you literally need to go through extra steps to be recognized as an ethnic minority.

To put it another way: Han majority IS A BIG MISHMASH OF "Not-Minority". THERE IS NO HAN PURITY.

So what is culturally "Han" is basically "the stuff in the middle kingdom that is not an identifier of minority status". Han is not and was never a delineated ethnicity.

( Quick tangent on the origin of the Han as an ethnicity )

TL;DR - There is no genetic basis for Han ethnicity. There isn't even a very clear historical cultural basis for the Han ethnicity, which has been and still is in constant flux.

So, given that very complicated mess of a cultural identity, "Chinese" is, as far as modern conceptualization goes, a reference to citizenship. Aka, do you have legal residence in the People's Republic of China or the Republic of China territories (because the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists left a giant gaping problem for the modern "Chinese" identity to wrangle with). Granted in the Republic of China, there is a movement to remove China and replace the political entity with Taiwan, so like...whatever, I'll leave that complicated issue to the people in the RoC to figure out.

Meanwhile, in the PRC, which is what people mean when saying "China", what it means to be Chinese (again, a legal citizen of the political entity known as China) on a cultural level is...uh...being fought over. However, continuing the grand tradition of "we have no fucking clue who is part of our in-group so communication is the main standard", the ill-defined social consensus of "being Chinese" (again, here the "Chinese" refers to "person belonging to the political entity known as China" aka 中國人, not Han ethnic majority aka 漢人) is:

• Can read and write Chinese (中文). (Note: Written Chinese is grammatically the same no matter the spoken dialect.)

• Can speak a dialect of Chinese (中國話). There's like over 200+ of these dialects. The official one is Mandarin, but like...there are definitely grandmas who can't speak Mandarin.

Notice that in the Chinese language, the spoken and written language are conceptually different things. While the written form is unified (more or less), the spoken one is not.

And...that's pretty much it. Any other standard meant to exclude minority ethnic groups will inevitably end up excluding some part of the Han majority due to the fact that the Han majority DON'T HAVE HOMOGENEITY.

So.

With all of that said.

When a Chinese-American complains that their Chinese relatives in PRC don't consider them "real Chinese" because they "can't speak or write Chinese" and that's being "racist"...

...all I've got is STFU. Chinese is not an ethnicity. And if you don't have basic communication skills in the Chinese language, then you need to get out of the discussion of what it means to be Chinese. You are an American. Keep your nose out of other people's domestic problems.

Edit to add:

( More rambling about Chinese written vs spoken and the writing system versus the language and cultural identification with language as a basis )

Edit 2: Following up on the language thing, I felt it's important to acknowledge that there is some attempt to try to equate "central plains" (中原) with China (中國). This is deeply xenophobic, as it excludes not only the officially recognized minorities from their historical influence on Chinese culture in modern PRC, it also stems from a desire to "purify" what is considered "Chinese".

Even before the conception of the nation-state, the political entity known as China has always been a multi-ethnic state. In the modern nation-state conception of the political entity know as China, both RoC and PRC have been founded on the recognition of ethnic minorities as legitimate members of the nation with a political claim to the concept of "Chinese".

Chinese is not about being Han. Chinese is not about being of 華夏 descent. Chinese, in the modern nation-state concept, is about being a citizen of the nation known as China. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise, STFU. (And yes, writing this might also get me into political trouble. It's why I use VPN.)

So I was having a discussion with a friend on the traits that makes a story and characters shippable (which started as me complaining that my obsession with HSR is actually just a desperate want for some low brow period drama that has lots of political machinations and shippable hot men), then, long story short, we got to talking about Water Margins (水浒), and then got onto the subject of 卢俊义/燕青.

And then I was like: OMFG 燕青=彦卿!
(The two names are homophones.)

OK, that's the main gist, so let me explain 卢俊义/燕青 and how Water Margins probably infected an entire country of BL shippers with a specific BL kink:

( Ming Dynasty Queer Baiting )

So...kinks. Obviously there's master/servant, older man/younger boy, guardian/ward, teacher/student, possessiveness, literally marking his person, crying...so much crying...

But also, a very specific thing that I've noticed in HSR fandom is the desire for multiple social identities all mixed up into one love interest (this is a common thing that happens to Jing Yuan). I was actually a bit confused why that was such a common trope until last night and was like "Right...that ship."

But man, 彦卿 is such a fucking downgrade from 燕青.

Before I get started, I'm just gonna say Kamila Valieva is absolutely breathtaking. I'm out of words to describe how beautiful and enjoyable her routines are and her ability to withstand pressure and recover from errors are beyond imagination. Amazing strength, flexibility, and mental fortitude. This girl has completely won over Chinese social media and was crowned the new queen Czarina. If you haven't seen her routine yet, go watch it on your local Olympic broadcast network now. You will not regret it.

In contrast, we have the Chinese figure skater who fell on her butt in both her short program and freestyle program. It was terrible. And then she broke down in the middle of her routine, which only speaks to her fragile mental state.

So predictably, Chinese social media lost all sense of scale.

And then CNN fucked things up even further by completely misrepresenting the nature of the grievances.

( Things cannot possibly get worse than this, right? )

And that's where we're at. On top of this dumpster fire, I saw a netizen who decided to make a video essay to chew out Zhu. Except, said video essayist didn't even have the confidence to show her own face without a beautifying filter slapped over it. Anyone who doesn't have the confidence to show their face without digitally enhancing their features do not deserve to criticize another person (athlete or otherwise) for their perceived lack of metal fortitude. Kindly fuck off.

An Asian American who wasn't impressed by Shang-Chi.

(〒▽〒)

For nearly two weeks, I was sitting around wondering if I and one other reddit user were the only ones who saw Shang-Chi for what it was: a repackaging of Asian (specifically Chinese) stereotypes that is more palatable to White people without being blatantly racist. I believe the best description was Shang-Chi strikes [him] as an 'improved congee', aka an Asian thing that's been Westernized to appeal to xenophobic Americans.

And lo!

If “Shang-Chi” breaks any ground, though, it won’t be for the quality and nuance of how it represents Asians or Asian Americans, but for the simple fact of that representation. The movie is an Orientalist fantasia that presents the same old tropes in slightly updated, somewhat self-aware, very expensive packaging. — Washington Post

I was told by a friend to be patient, as the negative reviews will come as more people watch the movie and make their voices heard, but I still couldn't help but feel like I was in some topsy-turvey world where the stereotypes were being heralded as revolutionary, progressive, and limit-breaking. Glad to see that I've got at least one more person in my corner.

Not gonna lie, it feels good to see my perspective validated in a major newspaper.

Also, very glad to see Morris correctly identified as 帝江 (dijiang) instead of 混沌 (hundun), because Americans are fucking confused. 混沌 has a face, it has ears that can't hear and eyes that don't see. Also, it has four legs instead of six. Gah. It was bothering me so much that people kept calling Morris a 混沌, because it's the wrong creature FFS!

/rant

Also, word to the following:

It’s not enough for me. I’m sorry. I’m not grateful for Shang Chi, because I’m not grateful for scraps from the table anymore.

I want a seat at the table.

I want the table.

I wish more Asian Americans aren't so quick to swallow Hollywood BS and are willing to demand more. They ought to demand more. America doesn't deserve a pat on the back for giving away table scraps. You don't get to feel progressive just because you cast actors of Chinese descent as Chinese characters in a movie. That's not enough.