douqi

 This is the second of two planned entries on action scenes as vehicles for character moments in wuxia, and particularly in Jin Yong's oeuvre. The first, which discusses a major fight scene in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (天龙八部), can be found here. This post will discuss a key action scene from The Smiling Proud Wanderer (笑傲江湖).

( spoilers for The Smiling Proud Wanderer )

Jin Yong has, of course, written a number of romantic sword-based action scenes, among them Yang Guo (杨过) and Xiaolongnu (小龙女) fighting side-by-side using different but perfectly complementary techniques in Return of the Condor Heroes (神雕侠侣), and Zhao Min (赵敏) pulling three suicidal moves in a row in order to save Zhang Wuji's (张无忌) life in The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre (倚天屠龙记). But for my money, this is his best swordfighting-as-romance scene to end all swordfighting-as-romance scenes.

In chronological order:

The Book and the Sword: Huoqingtong and Li Yuanzhi HUOQINGTONG AND LI YUANZHI. Like come ON, the early chapters of the book even have a disguised-as-a-man Li Yuanzhi flirting shamelessly with Huoqingtong, in a rush of power that comes with temporarily being perceived as a man. Also gets them away from their deeply mediocre love interest (Huoqingtong) and husband (Li Yuanzhi).

The Sword Stained with Royal Blood: Wen Qingqing and He Tieshou WEN QINGQING AND HE TIESHOU. Again, come ON, He Tieshou is canonically in love with Wen Qingqing for the chapters where she thinks Wen Qingqing is a man. No shade on our male lead Yuan Chengzhi, but he's frankly BORING and He Tieshou is the queen of sexy banter.

The Legend of the Condor Heroes: Very slim pickings here, in part because I do think Huang Rong and Guo Jing work for each other and in part because the female characters spend very little time together. You could maybe do Huang Rong and Mu Nianci, but that feels too much like pairing the two main female characters up just because they happen to be the main female characters. 

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain: There's literally only one alive woman with any substantial role in this, so yeah.

(Edited to add: just after posting, I remembered that there IS another young woman, the sweet-seeming-but-secretly-scheming Tian Qingwen, in this story, but the arc Jin Yong gave her was so horrific that I've blotted it from my memory. On that basis, I suppose you could ship her with actually-sweet female lead Miao Ruolan in an opposites-attract/redemptive relationship sort of way, but that would require a ton of extra-textual imaginative work)

The Return of the Condor Heroes: Controversially, I've never felt that Xiaolongnu and Yang Guo's supposed epic romance was particularly well-developed. Jin Yong just spends too little time on that emotional arc. It's just bam! they're master-disciple and bam! they're in love. Anyway this fic has convinced me that Xiaolongnu would be better off with her shijie and (one-sided) martial rival Li Mochou. Also prevents Li Mochou's entire storyline from being 'she became a badass villain because she was Scorned by a Man'.

The Young Flying Fox: A tough one. Cheng Lingsu has occasional antagonistic chemistry with her romantic rival Yuan Zhiyi, but does Yuan Zhiyi deserve Cheng Lingsu? No she does not, and her motivations and the premise of her character make completely no sense. I think I fundamentally ship Cheng Lingsu with being alive.

White Horse Neighs in the Western Wind: Look, it's got to be Li Wenxiu and A-Man. There's even a bit where Li Wenxiu, disguised as a man, tries to get A-Man away from a terrible captor by pretending she wants A-Man as a slave (though the racial implications of that... yeah).

Blade-Dance of the Two Lovers: I give up, I still can't remember what happens in this.   

The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre: Ehhhhhh I guess Zhao Min and Zhou Zhiruo, romantic rivals, have reasonable enough antagonistic chemistry that you could build a ship on that? I know there's been fic written about that. I don't really care all that much about them, male lead Zhang Wuji, or this novel though.

A Deadly Secret: None of the women spend enough time with each other to be remotely shippable, and tbh Shui Sheng and Di Yun work pretty well together as two utterly broken people finding a tiny measure of healing with each other.

Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils: For Reasons, it is IMPOSSIBLE to ship most of the younger female characters together in good conscience, no matter how much aloof-jiejie-x-cute-cinnamon-roll-meimei chemistry you think Mu Wanqing and Zhong Ling have. Still I think A-Zhu and A-Bi (to whom the Reasons do not apply) would be cute: they're basically introduced as a pair, and they live and work together and know each other well. Also gets A-Bi away from her terrible unrequited love interest. A-Zhu and her canonical fiance can stay friends instead (which works better anyway since said fiance is all but stated to be aroace).

Ode to Gallantry: Too much of a mess for me to take seriously even for crack shipping purposes. Also I don't think the two main female characters exchange more than a couple of sentences with each other.

The Smiling, Proud Wanderer: Ren Yingying intimidates me too much for me to suggest pairing her up with anyone else but the male lead, whom she's obviously deeply in love with. I could JUST about see pairing her up with Lan Fenghuang in a lady/handmaiden-but-with-poisons sort of way, but that would require a LOT of extra-textual imagination.

The Deer and the Cauldron: Can I ship the wives (except maybe Princess Jianning) with each other as one big happy poly family? And have them cut out Wei Xiaobao completely?

Sword of the Yue Maiden: A-Qing and Xi Shi (yes that Xi Shi) A-QING AND XI SHI. I have a post-canon revisionist fic for this on the back burner of my mind; someday I may even write it.

We all know master = shifu (师父). We also know that it's gender-neutral despite having the character for 'father' (父) very prominently in it.

What you call your master's sect-siblings is also simple enough. If senior to your shifu, they're your shibo (师伯), teacher-uncle, or to be more precise, teacher-father's-elder-brother. If junior to your shifu, they're your shishu (师叔), teacher-father's-younger-brother. Again, these terms, despite appearing strongly gendered, are gender-neutral, and apply equally to your master's male and female (and, indeed, non-binary/genderfluid) sect-siblings. In Return of the Condor Heroes, for instance, sect-sisters Li Mochou and Xialongnu's disciples refer to them respectively as 'shibo' and 'shishu', and the same is true of the disciples of Hengshan sect-sisters Dingxian, Dingjing and Dingyi in The Smiling Proud Wanderer. There are occasional heretical suggestions that one's master's sect-sisters should be addressed as shigu (师姑), teacher-aunt or literally teacher-father's-sister, but these can be safely ignored.

One's master's wife is one's shimu (师母) or shiniang (师娘), teacher-mother. Again, this is clear, and I see no reason why it shouldn't apply regardless of one's master's own gender. If one's master happens to be a woman, she's still one's shifu, and if she happens to be married to another woman, that's one's shimu or shiniang.

Where it starts to get tricky is how one addresses one's shifu's husband. Annoyingly, Jin Yong provides zero guidance on that score (at least, to my fallible memory), because his sufficiently senior women tend to either (1) be nuns (2) not take disciples, in part because they're busy looking after their children or their husbands' disciples or (3) in one notable and highly scandalous instance, marry their own disciple. I have occasionally seen shigong (师公) suggested, but am unsure of its canonical value. A very quick search suggests that it may be used for master's master as well (and wouldn't that confusion be delightful), and also frankly it just sounds a bit rude. Probably the most acceptable suggestion I've seen so far is 师丈, but interestingly that's teacher-husband not teacher-(kinship term).

Even tricker? What does one call one's master's sect-sibling's husband? If we're talking wives, shibomu (师伯母) and shishen (师婶), respectively teacher-father's-elder-brother's-wife and teacher-father's-younger-brother's-wife makes about as much sense as anything else. But the traditional terms are less intuitive where husbands are concerned. Rifling through the 'kinship terms for same-sex couples' chart I saw a while back, it looks as though the best options are shibozhang (师伯丈) and shishuzhang (师叔丈) — again, teacher-elder/younger-brother's husband rather than teacher-(kinship term).

(Note: I tried to make this accurate, and I think there are no horrible errors, but I am extremely bad with paternal kinship terms in Mandarin because our family uses Hokkien/Southern Min terms for that side of the family)

ETA: Posting the 'kinship terms for same-sex couples' chart below as kolleh requested it.