Wuxia - The Chinese Hero Tales

[eni]

A absolute unique form of Chinese folklore and media sure is the wuxia genre, commonly known from movies like House of the Flying Dagger or Hero. We all know the scenes of martial artists doing nearly impossible stunts, e.g. flying at each other or running up walls.

Read here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia

A very typical manhua that contains wuxia elements is Storm Riders, which I very much recommend to everyone. It also has a cool movie and TV series adaption. Do you know others? Any favorites you have?

What do you think of Western media importing this genre? The Matrix trilogy is the best known example for using wuxia in a modern, westernized (Hollywood) context.

And maybe a bit unrelated, but I was told that parkour, the sports, kinda includes the dream of making wuxia possible. Another term for parkour sportsmen is "urban ninja". When I was little, the wuxia movies seemed less impossible to me than today, to be honest. I didn't see the big deal on running up a house wall to fight flying on the roof

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