What is jianghu? Jiang is the name of a long river, roaring waves, impressive length: Like Changjiang, also known as the Yangtze. And hu? Hu is lake, a large one, usually, like Xihu, or West Lake. And Jiangnan? Jiangnan is South of the River Yangtze, a land with lakes, blossoms, rain, and gardens. In the north are the plains, plateaus, and history. The historical seat of Cathay´s power, Cathay´s origin, Cathay´s mythology.
So Cathay is divided into two, a north and a south, a history and a development, a plains and a gardens, a Wilhelmina Wang´s father, Wang Xiaolong´s land, and her mother Tang Lili´s soft rivulets.
The North is Tai Mountain, Confucius, and dusty, opulent Chang´an. It is ancient, burnt, rebuilt, re-remembered dancing women of Epang Palace. It is the pipa-playing bodhisatvas of desert caves and the snow-covered mountains of Changbai, the Wall that keeps out — when it can — the even northern-er barbarians. It is where the Cathayans started, rose out of the wind-blown-dust-sedimented plateau, the yellow soil that is always under danger of flooding from the yellow river, but is always rebuilt upon, regrown upon, relived upon, unceasing, an eternal line.
In the lands around Xianyang, are the remnants of old bones of castles, Cathayan castles, palaces, pleasure gardens and courtyards and graves. The tombs that capture some of the luxury, the capabilities, the buried treasure of a Cathayan past. By one of these hills is an old, old palace, where one of the old, old kings (long before Qin Shihuang emperor united all Cathay) had his seat. And there the emissaries used to have to get off their horses, high or low, and walk the last three li on foot (three li was about one-and-a-half kilometers, and the corpulent, the old, the young, the infirm, all had to proceed on foot, along a line of imposing statuary, of ancient, imaginary, and all-too-real giants in stone).
The South, ah, the South. The sound of it, even, is beauty and softness, is poetry and song, is the lilt of the southern dialects and the color of its women´s silks. The South is fruit trees and merchants, of trade and operas, of villages built up almost onto rivers the way Venice and Hamburg are, were, and the boats and ships that carried the wares far and far back.
What is jianghu? Jianghu is that imaginary now, but real then, that literary now, but flesh-and-blood then place, that society, that concept, of knights errant but Cathayan, of damsels distressed but possessing extraordinary martial arts, of ability not based on magic but based on years of study and training, that particularly Cathayan way of imagining a high fantasy world, of bringing the glorious past to within ink-printed page, and into the imagination. Unlike the high fantasies of the occident, there are no wizards or witches, no magic and spells, no sword with extraordinary powers outside what an artisan has given through his sweat and skill. There are no elves no trolls, no fairies no wands, no hero who has greatness thrust upon him because of a magical gift or weapon. In a way, there is no room for dreaming, for fantasizing. What the Cathayan jianghu offers, what Cathayan society offers, what all Cathayan wisdom and tradition offer is: hard work. The highest fantasy of Cathay is achieved through nothing but practice, of day-in-day-out work and repetition, of getting better and pushing yourself harder. There is no magic, there is no one saving you, there is no one who will, who can, lift you out of poverty, or ordinariness, or the hardest days when you can´t even imagine keeping going, nothing but repetition of the hard things, the daily things, the needful, necessary actions and practices.
That´s martial arts, the way playing music is practice, the way drawing is practice, the way writing is practice, the way getting good at business includes practice, getting good at politics includes practice, getting better at life is all about practice. And that´s the land of reincarnation, of practice at getting this thing called living right.
The fantasy of martial arts is, that anyone, through enduring the bitterness of practice, can become a hero. No magical sword necessary. A beautifully made sword from a master swordsmith certainly helps, but the skill that wields it is what matters, for through practice the lowest piece of metal can pierce the costliest sword, and the ultimate zen is to be empty handed, yet defeat the greatest foe.
What is jianghu? Jianghu is the Middle Kingdom, not Middle Earth. In jianghu, no one is born with martial arts, just as no one is born knowing how to read, or to do math, or to play the guzheng. There is no Frodo who, without skills or training, through his pluck and courage alone can become a hero. There is no Harry Potter, who was born with magic in his blood, and fated to a great destiny. In jianghu, there is only the unglamorous, the quotidian, the mundane practice, learn, again to lift one´s life out of the ordinary, or to just survive. The yellow river floods, and waits for no man, no lord, no mage. But the farmer, the peasant, the eternal line, rebuilds, replants, rebirths: again.