It’s been a long time since I last wrote a reading note……
At the Di Tan book market, I bought a complete set of *The Legend of the Twin Dragons of Great Tang*, a wuxia saga running to several million characters. Back when Huang Yi’s serialization was nearing its end, I read it once online; later I bought a pirated copy and read it again. This time, though still pirated, the quality is much better than the one I bought before: there are no missing sections, and it reads much more smoothly.
And yet my reading speed for this book has gotten slower each time; in fact, I now read it much more slowly than I read academic books. I rarely read novels, and a novel that I can read three times can be counted on one hand. Much less such a long one. From this, one can see that *The Legend of the Twin Dragons of Great Tang* occupies in my heart a place not to be compared with ordinary wuxia.
What I like about *The Legend of the Twin Dragons of Great Tang* is not only Huang Yi’s wonderfully imaginative, breathtaking, and exquisitely skillful style, but crucially also one of its protagonists. Among so many novels, he is the only one who can truly draw me in and let me fully immerse myself in him — Xu Ziling! Do you think he resembles me? Hehe.
Latest comments
mistgalaxie
2005-10-22 12:05:06 [Reply]
He doesn’t resemble you at all. Daoism and Buddhism are worlds apart呢
🙂
2005-10-22 12:05:06 [Reply]
He doesn’t resemble you at all. Daoism and Buddhism are worlds apart呢
🙂
Gu Che: Is Xu Ziling Daoist or Buddhist? Neither! Xu Ziling is not a religious believer, but he has ties to both Buddhism and Daoism. Buddhism and Daoism are in fact interconnected; at least in China, that is the case. I am not Buddhist and not Daoist either; in fact, what I most admire is Confucianism, yet I seem to be closer to Daoism and Buddhism. There is no contradiction here.
I really do resemble Xu Ziling, in a fundamental sense of resemblance — resemblance in temperament, likes and dislikes, aspirations, views of good and evil, values, and so on. The special significance of *The Legend of the Twin Dragons of Great Tang* for me lies in the fact that I can fully merge myself into the thought and life of this protagonist. If I were role-playing, the choices I would make would be almost identical to Xu Ziling’s. As for other wuxia protagonists, however much I like them, I still cannot wholly immerse myself in them. For example, I like Guo Jing, Duan Yu, Linghu Chong, and so on; I also approve of their actions and choices. But if I were placed in the same situations, in many cases I would not make the same choices they did. Only Xu Ziling is special: all his choices are not only ones I approve of, but ones with which I genuinely “sympathize.”
Unless otherwise noted, all articles are original works by Gu Che. Please credit the source when reposting: reposted from Suixuan. Or refer to the copyright statement
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Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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