Ryan - Angel Hair (orig. Chi.)

[oyceter]

AKA: My First Manhua

I've been trying to look for actual Chinese manhua instead of translations of manga, though it's been difficult. I suspect there's even more manhwa here than manhua, though possibly I'm looking in the wrong places. But given that a lot of the idol dramas in Taiwan are based on manga and manhwa, and given the prevalence of Japanese stores EVERYWHERE, I don't think I'm overestimating the prevalence of manga and the paucity of manhua, at least in Taiwan as opposed to other Chinese-speaking locales.

I did manage to find the recently licensed manhua Divine Melody, though I didn't get it because I didn't like the art that much. On the other hand, that was before I realized it had gender-bending, fox spirits, and reincarnation!

Angel Hair is a collection of three short stories. The frame story has two hikers coming across some ruins and a statue of the angel Nathaniel, who has a scar on his (zir? her? I am fairly sure he's coded male by the language, the story, and the art, but as we all know, it can be hard to tell) cheek and long hair on one side and short hair on the other. The three stories are all explanations of how he got the scar and the chopped off hair.

I find it rather disconcerting but not startling that the stories are all Euro-centric; I'm fairly sure the frame story is set in Europe, and all the characters have Western names.

The first story is about Princess Chantilly, her guardian angel Nathaniel, and the neighboring Prince Gouman (spellings are approximations). Chantilly wants Gouman to marry her because his country is richer and her country needs the money, but she has gorgeous long black hair and he hates black hair and loves blonde hair. The entire thing is about her begging her guardian angel to turn blonde. I found this story extremely frustrating and problematic for the obvious reasons.

The second story posits that Gouman and Nathaniel are actually close friends, and the third is Nathaniel's story. All of them star Chantilly, Nathaniel and Gouman, albeit in different capacities, and in all of them, black hair is abnormal or a sign of evil, while golden blondness is a sign of angelicness (literal and figurative). The final story does the most to argue with the simple black-blonde dichotomy, though still not enough for my taste. I'm not going to go into theories of self-hatred or wanting to be Western, because I think while that is a part of it, it is also too easy to blame it all on the person exhibiting the self-hatred and/or desire to be Western and to ignore fun things like cultural hegemony and cultural colonization.

In conclusion, really boring and problematic, with not-so-great art to boot. I think next, I will pick up the fox spirit one or one that was set in Song Dynasty China.

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Was the Song Dynasty one "Vision of the Other Side"? I forget what dynasty it's set in, but the volume I read was quite fun, though normal wuxia in a lot of ways. I have vol 2, but haven't read it yet as vols 3-4 seem to be out of print, and it looks like it was dropped. (OTOH, if it was "Real Fake Princess," I recommend staying far, far away. I only read a couple chapters, but the "hero" was an alpha cretin in the worst possible way. I stopped reading when we reached what I would consider to be physical abuse.)

Comics One has actually published a ton of kung fu manhua (some of which I may or may not have recently ordered from rightstuf) and Tokyopop recently published a 2 volume dark romance by Jo Chen. I only vaguely know what it's about and have no idea if it's good, I just know that Jo Chen's comic covers are amazingly gorgeous, and the little bit of Dark Minds that she contributed to the plot was the best part of that series.

[oyceter]

Ummm, I don't remember! But I'm going back to the comic book store tomorrow, so I will check it out and try to remember to avoid "Real Fake Princess."

Oooh, dark romance? That sounds interesting.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Just to make sure you don't forget to avoid Real Fake Princess; The basic idea is that there was a rebellion 15~ years before the story, and the infant princess was sent away with allies to be raised in secrecy. Now that things are calm again, they want her brought back, only no one knows where she is. Her adopted brother tells her, and takes her back to the palace, even though she doesn't want to be the princess. The "hero" is the official meant to weed out the fakes, and is suspicious of everyone claiming to be the princess. So far, it's pretty normal, but could be a decent shoujo for its 5 volumes length, as long as he doesn't behave badly. However about halfway through volume 1, he orders her hair to be cut. When she objects, he wrestles her, pins her to the bed, shoves the scissors in her face, and tells her that if she doesn't obey all his orders, starting with the hair, then he'll have her brother hunted down and he'll kill him by shoving the scissors in his chest. At which point, I quietly closed the file, said a brief word of thanks that I try to read at least a couple chapters online or in the store before buying a manga, deleted the file, and went off to reread some Tsubasa.

The Jo Chen books I hope to read soon.

[issen4.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to look for actual Chinese manhua

A bit difficult? They had a go in the 1990s, but the recession hit and the Taiwanese manhua market never really took off in a big way: economics, bad timing, etc. Most of the comics are translated Japanese and Korean stuff, plus a bunch of children's cutsy stuff. But pulp romances are out in a big way, as are internet novels, so I guess that's where the readership went.

That's the impression I got, anyway. Most of the idol dramas are adaptations of Japanese manga series, so that doesn't help either--no local market.

I do remember reading 游素蘭 (You2 Su4 Lan2)'s series, which was fantasy-based and resembled Japanese shojo a lot. She's still pretty popular, according to wiki.

[oyceter]

Siiigh, re: the Taiwan manhua market. I sort of figured given that I've heard of almost no Chinese manhua artists throughout high school and whenever I talk about comics with people here.

OMG the pulp romances! The ones with the watercolor covers? I used to look at those in bookstores and then my eyes would glaze over from all the text. My sister went on a spree of Chinese chick lit for a while, which I'm sure is still big.

I'll keep an eye out for You Su Lan, thanks!

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Hee. The pulp romances are fun. Sometimes they're even well-written. :p I know of people who read them like Harlequins (they've got series numbers!). What I find really amusing are the covers, though. I think they usually can't be bothered to shell out for a good cover artist, so they modify the photographs of celebrities. I saw a cover the other day that looked just like Andy Lau, except he had a smaller nose and I think, blue eyes? ^__^

They usually solicit for manuscripts too, which makes me think there's quite a strong market.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

One thing that strikes me, given the European setting, is that the light hair/dark hair dichotomy is an ongoing thread in Shakespeare's plays. Of course, there's no way to tell if any degree of influence is there.

[sajia.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of the colorism issues in South Asian culture, though I can't actually remember if dark-skinned women were termed evil rather than just ugly.

[jiawen]

If by any chance you find an extra copy of 九命人 Nine Life Man by 阿推 Push I will gladly pay you for it.

[oyceter]

Will keep an eye out for it!

[jiawen]

Yay!

[oyceter]

OH! I forgot! Totally OT, but I was looking at books and short story collections by Ni Kuang in a bookstore the other day, and I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff he's published! Is there anywhere in particular that you'd recommend starting out with? I was about to randomly buy a collection titled "Demon Girl," just because, hey, demon girl.

(Also, I was somewhat confused to find his books under the wuxia category, even though there were non-translated Chinese books in the SFF section. My dad was like, "It's because his stuff is more classic?")

[jiawen]

Ni Kuang is, like I said, seriously prolific. Like Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein rolled into one. SF in Chinese has his imprint on it, very heavily; I got the impression a lot of Taiwanese people don't really understand the difference between "SF prose" and "prose written by Ni Kuang".

I don't really know all that much about his stuff, to be honest. I've only read a little bit of it. And I suspect I'd be into the more hard SF things than you are. A lot of his stuff seems to skew towards Fortean happenings more than American SF. I guess I'd recommend anything that has lots of his short stories, so you can get a sampling of what he writes.

He also writes wuxia stuff. According to Wikipedia, him and Jin Yong are good friends. So his books in the wuxia section very likely are wuxia. He also writes mysteries and apparently other genres, too.

However, book categorization was very haphazard regarding SF&F in the bookstores I saw. I forgot, have I ranted to you how much the disorganization of Chengpin "Eslite" pissed me off? UFOlogy, Tarot, detective novels... Their SF&F section seemed to be a dumping ground for anything the clerks couldn't be bothered to put in the right place. And then I'd find a translation of Red Mars in the foreign literature section or something. Grr. I think it may be because the Chinese for "science fiction" and "fantasy" (科幻 and 奇幻) don't have as much history as the English words, but they also just have different meaning clouds (at least partially because of the writing interests of Ni Kuang). But I don't think mysteries belong in the SF section, regardless, you know? It once annoyed me so much that I actually volunteered to organize their SF&F section for them, but they weren't interested.

Do you know about Silex Books? When I was in Taiwan, their first floor was all kids' books, but their second floor was the best selection of SF&F on the island. I think most of it was in English, though. I don't remember how much was in Chinese. I also don't know if they're still selling SF&F on the second floor -- that may just have been a temporary thing. (I'd love to know for certain if they aren't.) They're worth checking out, anyway.

It might be good to check out my page about gaming in Taiwan; I've listed a lot of other good spots for SF&F-related materials there.

[oyceter]

Thanks in particular for the bookstore rec! Also, very yes re: Eslite's categorization, which drives me crazy. I like Page One's much better, but it's a pretty new store come from Singapore.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds depressing.

I have some manhua on my to-read shelf that are adapted from the novels that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was based on.

[oyceter]

It wasn't so much depressing as just... really boring and problmatic.

Oh, I saw the Crouching Tiger adaptations but never got around to reading them in the library! Will be interested to know how they are.

[raucousraven.livejournal.com]

...Hmm. Do you have any thoughts on stuff like Saiunkoku Monogatari, which is Japanese but seems to be set in China? It's not quite the same kind of dynamic as the near-fetishist Anglophilia of something like Emma, I don't think, but since I'm just starting that series (Saiunkoku, that is), I'm still thinking about it.

[oyceter]

Hrm, I think I watched about ten episodes of the anime a year or so ago and then never quite finished. I am always torn between feeling gratified that people find China and Chinese history a good setting for fantasy (or, you know, bishounen) and feeling weirded out by it.

It usually feels less weird for me when it comes from Japan or Korea, just because of shared history and how China dominated E. Asia culturally for quite some time; then, it feels more like how there's still a lot of English-language stuff on ancient Rome and Greece. I tend to feel much odder when it comes to modern portrayals of Chinese people or random Chinese people, particularly in manga/anime. Especially when Chinese-ness is signified by Chun Li buns, cheongsam, or other traditional clothing no one wears often now when everyone else in the series is in a tank top and jeans.

/rant

[cafecomics.livejournal.com]

Some works by Selena Lin are translated into french : Flower Ring (http://www.soleilmanga.com/~solmanga/lire_manga.php?id_manga=96) and Burning Moon (http://www.soleilmanga.com/~solmanga/lire_manga.php?id_manga=218). Her style is very shoujo-esque. Even her "How-to" book (http://livre.fnac.com/a1993366/Lin-Comic-school-Selena-te-montre-comment-realiser-un-manga?Mn=-1&Mu=-13&Ra=-1&To=0&Nu=1&Fr=3) was translated.

[cafecomics.livejournal.com]

Okay, it seems Tokyopop US translated some of her books (and Tokyopop Germany a lot more). ^^;

[oyceter]

Cool, thanks for the FYI!