Before svsss, before 2ha, before danmei existed as a genre, there was Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü and there was wuxia shizun-fuckery.
One might even argue that you can't really separate shizun-fuckery from wuxia/xianxia at this point, because you can't really separate modern wuxia/xianxia from Jin Yong novels. If mainstream western fantasy can all be traced back to Tolkien, then most mainstream modern wuxia/xianxia are similarly descended from Jin Yong.
Among these Jin Yong novels, the 1959 wuxia romance 神雕侠侣, or Return of the Condor Heroes, has apparently received no less than 12 TV and film adaptations. I have no idea why the novel is called that in English; maybe because a more literal translation, "Divine Eagle Hero Lovers/Couple," sounds too dumb.
Said lovers are, of course, a master/disciple pair. (The divine eagle refers to both the male lead and an actual magical eagle.) Before we get into the shizun-fucking, I should probably clarify what a shizun is. The word "shizun" itself is basically a fancier and more respectful form of "shifu", and is rarely used outside of fiction these days.
Shifu itself also has two spellings that are often but not always interchangeable. One of the forms, 师父, is made up of the characters Shi, teacher, and Fu, father. Then there's the popular saying: 一日为师终生为父, or "shifu for a day, father for a lifetime," which is meant to highlight the filial love and respect a disciple owes their master.
The reason I bring this up is that compared to the western image of a teacher, the Confucian ideal specifically emphasizes hierarchy and filial piety. A master/disciple romance is in many ways distinct from the western teacher/student romance, in that it's not only taboo but anti-Confucian, with Confucianism being the very foundation of the old social order. The overarching love story in Return of the Condor Heroes is at its core a story about transgression, and the enduring popularity of shizun-fuckery in historical fantasy reflects a continued interest in the tension between love and traditional notions of propriety. The typical issues surrounding teacher/student relationships are still present, but are usually not the focal point of this type of master/disciple portrayal.
Not to out myself as an Old, but I would argue that the most genre defining version of Condor Heroes remains the 1995 TV adaptation, in which HK actress Carman Lee's Xiaolongnü soul-blasted the entire sinosphere and left a milf-shaped cultural crater visible from space. You might recognize Carman Lee as the guest-starring Lan ancestor in that info dump episode of The Untamed where the main pair fall into the underwater(?) cave, but even now she's still known first and foremost as Xiaolongnu, the white-clad shifu from Condor Heroes.
If her whole Energy feels oddly familiar, it's because Xiaolongnu's influence is such that there are now an innumerable number of milf-coded (gender neutral) shizuns cast in the same general mold.
To give a quick rundown of Xiaolongnu, here are some of her notable features:
Grew up isolated and extremely sheltered
Prodigious talent
Cold, otherworldly beauty
Master qin player, has some sort of music-based power
Values celibacy (until the whole shizun-fucking situation)
Lives somewhere called the Tomb of the Living Dead (Incidentally, 2ha's Sisheng Peak can be more directly translated as "Summit of Life and Death.")
And to give ranwan shippers more deja vu, I found a cut of Xiaolongnu in action.
It's now time for me to admit that I don't remember much about the male lead Yang Guo, the shizun-fucker from my clickbait title, other than that he's a shizun-fucker. I mentally refer to him as Pigeon Boy, because half his lines are "Gugu, Gugu," which also happens to be the sound pigeons make in Chinese.
The "gugu" thing came about because Yang Guo doesn't like calling Xiaolongnu "shifu", which is just a Bit Much for this particular shizun-fucker. ("Gugu," or "aunt/auntie", is far less incestuous than it might sound, since it's very common to address people by familial terms in Chinese.) But even in his fervent pursuit of shizun-fuckery, Yang Guo has not abandoned all sense of propriety, which is why even though they are only ~5 yrs apart, he still acknowledges her generational rank as his master, and uses "gugu" instead of something like "jiejie".
This is notably different from works like svsss and 2ha, where the constant bombardment of "shizun" specifically zeroes in on the shizun-fucking itself. Lbh in particular continues to be babied long after the author very pointedly draws a line between lbh the boy and lbh the man for obvious reasons, in a way Yang Guo can't be without undermining his culturally presumed idea of masculinity.
At the end of the day, despite Condor's very cursory exploration of some vanilla version of power exchange, it ultimately does not meaningfully confront nor subvert the inherent assumptions behind mainstream heterosexual romance. Their eventual marriage then seems to serve as some sort of equalizer, wherein their master/disciple relationship is largely superseded by their conventional husband/wife relationship.
Still, there appears to be another adaptation of Condor Heroes in the works. The master/disciple trope clearly isn't going anywhere, so go forth, brave shizun-fuckers, and sprinkle some new nuance in the narrative while you're at it.
Yang Guo and Xiao Long Nu from Return of the Condor Heroes, my fav couple in all of fiction. I also love Guo Xiang, Guo Jings second daughter, and her friendship with Yang Guo 🥰 Thank you Jin Yong for writing this story 🥰 Im currently on the final ep of my rewatch of my fav tv version, the 95 one starring Louis Koo and Carman Lee, and being reminded the whole time of why I love this story so so mich 🥰
So here’s the thing about the Landlord and the Landlady. They introduce themselves to the Beast as Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu. In some English subtitles, this is replaced with Paris and Helen of Troy, which is an okay substitution, as it denotes the “failed romance” that the two share, but it also doesn’t tell you the whole story.
This turned out to be a long post, so here’s a cut.
Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu are the protagonists of Jin Yong’s second novel of the Condor Trilogy, Return of the Condor Heroes. One is the son of a hated hero and traitor to his people, and the other a student of reclusive martial artists.
They also share a complicated romance, Yang Guo being Xiaolongnu’s master and teacher, or Shifu (师父). “Shifu” literally means “teacher-father” and although the usage is gender-neutral, denotes both a teacher-student and father-son relationship when a skilled master takes on an apprentice. The two are of around the same age and practically grew up together, so young people and all that, but the relationship is still taboo because of Confucianist propriety.
Throughout the novel, their bond is tested by circumstance and their dedication to each other, until the very end, where they’re allowed to be together.
Of course, the Landlord and the Landlady couldn’t possibly be the same people as the ones in the novel, as the novel takes place during the Song Dynasty, around eight hundred years ago. It’s likely that the Landlord and the Landlady were given the monikers Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu because their passion for each other transcended both negative fate (缘) and destiny (分) to be together.
So that’s the history behind their names. What Stephen Chow does is show what happens after they’ve stayed with each other, and what they are, are exaggerations of certain Chinese people that are very true to life. Yang Guo becomes a whimsical perverted uncle of a man, taking advantage of other people’s generosity. Xiaolongnu becomes a horrible, shrill harpy of an aunty, with a banshee’s scream, a trigger-hair temper, the uncanny ability to complain for hours and hours, and Roadrunner-esque speed when pissed. Who will hit you with a slipper if you give her any backtalk. And being not just mighty martial artists but also Looney Tunes-type cartoon characters, they’re also not afraid to get physical with each other. They can take it, because they’ve taken worse in the past while training their kung-fu.
But in spite of all that, they’re still heroes, ready to fight for what is right when they must. It resonates with the message in wuxia fiction that common, normal people, with all their flaws and foibles, can be and are heroic.
