C-novels: Xianxia, Wuxia, Cultivation and Jianghu Terminology
Aside from the simplified danmei depictions of cultivation, xianxia/wuxia and cultivation novels make up the majority of Chinese webnovel/casual writing culture. Think Legend of the Condor Heroes, a lot of danmei novels (MDZS, SVSSS etc) and pretty much every piece of media that makes reference to ancient China will speak of the jianghu, cultivators, etc…
What the fuck is a wuxia? What the fuck is a xianxia? What the fuck is a jianghu? How does cultivation work? That’s what I’m here for!
As always, a quick disclaimer: what I say is obviously not gospel. I’m not an expert and I’ve never written a full webnovel on any Chinese websites (I do read a lot of them though LMAO), I’m just Chinese. Different people will have different experiences than me, and a lot of my explanations will vary depending on the author or the readers’ personal preferences.
Do your own research! This is just ONE post. I will also be tackling the jianghu, xianxia and wuxia EXCLUSIVELY AS MODERN POP CULTURE DEPICTS IT. I will not be talking about the earliest wave of authentic old novels. This is how most young people interact with xianxia/wuxia.
Okay. The big overarching core to any novel set in ancient China is the jianghu 江湖, which literally means rivers and lakes. The jianghu basically means cultivator society and the land. It refers to a complex system of social hierarchies, laws and honour rules (like how pirates refer to their territories as the “open seas” and have their own “pirate code”: that’s the jianghu).
The jianghu is associated with martial arts and cultivation. It can and does involve normal everyday people, but when people talk about making a big name for themselves in the jianghu, they’re talking about their reputation among various martial arts masters (in a non-fantasy setting) or cultivators (in a fantasy setting). Again, think pirates!
The jianghu is the setting of all wuxia and xianxia novels. What’s wuxia and xianxia? Wuxia 武侠 means martial arts and heroics. It refers to a type of low-fantasy setting in which different xiake 侠客 (“heroes”) characters interact and fight for righteousness. The low fantasy I’m talking about involves mystical forms of training manuals (like the whatever five step palm strike thing in Kill Bill) that grant the user incredible powers, but the absence or presence of ghosts and demons are up to the author.
Wuxia and jianghu take CHIVALRY and HONOUR very seriously. Think Zuko in ATLA. Thus, if you make a promise to someone, you follow through even if it kills you. If someone hurts your friends or family, you take revenge even if it kills you. Wuxia characters often follow very recognisable tropes: a poor orphan underdog, taken in by a great teacher, grows up to be incredibly strong and roams the jianghu fighting for justice and gets an equally-strong and beautiful girlfriend in the process etc etc.
How is xianxia 仙侠 different from wuxia? You may notice the wu replaced by a xian. Wu means martial arts, and xian means… immortal? Technically it means fairy. Xian doesn’t mean fairy the way we think of fairies as little pixies or flying pretty ladies, it means someone who’s ascended from morality to immortality and is exceedingly powerful. So xian can be humans (male and female) and gods and exceptionally powerful animals who’ve lived a long time, or even very old plants and trees.
Wuxia is low fantasy, and xianxia is high fantasy. Think Harry Potter/Game of Thrones vs Lord of the Rings. Whereas wuxia is focused on martial arts and honour and battle and gritty strong main characters, xianxia is where you’ll find your elegant cultivators with long flowing hair and poetic names and cultivation sects and blah blah blah.
Xianxia tends to be more popular among younger people (my parents’ generation, for example, grew up with and LOVE Jin Yong’s famous wuxia novels, but xianxia doesn’t appeal to them as much) because it seems more elegant and beautiful.
Your favourite danmei novels all take place in xianxia because it’s less sexy for your top and bottom to be tussling it in the dirt rather than on a distant misty mountain. Even the non-danmei media like 三生三世十里桃花 (Eternal Love) and the more modern c-dramas all take place in xianxia. Wuxia is… decidedly less appealing for people who want to see long flowy robes and elegant romance and pining and gorgeous actors.
Xianxia is often very inspired by mythology. Since it’s high fantasy, there are lots of mythical beasts, immortality, supernatural powers, etc. Xianxia involves ghosts and demons and gods. I’ll explain these categories in more depth later on.
So what is cultivation? Cultivation 修炼 (xiulian: literally “practice and cultivate”) refers to the Taoist concept in which people (and various animals and plants sometimes) may become powerful and gain supernatural powers through practicing martial arts, meditating, and growing their qi.
I’m sure many people have heard of qi (or chi, as it's phonetically pronounced), but it basically means vitality or energy. Qi flows through your body like blood through spiritual meridians, and if it has a smooth and unimpeded flow, you’re healthy. Qi can become blocked by stress, illness or bad thoughts like greed, and that impedes cultivation.
People whose qi flows freely and smoothly do so through constant meditation and seclusion to allow for peace of body and mind. This is how you form a golden core- your qi flows so nicely through your body that eventually it’ll become a core in your lower stomach- this core theoretically keeps you sustained forever and grants you powers.
The exact details of qi vary from novel to novel- sometimes, everyone naturally has qi and it’s just a matter of cultivation that differs your MCs from normal people, and sometimes you have to be born with it to be able to cultivate.
Cultivation thus takes place through meditation, using your qi (martial arts and battle), and sometimes doing good deeds with your powerful qi can also help you ascend faster. Often the goal is to cultivate to a level of immortality and become a xian.
Xianxia novels and wuxia novels are very popular because it’s quite a romantic and beautiful concept and setting. Cultivators often gather in sects on secluded mountains (to avoid the rest of society for better qi meditation) to teach their particular methods of cultivation. These sects are headed by very powerful cultivators who become teachers and mentors to everyone else in the sect.
Let’s explain some jianghu, xianxia and wuxia terminology!
Shifu/shizun 师傅/师尊: The word shi means teacher. Shi-fu basically means your mentor- they can be a mentor in all sorts of things, whether it be cooking, cultivation, etc. In modern society shifu is a term we still use- taxi drivers, master chefs, teachers of traditional arts like kung fu, calligraphy, dance, ancient instruments are all called shifu. IDK why taxi drivers are called shifu. Maybe they are the shifu of the taxi. Shifu are your direct teachers.
Shi-zun means something very different. The suffix zun means “honoured” or “respected”. Sort of like -sama or -dono in Japanese. For those of you who watch a lot of anime, you can think of shizun as your sensei with a -sama at the end (yes, I know sensei is also a suffix, but just ignore that okay).
Your shizun is someone who is very, very high-ranking and is usually also famous or very respected in the entire jianghu. We don’t say shizun anymore. If you go to your calligraphy teacher and call them shizun they’ll think you’re crazy.
Shizun are probably not your direct teachers. Your shifu’s shifu may be your shizun, or they may be the shifu of someone higher-ranking than you. In some cases, if you yourself are already very high-ranked, you can call your direct teacher shizun.
BTW! Even though zun is a suffix, you cannot attach just zun to someone’s given name. If someone’s name is Bob, you can’t call them Bob-zun the way you could say Bob-sama or Bob-dono or Bob-sensei. You can say Bob-shifu, but you can’t say Bob-zhizun. (If Bob’s last name is Smith, you could say Smith-shizun, but you still can’t just say Smith-zun). The suffix zun has to be attached to shi to make shizun, or you could attach it directly to a title.
Let’s take MDZS as an example since I know it’s very popular. Some of the famous titles in MDZS are Lianfang-zun (Jin Guangyao) and Chifeng-zun (Nie Mingjue). Lianfang-zun and Chifeng-zun are both titles given to them by cultivation society. You cannot call them Jin-zun or Jin Guangyao-zun. -zun as a suffix can ONLY be attached to titles. There are MANY suffixes you can attach to titles and names in Chinese novels- I will only cover a few in this post.
师姐/师兄/师弟/师妹 Sect relationships: shijie, shixiong, shidi, shimei:
Within cultivation sects, people that are not your teachers (shifu/shizun) are called your sect siblings. No, it doesn’t mean you’re literally siblings, Chinese people just like to call each other siblings for fun. It also doesn’t mean you’re adopted- it just means that the sect is supposed to support and respect each other like a family. A female disciple older than you is a shijie, a female disciple younger than you is a shimei, a male disciple older than you is a shixiong, a male disciple younger than you is a shidi.
Why is an older male disciple called shixiong and not shige? Ge means older brother in Chinese (pronouned guh, not gee), but it is fairly informal. Xiong means brother as well, but in a more formal sense. Xiong can also be a suffix to attach at the end of someone’s name as a friendly nickname (for example, if Bob Smith and Jake Brown are friends, they call each other Bob-xiong and Jake-xiong or Smith-xiong and Brown-xiong).
In a sect, your relationship with your sect siblings can be pretty formal, especially with someone older, so you’d refer to them as shixiong and not shige out of respect. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the term shige, though maybe it does exist and I haven’t noticed it anywhere.
Xiong is a formal term for brother, but there aren’t formal terms for older/younger sister or younger brother. That’s why the others remain the same as casual terms. Xiong and xiongdi are very NUANCED terms, so I may do a whole post on why if you see people as sworn brothers or xiongdi, it doesn’t mean they’re actually adopted brothers.
In xianxia, there are 3 realms: the human realm (the mortal realm), the immortal realm (for gods and immortal xian), and the demon realm (for monsters, demons and dead people). The mortal realm is where we, and most characters, live! It’s characterised by being full of chaos and emotion, both good and bad, and both tragedy and joy.
You’ll often see cultivators speak of “worldly dust” or 红尘 (red dust): this refers to the tumultuous “vibes” of the mortal realm, and basically means chaos or imbalance. This “dust” is what cultivators try to avoid- chaos is not good for qi flow, which requires a peaceful mind and body. This is why cultivators secede to distant mountains and avoid the rest of society.
The immortal realm or the xian realm is where gods and immortals live. It might be up in the sky or it might be slightly outside the fabric of reality as we know it. It could also just be up a really, really tall mountain- it depends on the setting of the particular novel. It’s full of beauty, tranquility, peace and magic. Everyone wants to ascend and come live here!
The demon realm is like… Du-at in Egyptian mythology. It’s not inherently bad (like Hades’ hell), but it IS home to a lot of suffering. Monsters and demons (animals or plants that become violent and tainted through bad energy, as well as human spirits who died wrongfully and are now vengeful) live here. They often escape up to the mortal realm to cause trouble for humans, which is when cultivators come in to vanquish them and quell their anger to appease their spirits.
There may also be other realms depending on how the novel presents its settings: monsters/demons may be split up into different realms, and human spirits might go into another realm, and gods and immortals may be split up into separate realms- authors will often clarify through dialogue.
Cultivator sects’ structure: Usually the sect master is very old, very powerful and VERY secluded. They almost NEVER make an appearance and are almost ALWAYS already immortal. They opened their sect to teach disciples, but they do not teach directly- THEIR disciples teach more disciples, and so on and so on.
There may be a sect leader, who is usually a direct disciple of the sect master (sometimes a second/third generation disciple). They are not usually THAT old but they are usually also immortal. Then there might be a sect head who’s a disciple of the sect leader.
The main characters usually will only interact with the sect’s head disciple or sect leader etc. Head disciple is the highest-ranking disciple: they are usually a direct student of the sect leader and are usually not immortal (but almost there).
Then there will be inner disciples and outer disciples. Outer disciples are ordinary people who go to learn. Don’t misunderstand- to be an outer disciple of a great sect is already a huge honour! Inner disciples are high-ranked, very talented disciples. They may start out as outer disciples, but rise through the ranks because of their skills.
Then we have direct disciples. Direct disciples are, as the name suggests, direct students of the high-ranking sect members. They can be inner disciples selected carefully through tests, but a lot of them get in through nepotism or are just born with hacks. (e.g: their family knows one of the high-ranking disciples etc. Ne Zha is a direct disciple of the Chan Sect through the nepotism of his shifu Taiyi Zhenren). Being nepo babies doesn’t mean they’re weak- nepotism has standards! If they’re just inherently BORN genius, then that can also merit a spot as a direct disciple.
Often, a common trope is that a wandering sect leader finds an orphan on the street looking pitiful and takes them in as a direct disciple.
The main rules of being in a cultivation sect: LISTEN TO YOUR ELDERS (your shifu, your shizun, your shixiong/shijie-s, etc), be righteous and kind, help the common people, follow the rules of Taoism, meditate and have a calm mind, drive away greed and pride, etc. Cultivation sects often have secret methods of cultivation they only teach to the closest disciples. The sect will send its disciples out to capture demons, on night-hunts, and to help the common people.
Sometimes, sects can be corrupt. Historically this was never seen in ancient novels, but in more and more webnovels and movie adaptations, big powerful sects can be breeding grounds for corruption, evildoing and greed (see Chan Sect in Ne Zha, Yuding Zhenren in New Gods: Yang Jian, Wen Sect in MDZS etc). This is just a plot point.
Sects are literally always on distant mountains. As I said, this is mainly to avoid the chaos and dust of the mortal realm, but also because 灵气 or 灵力 (spiritual power) tends to gather on top of mountains, close to the sky and to the heavens and thus the immortal realm. Misty tall mountains are beautiful and peaceful and tranquil, so naturally they’re good places to cultivate qi.
TYPES OF MONSTERS/DEMONS/GHOSTS: This is fairly important and hard to translate. Chinese novels make a distinction between 妖魔鬼怪(yao/mo/gui/guai) and human spirits.
I will translate yao/mo/gui/guai as monsters, demons, ghosts and beasts, although the English translations are not direct and require a lot of nuance and explanation.
OKAY! Yao or yaoguai are the most common “enemies” your cultivator characters will experience. I translated yao as monsters. Yao is a very broad term: anything (human, animal, plant, even inanimate objects like hairpins and swords) may become yao.
Yao usually do not start off as yao. They may be normal people, normal animals etc. If a human dies and was wronged (i.e: murdered, a wife who got cheated on, betrayed etc), their desire for revenge may turn their spirit into a yao who lingers where they died.
Very long-lived animals and plants may become tainted with resentful energy through human yao or human emotions (sometimes if the animal died a painful or wrongful death they might become yao) will also become yao. A hairpin or umbrella might become a yao if, for example, it was used as a murder weapon in a vengeful and violent murder.
Mo is translated as demons- they are born as demons. They are the culmination of vengeance and bad thoughts. Yao are living beings TURNED into monsters, but mo are the MANIFESTATION of those bad thoughts itself.
For example, if there is a mass grave somewhere caused by the murder of a whole family, the dead family members will turn into yao but their collective resentment may manifest as a demonic mo. Mo are manifested, but they can also be CREATED through ghosts (more on this later).
A distinction: regular people who die (i.e: old age, an accident not caused by human hands) will not become yao or manifest any mo. Only wrongful deaths will create yao or mo. Rich cultivators, even if they die wrongfully, also usually don’t become yao or mo because they go through ceremonies to prevent this when they’re alive.
Sometimes, mo CAN be yao (it depends on the author) like when a yao goes from plain resentful and harmful to FULL-ON EVIL. It depends!
Gui are ghosts. Not much else to it. You can envision them as Harry Potter ghosts. These wandering spirits have some sort of regret (they weren’t able to protect their family, they weren’t able to finish something, etc) but they usually aren’t resentful, they just can’t move on for whatever reason. For example, this can be a dead parent watching over their living child.
Ghosts can BECOME resentful and become mo. When ghosts become resentful, they don’t turn into yao (yao are created from living things or just-deceased bodies) since they’re just spirits and yao require a physical vessel. If a dead mother saw her child being abused or mistreated, she may become resentful and turn into a demonic mo.
Guai are beasts. They may be evil or resentful, but they often aren’t. Guai just means “weird”: a guai can be a really fucking big tiger, but it can also be a mutated rat.
Yao-mo-gui-guai is a phrase that means “terrible weird wicked things” and we still use it today, not only to refer to ghosts and demons, but just general bad shit or people. For example, if you start hanging out with delinquents, your mom might say, “don’t just hang out with any yao-mo-gui-guai!”
What do cultivators do? They conquer yao and mo, and appease gui and guai to help the common people. Basically, they’re exorcists. They use spiritual weapons (most commonly a long, slim sword, but they may also use spears, whips, greatswords, musical instruments, or any random tool) to channel qi into supernatural powers. They may also use talismans enchanted with protective sigils.
Most cultivators have a sword. They might cultivate with other stuff (powerful cultivators will have MANY spiritual tools) but they almost always have a sword. The primary method of travel in xianxia is 御剑 or riding on a sword. They stand on the sword and fly around like a magic carpet. Kinda cool, right?
Some of the most famous spiritual tools are Sun Wukong’s Ruyi Jingu Bang (a size-changing golden staff), the Magical Lotus Lantern (a lantern that functions as an impenetrable shield), the Painting of Mountains and Rivers (traps anything that touches it inside the painting), the Gold Calabash (sucks things into it), etc.
In modern webnovels, you’ll see the MCs using fancy and elegant spiritual tools such as magical fans, magical flutes/instruments, magical bracelets and rings and necklaces etc. Umbrellas are often commonly used as shields.
OKAY! Time for some famous wuxia/xianxia media!
Jin Yong wrote mainly in the 60s and 70s and his works are some of the most influential in Chinese culture today. He set the standard for much of what we see wuxia as today. His most famous works are 笑傲江湖
(literally: smile proud among the jianghu, translated on Wikipedia as The Smiling Proud Wanderer),
(Legend of the Condor Heroes), and 神雕侠侣 (Return of the Condor Heroes), even though all his novels are very famous.
The Smiling Proud Wanderer and the Condor Heroes series produced China’s most iconic wuxia characters. 东方不败 Dongfang Bubai (literally: Undefeated in the East or Invincible East) is literally the most iconic wuxia character you can ever think of. I won’t spoil Smiling Proud Wanderer, but basically he used to be a famous disciple before discovering a secret cultivation manual that granted him endless powers but required him to castrate himself, so he did and gave up his masculinity.
You can sort of think of Dongfang Bubai as trans or genderfluid? Though DFBB is neither female nor nonbinary. Just DFBB. Also DFBB is a villain, but a very COOL villain. Everyone loves DFBB.
DFBB is often depicted as a trans woman in a lot of TV/movie adaptations, or sometimes just female. China has a reputation for being very conservative about LGBTQ topics (which is true), but there are a lot of legends about various gay or trans characters, as well as several openly LGBTQ celebrities. I may make a post about LGBTQ Chinese pop culture.
The Smiling Proud Wanderer is a VERY popular movie series as well. Go watch it, it’s really, really good! You’ll fall in love with the movie DFBB. I certainly did as a child.
I don’t really like Legend of the Condor Heroes because I personally think it’s a little cringe, but my family all loves it, it’s totally up to personal preference (my favorite Jin Yong work is still Smiling Proud Wanderer). If you read NO OTHER JIN YONG work, read The Smiling Proud Wanderer.
Condor Heroes is probably second on the list. Jin Yong has a lot of novels and they’re all distantly connected (the same way A Song of Ice and Fire is connected to Fire and Blood- they all take place in the same universe, and the characters are related to each other).
The Legend of Chu Liuxiang is also a very famous wuxia series. Chu Liuxiang is a little bit like a Robin Hood figure- he’s righteous and steals from the rich to help the poor. He uses a fan as his spiritual tool and he’s very pretty and moral (he doesn’t kill people, even bad people). He’s also very smart, calm and collected.
I’m NGL, although Chu Liuxiang is traditionally the handsome, distant husband archetype, recently I’ve been seeing people pairing him as the bottom of a BL couple. Won’t spoil who his ships are, but… yum.
I haven’t read the Chu Liuxiang novels, but I grew up on movie and TV adaptations. Looking back, since they’re all pretty old, none of the story/plot/actors/styling choices appeal to me now, but I LOVED CLX as a kid. It’s hard not to, the same way everyone loves Robin Hood as a kid! He’s really cool.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is wuxia! This might be the most famous wuxia media that Westerners know of.
The old Chinese guy in Kill Bill also technically makes that portion of the film wuxia. TBH, Kill Bill overall FEELS very wuxia- the MC taking revenge for people who wronged her, there’s a whole training arc, she has a shifu, etc. I love Kill Bill! Maybe this is why. The Kill Bill movies (and a lot of Tarantino films) take inspiration from Chinese/Hong Kong cinema and wuxia films such as those by Stephen Chow and Zhang Yimou.
Well, I suppose Kung Fu Panda is also wuxia. I personally really like Kung Fu Panda. It gives you a good idea of the ideals and values of wuxia, hmm?
Joy of Life 庆余年 is a very good wuxia novel/TV show. It doesn’t focus a lot on wuxia, but there’s wuxia elements to it!
I think a lot of people are familiar with xianxia danmei (danmei is Chinese BL). In fact, the explosive popularity of danmei webnovels like MDZS, TGCF and 2HA is what introduced xianxia to a lot of overseas people. You’ll recognise many of the terms I outlined above in MXTX and Meatbun’s works. (Quick note: MDZS is a very untraditional cultivation setting)
Xianxia is a very popular setting for danmei because, well, it’s very romantic imagery for your top and bottom to be dressed in beautiful clothing. Xianxia is also a good setting for both sexy times and tragic plotlines.
MXTX works (MDZS, TGCF, SVSSS)
Meatbun works (2HA, Remnants of Filth)
Priest works (Word of Honour, Liu Yao etc)
A LOT of c-dramas are set in xianxia. Xianxia gives potential for beautiful clothes/hair and makeup while also letting your antagonists be freely evil for understandable reasons (having someone hate just for haters’ sake is easier to stomach in xianxia than in a modern setting where you need a JOB LMAO).
Some of the most popular non-danmei xianxia c-dramas are:
三生三世十里桃花 Eternal Love (terrible name: it’s more like 3 Lives, 3 Realms and 10 Miles of Peach Blossoms). It’s VERY popular in China, but I thought it was just mid. A lot of people really like it though!
琅琊榜 Nirvana in Fire (the plot is good if you can get past the TERRIBLE STYLING)
苍兰诀 Love Between Fairy and Devil (I thought it was mid. Fairly popular though)
斗罗大陆 Douluo Continent (I hated the show LMAO. The show was bad, but the IP itself is very popular)
香蜜沉沉烬如霜 Ashes of Love (yet another terrible name) I personally hate this show but a lot of people love it LMAO
长歌行 The Long Ballad (This one was actually pretty good! I recommend it)
Novels and webnovels are where xianxia shines! Most xianxia danmei are webnovels, and most xianxia c-dramas are adapted from webnovels too.
Popular xianxia novels/webnovels include:
凡人修仙传: A Mortal Cultivating to Immortality
Exactly as it sounds- a record of some dude cultivating to immortality. It’s very famous and VERY popular, but it’s really long. I never finished it LMAO. It has like, 8 million words. For context, the ENTIRE HARRY POTTER BOOK SERIES COMBINED is only about 1 million words.
修真聊天群: Cultivation Group Chat
A webnovel in which a regular person gets added to a group chat of cultivators (he assumes they’re fantasy roleplayers). It’s pretty funny and is basically a parody of common xianxia novels.
Gu is an important concept in Chinese “sorcery” for anyone reading this novel, which you can Google, but Reverend Insanity is about a villain sent 500 years back in time with his gu and he’s a ruthless cruel dude who stops at nothing to achieve his goals and takes out anyone who opposes him. I really like the MC Fang Yuan, but the novel can be somewhat “dark” for people who prefer righteous honest main characters.
Maybe I’ll make a post on Gu or Chinese sorcery in general.
This list was taken from Wikipedia (because I assume Wikipedia will only include the ones semi-famous abroad) and is in NO WAY exhaustive. Most Chinese webnovels are xianxia, so there’s literally hundreds of famous webnovels. My personal favourites are 2HA, Candle in the Tomb (not xianxia- it’s about tomb raiding) and Global Examination (it’s danmei but not xianxia).
Personally, I like xianxia but not enough that I exclusively read it (like some of my friends). Xianxia itself is not appealing enough for me to read a webnovel purely because it’s xianxia. Actually I tend to prefer novels set in reality, IDK why.
