![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
我能写中文在我的大学的电脑。我很高兴。今天我有中文课，很有意思不太难了。我喜欢我的大学。
For the past month and a bit I've been reading the Ming dynasty novel Creation of the Gods in translation. The translation I have is by Gu ZhiZhong and seems to be the only English language translation available. It's unfortunately been abridged, there are still a 100 chapters and over a 1000 pages but it leaves you wondering what they left out.
The novel is in a lot of ways quite similar to Journey to the West though everyone is Daoist instead of Buddhist. But there is a lot of magic and kung fu and battles between immortals and from time to time even the gods themselves get involved, including the deified Lao Zi.
The story is set at the downfall of the Shang dynasty and covers the establishment of the Zhou. However such historical settings should not lead you to believe that this in anything other than a fantastic story. My favorite thing was the constant references to the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, none of which had started by the time of the story. (roughly 1000BCE)
Despite all the extravagant trappings I found that the story had some very interesting insights. The biggest theme of the story was duty to heaven versus duty to your ruler. It was a story without real heroes of villains, the author very clearly wrote that everyone's motives were good, some felt their duty was to the dynasty, others who seemed more aware were able to tell that the mandate had gone and the dynasty should be opposed. Even the evil spirits leading the Emperor astray were said to be doing the will of Heaven. It was fascinating.
Another nice theme in the book was the role of women. Women were almost always portrayed as the equal of men. This was particularly interesting as the claims against the Emperor were that he was "wasting all his time with women". But the women were intelligent and fierce warriors fighting alongside the men.
It was a most enjoyable read. I felt that some of the battles towards the middle had lost a little in translation and probably would have looked much better on screen, but it was still an amusing and interesting book that even managed to be a little disturbing at times.
The novel is in a lot of ways quite similar to Journey to the West though everyone is Daoist instead of Buddhist. But there is a lot of magic and kung fu and battles between immortals and from time to time even the gods themselves get involved, including the deified Lao Zi.
The story is set at the downfall of the Shang dynasty and covers the establishment of the Zhou. However such historical settings should not lead you to believe that this in anything other than a fantastic story. My favorite thing was the constant references to the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, none of which had started by the time of the story. (roughly 1000BCE)
Despite all the extravagant trappings I found that the story had some very interesting insights. The biggest theme of the story was duty to heaven versus duty to your ruler. It was a story without real heroes of villains, the author very clearly wrote that everyone's motives were good, some felt their duty was to the dynasty, others who seemed more aware were able to tell that the mandate had gone and the dynasty should be opposed. Even the evil spirits leading the Emperor astray were said to be doing the will of Heaven. It was fascinating.
Another nice theme in the book was the role of women. Women were almost always portrayed as the equal of men. This was particularly interesting as the claims against the Emperor were that he was "wasting all his time with women". But the women were intelligent and fierce warriors fighting alongside the men.
It was a most enjoyable read. I felt that some of the battles towards the middle had lost a little in translation and probably would have looked much better on screen, but it was still an amusing and interesting book that even managed to be a little disturbing at times.
.