Wuxia vs xianxia: what’s the difference?
Wuxia (武侠, “martial heroes”) follows human fighters who live by a code of honor in the jianghu, a world of rival schools and outlaws, and grow stronger through training. Xianxia (仙侠, “immortal heroes”) grew out of wuxia and adds Daoist magic: its heroes cultivate qi through ranked stages, hoping to become immortals.
What is wuxia? The wuxia meaning and its roots
Wuxia is Chinese fiction about martial artists who act as knights-errant, people who use their own strength to right wrongs that the law will not. The word joins wu 武, “martial,” with xia 侠, the chivalrous hero. The scholar Zhange Ni notes that the compound itself is modern, borrowed into Chinese from Japanese, and defines wuxia fiction as vernacular prose about “the intersection of martial arts with the altruistic ideals” of the Chinese knight-errant.
The knight-errant is far older than the word. The Han historian Sima Qian gave two chapters of his Records of the Grand Historian (史记 Shiji) to wandering knights-errant and to assassins, praising men who kept their word at the cost of their lives. Tang dynasty chuanqi 传奇 tales added sword-bearers with uncanny skills. The best known is Pei Xing’s “Nie Yinniang” (聂隐娘), about a girl trained in swordsmanship and stealth, later the basis of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 2015 film The Assassin.
The Ming novel Water Margin (水浒传 Shuihu zhuan), traditionally attributed to Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong, gathered tales of 108 bandit-heroes who fight corrupt officials in the waning Song dynasty. Its earliest versions date from the early 1500s, and its outlaw brotherhood became a model for later martial storytelling.
In 1928 Xiang Kairan’s Marvelous Gallants of the Rivers and Lakes (江湖奇侠传) became the film The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple. After 1949 the genre flourished mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In 1955 Jin Yong (金庸, Louis Cha, 1924–2018) began serializing The Book and the Sword in a Hong Kong newspaper; Liang Yusheng is the other writer credited with founding this “new school.” In Taiwan, Gu Long (古龙) became known for the Chu Liuxiang and Little Li Flying Dagger series. Ni notes that new-school wuxia stayed within Chinese history and avoided the gods and magic of earlier stories.
What is xianxia?
Xianxia is fantasy in which the hero’s goal is to become a xian 仙, an immortal. In Daoism a xian is someone who has achieved divinity through Daoist practice, and early Daoist adepts sought long life through breath control, exercises and elixirs.
An early ancestor is Huanzhu Louzhu’s Sword-Knights of the Shu Mountains (蜀山剑侠传), serialized from 1932 to 1948 and full of immortality seekers. Modern xianxia began online. In October 2002 a writer using the pen name Xiao Qian began serializing Journeys into the Ephemeral (飘渺之旅), which Ni calls the first xiuzhen (修真, “immortality cultivation”) novel. It helped make cultivation fiction, also called xiuxian 修仙 or xianxia, one of the most popular genres in twenty-first-century China.
Video games shaped it too. The 1995 PC game The Legend of Sword and Fairy (仙剑奇侠传) drew on The Shu Mountains and invented a cultivation sect, Shushan, that later appeared in many novels. Ni observes that the ranked levels in these novels are closer to video game maps than to the stages of Daoist alchemy.
Wuxia vs xianxia at a glance
The quickest test is the hero’s goal: a wuxia hero wants justice or revenge in this life, and a xianxia hero wants to leave mortal life behind.
| Wuxia 武侠 | Xianxia 仙侠 | |
|---|---|---|
| Power source | Training, technique and internal energy (neigong) | Qi cultivation modeled on Daoist internal alchemy, plus talismans, elixirs and magic treasures |
| Goal | Justice, honor, revenge, loyalty to friends | Immortality and ever higher stages of existence |
| Setting | The jianghu of a historical China | Mortal and immortal realms, sects on mountains, heavens above |
| Typical hero | A wandering swordsman or a disciple of a martial school | A cultivator climbing a ladder of named realms |
| Example works | Water Margin; Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes; Gu Long’s Chu Liuxiang series | Sword-Knights of the Shu Mountains; Journeys into the Ephemeral; the drama The Untamed (2019) |
Where kung fu stories and xuanhuan fit
Kung fu stories sit at the realistic end of wuxia, and xuanhuan is the wide fantasy field that contains xianxia.
Kung fu (功夫 gongfu) is a real martial art, and the word can also mean careful preparation for any skilled task. In the second half of the twentieth century, kung fu films became their own action genre and spread interest in the art worldwide.
Xuanhuan (玄幻) means “the mysterious and the fantastic,” fantasy with Chinese characteristics. Ni places cultivation fiction at its heart, but in everyday use xuanhuan often names high-magic stories that keep the power levels and drop the Daoist elements.
Key terms: jianghu, qi, neigong, cultivation and sects
Five words carry most of the vocabulary of both genres.
- Jianghu (江湖), literally “rivers and lakes”: the half-hidden world of fighters, schools and outlaws where wuxia stories happen.
- Qi (气): in Chinese philosophy and medicine, the energy that fills the universe. Early Daoists developed techniques to move qi in the body for long life and spiritual power.
- Neigong (内功), “internal skill”: in wuxia, cultivated inner energy that gives a fighter strength, speed and the power to heal.
- Cultivation and realms: in xianxia the hero rises through named levels. Ni traces them to the stages of Daoist internal alchemy (neidan 内丹): refining essence into qi, qi into spirit and spirit into the void. Novels stretch these into long ladders; Journeys into the Ephemeral has more than ten.
- Sects and schools (门派 menpai): martial houses that share a teacher and a style. In xianxia the whole cultivation world is organized into sects.
Why wuxia and xianxia matter today
Both genres now reach readers and viewers far beyond China through film, television and translation.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) won four Academy Awards, including Foreign Language Film. Jin Yong’s books have sold more than 300 million copies. In 2018 Anna Holmwood’s translation of A Hero Born, the first of four volumes of Legends of the Condor Heroes, brought his best-known saga to English readers. On the xianxia side, the 2019 drama The Untamed, based on the novel Mo Dao Zu Shi by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, follows two cultivators and was one of the highest-earning dramas of 2019.
Questions
- Is xianxia a type of wuxia?
- Partly. Scholars describe xianxia as derived from wuxia, and the name keeps wuxia’s second character, xia (knight-errant). It also draws on older Chinese tales of gods and demons, so it is a branch that grew out of wuxia and then went its own way.
- What does jianghu mean?
- Jianghu (江湖) literally means “rivers and lakes.” In wuxia it names the world of wandering fighters, rival schools and outlaws that exists alongside, and largely outside, the government and its law.
- What is a cultivation novel?
- A cultivation novel (xiuzhen 修真 or xiuxian 修仙) follows a character who trains body and spirit through a ladder of named stages, refining qi, in order to become an immortal. The stages are loosely based on Daoist internal alchemy. Most xianxia stories are cultivation novels.
- Is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon wuxia or xianxia?
- Wuxia. The 2000 film was adapted from a martial arts novel, and its fighters are human swordsmen and swordswomen, however lightly they glide across water.
- What is the difference between xianxia and xuanhuan?
- Xuanhuan (玄幻, “the mysterious and the fantastic”) is the wider label for fantasy with Chinese characteristics. Xianxia sits inside it and keeps the Daoist goal of immortality. Stories labeled xuanhuan often keep the power levels but drop the Daoist framework.
Read it as a story
The Forgotten Arts brings wuxia into the modern day. Shen Mo, the last master of Origin Gate, a hidden house of the old martial arts, reaches its burning gate on the night it falls and wakes in a modern city, where Detective Su Yue is looking at a death no doctor can explain. The first 20 comic chapters are free, and so are the first 10 chapters of the novel.
Redwood Gate is a kung fu academy story. Twelve-year-old Kai Lin washes dishes in his parents’ restaurant and practices one kung-fu move five hundred times, as 24 kids compete for three places at a martial academy hidden among the redwoods. The first 20 comic chapters are free.
Ready to read some? See wuxia novels in English: where to start.
More legends: the nine-tailed fox, the Legend of the White Snake and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.
Sources
- Zhange Ni, “Xiuzhen (Immortality Cultivation) Fantasy: Science, Religion, and the Novels of Magic/Superstition in Contemporary China,” Religions 11, no. 1 (2020): 25. doi.org/10.3390/rel11010025
- Academy of Chinese Studies, “The Wandering Knight-errant in Chinese Culture.” chiculture.org.hk
- Britannica, “Water Margin.” britannica.com/topic/Water-Margin
- Britannica, “Hong Kong literature.” britannica.com/art/Hong-Kong-literature
- Britannica, “xian.” britannica.com/topic/xian-Daoism
- Britannica, “qi.” britannica.com/topic/qi-Chinese-philosophy
- Britannica, “kung fu.” britannica.com/sports/kung-fu
- Richard James Havis, “What martial arts storytelling owes to The Water Margin,” South China Morning Post, 19 September 2021. scmp.com
- Festival de Cannes, “Hou Hsiao-Hsien reinvents the tradition of the martial arts film,” 2015. festival-cannes.com
- NPR, “Louis Cha, Who Wrote Beloved Chinese Martial Arts Novels As Jin Yong, Dies,” 31 October 2018. npr.org
- NPR, “Chinese Classic ‘Condor Heroes’ Takes Wing In English,” 4 March 2018. npr.org
- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “The 73rd Academy Awards (2001).” oscars.org
- Wikipedia (pointers): Wuxia, Xianxia, Nie Yinniang, Gu Long, The Untamed.