Footnotes
Chapter 3
[1] The Beggars’ Gang (丐帮) is a large grassroots organization made up of beggars. It is common across many wuxia settings and noted for being a large, powerful group with an excellent information-gathering network. Its members traditionally carried bowls to collect coins when they begged on the streets.
[2] The heavenly tribulation (天劫) is a common aspect of many xianxia stories. Cultivation is a process that goes against the natural order of things, so sometimes the cultivators must pass a trial to ascend to a higher stage of cultivation or godhood. This trial usually requires the cultivator to withstand the strike of a divine lightning storm or another natural disaster, and failure can mean death or significant loss of cultivation and/or power.
[3] From Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, a novel by Mo Yan.
Chapter 4
[4] Lucky money (压岁钱), literally “keep the age (sui祟) down money,” sounds like “keep the evil (suiËî) away money.”
Chapter 5
[5] A line adapted from the writing of 4th century BCE philosopher Zhuangzi (庄子).
Chapter 8
[6] Train ticket without a seat reservation.
[7] Guanyin (观音), called the Compassionate Bodhisattva or Goddess of Mercy, is the primary protector of the heroes in Journey to the West. Rulai (如来) is the Chinese name meaning Tathāgata, which may indicate one of several Buddhas, here likely Siddhartha Gautama, and refers to having transcended mortal concerns.
Chapter 12
[8] Four (四, sì), which sounds like “death” (死, si), is an unlucky number.
Chapter 15
[9] A legendary monk who came to China from the west in the 5th or 6th century, considered the founder of the Chan school of Mahāyāna Buddhism.
Chapter 19
[10] Ba (魃) is a drought monster, sometimes believed to be a corpse that doesn’t dry out after death.
Chapter 20
[11] The Jade Pond (瑶池) is a mythical place in the Heavens where the Queen Mother of the West (西王母) resides.
[12] Lei Feng (雷锋) was a folk hero around the 1950s-1960s, touted by the state as a model of altruism.
Chapter 21
[13] The sauwastika (卍) is a Sanskrit symbol representing the auspicious footprints of the Buddha.
Chapter 22
[14] The Four Symbols (四象) represent the guardians of the four cardinal directions, and they are each associated with a series of things like colors or seasons. The four creatures are the White Tiger of the West (shaoyin), the Vermilion Bird of the South (taiyang), the Azure Dragon of the East (shaoyang), and the Black Tortoise of the North (taiyin).
The Mountain Spirit
[15] The Mountain Spirit (山鬼) is a poem from Nine Songs (九歌), a collection of ancient poems. The poem is about a mountain goddess who yearns for her lover. Note: Shen Wei’s original name, 嵬 is a combination of these two characters.
[16] Qinggong (轻功) is a martial arts technique based on a real-life discipline for scaling vertical surfaces. Qinggong in wuxia and xianxia is often exaggerated, allowing practitioners to glide in the air, travel at miraculous speeds, run over water, and leap through trees or over buildings.
[17] Jianghu (江湖 / “rivers and lakes”) is a common setting for wuxia stories, featuring an underground society of martial artists, outlaws, and their associates, who self-govern and settle issues among themselves based on principles of strength and personal conviction.
[18] The Chinese word for “snowflake,” when translated, “xuehua” (雪花), literally, means “snow flower,” which makes it sound like it’s a type of flower.
[19] The two protagonists from the Legend of the White Snake (白蛇传), one of China’s most famous folktales. Xu Xian is a human scholar, while his lover, Bai Suzhen, is a white snake spirit who has cultivated human form. They fall in love, but must overcome ordeals and persecution to be together. Over centuries, the story has evolved from a tragedy to a love story.
[20] Tales of a Bitten Peach (分桃记) references an ancient Chinese story about a duke and his male lover, who offered the duke a peach after taking a bite. Bitten peaches, like cut sleeves, can symbolize gay romance.
[21] The character for his current name, Wéi (嵬), is formed from the characters “mountain” (山 / shān) and “ghost” (鬼 / guiˇ), while Shen San’s suggestion, Wēi (巍), has the added character wei (委). Both characters mean large, tall, lofty, but 嵬 has a more uneven, craggy connotation while 巍 is more majestic and dignified.
[22] In traditional astrology, the North Star is known as the Emperor Star (紫薇星), and influences on it can represent both the fate of the emperor personally and significant outcomes for the nation as a whole.
[23] Jingzhe (惊蛰), meaning “the startling awake of insects,” is the third of the twenty-four traditional Chinese solar terms. Usually around early spring, when insects first leave winter hibernation, approximately March 5th–20th.
Pocket Dimension
[24] Plaza dancing (广场舞) is a trend where dancers, mostly middle-aged women, gather in public areas to perform group choreography to a variety of music.
[25] Chengyu (成语) are Chinese proverbs or idioms, usually based on quotes from literature or historical quotations and condensed to four characters. Educated people usually have a good chengyu vocabulary and are able to apply them with ease.