#xiaolongnu

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.

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.