Favorite novel by Mr Jin Yong?

[archylgp]

@John Yu -- that's impressive. I'm going to start reading 射鵰英雄傳. We'll see how it goes.

@Sam -- I tried to read 三國演義 once. I didn't get very far, though. These days I've been going through the 詩經 one by one. I find that enjoyable. I read 衡門 last night. It's interesting to think about the moral point in song (?) that was written during the Eastern Zhou dynasty is still true today -- that is, why use "expensive things" when "simple things" work just as well.

I think 三國演義 not hard.
Taiwan student study in junior high school.
But many many people in 三國.
So hard to remember who is who side, who kill who, who do what.
But too much good story, very exciting, everyone Thailand love this book.

Yeah -- I just didn't find it that interesting. I ended up reading 李方桂's 上古音研究 instead. To really understand that book is hard, but not because of the language. Like I mentioned before, I'm enjoying the 詩經 now. Another book I'm reading now is 五十年來中國國語運動史 by 方師鐸. Most people will find it boring, though. I like adventure stories so I'm going to start Jin Yong's 射鵰英雄傳 tonight/tomorrow...

[John Yu]

射鵰英雄傳 is a great book. I read the book, the graphic novel, watched the TV series...and now I know the 18 Dragon Subduing Palms! haha

[John Yu]

[Teddoman]

My vague recollection of Jin Yong was that the literary and/or ancient period vocab seemed quite high compared to what I was learning in school. Does that sound right to you? I felt like I had developed absolutely zero vocab that would enable me to read it.

Reading 4 Jin Yongs, wow. Impressive.

[John Yu]

You're right - there's a lot of literary/ancient period vocab in there that's harder than what you learn in school and might be irrelevant to modern/basic Chinese. On the other hand, if you develop an interest in these novels, you can learn a lot about Chinese culture and history.

When I was an intermediate-level Chinese student trying to figure out a way to take my Chinese to the next level, someone suggested selecting a niche/genre and reading a whole bunch of stuff in it. I chose wuxia novels and read a lot of them. At the beginning, it was confusing, but the more you read, the more they make sense, and you pick up a lot of advanced Chinese in the process.

[Teddoman]

Well that's definitely a cool niche, though probably a very difficult one. That and Taiwanese budaixi. Two things I'll never get to read or understand directly

I just remember opening up a Jin Yong book (don't remember which one) and trying to read the first page. I didn't even really try that hard. But I just scanned the page, and the radicals on some of the characters and the words were just clearly not normal vernacular everyday type words. The words I did look up were period words. Which made me realize it was a lost cause without a serious investment in developing that vocab.

[John Yu]

Yeah, pretty serious investment to get into that niche...must've taken me a year or so to finish the first wuxia novel I tried to read. They got a little easier after that though.