俠客, 近代를 만나다

Abstract

One of the critical characteristics of Pingjiang Buxiaosheng's Jindai Xiayi Yingxiong Zhuan(The Stories of Modern Chivalrous Heroes) is the aspect that Huo Yuanjia, a chivalrous fighter, goes to Shanghai and experience the modern city. In the city, he goes through a number of unfortunate disasters including his own death. Despite all the tragic events, his life in Shanghai cannot be judged as a complete failure. Serving the needs of his mother country, he contributed himself to the project of modernizing Chinese martial arts. Through the thorough examination of Huo Yuanjia’s modernizing processes, the current study suggests the aesthetic uniqueness of Jindai Xiayi Yingxiong Zhuan and highlights the excellence Pingjiang Buxiaosheng's realistic writing styles. Additionally, the study illustrates the writer’s effort to relocate the chivalrous fighter from the ancient context to the modern one, suggesting the recontextualization is basically related to the birth of martial arts novels.