In Cambodia there are a lot of Chinese ethnic people living all around the country. (To be frank, even I myself have some chinese blood running in my vein.) That's why you will see chinese temples and some chinese culuter all around Phnom Penh.Even at What Phnom Pagoda which is the symbol of Phnom Phen you will find the status of Thang Chan (the monk in Thang dynasty who traveled to India to copy the Buddha Books).
Since I was a child I like to watch chinese martial art drama very much. The whole drama is full of love, mystery, brotherhood, tricky..... Then one day I had the chance to read chinese martial art novel in Khmer.I must admit that it was really a page turning stuff.I could not control myself and have to read all the five books at once :) . My father also used to tell me that when he was in his twenties he also get lost in this cinese martial art fiction world too.
the cover of Legend of the Condor HeroesThose chinese martial art things are called
Wuxia in chinese. Becasue I can not read chinese and I was eager to read the novels I was end up with some interesting web sites after I google a bit :)
The most famous Wuxia author is
Jing Yong. His novels are adapted into movies and dramas and some of his novels have been adapted for many times.
For example his novel named
The Return of the Condor Heroes was adapted to drama and was very popular when i was in cambodia. It was called Tep Intri Sena Kla Han in khmer.I still remember my whole family always watch that daram every night.
from chapter 1 of Legend of the Condor HeroesIf you can not read chinese like me and wanna give wuxia a try then the following web sites are the good starting point.
http://www.wuxiapedia.com/ has many novels. All of the novels are translated voluntarily into English by people who interested in Wuxia.I was very impressed when I firstly knew about that. It is a good community sense which people in the community contribute to make the community active. It is not different from people in Open Source software community. I do wish that soon our khmer people will have such community sense.
This forum also have some Wuxia novels translated into English by its member.
Hope that you will enjoy them.
