It always seems like when I comment about the translations on wuxiaworld it's to criticize, so I just want to throw out some props. Translating a novel from a language and culture for a western audience has got to be ridiculously hard, and the fact that the translations you guys do are so readable is just amazing. I took a look at a machine translation and I can't imagine how anybody reads them. Mad props to you guys!
Listening to Xiao Lai talk about Qi makes me think about when religious fundamentalists talk about "knowing" that god was real, and other Placebo effect things that happen when people do "spirit healing".
From experience I can say that spiritual energy and aura can be very much felt through exhausting martial arts training for many tens of years. After 10 years of practicing karate everyday I can feel "energy" moving through the body often. The feeling is much heavier when you get exhausted and I'm sure chemicals in the brain have alot to do with it aswell, however being exhausted and feeling actually stronger than when you start is very strange so I believe there's really something going on I have recently started reading these wuxia and I couldn't believe how similar to reality the mentalities and the descriptions are in them compared to people I know that practice as if their live depends on it everyday. It's very hard to describe and the older people I talk to which have been training their whole lifetimes say that it this energy never ceases to increase throughout the years. I don't believe someone that just studies can ever feel qi (no offence intended), but you can definitely feeling when you have been exerting yourself physically for years upon years and I feel martial arts are the 'dao' to simplify this process. It could be the brain and chemical but the answer to this question is hard to answer through science and what we have available to understand it currently is the "feeling" we get from it.
My personal interpretation of Qi is it's an extremely broad brush for "change , effect, growth(positive or negative)" on everything like the physical, spiritual, conceptual, and experience or person or thing. If you put Qi in that light it works well with the western mind set of cause and effect.
It's like higher level physics, it both tangible and intangible, because that's how dantian was, there were lakes in dantian and stuff. Like Schrodinger's cat.
Hm you know I've seen the occasional story where the reduction of qi in the environment is attributed to pollution. Now that might have just been made up, but if that holds up and the majority of the Chinese believe in qi and such it's strange they seem unconcerned about pollution.
On the contrary, they are very concerned with air pollution. Like in our city we have license plate limitations so that only certain cars can drive on the road at certain times. They cut the heating supply to reduce coal pollution this winter. They force factories to shut down during certain times of the year when pollution gets bad. But all those things also have negative ramifications. Actually, the pollution situation has improved a lot where I live over the past year or two.
Chi is real, as long as you believe in it. All of what you experience, be it your interpretation of vision, hearing, tasting, feeling, or concepts like "truth" "justice" and your believes, are a construction of your brain. Non of it is objectively real, and can never be unless you become literally everything, but that excludes the possibility of being an individual in the way we defined one to be. So someone feeling inner energy is as real as whatever else you construct for yourself to be real. And if another person believes that they get better by stimulating their chi or whatever, they , to a certain degree, will. As for the question wether or not chinese medicine can really heal you, that would need a bigger discussion about the question wether or not we as the human species have actually any kind of medicine that can really heal you, and is not only there to either give you more confidence in your selfregulating system, destroy stuff like bacteria or virusses , or mechanically repair stuff (chirugic practices)
Good points. I wouldn't differentiate western and eastern medicine so much. When eastern med practitioner gives you some traditional stuff and when a western doctor prescribes you a painkiller and sends you back home or prescribes a drug without any blood microb testing these two appear as the same level voodoo charlatans... except that you may actually heal many diseases with herbs and many western meds are just extracts of those while you can also be unlucky to have a doctor who everytimes prescribes you overpriced antibiotics basicly destroying your natural immunity. On other extreme there are homeopathic pseudomeds or chemotherapy which was proven to mostly kill you faster than cancer itself.. but the real scientifical medicine and old local herbal knowledge compatible with your region environment is the greatest thing they is just not many doctors are educating themselves and are oblivious to ride effects of meds they prescribe. This at least is point of view from CE Europe. In Germany (except the nazi german auschwitz invention of chemiterapy) or Switzerland it's much higher level of competence.
It always seems like when I comment about the translations on wuxiaworld it's to criticize, so I just want to throw out some props.
Translating a novel from a language and culture for a western audience has got to be ridiculously hard, and the fact that the translations you guys do are so readable is just amazing. I took a look at a machine translation and I can't imagine how anybody reads them.
Mad props to you guys!
Listening to Xiao Lai talk about Qi makes me think about when religious fundamentalists talk about "knowing" that god was real, and other Placebo effect things that happen when people do "spirit healing".
Thanks patriarch for answering my questions deeply bows. 🙏
From experience I can say that spiritual energy and aura can be very much felt through exhausting martial arts training for many tens of years. After 10 years of practicing karate everyday I can feel "energy" moving through the body often. The feeling is much heavier when you get exhausted and I'm sure chemicals in the brain have alot to do with it aswell, however being exhausted and feeling actually stronger than when you start is very strange so I believe there's really something going on
I have recently started reading these wuxia and I couldn't believe how similar to reality the mentalities and the descriptions are in them compared to people I know that practice as if their live depends on it everyday. It's very hard to describe and the older people I talk to which have been training their whole lifetimes say that it this energy never ceases to increase throughout the years.
I don't believe someone that just studies can ever feel qi (no offence intended), but you can definitely feeling when you have been exerting yourself physically for years upon years and I feel martial arts are the 'dao' to simplify this process. It could be the brain and chemical but the answer to this question is hard to answer through science and what we have available to understand it currently is the "feeling" we get from it.
Imagine if 100 cells in your body are taken for a mitochondria count and scientists are like "they're increasing! That must be what he means by 'qi'!"
Definately agree to that +50 chapter thing, after that it just flows like a flood
I heard a 'cold snort' from Xiao Lai when the question about Chinese medicine to westerners was asked
My personal interpretation of Qi is it's an extremely broad brush for "change , effect, growth(positive or negative)" on everything like the physical, spiritual, conceptual, and experience or person or thing.
If you put Qi in that light it works well with the western mind set of cause and effect.
missed it, for reading some chapters xp.!
It's like higher level physics, it both tangible and intangible, because that's how dantian was, there were lakes in dantian and stuff.
Like Schrodinger's cat.
I hate i was at work when u went live
I stayed awake until 1 then fell asleep :'( So sad i should've hanged on for 1 hour
skyfire avenue not skyfire alley :/
Hm you know I've seen the occasional story where the reduction of qi in the environment is attributed to pollution. Now that might have just been made up, but if that holds up and the majority of the Chinese believe in qi and such it's strange they seem unconcerned about pollution.
On the contrary, they are very concerned with air pollution. Like in our city we have license plate limitations so that only certain cars can drive on the road at certain times. They cut the heating supply to reduce coal pollution this winter. They force factories to shut down during certain times of the year when pollution gets bad. But all those things also have negative ramifications. Actually, the pollution situation has improved a lot where I live over the past year or two.
Chi is real, as long as you believe in it. All of what you experience, be it your interpretation of vision, hearing, tasting, feeling, or concepts like "truth" "justice" and your believes, are a construction of your brain. Non of it is objectively real, and can never be unless you become literally everything, but that excludes the possibility of being an individual in the way we defined one to be. So someone feeling inner energy is as real as whatever else you construct for yourself to be real. And if another person believes that they get better by stimulating their chi or whatever, they , to a certain degree, will.
As for the question wether or not chinese medicine can really heal you, that would need a bigger discussion about the question wether or not we as the human species have actually any kind of medicine that can really heal you, and is not only there to either give you more confidence in your selfregulating system, destroy stuff like bacteria or virusses , or mechanically repair stuff (chirugic practices)
Good points. I wouldn't differentiate western and eastern medicine so much. When eastern med practitioner gives you some traditional stuff and when a western doctor prescribes you a painkiller and sends you back home or prescribes a drug without any blood microb testing these two appear as the same level voodoo charlatans... except that you may actually heal many diseases with herbs and many western meds are just extracts of those while you can also be unlucky to have a doctor who everytimes prescribes you overpriced antibiotics basicly destroying your natural immunity. On other extreme there are homeopathic pseudomeds or chemotherapy which was proven to mostly kill you faster than cancer itself.. but the real scientifical medicine and old local herbal knowledge compatible with your region environment is the greatest thing they is just not many doctors are educating themselves and are oblivious to ride effects of meds they prescribe. This at least is point of view from CE Europe. In Germany (except the nazi german auschwitz invention of chemiterapy) or Switzerland it's much higher level of competence.
:)