Shaw Brothers Expo! - more - more - more - more
This picture is considered particularly good. Super old school stars posing with posters from their old movies.
Shaw brothers is remastering and releasing lots of their old movies on DVD, one of my friends imports them all and we watch. Just the other day we saw The Three Smiles, the poster in the middle of that particularly good picture.
The Three Smiles (三笑) is an example of Yellow Plum, or Huangmei, Opera (黃梅戲), which it turns out is great fun. Lots of music and funny misunderstandings and complicated situations.
When we watched it it led to Jenny and I talking about Dream of the Red Chamber which she just barely managed to read recently, which then led to searching on the internet for the answers to all sorts of questions, which she keeps wanting me to report on here. Maybe she’ll appear and write some comments.
Jenny
The book was a difficult read even with translation at the end of every chapter. I was wondering if Dream of the red chamber was the oldest written novel in the world as it was look upon as one of the greatest achievements in Chinese literature. Well, it\’s not.
steve
Yeah that\’s right. So we looked up what\’s older than Red Chamber Dream (18th century), and found that Romance of Three Kingdoms was older (14th century). But then we found what seems to be considered the oldest novel, the Tale of Genji (written right around the first turn of the milennium).
What I don\’t get: How are the Iliad and the Odyssey not considered the first novels? They were composed around 800 BC and first written down around 500 AD. I\’ve started reading the Odyssey, and it sure seems novel-ish to me.
Dogzilla
Aren\’t both the Odyssey and the Iliad considered to be epic poems? A bit of semantic hair-splitting there if true, as epic poems were clearly considered to be the novels of their times, but I suppose it is valid to consider them as a separate categiry. Another thing to consider is that both the Iliad and the Odyssey are from an oral tradition, which means every retelling of the story would have been somewhat different.
Me
Mr. Dogzilla has hit the nail on the…well you know what I mean.
steve
Yeah I understand all that, but they were finally written down in 500 AD. I say, at that point, they became novels.
Dogzilla
Just want to make sure everything goes in its proper categiry.
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