Blood Tofu and Blood Demons

A fantasy novel set in 17th century Sichuan is the hot-pot of my dreams.

A legendary swordswoman from Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain

In the first chapter of Legendary Swordsmen of the Shu Mountains, an wuxia epic set in Sichuan shortly after the fall of the Ming dynasty, a father and daughter who have traveled thousands of miles from their home in northeastern China encounter an old friend, Uncle Zhou. Uncle Zhou invites them to his home; his student, a young man named Zhao Yan, prepares a meal. The dishes include bacon, pickled vegetables, vinegar noodle soup, and xuedoufu – blood tofu.

Before last night, I had not previously encountered the term “blood tofu.” I have to say: I was a little perplexed by the dictionary definition: “animal blood made into tofu-shaped squares.” I’m familiar with the practice of cooking tofu to imitate different kinds of meat, a phenomenon often encountered in Buddhist vegetarian restaurants. But to have an animal product imitating tofu? That seemed odd.

A little research indicated that the term was just another name for coagulated pig’s blood, a not uncommon ingredient in various Chinese cuisines. I’ve eaten it myself, though I’ve never cooked with it. The texture is similar to tofu, and like tofu, it tends to pick up the flavors of what it is cooked with, rather than having a distinct taste of its own.

So, ok, learn something new every day, right? That is, after all, what gets me up in the morning. For a second, I contemplated whether the concept of pig’s blood in the shape of tofu could be worked into a newsletter post about how food tech startups are trying to figure out ways to make a pork substitute out of soybeans. But then I dove right back into The Legendary Swordswomen of the Shu Mountains, a saga that I will be spending a lot of time with over the next few months (and most likely years.

I first learned of the existence of this novel six or seven years ago. Originally published as a serial in a Tianjin newspaper in 1932, Legendary Swordsmen is considered a major precursor of the modern wuxia novel, reportedly stuffed to the gills with fantastic immortal beings, evil demons, magical beasts and a plentitude of legendary swordplay by men and women. When I discovered that the novel was set in Sichuan, I thought wistfully about how fun it would be to read. But the work has never been translated, and at the time, my Chinese reading comprehension wasn’t up to the task.

I then completely forgot about it, until a few days ago, I happened to see it mentioned in an essay by the great wuxia writer Jin Yong, who was in the course of discussing how the “the Swordswoman of Yue,” a sublime mistress of gongfu said to have lived during the Spring and Autumn Era, had learned her skills from a bamboo-stick wielding ape.

The Legendary Swordswomen of the Shu Mountains, wrote Jin Yong, was full of weapon-wielding apes.

Huh, I thought; I need to read that; and now I probably can. I checked Amazon. A Kindle version was available for ten dollars. All five thousand two hundred and seventy-five pages!  

The author, Li Shoumin, who wrote under the pen-name Huanzhu Louzhu (“Master of the Pearl-Rimmed Tower”), has been called China’s J. R. R Tolkien. My copy of The Lord of the Rings runs 1215 pages. The Legendary Swordsmen of the Shu Mountains is five times as long as The Lord of the Rings.

Blood Demon from Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain

What a strange, strange place for The Road to Shu to lead me. And yet, it seems so absolutely appropriate, almost as if, for the better part of a decade, I’ve been studying every aspect of Sichuanese history and culture I can dig up just so I am adequately prepared to read this book. On the very first page, there is a reference to the desolation and massive depopulation wrought upon Sichuan by the insane maniac Zhang Xianzhong, a bandit leader who ruled over Sichuan at the end of the Ming dynasty. I’ve read both a dissertation about that depopulation (Robert Entenmann’s Migration and Settlement in Sichuan, 1644-1796) and a recent book focusing on Zhang Xianzhong’s turbulent career, (Kenneth Swope’s On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China during the Ming-Qing Transition). Both works have assisted me in researching the theory that the immigrants who repopulated Sichuan during the early years of the Qing dynasty were responsible for bringing chili peppers with them to the region for the first time, and consequently responsible for the birth of modern Sichuan cuisine.

The Legendary Swordswomen of the Shu Mountains begins with two immigrants entering Sichuan. (The story’s opening scene, with the father-and-daughter pair traveling through the treacherous Wu Gorge on the Yangzi river, fascinatingly echoes the opening scene of Li Jieren’s great River Trilogy, (written around the same time as Legendary Swordsmen), which depicts our protagonist returning to Sichuan on a boat traveling up the Yangzi river.)

In the second chapter, our traveling party makes a pilgrimage to Mount Emei, a Sichuanese destination holy to both Daoists and Buddhists, and an extremely popular name for Sichuan restaurants around the world. Indeed, the first Sichuan meal I ever ate was at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Taipei called Emei. I also happen to have read James Hargett’s “Stairway to Heaven: A Journey to the Summit of Mount Emei.”

 I don’t need footnotes to read Legendary Swordsmen. I am the footnote.

In a superb article introducing the wuxia genre in both literature and film, Sam Ho writes of Legendary Swordswomen that “China’s three major schools of belief, Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism are simmered in Huanzhu Louzhu’s melting pot, their essences interacting with the fighting ethos of wu and the chivalrous spirit of xia to produce a magic potion that nourished the genre for decades.”

That makes me so hungry for Sichuan hot-pot! So now I too am working my way up the Yangzi river, embarked on a fresh adventure. Fantasy novels have long been my guiltiest pleasure. But a fantasy novel set in 17^th century Sichuan – this is my life’s work.

Bonus: Tsui Hark’s 1983 masterpiece, Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, was loosely based on Legendary Swordsmen and can be watched in its entirety on YouTube right here. An entertaining trailer can be found here.