ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT

Not a bad way to bring in the Year of the Tiger, spending a few hours with another pretty boy with a sword.  Up to episode ershi san (23, of sanshi, 30) in "Sword Stained with Royal Blood," my current epic wuxia series,  based on a novel by Louis Cha, the Louis L'Amour of China. This one is an end-of-Ming story starring the charming, pouty-mouthed Bobby Dou Zhi Kong, right, a young Taiwanese actor, who has four sword-wielding women in love with him in a formulaic story about his little band of kung fu experts, including a monk, a reformed bandit, some mysterious uncles and one of the adoring women.  They are out to kill the last corrupt and stupid Ming king (whose daughter is one of the lovestruck maidens) and save the country in the face of Qing attacks. (There is real history here.) Bobby plays a moral and very agile character, although I keep thinking the role calls for Vincent Zhao, supported by Power Chan as the reformed bandit. (But that's just me. I think maybe Bobby is channeling Vincent a little.) Original language here is Mandarin, so I've been training my ear and learning some useful phrases.

A surprise element in this story (to me, maybe it's a well known Chinese thing) was the magical "ice toad," which looks like a marzipan amphibian that sucks poison (a common wuxia element) out of anyone so afflicted; the opposite, really, of the tropical bufo.  Googling "ice toad" I find that, apart from its appearance in some fantasy games, there actually are toads in Alaska that freeze and thaw; they create their own antifreeze.  Sounds like Chinese medicine; I've seen those geckos on a dipstick!  Click here for some fascinating toad-related stuff.

Taoist Immortals Dancing with Toad