Soothing Eloise re ethnocentrism, Chinese wizards

[greyshi]

No: HPFGUIDX 35933

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:

> Errrr... errr... Chinese wizards?  Not a clue, to be honest 
(dragonback?), though I could find out for you by asking people I
know 
who were educated in Chinese and would be familiar with Chinese 
fairytales and so forth.  Unless we have someone wiser than I in the 
ways of Chinese mythology already on the list...?  I was raised in 
Australia with the Brothers Grimm and Mother Goose (though I did see 
Monkey as a child!).  I remember reading something on the Net about 
how they explained the broomsticks in the Chinese translation, but 
I've no idea where it was.  I remember them saying it was a problem, 
because Chinese children would never have heard of the flying 
broomstick concept...


Ah, I can help here! If JKR were to use Chinese stories as a basis
for 
what any Chinese wizards might do, then they'd probably jump-fly like 
in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. While most Western audiences found 
this to be really odd in the movie, it's normal for fantasy
characters 
with "powers." OTOH, one of the most well known wizards in Chinese 
legend is Zhuge Liang and he traveled the way everyone else did.
Boat, 
horseback and walking. The clouds that Monkey and his like use are 
immortal forms of travel. So the idea of using an object like 
broomsticks would be odd.

There is a well-done webpage that deals with how things were 
translated in the Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese editions:

http://cjvlang.com/Hpotter/index.html

Greyshi

//Elf Note: Since discussion of other kinds of mythological wizards is 
potentially very interesting even outside of the HP books (well, to me it is!),
 make sure that any non-HP-related follow-ups to this topic mosey over to the 
HPfGU-Chatter list!  ~ MaHoney Elf//