ABSTRACTS: Xiuzhen 修真 (cultivating authenticity or perfection) and xianxia 仙俠 (immortal arts and knights-errant) are two popular genres in internet literature that flourish in twenty-first-century China. These novels not only feature the adventures of cultivators practicing Daoist alchemy but also bear the influence of Buddhism and its sinicization. For instance, cultivators must undergo trials and tribulations, designated as jie 劫 ( kalpa , a time unit in Buddhist cosmology), a concept introduced into China via the spread of Buddhism. The contemporary usage of jie is predicated upon the transformation of this concept in scriptures of Buddhism, Daoism, and salvationist cults as well as literary writings, especially vernacular novels of the late-imperial period. The semantic field of jie expanded beyond cosmic cycles to include catastrophes marking apocalyptic moments and sufferings intrinsic in human existence that extend across lifespans. In the last type, jie became associated with ye 業 (karma)—the chain of cause and effect that keeps sentient beings in the cycle of endless rebirths—another concept brought into China by way of Buddhism. Today's web novels describe surviving the repeated attacks of supernatural forces to ascend to higher stages of existence is described as dujie 渡劫 (ferrying across kalpas ), while struggling through several life cycles in the mundane world is lijie 歷劫 (living through kalpas ). Dujie/lijie stories can be read as allegories for the formation of the digital subject, no longer the discipline of the modern individual but what Gilles Deleuze calls the modulation of the dividual, a datafied self constantly disassembled and reassembled.
Zhange Ni (Sat,) studied this question.
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