The Water Margin

The Water Margin, or the 水浒传 (shui hu zhuan) is one of the novels from the Ming Dynasty that we can point to as the origin of much of the Kung Fu tradition. It is the story of 108 dudes (I’m being technical here). They live outside of the boundaries of the urban Chinese world, just on the edge of civilization. The government is corrupt, so they have formed their own gang. They live by a code, brotherhood and revenge, and they kill anyone who gets in their way, including each other. This is the second in our series on toxic masculinity.