The Comparative Study Between Xiao Ao Jiang Hu Tv Drama In Mainland China And Hongkong

The martial arts drama, as a special genre in China, illustrating knight-errant's excellent kung fu and romantic stories, always maintains high-level audience ratings. Among most martial arts dramas, those adapted from Ji Yong's martial arts novels have been paid the greatest attention. Among Ji Yong's martial arts novels, Xiao Ao Jiang Hu (also known as The Swordsman), has been adapted as films and TV dramas for many times and the original story was often recomposed to a large extent. At the end of the last century and the beginning of the21st century, the adaptations of Xiao Ao Jiang Hu were more faithful to the original. In this paper, the author aims to compare and contrast two adaptations of Xiao Ao Jiang Hu, i.e. the martial arts drama by TVB in1996and the one by CCTV in2001in terms of cultural background, audience's expectations, content and structure, scenes and characterization.The first chapter mainly focuses on the relationships between Ji Yong's original work and adapted TV dramas. In addition, the author indicates that the adapter's levels exert influences on the representation of the original work. It is believed that the drama adapter should maintain faithfulness to the original and meet the audience's expectations as far as possible.The second chapter primarily explicates the characteristics of the TVB version of Xiao Ao Jiang Hu. Influenced by the social circumstances and cultural background at that time, the TVB version took the characters' emotional development as the main storyline and meanwhile, focused on character appearance, kongfu and actor's performance, while the natural environment and power conflicts were less important.Through the comparison and contrast between the two versions of Xiao Ao Jiang Hu TV dramas, Chapter3provides an analysis of characteristics of the CCTV version. Compared to the TVB version which nicely met audiences'expectations by representing popular culture, the CCTV version did not achieve a balance between the illustration of cultural background and audiences' needs. However, due to the successful publicization, CCTV version gained high-level ratings. Instead of adopting the original narrative structure of the novel, the CCTV version made some creative changes. In terms of the representation of martial arts, the CCTV version not only focused on the attractiveness, but also added various cultural factors. Also, the CCTV version presented the beauty of different settings, while the natural environment and cultural scenes were rather monotonous in the TVB one. Additionally, compared to the TVB version, actors' performance styles varied considerably. The leading roles were not satisfactorily performed, while those who acted minor roles showed impressive performance skills.