Xianxia

Summary

Xianxia is a genre of Chinese fantasy heavily inspired by Chinese mythology and influenced by philosophies of Taoism, Chan Buddhism, Confucianism, Chinese martial arts, classical Chinese medicine, Chinese folk religion, Chinese alchemy, and other classical elements of Chinese culture, It is also closely related to the wuxia and shenmo genre, as it developed as a subgenre of wuxia and simultaneously as a subgenre of shenmo before branching out to become a distinct martial arts genre by the late 19th century. It is often considered akin to other high fantasy genres such as the sword and sorcery stories of Western literatures and the ninja fantasy fictions in Japanese literature.