Bridge of Birds

Bridge of Birds, the first installment in Barry Hughart's literary trilogy The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, is a fantasy novel taking place in a version of ancient China wherein the regional folk tales and Taoist myths are all true. The gods really do meddle in the affairs of mortals (but subtly, for reasons of etiquette) and minor bits of magic can be found anywhere.

Lu Yu, nicknamed Number Ten Ox because of his birth order and great strength, is a humble peasant living in the village of Ku-fu, content to spend his days farming and assisting with the annual silk harvest...until one year when the abject failure of the harvest coincides with a devastating plague that infects the children--and only the children--of the village. Ox's aunt sends him to Peking with money in order to hire a wise man to solve the mystery, and he winds up with one Li Kao, an antiquated drunkard who keeps company with bandits and thugs. But despite these "slight flaws in his character," Master Li also has a well-developed sense of justice and quite possibly the keenest mind in all China, and he eagerly joins--in fact, he takes command of--Ox's quest to save the children. A quest that ultimately takes them into every conceivable corner of China, into bustling cities and deep caverns and across deserts and mountain ranges, to do business and battle (sometimes simultaneously) with brilliant scholars, horrifying monsters, scheming noblewomen, obsessive businessmen, demigods, and not a few tormented ghosts.

The writing style is lush and poetic yet semi-conversational in tone, featuring devices such as alliteration, humorous exaggeration and understatement, and casual references to Chinese history and folklore. The tone is a wonderful blend of action, drama, comedy, and even romance, along with an engaging theme of mystery and discovery as Ox and Master Li gather and put together the pieces of the puzzle. Although short as fantasy novels go--it clocks in at under 300 pages--it nonetheless contains more story than many a conventional Doorstopper.

Hughart wrote two sequels--The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen--which have been published in an omnibus edition with their precursor. Neither really lives up to the standard set by Bridge of Birds, although they are still very good.


 * Adaptational Attractiveness: An in-universe example.
 * Exclusively Evil: All the Dukes of Ch'in.
 * Apocalyptic Log: In the city destroyed by The Hand That No One Sees.
 * Asshole Victim: One of Li Kao's plans involves murder, and he hopes to find someone who deserves to be offed. He does.
 * Awesome Moment of Crowning:
 * Axe Crazy:, literally. Arguably justified, considering the indignities he'd endured for so many years.
 * Badass Grandpa: Master Li.
 * Bamboo Technology: Literal in the case of the Bamboo Dragonfly.
 * Beat Still My Heart
 * Brains and Brawn: Master Li and Number Ten Ox, respectively.
 * Catch Phrase: "My surname is Li, my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character."
 * Chekhov's Gun: Too many to list, and all pretty clever.
 * Chekhov's Gunman: Likewise.
 * Chekhov's Skill: Again, likewise.
 * The Chessmaster:
 * Comic Sutra: Good luck figuring out what exactly "Six Doves Beneath the Eaves on a Rainy Day" is supposed to look like.
 * That said, most of the other named positions do appear in Chinese sex manuals, with named defensibly translated as Hugart does, and are used appropriately in the story.
 * Contractual Genre Blindness: The Duke of Ch'in deliberately acts like a villain out of fairy tales, incidentally providing his foes with a fair chance to beat him. However, this is not out of a sense of fairness--it's because he's more frightened and confused than he tries to show.
 * Contrived Coincidence: Too many to list. Let's just say that characters keep on bumping back into each other with alarming frequency.
 * Deus Ex Machina:
 * Devoted to You: Lotus Cloud.
 * The Dog Was the Mastermind: Master Li reveals in a Wham! Line that.
 * Evil Matriarch: The Ancestress.
 * Evil Overlord: The Duke of Ch'in.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: The handmaidens.
 * Find the Cure: The impetus for the entire plot.
 * Finger-Licking Poison: Mentioned, but not actually part of the plot.
 * Genre Savvy: Master Li--"You and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac."
 * God's Hands Are Tied
 * Heart Trauma: "A man with no heart likes things cold."
 * Henpecked Husband: The appropriately nicknamed Henpecked Ho.
 * Historical Villain Upgrade
 * Innocuously Important Episode: Anything that happens and isn't immediately important will be important later.
 * If I Can't Have You:
 * I See Dead People: A rare case where this is a learned skill. Master Li can do it, and he teaches it to Number Ten Ox. As for the ghosts themselves, they repeat their deaths over and over until either the loop is broken, or their reason for remaining is removed. They wear Jacob Marley Apparel, and it's uncertain whether they know they're dead, though some seem to do.
 * I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Henpecked Ho, poor fella. Also, Number Ten Ox at the end, when he.
 * Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Number Ten Ox, according to Master Li. "When I run into something that is really foul, I can counter with the potential for foulness that resides in the depths of my soul... You, on the other hand, suffer from an incurable case of purity of heart."
 * Invisible Monsters: The Hand That No One Sees, which turns out to be.
 * Land of Dragons: This is "a novel of an ancient China that never was," to which the book blurb adds, "But oh, it should have been!" Gets credit for having a more developed world that the description would imply. And only one dragon, on a little necklace.
 * Long List: What you tend to get if you ask Henpecked Ho a simple question.
 * Love Makes You Evil:
 * Also subverted:
 * Mad Scientist: Doctor Death.
 * Madness Mantra: "Chop-chop. Chop-chop-chop!"
 * Malevolent Architecture
 * Masochist's Meal: Porcupine meat, if improperly prepared, will kill you horribly.
 * The Maze: Lots.
 * Meaningful Echo: Number Ten Ox and Fainting Maid's first stroll through the gardens leads to an argument about whether a bird is a cuckoo or a magpie imitating a cuckoo. Later on, when Master Li has, he tells her father, "You are perfectly free to hear whatever you choose, but what I hear is a magpie that is imitating the sounds of ."
 * Meaningful Name: Many of them, including Fainting Maid and.
 * Money Fetish: Lotus Cloud is known as the most expensive woman in all of China with good reason, although her greed extends to only pearls and jade. Anything else, and she instantly loses interest..
 * Murder Is the Best Solution
 * My Grandson, Myself.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Hand That No One Sees. Yes. Start running now.
 * Needle in a Stack of Needles: Subverted. Master Li thinks that this is what the Duke has done with the MacGuffin Girl... when the truth is far simpler and more brilliant.
 * The Nicknamer: Lotus Cloud gives all of her suitors cutesy nicknames like "Boopsie", "Woofie", and "Pooh-Pooh".
 * Old Master: Master Li, in spite of the slight flaws in his character.
 * Plot Coupon: The bell, the ball and the flute, and the parts of the Great Root.
 * Prehensile Hair:
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Several characters,
 * The Reveal: A couple of Wham Moment-y ones.
 * Royal Brat: Pretty much all the descendants of the Ancestress. Fainting Maid is the most prominent example.
 * Running Gag: "What have you done with my {precious item}?!"
 * Showy Invincible Hero: It never quite feels like our heroes are in any real danger, but there is great fun in seeing their plans to get out of it.
 * Soul Jar
 * Spiritual Successor: To the Kai Lung stories of the early 20th century.
 * Star-Crossed Lovers: Over and over.
 * Ten Thousand Billion Trillion To One Chance
 * Title Drop
 * Together in Death: Several instances.
 * The Triads and the Tongs: Master Li fakes being a member.
 * The Watson: Number Ten Ox, to Master Li.
 * When She Smiles: Lotus Cloud.
 * Who Wants to Live Forever?: Well, becoming a deity isn't so bad, but removing your heart also makes you kind of inhuman.
 * X Meets Y: Bridge of Birds reads like the scarier, sexed-up, long-lost older brother of The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen, with more Death Traps.
 * You Don't Want to Catch This: RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! IT IS THE PLAGUE OF THE TEN THOUSAND PESTILENTIAL PUTRESCENCES!

The Story of the Stone contains examples of:

"Demons bowed to trolls, who bowed to ogres, who bowed to devils."
 * Anything That Moves: Moon Boy. Up to and including a ten-feet-tall demon!
 * He does stick to males, though, much to Grief of Dawn's annoyance.
 * Band of Brothels: The guildmistress is called the Captain of Prostitutes, and she is the most powerful woman in China.
 * Celestial Bureaucracy: Hellish bureaucracy in this case.


 * Chinese Vampire: Lurching, strangling, and soul-stealing variety, not the hopping one. The name is transcribed as chiang shih.
 * Mad Artist: Not the usual kind, though.
 * Noodle Incident: "I tied the other end of a tarred rope around the corpse's legs, and it slid silently beneath the surface and drifted down to join the others." It is mentioned that "the others" are described in lost volumes of Memoirs of Number Ten Ox, which were destroyed by Imperial Censors.
 * Odd Job Gods: The guild of prostitutes even petitions Heaven for a new patron deity, as the current one isn't tough and crafty enough.
 * Really Gets Around: Moon Boy.

Eight Skilled Gentlemen contains examples of:
 * Eat the Evidence
 * Food Porn: Sixth-Degree Hosteler Tu expounds on food quite frequently, as it's his second great obsession (the first being murder). Also possibly averted in the sequence where Master Li and Yen Shih, depending on your constitution and/or sense of humor. Ox spends the duration trying not to throw up.
 * Scooby-Dooby Doors