There are four Chinese words based on wu including wushih, wuci, wuyi, and weiwu. Wushih literally means the soldier or warrior, wuci is the weapon which wushih holds, wuyi indicates the fighting skill which the wushih practices, and weiwu can be interpreted as "an awe-inspiring display of military force." These four words wushih, wuci, wuyi, and weiwu all have close links with the spirit of the wusia fiction genre. In other words they all have meanings close to the word wusia, which can be translated as "knight-errant". If we scrutinize the word wu, an associative compound of two pictographs one of which is a weapon, it is closer to wuci and wuyi.

      The ceaseless civil wars taking place in China inspired invention of many weapons. These weapons in general were called the Eighteen Weapons. And the martial arts studying to use these weapons was called the Eighteen Martial Arts. None of these weapons require gunpowder, so we could call them "cold weapons". Although there are various weapons used in the wusia novels they are all based on the Eighteen Weapons. "Baida" deserves to be highlighted among the Weapons, because it refers to the barehanded fighting skill. In the wusia novel of traditional Chinese martial arts, philosophies and religions were combined into a fantastic form of wugong. The martial arts adopted in wusia novels were mostly from both the School of Shaolin and School of Wudang: "the Shaolin wugong was superior in its external practice and Wudang was internal," it was said. The adopted philosophies and religions were principally from Buddhist and Taoist meditations and training in repose. Taoist ritual was a rich resource to the wusia novelist. In addition to literary fantasy, the Chinese wusia novel genre is filled with fabulous martial arts.

      Wusia stories were mostly set in ancient China, or specifically prior to the Cing Dynasty when "cold weapons" had not been replaced with "hot weapons", such as revolvers and machine guns. So a very traditional Chinese environment was created to match a wusia story including scenes, life styles and ideologies. As a result, a restored ancient Chinese imagery came to the scene and evoked nostalgia for past glories.

      The unique Chinese historical experience caused Chinese students in modern society to find the wusia novel a convenient access to Chinese traditions. So they read and learn from the wusia novels. From this point of view the wusia novel genre is represented as the most purely ethnic literary genre.

Conception of Siake and the Development of Its Imagery

      The sia are the central characters, the heroes, of a wusia fiction. This word originally did not imply anyone good or bad, but merely indicated a man of strong, powerful and healthy character and good skill in martial arts. Those people who were called sia were mostly warriors. There were warriors coming from a defeated country, losing their status, and looking for employment offered by the public in the Spring and Autumn Period and the subsequent Warring States Period, when the feudal system was in chaos and battles were endless. Unfortunately the killing skill and the militant attitude which they gained from the military training would block them from being accepted. So they would pick up the skill they learned in the army and fight their ways out against pressures from both the public who followed traditional rules and the feudal government who strictly forbade outlaw forces.

      The stronger the pressure from both the community and government, the stronger the rebellious attitudes of the sia, and the more conflict between them. So rebelliousness was one of the characters of a sia and they would stand against the established society including challenging social morals, rules and even laws. So in one of China's earliest philosophical texts, Hanfei Zih, sia were regarded as one of the five pests, wudu, of a country. And they were accused of breaking laws by using their martial arts skills, sia yi wu fanjin.