No Pollution, No Public Harm

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Translation completed as at 17 July 2021.

Length: 380k words

Summary

"When I was young, whenever I wrote essays, my last line was frequently 'I am determined to become someone useful to society.' On average, I made this resolve twenty to thirty times per school term. I was very thoughtless."

"Only when I grew up did I realise that to become someone who brought no harm to society was already the biggest accomplishment I would have in my life."

Due to working through the night and putting in overtime until his liver was going bust, the leader of the Martial Arts Alliance was in a bad mood. He refused to organise the yearly Martial Arts General Assembly.

The descendant of the previous Sect Leader of the Beggars' Sect was someone addicted to swiping the phone and online shopping; Tang Qian Yan who left no marks when stepping on snow produced a wretched shut-in with severe social anxiety disorder…

Like the water in the rivers flowing away, the state of the world became worse day by day. Only the followers of the demonic cults preserved their original aspirations. As ever, they shouted their slogans every day and worked hard to sell health supplements made by black market suppliers, carefully and seriously disturbing the public peace.

And, among the jianghu people mentioned above, whether they belonged to the righteous or the evil, not a single one of them could fight.

Kindness repaid with kindness, evil repaid with evil? White Horse Neighs in the Western Wind? Such things did not exist. Everyone still had to pay their credit card bills and house loans.

There were four ways to write "anise" in "anise beans," and five levels of "grief."

Main characters: Gan Qing, Yu Lanchuan
Genre: Modern wuxia

Please note that this is not danmei!

Content warnings are at the bottom of the page.

Notes on the summary:

• White Horse Neighs in the Western Wind is a wuxia novella by Jin Yong.

• The last line in the summary is “茴香豆”的“茴”有四种写法，而“丧”，有五个层次.

The first part - “茴香豆”的“茴”有四种写法 - refers to the story Kong Yiji by Lu Xun. The titular character, Kong Yiji, asked the narrator of the story if he knew the four ways to write the character 茴. Of the four ways to write the character, only one was still in use, while the other three were rarely seen and were of no practical use. Yet, Kong Yiji memorised all four ways, and even showed off his knowledge.

In the second part, 丧 literally means "grief" or "to mourn." The whole phrase, 而“丧”，有五个层次, has two possible explanations as far as I can tell:

• • • A reference to "sang culture" (丧文化), a recent-ish popular phrase that describes the mood of apathy and lack of motivation felt by Chinese youth as a result of the pressures of modern society. Memes and black humour are among the trademarks of 丧文化. More can be read about this subculture by looking up "sang culture." The titles of each book appear to tie with this meaning.

    • A reference to "five degrees of mourning attire" (五服) which means the proper attire and mourning ritual a person should adhere to in accordance to how closely related they are to the dead.

• Tang Qian Yan is a name that will appear in the story, further notes can be found in the glossary.

Translator's comments

This is a fan-translation of the novel 《无污染、无公害》No Pollution, No Public Harm by priest. Please do not repost this translation anywhere.

What you can expect from the story:
• A commentary on social issues in modern society.
• The burdens of adulthood and the sorrows of old age.
• A classic wuxia tale of greed, revenge and star-crossed lovers. (This point notwithstanding, there is very little romance in the story. But what's there is good ❤)

Yes, this is a story about the environment—the social environment. While the author classified it as "light," this story deals with some heavy themes.

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• Novel page on JJWXC

• Guide to using JJWXC

Some sections are translated by referencing the print version but the overall translation is mainly based on the web version.

Number of chapters: Prologue + 114 chapters + epilogue + a few extras

I'm a heritage speaker of Chinese but I'm not fluent in the language and translating is just something I enjoy doing as a hobby. I'm still learning so if you see any mistakes, do let me know.

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