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Moxiang Tongxu is a pseudonym, the first half of which means “fragrance of ink” and the second half “smell of money” in Chinese. Little is known about her life. She is careful to remain anonymous and, lately, has not spoken to an audience at all. As a child, she did not think about a creative career, remaining a keen reader. In college, she planned to study literature, but her mother insisted that her daughter enter the department of economics. Hence the pseudonym, reflecting the duality of Tunsu’s pursuits.
In one of her few interviews, she admitted that her favorite genres remain mysticism, ghost stories, and wuxia, Chinese adventure stories with an emphasis on oriental martial arts. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee is an exemplary wuxia film. However, Tongxue herself has chosen a different genre, xiangxia. The worlds in which xianxia stories take place are filled with magic, demons, immortals, gods, monsters, ghosts, and so on. The genre is most influenced by Taoism, although elements of oriental martial arts are also present.
“Mosian is inspired by Chinese mythology in general, reworking it to suit herself, but you can also find omens of other cultures in her books. The hero of Hua Cheng’s The Blessing of the Celestials clearly refers to the Mao people of East India. Yet many also see Siddhartha Hesse as Xie Liang, for example.
Mosian gives the impression of a deeply educated author. In her texts you can find not only external images of Chinese culture, such as musical instruments or lantern festivals, but also the basics of Taoist culture”, – says Maria Rudneva, editor of the fiction department of Eksmo.
Toonshu’s interest in writing began with anime fanfics. Her debut work, The Save-Yourself System for the Chief Villain, is a parody of the popular genre of the haremnik, in which the protagonist finds himself surrounded by several characters of the opposite sex in love with him, competing for his attention.
The protagonist of “The System,” Shen Yuan, is a fan of one such web novel called “The Way of the Proud Immortal Demon.” Its ending displeased him so much that he began to come up with a scathing commentary on the author, full of criticism and dissatisfaction. In the process, Shen gets so carried away that he dies of a heart attack. He is then reborn within the beloved story as the main villain, Shen Qingqiu. He ends up badly in the story, which means Shen Yuan will have to rewrite the story to survive.
Tongxu began publishing The System in 2014 on the online platform JJWXC (the equivalent of the samizdat resources Fickbook and Litnet) and attracted readers who were captivated both by the overall atmosphere of the book, which immerses them in the everyday life of mountain monasteries, and by the relationships between the characters.
What Moxiang Tongxu writes about
Already in her debut novel, the writer has demonstrated her strengths: she carefully crafts the plot and creates memorable characters, combines comic and tragic elements, and half-tones of relationships add up to a tense love line. The recurring motifs of her work are second chances, the wait for true love, which in the case of immortals can drag on for centuries, constant self-improvement and friendships that can grow into something more.
A second novel, fantasy with detective elements, The Master of the Devil’s Cult (or The Founder of the Dark Path), published in 2015, brought greater popularity to Mosiang Tongxu. In a world where immortality can be achieved by constant self-improvement, Wei Wuxian invents his “demonic way” and dies. He returns to life in the body of a country boy who endures humiliation and abuse from his relatives and dreams of revenge against them. In 2018, a dunhua (Chinese animated series) of three seasons was produced based on the book. And the writer was talked about not only in her native China, but also abroad.
