Jianghu

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For the 2004 Hong Kong film, see Jiang Hu (film).

The Jiānghú (江湖; Cantonese: gong woo) world is the milieu, environment, or sub-community, often fictional, in which many Chinese classical wuxia stories are set. The term can be translated literally as "rivers and lakes". Metaphorically, however, it refers not to a physical place or geographic location but to the wild and romanticized domain of secret societies, gangs, fighters, outlaws, bandits, entertainers, prostitutes, assassins, thieves, actors, beggars, and wanderers. In many wuxia novels, the people who are not a part of the jianghu life may not even realize that the person sitting next to them in a tea house is a renowned assassin or that a normal seeming town is affiliated to a secret society behind the scenes.

The term originally started in Chinese literature in the more literal sense of "rivers and lakes" to denote an unsettled geographic area. In medieval China, outlaws often fled to the frontiers, returning only to prey upon the law-abiding world. The roots of jianghu wuxia (frontier heroes) go back at least as far as the 14th century novel Water Margin (Traditional Chinese: 水滸傳; Simplified Chinese: 水浒传), in which a band of noble outlaws retreated to a swampy hideout and mounted sorties in an attempt to right the wrongs of the corrupt officials. Over time, especially in the wuxia novel tradition, the term eventually took on the more metaphoric meaning.

In modern days, the term jianghu is frequently used to refer to the triads and the secret societies of gangsters. A 2004 movie entitled Jiang Hu starring Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung is about the gangster societies in Hong Kong.