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On the evening of Oct. 31, Wuxia writer Jin Yong passed away at 94.
The New Yorker gives a fair: "Of course, there were other wuxia writers, and there was kung-fu fiction before Jin Yong. Just before Bob Dylan. "
Wuxia literature gives birth to an imaginary world for martial artists in ancient China, where they have different schools and tenets to abide by.
There were countless adaptations to his works, from screenplays to movies, TV series, and even games, but none is comparable in terms of excellence and intricacies to Jin's original works.
Jin Yong is his pseudonym, and his original name is Louis Cha. His life, just like his characters, is a mixture of worldliness and aloof spiritual pursuits. He was born in Haining, Zhejiang Province in Southern China, and settled in Hong Kong in the mid-1940s. He studied foreign policy in school and worked as a journalist before he became a well-known novelist. Back then, Ta Kung Pao, the oldest active Chinese language newspaper in China, was recruiting journalists across the country, and there were over 3,000 applicants competing for only two positions. Jin was then admitted to his outstanding performance, and began to work as a telecommunications translator. He was soon sent to Hong Kong in 1948.
Later, he started his own paper called Ming Pao with his high school classmate. His second wife joined the founding team. It is also at this time that Jin Yong began to publish his own novel "The Condor Heroes" in Ming Pao, so are most of his other novels.
Through Ming Pao, Yong Jin Yong, his strong national consciousness, confucianism, anti-war, and conservatism (against radical progress).
These beliefs are deeply rooted in his works. Jin Yong is especially good at creating paradoxical settings for his characters. Born in a warring period of the history, when more often than not they had to make a choice between their own happiness and the nation's destinies.
In one of the most important works, Half-Gods and Semi-Devils, the hero Qiao Feng, cut his own throat in front of the two armies of the Han Chinese-dominated Song Empire and the Khitan-led Liao Empire. He is sacrificed himself for the peace of the two countries in the coming decades. He is a tragic hero, like the ones in ancient Greek tragedies. He had always wanted to live a peaceful and peaceful life with his love life Azhu, raising sheep and cattle. Destiny goal just would not have it.
In Chinese history, writers and martial artists always need to make a choice between worldliness and other-worldliness. It means a politically involved person, taking part in the chaotic disputes of jianghu, or stand aloof from the worldly affairs, self-banished into their spiritual retreats, some rural faraway lands.
Jianghu is more or less the essence of Wuxia literature. What is it exactly?
According to Kaiser Kuo, jianghu is the name of the brotherhood of outsiders that existed in ancient China. It is the counter-culture society of workers who made their living with the skill of their own two hands: craftsmen, beggars, thieves, street performers, fortune tellers, wandering healers, and many martial artists. In ancient China, where education was valued over physical ability, this was the lowest rank of social order. Mainstream society belonged to the Confucian scholar-officials. Its underbelly was jianghu. jianghu tradition still influences martial arts to this day.
In a word, they can be outcasts of societies, who have not forsaken their own faiths and beliefs. Quite like a verse from the poem Renovation of the Yueyang Building of the Northern Song Dynasty, "And as an exile he would be, he would still preserve his fixation on the sovereign and his lord."
Love and Hatred in Jianghu
Though the most successful writer of this century, he also had his life in his love affairs during his younger days.
When asked about his young love, he answered by saying that the most important thing to him was freedom. "When I was younger, I used to woo a girl. She did not like me at all, but I really loved her. If I can not choose her, then I'd be set free. But it is really impossible for me. "
The girl he mentioned is Xia Meng, (the pseudonym is the dream of the Chinese, taken from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream), in Hong Kong actress of astonishing beauty. Throughout his life, the writer had three marriages, but Xia has been an unforgettable woman in his heart. But sadly when he puts Xia, she was already happily married.
"What's so special about Jin Yong's novels?" The late Chinese female writer San Mao commented on Jin's works.
His personal emotional experiences must have his writings. Unlike other famous Wuxia writers including Gulong, Jin Yong is always more keen and exquisite in writing the romance between characters. Some of the couples live happily ever after, but more often intertwined with miseries and sophistication.
In the Legend of the Condor Heroes, Zhou Botong, the old Peter Pan, is one of the most humorous characters in the book. Having been imprisoned in the Peach Blossom Island for decades, he became more naive and crazier than ever. In his youthful years, he was paying a visit to the emperor of Dali, when a concubine of the emperor, Ying Gu, fell in love with him studying martial arts together. But later he realized that it was betrayal and had to flee. Ying's hair turned gray in just one night.
Ying Gu had been searching for him for over twenty years; she would not like it anymore, she would not see him anymore.
"Four weaving machines, the weaving of mandarin ducks desires to fly together right away. It's a little bit old and white. When the green spring grass rips in the deepest of dawn's cold; standing face to face taking a bath wearing red clothes.
She made a handkerchief embroidered with mandarin ducks, which is a symbol for Chinese culture.
What is love, you ask, what do you say?
Among the many broken hearts in his novels, one character. Li Mochou caught me deeply.
In the return of the Condor Heroes, the second book of the trilogy, she was an infamous and cold-blooded killer, yet a drop dead gorgeous beauty at the same time. Even her enemies easily go to the mercy of her beauty. One of the techniques she invented to kill people is the Palm of Divine Serpent, which contains many poisonous creatures, including a centipede, a scorpion, a snake, a spider and a toad.
However, it has become a reality and has become a vicious, cruel, and unforgiving. She would hunt down anyone with a similar name to her rival in love.
In the end, facing death, she is in the fire, an old verse, "What is love, you ask, what does one say to death do us apart."
What's so fascinating about Jin's writings is how to infuse mundane life stories into every character, hero, villain, peddler and emperor alike. Before becoming legendary figures in Jianghu, they had their own heartbreaks and broken promises, or they were born of love or hatred. And it is in those parts of their lives that we see the divine sparks of humanity.
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