Wuxia Fiction and Me—Dongfang Yu
In the January 1, 1978 issue of Taiwan’s 《時報週刊》China Times Weekly, wuxia author Dongfang Yu 東方玉 began serializing his new novel《金笛玉芙蓉》Gold Flute, Jade Lotus. To coincide with this release, Dongfang Yu wrote an autobiographical introduction called “Wuxia Fiction and Me”. I have translated that introduction below. The original article, as it was posted by another wuxia fan online in Chinese, is structured in a few very long paragraphs. I have broken these up somewhat to make it a bit easier to read (though they are still a bit long). Aside from that, I have interpolated a few illustrations that accompanied the weekly installments during the novel’s 47-week run.
Wuxia Fiction and Me
Author Introduction
Dongfang Yu, real name Chen Yu, courtesy name Hanshan, from Yuyao, Zhejiang province. Graduated from Shanghai’s Chengming College of Liberal Arts Department of Chinese, served in the military administration office for a number of years. Skilled in calligraphy, proficient in poetry, wrote several collections of poetry including Hanshan Poetry Anthology, Embracing Splendor, Southern Thunder, Sharp Peak Lodge, and Green Scented Studio Lyric Manuscripts, and he wrote wuxia novels under the pen name Dongfang Yu with such works as Release the Crane, Capture the Dragon, Seven Swords of Lanling, etc., about 30 or so works totaling tens of thousands of words. Now he is a contracted writer for the eight major newspapers inside and outside of the country.
Read moreAn Interview with Cang Yue and Jiangnan
About a decade or so ago, when I was still new to translating, I ran a short-lived wuxia forum called Among Rivers and Lakes. I translated several short stories for that forum, a few of which I have posted here as well (check the translation list). I also translated an interview from 2006 that I found online with wuxia/fantasy authors Cang Yue 沧月 and Jiangnan 江南.
Jiangnan, the man in the pic above, is most well known for his fantasy series Novoland《九州縹緲錄》which was adapted in 2019 as a cdrama titled Novoland: Eagle Flag starring Liu Haoran and Song Zu’er. Cang Yue started out writing such wuxia novels as Listening Snow Tower series《聽雪樓》 and Seven Nights of Snow. Her wuxia novella Turbulent Times is translated on this site. She later switched to writing fantasy and is now most well known for her Mirror series. Her work has been adaped to cdramas several times, including Listening Snow Tower, Mirror: A Tale of Twin Cities, and coming soon, The Longest Promise starring Ren Min, Xiao Zhan, and Wang Churan and adapted from her Mirror novel Zhu Yan《朱顏》. Both of thes authors are from China and are part of what is now termed the “Neo Wuxia” 新武俠 school of wuxia, a term denoted the new mainland China writers who began writing wuxia after the ban was lifted in China around 1980. It includes words written mainly in the late 90s and early 2000s, along with the rise of web novels.
The below translation is the same as when I translated it a decade or so ago, except for some spellchecking for typos.
Read moreReturn of the Condor Heroes Official English Translation Coming Oct. 2023
Just a quick update cause I’d say this is significant wuxia news. The official English translation of the first volume of Jin Yong’s Return of the Condor Heroes, titled A Past Unearthed and translated by Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant, is scheduled for release on October 10, 2023 from Maclehose Press. They also published the four volumes of Legend of the Condor Heroes previously.
Source: https://www.hachette.com.au/jin-yong/a-past-unearthed-return-of-the-condor-heroes-volume-1
Qin Hong and The Avenging Eagle
In the 1978 Shaw Bros. film, The Avenging Eagle, Ti Lung’s character, Qi Mingxing, uses a three-sectioned staff. In two key scenes in the film, he uses it to stab people. As in thrusting the end of a section of the staff into someone’s body. That’s pretty weird, especially since the ends of the staff aren’t sharp or pointed.
Perhaps it’s because in the novel it was adapted from,《冷血十三鷹》Thirteen Cold-Blooded Eagles, by Taiwan wuxia author Qin Hong 秦紅, Qi Mingxing uses a sword. Much better for stabbing. The screenplay for the film version was written by Hong Kong wuxia and science fiction author Ni Kuang 倪匡. Presumably it was he who changed the weapon for the film, as well as changing Vagrant’s weapon from judge’s brushes to sleeve knives. Ni Kuang also happened to write the adaptation of another of Qin Hong’s novels,《怪客與怪鏢》The Stranger and the Strange Cargo, which became the film Rendezvous with Death (In Chinese called 請帖, The Invitation). There the protagonist’s weapon was changed from a sword to an umbrella.
Read moreYi Rong’s Recognition, Ghostwriting, and Rise to Prominence
Yi Rong’s “Recognition”, “Ghostwriting”, and “Rise to Prominence”
by Hu Zhengqun
Sword of the King is the work that made Yi Rong famous in Taiwan wuxia literary circles and was his first work after establishing himself as an author writing under his own name. It was published in 1965.
if you want to talk about Sword of the King or its author, Yi Rong, then you must first go back to the source and start by talking about Wolong Sheng.
Starting in 1959, Wolong Sheng’s wuxia novels were popular at home and abroad, and he became the grandmaster of the martial world par excellence, which lasted for a long time. At his peak he was serializing five different novels in five different daily and evening newspapers every day in Taiwan. He was truly at the height of his popularity.
Among these five works, one was Heavenly Whirlwind, published in Public Opinion Daily News. When it was in the middle of serialization, Public Opinion announced that the publication was shutting down. Wolong Sheng at the time was the “leader of the pack” of the martial world, so the paper shutting down lightened the interest and pressure on his writing, and so he stopped writing it. But the publisher that was already putting out monthly booklet installments of the work still hoped it could continue, so they pressed him closely.
In order to deal with the publisher and allow the booklets to continue being released, Wolong Sheng found someone to “grasp the knife” and ghostwrite it for him. That person was Yi Rong.
Read moreWriting Fast and Writing Well
Writing Fast and Writing Well
by Wen Rui’an
Writing is a pleasure. The inverse of that sentence is: if you find writing to be a chore, then please stop writing at once. Forced work will never be a success, and the craft of writing cannot be carried out casually; you have to write your best in order to see results.
I can write 3,500 characters an hour. Among Chinese authors, I’m naturally not the fastest, but I’m already fast enough to be considered a “swift pen”. Some doubt that word count, but actually there’s really no need to:
- Writing fast does not mean writing well. If you write fast but slipshod, then fast is not a good thing.
- This kind of speed requires focus, plus some practice, and then anyone can do it. When I write I am often unfocused, so much of the time I can’t reach even half of that speed.
Taiwan Wuxia Fiction Clichés
Taiwan Wuxia Fiction Clichés
by Jin Yong
For the last six months I’ve been reading a lot of wuxia novels. Recently there hasn’t been much wuxia novel output from Hong Kong authors, but on the Taiwan side it’s been surging like a storm, works emerging one after another. I read this kind of fiction exceptionally quickly, reading two books a night, each book between ten and twenty volumes. So the reason i can read these so fast is very simple, it’s because the novels’ plots are all pretty much the same, the stories formulaic, rarely seeing something new when flipping through them.
The following plots can be found in the great majority of Taiwan wuxia novels:
- A “dashing” young xia’s parents are killed by an enemy, so he is forced to roam the jianghu and undergo many adventures.
- Lots and lots of lady xia love him, among them will definitely be a licentious girl with the nickname of “Peach Blossom Something-or-other”, and there will be a lady xia disguised as a guy. This xia will certainly be drugged with an aphrodisiac and won’t be able to help himself from getting involved with one of the lady xia, “making a serious mistake”.
- The backbone of the story will be vying for a secret manual of the martial world or some rare jianghu treasure.
- This young xia will definitely obtain a secret martial arts manual left behind by an extraordinary person from a previous generation, and he will train until his martial arts is unmatched under the heavens, and the manual left behind will definitely have the words “left for one who is fated to receive it”.
- The young xia will definitely incur the favor of a senior who will help him open up his Conception and Governing vessels, get through a life-or-death training trial that will increase his strength one-, two-, or threefold.
- The xia’s antagonist will definitely be a master of a heretical school, some Demon Lord, Divine Lord, Ancestor, or old woman, all written the same, their appearance as grotesque as their martial arts, but with unexceptional personalities.
- Masters from prominent schools like Wudang, Shaolin, Kunlun, Kongtong, etc., will, when faced with the young xia, become completely worthless mediocrities.
The plots are mostly the same, and the language used to write them is also clichéd, stuff like “if it’s a blessing it’s not a disaster, if it’s a disaster you can’t avoid it”, “felt like ghosts were everywhere”, “a rare bud of the martial world”, none of them used by Hong Kong wuxia novelists. Wuxia fiction has been all the rage for less than ten years, but on the Taiwan side it seems to be even more popular than in Hong Kong. But in ten years for so many clichés and formulas to have already become so deeply rooted is really astounding.
Ming Pao, April 25, 1963
Jin Yong—On the Critical Standards of Wuxia Fiction
On the Critical Standards of Wuxia Fiction
by Jin Yong
This article by Mr. Jin Yong was published in 1957 in Hong Kong’s New Evening Post and was later lost. In 2015, Jin Yong Jianghu Forum1 poster “Emulating Lei Feng” found and copied the text of the article so that it could once again see the light of day. As everyone knows, although Mr. Jin Yong is a grandmaster of wuxia, he rarely wrote about his theories of wuxia literature. This article may be called a rare find and is extremely precious.
Recently someone published and article in the paper that was critical of wuxia fiction which led to a lot of debate. For the seventh anniversary of The New Evening Post, the editor asked me to write an article about wuxia fiction, so I am going to express my views on the subject.
If you take wuxia fiction as unadulterated entertainment to pass the time, then there is only one standard that has to be met: “does it interest the reader or not?” But clearly, the recent discussions have been treating wuxia fiction as a part of the national literature. For my part, I too hope wuxia fiction can be qualified to be considered “literature” and have been striving to write wuxia with that in mind, though I have not been successful at it so far.
When it comes to critiquing the good and bad of wuxia fiction, I think there are four main standards:
Read moreGu Long—On Wuxia
“On Wuxia”
by Gu Long
I’ve heard that Ni Kuang is getting ready to write A History of Chinese Wuxia Fiction1, and for a wuxia author this is really something worth being happy and excited about.
Wuxia fiction has been around for a long time, and it is has not been taken seriously for a long time as well. Now that someone is finally coming out to write a systematic account of this kind of fiction, it will have a place in the annals of fiction history. This undertaking is a grand event in the history of wuxia fiction; all authors of wuxia fiction ought to work together for this worthy project.
So I too can’t just stand back and watch the hunt and not join in. It’s just too bad I’m not as daring as Brother Ni Kuang, nor do I have his ability. I’m just offering my humble views on wuxia fiction based on my impressions and the little bit I’ve learned by writing it, but it’s not a formal account or serious criticism.
If it can be of interest to you, Gentle Readers, and can pave the way for Ni Kuang’s work, then I will be quite satisfied.
1
Regarding the origin of wuxia fiction, there are numerous arguments—since the Grand Historian’s Biographies of Wandering Xia, China has had wuxia fiction—of course that’s the most grand one, but not many accept that argument. Because wuxia stories are legends, if you insist on placing them on a par with the Grand Historian’s serious biographies, then you’re rather fooling yourself a bit.
It’s in the fictional records of men of the Tang dynasty that we first get stories closer to wuxia fiction.
Read more