The other day I ran across an article, reported by Nangong Yan 南宮雁, from February 2, 1986 in Singapore’s Shin Min Daily News 新明日报 that reports on what eight different authors in Taiwan were planning to do for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Four of them were wuxia authors, so I translated their entries below:
Qin Hong
This Year He’s Going to Cut Back
Qin Hong—professional authors are also feeling the effect of the recession.
Those who know Qin Hong knows he has a “saying”—to collect stamps from each country.
Qin Hong is a punctucal “on the clock” wuxia author. In the morning he writes, in the afternoon he plays weiqi or goes hiking, and in the evening he watches videotapes.
Every year, Qin Hong travels overseas for the New Year. This year, Qin Hong says he won’t be taking a long trip. He lists three reasons: one is that his wife insists on taking a bus tour; two is that his oldest son just went to university; and three is that the pay for submitting manuscripts has gone down. Although he’s not struggling financially, with the economy in a slump, he’s going to cut back on spending.
Got some new books today, all from my favorite wuxia author, Yun Zhongyue 雲中岳. The one with the pink cover pictured below is a collection of three novellas. It’s the fourth in a series of six novella collections from Yun Zhongyue. I’ve got them all now except the last one. It was published in 1981, though I suspect the individual novellas probably first appeared in wuxia magazines before being collected here (though I’m not sure).
The other two are really two parts of one novel. The one with the blue title is Sea of Swords, Waves of Emotion《劍海情濤》, and the one with the red title is its continuation, Bloody Sword, Thoroughwort Heart《血劍蘭心》. The latter is not a sequel but simply the second part of the novel repackaged to look like a sequel. It was all originally published as one book, under the former’s name, Sea of Swords. It was originally published April 1963 and is Yun Zhongyue’s debut novel. These pictured here are reprints from the 90s.
Fun fact about thoroughwort, which is what I translated for 蘭/兰, lan. Usually this is translated as orchid, which is what it does usually refer to nowadays. However, 蘭 didn’t begin to be used for orchid until the Song dynasty. Before that it referred to 蘭草, aka thoroughwort, aka Eupatorium fortunei or Eupatorium japonicum. It has fragrant flowers, and classic idioms and phrases using this word, such as 金蘭之交 (lit. intermingling of gold and thoroughwort, i.e sworn brotherhood/intimate friendship), are referencing thoroughwort, not orchid.
In the title Bloody Sword, Thoroughwort Heart, “thoroughwort heart” means a woman’s refined character. Thorougwort, according to A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese, is “often symbolic of purity of character, redolent integrity.” So there you go. If you ever find yourself translating, say, a Tang dynasty poem, and you run across 蘭, it’s not orchid.
《古道照顏色》(Ancient Path Shining Ahead) Yun Zhongyue
《劍海情濤》(Sea of Swords, Waves of Emotion), Yun Zhongyue
Beatdown Cudgel was published in 1974 and at only one volume, 262 pgs., it is one of Liu Canyang’s shorter novels, characteristic of his later period work. But it has everything Liu Canyang is known for: brutal violence; focus on the “dark path”, the underworld of society rather than a goody-two-shoes idealistic hero of the “light path”; a seasoned protagonist who is already a martial arts adept, who doesn’t need to find a master or esoteric martial arts manual to get strong and defeat his enemy. He can already defeat his enemy. Yet still with his own moral code he follows. Though elsewhere I have characterized Liu Canyang’s work as “grimdark before grimdark”, that’s not really accurate because morality in his novels is not grey, it’s just not idealistic. There is still a “good” and a “bad” guy, even though the good guy might, by society’s standards, be a “bad” guy. But he’s not a monster nor a completely selfish asshole. More Blondie (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) and less Caul Shivers (Best Served Cold). Liu Canyang has been placed alongside Yun Zhongyue in the subset of wuxia authors who write more “realistically”.
The protagonist of Beatdown Cudgel is Meng Changqing. His weapon is the Beatdown Staff, a black wooden cudgel, a little over four-feet long, with a dark red sheen to it, and scratch marks on the upper half part of it where sharp weapons seemed to have cut into it over and over over the years. Though I translated it as “beatdown” cudgel, the original Chinese, 煞威棒, refers to a real, historical rod used to beat suspects into submission after they have been arrested.
During the 60s and 70s over 400 wuxia authors emerged in Taiwan. To a large degree this was because the barrier to entry to become a wuxia author was very low, and one could receive abundant remuneration in return. In other words, many authors chose to write wuxia novels not because of some lofty ideal but because they could live a good life. As Zhuge Qingyun once said of himself, “Even though there’s no literary inquisition in this generation… writing books is still just a way to make a living.”
But how much money could a wuxia author make? This is a big topic. For example, Jin Yong, who ascended to the ranks of “billionaires” partly because of his wuxia novels, still the most important reason was because of the market value of his newspaper, Ming Pao. Or Gu Long, the money he earned from film and TV adaptations far exceeded the money he made from his novels. But that’s not the focus of this discussion. What I’m more interested in is manuscript submission payment because that is what the vast majority of wuxia authors relied on to make their living. After all, Jin Yong is just one person, and so is Gu Long. Their success is very difficult to duplicate; few authors were lucky enough to see their work adapted to film or TV, much less be like Jin Yong and use a newspaper empire to earn a nearly astronomical income.
There are spoilers for Jin Yong’s novels in this Q&A.
Cha Leung-yung was born on March 10, 1924 in Haining.
On February 8, 1955 in Hong Kong, The Book and the Sword began serializing in the “Arabian Nights” supplement of the The New Evening Post under the author name “Jin Yong”. Jin Yong was “born”.
Since then, people around the world have often only known Jin Yong, but did not know Cha Leung-yung.
In October of 1994, Jin Yong sat for an interview at Peking University, where he was also awarded the title of honorary professor. Jin Yong has had a close relationship with Peking University since then. In Huang Ziping’s edited collection of half a century of Jin Yong’s prose writings titled Searching for Him a Thousand Times there is included this transcript of the lecture on wuxia novels Jin Yong gave at Peking University on October 27, 1994, which was recorded by Lin Cuifen.
To mark the 60th anniversary of Jin Yong and his wuxia novels, The Paper has excerpted the Q&A session between Jin Yong and Peking University students from that transcript.
Q: The protagonists in your work all value righteousness. Do you think righteousness is the most important thing in life?
A: Morality is comprised of many aspects of one’s conduct. “Righteousness”1 is one part of that. Mencius described righteousness as doing what is reasonable and appropriate. Chivalric novels emphasized righteousness because people who roamed the jianghu had no family support and no fixed source of income. There’s that saying, “At home, rely on your parents, away from home rely on your friends”. Their principal support was their friends. In dealing with abuse from other cliques or oppression from corrupt officials, you needed to rally your friends to resist. If you want to unite, you have to value righteousness and support each other, working hard toward a common goal, even to the point of sacrificing your life. So in chivalric novels, “righteousness” was elevated to a very important position. In traditional Chinese morality, “righteousness” has always been important. It’s been an important force that has allowed us Chinese to continuously grow and develop.
Quicksand Valley《沉沙谷》is a wuxia novel by Shangguan Ding 上官鼎. Shangguan Ding1 is actually the pen name of three brothers: Liu Zhaoli, Liu Zhaoxuan, and Liu Zhaokai. Liu Zhaoli wrote the romance parts, Liu Zhaokai wrote the fight scenes, and Liu Zhaoxuan wrote everything else, being the principal writer of the three. When Quicksand Valley was published in 1961, Liu Zhaoxuan was only eighteen years old, Liu Zhaokai only sixteen. And this was their fourth novel.
They wrote their first novel in 1960, thinking to try their hand at writing the kind of novel they were so fond of reading. Their first novel was well-received and they were asked to complete a novel that Gu Long had stopped writing, Poisonous Sword, Fragrant Plum Blossom《劍毒梅香》. This was Gu Long’s second novel, but he only wrote four volumes before quitting.2 The story goes that he had asked his publisher for more money and was rebuffed, so he just quit writing it. The novel sat for several months before the Liu brothers (Shangguan Ding) were commissioned to finish it. They wrote volumes five through fifteen and finished the novel. It was a big hit and the brothers wrote seven more novels together between 1960 and 1966 before they all went overseas to study.
Jin Yong once said that Shangguan Ding was his second-favorite wuxia author behind Gu Long.
Liu Zhaoxuan went on to be president of National Tsing Hua University and Soochow University. He was also Premier of the Republic of China from 2008-2009.
Liu Zhaoxuan returned to the jianghu in 2014 and released another wuxia novel, writing alone this time but still under the name Shangguan Ding. He has since continued to write other novels, including political thrillers.
Quicksand Valley is Shangguan Ding’s most lauded novel, and is also the one Liu Zhaoxuan is most proud of, according to a preface to the edition I own. A tale of three sworn brothers and a mystery of what happened to the top martial artists in the jianghu long ago at Quicksand Valley. That incident is the subject of the first chapter translated below. Shangguan Ding’s novels were different in that they were actually written by young men in their teens, which is the same age as most wuxia protagonists, so they were able to give their characters the realistic vigor and temperament of hot-blooded young men. Most wuxia novels were older and already past those formative years; Shangguan Ding was able to tap into that young energy and it shows in the writing.
Hong Kong resident and wuxia novelist Zheng Feng is from a political family. Her father is our well-known former President of the Control Yuan Chen Li-an, and her grandfather was the second Vice-President Chen Cheng, but she did not follow them down the path of politics but instead followed after her brothers in her youth by beginning to read wuxia novels before creating her own wuxia world, to the point that she has been honored by Ni Kuang as the female piece of the puzzle the wuxia world has long been looking for.
Now she is not only a wuxia novelist, but also the mother of five children, writing novel after novel while raising her kids. Her newest novel, Valley of Life and Death, follows up her previous novel, Legend of the Marvellous Peak and the Strange Stone, which used the early Tang dynasty as an historical backdrop. This new novel takes place in the later Tang, when military governors vied for control in a fractured, waning empire.
“I used historical records as a foundation to construct a chronological table and was shocked: a lot of people during that time were killed by assassins. The military governors vied for each other’s territory, were poisoned and stabbed to death everywhere. The biggest of such incidents was when Li Shidao sent people to kill Wu Yuanheng in the street.”
Within wuxia literay circles, there are two famous authors who used to be roommates when they were students; they would stay up late every night, drinking and chatting. But once they graduated they didn’t communicate with each other. Later, when they were both popular among wuxia literary circles, they never helped promote each other but relied completely on their own talents to make their way in the world.
Those two wuxia authors were Sima Ziyan, original name Zhang Zuchuan, and Dugu Hong, original name Li Bingkun. At Tamkang University, Sima Ziyan was two grades higher than Dugu Hong. Sima Ziyan went on to enroll in the literature department and majored in Chinese literature.
After graduating, Sima Ziyan and his classmates had to perform mandatory military service. He was sent to the communications unit to work as a telegraphic dispatch. Because there was no war on at the time his days were mostly idle aside from hectic training exercises.
It was boring on duty when there were no telegrams to receive or dispatch, so Sima Ziyan took the opportunity during this downtime to write. He had already been submitting manuscripts to newspapers and magazines to earn a little money when he was in university, so his finances were a bit more comfortable than his classmates, and he usually had money to buy liquor.
What he was writing at that time was not wuxia, but typical youth literature. There was one story from those early publications he was particularly proud of, a story published in the Min Tsu Evening News called “Green Light”.
The story takes place in the green light district of Baodou in Wanhua District in Taipei and depicts a young prostitute leading a miserable life in that dark corner of town, as well as roving unruly hoodlums. The characters are vividly rendered, the plot is heartfelt and moving. His teacher, the famous author Xie Bingying, read the story and praised it highly. She felt it was a society novel of a kind rarely come by.
The well-established Spring & Autumn Publishing had published some of Sima Ziyan’s literary writings, though they mostly published wuxia novels. One day, Sima Ziyan returned home to Taipei on leave and dropped by Spring & Autumn’s offices to pick up his royalty money. The publishng house’s boss, Lü Qinshu, ran into him and it was like meeting one’s savior. He grabbed him and said he had something important to discuss with him.
