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.

At the time, Spring & Autumn was in the middle of publishing Zhuge Qingyun’s wuxia novel Wandering the Jianghu. In those days, small chapbook-sized books were all the rage, each book containing a few tens of thousands of words. An author would write and hand over the draft to the publishing company to print and sell. It just so happened that Zhuge Qingyun had written ten volumes and then stopped. For one thing, he was so popular at the time that he was writing a different wuxia novel installment for several different newspapers every day and was overworked. Plus, he liked going out with his many friends, eating, drinking, and carrying on, so he didn’t have time to keep writing that novel.

The biggest problem though was Wandering the Jianghu was getting an incredible response from readers. Distributors and readers from all over were calling up and asking when the next volume would be released. Lü Qinshu received over a dozen such calls each day, making him as anxious as ants in a hot frying pan. Finally, he had to bite the bullet and plead with Zhuge Qingyun to help him out.

Zhuge Qingyun had a talent for writing, and it was Lü Qinshu who had discovered him. If Lü had not encouraged him to write wuxia novels and helped him publish them, there’s no way Zhuge Qingyun would have had such glorious success. So, they were not only good buddies, one was a Bole, the other a thousand-li horse;¹ there was nothing the two of them couldn’t talk about. Zhuge Qingyun gave it to him straight: he was already overworked and exhausted writing for all those newspapers, and he just couldn’t find the time to write for a novel that would only be published in single volume installments. After much talking it over, they finally reached a solution: Spring & Autumn would find a ghostwriter to continue the novel for him.

Even though they had a solution, the problem was who to get to be the ghostwriter? Lü asked around with his other writers one by one, but wasn’t able to come up with a good candidate. But now that Sima Ziyan was here, his painstaking search was over just like that. He already admired Sima Ziyan’s writing, but Sima Ziyan had never written wuxia before. Would he be a good ghostwriter?

The situation was critical, so Lü Qinshu had no choice but to take a gamble and bet all his chips on Sima Ziyan. He explained everything to him and asked him to help out and ghostwrite the novel. To his surprise, Sima Ziyan agreed at once. Now that that difficulty was over, Lü was still worried that Sima Ziyan would produce a literary novel instead of a wuxia novel.

Sima Ziyan was not one to take a promise lightly. Even though he’d never written wuxia before, he had read a lot of it. Wuxia was all the rage in those days, and it sold a lot better than literary novels, so he had long been itching to give it a try. However, readers were prejudiced toward famous authors; they adored them. In order to sell more books, a publisher would never risk hastily promoting a new, unknown author. Sima Ziyan was not about to miss this unexpected opportunity to display his skill.

Sima Ziyan was still doing mandatory military service then, and there was no study in at his unit. There wasn’t even a desk and chair for him to sit down and write. The only place with a desk and chair was at the telegraph dispatch office. But the telegram equipment they had back then was not advanced, and there were fifty vaccuum tubes installed in the office, which made the room heat up to 40 degrees celsius (104F). He would write in the telegram office, drenched in sweat.

It was in this hostile environment, which others would not be able to stand, that Sima Ziyan continued writing Zhuge Qingyun’s Wandering the Jianghu. He had to continue developing the characters and the plot threads as before, and he had to copy Zhuge Qingyun’s habitual wording and other writing tics so that readers would not know that a second person had taken over writing it.

He turned in manuscript after manuscript. Lü Qinshu didn’t even read them, he just passed them along to the printer. It’s not that he had complete confidence in Sima Ziyan’s writing, it was more like that Cantonese saying “冇眼睇” (can’t be bothered to look). At that time, he just wanted things to go smoothly for the readers and the distributors. As for how good Sima Ziyan was writing it? Lü Qinshu was not concerned about it.

Sima Ziyan wrote over twenty volumes and concluded the novel. Funny thing was, one of the staff at the publishing house reported to Lü Qinshu that the volumes Sima Ziyan had written had sold better than the ones Zhuge Qingyun had written. In fact, some readers started with later volumes and then went back and bought Zhuge’s earlier ones.

This was not that unusual. What was really unusual was that a film company had taken notice of Wandering the Jianghu and wanted to buy the film rights to the novel. Because the novel was in Zhuge Qingyun’s name, it was he who frankly pocketed the copyright royalties.

But as for that, Sima Ziyan actually took it well because in the first place he had agreed to Lü Qinshu’s request for him to ghostwrite it and had only been looking to earn some cash from it, and he wanted to try his hand at writing wuxia. He had now accomplished both of those goals, so he was satisfied. As for the film rights money, that was just an unexpected windfall for Zhuge Qingyun. He had just been lucky enough to win the lottery.

Lü Qinshu, on the other hand, felt awkward about it and felt he owed Sima Ziyan a favor, so he wanted to find a way to compensate him. Then he had an idea and he rapped himself on the noggin. He was thinking of how he had helped Zhuge Qingyun get his start, and now here was Sima Ziyan, another talented writer. Why not copy the old model and help promote a second Zhuge Qingyun? So he encouraged Sima Ziyan to continue writing wuxia novels, only this time not as a ghostwriter, but under his own name. In short, if he wrote it, Spring & Autumn Publishing would do all it could to support him in publishing it.

With Lü Qinshu’s encouragement, Sima Ziyan went back and started writing, dashing it off quickly back in the telegram dispatch office at his unit. It was hot as hell in the office, but it didn’t bother him. One time he was in the office with his head down, writing for nearly 20 hours. Except for breaks to eat, all he did was sit hunched at his desk and write and write. Someone asked him why he was going at it so hard? He shook his head and said, “I can’t help it. Once I get going I can’t stop.” Later he cheerfully mocked himself, saying, “Adversity produces excellent results!”

He wrote this first novel under his own name until he was finished with his mandatory military service. There were over seventy volumes in all, three times as long as Wandering the Jianghu. When he turned in this “monumental work” to Spring & Autumn, Lü Qinshu was scared out of his mind. Because printing this book would cost three times as much as other books they published. Besides, readers had never heard of Sima Ziyan, would they be willing to pay three times the price to buy a novel from an unknown new writer? There was no doubt about it, if this book didn’t sell, the loss would be three times greater than other books.

But Lü Qinshu had told Sima Ziyan, “If you write it, I will publish it”. He had been in this business for a long time and was well respected because he always kept his word, so how could he damage his reputation now in front of a new author? And so he bit the bullet and instructed the publishing house staff to send Sima Ziyan’s manuscript off to the printers.

It was no wonder that Sima Ziyan’s “monumental work” would make an old hand like Lü Qinshu jump out of his skin. Up to this point, the longest wuxia novel was Wolong Sheng’s novel Gold Sword, Eagle Arrow at 96 volumes. Sima Ziyan’s debut novel, White Hair Lament, would be 77 volumes, making it the second longest. That record would not be broken. However, Wolong Sheng was a giant star among wuxia circles, and Sima Ziyan was only a newborn calf, how could the two be compared?

How did the pen name Sima Ziyan come about? In his own words: One, he respected and admired Zhuge Qingyun’s literary talent; two, he was very grateful to Zhuge Qingyun. If this wuxia elder had not given him this chance, he would not have so easily been able to enter the ranks of wuxia authors. Therefore, since Zhuge was a compound surname, he would take the compound surname Sima. And he took the antithesis of Qingyun (blue/green cloud) and made Ziyan (purple mist). Later he would use the surname “Sima” by itself as a pen name for his historical fiction.

White Hair Lament might have been 77 volumes long, but it was well received by readers. Sima Ziyan was naturally delighted. But there was one who was even happier than he: the boss of Spring & Autumn Publishing, Lü Qinshu. This time he could say to Sima Ziyan even louder, “If you write it, I will publish it.”

In the army he could sit and write for 20 hours in an unbearably hot telegram dispatch office. Now, in a comfortable study, writing for a dozen hours a day was kind of taking it easy. And because he was so skilled in the “art of sitting”, he not only produced many “brilliant monumental works”, he wrote in many different genres. He wrote wuxia, he wrote romance, detective novels, action novels, historical fiction, he could write pretty much everything and pretty much did write everything.

After Sima Ziyan became famous, newspapers competed to get him to write serials for them. At that point he was by no means inferior to elders like Wolong Sheng or Zhuge Qingyun. In addition to writing wuxia novels under his pen name Sima Ziyan, he also wrote Republican-era action novels under the name “Zhu Yang” (red sun) for one of Taiwan’s two biggest publications, Unitas. He used the name “Sima” to write the historical fiction novel Purple Jade Hairpin for Dawa Evening News, and he wrote action novels for China Daily News under the name “Sima” as well.

Sima Ziyan had to write a lot every day for serial publication, which the newspapers published daily, so missing a day would be a big headache for the editors and disappointing for readers. Because his “art of sitting” was so accomplished, he didn’t have much spare time for playing around or having a social life, and he didn’t suffer from the constant delays of missing deadlines that his elders Wolong Sheng and Zhuge Qingyun did.

All the wuxia authors back then admired the elders of the wuxia community, and their style was affected by them to some degree. Wolong Sheng, for instance, was influenced by Wang Dulu; the elder that Zhuge Qingyun most admired was Huanzhu Louzhu. So his early works are similar in style to Legendary Swordsmen of Mt. Shu. Since Sima Ziyan was ghostwriting for Zhuge Qingyun, it stands to reason that he ought to be influenced by Huanzhu Louzhu as well. However, he was more like Wolong Sheng, in that the master he studied was Wang Dulu and not Huanzhu Louzhu.

Wang Dulu’s works were not as fantastic as Huanzhu Louzhu’s, with people flitting about here and there without a trace. His work emphasized human nature and emotion, whether it be in depicting scenery, romance, or the protagonist’s inner psychology, everything was described in penetrating detail. His novels Crane Startles Kunlun, Armored Cavalry, Silver Vase, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon still move readers deeply. Sima Ziyan once wrote a serial novel for Taiwan’s Economic Daily called Roving Dragons in the Wilderness, and its style was very close to his revered elder.

Speaking of “briliant monumental works”, Sima Ziyan is really deserving of the title. Others can write a lot, but he wrote even more. He used the pen name “Sima” to write an historical novel Purple Jade Hairpin based on a chuanqi from Tang dynasty writer Jiang Fang about a poet, Li Yi, and his tragic romance with Huo Xiaoyu. The original story was only a few thousand characters, but Sima Ziyan was able to take that story with its single plot thread and turn it into something truly deserving of the title “monumental work”. The novel’s serialization in the Dawa Evening News ran for four years and had readers eagerly anticipating new installments for all four of those years.

What was really special was he described the Tang dynasty chancellor, military governors and other officials, and imperial court protocol in great detail. Clearly, he had really done his research. Let’s disregard for the moment how authentic the story was, but the textual research served to draw the reader into the time period and into the lives and experiences of people during the Tang dynasty.

Another of his historical novels, Yan Qing, I saw at a bookstore in Taiwan. The title is the same as my pen name so I couldn’t help but be curious, so I bought it. Yan Qing is a minor character in Water Margin, the domestic servant of the second-ranked Lu Junyi, the Jade Qilin, at Liangshan Marsh. Not only is Yan Qing’s rank low at Liangshan Marsh, he is not extraordinarily skilled in martial arts, and Shi Nai’an did not write much about him. Yet Sima Ziyan was able to take such a minor subject and turn it into a 560-page “monumental work” and make it really interesting. One has to admire his ability to do that.

Sima Ziyan was a versatile writer, able to write wuxia, romance, detective novels, action, or anything else. This is not so unusual, but the American publication World Journal once published a story called “The Essence of Taijiquan” by someone under the pen name “Purple Old Man”, and this person was none other than Sima Ziyan.

When many martial arts instructors teach, they simply teach the moves to their students but don’t explain the reasoning behind the moves. This might be what his teacher did with him, so he knew the moves but not the reasoning behind them.

In Sima Ziyan’s wuxia novels, he would often work out the martial arts moves for each of the sects and include them in his fight scenes. His deep research, even the deeply profound principles of taijiquan, was analyzed scientifically. His The Essence of Taijiquan used physiology and psychology to expound every taijiquan move and form and lay bare the secrets of how to utilize their power.

His armchair taijiquan master book ran for over six months in America’s World Journal and astonished the Chinese martial arts community in North America. Taijiquan masters there felt that this “Purple Old Man” analyzed taijiquan clearly and logically and thought he must be a taijiquan master himself, and a highly skilled one. Someone sent a letter to the paper’s office expressing admiration for Purple Old Man’s elucidation of the principles of taijiquan. They joined together to invite Sima Ziyan to the States to set up a school, and some other experienced taijiquan masters wrote to the journal, hoping to invite Purple Old Man to the States so he could demonstrate his martial arts. Other schools of different martial arts styles wrote in as well, wanting Purple Old Man to prove his martial arts ability.

It was then that Sima Ziyan realized his “armchair master treatise” was going to get him in trouble. He knew he was no fierce dragon, not about to cross even a river, much less the whole ocean to go set up a school overseas and accept students, or prove his martial arts abilities to others. So he didn’t write any more of The Essence of Taijiquan, and he never again mentioned that Purple Old Man was really himself.

Spending so much time at a desk hunched over his writing, people took to the notion that Sima Ziyan was an effete intellectual, and that he was a person who loved quiet. If that’s what you thought, you are seriously mistaken. As soon as he left his room he was a sportsman. He had been active on the ball field from elementary school to university, playing ball games of all kinds, and he had been a player for the school. It would be quite appropriate to describe Sima Ziyan as “quiet like a virgin, but moves like a fleeing rabbit”.

In university, Sima Ziyan developed a fondness for wine, but he had no other hobbies. Regulations were strict in the army, and he was not allowed to drink alcohol, so when he got out he was as free as a fish in water; he would have two glasses of wine at every meal. But he was not particular about name brands like Gu Long was. Any alcohol would do. Whenever he invited someone over for dinner, there would always be a bottle of alcohol on the table. And whenever someone invited him over, his hosts would always be prepared with the same because they knew he would not be satisfied without it.

Sima Ziyan had a problem every time he drank: he would always sweat. Waiters at restaurants were always giving him several towels. He could hold his liquor well, and it might have been all that sweating that flushed it out of him.

Usually, Sima Ziyan appeared simple and quiet, even reticent. But after three rounds of drinks you could say that “three cups clears a path”, and he would get talkative. Astronomy, geography, nature, there was no topic he could not talk about, and he loved telling off-color jokes without inhibition, making everyone’s sides split with laughter.

Many people go through several different professions in their life, but once he finished military service, Sima Ziyan was only a writer, he never deviated from it. He certainly never did like Wolong Sheng, Zhuge Qingyun, and Gu Long, who started up their own businesses or went into filmmaking. He just relied on his brilliant pen to earn the “four things” all people strive for: a house, a car, a wife, and a son. There were no fax machines in those days, so authors had to either deliver their manuscripts to the print offices themselves or have them delivered. Sima Ziyan was the earliest author to join the rank of motorists. Seeing him driving to the office to deliver his manuscripts must have made a lot of people envious.

Sima Ziyan was a bit late getting married than the average perrson because he and his girlfriend dated many years before finally taking the plunge. After he was married, husband and wife each focused on their own careers. Sima Ziyan was at ease writing from home; his wife was involoved in education.

Sima Ziyan’s wife was a teacher, but she didn’t teach regular students; she taught at a school for the deaf and mute. Since the students were deaf and mute, teachers had to know sign language. She influenced Sima Ziyan to learn sign language as well, and their children learned to use it too in place of speaking. Therefore, their household was unusually quiet, so much so that Sima Ziyan could be writing while his wife talked with the children through sign language while sitting next to him without disturbing him.

Back when Taiwan’s president Lee Teng-hui selected Lee Yuan-tsu to be his vice president, Lee Teng-hui praised him as the “silent vice president” because he never expressed his political views publicly. Actually, President Lee ought to have commended Sima Ziyan as well, because they wer the “silent family”.

(This is a translation of an article that was originally written by writer and critic Yan Qing and published in Hong Kong’s Wuxia World Magazine. You can find the original Chinese text here.)

1. Bole was a horse trainer during the Spring & Autumn period (~700-476/403 BCE) and was an excellent judge of horses. He could determine how good a horse was by its appearance. A thousand-li hoirse is the best quality horse that was said to be able to gallop 1000 li (~400 km ina single day. Calling someone a “Bole” means they are a good judge of talent, and a “thousand-li horse” refers to such a talent.