Posted on by Lone Crane

Hong Kong’s “Great Wuxia Era” — Part 2

Hong Kong’s “Great Wuxia Era”

by Lin Yao

3

Luo Bin’s founding of Wuxia World was the first magazine specializing in wuxia fiction. It was a weekly and readers could read more words at a time, much more satisfying than what readers got with what was published in newspaper supplements. For a time, Wuxia World was a bestseller, every week publishing over 10,000 copies, and it was available all over Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore.

Luo Bin was a businessman. He took the wuxia fiction that had been published in the other magazines under the “Global” banner: West Point and Blue Book, and reprinted them in Wuxia World. Aside from printing old manuscripts, new manuscripts shifted to this battlefield, simultaneously serialized in the magazine and published as standalone volumes by Global Publishing and Wulin Publishing, each thin volume around 70-80 pages. These are still being sought after by wuxia fans and collectors today.

Besides Wuxia World, on October 5, 1959, Luo Bin also founded Hong Kong Daily News. In addition to publishing Hong Kong news, it mainly focused on horse racing and sports forms.

Ti Feng’s wuxia fiction and horse racing reports were well-written, but he was also a skilled calligrapher. The masthead of Hong Kong Daily News was written in his calligaphy, and he wrote horse racing forms for the paper as well.

Luo Bin had his “business sense”: “Every day I had to publish periodicals and the Hong Kong Daily News; some of them were no cost, like when it came to printing I could use the leftover paper from the newspaper. Hong Kong Daily News was a bit narrower, so there was more leftover paper. Typesetting and printing after all has personnel and machinery, you do what you can. Publishing so much, some would make a lot of money, some not so much, but still it’s something.”

The publication of Wuxia World made Ming Pao’s proprietor, Jin Yong, want to have a go at it himself. Jin Yong, possessing a mind for business, naturally wasn’t going to let Luo Bin have a monopoly. Once Ming Pao had been in operation for over half a year, on Janurary 11, 1960, he started publishing the magazine Wuxia and History. In order to attract readers, Jin Yong wrote another wuxia novel—he gave 1959’s Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain a prequel, The Young Flying Fox, to compete with Wuxia World.

Read more
Posted on by Lone Crane

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 more
Posted on by Lone Crane

How Four Wuxia Authors Planned to Spend Their New Year—in 1986

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.

Read more
Posted on by Lone Crane

How Much Money Did Wuxia Writers Make?

A Discussion of Taiwanese Wuxia Author Pay

by Gu Xueyi

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.

Read more