Last year I wrote a post about some authors who imitated Gu Long’s signature style. One of those authors was Long Chengfeng 龍乘風. I translated the full first chapter of his novel Snowblade Vagabond《雪刀浪子》 to illustrate his imitation of Gu Long’s writing style. That novel was first published in 1977 and was the first of what would eventually become a 50-novel series.

I’m currently reading the fifth book in the series, The Golden Boat Bloodbath《血洗黃金船》and wanted to share a short excerpt from it. I’ve heard it said that Long Chengfeng’s work captures the form of Gu Long’s work but lacks its spirit. I think that’s a pretty fair assessment. When Long Chengfeng wrote this series he was a young man clearly having fun, and he did a fine job copying many of the tropes and features and effects that made up Gu Long’s signature style. It’s just that his work often feels like it’s lacking something, a certain je ne sais quoi. Still, when Long Chengfeng is at the top of his game he is highly entertaining, and at times he even writes Gu Long so well you could be forgiven for thinking it really was a lost Gu Long novel.

The following excerpt from The Golden Boat Bloodbath is just a simple scene that really shows, in my opinion, how close Long Chengfeng can get to Gu Long. I could easily see this scene in a Gu Long novel. It has the same humor, the same easy, casual voice, and it features eccentric characters which became part of Gu Long’s stock-in-trade. Although I often do find the Snowblade Vagabond series a bit lacking in substance, there’s still enough of scenes like this that keep me reading the series.

If you like Gu Long, take a look at this.