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New Translation: Soaring Swallows Startle Dragons by Wolong Sheng

Today begins the translation of one of the most important novels in the entire wuxia genre: Soaring Swallows Startle Dragons《飛燕驚龍》by Wolong Sheng 臥龍生. I have avoided picking up a long project such as this for a long time, not wanting the commitment it requires. But I can’t put it off any longer, because to tell the truth, it’s pretty lonely being a wuxia fan. Even among Chinese readers the genre is pretty much dead, only really one active forum for it online, and that barely active. In English it’s even more barren.

And that’s simply because there hasn’t been much translated into English. What has been translated is almost entirely confined to two writers: Jin Yong and Gu Long. No surprise there as they are the most lauded and most popular. But that’s only two drops in a very large ocean. Though there are a few translations by other authors, mostly shorter pieces and teasers, still most of the major wuxia novels have yet to be touched.

This project will take care of one of them. (If you don’t care about me babbling on about the history of wuxia, you can skip to the Soaring Swallows novel page here.)

Soaring Swallows Startle Dragons is one of the most influential novels in all of wuxia. The tropes it established or employed set the tone for how wuxia fiction was to be written for decades, and Wolong Sheng for a time was one of the biggest names in the genre, second only to Jin Yong, and even surpassing Jin Yong in Taiwan (on account of Jin Yong being banned there).

Let me give you a quick rundown of the history of wuxia. And I mean lickety-split.

Soaring Swallows Startle Dragons
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A Great Opening Chapter—Wolong Sheng’s Heavenly Sword, Supreme Sabre

It’s true for any genre: when writing a novel you need a strong opening, something that piques the reader’s interest and keeps it and makes them want to read the next chapter. Well you won’t a much better example of such a chapter than Wolong Sheng’s 1965 novel Heavenly Sword, Supreme Sabre《天劍絕刀》.

Wolong Sheng 臥龍生 was a master at crafty interesting, intricate plots that kept the reader turning pages. There’s a reason he was called the “Mount Tai and Northern Dipper of Taiwan Wuxia” (台灣武俠泰斗) and was one of the “Three Swordsmen” 三劍客 of the Taiwan wuxia literary circle, along with Sima Ling 司馬翎 and Zhuge Qingyun 諸葛青雲. He is criticized for not taking his work seriously enough and allowing other authors to publish their work under his name, but I feel is strong points are too often overlooked in favor of repeating these same criticisms. It’s true his novels tend to suffer from having the “head of a tiger and the tail of a snake”, starting strong but then petering out by the end. But that’s true of many wuxia novels by many different authors, a product in part of the long serialization process (novels typically ran in newspapers for two to four years), and in Wolong Sheng’s case, also because he often wrote multiples novels for different newspapers at once. During his prime years, at one point he was concurrently writing Flying Swallow Startles the Dragon《飛燕驚龍》for Great China Evening News, Jade Hairpin Oath《玉釵盟》for Central Daily News, Red Snow, Black Frost《絳雪玄霜》for Sin Chew Daily, and Heavenly Whirlwind《天香飆》for Public Opinion Daily. Writing daily installments for all of those novels, it’s easy to see why he might have issues with consistancy. Keep in mind too that unlike Jin Yong 金庸, who spent years revising his entire body of work, Wolong Sheng’s novels that we have today still use the original text he published in the newspapers. He (and this is true for almost all wuxia authors) never revised his work.

Despite all that, Wolong Sheng still managed to produce some good work, great at times, and the first chapter of Heavenly Sword, Supreme Sabre is about a good an opening to a story as one could ask for.

But rather than just vaguely telling you why, I took the liberty of translating the first chapter so you can see for yourself. That chapter follows below. Afterward, I will discuss why I think this chapter is so effective.

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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.

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The Publication of Wolong Sheng’s Novels in Singapore Newspapers

Recently I did some research into the serialization of Wolong Sheng’s 臥龍生 wuxia novels in Singapore newspapers. Fortunately, Singapore’s newspapers are archived online, so anyone can go and look at any issue. So I looked up all the Wolong Sheng novels I could find in that archive, and below is what I found.

The most important discovery is that the novel Red Snow, Black Frost《絳雪玄霜》was actually published from Feb. 20, 1961 to Nov. 21, 1963 in Singapore’s Sin Chew Daily《星洲日報》. Bibliographies of Wolong Sheng’s works have always placed the date of publication at 1963, but there’s never been any details given about what month or where it was published. Turns out, the novel was a Singapore exclusive at the time. That’s probably why the earliest publication date up till now has presumably been when it was first published in Taiwan in book form (presumably 1963). But it’s actually an earlier novel than that.

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Wolong Sheng and Jade Hairpin Oath

Wolong Sheng and Jade Hairpin Oath

by Hu Zhengqun

On March 23, 1997 at around 9:00 pm I returned home in the dreary, heavy spring rain. Outside the door I heard the telephone ringing and quickly opened the door and picked it up.

“Uncle Hu… Dad left us at 8 o’clock… I don’t know what to do…”

It was Wolong Sheng’s child calling. The call I’d been dreading for years really arrived.

I told this sad news to Wolong Sheng’s good friend and wuxia author Yu Donglou and “Ox Bro” Li Feimeng. (Mr. Li Feimeng also passed away in 1997, Yu Donglou in 2003).

Ox Bro, Wolong Sheng, and I were friends for almost forty years, as close as brothers. When we talked on the phone I was so sad I could barely get the words out, but Li Feimeng understood, and choking back sobs, urged me not to be too sad.

I hung up the phone and sat despondently under the lamplight. It was pitch-black outside my window and utterly silent.

Lost in thought, I asked myself, “Is Wolong (we used to call him that) really gone?”

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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.

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Martial Arts Manuals — A Discussion of Wuxia Fiction Tropes

The jianghu world in wuxia novels is a “martial” world. Martial arts is not only what heroes and lady xia rely on (for protection) as they roam the jianghu, the requirement for chivalrous deeds (acting as a xia), is the final standard for settling disputes and getting satisfaction through seeking vengeance. In fact, the “wu” in wuxia, referring to martial arts, supports the entire framework. Liang Yusheng once said, “‘Xia’ is the soul, ‘wu’ is the body; ‘xia’ is the goal, and ‘wu’ is the means.”1 Even so, as for the characteristics of the wuxia genre, “wu” is the key therein.2 It’s hard for us to imagine a major character in a wuxia novel with little or no martial arts ability, even though Jin Yong wrote a character in The Deer and the Cauldron, Wei Xiaobao, who relied entirely on his eloquence, quick wit, and ability to adapt to circumstances in order to freely navigate the imperial court and the jianghu, “creating a marvelous, unprecedented wuxia novel”.3 However, we’ll leave aside discussions of the desire to “subvert”,4 as that is not a conventional practice in wuxia fiction. And Jin Yong still could not escape conferring a modicum of martial arts on Wei Xiaobao, from the “Art of the Hundred Flights” and “Art of Escape” to his dagger and precious vest, all are aimed at keeping this distinguishing wuxia quality in mind. It could be said that Jin Yong is acknowledging martial arts.

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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.

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Heavenly Whirlwind — Wolong Sheng Chapter Summary

In 2014 when I first read Heavenly Whirlwind《天香飆》by Wolong Sheng 臥龍生, I wrote a summary of every chapter as I read it. I finally got around to uploading it, along with a list of characters. You can read the full 30-chapter summary here: https://wuxiawanderings.com/wuxia/wolong-sheng/heavenly-whirlwind/.

The cover art is from a reprint by Spring & Autumn publishing, but the chapter divisions and titles come from the 2012 Storm & Stress reprint. All name and title translations are my own.

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Unknown Flute – Wolong Sheng

Cover of Wolong Sheng's novel Unknown Flute, published 1961.
Unknown Flute《無名簫》by Wolong Sheng 臥龍生. Published in 1961, concurrently with his other famous novel Heavenly Whirlwind. He was also still working on Jade Hairpin Oath at the time. Unknown Flute is regarded as one of his major works, though it is rarely talked about, overshadowed by the other two novels. This reprint edition is relatively hard to find nowadays, though the text of the novel is available online through many sources.