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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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Tale of the Long Sword — Xiao Yi

Tale of the Long Sword《長劍篇》is a wuxia novel by Xiao Yi and published in 1982. The following is a translation of a plot summary and short review from A Critical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Wuxia Fiction《中国现代武侠小说鉴赏辞典》edited by Liu Xinfeng, Chen Mo, et al.

There was a drama adaptation of this novel in 2005 under the title 長劍相思 (Sword of the Outlaw) starring Chen Kun and Li Bingbing, but it seems to be very different from the novel.

Plot Summary

During the year of a great drought, The Great Bandit of Liaodong, Gold Wing, arrives at Linhuai Pass and sends and invitation to the richest family of the area, that of Mai Yujie and expresses that before the night of the Midautumn Festival, he will come demanding 10,000 taels of gold. Huang Tong, one of the hangers-on at the Mai estate, in order to repay his host’s generosity, stands up for and defends his host and is seriously wounded by Gold Wing in the process. Just at the critical moment, a teacher from the Mai Family ancestral hall, Guan Xueyu, strides out and engages Gold Wing and a life-and-death battle. Guan Xueyu’s real name is Yan Xue, the son of Yan Zhuiyun, the head of the illustrious Yan School within the martial world. He is wise and brave and is an incredible martial artist.

But he is still injured by Gold Wing’s “black finger” and narrowly escapes. Guan Xueyu happens to run into the mysterious figure Miss Feng (phoenix), who saves him and uses her school’s gold feather insignia to repel the enemy. Turns out that Miss Feng is the daughter of Feng the Seventh, the head of the powerful but mysterious Seven Finger Snowy Mountain Gold Phoenix Lodge. Feng the Seventh once saved Gold Wing’s life. Miss Feng falls in love with Guan Xueyu at first sight, and she uses her sect’s secret medicine to treat Guan Xueyu and the Mai family’s only daughter, Mai Xiaoqiao, who is a student at Mount Jiuhua. However, the two cannot be fully cured of their poisoning without the antidote from Gold Wing’s sect.

Guan Xueyu bids farewell to the Mai family and Mai Xiaoqiao sees him off in the morning; the feelings between them apparent but left unspoken. Guan Xueyu arrives in Ningguo prefecture and gets to know the local chivalrous characters Bao Yu and the young master of the Beggar’s Sect, Tong Bing. Again Guan Xueyu fights with Gold Wing, but his martial arts is still not strong enough and he is defeated again. At an inn, he becomes acquainted with the martial world master Hermit Jiang and receives snake blood from Jiang with which he gets rid of the remaining poison in his body. Guan Xueyu also finds out that Hermit Jiang is the ringleader of the jianghu’s dark path and is now plotting to steal government relief aid meant to help disaster victims in Linhuai Pass. Feng the Seventh and his daughter Miss Feng also have their eyes on the relief money, as does the Great Bandit of Liaodong, Gold Wing.

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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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Novel Premiere—A Rain of Blood Stains Flowers Red

A Rain of Blood Stains Flowers Red

Here is the novel translation I mentioned in my New Year’s post, A Rain of Blood Stains Flowers Red by Xiao Yi . You can read the table of contents page for more info on Xiao Yi. As for the novel, here is Chapter 1 in full.

I plan to release each chapter all in one part. There will not be a set release schedule for this. I will post a chapter as soon as it is ready. There are 16 chapters in all. It’s published in Chinese in two volumes, 498 pages total. As you can probably guess from the cover, there’s romance and violence. Maybe not how the cover would lead you to believe, though…

Novel Updates link is here: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/a-rain-of-blood-stains-flowers-red/

At a small fur trading town on the northern frontier, a lone rider approaches.

Stranger to these parts.

But he didn’t count on falling for the beautiful daughter of the most prominent man in town.

Nor did he count on getting tangled up in that man’s old blood feud with some powerful enemies…

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Gan Shijiumei — Xiao Yi

I’m not sure when Gan Shijiumei was originally published, but the reprint I have pictured is from 1981. The novel has been adapted into TV dramas, twice: once in 1996 and again in 2015 (under the name Sister Gan Nineteen, a literal translation of the character’s name). The author, Xiao Yi, had two “primes” you could say. He originally rose to fame in 1960 with his first novel, Iron Goose, Frost Feathers, and then in the 1970s he changed his style and became popular all over again. His new style, Gan Shijiumei being the most famous, focused more on romance, making them good candidates for TV serial adaptations.

The novel follows Yin Jianping, whose sect has been wiped out, on his path of revenge against the Phoenix Sect, to which Gan Shijiumei belongs. Gan Shijiumei had been ordered to wipe out Yin Jianping’s sect to redress a wrong done to her teacher, Shui Hongshao, some forty years previous. Problem is, Yin Jianping is operating under an assumed name, Yin Xin, so Gan Shijiumei doesn’t know who he is when she falls for him…

The excerpt below is part of the first chapter of the novel. Before that though, for those interested in knowing the whole story, here is a translation of a full synopsis of the novel. SPOILER ALERT: This synopsis reveals the major plot points for the entire novel, so don’t read if you don’t want to be spoiled. But let’s face it, this novel will likely never be translated (hope I’m wrong about that), so some of you might want to know the full story. Here it is.

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