It’s easy to forget that the Jin Yong novels we know nowadays are actually revised versions. From 1970 to 1980, Jin Yong revised his entire oeuvre. In 1999 he underwent another round of revisions, though the changes made here were relatively minor. The first round of revisions were major overhauls, some sections being completely rewritten.

The opening of Legend of the Condor Heroes is a good example of this. So I thought it would be interesting to compare the opening of the current edition with that of the original edition serialized in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily.

We start then, with the current edition, as translated by Anna Holmwood in the official English translation of Legend of the Condor Heroes, volume 1: A Hero Born.

Chapter 1

Suddenly a Snow Storm

1

The Qiantang River stretches from the west, where its waters swell day and night, past the new imperial capital of Lin’an and the nearby Ox Village, on to the sea in the east. Ten cypresses stand proudly along its banks, their leaves red like fire. A typical August day. The grasses are turning yellow beneath the trees and the setting sun is breaking through their branches, casting long, bleak shadows. Under the shelter of two giant pine trees, men, women and children have gathered to listen to a travelling storyteller.

The man is around fifty, a pinched figure in robes once black, now faded a blue-grey. He begins by slapping two pieces of pear wood together, and then, using a bamboo stick, he beats a steady rhythm on a small leather drum. He sings:

“Untended, the peach blossoms still open,
As fallow fields of tobacco draw the crows.1
In times past, by the village well,2
Families once gathered to vent their sorrows.”3

The old man strikes the pieces of wood together a few more times and starts his story.

“This poem tells of villages, where ordinary people once lived, razed by Jurchen tribes and turned to rubble. One such story concerns Old Man Ye, who had a wife, a son and a daughter, but they were separated from one another by the invasion of the Jin. Years passed before they were reunited and could return to their village. After making the perilous journey back to Weizhou, they arrived to discover their home had been burned to the ground by enemy forces, and they had no choice but to make for the old capital at Kaifeng.”

He sings:

“The heavens unleash unexpected storms,
People suffer unforeseen misfortune.

“Upon arrival,” he continues, “they encountered a troop of Jin soldiers. Their commanding officer spotted the young Miss Ye, by now a beautiful young maiden, and eager to capture such a glorious prize, he jumped down from his horse and seized her. Laughing, he threw her onto his saddle and cried, ‘Pretty girl, you are coming home with me.’ What could the young Miss Ye do? She struggled with all her might to free herself from the officer’s grip. ‘If you continue to resist I will have your family killed!’ the man shouted. With that, he picked up his wolf-fang club and smashed it down on her brother’s head.

“The nether world gains a ghost, just as the mortal world loses one more soul.” He breaks again into song.

“Old Man Ye and his wife threw themselves on top of their son’s body, weeping and sobbing. The commanding officer raised his wolf-fang club and once again brought it down on the mother, and then once more on the father. Rather than cry or plead, the young Miss Ye turned to the soldier and said, ‘Sir, rest your weapon, I will go with you.’ The soldier was delighted to have persuaded her, but just as he let down his guard the young Miss Ye grabbed the sabre from his waist, unsheathed it and held the point of the blade to his chest. Was she about to avenge her family’s death?

“Alas, it was not to be. Being experienced on the battlefield, the soldier knew that if he took a deep breath, tensed his muscles and pushed against the blade, she would tumble to the ground. Then he spat in her face. ‘Whore!’

“But young Miss Ye brought the blade to her neck. That poor, innocent girl.

A beauty made of flower and moon,
And so was taken the sweetest soul that night.”

He alternates between singing and speaking, all the while beating his small drum with the bamboo stick. The crowd is entranced by the old man’s words; they snarl with rage at the soldier’s cruelty, and sigh at the young girl’s sacrifice.

“Dear friends, as the saying goes, ‘Keep honest heart and ever gods in mind. For if evil deeds go unpunished, only evil doth one find.’ The Jin have conquered half our territories, killing and burning, there is not an evil deed they have not committed. And yet no punishment is forthcoming. The officials of our great Empire are responsible for this. China has plenty of men, healthy and willing to fight, yet every time our army faces the Jin they turn and run, leaving us peasants behind to suffer. There are stories, a great many stories just like this one, north of the Yangtze. The south is a paradise in comparison, but still you live each day in fear of invasion. ‘Rather be a dog in times of peace, than a man in times of trouble.’ My name is Old Zhang, thank you for listening to the true story of young Miss Ye!”

The storyteller bangs together the two pieces of pear wood and holds out a plate to the crowd. Villagers shuffle forward and drop a few coins onto it. Old Zhang puts the coins into a pocket and starts gathering his belongings.


The picture above is the first installment of Legend of the Condor Heroes from January 1, 1957 in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily. The picture shows the full installment. That was it. You had to wait until the next day to read more. So below I have translated what the first installment in full:

Chapter 1: An Unexpected Turn of Events at Midnight


Green hill after green hill, mansion after mansion
The song and dance at West Lake, when will it end?
A fragrant southern breeze intoxicates ramblers
Making Hangzhou into Bianzhou.

The above poem is talking about a situation over eight hundred years ago. In those days, the Song empire was in decline, and the emperors Huizong and Qinzong were taken captive by the Jin, the Prince of Kang transferred the capital to the south to Lin’an (Hangzhou) and became known as Gaozong, retaining sovereignty over only a part of the empire. During this time, a powerful enemy pressed on the borders, half the country had fallen into enemy hands, and they need a plan to regain the empire, but Gaozong feared the Jin like one feared a tiger, and he worried that should Huizong and Qinzong return, he might not be able to be emperor. He listened to the advice of the treacherous official Qin Hui and had the Jin-resisting general Yue Fei killed and lowered himself by dishonorably offering to negotiate peace with the Jin. The Jin army had been defeated multiple times by Yue Fei, sapping its vitality, and peasant resistance was rising all over the north of Middle Kingdom. To see the Song empire sue for peace when they were in this flustered state was just what they’d hoped for. On the first month of the twelfth year of the Shaoxing reign period, peace was achieved, and the Song and Jin were divided by the Huai River. Gaozong Zhao Gou referred to himself as a subject and said, “Your subject Gou says that since he has received your favor, he is willing to become a vassal state, and its descendants for generation after generation will faithfully follow the principles pertaining to subjects. Every year without end on the emperor’s birthday and on the first day of the year, we shall dispatch an envoy to congratulate you and offer 250,000 taels of silver and 250,000 bolts of silk as tribute.”

It was truly an extreme disgrace for the emperor to do this. When the citizens and soldiers of the entire nation heard this news there was not one who wasn’t indignant in the extreme, and those north of the Huai River knew there was no hope for restoring the empire and so were even more choked with grief. Song Gaozong, on the other hand, felt this was a great achievement from Qin Hui. Qin Hui had already been named junior guardian, vice director of the left, and he was especially made concurrent chancellor and enfeoffed as Lord of Lu. To then be also conferred the title of grand preceptor was an unparalleled honor.

After this, the Jin army was stationed in over half of the Middle Kingdom, and the partial court in Jiangnan became more and more corrupt, the emperor and officials every day just singing, dancing, wining and dining without a thought for the monumental task of restoring the empire. Although they had a few renowned generals, like Yu Yunwen, one wooden pillar can’t support an entire building, and in the end the great task was not achieved and ended in melancholy. The poem above is satirizing the monarch and officials of the Song house who transfered the capital to the south, describing how they sought pleasure in the gorgeous scenery of West Lake in Hangzhou, taking Hangzhou for the old capital of Bianzhou (Kaifeng) and thinking no more of taking back lost territory.

Several decades passed quickly and Gaozong was followed by Xiaozong, who was followed by Guangzong, who was followed by Ningzong. Now it was the fifth year of the Qingyuan reign period. It has just turned winter and a heavy snow fell two days in a row, raining snow-gems all over the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou balls of silver silk floss filling the sky. Court officials sat around braziers and enjoyed the snow, merry with drink; no need to go into detail. Instead let’s tell4 of Ox Family Village on the eastern outskirts of Hangzhou and two heroes there who were also drinking baijiu5 together. One was called Guo Xiaotian, the other Yang Tiexin.6 Guo Xiaotian was a descendant of the Earthly Assisting Star “Rival to Rengui” Guo Sheng, who was one of the 108 goodfellows of Mount Liang Marsh.7 The weapon passed down through the Guo family was the ji,8 but its long shaft was shortened when it was passed on to Guo Xiaotian’s father, and a second was added to form a pair, so Guo Xiaotian’s double ji was his family’s unique skill. Yang Tiexin was a descendant of the famed general Yang Zaixing. Yang Zaixing had been a general under Junior Guardian Yue Fei, who at the Battle of Zhuxian slaughtered the Jin army until they were terror-stricken. Later, his horse got stuck in the mud at the Xiaoshang River and he was riddled with Jin arrows and died. Yang Tiexin trained in his family’s ancestral art, the Yang Family Spear. The two of them met and got to know each other in the jianghu, and developed mutual admiration for each other after discussing martial arts and performed the eight obeisances to become sworn brothers. Later on, they simply moved to Ox Family Village9 into adjoining houses and every day practiced martial arts and chatted. They were truly closer than blood brothers.

On this day the two of them were at Yang’s house drinking, watching the snowfall, and thinking of how the northern empire had fallen to foreign cavalry. The more they talked the more grieved and vehemently incensed they became. Yang Tiexin slammed his hand down on the table as the door curtain suddenly lifted and an incomparable beauty walked into the room.

First of all, the chapter title is different. That’s no big surprise. Chapters of wuxia novels were commonly rearranged and retitled in various editions. The official English translation translates the title of first chapter “Suddenly a Snow Storm”. The Chinese is 風雪驚變, which means literally “wind and snow astonishing change”. The last two words are the same as the original edition, which I have translated as “Unexpected Turn of Events”. So Jin Yong just changed it from “midnight” to “snowstorm”.

Overall what is different between these two versions is that the original begins with a boring info dump. Jin Yong wisely rewrote this section and included an oral storyteller, and through this storyteller he was able to convey the historical background in a more natural and more interesting way.

This also means Yang Tiexin and Guo Xiaotian are not at home in the current revised version. And the season is different. The original version starts off when it is already snowing. So the Qu San section in the revised version is not present in the original version.


he first installment translated above is pretty short, so I translated a bit more after that to give a better idea of what changed in the opening.

The woman was carrying a tray filled with two catties well-sliced beef and a yellow chicken. With a smile she said, “What has gotten you two all worked up?”

Guo Xiaotian said, “We were just talking about the imperial court. Sister, have a drink with us!” Turns out the woman was Yang Tiexin’s wife, née Bao. She was a renowned beauty from Lin’an with a gentle disposition and a shy look about her. Whoever saw her inwardly praised her. She and Yang Tiexin had not been married long, and because they were both exceptional, unreserved figures, they paid no mind to the taboo of men and women coming into close contact and often drank and chatted together with Guo Xiaotian. She set down the beef and chicken and picked up a wine cup and poured herself a cup, then sat to the right of the guest of honor and drank.

Yang Tiexin said, “Yesterday I was at a teahouse southeast of Crowd Tranquility Bridge and overheard someone talking about that traitorous chancellor Han Tuozhou. Everything that person said was true. He said no matter which official submits a memorial to the throne, if there’s not something indicating that he’s ‘also presenting such and such’, then that traitorous chancellor will not even so much as look at it.”

Guo Xiaotian sighed. “With such an emperor, there will be such a chancellor. Such a chancellor leads to a certain kind of official of all ranks. Take our prefect of Lin’an, His Excellency Zhao. That time Han Tuozhou took the officials on the outing on the outskirts, I was in the mountains cutting firewood and saw them arrive. I didn’t pay it no mind, but then I heard Han Tuozhou sigh and say, ‘The simple dwellings here really have just the perfect rustic air about them. It’s too bad there’s no cocks crowing or dogs barking!’ Just as he said that, a dog suddenly starting barking from the bushes.”

Née Bao clapped and laughed. “That dog has good timing!”

Guo Xiaotian said, “Yeah, really good timing. The dog barked for a bit, then rushed out from the weeds, and you know what dog it was? It was our dignified prefect of Lin’an, His Excellency Zhao.”

Née Bao laughed like a trembling flower stem and cried out, “Oh!” The three of them drank for a while, and outside it was snowing harder. Née Bao said, “I’ll go invite Sister over to have a few cups with us.”

Guo Xiaotian said, “Don’t go get her, she’s not been feeling well lately.”

Née Bao quickly got to her feet. “How come I didn’t know about this? I’ll go see her.” Guo Xiaotian smiled but said nothing. Yang Tiexin saw that he didn’t look the least bit worried, so presumably it was not a serious illness.

A while later, née Bao returned, all smiles, poured a cup of wine and said to Yang Tiexin, “Hurry up and drink, drink a toast to Big Brother!”

Yang Tiexin said, “What for?”

Née Bao laughed. “Drink! Drink! Drink and I’ll tell you.” Yang Tiexin threw his head back and drained the cup. Smiling, née Bao said, “Big Brother, you tell him.”

Guo Xiaotian smiled. “This month she was once again having back pain, so yesterday I went to the city to get a doctor to come take a look. Turns out she’s three months pregnant.”

Yang Tiexin was delighted. “Big Bro, congratulations!” The three of them drained three cups.

Just as they were getting tipsy from drink, they suddenly saw a Daoist walking their way in the snow. The Daoist wore a bamboot hat and a rush rain cloak. He was covered with snow and he walked with a brisk pace on the snow, his steps strong and vigorous, a sword on his back, the yellow tassel on the hilt of the sword fluttering in the wind, giving him an unusually spirited look. Guo Xiaotian said, “Brother, that Daoist knows martial arts. Not like an ordinary person, but I don’t know where he came from? It’d be great if we can befriend him, but we’re nobodies, it would be awkward to ask for pointers.”

Yang Tiexin said, “Yeah, let’s invite him in to drink three cups and make friends with him.” They were both hospitable and got up at once and went out. The Daoist was walking so fast, in a flash he was already several staves away.

The two of them watched him, much astounded. Yang Tiexin called out, “Senior Daoist, please wait!” The Daoist swiftly spun around and nodded. Yang Tiexin said, “It’s cold and snowy out, Senior Daoist, why not come in and have a few drinks with us to dispel the cold?” The Daoist gave a cold chuckle and ran over to them as if he had wings.

Yang and Guo never imagined he could move that fast and were astonished. The Daoist’s face was still a mask of severe frost as he said coldly, “You two are in the habit of making friends.”

Yang Tiexin was young and impetuous. He thought, we kindly invited you to a drink but you treat us so rudely like you’re above us. Guo Xiaotian, however, was more experienced. He made a cupped fist salute and said, “We were just warming ourselves by the fire and having a drink when we saw Senior Daoist braving the cold all alone, so we made bold to invite you over, hope we didn’t give offense.”

The Daoist gave them a look, then in a clear, loud voice said, Okay okay okay, if you want to drink let’s drink!” And he strode inside.

Yang Tiexin was even more ruffled at this and reached out to grab the Daoist’s left wrist and pulled him back and bellowed, “I still haven’t asked Senior Daoist’s clerical name.”

Suddenly, the Daoist’s hand slipped away like a swimming fish, and knowing trouble was coming, Yang Tiexin was about to step back when his wrist suddenly tightened as if shackled by an iron hoop, hot and aching, and he quickly circulated his energy to withstand it, but who would have expected it would have been better not to. When his internal force moved into his arm, his whole arm then and there became sore and numb and limp, his wrist hurting down to the bone, the pain traveling all the way to his heart.

Guo Xiaotian saw his younger sworn brother’s face suddenly get all red and swollen and knew he had had it, but because he didn’t know anything about the Daoist, he still thought it best not to act rashly, so he cut ahead and said, “Will Senior Daoist please have a seat?” The Daoist snorted twice and let go of Yang Tiexin’s wrist. Yang Tiexin felt awkward and angry and went straight inside and told his wife, née Bao, about that loathsome Daoist.

Née Bao muttered, “There’s something strange about this Daoist’s arrival. Just drink with him and find an opportunity to find out about him, but don’t do anything.” Yang Tiexin answered with a nod. Née Bao properly carried in a pot of warm wine and two side dishes which Yang Tiexin set on a tray and then went out.

Née Bao watched her husband step out and called him back. She took from the wall a dazzlingly gleaming seven-digit long dagger and gave it to him for him to keep in his robe. Yang Tiexin poured three cups of wine and drained his cup without a word.

There are some other minor changes, such as the dog barking story. In the original it is Guo Xiaotian himself who witnessed the event, whereas in the revised version the story is told to him. Also the dialogue with the Daoist and how the Daoist is rude is made clearer in the revised version (see the end of chapter 1 in the official translation for those passages). Yang Tiexin gets the dagger himself from a drawer in the revised version, while in the original version his wife takes it down from the wall and hands it to him.

Just comparing the passages I translated from the original version with the first chapter of the official translation shows just how extensively Jin Yong rewrote the opening. In my opinion, his changes here were for the better.


Notes

  1. There was of course no tobacco in China in the Song dynasty. This is a bizarre mistranslation that makes one wonder how much attention was paid to the translation of this poem. The word translated here as “tobacco” is 煙草 which literally means “smoking grass”. The literal translation is the correct one as this is a scene of a smoldering village after the Mongols burned their way through it. There is no word in the poem that is anywhere even remotely close to “fallow”; that was just made up by the translator for some inexplicable reason. The original text also says “evening” crows, not just crows.
  2. No. 故 in the original does not mean “in times past”. It’s position in the sentence makes that impossible (word order is crucial in Chinese). It means old. So “old well”. This translation also omits the key part of the line, the crumbling walls around the well, which refer to the villagers’ houses.
  3. No. There is nothing in the original about venting sorrows or sorrows at all. The last line is 向來一一是人家 which means each and every one (referring to the crumbling walls around the old well, i.e. people’s houses) were once people’s homes. The poem is about a village that has been destroyed by the Mongols, so the grass is smoking where they burned through the village and the buildings are destroyed. There’s no one in the village anymore, so how could they gather?
  4. No need to go into details and let’s tell of… are conventional oral storyteller phrases dating back to imperial times. Hardly something new from this “new school” wuxia writer. Actually the old and new school designations at this time were little more than demarcations between the wuxia of the 20s-40s in China and that of the 50s in Hong Kong; it doesn’t really signify a major change in the genre. I point this out here to highlight that Jin Yong too was influenced by past writers and conventions, a point worth keeping in mind, especially since so many in the West are apparently under the impression that Jin Yong is the “grandfather” of wuxia or that he even created the genre himself! Neither is the case. This entire opening, beginning with a poem and then an info dump of setting, was very conventional and already cliché in 1957 when LOCH began serialization.
  5. Clear distilled spirits, usually distilled from sorghum or other grains.
  6. Guo Xiaotian is rendered Skyfury Guo in the official translation, and Yang Tiexin is Ironheart Yang. But Xiaotian and Tiexin are NOT nicknames, they are their given names. Translating proper Chinese names is kind of a conventional no no among translators. A name is a name. It’s literal meaning is something people don’t really think about. Of course, Jin Yong gave them these obvious names for a reason, and a Chinese reader would understand it. Xiaotian means “howling at Heaven (or the sky)” and “iron heart” refers to a strong will, determination. But translating them makes them sound like nicknames, and since other characters in the novel do go by nicknames, this can be confusing. A footnote could convey the literal meaning of the names without getting in the way or causing confusion, or one could include it in a character list. But translating it would be like taking the name James and translating it based on its Hebrew meaning (supplanter, one who follows). It would be weird. Translating proper Chinese names is also weird.
  7. This is a another conventional trope, making a character a descendent of another novel’s character or an historical figure. “Rival to Rengui” means he is comparable to the Tang general Xue Rengui. In the novel Water Margin, where Guo Sheng appears, another character, Guan Sheng, is said to be a descendent of Guan Yu. So again, Jin Yong is using a conventional trope here.
  8. 戟. A polearm that is basically a spear with a dagger or some other kind of blade sticking out on one (or sometimes both) sides. You might see it translated elsewhere as halberd or guisarme, but of course those are two distinct weapons, and the ji is a third distinct weapon. So I’m going to allow ji to stand on its own as other weapons get to do. For some reason translators of Chinese terms always make them wear European clothing. Leaving words in pinyin is not ideal because Mandarin simply doesn’t have another sounds and syllable combinations to make enough distinct words without leading to confusion, but sometimes with abstract or very specific words, it might be necessary. If I were going to translate ji, I would probably call it a dagger-spear, following the common translation of a similar polearm, the ge 戈 as “dagger-axe”, which has taken on common usage already. A dagger-spear, then, is just a dagger-axe with a spearhead at the end of the shaft, whereas a dagger-axe just has the dagger sticking out to the side. If anyone has a better translation, please let me know.
  9. 牛家村. Usually “family” villages are named after the surname of the family that populates the village. “Ox”, 牛 (Niu), is also a surname. So it might really be better to translate this as Niu Family Village.