From October 22, 1981 to May 21, 1982, Gu Long published what would be his final novel, The Sound of a Sabre Among the Windchimes《風鈴中的刀聲》in the United Daily News in Taiwan. But the last two chapters of the novel were ghostwritten by Yu Donglou 于東樓. It was not very much, only around 7,500 characters, so it’s curious he didn’t finish it himself. In a 2015 interview with Ding Qing 丁情, one of Gu Long’s “disciples”, Ding Qing said that at the time Gu Long was busy, so Ding Qing wrote a bit in his place, but then he got busy, and so Yu Donglou came in to finish the novel so that publication wouldn’t be interrupted.¹ In that interview, Ding Qing also indicated that Gu Long dictated Windchimes while he copied down the dictation.

This was how Gu Long was writing back then ever since the attack in October 22, 1980 at Whispering Pines Inn in the Beitou District north of Taipei City. That night, because of an altercation in which Gu Long allegedly refused to go and have a drink in the room where Ko Chun-hsiung, Jimmy Wang Yu and others were drinking.² Two of the others in the entourage, Chen Wenhe and Ye Qinghui accosted Gu Long and his party in the corridor later on as they were leaving. Ye Qinhui stabbed Gu Long n the wrist with a push dagger, severing tendons and an artery, and penetrated his carpal bone. He was rushed to the hospital and lost so much blood he needed a blood transfusion of 2500cc.³ Gu Long has surgery to repair the damage, but he was never the same again. He couldn’t write much because of the pain in his wrist, so he took to dictating.

The Sound of a Sabre Among the Windchimes is similar in style to Horizon, Bright Moon, Sabre in its use of poetic language and structure. I have translated the prologue below so you can see for yourself. But before the prologue, Gu Long wrote a piece introducing the novel, how it came to be written, and what it’s about. I really like this piece, so I decided to translate it. I’m currently reading the novel, and it’s really good so far (there’s no English translation as of yet).

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Windchimes · Horse Hooves · Sabre

A Prelude to The Sound of a Sabre Among the Windchimes

(1)

As a writer, it always feels like you’re a pupa in a cocoon, always trying to make a breakthrough, but this kind of breakthrough is torturous. Sometimes, after going through long, long periods of torment, you still can’t become a butterfly. If you’re a silkworm, you really don’t want to make silk.

So many writers die in the cocoon, which often leads them to drinking excessively, doing drugs, escaping, giving up, to the point that some will stick a Remington shotgun in their mouth and use a finger that once held a pen to pull a trigger to destroy himself and his despair at the same time.

Writing is an arduous affair. Very few people can understand aside from those who do it.

But as long as a writer is living he must write, or else he will fade away.

It’s better to burn out than to fade away.

× × ×

So every writer hopes they can make a new breakthrough, a new creation. For them, this frame of mind is close to “Zen” and “Dao”.

During the process, the setbacks, humiliations, and ridicule they suffer is not less than the setbacks and misery that Tang Sanzang suffered on his journey to the West.

Religion, art, and literature in some respects reach the same goal through different paths. In the process of seeking something new and different, some pain and torment is unavoidable.

(2)

As someone who has been writing wuxia novels for twenty-five years, having written over twenty million characters and had over 200 wuxia film adaptations made, the desire to seek something new and different, the desire to make a breakthrough, is more intense than a drowning man hoping to come along a piece of driftwood.

It’s just that this hope is often in vain.

So the drowning man dies, the writer perishes; it’s a common occurrence. Those who manage not to die or perish generally number no more than one in a thousand.

× × ×

The Sound of a Sabre Among the Windchimes is by no means a timely rescue boat, nor is it a piece of dry land. The most I can hope for is that it’s a piece of driftwood. The most I can hope for is that it can offer me a bit of spring greenery in my life.

(3)

One night while drinking with Ni Kuang, we got to talking and I suddenly thought of the title. We started chatting about it, and a story came along. At the time neither of us knew what kind of story it would be, it was nothing more than a shadow of a story. One day, I got drunk, then sobered up. This shadow of a story surprisingly began to take shape.

Later in bed, in the shower, in the car, when drinking, whenever I was able to think, this story like a pupa suddenly morphed into a butterfly.

There mare many kinds of butterflies, some beautiful, some ugly, some ordinary, some precious.

What kind of butterfly would this one be?

Who knows?

(4)

One night, I had a lot of friends over at my house drinking, among them editors, authors, directors, actors, celebrities, beautiful people, even jianghu ruffians and famed martial artists.

I proposed a game, a not very fun game.

I proposed that one person would say a word or phrase, then everyone, in a short period of time, would come up with three words or phrases they felt were related to that word or phrase.

For example: one person would say the word “peanut”.

The three words associated with that that another person thought up could be “Jimmy Carter”, “acne”, and “red label rice wine”.

× × ×

That day I posed the word: “windchime”.

Everyone immediately thought of:

Autumn, wind, a child’s hand, decorations, nail, waiting, music box, leisure, under the eaves, separation, fantasy, door, problem, companion, loneliness, longing, be on one’s guard, depression, nostalgia, memories…

Among the responses many were easy to see how they associated with windchime, but some of them people felt were very peculiar, like nail. “What does a nail have do with windchimes?” I asked the person who suggested it.

He came back with the perfect answer: “Without a nail, how can you hang the windchime up?” A child’s hand? What does a child’s hand have to do with windchimes?

The person said, “Have you ever seen a child when they see a windchime not run their hand across it?”

× × ×

“And you?” they asked me. “What do you associate with windchimes?”

“Mine are different than yours,” I said. “Probably because I’m a writer, and writers always write about people, so I associate everything with people.”

“What kinds of people did you think of this time?”

“Wanderers, people living in faraway places, transient visitors, a husband who left.” I suddenly said, “This time I also thought of the sound of horse hooves.”

“The sound of horse hooves? What do windchimes have to do with the sound of horse hooves?”

I gave them some lines from a popular new poem:

My clop-clopping horse hooves

Are a beautiful mistake.

I’m not returning, just passing through.

(5)

A lonely young wife sitting alone under the windchimes, waiting for the one she longs for to return, her state of mind so dreary and lonely.

In this kind of situation, every sound brings with it endless fantasies and hopes, making her think her longed-for one has returned.

When the time comes that her fantasies and hopes are shattered, though she will be grieved and hurt, but that brief moment of hope was still beautiful.

So the poet said, “It’s a beautiful mistake.”

If you wait until there is no hope at all, that’s real sorrow.

In The Sound of a Sabre Among the Windchimes, this was the kind of story I started out writing.

× × ×

This story, of course, also has a sabre.

(6)

A sabre slashes, sabre-tip slicing through the air, shaking the windchimes. The wailing sound of the sabre set against the windchimes makes their sound even more elegant and beautiful. This sound is the easiest to arouse one to longing.

The person who is longed for sure enough returns, but his return shatters all hope.

How brutal of a story this is. Unfortunately, reality is often even more brutal than stories.

And so longing turns to hate, and recollections turn to bitter resentment.

And so blood begins to flow.

× × ×

“Why is that wuxia novels always have to have bloodshed in them?” someone asked me.

“It’s not that wuxia novels have to have bloodshed, it’s just that in the real world, it’s forever unavoidable.” I said, “In every corner of the world, at any time, any place, this kind of thing can occur.”

“So it can never be stopped?”

“Of course it can be stopped.” I said, “It’s just that there’s a very big price to pay.”

I added, “Though everyone can pay this price, there are very few who are willing to.”

“Why?”

“Because paying that price means sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice what?”

“Sacrificing yourself.” I said, “Restraining your anger, tolerating the faults of others, forgetting how someone has hurt you, fostering compassion for others. In some respects, these can all be considered a kind of self-sacrifice.”

“I get it,” the person who asked me said. “All the blood and violence in the world is hard to stop because the vast majority of people are not willing to do those things.”

He had a serious, pained look on his face. “Because anything else is easy to sacrifice, but sacrificing oneself is very difficult.”

“Yes.”

I looked at my friend with the same sort of serious, pained expression, and in a voice like a windchime said:

“But if you think there’s no one left in the world who is willing to sacrifice themselves, then you are absolutely mistaken.”

My friend laughed, laughed loudly!

I laughed too.

(7)

I laughed because I was happy. I was happy because my friend knew that wuxia novels do not write about blood and violence, but about tolerance, compassion, and sacrifice.

I also believe that this type of story can similarly stir people’s hearts.

Prologue

If life is like a dream, then all things are born from dreams and are destroyed by dreams. Then what of dreams?

She didn’t fear being seen because there was never anyone here, no vagrant wanderers to sky’s end,⁴ and not the person she had been waiting for so long to return.

× × ×

Her name was Yinmeng.⁵

(1)

Swelteringly hot, no wind.

Not even a trace of wind, the windchime under the eaves hanging there like a dead vulture. Not only was there not even a whiff of the breath of the living, there was not even a whiff of the dead.

No life, so how could there be death. The difference between life and death was the difference of a breath.

She sat alone under the eaves.

For as far as the eye could see the desert was roasting under the scorching sun, yet there was not a single bead of sweat on her face. The tip of her fine, delicate nose was still glossily, spotlessly white as if translucent.

Now she was completely settled down.

Aside from the occasional, thoroughly wild outburst, she had long since become accustomed to this lonesome, peaceful life. Because her life was waiting. Aside from waiting, it had no other meaning.

(2)

The scorching sun was passing away at twilight as night approached. She sat still and quiet under the eaves, still and quietly watching the distant desert and the windchime under the eaves, thinking this day would pass as peacefully as the hundreds of days and hundreds of nights before.

As she was getting ready to go into the kitchen and boil a bowl of noodles to eat, the windchime suddenly sounded.

On a windless night like this, the windchimes unexpectedly rang out.

She had just stood up and now sat down again and looked with a start at the shaking windchimes. She could just barely feel an odd sound of a gust of wind. And yet could also feel a gust of wind that was not wind, but a blade.

When the edge of a blade slashed through the air, it would carry with it the sound of a gust of wind.

She had long since become familiar with this sound. Her pupils contracted at once at the sound. Then she saw a familiar figure at the fringe of the desert running headlong under the bloodred wheel of the sun.

× × ×

A vigorous, slender figure, with a peculiar intrepid bearing, running headlong under the evening sun.

She stood up again, a flame like the evening sun beginning to burn in her bright eyes.

Just at that moment, the figure suddenly severed. An intact person suddenly severed in two, severing in two pieces at the waist.

His midsection suddenly snapped backward and a burst of blood suddenly jetted out from his broken off midsection, spraying the sky with blossoms of blood.

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1. 本色古龍：古龍小說原貌探究, pg. 458.
2. Ko Chun-hsiung 柯俊雄 1945-2015) was an actor, director and politician. He was a three-time Golden Horse Award winner and played the role of “Tiger” in the 1989 film Miracles with Jackie Chan. After the incident, Gu Long alleged that Ko Chun-hsiang had sent the other two men to attack him, but because Ko denied it and there was no proof, Ko was not implicated further.
3. Sources: United Daily News, Oct. 24, 1980 and Dec. 9, 1980.
4. 天涯. Usually translated “horizon” because that’s what it is. Such as in Gu Long’s famous novel 天涯明月刀 (Horizon, Bright Mood, Sabre). It’s often used to refer to the ends of the earth, the far corners of the earth, a place long long distant. But literally it means “sky edge” or “sky boundary”, so I translated it “sky’s end”. I think it’s a marvelous kenning and more poetic and satisfying, better euphony, than the rather plain “horizon”.
5. 因夢. Literally, “because dreams”. Not the tagline at the beginning of the prologue.