Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel 0824827635, 9780824827632

Citation preview

Paper Swordsmen

Paper Swordsmen Jin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel

John Christopher Hamm

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2005 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 09 08 07 06 05 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hamm, John Christopher. Paper swordsmen : Jin Yong and the modern Chinese martial arts novel / John Christopher Hamm. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-2763-5 (alk. paper) 1. Jin, Yong, 1924—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Martial arts fiction. I. Title: Jin Yong and the modern Chinese martial arts novel. II. Title. PL2848.Y8Z535 2005 895.1'352—dc22 2004017243

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press Production Staff Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments A Note on Conventions 1 Introduction: The Literary and Historical Contexts of New School Martial Arts Fiction

vii xi

1

2 Local Heroes: Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction and the Colony of Hong Kong

32

3 The Marshes of Mount Liang Beyond the Sea: Jin Yong’s Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

49

4 National Passions: From The Eagle-Shooting Heroes to The Giant Eagle and Its Companion

79

5 The Empire of the Text: Jin Yong and Ming Pao

114

6 Beyond the Rivers and Lakes: The Smiling, Proud Wanderer

137

7 Revision and Canonization: From Ming Pao to The Collected Works of Jin Yong

168

8 Beyond Martial Arts Fiction: The Deer and the Cauldron

198

9 Coming Home: Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

227

10 Jin Yong at the Century’s End: The Wang Shuo Incident and Its Implications

250

Notes Select Glossary of Chinese Characters Bibliography Index

261 301 311 341

v

Preface and Acknowledgments

his study of Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction originates in my doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley. I thank, above all, my advisor, Hung-nien Samuel Cheung, who first encouraged me to make an avocation a topic of more serious study, and who has lent his enthusiastic support to the project in its subsequent stages. Among my other teachers and mentors at Berkeley, Lydia Liu was most directly involved with this particular project, but I hope that Stephen West, David Johnson, and David Keightley will not be embarrassed to have their contributions to my broader education gratefully recognized as well. The research and writing of the dissertation were generously supported by a Fulbright dissertation fellowship, and by a dean’s dissertation fellowship and a regents’ predoctoral humanities fellowship from the University of California. While conducting research in Hong Kong, I received invaluable assistance from Ms. Emily Chan of Television Broadcasts Limited; Ms. Karen Chan; Prof. Stephen Ching-kiu Chan; Mr. Fung Chi Cheung; Mr. K. K. Cheung; Ms. Susanna Ho and the archival staff at Sing Pao; Mr. Keith Kam of Ming Pao Holdings Ltd.; Mr. Lam Ling Hon; Mr. Lee Ki Wai; Mr. Liao Futian and Ms. Zhang Xiufen; Mr. Simon Lun of the Hong Kong Daily News Group; Prof. Eric K. W. Ma; Prof. John Minford; Mr. Ng Ho; Mr. Shen Xicheng; Mr. Tse Pui Yin of Ming Pao Holdings Ltd.; and the staffs of the Chinese Service Center at Chinese University, of Fung Ping Shan Library at the University of Hong Kong, and of Ming Ho Publishing. In Beijing I profited greatly from the comments and advice of Prof. Chen Pingyuan, Prof. Wang Yichuan, Prof. Yan Jiayan, and Song Weijie. Prof. Lin Baochun, Ms. Rose Shen, and Mr. Ye Hongsheng offered help and encouragement in and from Taiwan. Yomi Braester, Andrea Goldman, Zev Handel, Andrew Jones, Polly Rosenthal, Meir Shahar, David Shiretzki, and Paola Zamperini are among the colleagues and friends who lent support of various kinds during my days at Berkeley. At the University of Washington, the Junior Faculty Development Program afforded precious opportunity for further

T

vii

work on this project. Jeffery Kinkley generously devoted his time and expertise to a reading of an early draft, and Theodore Huters and a second, anonymous reader for Hawai‘i University Press made invaluable suggestions, which I have done my best to incorporate. To all named I give my heartfelt thanks, and to any whose contributions I have failed to mention I offer my apologies. My deepest gratitude is owed to my parents, Charles E. Hamm and Helen H. Hamm, and to my wife, Zhou Xue; to them this book is dedicated. Various portions of this work have been presented, as papers, at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies; the “International Conference on Jin Yong’s Novels,” Taipei, 1998; the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1999; the “Beijing International Conference on Jin Yong’s Fiction,” Peking University, 2000; the “On the Edge, Over the Edge: Hong Kong Cinema and Popular Culture” conference, University of Wisconsin, 2001; the “Chinese Popular Culture Unveiled” conference, Columbia University, 2001; and the “Entertainment China” conference, University of Oregon, 2003. My thanks to the conference organizers, panel chairs and commentators, colleagues, and audience members who contributed queries and observations. Portions of chapter 2 were published in Twentieth-Century China 27.1 (November 2001): 71–96, under the title “Local Heroes: Guangdong School wuxia Fiction and Hong Kong’s Imagining of China.” Portions of chapter 3 were published in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 11.1 (Spring 1999): 93–124, under the title “The Marshes of Mount Liang Beyond the Sea: Jin Yong’s Early Martial Arts Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong.” I am grateful to the editors of the two journals for allowing this material to be included here. It is my hope that this study will both interest the general reader and contribute to the scholarly conversation on modern Chinese literature and culture by introducing information and perspectives on a topic that, despite or because of a wealth of popular attention, has hitherto received scant regard from the Western academy. At least some of this volume’s limitations are evident to me even as I commit it to print. As a study of the work of Jin Yong, it provides a point of entry into the genre of martial arts fiction as a whole, yet by the same token offers a picture that is partial and to some extent distorting, for if Jin Yong’s novels are recognized exemplars of the genre they are also creatures sui generis, and the Jin Yong phenomenon impinges upon literary, critical, and political realms otherwise largely untroubled (at least on the conscious level) by the presence of martial arts fiction. The broader cultural history of the modern martial arts novel remains to be written. Even as a study of Jin Yong’s own oeuvre, this vol-

viii

Preface and Acknowledgments

ume makes no pretense of exhaustiveness. It discusses in some detail five or six of the author’s dozen major works, necessarily omitting others equally worthy of consideration, and addresses the chosen works from those particular perspectives suggested by my own interests and preoccupations. I believe that the argument made here can validly be extended, not only to encompass the rest of Jin Yong’s novels but to engage larger questions of literary history and interpretation as well; yet there are obviously many issues and potential approaches that lie outside the scope of this study. In particular, and finally, I should make clear that the intended focus of this study is Jin Yong’s work as a body of Chinese-language literary (meaning here simply written, as distinct from, e.g., visual or performative) texts. At several points I mention the many adaptations of Jin Yong’s novels into other media but do so primarily to note the adaptations’ role in the “Jin Yong phenomenon” and their influence upon the reception of the literary originals. A full account and analysis of Jin Yong–related films, television serials, comic books, video games, et cetera, and of the circulation of his novels as translated into Vietnamese, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, German, English, and other languages, remains, again, to be undertaken.

Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

A Note on Conventions

Jin Yong’s works: Page numbers provided for citations from Jin Yong’s works refer to the Ming Ho Collected Works of Jin Yong (see my bibliography). The English titles used (with one exception) are likewise those supplied in the Ming Ho edition. English translations from the texts are my own unless otherwise acknowledged. Romanization of Chinese: Chinese names and terms are for the most part romanized according to the conventions of Hanyu pinyin. Exceptions include some names with conventional English spellings or familiar alternate romanizations: for example, Hong Kong, not Xianggang; Taipei, not Taibei; Li Teng-hui, not Li Denghui. In certain other cases where published sources employ an alternate romanization, that spelling is given precedence, and the Hanyu pinyin is provided in parentheses at the first occurrence: for example, Sing pao (Cheng bao), Ming Pao (Ming bao). Chinese characters are provided in my glossary.

xi

Chapter 1 Introduction The Literary and Historical Contexts of New School Martial Arts Fiction

n Hong Kong and Taiwan, and in Chinese communities overseas, the latter half of the 1950s saw an explosion in the popularity of wuxia xiaoshuo—“fiction of martial arts and chivalry,” or “martial arts fiction” for short.1 Well into the 1970s, martial arts novels were written, circulated, and read in quantities unseen since the prewar heyday of the so-called Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School. To distinguish it from its predecessors, the reemergent body of martial arts fiction was quickly dubbed the New School. The works published in this period, their imitators and successors, and their adaptations into film, television drama, comic books, video games, and other media continue to circulate to the present day, constituting an ubiquitous element in the popular culture of Chinese communities around the globe. Most prominent of all New School works are the novels of Jin Yong, the pen name of Zha Liangyong or Louis Cha (1924– ), a native of Zhejiang province who relocated to Hong Kong in 1948 and began publishing fiction in the colony’s newspapers in 1955. Though advanced by publishers for promotional reasons, the slogan “Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction —the common language of Chinese the world over” is embraced by legions of fans as both the literal truth and an articulation of that which they value in Jin Yong’s work. Jin Yong is by most accounts the single most widely read of all twentieth-century writers in the Chinese language. Readers’ polls rank him second only to Lu Xun in importance and appeal, and his actual readership undoubtedly far surpasses that of the anointed father of modern Chinese literature. Jin Yong’s work is lauded for its panoramic and emotionally charged engagement with Chinese history; its seemingly inexhaustible inventiveness and the dazzling complexity of its plotting; its

I

1

range of vivid, multifaceted characters and psychologically adventurous exploration of human relationships; its integration of a modern sensibility and Western literary techniques with the inherited material of the martial arts genre; its reinvention, through the rejection of Europeanized elements, of Chinese vernacular prose; its ability to wed a breadth of learning and profound insights on life with the most crowd-pleasing action and melodrama; and its effectiveness in accessibly introducing Chinese culture and values to a socially, geographically, and generationally diverse readership, including such “disadvantaged” elements as the younger generations of Chinese overseas. Various parties—some far from disinterested, as we shall see—claim with increasing vigor and assurance not merely that Jin Yong’s novels are the finest specimens of martial arts fiction but that they transcend the genre to stand as fiction pure and simple, or even as Literature. His works have been adopted for college curricula, and they are the subject of an ever-expanding body of commentarial and appreciative secondary literature; rumors persist of his being considered for the Nobel Prize. It is thus not merely the size of Jin Yong’s readership that demands the attention of students of Chinese literature, but, more significantly, the challenges presented to literary history and theory by the claims made for a body of work whose origins in China’s geographic periphery (Hong Kong) and in the often despised ghetto of popular genre fiction would seem to place it on the fringes of modern literature’s central tradition and outside the scope of serious consideration. Just as Jin Yong’s novels seem to have outstripped the genre from which they were born, so likewise does the “Jin Yong phenomenon” extend well beyond the novels themselves. Jin Yong /Zha Liangyong is known not only as a writer of fiction but as a publisher and entrepreneur, whose establishment of the daily newspaper Ming Pao (Ming bao in Hanyu pinyin; English title Ming Pao Daily News) in 1959 laid the foundation for a lucrative and influential print empire; as an editorialist and political commentator, a voice for the people of Hong Kong, and an analyst of mainland politics through the tumultuous 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s; as a political player himself, a member of the draft committee responsible for engineering Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty; as a spokesman for and representative of “Chinese tradition,” whose learning and cultural status have been recognized in honors, including his 1999 appointment as dean of Humanities at Zhejiang University; and as a celebrity whose movements and pronouncements receive enthusiastic attention in the media of Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Chinese mainland, and beyond. The status of Jin

2

Chapter 1

Yong’s martial arts fiction has become inextricably interwoven with the public personae of the author.2 Though not coterminous with the story of New School martial arts fiction, the story of Jin Yong begins with its emergence; and the story of New School martial arts fiction is often said to have begun with a match between two rival boxing masters that was fought in Macau on January 17, 1954. Within days of the match, hoping to capitalize on the excitement it had generated, the Hong Kong newspaper Xin wanbao began serializing Longhu dou jinghua (Dragon and tiger vie in the capital), a novel of martial adventure by Chen Wentong, writing under the pen name Liang Yusheng. This serial’s immediate success spawned numerous imitators, including, in the following year, Jin Yong’s maiden effort, Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge. With Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng in its vanguard, New School martial arts fiction rapidly conquered readerships in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Southeast Asia; and in the years that followed, it extended its domain to Taiwan, and ultimately to the Chinese mainland. This oft-repeated account of the New School’s origins is clearly insufficient. The simple triumphalism of its narrative arc, which overrides the complexities and particularities of martial arts fiction’s circulation and reception, is matched by the naiveté of its vision of causality, which neglects the multilayered literary and cultural contexts of postwar Hong Kong. And yet to begin to understand these contexts, we could do worse than to consider the match fought in Macau in January of 1954; for in the circumstances of this event and the discourses constructed around it, we can discern many of the elements that contributed to the shape and role of the fiction whose appearance it helped, however adventitiously, to trigger. Battle in Macau On January 3, 1954, the Hong Kong media excitedly announced plans for a match between the local martial artists Wu Gongyi and Chen Kefu.3 Wu Gongyi, fifty-three at the time, was head of Hong Kong’s Jianquan Taiji Association (Jianquan taiji she), founded by his father, Wu Jianquan, a native of Hebei province in the north who had brought his family to the colony from Shanghai at the outbreak of the war with Japan in 1937. Wu Gongyi’s grandfather was Wu Quanyou (1834–1902), a prominent disciple of the founder of Yang-style taiji quan, Yang Luchan (1799–1872). Chen Kefu, thirty-five, was founder and head of the Taishan Fitness Academy (Taishan jianshen xueyuan) in Macau. Chen was known as an expo-

Introduction

3

nent of White Crane Boxing (Baihe quan), which he had studied with the eminent local master Wu Zhaozhong, but had trained in Western boxing and Japanese judo as well. Chen was a native of Taishan in Guangdong and spoke with the distinctive Taishan accent; his parents had emigrated to Australia. A match between the two boxing masters had been anticipated for some time. In August of the previous year, Wu Gongyi had published an open letter declaring his willingness to meet practitioners of any other school “at any time and any place” for “mutual study” of the martial arts. The invitation drew a response from Chen Kefu, which developed into a simmering war of words; and the war of words was rumored to have nearly erupted into violence at a New Year’s Eve banquet at a Hong Kong hotel, attended by supporters of both parties. It was on the following day, New Year’s Day of 1954, that the principals signed the agreement to hold a match later that month. The match’s sponsor, Macau’s Kangle Athletic Association (Kangle tiyu hui), presented it not as a duel but as a “joint exhibition of the martial arts” (guoshu heyan) staged for charitable purposes. Only a week earlier, on Christmas night of 1953, a fire had broken out in the Shek Kip Mei area of Kowloon. Fires were a chronic plague in Hong Kong’s squatter settlements, dense tracts of hastily built wooden buildings, often without electricity or running water, housing the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had thronged to the colony from the mainland in recent years. The Christmas night fire was, however, of unprecedented scope—in the words of the government’s Annual Report, “unquestionably the worst catastrophe the Colony had ever suffered.”4 By the time it had burned itself out on dawn of Boxing Day, some fifty-nine thousand people were left homeless and stripped of their possessions. In the long run, the Shek Kip Mei fire was to prove an impetus for a profound restructuring of relationships between the colonial government and the territory’s Chinese population.5 In the near term it drew an outpouring of relief efforts from the government; from the Chinese mainland, the United States of America, and the Vatican; and from numerous local charitable organizations. The Chen-Wu match was designed as a charitable endeavor, with proceeds to be divided between a fund for Hong Kong fire victims and a hospital and foundation in Macau. The contest between Chen and Wu was the centerpiece of a show that would also include solo and group exhibitions of martial arts by members of the principals’ respective schools, and vocal performances by a number of the most popular stars of the local opera stage. Tickets soon went on sale at various locations in Kowloon and Hong

4

Chapter 1

Kong island, with prices ranging from five Hong Kong dollars for general admission to one hundred dollars for premium box seats. One of the vendors was a hotel travel agency prepared to arrange transit visas for those with out-of-territory papers. Arrangements were made for additional ferry service between Hong Kong and Macau to handle the expected crowds. Construction also began on the stage and on viewing stands for an audience of up to ten thousand. The match was to be fought on a platform erected in the center of the swimming pool outside the Xinhuayuan Nightclub. Though variously referred to as a wutai, “(opera) stage,” or leitai, the name for the platform on which challenge bouts between martial artists were fought during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the stage was constructed on the model of a Western boxing ring, twenty feet square, with ropes around the perimeter. Surrounding the raised ring was a platform at water level to accommodate the fighters’ seconds, a panel of seven judges, selected dignitaries and members of the media, and, it was reported, two lifeguards, on hand in the event that one of the contestants was hurled into the pool. The rules drawn up for the conduct of the bout also reflected the conventions of Western boxing. There were to be six rounds of three minutes each, with a two-minute resting period between rounds. No gloves were to be worn, and the range of allowable techniques was broad, though eye gouges and strikes at the genitals were forbidden. Clinches would be broken up by the referees. Victory would be determined by the panel of judges on the basis of a detailed set of conditions—time against the ropes or on the ground, number of blows landed and sustained, ability to present oneself at the conclusion of the match, and so forth. Preparations were made for live radio broadcasting and for filming the event. As the date drew nearer, speculation raged in Hong Kong’s offices, teahouses and restaurants, martial arts circles and athletic clubhouses. In interviews, the organizers and principals stressed that the aims of the exhibition were charitable relief—Wu noting that a fortune-teller had warned him of the need to build a positive karmic balance during a perilous period in his horoscope—and the promotion of the Chinese martial arts. Chen, in particular, voiced his hopes for the “demystification” of the tradition and for its systematization along the lines of its Western and Japanese analogues. But the organizers also found themselves denying rumors that the match was fixed by secret agreement, or alternately that it would be a duel to the death; that representatives of the two lineages had arrived from abroad to consult on strategy and provide reinforcements; that the fight would set off a blood feud between the schools, and perhaps erupt into a general melee outside the ring. Speculation also took the form of

Introduction

5

enthusiastic betting. Early odds in Macau were said to be even, with Chen’s youthful vitality and varied and up-to-date training thought to balance Wu’s years of experience. But Hong Kong punters tended to favor Wu, noting that taiji quan relied on subtlety and depth of cultivation rather than speed or brute strength. Wu was rumored to have mastered the art of attacking vital points (dianmai) and rendering an opponent helpless with a single touch. The principals and their entourages settled into Macau hotels several days before the match. Wu Gongyi then withdrew to a Buddhist monastery to rest and gather his spirits, while Chen Kefu devoted himself to a routine of early morning jogging and qigong exercises. Ferry traffic from Hong Kong to Macau broke all records in the two days preceding the event, and the streets of the Portuguese colony were filled with Hong Kongers hailing one another and animatedly discussing the upcoming contest. The visitors viewed with appreciation the martial arts classes that had sprung up in parks and alleys in response to the excitement surrounding the match. They swarmed into local restaurants and filled the hotels to capacity; latecomers unable to find a room on the eve of the main event whiled the night away in the Macau casinos. Shortly after two in the afternoon of Sunday, January 17, the wife of the governor of Macau cut a red ribbon to open the Joint Exhibition of Martial Arts and Opera Star Benefit Recital. Vocal performances followed, and then the exhibitions by members of Wu’s and Chen’s schools. Wu Gongyi and Chen Kefu themselves took the stage shortly after four, Wu wearing a traditional gray scholar’s gown over his combat attire of shirt, loose trousers, and basketball sneakers, and Chen a white and blue Western-style boxer’s warm-up robe. After massages by their seconds and instructions from the chief referee, they doffed their outer garments. At the sound of the bell, the fighters advanced to the center of the ring, exchanged a salute, and began. Chen took the offensive and, after some inconclusive exchanges, landed a strike to Wu’s face that sent him stumbling onto the ropes. Wu immediately counterattacked and delivered a heavy blow to Chen’s nose. Blood gushed forth; the judges rang the bell to end the first round. The rest period was extended to allow Chen’s seconds to stanch the bleeding, and when he took to the center of the ring to begin the second round, his white shirt was spattered with crimson. The atmosphere on the platform and in the stands was tense. The second round began with more cautious sparring but quickly turned fierce: Chen drew blood from Wu’s mouth and landed a blow to his belly, Wu again struck Chen in the nose, and the two exchanged a flurry of kicks. The judges stopped the match.

6

Chapter 1

After hurried consultations and a secret ballot, they declared the contest at an end, with no winner announced. The opera star Xin Mazai took the stage to regale the crowd with a rendition of the aria “Of all sins, lust is the chief” (“Wan e yin wei shou”); Fang Yanfen, slated to perform as well, had apparently been overcome by the sight of blood and was unable to appear; but the audience was already dispersing. At a banquet attended by all parties some ten days after the event, the head of the organizing committee expressed his satisfaction with the outcome of the match: over one hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars had been raised for charity, and the audience had been afforded an admirable exhibition of the skills and spirit of the Chinese martial arts. In numerous interviews, Wu and Chen repeated the organizer’s assessment, coyly deferred questions about victory and defeat to the panel of judges, praised their opponent’s performance, and dismissed reports of grudges or injuries —Chen denying that his nose had been broken and explaining that a nosebleed was nothing at all remarkable by the standards of Western boxing, and Wu going so far as to display his undamaged set of false teeth in order to lay to rest rumors that he had lost a tooth in the match. Some published comments also repeated the organizers’ praise of the match’s conduct; others criticized its curtailment or the level of skill displayed. However assessed, the match remained a central topic of conversation for weeks, and those whose attendance enabled them to provide firsthand accounts found themselves favored invitees for tea and dim sum. Most distressed by the outcome were reportedly the legions of gamblers, whom the lack of a winner or even a formally declared tie left with no clear standard for settling sometimes astronomical wagers. “From the unfinished fiasco,” opined the English-language Hong Kong Standard, “there seem [sic] little chance the ancient form of Chinese sport might revive in popularity.”6 But reports and anecdotes in the Chinese press over the following year indicate an explosion of enthusiasm for the study of various forms of the Chinese martial arts. Even more dramatic and long lasting was the martial arts’ revival in the realm not so much of practice as of imagination. Two days after the match, Hong Kong’s Xin wanbao, one of the newspapers that had offered the most detailed coverage of the affair, published the following first-page announcement: Since the bout between Wu and Chen, everyone in Hong Kong and Macau has been discussing it with great enthusiasm, and the streets and alleys are filled with talk of the martial arts. Tomorrow, in order to add to our readers’ pleasure, this paper will begin serializing Mr. Liang Yusheng’s martial arts novel

Introduction

7

Dragon and Tiger Vie in the Capital. The book narrates a taiji master’s struggles against the masters of rival schools, and involves a quest for vengeance by a master of the Martial Grove, a tale of love between young men and women of the Rivers and Lakes, and various other plots, ending with a great battle in the capital city. It is an extraordinarily exciting tale, and we respectfully commend it to our readers’ attention.

The following day’s first installment of the text opens with a poem in ci form written in response to verses composed by Chen’s master Wu Zhaozhong on the eve of the bout, and with direct references (omitted when the novel was republished in book form) to the enthusiasm generated by the event and the editor’s charge to the author to respond with a work of fiction. As promised, the tale that ensues features among its main characters a venerable master of the taiji quan lineage. It is undeniable that New School martial arts fiction, of which Liang Yusheng’s Dragon and Tiger would soon come to be hailed as the forerunner, drew much of its immediate inspiration from the match fought in Macau in January of 1954. If we look beyond the simple fact of its occasioning the publication of Liang Yusheng’s novel, what points of entry does the Chen-Wu match offer for our understanding of the literary and social phenomenon of martial arts fiction? We might consider, first of all, the light it sheds on the nature and role of the martial arts in the social imagination of mid-century Hong Kong. The excitement generated by the contest exceeded in intensity and differed in kind from that inspired by other sporting events reported in the territory’s Chinese-language newspapers. Like other contests, the bout promised the drama of victory and defeat; like the horse races, it allowed spectators to literally invest their excitement in the form of gambling; like the football matches, it offered fans the opportunity for group identification and loyalty. A key difference, however, is that a primary focus for identification in this case was not so much one party or the other as the medium of the contest itself—the Chinese martial arts. Both the principals in the contest, as reported in the newspapers, and the newspapers in their own narratorial voices highlight an association between the physical skills employed and a Chinese national identity. The association is explicit in the term guoshu, literally “the national arts,” a term inherited from the Republican era and enshrining that period’s project of reinventing martial traditions in the service of nationalistic self-strengthening.7 Reporting on the match maps the association in more detail through the evocation of national history—tracing the contestants’ lineages back to the Yuan (1260–1368) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties—and through the presen-

8

Chapter 1

tation of the martial arts’ affinity with such other distinctively “Chinese” cultural forms as the opera, medicine, and classical verse. The “Chineseness” of the Chinese martial arts finds its definition not only through reference to a native tradition but also through a complex relationship with a Western “other,” a relationship of both distinction and emulation. From one perspective, Chen in his white and blue boxer ’s warm-up robe plays the young and vigorous West to the venerable China of Wu in his gray scholar’s gown. From another, though, his proclaimed desire to systematize and demystify the martial arts, and indeed the whole staging of the match in accord with the protocols of Western boxing, represent the ambition to adapt the perceived strengths of Western modernity and so realize China’s potential to stand as an equal. The interlocking imperatives of self-confidence and inferiority implicit in this ambition are a familiar pattern in Chinese encounters with Western modernity as a whole; their manifestation in the particular cultural field of the martial arts can again be traced to the Republican era, as we are reminded by the Hong Kong Standard’s note that the Chen-Wu match was “the first since the Chinese Nationalist Republic banned that form of fighting.”8 This remark in the English-language Standard foregrounds the role of the Chinese Nationalist modernization project in shaping the fate of the martial arts and making the Chen-Wu match an unprecedented occurrence but conveniently ignores the presence of another agent: the British colonial government of Hong Kong. Although contemporary newspaper accounts are silent on the question of why Macau was chosen as the venue for the match, and though we must note that the organizing body and one of the principals were based in the Portuguese colony, reports circulating in Hong Kong to the present day aver that the British colonial government would not permit a public contest of the Chinese martial arts to be staged in its own territory. Whatever the truth of this claim or its concrete basis in Hong Kong law, it is illuminating to note that a Western-style boxing tournament organized for the charitable relief of fire victims was held in Hong Kong only days before the Chen-Wu match in Macau, and that the Englishlanguage press’s detailed and enthusiastic reporting of the former stands in marked contrast to its dismissive, even mocking coverage of the latter.9 For Hong Kong’s Chinese inhabitants, the institutions of colonial rule made the paradoxes of the relationship between China and the West extraordinarily immediate and complex. The colonial presence unquestionably played a role in the fact that a contest in the Chinese martial arts, held for the benefit of Chinese refugees in Hong Kong, was staged in a boxing ring in the middle of a swimming pool outside a nightclub across the water, in

Introduction

9

the adjacent colony of Macau. And it made itself felt as well, as we shall see, in the changing contexts and contents of martial arts fiction. To read the Chen-Wu match simply as a result of tensions between East and West or of the peculiar contours of colonialism in Hong Kong would be to overlook yet another phenomenon it serves to dramatize: the internal complexities of Chinese identities. Any temptation to imagine “the Chinese” or even “the Hong Kong (and Macau) Chinese” as a homogeneous community is quickly dispelled by consideration of the match’s two principals, who are distinguished by generation, by native place and dialect, and by experiences of history and patterns of migration in which both native place and generation play a part. Wu Gongyi was born in the last decade of the Qing dynasty to a northern family that relocated to the metropolis of Shanghai during the Republican era and then to the British colony of Hong Kong with the outbreak of war with Japan; Chen Kefu and his family exemplify the back-and-forth movements between China proper, the immediately adjacent colonial territories, and the Chinese communities abroad in which the natives of the southeastern littoral have historically played so major a role. This work seeks to understand twentieth-century martial arts fiction, and Jin Yong’s work in particular, in the context of its reading communities, and a key to that understanding is consideration of these communities’ synchronic and diachronic variations. A further aspect of the contexts of New School martial arts fiction to which the Chen-Wu match can alert us is the role of the press in articulating community and creating public discourse. Hong Kong’s Chinese newspapers have been mentioned as sources for information on the match and as the medium for the publication of Liang’s novel, but their function is not merely that of neutral vehicles for the transmission of data and texts. Beyond reporting the contest, they publicize it, fan the excitement surrounding it, and articulate a range of responses and interpretations. They also concretize both our and their contemporary readership’s perception of this particular event’s embedding in its social and historical contexts, through the coexistence on the newspapers’ pages of coverage of the match, reports on the daily trials, dramas, and amusements of Hong Kong’s Chinese communities, and tidings from the broader stage of the Cold War world. Benedict Anderson has outlined the role of the daily newspaper in facilitating the imagining of national communities; Prasenjit Duara offers support for the possibility, previously intimated, that the imagining of communities may not be the prerogative of the totalizing and essentializing nation-state alone.10 One of my strategies for tracing relationships between Jin Yong’s work and its readership communities is

10

Chapter 1

to consider the historically specific character and scope of the newspapers and other media through which martial arts fiction has been circulated. The relationship between the “fictional” and “factual” aspects of the newspapers’ coverage is particularly germane to our concerns here. To characterize Liang Yusheng’s Dragon and Tiger as a work of fiction or imagination inspired by the real-world events of the Chen-Wu match is less accurate than to acknowledge it as simply an extension of the processes of fantasy and mythmaking operant in the match throughout its planning, conduct, and representation. In Xin wanbao’s coverage of the match, matter-of-fact reports of the membership of the organizing committee and arrangements for ticket sales coexist with the melodramatic rhetoric of “fight to the finish” (juezhan) and “battle of dragon and tiger” (longhu dou). While the telescopic scale and attention-getting aims of headlines make them especially prone to such dramatic flourishes, the news articles proper are hardly immune; the first report on the upcoming match slips easily into the vocabulary, rhythms, and reported dialogue of martial arts fiction in relating the supposed confrontation between Chen’s and Wu’s parties at the New Year’s Eve banquet.11 A pre-match article by Liang Yusheng himself, “A Page from the Secret History of taiji quan,” cites “unofficial histories and martial arts fiction” (baiguan yeshi, wuxia xiaoshuo) as the sources of its information.12 If the practice of the Chinese martial arts inspired fictional treatment, the tradition of martial arts fiction at least equally shaped the perception of actual practice, as shown through the following brief sketch of the fictional traditions antedating and informing the appearance of the so-called New School in Hong Kong in the mid-1950s.13 The Tradition of Martial Arts Fiction The term wuxia xiaoshuo made its appearance in China only in the first decade of the twentieth century, adapted from Japanese usage.14 But literary production on the topic of xia—altruistic and independent individuals and the values they practice—dates at least to China’s Warring States period (403–221 BC), and since its earliest recorded appearances, the term xia has been frequently though not invariably associated with the energies of wu, the “martial” or “military.” Among the most prominent early uses of the term is in the “Wu du” (Five vermins) chapter of the writings attributed to the third century BC philosopher Hanfeizi: The Confucians [Ru] with their learning [wen] bring confusion to the law; the knights [xia] with their military prowess [wu] violate the prohibitions. Yet the

Introduction

11

ruler treats both groups with respect, and so we have disorder. People who deviate from the law should be treated as criminals, and yet the scholars actually attain posts in the government because of their literary accomplishments. People who violate the prohibitions ought to be punished, and yet the bands of knights are able to make a living by wielding their swords in a private cause.15

Xia here denotes a class of people whose behavior is characterized by the private and extralegal use of wu. It is the disruptive nature of their activities (relative to an ideal of unassailable state control over society), together with the neat complementarity of their “military prowess” with the Confucians’ “learning,” that leads the philosopher to posit them as a category both equivalent to and distinct from that of the scholars—there is no implication that the xia resembled the Confucians in the sense of constituting a formal school or tradition of thought. China’s first and greatest historian Sima Qian (145?–86? BC) cites Hanfeizi’s dictum at the opening of the “Youxia lie zhuan” (Biographies of the wandering knights) in his Shi ji (Records of the historian). Rather than merely gnomic pronouncements, however, he offers extended accounts of the lives and activities of individuals exemplifying the category; and instead of simply condemning the youxia for their lawlessness, he articulates and expresses admiration for the principles to which they devote themselves. Sima Qian’s narrative material and conceptual framework serve as a foundation for subsequent treatments of xia in the Chinese literary tradition. As Ping-ti Ho has pointed out, while the phrase “wandering knights” more or less accurately renders the literal meaning of the Chinese youxia, in terms of the behavior imputed to them, the subjects of Sima Qian’s chapter might better be described as “underworld stalwarts.”16 They are local strongmen, exercising power outside the purview or at times in direct defiance of established government authority, rendering private justice and offering protection to those who seek their aid. Sima Qian singles out for praise the “knights of the common people,” who neither base their power on wealth and connections nor abuse their authority by oppressing the populace to gratify personal desires. While admitting their potentially negative influence on society, he argues that though their actions may not conform to perfect righteousness, yet they are always true to their word. What they undertake they invariably fulfill; what they have promised they invariably carry out. Without thinking of themselves

12

Chapter 1

they hasten to the side of those who are in trouble, whether it means survival or destruction, life or death. Yet they never boast of their accomplishments but rather consider it a disgrace to brag of what they have done for others. So there is much about them which is worthy of admiration, particularly when trouble is something that comes to almost everyone some time.17

Sima Qian’s admiring treatment of the “wandering knights” reflects the personal indignation against officially countenanced injustice and the desire to immortalize the unsung, which motivate his history as a whole. While the subjects of Sima Qian’s “Wandering Knights” chapter are in some cases acknowledged to be directly or indirectly involved in murders and other acts of violence, these acts are not highlighted in the narrative, which centers instead on their reputations and acts of magnanimity. Deeds of physical courage and prowess are central, however, to the accounts contained in the same work’s “Cike lie zhuan” (Biographies of the assassinretainers), from Cao Mei’s winning back his lord’s lands through a brazen hostage-taking at a peace ceremony to Jing Ke’s failed attempt to assassinate the king of Qin on behalf of Prince Dan of Yan. As these examples suggest, the role of “retainer” is no less important to these characters’ identities than are their deeds as “assassins.” Their biographies join the celebration of valor and personal integrity with that of loyalty, specifically loyalty to a zhi ji, one who recognizes and gives employment to an individual’s unique talents. “A man will die for one who understands him (shi wei zhi ji zhe si), as a woman will make herself beautiful for one who delights in her,” declares another of the assassins, Yu Rang.18 The importance accorded to understanding and recognition by Sima Qian’s subjects resonates with the author’s own memorialization of them through his writings. “Some succeeded in carrying out their duty and some did not,” he remarks in his closing evaluation. “But it is perfectly clear that they had all determined upon the deed. They were not false to their intentions. Is it not right then, then, that their names should be handed down to later ages?”19 The xia as a social phenomenon were deliberately repressed by the emperors of the Former Han period (206 BC–AD 23). Official historians subsequent to Sima Qian severely critiqued such unorthodox agents as the “wandering knights” and “assassins” or simply declined to grant them formal recognition in their records.20 Behaviors and attitudes associated with the original xia have nonetheless been woven into Chinese history up through the present day, influencing spheres of life ranging from personal conduct through informal associations and secret societies to military affairs and society-state relationships. The protean social and political his-

Introduction

13

tory of the xia lies beyond the scope of this study. Of more immediate interest is the continued production of literary material on xia-related themes. This material increasingly takes on the character of a self-sustaining tradition of narrative and thematic elements, even as it maintains a reciprocal relationship with social realities, influencing and feeling the influence of historical developments from a sometimes more and sometimes less attenuated remove.21 The evolving literary and symbolic system of the xia blurs the distinctions Sima Qian seems to make between the acts, social roles, and motivations of the “wandering knight” on the one hand and the “assassin-retainer” on the other. The magnanimity, sense of public justice, and disdain for governmental authority of the former mingle with the latter’s valor, prowess, idiosyncratic bearing, fierce personal loyalty, dedication to repaying debt and avenging injury, and thirst for a zhi ji’s recognition, if not for fame.22 The crucial role of Sima Qian’s “assassins” within the wuxia tradition manifests in fictional elaborations of their deeds as early as the Six Dynasties(?) tale “Yan Danzi” (Prince Dan of Yan) and as recent as the cinematic epics of Chen Kaige (Jing Ke ci Qin wang [The emperor and the assassin], 1998) and Zhang Yimou (Yingxiong [Hero], 2002).23 Through the Six Dynasties (AD 222–589), Sui (581–618), and Tang (618–906) periods, literary inventions on xia themes, inspired by the historical records and such other works as the allegorical “Shuo jian” (Discoursing on swords) attributed to the philosopher Zhuangzi, take both poetic and prose forms. The verse presents the xia in a range of rather diverse guises. Some consists of straightforward versifications of historical material; much of it however elaborates more abstract and idealized images that contribute greatly to the romanticization of the xia. At times the subjects are sword-bearing, free-spending, and pleasure-loving rakes. While such figures occasionally evoke a note of disapproval, more often (as in the poems of Li Bo (701–762), who himself indulged a similar lifestyle) they are admired for their dashing style, joie de vivre, and rejection of convention. In other poems the xia becomes a figure for high principles, lofty ambitions, and the (usually frustrated) desire for recognition and service worthy of one’s talents. One of the best-known crystallizations of this complex of themes can be found in Jia Dao’s (779–843) “Jianke” (The swordsman): For ten years I have been polishing this sword; Its frosty edge has never been put to the test.

14

Chapter 1

Now I am holding it and showing it to you, sir: Is there anyone suffering from injustice? 24

In prose, the importance of this period for the development of wuxia fiction is twofold. First, the evolution of the Six Dynasties zhiguai into the late Tang chuanqi marks the emergence of China’s first distinct and selfconscious genre of fictional narrative from its cradle of anecdotes, fables, biography, and unofficial history. Second, the Tang chuanqi tales expand the body of imagery and narrative material associated with the xia, introducing and consolidating elements crucial to the subsequent history of martial arts fiction. Foremost among these newly prominent elements are the magical and the feminine. Both are shared by the chivalric tale with other chuanqi subgenres such as the love story and the encounter with the supernatural; both reflect that fascination with the extraordinary and the inexplicable, enshrined in the name given to the genre as a whole (“tales of the fabulous”). Within chivalric chuanqi, the female and the supernatural frequently combine in the recurrent figure of the “swordswoman” or “female xia” (xianü, nüxia). While the roots of this figure go back at least to the story of the “Yue Maiden” (Yue nü) in the Wu Yue chunqiu (Spring and autumn annals of Wu and Yue), a text purportedly from the first century AD, it is in the ninth-century Tang tale that she achieves sudden prominence. Two examples are the tales of “Nie Yinniang,” attributed to Pei Xing (825–880), and of “Hongxian,” attributed to Yuan Jiao (late ninth century). In the former, the daughter of a general is kidnapped by a nun and trained in the arts of magic and assassination; entering the service of a military governor, she employs miraculous transformations in defending him against the equally magical assassins sent by a rival, then rides off on a white donkey to an unknown destination. In the latter, the maidservant of another military governor travels hundreds of miles in a single night and penetrates the heavily guarded bedchamber of her master’s rival to steal the horoscope from his bedside and so reveal his vulnerability; having rendered this service, she reveals the karmic roots of her situation and then disappears. These bald summaries convey nothing of the texts’ elegance and masterful evocation of mystery but give at least some idea of how these and similar tales inject the otherworldly and the erotic into material partly inspired by Sima Qian’s assassins. The swordswomen can be seen as effecting a fictional fusion of the figures of devoted knight and beautiful woman that Sima Qian’s Yu Rang associates by mere analogy.25 By welcoming fantastic material and bringing to maturation alter-

Introduction

15

natives to the form and aesthetics of historiographic narrative models, chuanqi open the door to variant treatments of some of the historians’ central concerns. This is the possibility exploited in one of the most famous of the Tang tales, Du Guangting’s (850–933) “Qiuran ke zhuan” (The curlybearded stranger). One Li Jing calls on an arrogant official of the Sui dynasty and attracts the notice of a beautiful serving girl in attendance upon the grandee. The girl later presents herself to Li at his inn, demanding that he elope with her and explaining that she has seen in him the promise of greatness her master lacks. At another inn, later in their travels, the pair encounters a bold-mannered stranger with a curly red beard, who, learning of Li’s acquaintance with a man named Li Shimin, demands an introduction. Having met Li Shimin, the stranger announces that he has recognized a future emperor and must abandon his ambition of winning the empire for himself. He turns his wealth over to Li Jing, that he might support the fated sovereign in his rise to power, and departs the realm. Ten years later Li Jing, now a high minister under the newly established Tang dynasty, hears tidings of a coup in a kingdom in the southeastern seas, and knows that the stranger has achieved his ambitions in another land. The tale thus employs Li Jing as the focus for a series of recognition scenes that indirectly narrate two parallel tales of dynastic founding. The flamboyant xia simultaneously validates the mandate of the orthodox Son of Heaven and realizes its mirror image in a fantastic, geographically distant realm. Classical-language verse and prose on xia themes continued to be produced in the periods after the Tang; chivalric poetry enjoyed a patriotically tinged revival during the Ming, and stories of xia and swordswomen appear among the gems of such later zhiguai and chuanqi collections as Pu Songling’s (1640–1715) Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange stories from the leisure studio). But the most significant post-Tang contributions to wuxia literature were made within the various vernacular genres that developed during the Song (960–1279), Yuan (1260–1368), and Ming. Records of the Song capitals make clear that heroic martial and military themes were a specialty of some of the entertainment districts’ professional storytellers. Similar material can be found in the surviving texts of Yuan dramas and appears in abundance in the short stories (huaben) and full-length chaptered novels (zhanghui xiaoshuo) of Ming vernacular fiction. The vernacular linguistic register of these genres is accompanied by a prolix, exhaustive narrative approach quite different from the concision and allusiveness of their classical-language predecessors, and also by an expanded interest in “lower” mimetic modes, ranging from the melodramatic to the mock-heroic and

16

Chapter 1

burlesque. The intersection of these new narrative possibilities with the xia tradition can be seen in a number of the huaben: “Zhao Taizu qian li song Jingniang” (Zhao Taizu escorts Jingniang for a thousand li), for instance, depicts the future founder of the Song dynasty as a quick-tempered brawler whose zeal in defending a country maid from bandits drives the unfortunate object of his chivalry to suicide; “Cheng Yuanyu diansi dai shang qian, Shiyi niang Yungang zong tan xia” (Cheng Yuanyu pays the bill at an inn, Lady Eleven discourses on chivalry at Cloud Peak) puts a swordswoman, explicitly modeled on her Tang predecessors, at the service of a merchant who pays her tab at a roadside tavern, and allows her to deliver Chinese fiction’s first extended exposition of the history and principles of the xia.26 But the definitive expression of the vernacular transformation of the xia is to be found in the novel Shuihu zhuan (The water margin), whose extant sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts, variously attributed to Shi Naian or Luo Guanzhong, draw heavily on preexisting materials and possibly earlier recensions.27 In its language, narrative rhetoric, structure, and distinctive elaboration of the themes of martiality and chivalry, The Water Margin is both an immediate inspiration for a large number of Qing (1644–1912) vernacular novels and a proximate ancestor of much of the wuxia fiction of the twentieth century. Its protagonists are not the solitary and mysterious paladins of the Tang tales, who step forth to perform some astonishing deed and then vanish simultaneously from the narrative and from human ken, but hot-blooded “goodfellows” (haohan) who, driven from ordinary society by injustice or by their own passions, forge bonds with fellow practitioners of the martial arts and create an alternate society of their own. This alternate society finds concrete form in the bandit stronghold at the Marshes of Mount Liang (Liangshan po), and more generalized expression in the landscape of the “Rivers and Lakes” (jianghu)—the complex of inns, highways and waterways, deserted temples, bandits’ lairs, and stretches of wilderness at the geographic and moral margins of settled society. As Chen Pingyuan has pointed out, the world of the Rivers and Lakes constitutes an activist alternative to the “hills and woods” (shanlin) of the traditional Daoist or Confucian recluse, equally removed from the seats of power but not content with quiet self-cultivation.28 The marginal terrain of the Rivers and Lakes, the creation of an alternate sociopolitical system, and the bandits’ chivalric imperative to “carry out the Way on Heaven’s behalf” (ti tian xing dao) all harbor a potential threat to the established order, traditionally conceptualized as comprehensive, hierarchic, and exclusively sanctioned by divine authority. The tension between the orthodox order and the ban-

Introduction

17

dits’ shadow society shapes the novel’s overall plot, which moves from the picaresque, interlocking adventures of individual heroes, through the formation and rise to power of the Mount Liang band, to the band’s capitulation to imperial sovereignty and eventual destruction in campaigns against other bandits, rebels, and foreign invaders. On the level of characterization, this same tension informs the symbiotic relationship between the leader Song Jiang, ever anxious to return to the imperial fold, and his anarchic henchman and alter ego Li Kui.29 The ideological ambiguities lurking within the text have been played out in the tortuous history of its reception and circulation. The novel has been both cherished and reviled by readers, and several times banned by the authorities. In a truncated commentarial edition that ends with a nightmare vision of the fellowship’s execution prior to its surrender to the court, Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) expressed his reverence for the novel’s artistry, his love for the individual bandits’ spirits, and his scorn for the ideology represented by the bandit leader Song Jiang. Direct sequels to the work range from Chen Chen’s Shuihu houzhuan (Sequel to the Water Margin, 1664), which is inspired by “The Curly-Bearded Stranger” to allow the band’s survivors to establish a utopian kingdom in the southern seas, to Yu Wanchun’s Dangkou zhi (Quelling the bandits, 1853), which surpasses Jin Shengtan in the ruthlessness with which it extirpates the goodfellows of Mount Liang. These varied readings and rewritings reflect the continual reassessment of the problems of outlawry and orthodoxy in the light of contemporary politics. Chen Chen, a Ming loyalist opponent to Qing rule, found in the novel an expression of Song resistance to the Mongol Yuan, while the civic-minded Yu Wanchun saw it as an incitement to the banditry and rebellion that threatened the survival of the state in which he lived. To the hermeneutics of social order and dynastic struggle, the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries added those of class and political factionalism. Late Qing and Republican reformers read The Water Margin variously as a work of nationalistic patriotism, as an early expression of democratic aspirations, and as an exemplar of the linguistic and literary genius of the common man. After 1949 the novel was lauded on the mainland as an expression of revolutionary consciousness and largely ignored on Taiwan on the strength of the mainland’s favor. In the mid-1970s it served as a tool in the internecine struggles of the Cultural Revolution; pointed attacks on Song Jiang’s “capitulationalism” were supported by the issuing of an appropriately revised edition of the text. The vicissitudes of The Water Margin’s circulation and interpretation testify to the emotional power and political

18

Chapter 1

volatility of its portrayals of xia and haohan and of the landscape and counter-society of the Rivers and Lakes.30 Martial arts fiction proliferated during the Qing dynasty, particularly its final century. Most prominent were the vernacular novels modern critics have labeled xiayi gongan xiaoshuo, “chivalric court-case fiction,” in which xia characters and narrative elements merge with those from another popular narrative tradition, that of stories of crime and punishment. This mingling of thematic subgenres involves what the same critics have viewed as a betrayal of the xia’s essential independence and the rebellious ethos of The Water Margin, as it portrays paladins and outlaws who recognize the orthodox authority invested in a righteous official and who devote their prowess to hunting down bandits and insurgents. The bestknown example of the category is San xia wu yi (Three heroes and five gallants), whose successive and variously titled recensions spring from the work of the mid-nineteenth-century Beijing storyteller Shi Yukun. The narrative techniques and basic ideological stance of this and other “chivalric court-case” novels are shared with other works of the period, such as Shengchao ding sheng wannian qing (The sacred dynasty’s tripods flourish, verdant for ten thousand years), which centers its swashbuckling tales on the figure of the Qianlong emperor, and Jigong zhuan (The tale of Jigong), which draws on the more fabulous reaches of the xia tradition in relating the escapades and magical combats of a righteous monk.31 All the named works’ links with professional storytelling, the opera stage, and commercial publishing, no less than their sometimes unpolished prose and formulaic plotting, testify to circulation below the most elite levels of society. But the late Qing literati’s interest in xia is evident in the continuing production and circulation of classical-language chivalric fiction, and in the use of xia characters and themes in “literary” vernacular novels such as Wenkang’s Ernü yingxiong zhuan (A tale of lovers and heroes, 1878). Martial Arts Fiction in the Twentieth Century The varieties of xia literature noted above maintained their popularity through and beyond the 1911 revolution that abolished the imperial system and established the Republic of China. They were joined by new currents as well, as certain progressive writers and thinkers looked to China’s martial traditions as a possible source of national strength in the face of the imminent disaster threatened by internal weakness and foreign encroachment. Thus Liang Qichao’s Zhongguo zhi wushi dao (The way of

Introduction

19

the warrior in China, 1904) simultaneously drew inspiration from Japan’s veneration of bushido and sought a similar heritage of heroism and selfsacrifice in the records of China’s Warring States period. In a more expressly fictional mode, the revolutionary activist and later Guomindang official Ye Xiaofeng’s (Ye Chucang, 1887–1946) novel Gushu hanqie ji (The ancient garrison’s record of the winter eggplant, 1914) spins a tale of Ming loyalist resistance to the Qing that implicitly assails the new Republic’s president and would-be emperor Yuan Shikai. In its interweaving of romance and martial adventure, its fictional improvisations on historical settings and characters, and its use of history as a critical mirror of the present, it both draws inspiration from the Water Margin sequels and adumbrates some of the possibilities for modern martial arts fiction that were to be later exploited by Jin Yong and others. Xu Sinian and Liu Xiang’an see these and other politically progressive deployments of xia material as characterizing the initial stage in the history of martial arts fiction during the first half of the twentieth century.32 The second stage was initiated by the explosive commercial and popular success of the works of Buxiaosheng (Xiang Kairan, 1890–1957). In 1923 this author, who had established his career as a novelist through a scandalous exposé of Chinese students and sojourners in Japan, began serializing martial arts novels in two popular Shanghai fiction magazines. Jianghu qixia zhuan (Marvelous gallants of the rivers and lakes) narrates the struggles between rival schools of the martial arts in an earthy yet fantastic marginal world of vagabonds and immortals. Jindai xiayi yingxiong zhuan (Chivalrous heroes of modern times) assembles the purportedly factual adventures of righteous and patriotic stalwarts from recent history. Among the most prominent authors of the unprecedented boom that followed these works’ success were Gu Mingdao (1897–1944) and Zhao Huanting (1877–1951); another of its effects was the inauguration of Chinese martial arts film with the 1928 adaptation of Marvelous Gallants as Huoshao Hongliansi (The burning of Red Lotus Temple). The third stage of Republican-era martial arts fiction, during the 1930s and 1940s, was in many respects a direct continuation of the second. It was differentiated by an overall decrease in the number of works produced and by the forfeiture of the virtual hegemony over the world of popular fiction the genre had enjoyed during the heyday of the 1920s. The center of production shifted from beleaguered Shanghai to Beijing and Tianjin, relatively stable under Japanese occupation. And authors in the now wellestablished genre exhibited increasing maturity and diversity in their fictional technique and treatment of received themes and narrative materials.

20

Chapter 1

Huanzhu Louzhu (Li Shoumin, 1902–1961) dominated the period with his elegantly written and inexhaustibly imaginative epics of flying swordsmen, magical monsters, and Buddhist and Daoist adepts. Bai Yu (Gong Zhuxin, 1899–1966) portrayed a world of martial artists that was both tied to ordinary society and cannily reflective of its struggles and pitfalls. And Wang Dulu (Wang Baoxiang, 1909–1977) achieved fame through the exploration of the emotional and psychological facets of his characters’ vicissitudes; one of his tragic martial romances was the basis for Ang Lee’s recent film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu canglong, 2000). Implicit in Republican-era martial arts fiction is a certain nostalgia for the (imagined) values and social forms of the Chinese past. “It was just at the time when ‘wandering knights’ and ‘precious swords’ essentially became antiques that martial arts fiction came into vogue throughout the nation.”33 Nostalgia by definition represents not a seamless continuity with the past but an evocation of the past from a position fundamentally altered in some respect. Recent scholarship on the martial arts fiction of the 1920s–1940s, and on Republican-era popular fiction in general, has addressed its grounding in the evolving institutions of literary production, its reflection of authors’ and readers’ encounters with rapid and sometimes catastrophic social and political change, and its exploitation of new literary techniques.34 Such studies represent in part an attempt to reclaim a “modernity” denied to popular Republican fiction first by contemporary critics and later by an orthodox literary historiography that took these critics’ polemics as gospel. Claims for a link between the xia tradition and the project of national restoration recur in prefaces to martial arts novels of the 1920s and beyond; but the aura of progressivism that may have accompanied such claims in the first decade of the century quickly dissipated in the face of the Literary Revolution’s vehement assertion of a very different model for a forward-looking culture and its relegation of contemporary popular literature to the category of the “old.” The intellectuals of the May Fourth generation demanded that literature be politically committed, defined correct commitment as the demolishment of the moribund forms and values of inherited Chinese culture, and articulated their iconoclastic project in terms of its distinction from the paired specters of the ancient literary tradition and those forms of contemporary literature not dedicated to their own cause. They denigrated a broad swath of offending contemporary literature as “Old School” (jiupai), “Saturday School” (Libailiu pai, from the name of a prominent periodical), or “Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School” (yuanyang hudie pai, from its romantic imagery), and represented its sins as both ideological

Introduction

21

and formal. Ideological error lay in its content, which purportedly bolstered “feudal” attitudes, and in the motivations of its authors and publishers, who were charged with frivolity and money worship. Formal criticisms in many cases reduce to similar ideological objections. In an influential critique of contemporary fiction published in 1922, for instance, Mao Dun dismisses the use of the vernacular and imitation of Western rhetorical devices as superficial window-dressing, and savages a “ledgerlike” (jizhang shi) narrative technique devoid of the careful observation and thoughtful analysis of experience that alone can produce living literature.35 During the heyday of the May Fourth movement, in the late 1910s and early 1920s, attacks on “Old School” fiction focused on love stories and social melodramas, genres seen as touching on issues central to the May Fourth project but doing so from erroneous artistic and conceptual perspectives. By the 1930s, martial arts fiction received more sustained attention. A sense of national crisis fanned by Japanese imperialism joined with a growing interest in Marxist visions of social revolution to produce a call for “mass literature” that would mobilize the population at large. As intellectuals addressed the problem of the gap between their ideals and the cultural forms the masses actually enjoyed, the wuxia genre stood out as egregiously offensive by reason both of its “escapist” content and of its widespread dissemination through the media of film and comic books (the craze initiated by The Burning of Red Lotus Temple was at its height) as well as fiction. Mao Dun’s 1933 essay “Fengjian de xiao shimin wenyi” (The feudalistic literature and arts of the urban petty bourgeois) characterizes the genre’s pernicious effects on its audience as follows: The more passive among them achieve a kind of vicarious satisfaction from the page and the screen, while the more hot-blooded determine to leave their homes and go off to the mountains to seek a master with whom they can study the Way. These scenes of “abandoning the home to study the Way” may throw a certain number of households into confusion, but society as a whole is stabilized through the elimination of disruptive elements.36

The accusation that wuxia fiction drives impressionable youth to run off to the wilderness in the hope of studying the martial arts with immortal masters has dogged the genre throughout the twentieth century. Whatever its basis in actual incidents, the charge epitomizes the objections held by the May Fourth camp and its descendants. (Proper) literature is held to be both mimetic of contemporary social reality and a catalyst for individual agency and social change. Martial arts fiction’s sin is to combine affective

22

Chapter 1

power with a misrepresentation of the world and hence an asocial and quixotic misdirection of the energies literature engenders. Discussions of “revolutionary,” “mass,” and “proletarian” literature during the 1930s were the direct progenitors of the principles laid down by Mao Zedong in his 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art,” and these talks in turn became the blueprint for artistic policy in the People’s Republic of China after 1949. Certain aspects of the new orthodoxy—most notably its predilection for “national forms” and the idealized heroes and formulaic plots of “revolutionary romanticism”—brought some of the literature of the new People’s Republic far closer to the discursive norms of martial arts fiction than the determinedly progressive writings of the May Fourth era had been. But the restrictions on setting and content and the demands that literature both hew to overarching ideological dicta and serve the immediate needs of particular political campaigns relegated martial arts fiction proper to the category of “poisonous weeds” banned from the gardens of culture. The writing and publication of fiction in the genre ceased, and copies of preliberation works gradually disappeared from the bookstalls of the mainland’s cities. Geopolitics, Colonialism, and Cultural Identity Enthusiasts of the martial arts fiction produced in Hong Kong and Taiwan beginning in the 1950s soon dubbed these works New School martial arts fiction (xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo), distinguishing them from Old School (jiupai) works of the preliberation writers.37 As several recent critics have pointed out, in content, themes, structure, and narrative technique, the so-called New School works demonstrate continuous development from their predecessors rather than any revolutionary break.38 The material and economic conditions of the New School fiction’s production and distribution—through the commercial press of urban industrial societies—likewise mirror those of prewar martial arts fiction. “I suspect,” says Chen Pingyuan, “that those who originally articulated the distinction between New and Old martial arts fiction proceeded primarily from geographic and political considerations, and not from the requirements of artistic comprehension.” 39 Chen unfortunately declines to detail what he sees as the ramifications of these “geographic and political considerations” for postliberation martial arts fiction. Numerous other mainland commentators, however, have offered accounts of the rise of the New School in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Chen Mo, for instance, identifies the primary factors in the appear-

Introduction

23

ance and success of the New School works as the irrepressible vitality of the ancient tradition of martial arts fiction; the economic prosperity of the postwar world, with the attendant triumph of commodification and the entertainment ethos in the realm of culture; and the genre’s expression, through the concepts of wu and xia, of “the unique cultural psychology of the Chinese people (Zhonghua minzu)”: The appearance of “New School martial arts fiction” overseas [i.e. in Hong Kong and Taiwan] did not come about solely as a profound yearning for the psychological heritage of wu and xia, for the mountains and rivers, the history and geography of the ancestral homeland; it came about also as a kind of temporary escape from modern commercial civilization, from cruel economic struggles and the struggle for existence—as a unique form of revolt and a profound feeling of unease.40

Although Chen Mo is writing for a popular rather than an academic audience, the essentials of his account do not differ from those found in other mainland histories of martial arts fiction.41 Inherent in these accounts are certain simplifications that call for further examination. To say that “Hong Kong and Taiwan, situated far across the seas, both preserve the native cultural traditions of the mainland and feel the influence of the great tides of global economy and culture,”42 omits certain salient features of the geopolitical context of the New School martial arts fiction. The nostalgia for the homeland undeniably felt by many postwar immigrants to Hong Kong and Taiwan was complicated by the fact that many of them, unlike the economic migrants of earlier decades, were unwilling refugees, driven from the mainland by their opposition to or fear of the regime that assumed power in 1949. Some overseas commentators have in fact alluded to this aspect of New School fiction.43 Until recently, though, they, like their mainland peers, have largely declined to address the corollary to the avoidance of Communist rule; the fact that postwar martial arts fiction appeared, on the one hand, under the iron rule of the U.S.-backed Nationalist government on Taiwan and, on the other, under the more laissez-faire supervision of the British colonial government of Hong Kong. Ma Kwok-ming is one of the first scholars to have undertaken a critical analysis of Jin Yong’s work in the context of its genesis in colonial Hong Kong. He notes that almost all of the novels are set against the historical background of Han Chinese oppression by the threat or reality of foreign (non-Han) rule, and proceeds to read Jin Yong’s fiction as a site for the negotiation of the problems of Hong Kong’s colonial identity. Pointing out

24

Chapter 1

that the red-blooded patriotism of such early classics as The Eagle-Shooting Heroes is questioned, compromised, and ultimately subverted in later novels, and positing an equivalence between the practice of the martial arts and the discourse of traditional elite culture, he argues that the corpus of Jin Yong’s works manifests the educated elite’s attempts to negotiate a strategy for maintaining power in the face of the twin threats of Western imperialist incursion and the newly mobilized energies of the lower classes. The Hong Kong compromise is incarnate in the figure of Wei Xiaobao, protagonist of Jin Yong’s final novel, The Deer and the Cauldron, who embraces the “bastardy” of colonialism in return for continued enjoyment of the privileges of the patriarchal order.44 The Deer and the Cauldron’s refraction of the Hong Kong experience is likewise the focus of an article by Lin Linghan, who argues that the work both portrays and exemplifies the complex negotiations between the political forces of colonialism and the economic and ideological imperatives of commercial culture.45 Portions of Song Weijie’s analysis of Jin Yong’s work proceed from a similar interest in the problems of colonialism, nationalism, and identity, and from an assumption that history functions in the novels most fundamentally as an expression of contemporary concerns. He maintains however that “we cannot simply reduce Jin Yong’s fiction to a ‘national allegory’ of Hong Kong’s situation.” Exploring the novels’ representations of nationalism, of the problem of personal identity, and of the formation of cultural and historical memory, and the evolution of these representations through the corpus of Jin Yong’s fiction, he finds that these texts “call into question and partially subvert any sort of narrow nationalist prejudice, and reflect the problems encountered by colonial society and by the weak nation-state in a broader sense.”46 My work follows the forenamed scholars in acknowledging the prominence of scenarios of national crisis and themes of cultural identity in Jin Yong’s fiction, and in believing that the prominence of this material affords fruitful opportunities for considering the relationships between Jin Yong’s work and the geographical, cultural, and political circumstances of its circulation. It differs somewhat, however, in the parameters of its geographic and historical referents. Where Ma and Lin read Jin Yong as a specific figuration of postwar Hong Kong society, and Song reads him as illuminating the twentieth-century Chinese condition more broadly (or even as exploring questions of identity common to “colonial societies and weak nation-states” generally), this study seeks to ground its readings of Jin Yong’s works in the shifting and expanding contexts of its production and circulation. The shifts in the treatment of nationalism that Ma, Lin, and

Introduction

25

Song have noted can be correlated not merely with successive attempts to resolve the more or less static problem of Hong Kong’s colonial identity, nor merely with the intrinsic complexity and protean nature of the general problems of colonialism and national identity, but more precisely with changes in the aspect of these problems as they are viewed from changing historical and geographic perspectives. Jin Yong written and read in midcentury Hong Kong may be quite different from Jin Yong read in the mainland at century’s close. Chapters 2 and 3 of this book therefore consider Jin Yong’s earliest novels, Book and Sword and The Sword Stained with Royal Blood, against the context of Hong Kong’s geopolitical situation in the years preceding and following 1949 and against a form of martial arts fiction popular in Hong Kong and neighboring areas during these years—Guangdong School martial arts fiction. While echoing certain aspects of Guangdong School fiction, Jin Yong’s work rejects its provincial allegiances in favor of a nationalist ideal organized around an imagined convergence of Han ethnic chauvinism, state sovereignty, and Chinese historical and cultural traditions. The choice of the Manchu conquest of the Han Ming dynasty as the novels’ setting and central theme guarantees that the realization of this nationalist ideal is doomed to failure; and in the resultant narratives of political catastrophe and exile, we find that Jin Yong’s early work resonates not only with the Hong Kong experience of life under colonial rule but also, and perhaps more seminally, with the dislocation from the mainland experienced by the colony’s refugee population. The Eagle-Shooting Heroes and The Giant Eagle and Its Companion, the novels that cemented Jin Yong’s authorial reputation and helped launch his own publishing enterprises, present patriotic nationalism in its most triumphal mode, as the protagonists achieve full realization of their status as heroes through defense of the Han Song dynasty against the invading Mongols. But the discrepancy between these heroes’ fictional victories and the historical fact of the eventual Mongol conquest of the Song betrays a certain speciousness to the patriotic apotheosis; and, as I demonstrate in chapter 4, even these novels contain the emergent forms of elements that in Jin Yong’s later work challenge the nationalist narrative. Song Weijie identifies The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre, with its weakening of the presumed identity between ethnicity and national loyalty and its elevation of romantic gratification over political mission, as a milestone in the rejection of the earlier novels’ patriotic vision.47 Taking a cue from Wu Aiyi’s sketch of the development of Jin Yong’s protagonists,48 I focus on the thread of “romantic reclusion” that ties The Giant Eagle and Its Com-

26

Chapter 1

panion (discussed in the latter part of chapter 4) to the author’s penultimate novel, The Smiling, Proud Wanderer (discussed in chapter 6). I also stress the thematic ties established between personal fulfillment and the romantic vision, on the one hand, and the imagining of the Chinese cultural tradition, on the other. As already suggested, the imagining of this cultural tradition plays a role in even the earliest of Jin Yong’s novels. With Eagle-Shooting Heroes, however, the culturalist imaginary begins to pull away from the narrative of the nation-state; in this novel, the practice of the martial arts and a discourse of textuality begin to merge with a mythical geography parallel to but distinct from the political geography of state nationalism. The Smiling, Proud Wanderer presents a fully realized vision of apolitical culturalism, disjunct from geography and politics and distancing itself from the martial arts as well, while bearing away intact the dream of romantic fulfillment. The evolution within Jin Yong’s novels from a central concern with the political vicissitudes of the Han Chinese and the Chinese nation to a vision of Chineseness centered on cultural traditions inverts the “culturalism to nationalism” shift that an earlier generation of Western sinologists posited as a central trend in twentieth-century Chinese thought. The classic articulation of the “culturalism to nationalism” thesis in the works of Joseph Levenson and others has been qualified and nuanced by recent scholars, who have emphasized the coexistence and simultaneous availability of both the culturalist and the nationalist paradigms, and the inability of a single teleological model to account for a process whereby a multiplicity of subjects and shifting subject-groupings constantly renegotiate their affiliations, “national” and otherwise.49 The gravitation toward a culturalist vision of Chinese identity in the developing body of Jin Yong’s fiction echoes currents widely dispersed through the thought and self-imaginings of twentieth-century Chinese populations. The displacement of the locus of authority for this culturalist imaginary away from the geographic center of the Chinese mainland resonates not merely with the geopolitical circumstances of Jin Yong and his readers but more broadly with positions enunciated by diasporic intellectuals such as Tu Wei-ming, who argues for the “transformative potential of the periphery.”50 In chapters 5 and 7 herein, which analyze aspects of the circulation of Jin Yong’s fiction through the author’s expanding publishing enterprises, I suggest parallels between the culturalist vision expressed in the novels and the specific contexts of the novels’ changing audiences, the transnationalization of the newspaper Ming Pao and its affiliates, and the explicit invocation of a global Chinese culture in Ming Pao Monthly.

Introduction

27

The culturalist vision of such late novels as The Smiling, Proud Wanderer finds expression in a setting imagined not only as removed from the political geography but also as disjunct from history and beyond the sullying influence of realpolitik. With his final novel, The Deer and the Cauldron, Jin Yong returns to a definite historical context and revisits the dynastic and nationalistic problems so prominent in his earliest work; the now dominant culturalist perspective, however, facilitates a radically altered response to the familiar political dilemmas. The Deer and the Cauldron’s antiheroic protagonist, Wei Xiaobao, has been widely interpreted as a figure of Hong Kong identity. The scholars mentioned above have read this identity as a hybridized response to the tension between (pan-ethnic) Chineseness and British colonial domination. Without rejecting the possibility of such interpretations, I take inspiration from Rey Chow’s understanding of Hong Kong as poised “between [the] colonizers” of Great Britain and mainland China itself, and her reminder of the repressions inherent in a monopolistic nativist response to foreign domination.51 Chapter 8 thus reads The Deer and the Cauldron against the history of Jin Yong’s relations with the mainland regime and the introduction of his works into the Chinese mainland in the 1980s and 1990s, and explores the possibility of Wei Xiaobao’s serving as a figure for the experience not only of British colonialism but also of retrocession (huigui) to Chinese sovereignty. Strategies of Reading and the Economy of Literature The readings of Jin Yong’s novels proposed here so far are contextual in the sense that they seek some part of the meaning of these works in the historical and social circumstances of their production and circulation.52 They are broadly informed by Benedict Anderson’s remarks on the crucial role that fiction can play in a community’s enunciating and confirming its own existence. Fiction’s relationship to society, according to this understanding, is not merely reflexive but potentially creative as well; beyond mirroring (often through transformation and displacement) social phenomena and the structural relationships obtaining in a given time and place, fiction can also play a role in conceiving and focusing still-emergent possibilities. The guiding and predictive potential of a fictional vision emerges with progressive strength in successive portions of this book. Early sections consider Jin Yong’s novels’ expression of a Hong Kong identity shaped by the events of the postwar decades. The central chapters explore the contributory role of the novels, and of the journalistic and media com-

28

Chapter 1

plex through which they circulated, in articulating a culturalist and diasporic vision of Chinese identity. The chapter 8 reading of The Deer and the Cauldron as (in part) a story of return to the geographic and political realities of the Chinese mainland seems to impute to a text composed at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s a foreknowledge of events not set in motion in the political sphere until the signing of the Joint Declaration by Britain and China in 1984. The point here is not to impute to Jin Yong the prescience of a Nostradamus (or a Zhuge Liang) but merely to suggest that the novel’s exploration of the themes of cultural and political allegiance sketches out possibilities, some of which were in fact soon to be realized. Given the widespread audience for Jin Yong’s work and the author’s personal involvement in the negotiation of Hong Kong’s return to mainland sovereignty, the question of how and to what extent the vision expressed in the novel may have informed the discourse governing the unfolding of the political process is both evident and intriguing; but addressing the question lies beyond this book’s scope. Tracing links between the contents of Jin Yong’s novels and the political and social circumstances of their times, this study seeks to contextualize its readings in another fashion as well: by keeping in focus the materiality of reading, the changing physical forms and commercial and institutional environments through which Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction has circulated among its audiences. In part, this emphasis on the concrete circumstances of publication and circulation serves to underpin the sociopolitical readings discussed here. Interpreting Jin Yong’s early work as a literature of war and exile is much more convincing, even obvious, when the original serialized texts are seen printed side by side with reports from refugee camps and accounts of skirmishes across the Taiwan Straits. As Anderson makes clear, moreover, it is only through the networks of publication and distribution that fiction can reach its audiences and allow them to join in its imagining of a community. But the uses for a close attention to the circumstances of the circulation of Jin Yong’s work are not limited to a greater understanding of the novels’ political (in the narrow sense) referents. Study of the material forms in which Jin Yong’s fiction has been distributed, and an “intertextual” approach focused not on texts cited within the novels but on texts in the company of which they circulated, and which directly or implicitly shaped their reception, also sheds light on the changing cultural status of Jin Yong’s work. The migration of Jin Yong’s novels has been not only from Hong Kong to the Chinese diaspora and back to the Chinese mainland but also from commercial success

Introduction

29

in a popular but little respected “sub”-literary genre to consideration as one of the most accomplished and influential bodies of work in Chinese of the latter half of the twentieth century. My analysis of the shifting status of Jin Yong’s fiction is inspired in part by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who offers a model of the processes by which authors and texts negotiate their positions within a field generated by the constant rebalancing of the tension between values understood as uniquely and properly “artistic” and those political and economic principles holding more widespread sway throughout the structure of society.53 Chapter 5 begins an exploration of the production of the meaning and value of Jin Yong’s work by analyzing the early history of his newspaper, Ming Pao. The association between Jin Yong’s fiction and his journalistic enterprise was, in the first place, one of mutual commercial support, with the fiction contributing to the paper’s financial viability and the paper providing a primary medium for the distribution of the fiction to its audience. From the early days of Ming Pao’s existence, however, Jin Yong can also be seen to deploy the paper as a forum for actively constructing an aesthetic and a practice of reading for martial arts fiction. Chapter 7 continues the story of how the synergetic relationship between the content of Jin Yong’s fiction, the growing power and expanse of his publishing enterprises, the social and cultural status of the author/publisher himself, and his enunciation of a discourse concerning the novels’ nature and function, carries these works from the pages of the daily newspaper’s fiction supplement to the thirty-six volumes of the Collected Works of Jin Yong. An oeuvre’s attainment of status within a given society’s cultural field is not the result of individual agency, no matter how powerful the individual (the question one must ask, in any case, is how society confers this power) or how many different roles (author, publisher, critic) combine in his or her person. Chapter 9 reviews the role played in the elevation of Jin Yong’s fiction by the academy, an institution that Bourdieu identifies as instrumental in arbitrating the middle reaches of the cultural and literary fields—the domain of “bourgeois consecration.”54 The chapter further examines the impact on the status of Jin Yong’s fiction of the migration, both of the works themselves and of the discourse on their nature and meaning, to a new cultural terrain. Entering the Chinese mainland in the 1980s, Jin Yong’s work played both a contributory and an emblematic role in the profound reconfiguration of the arts and their relationship to economic and political life during the era of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. It is in this milieu—amidst the marketization of cultural life, the avant-garde’s rejection of this process, and the political and cultural establishments’

30

Chapter 1

search for new validations of their authority—that Jin Yong’s fiction received its most unqualified consecration. It is here too that an intersection becomes evident between Jin Yong’s articulation of a culturalist response to the political problems of Chinese identity and the fortunes of his work within the field of cultural production. The (cultural) Chineseness transcending ethnic and political divisions, elaborated over the course of the oeuvre’s development and enacted in its permeation of the Chineseliterate world, is interwoven and at times seemingly identified with the (Chinese) culture that bestows the aura of authenticity and purpose upon a body of work confidently rooted in its mastery of the literary marketplace. But both the terms and the results of these negotiations remain in flux. The final chapter, by way of a coda, presents a snapshot of a revealing moment in the recent history of the assessment and reception of Jin Yong’s work.

Introduction

31

Chapter 2 Local Heroes Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction and the Colony of Hong Kong

tandard accounts divide twentieth-century Chinese martial arts fiction into Old School, produced in Shanghai, Tianjin, and other urban centers before the war, and New School, which emerged in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the 1950s and 1960s. As the very names “Old School” and “New School” make clear, this narrative is one of regeneration, even revolution, but simultaneously one of inheritance and continuity. The New School authors themselves proclaimed their indebtedness to their antebellum predecessors. Liang Yusheng, the pen name chosen by the New School’s “founder,” Chen Wentong, suggests that the author was born (sheng) of the Old School master Bai Yu; the first chapter of Liang’s maiden work opens with a scene involving twelve coin darts, an homage to Bai Yu’s masterpiece Shier jinqian biao (The dozen gold coin darts). Liang Yusheng’s contemporary Zhang Kuoqiang took the pen name Zhang Menghuan, implying a dream (meng) of the inimitable Huanzhu Louzhu. The name “Jin Yong” makes no such explicit declaration of influence, being derived instead from the last character in the author’s given name. But Jin Yong expressed in the fledgling Ming Pao his indebtedness to his prewar models, offering on the same page as his own latest work a feature entitled “Wuxia mingzhu jingxuan” (Selections from the classics of martial arts fiction), which presented selections from Bai Yu, Huanzhu Louzhu, and other Old School authors, chosen and introduced by Jin Yong himself.1 As noted in the preceding chapter, the Old/New School division essentially denotes a shift in the production and circulation of martial arts fiction away from the mainland to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and communities

S

32

overseas, in the aftermath of 1949. Yet if we examine the Hong Kong in which New School fiction appeared—the Hong Kong of the celebrated match between Wu Gongyi and Chen Kefu—we discover a body of literature, generally overlooked in the standard histories of martial arts fiction, which complicates the temporal and geographic assumptions of the Old School/New School narrative. These are texts relating the adventures of heroes from the Guangdong region, produced and circulated also primarily within this region and its cultural satellites. Ye Hongsheng, one of the few scholars to discuss these works, terms them “Guangdong School martial arts fiction” (Guangpai wuxia xiaoshuo).2 In terms of temporal parameters, Guangdong School martial arts fiction both provides an example of direct textual continuity between the late Qing and Old School periods and bridges the Old School/New School chronological divide as well. The second temporal bridge additionally brings to our attention the ways in which the Guangzhou/Hong Kong axis disrupts the geopolitical boundary between China proper and the Chinese “overseas.” Ye Hongsheng’s contention that it was primarily with reference to Guangdong School fiction that the work of Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, and their contemporaries struck their readers as something new throws the New School authors’ project into sharper relief, highlighting the fact that their appropriation and reinterpretation of materials, themes, and linguistic practices associated with the martial arts fiction of prewar Shanghai and Tianjin was not so much a seamless and reflexive inheritance as a conscious choice of one tradition over another. Their ignoring of a local strain of martial arts fiction reflects not merely the authors’ personal histories and preferences but—as the enthusiastic reception accorded their work testifies—widespread changes in Hong Kong society and culture in the years following the end of the Pacific War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. What had been in large part, for its Chinese residents, an extension of local Cantonese culture now became a “lifeboat,” a locus of indefinite exile from the Chinese homeland. And the New School authors accordingly employed martial arts fiction less as a celebration of local heroes and traditions than as a vehicle for exploring the authors’ and readers’ relationship to this near-yet-suddenly-distant home. This chapter establishes a background for appreciating Jin Yong’s earliest work by chronicling its immediate predecessors and context. Sketching out Guangdong School fiction’s geographically and historically specific loyalties allows us to perceive anew the celebration of universalized, mythicized Chinese identity that lies at the heart of New School fiction. I

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

33

begin by briefly reviewing the history of Guangdong School martial arts fiction. This history is one of texts and shared thematic material, and for this part of the story, the late Qing novel Shengchao ding sheng wannian qing provides a useful point of access. But the story of Guangdong School martial arts fiction is also a story of the material’s circulation within a particular geographic and cultural sphere, in large part through the medium of newspaper serialization. Our survey of Guangdong School texts and their authors thus leads us to a consideration of the dynamics of newspaper publishing in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the decades leading up to the war with Japan. The Japanese war, the Chinese Civil War, and their aftermath profoundly reshaped both the institutions of newspaper publishing in Guangzhou and Hong Kong and the communities they served. The final portion of this chapter will therefore review the fortunes of Hong Kong’s newspaper industry and the role and character of serialized newspaper fiction in the postwar years—closing with a glance at how a hero from the Guangdong School of martial arts fiction fares in this altered world. The Origins and Characteristics of Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction A major source of material and inspiration for the body of twentieth-century martial arts fiction that took the Pearl River region as its setting, and found there its primary base of circulation as well, was the anonymous late Qing (1893) vernacular novel Shengchao ding sheng wannian qing—literally, “The sacred dynasty’s tripods flourish, verdant for ten thousand years,” but hereafter, for simplicity’s sake, Everlasting.3 Everlasting interweaves stories of the Qianlong emperor’s incognito travels through the southern regions of his empire with tales of the hotheaded disciples of Zhishan, abbot of the southern branch of the Shaolin temple, the legendary cradle of China’s martial arts traditions. The two bodies of material may well have existed independently before being combined in this novel; the narrative alternates between the emperor and the Shaolin disciples for dozens of chapters before stitching their tales together.4 The stories of the Shaolin disciples begin in the novel’s fourth chapter. A synopsis of the opening incidents will make clear the extent to which Guangdong allegiances motivate the plot and inform the sensibility of this part of the novel’s material. Fang De, a merchant from Guangdong, runs a silk emporium in Nanjing, and one day an aged salt-smuggler, caught in a sudden storm, seeks shelter in his shop. “Hearing [the stranger] speak

34

Chapter 2

with a Guangdong accent, Fang De was stirred by affection for his old home” (32). He treats the old wanderer, Miao Xian, as a brother, and in time Miao Xian weds his daughter Cuihua to his benefactor. Miao Xian is in fact a skilled martial artist, a comrade of southern Shaolin’s abbot Zhishan. He transmits his arts to his daughter, and she in turn passes them on to the son she bears to Fang De, Fang Shiyu. Fang Shiyu grows up headstrong and ungovernable. His father takes him along on a business trip to Hangzhou, hoping to teach him something of the ways of the world. But in Hangzhou, Fang Shiyu encounters Lei the Tiger (Lei Laohu), a military officer from the north who has erected a leitai and issued a humiliating challenge to the heroes of Guangdong and the southlands. Enraged by the insult, Fang Shiyu kills Lei (rather unheroically, using a weapon forbidden by the rules of the match); and thus begins the first of a series of blood feuds that embroil him and his companions. The Qianlong emperor, meanwhile, journeys in disguise through the southern regions of his realm. He indulges courtly tastes for scenery and versification but also finds frequent opportunities to display a hair-trigger temper and lethal skill in the martial arts. He exposes, overthrows, and as often as not slaughters with his own hands malefactors ranging from venal pawnshop clerks to corrupt magistrates and the overbearing offspring of high-ranking ministers. While some of his deeds benefit those of his subjects who suffer from local tyrants’ oppression, other exploits seem to be motivated primarily by an uncompromising rage against any who might slight his majesty or oppose his personal will. The emperor seems in fact to be a character cut from the same cloth as Fang Shiyu and his comrades —his pride, willfulness, and violence identical in kind with theirs. As previously noted, fictional treatments of “goodfellows” (haohan) material, from The Water Margin on, have confronted an inherent tension between the ethos of sworn brothers who would “carry out the Way on Heaven’s behalf” and the prerogatives of cosmically sanctioned imperial authority. Where late Qing novels such as Three Heroes and Five Gallants address the problem by enlisting the goodfellows as loyal champions of an incorruptible official, Everlasting offers an even more intimate alliance, conflating authority with brawling heroism in the emperor’s own person. And if the “goodfellow” as a role or institution gains a certain luster from this imperial sanction, the ideological repercussions for imperial authority as such seem confused at best. Although frequently aided by omens and agents from the courts of heaven, Qianlong appears to legitimate his rule in part through simple tyranny and force majeure,5 and his embrace

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

35

of the heroic role does not necessarily elevate the position of other goodfellows in the novel. When Qianlong discovers a bosom friend in the young stalwart Zhou Riqing, the two follow the pattern of the heroes of Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin by taking vows of mutual loyalty. The relationship they swear to, however, is that of father and adopted son, not elder and younger brothers—a difference that respects not merely the disparity in their ages but the hierarchic inapproachability of the imperial person as well. The other heroes in the novel’s world face the choice between serving the emperor or opposing him. Those who swear fealty receive honors and official position, but those who do not are eliminated. Into the latter category fall Fang Shiyu and the other Guangdong heroes. When their increasingly brazen exploits attract the emperor’s attention, he sends his champions to subdue them. In the final chapters of Everlasting the nun Wumei, the White Eyebrow Daoist (Baimei Daoren), and other paladins loyal to the emperor kill Zhishan, Fang Shiyu, and the rest and raze the southern Shaolin temple to the ground. At some point in the 1930s, Fang Shiyu and his comrades achieved textual liberation from the heavy hand of imperial authority. One Jiang Diedie extracted and expanded their exploits from Everlasting, publishing the result as the twenty-chapter novel Shaolin xiao yingxiong (Young heroes from Shaolin) (hereafter Young Heroes).6 Whatever currency the Shaolin material may have had prior to or outside of its incorporation into Everlasting, Jiang Diedie’s work clearly takes the Qing novel as its direct textual source. In many passages the two are identical, word for word. Jiang ends the tale, however, with the settling of the Shaolin disciples’ feuds by the nun Wumei, a scene that appears in chapter 18 of the seventy-six-chapter Everlasting. The heroes’ later excesses and ultimate destruction at the hands of the emperor’s champions are entirely absent from the new work. Thus liberated from narrative retribution, and disassociated from the apparatus of imperial and celestial orthodoxy trumpeted in Everlasting, Fang Shiyu and his companions emerge as the masters of their diegetic universe. “It is difficult to discern,” frets a modern mainland commentator, “by what standards the author intends to establish their image as heroes”; 7 and indeed, in Young Heroes the bravos from Guangdong seem neither to require nor to answer to any legitimation outside their own hubris, martial prowess, and loyalty to their teacher and their native place. 8 Young Heroes’ direct textual links with Everlasting make it an interesting case in the evolution of martial arts fiction—an Old School novel born directly from the body of a late Qing work. But it represents neither the

36

Chapter 2

earliest reworking of Everlasting’s material nor the most proximate source of the Guangdong School of martial arts fiction. Those distinctions belong rather to the fiction of Deng Yugong, who in 1931 began serializing his own versions of the legends of the Shaolin heroes—Zhishan san you Nanyue ji (An account of Zhishan’s three journeys to the south of Yue), Shaolin yingxiong xuezhan ji (An account of the Shaolin heroes’ battle to the death), Huang Feihong zhengzhuan (The true story of Huang Feihong), and others—in Guangdong newspapers. Deng was soon followed by a host of imitators, including Zhai Gong (the pen name of Zhu Yuzhai), You Cao (Wang Xiangqin), Nianfo Shanren (Xu Kairu), and Kong Dong (Yang Daming). These authors wrote in a simple classical prose, a linguistic register that coexisted with baihua vernacular as a medium for fiction and anecdotes in prewar newspapers. Ye Hongsheng considers these authors’ works the first stage of Guangdong School martial arts fiction and sees the emergence in 1938 of a second stage, when Gao Xiaofeng (Dai Zhaoyu) began to publish stories of the Guangdong martial artist Huang Feihong. Like Deng before him, Gao inspired a number of followers, including Cuiwen Louzhu (Chen Guang) and Woshi Shanren (Chen Jin). One characteristic of these latter authors’ prose is the introduction of Cantonese vocabulary, particularly in passages of dialogue. This linguistic practice fulfills, in a way, the promise of Everlasting and Young Heroes, whose tales of the Guangdong heroes, albeit rendered in the linguistic register of standard Mandarin, begin with Fang De’s and Miao Xian’s joyful recognition of their native Guangdong accents on each other’s tongues. In content as well as in language, the Guangdong School novels are very much a local literature. The protagonists’ heroism evidently consists in their resistance to Manchu rule and their chivalric readiness to aid the oppressed. The former, however, often seems an expression more of southern cultural loyalties than of dynastic patriotism, while the latter is more often than not eclipsed by blood feuds and factional brawling. As one reads the endless chronicles of these bravos’ feuds with rival clans and schools, it is difficult to escape the impression that the sworn brothers’ heroic status rests in large measure simply on their identity as local celebrities. The authors’ very pen names often announce the same local identification. The best known of Deng Yugong’s many pseudonyms, borrowed as well by Gao Xiaofeng, was Zhongyi Xiangren—freely translated, “A Loyal Son of the Old Sod.” The names “Nianfo Shanren” (or nian Foshan ren, “One Who Remembers Foshan”) and “Woshi Shanren” (“I’m a Native of [Fo]shan”) both declare allegiance to the town outside Guangzhou that was home to the hero

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

37

Huang Feihong. The later Guangdong School author Huang Jian styled himself Daquan Didan, which in local slang means something along the lines of “The Guangzhou Godfather.”9 Newspapers, Fiction, and Martial Arts in the Guangzhou–Hong Kong Cultural Sphere Guangdong School martial art fiction’s natural field of circulation was the Guangdong cultural and linguistic sphere, a sphere that included the British colony of Hong Kong and the Cantonese-speaking segments of Chinese communities overseas. Within this sphere or network, Guangdong School fiction circulated through the medium of newspapers and the commercial press. Since the nineteenth century, the press has been an essential element in the formation of transnational Chinese networks in general, and has played a particularly intimate role in the cultural linkage between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Newspapers and books from Guangzhou circulated widely within the British colony’s Chinese communities, while Hong Kong’s xiaobao (“little papers,” akin to a tabloid press) published fiction, scandal, and political commentary forbidden by the Guangdong government, and were sold in Guangzhou at inflated prices.10 Many of the authors of Guangdong School martial arts fiction were journalists directly involved in the press’s movements back and forth across the Guangdong–Hong Kong border. The genre’s founder, Deng Yugong, a native of Foshan, ran several xiaobao in Guangzhou during the 1930s. When government pressure forced him to close his scandalous Yugong bao in 1936, he removed to Hong Kong and founded the tabloid Shisui.11 With him came the Nanhai native He Wenfa, who had left high school to work in the newspapers with Deng. He Wenfa found work with Hong Kong’s Tanhai deng, and then in 1939 founded his own paper, Sing pao (Cheng bao).12 Sing pao was to become one of Hong Kong’s bestselling papers; among its attractions was its serialized fiction, and it published Guangdong School martial arts novels by Deng (under the pen name Zhongyi Xiangren), You Cao, and others, into the 1960s. One of Gao Xiaofeng’s successors in the Guangdong School, and the author from this group best known today, was Woshi Shanren.13 His tales of southern Shaolin heroes appeared in such newspapers as Guangdong shangbao after the war and were soon reprinted in book form.14 With the liberation of the mainland in 1949, the author migrated to Hong Kong, where in 1952 he joined other Guangzhou newspapermen in establishing the Huanqiu bao. He continued to publish Guangdong School tales in

38

Chapter 2

newspapers, magazines, and books until his death during the 1960s.15 A passage from the preface to his Hong quan dashi Tieqiao San (Hong-style grandmaster “Iron Bridge the Third”) reminds us that it was not only the authors and texts of Guangdong School fiction that traversed the Guangzhou–Hong Kong border but the martial arts traditions that inspired the fiction as well: In the third generation, the arts of [the southern Shaolin abbot Zhishan’s disciple] Hong Xiguan were transmitted to Tieqiao San (“Iron Bridge the Third”). On the basis of this boxing style, Tieqiao San created “Iron Thread” boxing and transmitted it to “Grindstone” Song, Lin Fucheng, his grandnephew Liang Baoshan, and others. Lin Fucheng transmitted it to Huang Feihong; Huang Feihong transmitted it to Lin Shirong; and Lin Shirong transmitted it to his nephew Lin Zu and to his disciples Deng Fang, Liang Yongheng, Liu Zhan, Zhao Jiao, Zhu Yuzhai, Hu Yunfei, Deng Laoyi, and others. These gentlemen are all renowned boxing masters of present-day Hong Kong and Kowloon, with legions of disciples, and moreover serve as martial arts consultants to this publication. It is their pleasure to offer their services to our esteemed readers, and their solemn duty to make available their arts of medicine and bone setting, for which they richly deserve our gratitude. Master Liang Yongheng has opened a clinic on Des Voeux Road, and when the practice of medicine affords him leisure, he transmits the martial arts to his disciples, patiently guiding them along the path, like the life-giving breezes and rains of spring. And amidst his myriad concerns, Master Liang has found time to recount to me the legends of his grand master, Tieqiao San. I in turn have taken up my brush and set them down as a novel, serializing them in this publication for the enjoyment of our readers.16

Woshi Shanren here notes his debt to Master Liang Yongheng, a student of the historical Huang Feihong’s disciple Lin Shirong, for the story of “Iron Bridge the Third.” Another of the students of Lin Shirong mentioned in this passage, Zhu Yuzhai, was a crucial figure in the tradition of Guangdong School martial arts fiction and in the further dissemination of this material in various popular culture media. Born in Nanhai, Zhu came with his mother to Hong Kong at the age of seventeen; there he studied martial arts with Lin Shirong (who had established a school in the colony sometime around the early 1920s) and medicine with a master Zhang, and in time opened a clinic of his own.17 In addition to editing manuals of Lin’s boxing techniques, Zhu penned classical-language anecdotes and tales concerning local martial arts figures.18 His Huang Feihong biezhuan

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

39

(The unofficial history of Huang Feihong) is not only regarded as one of the more historically reliable works of the Guangdong School but was also responsible for the elevation of its protagonist to the status of folk hero; Zhu’s tales were a primary inspiration both for storytellers’ radio broadcasts and for one of the milestones of Hong Kong cinema, the phenomenally successful series of some eighty Huang Feihong movies during the 1950s and 1960s and their updated sequels in the 1980s and 1990s.19 Isle of Refuge: The Sino-Japanese War, the Civil War, and the People’s Republic The examples of Woshi Shanren and Zhu Yuzhai testify to the cultural continuity between Hong Kong and Guangdong, as well as to the degree to which concrete association with the local community and with local culture in the form of southern martial arts lineages and their living practitioners was a hallmark of Guangdong School martial arts fiction. While Hong Kong and Guangzhou shared a deep level of cultural continuity, however, they were also divided by the demarcation of political authority between the colony and the Chinese mainland. This political boundary played a role in the careers of some of the legendary martial artists of the Guangdong region. Lin Shirong is said to have come to Hong Kong in part in response to an invitation, in part to avoid the consequences of a melee in Guangzhou in which he killed several opponents. The historical Huang Feihong is reported to have made one trip to Hong Kong and, after wounding several opponents in a brawl over his disciples’ turf, to have found it prudent never to return.20 The Chinese population’s ability to move freely back and forth across the political border between the mainland and the colony also played a crucial role in the development of the Hong Kong press. A tradition of utilizing the shelter of the colony’s foreign law to promulgate views on mainland affairs can be traced to the founder of Hong Kong’s Chinese press, Wang Tao (1828–1897), who fled from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 1862, under suspicion of involvement with the Taiping rebellion, and in 1874 founded the seminal Chinese-language daily Xunhuan ribao. Though primarily commercial in orientation, Xunhuan ribao included periodic editorials critical of the Chinese court and supportive of various reforms. The practice of “over-the-border” critique expanded with the 1899 establishment of Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary Zhongguo ribao. This publication was followed by other revolutionary newspapers and then, in the years following the founding of the Republic, by papers supporting various factions in

40

Chapter 2

the Byzantine politics of Guangdong province.21 In their strategic utilization of the immunity Hong Kong afforded vis-à-vis mainland affairs, these propagandists and publishers established the second essential element of the colony’s press: a focus not on the local community that spanned the Hong Kong–Guangdong border but on the Chinese nation as a whole, upon which the British-ruled territory offered a privileged vantage point for often self-conscious reflection. Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937 propelled waves of refugees to Hong Kong. The tide increased with the fall of Guangzhou in October 1938. Hong Kong’s new inhabitants were quite different in origin and outlook from the Guangdong locals who had hitherto made up the vast majority of its Chinese population. They hailed not only from the nearest mainland counties but from Shanghai and regions even farther afield, and they saw Hong Kong not as an economically useful extension of their native province but as an isle of refuge and exile in a time of national crisis. Literary history notes the period of the Sino-Japanese War for the first wave of the so-called South-bound Authors (Nanlai zuojia), mainland writers, many previously based in Shanghai, who arrived hopefully to ride out the war or pursue their political and artistic agendas in what they saw as Hong Kong’s safe harbor.22 The first seeds of the colony’s later industrial development were sewn in the economic realm, with several Shanghai textile concerns establishing factories in the colony. And linking the artistic and commercial realms were the “culture industries” of film production and newspaper publishing, both of which were invigorated by the influx of talent, technology, capital, and an urgent sense of mission. During the war period, many mainland newspapers transferred operations to Hong Kong or established branches there, employing the expanded pool of journalistic and literary talent from Guangzhou, Shanghai, and elsewhere. Shanghai’s Libao, founded in 1935, commenced publication in Hong Kong in April 1938, with its literary supplement “Yanlin” (Forest of words), edited by the most prominent of the South-bound Authors, Mao Dun (1896–1981). The patriotic Dagong bao, which had first appeared in Tianjin in 1902 and established its Shanghai branch in 1936, published its first Hong Kong edition in August 1938. And another southcomer, the poet Dai Wangshu (1905–1950), edited the “Xingzuo” (Constellation) supplement of the new newspaper Xingdao ribao.23 Hong Kong’s Xingdao ribao began publication on August 1, 1938, an extension of the commercial empire of Hu Wenhu (1882–1954), who had already amassed a fortune with his patent medicines and his newspapers in Southeast Asia.24 Its appearance can serve to mark the settling of Hong

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

41

Kong’s newspapers ever more clearly into two distinct camps: the “Guangdong–Hong Kong papers,” run by local newspapermen, attentive to local matters, and often employing Cantonese-flavored prose; and the “outland papers” (waisheng baozhi), established by entrepreneurs from the mainland or overseas, more interested in national than in local affairs, and dedicated to the linguistic purity of the national language (guoyu). If Sing pao was the most successful of the former group, Xingdao ribao was the standard-bearer for the latter.25 Xingdao ribao accepted manuscripts from many of Hong Kong’s literary sojourners and passionately voiced the patriotic nationalism and anti-Japanese fervor of the time. For the émigrés, anti-Japanese patriotism was one element of a broader “Central Plains syndrome” (da zhongyuan xingtai), a mainland-oriented “centralizing nationalist ideology” in which a “modernizing project of state-building, linguistic unity, and antiimperialist autonomy” was linked with a “contempt [for] all cultures in the periphery of the mainland.”26 This contempt was most famously expressed in Mao Dun’s condemnation of Hong Kong as a “cultural desert.”27 Both aspects of the “Central Plains syndrome” are evident in the essay heading Xingdao ribao’s first literary supplement, which casts Hong Kong as an “island harbor” whose lights are a poor substitute for the veiled stars of the “heavenly” motherland: For days on end the skies have been overcast, and by night not a single star is to be seen. Yet on the shores all about the harbor shine a hundred thousand lamps, almost as if the myriad stars were there arrayed. At present, under these somber skies, those who truly wish to gaze upon the stars can only take these lanterns as a temporary surrogate. These dreary overcast skies cannot drag on forever. They will either burst into a yet more dreadful tempest or dawn into a radiant day of peace. If the great storm does arise, then not only will the stars in the heavens be gone forever, but even the lamps that have taken their place in this island harbor will be extinguished. And if one day these clouds should finally break, and the clear light shine forth, then the night-time scene will be more radiant than before. Not only will the twinkling stars appear but the even more glorious moon as well; and on that day, the light of these few harbor lamps will seem as nothing at all. Constellation now entrusts itself to this island harbor. Needless to say, both editors and readers long for an early end to these overcast skies. Bright daylight would of course be best, yet even the violent storm would also serve—it would bring relief, at least, from the present state of affairs. But if by some ill chance we must continue to struggle on beneath these overcast skies, then the

42

Chapter 2

editors’ only wish is that Constellation might loyally serve its readers in taking the place of the stars of heaven, and join the lamps that ring the harbor in the task of casting a glimmer of light.28

The tempest, longed for and dreaded, eventually arrived; the Pacific War broke out in December 1941, and Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese on Christmas Day. Postwar Hong Kong’s Newspapers and Newspaper Fiction By the time of the colony’s liberation in August 1945, the population, winnowed by flight and death, had shrunk to little over 500,000. After the Japanese surrender, though, former residents quickly returned, and by the end of 1946 the population was estimated to have reached the prewar figure of 1,600,000. The intensification of the civil war on the mainland and the victorious Communist armies’ drive toward the south soon brought new tides of refugees. In the spring of 1950, some months after the founding of the Peoples’ Republic, population was estimated at over 2,300,000. Stabilization of the situation on the mainland encouraged migration outward, so that at the end of 1952, population stood at approximately 2,250,000. In subsequent years, however, natural increase and the influx of immigrants both legal and illegal continued to swell the population, to 2,500,000 by 1956 and nearly 3,000,000 by 1960. 29 Hong Kong’s newspapers recovered rapidly after the war, invigorated by yet another influx of talent in desperate need of work, by the entrepreneurial opportunities offered by a chaotic but growing economy, and by Hong Kong’s new importance as a harbor of relatively free speech poised between the forces of the left and the right. The major Chinese-language dailies before the war had been Huazi ribao (established 1864), Xunhuan ribao (1874), Huaqiao ribao (1925), and Gongshang ribao (1925); among the many newspapers making their appearance late in the 1930s were Xingdao ribao (1938), the Hong Kong edition of Dagong bao (1938), and He Wenfa’s Sing pao (1939). Huaqiao ribao was the only one of these to continue publication under the straitened material conditions and heavy-handed censorship of the Japanese occupation.30 But with the exception of Huazi ribao, which failed to make a successful recovery, the others resumed publication within several years of the Japanese surrender, joined not only by lesser prewar papers but by a host of new publications as well. Among the more widely circulated dailies established in the 1940s and early 1950s were Xinsheng wanbao (established 1945), Honglü ribao (1947), Wenhui bao

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

43

(1948), Chaoran bao (1949), Xianggang shibao (1949), Xin wanbao (1950), and Xianggang shangbao (1952). Between 1945 and 1950, a total of 155 periodicals and newspapers, Chinese and English, old and new, registered with the Hong Kong government; one tally puts the total of Chineselanguage dailies at 14 in 1946 and 30 in 1956.31 Many of the newspapers had unambiguous political affiliations. Dagong bao declared in its November 10, 1948, editorial its allegiance to the Communist cause and thereafter served as the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper in Hong Kong. Xin wanbao was its sister evening paper, and Wenhui bao (established in Hong Kong after being shut down by the Nationalists in Shanghai) was another mainstay of the left. Taiwan’s Nationalist government supported Xianggang shibao as its spokesman in the colony, while major commercial newspapers including Huaqiao ribao and Xingdao ribao tended to be sympathetic to Taiwan and its allies.32 The paper with the greatest circulation in postwar Hong Kong, however, was the nonaligned Sing pao. The paper was founded in 1939, as noted, by He Wenfa, a veteran of the Guangzhou and Hong Kong newspaper worlds. He Wenfa and much of his staff spent the years of the occupation in the enclave of Macau but were the first to recommence publication of their paper after the Japanese surrender, putting the first issue on the stands October 7, 1945. In the years that followed, Sing pao became the best-selling Chinese daily and maintained this position well into the 1970s. It appealed to its readers by eschewing political controversy in favor of bountiful and varied fiction and entertainment supplements (fukan). Of the four pages it published daily in the 1940s and early 1950s, the second was devoted to the mixed columns and amusements of “Tantian” and the third to the serialized fiction of “Shuodi” (the names literally mean “chatting of the heavens” and “speaking of the earth,” respectively; together they make up a common phrase for “talking about everything under the sun”). In the 1950s the paper began offering more serious news reporting in addition to its supplements; it strove to maintain allegiance to “the Chinese people” and “the national interest” while carefully avoiding ties to factions on either the left or the right.33 Literary and entertainment-oriented supplements had long been a feature of Hong Kong’s newspapers, and serialized fiction a draw since the early 1930s. 34 In the years immediately after the war, though all of the major dailies had supplements of one sort or another, few devoted as much space to serialized fiction as did Sing pao. Even in the more entertainment-oriented evening papers (Xinsheng wanbao, Xin wanbao, etc.), seri-

44

Chapter 2

alized novels claimed a fairly modest space alongside shorter fiction, anecdotes, columns, word games, and various other pieces. From the beginning of the 1950s on, however, serialized fiction became more and more prominent. The expansion was due in part to the overall growth in the size of the newspapers, from four pages daily to six and eight, or from eight to twelve and sixteen. Even allowing for this across-the-board growth, however, serialized fiction appears to have claimed an increasingly important role, occupying a greater portion of some supplements and, in other cases, warranting an entirely new section of its own. Such expansions were invariably heralded by dramatic front-page notices, illustrating the importance attributed to serialized fiction’s appeal in the increasingly competitive newspaper business. On May 5, 1951, Dagong bao introduced the new “Xiaoshuo tiandi” (World of fiction), running one short story and four serialized novels, to accompany its existing “Da gongyuan” (Public gardens) supplement. On April 4, 1953, Xianggang shangbao expanded its supplements, creating the paired “Tanfeng” (Chatting of the breeze) and “Shuoyue” (Speaking of the moon), the latter devoted to serialized fiction. And on October 5, 1956, Xingdao ribao added its own fiction supplement, entitled, like Dagong bao’s, “Xiaoshuo tiandi.” A notice run during the first four days of Xianggang shangbao’s “Shuoyue” (April 4–7, 1953) suggests some of the conventions of the day’s serialized fiction and provides some insights into the conditions of its production. The two new supplements’ parallel titles, “Tanfeng” and “Shuoyue,” carry romantic or mildly erotic implications, but “Shuoyue” could also be construed as “Fiction month”: A Call for One-Month Fiction This supplement is entitled “Shuoyue,” and as the name makes clear, it refers to novels that are completed in one month’s time. With the exception of the items Zhuo Wenjun, Xiaoshuo mi, and Laopo huangdi,35 all other items will complete their publication within one month, and from here on, a number of exciting new novels will be offered for our readers’ pleasure on the first of every month. We hope that our readers will continue to demonstrate their concern for this newspaper, and offer criticism on any of “Shuoyue’s” features. Please let us know which items or what kinds of fiction you most enjoy, and we will unceasingly strive for improvement. Accordingly, this paper respectfully requests manuscripts for one-month fiction from any of our readers, as follows: 1. Content: All manner of romance, horror, detective, martial arts, family

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

45

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

melodrama, society tales; content of any sort is acceptable. What’s most important is that it be novel and interesting. As to language and style, classical is also acceptable [i.e., in addition to the vernacular (baihua) register now the norm for most serialized fiction; classical prose was more common in the immediate postwar years], preferably simple and succinct. Manuscripts should be suitable for publication in one month’s time (thirty-one days in May), with 800–1000 characters published per day. Please submit only complete manuscripts. If we find them suitable we will offer remuneration. Remuneration will be 200–300 Hong Kong dollars per manuscript (if the work is discovered to be plagiarized, no remuneration will be tendered). Submitted manuscripts should clearly indicate an address for communication, so that we may return the manuscript or send remuneration. Manuscripts may be submitted at any time, beginning today. Indicate “Shuoyue editorial office” on the envelope.

As this notice suggests, martial arts fiction, before leaping into prominence with the success of Liang Yusheng’s and Jin Yong’s works, was only one genre among many in Hong Kong newspapers’ fiction supplements. From the early days of its postwar publication, Sing pao included tales by the Guangdong School authors Deng Yugong and You Cao. On October 28, 1947, Gongshang ribao began running anecdotes about Huang Feihong and other Guangdong heroes by Zhu Yuzhai; after about two weeks the series moved to the evening paper, Gongshang wanbao, where this author’s pieces had appeared some ten years before. Martial arts fiction remained absent from most other papers’ supplements, however, until the young Xianggang shangbao included the genre in its new “Shuoyue.” The first month’s selection of stories included Leizhu Louzhu’s Fang Shiyu xia Nanyang (Fang Shiyu journeys to the South Seas). This tale’s successors in the months that followed included work that would later be thought of as New School, such as Mou Songting’s Zhenben Shandong xiangma quanzhuan (The complete and authentic tale of the highwaymen of Shandong) (serialized October 1, 1953, through December 31, 1955; herafter referred to as Highwaymen of Shandong).36 The notion of “new” martial arts fiction did not become current, however, until the appearance in Xin wanbao in 1954 of Liang Yusheng’s first novel and Jin Yong’s on the same pages a year later. The enthusiasm with which readers greeted these works inspired other authors and editors to imitation, and by the end of the 1950s nearly

46

Chapter 2

all fiction supplements included one or (often) several works of martial arts fiction. Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas, the martial arts tale presented in the first month of Xianggang shangbao’s “Shuoyue” (April 4–30, 1953), deploys as its protagonist the quintessential hero of the Guangdong School. A lackluster piece of fiction in many ways, it is notable for some curious twists it offers on the standard Guangdong material—twists that indirectly presage the “new” martial arts fiction soon to emerge. The novella begins with a retelling of the famous episode of Fang Shiyu’s duel with Lei the Tiger on the Hangzhou leitai. After the duel, in this version, the old merchant Fang De hustles his quarrelsome son off to Singapore, where Fang De has an overseas business venture that has run into trouble. The trouble turns out to be another Tiger, the Black Tiger of Singapore (Xingzhou heihu), whom Fang Shiyu eventually slaughters in another duel, rescuing the family business and vindicating his countrymen’s honor. While the plot is little different from that of Fang Shiyu’s original adventure, shifts have taken place on other levels, including one in the identity of Fang Shiyu’s “countrymen.” They are still fellow Guangdong natives, to be sure, speaking Cantonese and hosting Fang De at the Guangdong Guildhall; here in this foreign land, however, they are also, and more simply, Chinese. The Black Tiger is not a rival from another province but is a blackskinned “Canningren,” 37 whose interests the local government favors over those of the Chinese merchants. “Because of the affair of Fang Shiyu’s killing the Black Tiger of Singapore with a single blow,” the story’s final line informs us, “the Canningren never again dared to look down on the Chinese.” Fang Shiyu’s martial prowess has become the tool and symbol not merely of local pride but of Chinese identity in the face of alien races and governments. The hero’s geographic and cultural displacement, furthermore, have become intertwined with a strange temporal disjunction. Arriving in Singapore, Fang Shiyu drinks coffee and English tea, eats toast and jam, rides buses, receives a message by telephone. In a strange presentiment of the match between Wu Gongyi and Chen Kefu, his duel with the Black Tiger takes place in a roped-off ring, with a bell sounding to begin the rounds and the seconds waiting in the corners. The Black Tiger himself is a “heavyweight champion,” employing Western boxing and wrestling moves against Fang Shiyu’s Chinese martial arts. Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas offers no narrative justification for this mix of cultural and chronological disjunctions. As we shall see in the next chapter, such disjunctions are typical of a “fiction of displacement” quite popular at this

Guangdong School Martial Arts Fiction

47

time. In the case of this story, regardless of the lack of causal explanation, their general significance is clear: the Guangdong hero has entered a new locale, a new political environment, a new historical era, and consequently a new relationship with something identified as Chinese culture. Chapter 3 will argue that it is precisely these new circumstances that inform the martial arts fiction of Jin Yong and his contemporaries. The “newness” of their New School fiction, however, lies in its abandoning the Guangdong heroes in favor of quite different characters and quite different strategies for responding to the altered world.

48

Chapter 2

Chapter 3 The Marshes of Mount Liang Beyond the Sea Jin Yong’s Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

s dramatic as the growth of Hong Kong’s Chinese population in the postwar years was the shift in this population’s relationship with the Chinese mainland. Throughout the colony’s previous history, its Chinese residents had largely hailed from Guangzhou and adjoining areas, and their movement back and forth across the border had been relatively unrestricted. Hong Kong had accordingly served as a haven of economic opportunity or temporary political refuge for a population whose familial and cultural roots remained elsewhere. During the upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s these “locals” were joined by an increasing number of “outlanders” (waishengren), refugees from more varied and distant regions. And the expectations of the postwar refugees, whether “local” or “outlander,” were perforce quite different from what they had been in the past. In the words of the colonial government’s 1952 report, “the situation in China has so changed within the last two or three years that the surplus population of these unfortunate people cannot now be expected, as it was previously, to leave Hong Kong.”1 They had fled not a foreign invader but a new regime, formed by their own countrymen, under which they felt they could not live; and for all the rhetoric of return-and-repossession from the Nationalist government on Taiwan, the chances for change in the mainland’s political situation seemed dimmer with each passing month and year. Strict new border controls instituted by both Chinese, anxious to stem the outflow of human resources, and British, fearful of the refugee burden and wary of subversive elements, made the sense of separation a concrete reality in the realm of immigra-

A

49

tion policy. In the economic realm, likewise, the resumption of Hong Kong’s prewar role as entrepôt was thwarted by United Nation sanctions on trade with China imposed with the outbreak of the Korean War, and then by China’s isolationist policies in the succeeding decades. Hong Kong had become not the “railway station” of a people in transit but a “lifeboat” in which an exile population might find itself drifting indefinitely.2 A consciousness of exile informs Jin Yong’s early works and New School martial arts fiction more generally, and constitutes a crucial element in the New School’s differentiation from the Guangdong School tradition. The exilic consciousness emerges most clearly when Jin Yong’s first novels are read in the specific context of their newspaper serialization. Such a reading gives us access not only to the social and historical circumstances of the community in which the novels first circulated but also to the other texts, fictional and nonfictional, with which Jin Yong’s work coexisted and in relation to which it defined itself. Comparison with these texts—in particular with the body of fantastic narratives I dub “comedies of displacement”—reveals the extent to which the vision of New School martial arts fiction is shaped by precisely those forces it alludes to obliquely or elides altogether: the contemporary political situation on the mainland, local Cantonese culture, the refugee experience, and Hong Kong’s coloniality. The culture of postwar Hong Kong, both literary and cinematic, has been criticized as dominated by mainland intellectuals and accordingly dismissive of local culture and concerns.3 In the newspaper world, the numerically greater and more enduring presence of mainlanders deepened the distinction between “local” papers—focused on Hong Kong and Guangzhou matters, employing Cantonese prose, published by local newspapermen, and appealing to a readership largely composed of the working class—and “outland” papers, which were oriented toward mainland politics and affairs, written in standard Mandarin, managed by newcomers to Hong Kong, and read by a larger portion of the educated émigré population. While the latter publications’ “Central Plains syndrome” appears hegemonic and marginalizing from the perspective of the indigenous Hong Kong identity that was to crystallize in later decades, it was not alien to the interests of that substantial portion of the population which was itself made up of recent refugees. The distinction between “mainland” and “local” orientation was, in any case, far from absolute. Our review in this chapter of a daily newspaper’s contents will illustrate the intersection of a broad range of topics and presentational styles on the pages of what is

50

Chapter 3

generally classified an “outland” or mainland-oriented publication, the Xin wanbao. This review will further serve to ground our reading of Jin Yong’s earliest work not only against its social and historical background but also in the mutually implicated contexts of textual medium and reading practice. The fiction published in the Hong Kong newspaper supplements of the 1950s and 1960s was interwoven with the daily life of its readers in at least two important respects. The first was that of the rhythms and contexts of reading. Although many fiction supplements included each day one or two anecdotes or short stories complete in a single installment,4 by far the majority of fiction published in the 1950s and 1960s and well into the 1970s was serialized, appearing in consecutive installments of from several hundred to over a thousand characters each over a period of days, weeks, months, or even years. A devoted reader therefore consumed a tale in a long series of small chunks distributed among the daily patterns of work, school, socializing, and home life. In one obvious sense the reader’s experience of the story was quite fragmented. In another, though, the story’s extension over time and periodic insertion into the reader’s life allowed it to gather to itself some of the depth and continuity of a life’s repetitions and gradual change—or, conversely, serve as a point of reference and token of continuity amidst the uncertainties of existence.5 As has been noted of the genre of serialized television melodrama, “the structuring gaps of the text . . . mark the point of the intersection between the horizon represented within the text and the horizon brought to the text by the reader.” 6 A second sense in which serialized fiction was tightly implicated with Hong Kong life was that of its immediate textual environment. The fiction supplement constituted but one part of a daily newspaper, coexisting with advertisements, entertainment listings and reviews, advice columns, the sports page, commercial and shipping news, police reports, wire-service accounts of international affairs, and a variety of other features. While not every reader can be assumed to have studied the entire paper from cover to cover, readers who paid attention to only the fiction supplement, or to only one particular serial, were most likely very few. And whatever a given reader’s habits, the text of a novel de facto shared its material existence not only with the daily building blocks of a half dozen other pieces of fiction but with the newspaper’s other textual components as well—the variety of texts that reported and facilitated, narrated and constructed the lives of the newspaper’s community of readers.7

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

51

A Day in the Life of Hong Kong: The Xin wanbao of February 8, 1955 The first installment of Jin Yong’s first novel, Shujian enchou lu (titled by Ming Ho in English Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge and hereafter referred to as Book and Sword), appeared in the Xin wanbao of February 8, 1955. The day’s issue runs to its usual length of six pages and sells for the standard price of one hao, one-tenth of a Hong Kong dollar. Prominently displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the first page, next to the masthead, is a notice with the double headline: “Crossword Puzzle Contest with Movie Ticket Prizes! A New Martial Arts Novel Makes its Debut!” The notice directs readers to the entertainment section, on page 3, for the contest with its prize of tickets to Zhonglian Studio’s new Cantonese-language film Guxing xuelei (An orphan’s tragedy); as to the martial arts novel, it declares: Starting today “Tianfang yetan” [(The Arabian nights), the paper’s fiction supplement] adds two new serials. The first is Mr. Jin Yong’s martial arts novel Book and Sword, the second Ms. Bei Jia’s spy novel Ta si zai di er ci (She died the second time). Both are thrilling works, full of fascinating twists and turns. Read them and see for yourself! We hope you will give them your attention!8

Apart from this notice and several commercial advertisements, the first page is largely devoted to major news stories. The main topic is the American-supported withdrawal of Guomindang troops from the Dachen islands off Zhejiang province and the resulting intensification of the standoff between the Communist and Nationalist governments. Articles drawn from the Reuters and Associated Press wire services report events on the islands and the major powers’ responses; the matter is also the subject of the day’s page-one editorial. Other first-page items are a regular feature collecting anecdotes and news concerning world leaders and celebrities, and a wire service photograph (the only photo on the page) of Indian acrobats. The bottom third of the second page is occupied by the sports section, the rest by a “Tianxia shi” (World affairs) section, running feature articles on international events. These articles include further “behind the scenes” analysis of the situation in Taiwan and a piece on and photo of the young Shah of Iran and his wife. Also presented here is an installment of a historical novel on the leaders of the Second World War and their diplomatic and strategic maneuverings, entitled Xin Sanguo yanyi (New romance of the three kingdoms) and signed with the punning pen name Luo Guanxi.

52

Chapter 3

The third page offers movie ads and the entertainment section, “Xin leyuan” (New elysium). Here, besides the crossword-puzzle contest, are news and photos of local and Hollywood movie stars, a review of the Italian costume epic Theodora, Slave Empress (discussing in a serious tone the film’s treatment of history and the themes of love and power), and an article on Mendelssohn’s piano compositions to be broadcast that evening on the English radio channel. Local news and advertisements appear on page 4. The news includes developments in an extortion trial; the release of a government report on the gradual decline in applications for resident identification cards; a gambling case, the seizure of a load of smuggled cigarettes, a report of gunshots, a domestic quarrel. Interspersed with these are consumer tips, the weather, some bits of financial news, and the radio broadcast schedules. The “Jiating” (Home) section occupies the bottom third of the fifth page, with items such as recipes, tips on buying toys, a story for children, and a piece on the wife’s situation when her husband loses his job. The rest of the page features the popular “Xiawu chazuo” (Afternoon tea). Here appear a variety of columns, cartoons, and feature articles of general interest. The main piece today is an article on “Women and Dogs”; the approach of Hong Kong’s annual dog show occasions a discussion, amply illustrated with photographs of movie stars and swimsuit-clad models nuzzling their pets, of whether the female sex has a particular affinity for animals. Among the other features is the regular “Dajia tan” (Open forum), which prints anecdotes, riddles, and comments submitted by readers, together with the editor’s replies to readers’ letters. The halfdozen or so items offered on this date include one reader’s “Most Unforgettable Day”: The day that my shanty [muwu, the flimsy wooden dwellings of the refugee settlements] was destroyed by fire, even my patched cotton quilt was burned, and I was forced to spend the night out on the street, clenching my teeth and holding back my tears against the battering of the frigid wind: that was my most unforgettable day. —Yang Mei

Finally, page 6, sporting a selection of advertisements, begins the fiction supplement “The Arabian Nights.” Eight pieces are presented, including the first installments of the new novels by Jin Yong and Bei Jia. The column “Dushi xiao jingtou” (Little scenes of the city) offers one-day anecdotes of Hong Kong life; today’s is on playing the horses. In its fiftysixth installment is Xia Yi’s Xianggang xiaojie riji (Diary of a Hong Kong

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

53

miss), a contemporary romance narrated in the first person.9 Also adopting the narrative strategy of the diary, and making colorful use of Cantonese for its dialogue passages, is part 319 of Shigougong ziji (The personal diary of Shigougong), a tragicomic account of the vicissitudes of Hong Kong life signed by Shigougong, a pseudonym of the prolific San Su.10 Veteran historical novelist Hu An contributes installment 117 of Tianguo yingxiong (Heroes of the Heavenly Kingdom), a tale set during the Taiping Rebellion.11 Tang Ren’s epic fictionalization of Chiang Kaishek’s career, Jinling chunmeng (Fleeting dreams in Nanjing), is in its third year with installment 864.12 And rounding out today’s “Arabian Nights” is part 15 of Yumian hu (The jade-faced fox), an illustrated novel (three panels with accompanying text) of romantic intrigue in contemporary Hong Kong. The international struggles of the Cold War era, and the tensions between the Nationalist and Communist governments in particular, dominate the news. The dominance is evident not only in the subjects of the front-page reports but in their provenance (international wire services) as well. Within the pages of the newspaper, however, the Chinese nation’s struggles on a global stage play themselves out against a decidedly local fabric woven of advertisements, police reports, readers’ reminiscences, sports coverage, and weather bulletins. While such items offer neither comprehensive coverage nor detailed analysis of Hong Kong affairs, and while the Xin wanbao’s textual potluck offers no more of an integrated account of the world than does the daily newspaper of any other time and place, the materials made available here allow the possibility of contemplating Hong Kong’s place in a multilevel narrative of personal and political events. Another striking aspect of the newspaper’s textual materiality—previously noted in our discussion of the Chen-Wu match—is the haziness of the boundaries between information and entertainment, fabrication and reported fact. The two types of material do not merely coexist on the newspaper’s pages but actually seem to seep into one another. Particularly striking in this regard are Tang Ren’s fictionalization of China’s contemporary history, sandwiched between the modern romances and historical fantasies of “The Arabian Nights” supplement, and the world-affairs section’s presentation of a traditional-style novelization of the events of the Second World War.13 But there are equivalent slippages as well between The Jade-Faced Fox or Diary of a Hong Kong Miss and the melodramas reported in the local news, while the rambling first-person narrative of The Personal Diary of Shigougong seems as close to reportage as to fiction. It is within this jigsaw puzzle of fiction and fact, of world events and

54

Chapter 3

local ephemera, of the recollected past and the still-unresolved present that Jin Yong’s Book and Sword makes its debut; and it is in this context that we must seek to understand the novel’s contemporary impact and the particular slice of representational terrain to which it stakes its claim. Book and Sword: The Empire and the Borderlands Book and Sword, set during the reign of the Qianlong emperor, relates the adventures of the Red Flower Society (Honghuahui), a secret brotherhood devoted to aiding the oppressed and resisting the Manchu invaders. Early in the tale the band escorts the young hero Chen Jialuo from the northwestern wilderness, where he has been in training, back to the Chinese heartland so that he may assume leadership of the Society after the former chief ’s mysterious demise. Battling to free a brother of the Society captured by the Qing soldiery, the Society joins forces with a Muslim tribe whose sacred Koran has been seized by the Manchus. The captured brother turns out to hold the key to a potent weapon in the struggle against Qing rule. He knows of proof that Qianlong is not the late Yongzheng emperor’s son, but a Han Chinese by birth, Chen Jialuo’s own brother, substituted as an infant for a daughter born to the former emperor. After various adventures, the Red Flower Society captures the emperor. They confront him with the proof of his origins and exact his promise to declare his true birth, expel the Manchus and eradicate their customs, and reinstate a native Han dynasty. The emperor delays taking action, though, and then demands that Chen Jialuo surrender to him his beloved, the beautiful Princess Fragrance (Xiangxiang gongzhu), daughter of the Muslim chieftain. Chen Jialuo, torn between love and duty, finally agrees. But the princess soon learns that Qianlong intends to betray the Red Flower Society, and she kills herself in order to warn her beloved. Chen Jialuo and his comrades fight free of the emperor’s ambush, pay their final respects at the princess’s grave, and flee for the wilderness beyond the northwest passes. The preceding summary does little justice to the eight-hundred-page Book and Sword; it gives no hint of the varied pleasures of language, imagery, and narrative spectacle offered by the work, and, even in terms of plot alone, elides the multiple subplots, individually complex and dizzyingly interwoven, into which the narrative irrepressibly expands. But as the warp to the subplots’ woof, and as the central enunciation of themes on which the sub-narratives play variations, the tale of Chen Jialuo and the Qianlong emperor provides a valid first point of approach to the novel’s reimagining of the material of martial arts fiction.

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

55

As the summary makes clear, Book and Sword utilizes a number of situations and images familiar from martial arts fiction in the Guangdong School tradition. One of the Guangdong School’s essential premises, the enmity between Han and Manchu, is enshrined in the Red Flower Society’s anti-Manchu mission. The Society’s very name evokes the Red Flower Pavilion, at which, according to Guangdong School tales and secret-society lore, the survivors of the razing of the Shaolin temple pledged their continued resistance to the Qing.14 Although the brothers of Book and Sword’s Red Flower Society are not themselves Shaolin disciples, the late Yu Wanting, the Society’s founder and Chen Jialuo’s godfather, once served as a novice at the southern Shaolin temple. The need to unravel the mystery of Yu’s departure from Shaolin takes Chen and his comrades to the temple at a crucial point in the plot. And even a version of the archetypal tale of the temple’s destruction finds its way into Jin Yong’s work: during the climactic battle, as the Red Flower Society strives to fight its way free of the emperor’s ambush, the Shaolin monks come to their rescue, reporting as they do so that the emperor’s troops have burned their monastery to the ground. The figure of the Qianlong emperor provides yet another link with the Guangdong School tradition. Although the villainous and cowardly ruler of Book and Sword is a far cry from the swaggering autarch of Everlasting, in scenes portraying Qianlong disguised as a merchant and dallying with the courtesans of Hangzhou, Jin Yong draws on the earlier novel, or at least on the legends on which it too was based. Yet the differences between Book and Sword and a typical Guangdong School yarn are vast. One of the most basic is Jin Yong’s recentering and revitalization of the theme of Han-Manchu struggle. Guangdong School fiction carries but dim echoes of the role this ethnic distinction played in the revolutionary politics of the early part of the century; it employs the antagonism, on the one hand, as a celebration of southern allegiances and, on the other, as a sort of Manichean paradigm, allowing the distribution of characters into clearly defined camps of good and evil, engaged in endless battle. The feuds waged against this background often develop into personal or interschool rivalries that neither directly challenge the fact of Manchu rule nor question the terms of the defining paradigm. Jin Yong’s novel, in contrast, re-foregrounds the struggle between Manchu and Han, posing as the key element of its plot a crisis that could bring about a radical resolution of the question of dynastic authority. This foregrounding of dynastic crisis constitutes one of the most obvious links between the content of Book and Sword and its immediate textual and sociopolitical environments. On a certain level this yarn of a turning point in the exer-

56

Chapter 3

cise of imperial authority cannot help but resonate with the recent change of regime on the mainland, which had so profoundly affected the lives of Hong Kong’s residents, new and old, and the still perilous military and political aftershocks that were reported on the front page of each day’s paper. Of course the fact that the dynastic struggle in Book and Sword is waged between two different ethnic groups, one of which is portrayed as a foreign interloper, raises the possibility of associations with the Chinese nation’s struggles against imperialist aggression, or more immediately with Hong Kong’s own status as a British colony. The political and cultural implications of Hong Kong’s colonial status are unquestionably relevant to an understanding of Jin Yong’s work. We cannot overlook the fact, nonetheless, that for readers in Hong Kong in the 1950s, one of the first associations invoked by Book and Sword’s tale of dynastic struggle might be the recent civil war. Setting the question of specific political resonances aside temporarily, we may take note of another significant aspect of Book and Sword’s portrayal of the Han-Manchu conflict: the fact that it personalizes this conflict in the relationship between Chen Jialuo and the Qianlong emperor. This personalization of the Han-Manchu struggle is one aspect of the overall reorientation of the novel toward emotional and psychological drama, which is almost universally cited as one of Jin Yong’s major contributions to New School martial arts fiction. Jin Yong’s works replace simple blood feuds and power struggles with plots revolving around complex and conflicted relationships; focus on protagonists’ moral and psychological responses to these conflicts of loyalty; display an interest in romantic melodrama at least as great as that in martial conflict as such; and interweave the martial with the psychological, utilizing even martial training and battle as vehicles for the exploration of identity and relationship. All of these features are present in Book and Sword, if in some respects less developed than in the author’s later work. Scenes of battle and adventure abound, but a good part of the novel’s immediate appeal to its readers seems to have rested on the tragic romance between Chen Jialuo and Princess Fragrance, Chen’s conflicting attractions to Fragrance and to her sister Huo Qingtong, the struggle for Fragrance’s affections between Chen and his imperial brother, and the myriad similar romances, rivalries, and crises of loyalty played out among the novel’s supporting characters.15 What is most significant for the present argument is the way in which the novel’s interest in personal melodrama and psychological exploration encompasses even the theme of dynastic struggle. Major portions of the narrative are devoted to the revelation (both to the reader and to the char-

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

57

acters) of Qianlong and Chen Jiaoluo’s relationship, and to the brothers’ encounters in a succession of shifting guises and circumstances—first incognito, then with the emperor a captive of the rebel leader, finally with Qianlong reinstated to the power and privilege of the Forbidden City. The brothers’ rivalry for the affections of the Muslim Princess Fragrance both heightens the conflict between them and further motivates the narrative’s focus on their emotional (rather than merely political or martial) lives. The novel places the fate of the empire in question, yet presents the political as subsumed by the personal; the crisis is experienced, solutions sought, failure confronted, on the level of interpersonal loyalties, moral choice, and psychological experience. Still another element of Book and Sword’s foregrounding of the struggle for dynastic control is a geographic imaginary rather different from that of Guangdong School fiction. The novel’s geography is, first of all, much larger in scope, encompassing not merely the Guangdong heroes’ haunts in Guangzhou and Fujian, but a China vast in scale, ranging from the southeastern seaboard to the land beyond the northwestern passes, and varied in environment, incorporating the roadways and taverns of the traditional Rivers and Lakes, the palaces of Beijing, the bustling cities of the lower Yangtze, the scenic wonders of West Lake and Haining, the desolation of the Central Asian deserts. The conflation of the struggle for China with the representation of the Chinese landscape finds expression in a variant title under which the book has circulated: Shujian jiangshan, literally “Book and sword, river and mountain,” jiangshan being a conventional metonymy for the empire.16 In addition to being expanded in scope, the novel’s geography also exhibits different conceptual demarcations. Guangdong School fiction’s primary geographic allegiances are to local cultural and linguistic centers; in the background looms a more general consciousness of cultural differences between north and south China (differences easily made to dovetail with the Manchu-Han feud). While the NorthSouth division and certain regional allegiances still appear in Book and Sword, perhaps the most significant of this novel’s geographic conceptualizations is the opposition between the interior and the borderlands. The lush landscapes of the interior constitute both the emotional heartland of the Han Chinese and the locus of dynastic authority, while in the sere wastelands beyond the passes roam the culturally alien and politically marginalized nomad tribes. These two geographic domains and their associated peoples define the interlocking plot lines, political and romantic, that embroil the novel’s protagonist, Chen Jialuo. The political

58

Chapter 3

crisis lies in the fact that a people from beyond the borders, the Manchu, has seized possession of the Chinese heartland. The novel opens with two secondary characters, Li Yuanzhi, the daughter of a military commander in the northwest, and her tutor, Lu Feiqing. Lu is a former member of an anti-Manchu brotherhood, who “fled to the far-off borderlands” when his band was destroyed and eventually found concealment in his position as a tutor (10). When Li’s father is rewarded with a coveted post back in Zhejiang province for his successes against the Muslim tribes of the region, the young girl, who has “lived since childhood in the border regions of the northwest,” is overjoyed at the prospect of seeing the “fair mountains and clear waters of the South,” and her old tutor, “long absent from the interior,” is equally pleased to accompany her (20). Returning to the heartland after years of exile, Lu Feiqing is moved to recite a lament by Xin Jiaxuan (Xin Qiji, 1140–1207), the Southern Song poet and hero of resistance against the Jin invaders. “This lyric,” muses Lu, “is like an inscription of my own heart’s feelings. He in his day was the same as I, with the flourishing realm of China fallen to barbarians before his very eyes” (21). When the barbarians enter the passes and seize control of the heartland, Han Chinese loyalists such as Lu or Chen Jialuo find themselves driven out to the borderlands. In this respect, the border regions share a certain range of significance with the Rivers and Lakes, the traditional realm of exile and inversion. Lu and his young disciple soon encounter both the Red Flower Society, escorting their new leader back from beyond the passes for his destined confrontation with Qianlong, and a band of Muslim tribesmen, seeking the sacred Koran seized from them by the Qing. Thus it is that these lesser characters lead us toward the primary strands of the tale; and thus it is that the stage is set for Chen Jialuo’s own meeting with the Muslim tribe. His romantic entanglement with the chieftain’s two daughters (he eventually settles his heart on the younger, Princess Fragrance) echoes in the romantic mode the male Han protagonists’ displacement from the center and search for allies in the borderlands that we have seen in the political sphere. When the emperor becomes infatuated with Princess Fragrance and seeks to win her affections away from his brother, the inversion of heartland and borderlands becomes extreme; Qianlong has a replica of the Princess’s home, complete with sand dunes and camels, constructed within the confines of the Forbidden City itself. When Chen Jialuo meets with Princess Fragrance one final time to inform her that he must leave her for the sake of the nation, it is only fitting that their tryst be at the

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

59

Great Wall, a symbol both of China’s grandeur and of the boundaries between the lands within and the lands without on which its existence depends. The dialectic between the empire’s center and its borders, and between the peoples of these two locales, also enters into the novel’s treatment of the martial arts. The martial arts play a more limited role in Book and Sword than in Jin Yong’s later fiction. As we shall see in the following chapter, the later novels devote considerable narrative attention to the gradual and often tortuous process of the protagonist’s training, employing the martial arts as the medium for a bildungsroman of emotional and moral growth. In Book and Sword, descriptions of combat constitute an important part of the narrative, and expertise in the martial arts is crucial to both the identities of individual characters and the relationships between them. But the protagonists’ martial development as such is not a major part of the story; they enter the tale with their basic skills already perfected.17 The primary instance of a breakthrough in martial ability in the course of the narrative occurs when Chen Jialuo, Princess Fragrance, and Huo Qingtong, pursued by a horde of wolves and a band of determined foemen, take refuge in an ancient city hidden in the depths of the western deserts. They soon find themselves trapped in this necropolis together with the skeletons of its ancient inhabitants. Among the bones of what was once the Muslim damsel Mamir they find an account, written in her dying blood, of how she and her comrades sacrificed their loves and lives to free their people from the foreign (non-Muslim) tyrant who held sway over the citadel. Mamir’s narrative brings Chen Jialuo to the realization that his romantic entanglement with the two sisters has distracted him from his mission of expelling the Manchus, and he vows to emulate this Muslim heroine and set his personal affairs aside until the grand enterprise has been achieved. Chen Jialuo and the others learn from Mamir’s testament that the map which has brought them to the hidden city was originally from her hand. They learn too that instrumental in Mamir and her companions’ struggle was a Chinese book from which her lover Ali divined a mysterious martial skill that allowed him to defeat the tyrant’s minions. Seeking this lover’s remains, Chen Jialuo discovers a second text, written in ancient Chinese characters on bamboo strips: Chen Jialuo’s heart leapt; but then he saw that the first line was: “In the northern darkness is a fish, the name of which is Kun.” Looking it over, he saw that the strips all contained the [ancient philosophical work] Zhuangzi. He had

60

Chapter 3

thought at first that it might be some wondrous text, but this Zhuangzi was something he had learned by heart as a child. He couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed. “What’s that?” asked Princess Fragrance. “It’s one of our ancient Chinese books,” said Chen Jialuo. “These bamboo strips are antiques, but they’re of no use to us. Only an antiquarian would be interested in them.” He tossed them to the ground, and the bamboo strips scattered. They saw then that one in the middle looked different from the rest; each character was marked with a tiny circle, and there were several words in an ancient Muslim script as well. Chen Jialuo picked it up and saw that it was the section “Bao Ding Carves the Ox” from the third book of the Zhuangzi. He pointed to the Muslim script and asked Princess Fragrance, “What does this say?” She answered, “‘Herein may be found the secret to destroying the foe.’” Chen Jialuo was puzzled: “What does that mean?” he asked. Huo Qingtong said, “Mamir’s testament says that Ali found a Chinese book and used it to figure out how to defeat the enemy with his bare hands. Maybe it was these bamboo strips that he found.” “Zhuangzi preaches renouncing desire and obeying Heaven,” said Chen Jialuo. “It has nothing to do with the martial arts.” (720)

Under the sisters’ continued questioning, however, Chen experiences a revelation. “He knew the Zhuangzi by heart, and it had seemed to him that there was nothing novel about it; but now, prodded by someone who had never read the book at all, he felt as if a window had been thrown open to the light.” He divines the principles embodied by Zhuangzi’s peerless butcher and their relevance to martial practice and realizes further that the postures of the fallen Muslim warriors hold the key to the techniques they used against their foe. Imitating the skeletons’ poses, he himself masters the esoteric martial techniques and later uses them to defeat his most formidable opponent. Densely interwoven in this episode are several themes central both to Book and Sword and to the subsequent corpus of Jin Yong’s work. Chen Jialuo’s derivation of fighting techniques from a written text which is not per se a martial arts manual posits a deep resonance between the practice of the martial arts and the communicative functions of a literary text. The literary text is further located—by the repeated reminders that this is “a Chinese book” (literally Hanren de shu, “a book of the Han Chinese”), by the specific identity of the text as one of the recognized classics of the Chinese literary tradition, and by its physical configuration as an article of recognizable, even emblematic antiquity (bamboo strips)—within the matrix of a Chinese cultural tradition, of which textuality and antiquity are mutu-

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

61

ally implicated signifiers. An ancient Chinese cultural heritage constitutes the root of which the martial arts and the literary tradition are flowers, and for which they both serve as vehicles of transmission. The picture presented is more complex, though, than a simple fusion of the martial arts, textuality, and the Han Chinese cultural heritage. We may note, first of all, that the text is a necessary but not a sufficient source of Chen’s realization. Although he divines the principles from the read and remembered words of the text, in order to fully realize his new techniques he must additionally resort to visual and somatic cues—examining the postures of the long-dead warriors and mimicking their motions with his own body. We may note too that the Han Chinese tradition remains inert until stimulated by non-Han factors. Chen Jiaoluo’s very familiarity with the literary tradition allows him to dismiss the Zhuangzi as a known quantity. It is only the unexpected rediscovery of the text in the unfamiliar environment of the deserts beyond the passes, the annotations in a foreign script, and the promptings of his non-Han comrades—“illiterate” at least in the sense of being completely untutored in the Han Chinese linguistic and literary canons—that stir him to a realization of this Chinese text’s potential. It is significant too, given the novel’s representation of a world in which patriarchy rules as firmly in the Rivers and Lakes as it does in the court, that the unlettered non-Han who prompt the scholarly Chinese hero’s realizations are also females. Finally, we must note that the Zhuangzi is only one of the two texts appearing in this episode. The ancient Chinese text offers Chen Jialuo the key to the development of martial prowess; but it is the testament of the Muslim woman, written in her own blood, that moves him to redevote himself to the duty of political struggle. Political aims and martial prowess may be yoked together in Chen Jialuo’s dedication of his powers to the anti-Manchu cause; but the fact that his twin realizations are sparked by two separate texts—one Chinese, male-authored, and philosophical; the other non-Han, female-authored, and narrative in character—implies the potential dissociation of martial ability, as such, from any particular ideological commitment. Our examination of this episode allows us to refine the earlier discussion of Han and non-Han peoples and their placement within the novel’s fictional geography. Given that the Manchus, a people from the empire’s periphery, have usurped control of the heartland from the Han Chinese and sent the Han heroes into exile beyond the passes, the borderlands and the deserts beyond clearly serve as the territory of dispossession and displacement. The scene in the lost city, however, makes it clear that this

62

Chapter 3

displacement can paradoxically lead to a reinvigoration of the central tradition. The ancient Han text inscribed on the bamboo of the verdant heartland yields its secret fruits only when reencountered in the desert wastes. And its mystery is glossed in a “Muslim script”: for if the Manchus embody the outlands’ dispossessive aspect, the Muslim tribes here represent their fructifying potential. The fact that the two sisters and their long-departed predecessor, the Muslim damsel Mamir, are instrumental in Chen Jialuo’s rediscovery of his mission and mastery of his martial skills alerts us to the circumstance that the borderlands’ antithetical possibilites vis-à-vis the male Han protagonist—threatening on the one hand, regenerative on the other—are further differentiated in terms of gender. While the Muslims are portrayed as dauntless warriors led by a patriarchal chieftain, the most prominent Muslim characters are female, the chief ’s two daughters. The exotic and erotic allure of this non-Han people is epitomized in the love feast that Chen Jialuo encounters when he seeks out the tribe, at which the Muslim maidens take the initiative in choosing their romantic partners (chapter 14). The most prominent representative of the Manchus (even if his parentage is in fact Han), and Chen Jialuo’s chief foe, is a male, the emperor. The only notable female presence among the Manchu characters is the cold and scheming dowager empress, asexual by reason of her age, a “mother” who is revealed as having no biological relationship with her supposed son, but who succeeds in turning Qianlong against his natal brother when he wavers over assenting to Chen Jialuo’s plans. The dialectic of heartland and borderlands—the “Central Plains syndrome [which] represent[s] a hierarchy of cultural differentiation derived from geographic, territorial, and cultural boundaries between the mainland core and the outlying periphery”18 —structures the central elements of Book and Sword’s plot and themes. It shapes the contours of its narrative as well, in a fairly obvious fashion: the story moves from the border regions into the heart of the empire, at the beginning of the novel, and makes a final exit with the heroes’ westward ride on the last page. To a certain extent the lands encircling China’s central plains are conterminous with the Rivers and Lakes, both as a terrain of political exile and contention and as the discursive home ground of the martial arts novel’s narrative activity. But with the novel’s conclusion—the characters’ departure from the field of discourse—the lands beyond the passes become borderlands in an even more radical sense. They mark the regions into which the narrative does not enter, into which the protagonists fade once their loves

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

63

have ended in tragedy and their dreams of national salvation, in betrayal. What is it that lies outside the geographical scope of the empire’s Rivers and Lakes and beyond the martial arts novel’s narrative range? How do these invisible regions shape the terrain, both diegetic and discursive, on display in the novel’s text? Jin Yong’s second work of martial arts fiction, Bixue jian, offers clues for further exploration of these questions. Beyond the Borders: Royal Blood Bixue jian (titled in English as The Sword Stained with Royal Blood and hereafter referred to as Royal Blood) was serialized in Xianggang shangbao from January 1 through December 31, 1956. It is set at the time of the Ming dynasty’s fall before an uprising led by Li Zicheng and the invasion of the Manchu Qing. The narrative is organized around the adventures of Yuan Chengzhi, the fictional son of Yuan Chonghuan (1584–1630), an historical Ming general distinguished for his successes against the Manchus but executed by the Chongzhen emperor at the urging of opposed factions at court. The novel’s young Yuan Chengzhi, raised in exile by his father’s loyal followers, becomes the pupil of the martial arts master Mu Renqing. In addition to learning the arts of his master’s Huashan School, he studies the Secret Scroll of the Golden Serpent (Jinshe miji), a manual of esoteric martial arts he discovers with the remains of the mysterious Jinshe Langjun (Young Lord of the Golden Serpent). Yuan Chengzhi descends from his master’s mountain lair and joins forces with the rebel leader Li Zicheng, intending to avenge his father by assassinating the emperor. In his travels he befriends a wayward and oddly beguiling young scholar, Wen Qing. He eventually discovers that Wen Qing is in fact a young woman, Wen Qingqing, the daughter of none other than the Young Lord of the Golden Serpent, between whom and the villainous elders of the Wen clan stands a history of bitter and bloody feuding. Yuan bests the Wen elders and heads off with Wen Qingqing for further adventures, interweaving the rivalries between and within the various schools of wulin (“the Martial Grove,” i.e., the world of the martial arts) with resistance against the despotic Ming regime, the Manchu invaders, and traitorous eunuch factions at court. Li Zicheng’s armies finally take Beijing, and the Chongzhen emperor commits suicide; the convoluted affairs of the Huashan School and of the Golden Serpent’s legacy likewise draw toward a conclusion. Just at this juncture, the wife of Li Yan, Li Zicheng’s most trusted lieutenant and Yuan Chengzhi’s sworn brother, appears on the scene to report that the Ming

64

Chapter 3

general Wu Sangui has opened the mountain passes to the Manchu armies, Li Zicheng is in retreat, and Li Yan has been framed by a rival and sentenced to execution. Yuan Chengzhi rushes off to save his comrade, but arrives too late. Disconsolate, he gathers his remaining companions and sets off for an island in the southern seas; there, he hopes, they can begin a new life. How does Yuan Chengzhi know of this island? During his adventures he has encountered a troop of Portuguese soldiers who are escorting a battery of Western-made artillery to Beijing. The foreigners are arrogant, contentious, and armed with deadly pistols and muskets. They are accompanied by a jewel-bedecked European beauty who excites Wen Qingqing’s envy, and by a Chinese interpreter who uses the status conferred by his association with foreigners to abuse his countrymen. Believing the Ming emperor will use the cannon against the Manchus, Yuan Chengzhi tells his comrades to leave the Portuguese in peace. When he learns that the weapons will be directed against Li Zicheng’s uprising, however, he destroys the cannon and captures their escort. The Portuguese captain is shocked to hear that his artillery was to be used against the oppressed people of the empire. Moved by Yuan Chengzhi’s chivalrous spirit, he presents him with the map to the southern isle: “Rather than fight on so bitterly here, you would be better off leading the hungry and oppressed common folk of China to this island.” Yuan Chengzhi smiled to himself, thinking, “This foreigner has a good enough heart, but he doesn’t know how vast China is. No matter how large this island of yours may be, it will never hold our hundreds of millions!” 19

At the end of Yuan Chengzhi’s tale, though, as he despairs over the Manchu victories and Li Yan’s ignoble death, it is the sight of this map that kindles his ambition to set forth and make a new home for himself and his followers. In Royal Blood, as in Book and Sword, the protagonists’ adventures among the Rivers and Lakes of the empire end with their departure for a land beyond China’s borders.20 Here, though, the departure is elaborated far beyond the simple westward ride that concludes the earlier novel. Yuan Chengzhi’s sailing off for a southern island evokes precedents in such classic treatments of xia material as the Tang chuanqi “The CurlyBearded Stranger” and Chen Chen’s Sequel to the Water Margin. Yuan’s fate also evokes the historical precedent of the Ming general Koxinga (Zheng

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

65

Chenggong, 1624–1662), who seized Taiwan from the Dutch and established there a base for anti-Manchu resistance. In the decades after 1949, Chinese outside the mainland commonly read Koxinga as a heroic prototype for Chiang Kaishek and his Nationalist government on Taiwan.21 In addition to these literary and historical allusions, however, we must also note the resonances between Yuan Chengzhi’s fate and the situation of many of the residents of 1950s Hong Kong. The characterization of Yuan’s island refuge as a land made available by Europeans suggests a parallel with the British colony to which so many of his readers had so recently fled.22 Such a parallel, in turn, suggests once again a resonance between the dynastic struggle against which the novel takes place and recent events on the Chinese mainland. There is no intent here to propose a direct allegorical correspondence between the novel’s representation of the historical past and the political events of the mid-twentieth century. The author’s explicit rejection of such readings in the case of a later work (see chapter 6) may be presumed to extend to the rest of his corpus. The most obvious such interpretation, moreover, which would cast the novel’s hero as a figure for the exiled Nationalist government on Taiwan, runs directly contrary to the expressed sympathies of the newspaper that serialized the story.23 The significance of Yuan Chengzhi’s departure for his southern island lies less in any specific representation of contemporary politics than in its expression of the “Central Plains syndrome” and its mapping of the relationship between the discursive territory of the martial arts novel and that of life in contemporary Hong Kong. A strictly allegorical reading would extend to few if any martial arts novels apart from Royal Blood itself and would therefore fail to take us far in understanding the appeal of Jin Yong’s other works or the wealth of New School works contemporary with them.24 Even in the particular case of Royal Blood, those elements that might be read as political allegory belong to the overall setting of the tale and are concentrated in certain episodes within the narrative. They assume greater prominence in an analytic summary of the work than they might in the context of accretive daily reading, where the broad contours of the plot and any political messages implied in the narrative frame might well take second place to the flavors of a piece of fiction’s prose, the appeal of its characters, its inventiveness of incident, its narrative pacing, its excitation and gratification of the reader’s desire to know “what happens next.” While Jin Yong’s fiction is frequently lauded for its excellence in all these respects, none of these features is necessarily unique to his work or to martial arts fiction in general. What distinguishes the martial arts novel of postwar Hong Kong

66

Chapter 3

from the other adventures, romances, and mysteries with which it shares the columns of the newspaper supplements, what gives it as a thematic genre a particular significance at this time and place, is its setting: the Rivers and Lakes of an imagined Chinese past. More precisely, the Rivers and Lakes attain significance here not as a mere “setting,” but as a chronotope—a set of geographic and temporal parameters inalienably implicated with certain emotional resonances and ideological associations.25 In order to understand these parameters and the particular significances accruing to them in the context of postwar Hong Kong, it will be useful to examine another thematic genre contemporary with New School martial arts fiction, one we have already seen adumbrated in Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas: the comedy of temporal, spatial, and cultural displacement. Comedies of Displacement Royal Blood’s serialization in Xianggang shangbao’s supplement “Shuoyue” marks the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration between Jin Yong and the illustrator Yun Jun. 26 Day by day the text is graced with Yun Jun’s renderings (quite crude in comparison with his later work) of robed and topknotted gallants brandishing their swords among the mountains and villages of ancient China. At the base of the page appears another tale, this one embellished with two illustrations daily. Here we find a gowned and bewhiskered figure, the double of a Daoist adept from Jin Yong’s world— but sporting, now, among modern Hong Kong’s avenues, shanties, bars, and bedrooms. This is Lü Dongbin, the protagonist of San Su’s Lü Dongbin xiafan (Lü Dongbin descends to the mortal world), one example of a genre of fiction that flourished in Hong Kong’s newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s: comedies of displacement, in which figures from the China of legend find themselves adrift in the modern city. A good deal of the literary fiction written in postwar Hong Kong— “literary” in that it appeared in literary journals or literary (wenyi) as distinct from “fiction” (xiaoshuo) newspaper supplements, and made implicit claim to artistic and political rather than merely recreational aims—took the colony for its setting, in effect undertaking to narrate the Hong Kong experience. Leftist writers took an early lead in this project, employing the techniques of social-realist fiction to depict the sufferings of the Chinese masses in a capitalist colonial society or the degenerate lives of the Nationalist “aristocracy.”27 Authors with Nationalist sympathies tended at first to favor mainland settings and the events of recent history but soon began to direct their own efforts toward producing a “refugee literature.”28 Much of

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

67

the popular genre fiction published in the newspaper supplements was likewise set in Hong Kong. For the most part these tales merely used the colony as the backdrop for conventional narratives of romance, crime, and adventure. But a unique and powerful strategy for narrating the life of Hong Kong’s residents appeared in one of the most popular works of the postwar era, Jingji La’s (another pen name of San Su) Jingji riji (An agent’s diary).29 The “diary” adopts a first-person voice, the persona of an “agent” or middleman in Hong Kong’s commercial markets, and the prose style christened sanjidi (roughly “three-in-one”), a mix of laconic classical and standard vernacular with Cantonese dialogue and the most up-to-date of slang.30 The narrative eschews genre fiction’s linear plots in favor of a repetitive, often almost directionless chronicle of the protagonist’s financial wheelings and dealings, romantic frustrations and entanglements, and the daily routines of eating, drinking, and socializing. It ceaselessly weaves into the story local teahouses and nightclubs, the latest social scandals, and the commercial world’s trends and misadventures. This blurring of the lines between fiction, column, and news, no less than the intimacy of voice and persona and the naturalism of the narrative strategy, make An Agent’s Diary not merely a chronicle of the Hong Kong society of its time but a brilliantly apt deployment of the medium of serialized newspaper fiction to both mirror and narrate the daily experience of its contemporary readership.31 In addition to penning An Agent’s Diary and such similar narratives as Xin wanbao’s long-running Personal Diary of Shigougong, San Su produced a number of works in the genre here dubbed “comedies of displacement.” Although not the sole author of such works, he was one of the most prolific.32 Sing pao and Xianggang shangbao were among the primary venues for his works in this vein. Under the pen names Xia Bo and Xiaosheng Xing Gao, Sing pao carried his Jigong xinzhuan (The new legend of Jigong) from 1951 through 1958, Baxian nao Xianggang (The eight immortals raise a ruckus in Hong Kong) from 1958 through 1964, and Zhu Bajie you Xianggang (Zhu Bajie’s travels in Hong Kong) from 1968 through 1969. In Xianggang shangbao, his Lü Dongbin xiafan rivalled Sing pao’s Jigong xinzhuan in length, beginning publication in August 1955 and running into the early 1960s. San Su shared the pen name Xia Bo with a colleague, Chen Xiazi. It was Chen who was responsible for the works appearing under Xia Bo’s name in Xianggang shangbao: 33 first ribald reworkings of traditional tales with Dahua Xiyouji (Tall tales from the Journey to the West) (1952–1953) and Laopo huangdi (The “old lady” emperor [i.e., Wu Zetian]) (1953), then

68

Chapter 3

“comedy of displacement” with Haijiao Liangshanbo (The marshes of Mount Liang beyond the sea) (hereafter Beyond the Sea), which was serialized from June 1 through September 30, 1953. Because of its links with The Water Margin and thus the tradition of martial fiction, Beyond the Sea will serve as a useful introduction to the basic features of the “comedy of displacement” genre. The tale begins where Jin Shengtan’s truncated seventy-chapter version of Water Margin leaves off, numbering its own first chapter “71” 34 and commencing its narrative with Lu Junyi, whose dream of the assembled heroes’ execution brings Jin Shengtan’s work to its grim conclusion. In Xia Bo’s tale, Lu Junyi, unable to sleep after the heroes’ Grand Assembly, wanders out to gaze upon the stars that fill the heavens, to contemplate the revelation that he and his comrades are themselves star spirits sent down to earth, 35 to meditate on the brevity of human life and to wonder what changes in the world a thousand years might bring. He finally falls into a drunken sleep and dreams that Mount Liang is ripped from the marsh in which it stands and whirled away to the ends of the earth. The legend tianxia taiping (“peace under heaven”), inscribed upon a placard hanging over the Hall of Loyalty and Righteousness, blurs and shifts before his eyes, changing first to writing in some foreign script, then to Taiping shan—that is, Victoria Peak. And so he finds himself in twentieth-century Hong Kong. Here he finds turbaned Indians, towering buildings, airplanes, and speeding motorcars. He enters a bar where scantily clad women shake and shimmy; if they feel so cold, he wonders, why don’t they put on a few more clothes? 36 He soon encounters his sworn brother Yan Qing, who introduces him to his patron, the “renowned philanthropist” and underworld boss Mr. Qi. Mr. Qi, barely literate, has heard storytellers’ accounts of the Liangshan heroes and vaguely understands them to be underworld stalwarts from some other locale. He is eager to increase his own standing and power by bringing them all into his own organization; as an ersatz Song Jiang, he thus becomes the vehicle for the narrative’s introduction of various characters from the original novel. Each successive chapter relates the misadventures of one or more members of the Liangshan band in their encounters with scandalous aspects of Hong Kong society. Li Kui becomes mixed up in an affair of stolen infants; Wu Song suspects his new fiancée of engaging in prostitution; Lu Zhishen falls in with a foreigners’ nudist association, and so on. Stringing these episodes together, and counterbalancing the presence of the contemptible Mr. Qi, is the heroes’ determination to find their missing elder brother, Song Jiang. They become convinced that they must seek him back in the interior (neidi); and at the end

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

69

of the tale Mr. Qi, anxious to escape involvement in the police investigation of a murder committed by Li Kui, packs them all onto buses and sends them over the border. The comedies of displacement appearing in postwar Hong Kong revive a fictional subgenre whose genealogy can be traced at least to turn-of-thecentury Shanghai and such works as Wu Woyao’s 1908 Xin shitou ji (New Story of the Stone), which brings Hongloumeng’s Jia Baoyu face to face with the modern metropolis.37 The reappearance of such stories in 1950s Hong Kong testifies both, perhaps, to the strong presence of Shanghainese in Hong Kong’s commercial and artistic communities and to certain essential similarities in the cultural conditions of the prewar treaty port and the postwar colony. What little critical attention has been given to this literature treats it as a satirical record of contemporary Hong Kong society. Huang Zhongming characterizes fiction of this type as “satiric fantasy” (jie xian feng jin, literally “borrowing immortals to satirize the present”) and points out how it serves both to mock and to record in rare detail the underbelly of Hong Kong life in the 1950s and 1960s.38 Luo Fu similarly lists The New Legend of Jigong and Zhu Bajie’s Travels in Hong Kong alongside An Agent’s Diary, The Personal Diary of Shigouggong, and other works by San Su that “mock and curse” the realities of life in Hong Kong.39 That these works’ fundamental motivation is satirical cannot be denied. Yet several features set them apart from others among San Su’s many satirical works. The first is the fact that fiction such as Beyond the Sea simultaneously engages in both satire and extended storytelling. The degraded bargirls, hypocritical socialites, corrupt doctors, and opportunistic reporters featured in this novel’s first episode might easily appear in a nonfiction column such as San Su’s own “Guailun lianpian” (Outlandish essays); 40 in the context of fiction as such, however, they are interwoven with a tale spun out with an eye toward startling incident, narrative tension, and melodramatic emotional appeal. The feature that further distinguishes the “comedies of displacement” from other satirical narrative, such as An Agent’s Diary, is the strategy they employ in staging their humor and critique. An Agent’s Diary engages in “thick description” of the phenomena of Hong Kong social and economic life. Amusement at or censure of these phenomena emerges from (without being demanded by) the perspective of the world-weary first-person narrator, or from the reader’s own collation of events against some assumed standard of decency, honesty, et cetera. A work such as Beyond the Sea, in contrast, provides within the narrative a concrete foil to the phenomena of life in Hong Kong—the presence of characters from another time, place,

70

Chapter 3

or order of existence. If satire consists in the demonstration of observed social phenomena’s failure to measure up to the standards of some second, more ideal reality, the comedies of displacement give this second world a narrative incarnation in the form of its wandering native sons. The significance of this collision of worlds is ambivalent in at least two respects, both evident in the scene of Lu Junyi’s visit to a strip bar. To describe this episode as simply “satiric,” that is, humorously critical of the degraded scene within the bar, glosses over, on the one hand, the fact that Lu Junyi’s naiveté makes him a fair target for a certain amount of mockery himself, and, on the other, the fact that the scene allows for some measure of prurient enjoyment, and not censure alone, on the part of the reader. Clues within the text (details such as the stench of the women’s sweat and the brutality of their handlers) and common habits of readership (positive identification with a protagonist, charitable imputation of moral motives to both reader and author) guide reader and critic toward the “satiric” reading without completely closing out the other possibilities. In any event, the moral or evaluative orientation of these episodes, while far from irrelevant to the present argument, is perhaps secondary in significance to their underlying structure—the essential conceit of a meeting of two worlds. There is strong prima facie evidence for the proposition that this fiction articulates the experience of displacement that so shaped the lives of Hong Kong’s residents during the decades in which the genre flourished. If the realist fiction of the left and right and such gritty entertainments as An Agent’s Diary address the struggles, triumphs, and absurdities of Hong Kong life, then the comedies of displacement shift the narrative focus toward the existential situation underlying the daily melodrama—a consciousness of having been thrust into the Hong Kong arena from some other environment. Beyond the Sea imagines its protagonists’ original home as distant from Hong Kong in space (Shandong, or the “interior” more generally), in time (the past of a thousand years ago), and in cosmologic mode (the “reality” to Hong Kong’s “dream”). At the end of the tale, we find these three axes of distance merging into one; when the dream-arrived heroes climb onto a bus to return to the mainland, the text sees no need to account for any discrepancy. In other stories, those involving Lü Dongbin or characters from The Journey to the West, the protagonists descend to the colony from the heavenly realm. Here the cosmologic distance claims priority, yet remains inseparable from a sense of temporal and spatial removal as well. The “elsewhere” from which the characters arrive is not just another place but another time and another order of reality; most

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

71

important on the affective level, perhaps, is the fact that it is a profoundly familiar terrain. Since these tales’ concern is displacement, the heroes’ homeland lies outside the boundaries of the narrative as such. Water Margin’s Mount Liang appears only briefly in the first installment of Beyond the Sea; when, in the final episode, the characters set off for the interior, they exit the narrative’s discursive domain, and the story perforce must end. To say that their homeland is familiar terrain, then, is perhaps less to the point than to say that it carries the connotation of familiarity. It is precisely the assumed familiarity, the “homeliness,” of this absent homeland that allows the tale’s protagonists, and through them the reader, to experience Hong Kong as alien. Within the boundaries of the narrative proper, the sense of familiarity is borne by the characters themselves. The heroes from Mt. Liang, the eccentric Daoist Lü Dongbin, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and the rest of the company from The Journey to the West, would all be familiar to this fiction’s readers, from the Ming and Qing novels recounting their exploits, from more recent fictional adaptations, from storytelling and operatic versions and radio broadcasts of the same, and from countless other renditions in both traditional popular cultures and the modern mass media. The recognition they evoke in the reader combines personal history (familiarity since childhood), a broad sense of cultural tradition, and a more specific association with the traditional literary and artistic genres in which these characters appeared. The comedies of displacement mobilize this recognition in at least two directions. On the one hand, the characters and their implied homeland offer a familiar and positively identified ground from which to mock and critique the absurdities of modern life in Hong Kong. On the other, the characters’ familiarity gives latitude for the staging of their own shortcomings. Ignorance or ineptitude in dealing with the modern colonial city is both humorous and excusable in these beings from another realm; displays of lust or anger are simultaneously deplorable and welcome as the signature traits of old companions. The Discursive Terrain of New School Martial Arts Fiction The comedies of displacement give us one perspective from which to understand the shape and contemporary significance of Hong Kong’s New School martial arts fiction. Beyond, or perhaps prior to, the attractions of plotting, characterization, and prose style, works such as Book and Sword and Royal Blood offer the more fundamental appeal of a compelling

72

Chapter 3

chronotope—the Rivers and Lakes of a mythicized Chinese past. If fiction such as An Agent’s Diary offers a narrative of Hong Kong society in the 1950s and 1960s, and the comedies of displacement satirize this world by introducing characters from another, then the New School martial arts novel may be thought of as presenting a vision of that second world in its pristine state. The often-advanced claim that the figure of the knight-errant (xia) and the world in which he moves have an immemorial appeal for the Chinese reader does not sufficiently account for the martial arts novel’s rebirth at this particular time and place. An aura of “immemorial appeal” is indeed a crucial element of New School martial arts fiction; but this aura is less an ahistorical given than a part of the deliberate evocation of tradition that lies at the genre’s heart, and that assumes a special significance in the particular cultural environment of post-1949 Hong Kong. The clearest evidence of the relative discursive positions of the comedies of displacement and martial arts fiction is the fact that characters from the latter genre can themselves be deployed in the staging of a displacement farce. From February 21 through June 20, 1960, Jin Yong’s own fledgling newspaper Ming Pao serialized the novel Honghuahui qunxiong nao Xiangjiang (The heroes of the Red Flower Society raise a ruckus in Hong Kong) (hereafter Red Flower Society). An “Editor’s Introduction” on the first day of publication presents the piece as follows: Mr. Jin Yong’s martial arts novel Book and Sword has received an enthusiastic welcome from its readers. Each one of the ten or more heroes of the novel’s Red Flower Society—Chen Jialuo, Wuchen, Wen Tailai, Yu Yutong, and the rest—is given a distinctive personality, “like a living dragon appearing in the flesh.” The present work employs a comical style and imagines that these heroes have arrived in Hong Kong, where they become embroiled in a variety of adventures. The tale is exciting and unique. The author, Mai Xuan, narrates it in the person of Chen Jialuo’s page, Xin Yan, bringing us even closer to the action.

The motivation for the journey to Hong Kong is Chen Jialuo’s yearning for Princess Fragrance. The final pages of Book and Sword show the heroes visiting her tomb and finding it empty but for a lingering perfume; as Red Flower Society opens, the group decides to seek the lost princess through all the “fragrant” places of the earth. They save the “fragrant harbor” of Hong Kong for last because of the overwhelming number of “fragrant” hotels, restaurants, banks, and so forth within its tiny area. While

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

73

the Society’s strategist, Xu Tianhong, pores over the itinerary, prepares a press release for their arrival, and awaits a telegram from Jin Yong confirming their travel plans (which the author is slow in sending, busy as he is with writing his next novel), the impetuous swordswoman Zhou Qi hurries down to Hong Kong on her own. There she puzzles over her hotel’s practice of charging by the hour, samples the sickly sweet liquors at the bar, and before long has become involved in the affair of a bar-girl’s stolen racing ticket. The other members of the Red Flower Society eventually arrive for a series of adventures that, in the standard mode of the displacement farce, play their chivalry and ignorance against the colony’s modern amenities, curious Western ways, and cutthroat pursuit of personal gain. The existence of such a story makes clear the affinity between the New School heroes’ native environment and that of Zhu Bajie, Lü Dongbin, and other “displacement” protagonists. This affinity may be, in part, one of genre, indicating the close association of the martial arts novel with traditional forms of fiction. Its primary register, however, is cosmographic: Chen Jialuo and his comrades come from the same “place,” in some sense, as the heroes of the displacement comedies. A sequence of serializations in Xianggang shangbao provides a fortuitous illustration of this point. Beyond the Sea concludes, as we have seen, on September 30, 1953, with the Water Margin’s heroes leaving Hong Kong on a bus bound for the interior. The following day the paper’s fiction supplement begins the serialization of Mou Songting’s Highwaymen of Shandong, an adventure set during the late Qing period in the Water Margin’s home province of Shandong. Highwaymen of Shandong is succeeded in January 1956 by Royal Blood; and this novel ends, on the last day of the year, with the protagonist on board a ship bound for what sounds uncannily like Hong Kong. The symmetry between Beyond the Sea’s heroes departing their tale for the interior and Royal Blood’s protagonists departing theirs for an island to the south neatly suggests the identity, on a conceptual level, of the characters’ homelands. At the same time, though, it also dramatizes the relationship between this homeland and the two genres’ quite divergent discursive projects. When the Beyond the Sea’s protagonists set out for Shandong, the curtain falls on their story, for their role in this work is to enact a tale of satire and burlesque that is predicated on the very fact of their finding themselves in an alien land. Yuan Chengzhi’s story ends, in contrast, at that moment when he turns his back on the Chinese mainland; for the New School martial arts tale is a story of China proper, the middle kingdom, the unassailable center of cultural authority.41

74

Chapter 3

If the displacement comedy’s business is the staging of cultural disorientation, the New School martial arts novel’s is the nostalgic recreation of a Chinese culture envisioned as whole and unchallenged. To say that this fiction’s imagined China is “whole and unchallenged” as a cultural entity is not, of course, to claim that it is free from conflict. The Rivers and Lakes are by definition the unstable and often violent regions of society; and in a strand of the martial arts tradition that stretches from “The CurlyBearded Stranger” to the New School novelists, this innately dangerous terrain further serves as the ground for struggles over political control of the empire. Yet in the world of the New School novel neither the violence nor the political contest imperils the cultural hegemony of the Chinese tradition. To the contrary, conflict provides the occasion for the performance of what is, in the discourse of martial arts fiction, the cultural tradition’s consummate manifestation: the practice of the Chinese martial arts. Royal Blood’s Portuguese soldiers, whose weapons threaten both the empire’s political balance and the supremacy of China’s martial practices, are the exception that proves the rule.42 Foreigners with such radically disruptive potential reappear in Jin Yong’s oeuvre only with his final novel, the consciously iconoclastic The Deer and the Cauldron. In his other works, as in the vast majority of New School fiction, the various roles played by foreigners (whether non-Han subjects of the empire or peoples from beyond the borders)—as objects of mockery, horror, or erotic allure; as hungry aspirants to the dragon throne; as supporters and nurturers of Han protagonists and Han traditions—all tend to reaffirm the paradigmatic centrality of the Chinese state and Chinese cultural identity. The colonial presence that haunts the comedies of displacement makes itself known in New School martial arts fiction primarily through the fervency of its disavowal. That this impregnable cultural China be imagined as temporally and spatially distant from the Hong Kong of the mid-twentieth century is obviously a necessity. It is not so much that the absence of modern technology and competing cultural systems allows the supremacy of traditional Chinese arts as that the Chinese cultural tradition, epitomized in the martial arts, stakes out an imagined territory in which other cultures and technologies lack any right to issue a challenge. And yet the world portrayed by Hong Kong’s New School novelists is not an entirely mythical realm. Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, and other Hong Kong writers of the late 1950s and early 1960s almost invariably provide their tales with concrete historical backgrounds. Their contemporaries in Taiwan, where a body of New

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

75

School martial arts literature also emerged during the 1950s, generally avoid defining historical settings, instead placing their tales in an unspecified and apparently timeless past, and often in a self-contained world of Rivers and Lakes thoroughly divorced from the affairs of court and the institutions of ordinary society. These choices reflect the Taiwan novelists’ skirting of painful political realities and their care to avoid government censorship. The Hong Kong authors’ predilection for moments of historical crisis, in contrast, given room for free expression under the British colonial government’s laissez-faire policy toward the arts, suggests the extent to which this literature, for all its fantastic tendencies, is also informed by a sense of political and cultural urgency generated by the ongoing crises in China and the Cold War world at large. Also useful for clarifying the shape of and motivations behind the Hong Kong New School’s imagining of its world is the contrast with the works of the Old School master Huanzhu Louzhu. This author set several of his novels at the moments of dynastic crisis favored by the New School writers: the Manchu conquest of China in his epic Shu shan jianxia zhuan (Legend of the swordsmen of the mountains of Shu, 1932–1949), the Mongol invasion in Liuhu xiayin (The hermit knights of Willow Lake, 1946). In Huanzhu Louzhu’s tales political disaster occasions the protagonists’ flight to remote mountains, the habitation of grotesque monsters and swordsman-immortals with preternatural powers, and it is within this transcendent world that his stories unfold. In Hong Kong’s New School novels, as we have seen, the hero’s withdrawal to an overseas island or beyond the mountains signals the conclusion of the tale. The milieux of Huanzhu Louzhu’s novels, however turbulent, are far removed from the sufferings of the empire; but it is these sufferings themselves—the crises that set the fate of the nation adrift among the perilous and unstable borderlands of society—that make up the Rivers and Lakes of Hong Kong’s New School. The New School novel’s imagined world is shaped by both the nostalgic invocation of an idealized cultural past and the anxious awareness of precisely those political and historical contingencies that make the nostalgic vision so appealing. While chapter 2 reviewed New School fiction’s immediate predecessor, the martial arts tales of the Guangdong School, and ended with a Guangdong School hero’s appearance in a comedy of displacement, this chapter’s further exploration of the displacement comedies, as well as of Jin Yong’s earliest novels, has illuminated the shift from the Guangdong School’s imaginary world to that of Jin Yong and his contemporaries. It is the intersecting visions of the Chinese nation as an immemorial cultural entity and

76

Chapter 3

as an imperiled political body that move Jin Yong’s novels away from the more parochial concerns of their Guangdong School predecessors. Guangdong School fiction’s fascination with local heroes, personal rivalries, and regional culture make its world too narrow to serve as a vehicle for the expression of an “émigré discourse of centralizing nationalism.”43 More importantly, perhaps, the concreteness and continuity of its ties with the local community preclude the establishment of that distance so essential to the imagining of an idealized Chinese past. Having touched on differences between the settings, plots, and characters of Guangdong and New School martial arts fiction above, we may now consider, as a final illustration of their divergent concerns, the variance in their respective linguistic registers. Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, and their imitators reject the Guangdong School’s Cantonese-inflected prose in favor of a standard vernacular braced with colorful four-character phrases and studded with conscious archaisms. Their models are the classics of premodern vernacular fiction (Water Margin, Dream of the Red Chamber, etc.) and the works of the prewar Old School authors. The New School’s prose thus epitomizes the undertaking of the novels as a whole: the envisioning of a world projected into the past, supported by the cultural authority of a venerable tradition, and implicitly but emphatically distinguished from the realities of life in contemporary Hong Kong. There exists no better testimony to the importance of the linguistic register in the New School’s imaginative project than the role that language plays in Red Flower Society’s cultural burlesque. Here language serves as a medium for the comedy of displacement both on the narratorial level, where the text makes play of Xin Yan’s leaps from hackneyed classical tags to Cantonese vernacular, and on the diegetic level, where the visiting heroes’ unfamiliarity with contemporary slang leads to scandalous misunderstandings.44 Led by the works of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, New School martial arts fiction vaulted to a popularity far beyond any ever enjoyed by the works of the Guangdong School. It did not immediately or completely replace this earlier mode of martial arts fiction; Sing pao continued to serialize Zhongyi Xiangren’s tales well into the 1960s, and even Jin Yong’s own Ming Pao carried fiction by Woshi Shanren in its early days. 45 But while Guangdong School fiction maintained its modest niche, New School works proliferated rapidly, often claiming first billing in the expanding fiction supplements of the late 1950s and early 1960s. On January 1, 1957, Xianggang shangbao began its serialization of the work that was to solidify Jin Yong’s reputation as the new master of martial arts fiction, The EagleShooting Heroes. On March 29 of the same year, the paper began running

Early Fiction and Postwar Hong Kong

77

Huang Hanxi and Hua Qiao’s Huang Feihong shifu zhuan (The story of our master Huang Feihong), a series of biographical anecdotes reminiscent of those published by Zhu Yuzhai in Gongshang ribao some ten years earlier. This feature appeared not in the fiction supplement but alongside local news and sports. Such placement is only logical, given the anecdotes’ supposedly factual basis; nonetheless, Huang Feihong’s retreat to the sphere of local interest illustrates the extent to which the Guangdong heroes have ceded the imaginary empire of martial arts fiction to the new creations of Jin Yong and his peers.

78

Chapter 3

Chapter 4 National Passions From The Eagle-Shooting Heroes to The Giant Eagle and Its Companion

ith The Eagle-Shooting Heroes and The Giant Eagle and Its Companion, Jin Yong’s fiction emerges more confidently from the nurturing and shaping soil of its contexts to assert a new distinctiveness and independence. This independence manifests in multiple modes: thematic, institutional, and critical, and it is the articulation of the new thematic vision that is the primary focus of this chapter. These two novels represent the consummation of that heroic nationalism expressed through a dialectic of heartland versus geo-cultural margins, which hints at an underlying consciousness of exile. At the same time, they reveal the coalescence and increasing dominance of a second vision: an essentialized and celebratory Chinese cultural identity. Gradually extricating itself from the dynastic and territorial concerns that govern the early works, this vision of identity locates itself within a timeless, mandala-like mythic geography; simultaneously, it asserts the priority of individual emotional experience—expressed above all in romantic relationships— over political and ethnic allegiances. If the early works’ consciousness of loss and displacement can be termed exilic, the later novels’ vision might be described as diasporic. The word “diaspora” is close in sense to “exile” in its earliest usages; recent discussions, however, have differentiated the two on the basis of diaspora’s more constructive aspects:

W

The key contrast with exile lies in diaspora’s emphasis on lateral and decentered relationships among the dispersed. Exile suggests pining for home; diaspora suggests networks among compatriots. Exile may be solitary, but diaspora is always collective. Diaspora suggests real or imagined relationships among

79

scattered fellows, whose sense of community is sustained by forms of communication and contact such as kinship, pilgrimage, trade, travel, and shared culture (language, ritual, scripture, or print and electronic media). Some communities in diaspora may agitate for return, but the normative force that return is desirable or even possible is not a necessary part of diaspora today.1

Just as the current usage of the term “diaspora” has evolved from its earlier deployment as a near synonym for “exile,” so the phenomena of modern diaspora, both as a mode of social organization and as a form of consciousness, represent extensions and permutations of historic experiences of exile. “As a form of cultural invention, exile often conjures up something new in the very act of looking backward.”2 The thematic evolution of Jin Yong’s works can be understood in part as a transformation of the early novels’ exilic metaphors and narratives of loss into a creative and celebratory vision of a Chinese cultural tradition conceived as untainted by political struggle, manifested through individual subjectivity, and independent of, though still emotionally tied to, the physical territory of the Chinese empire.3 Yet the independence staked out in The Eagle-Shooting Heroes and The Giant Eagle and Its Companion is not a thematic independence alone. These two novels allowed the author to achieve institutional independence through the establishment of a publishing enterprise—an enterprise that would quickly assume a diasporic configuration of its own. And the developing publishing enterprise served as a vehicle for the enunciation of a critical project—an argument for the value of the genre of martial arts fiction. The institutional and critical aspects of this pivotal juncture in the development of Jin Yong’s enterprise will be further explored in this study’s fifth and seventh chapters. The Eagle-Shooting Heroes Jin Yong’s Shediao yingxiong zhuan (titled in English as The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, hereafter referred to as Heroes) began serialization in Xianggang shangbao on January 1, 1957, the day after Royal Blood’s completion. It ran for over two years, through May 19, 1959; toward the end of its serialization, the author’s Xueshan feihu (titled in English as Flying Fox on Snowy Mountain, hereafter referred to as Flying Fox) appeared simultaneously in Xin wanbao (February 9–June 18, 1959). Flying Fox stands out among Jin Yong’s novels for its formalistic experimentation. The primary narrative occupies the space of a single day; but within this one day, various char-

80

Chapter 4

acters narrate a sequence of events reaching back some hundred years, to the downfall of Li Zicheng and the Ming/Qing transition. Each narrator’s knowledge of and prejudice toward these past events differs from the others’, causing the reader’s own perspective to shift constantly as the text unfolds. The loyalties, debts, and vendettas of the narrated past come to a head on the day of the primary narration, in a life-or-death battle between the Flying Fox Hu Fei and Miao Renfeng—the killer of Hu Fei’s parents, the father of his true love, and a valiant hero who has won his heartfelt admiration. And the text, in its second formal peculiarity, ends abruptly at the brink of a climactic resolution, with Hu Fei’s blade poised above his foe’s body: “Would Hu Fei be able to return safely to [his lover’s] side? Would he deliver this blow or not?” (244). Flying Fox’s multi-standpoint flashback narration has elicited countless comparisons (not entirely apt) with Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, while the suspended conclusion has generated debate over both the tale’s resolution and the author’s technique.4 The novel has generated a disproportionate quantity of analysis and commentary, and (perhaps because of its modest length as much as its narrative interest) was the first of Jin Yong’s works to be translated into English.5 Its studied intricacy testifies to the author’s ambitions for bringing his work into artistic territories hitherto unexplored by the genre of martial arts fiction. The broad course of Jin Yong’s future writing, however, and the basis of his fame, was laid not so much by the compact and formally experimental Flying Fox as by Heroes— epic in length, played out along labyrinthine narrative lines at least superficially reminiscent of traditional episodic “chaptered” (zhanghui) fiction, and focused less on overt narratorial pyrotechnics than on the adventures, personalities, and emotional vicissitudes of strikingly conceived protagonists. With this third novel, both the imagined world of Jin Yong’s fiction and Jin Yong’s own career as author and publisher made dramatic advances. Book and Sword and Royal Blood had met with enthusiastic receptions; Heroes cemented and expanded the author’s reputation to such an extent that by the end of its serialization, Jin Yong was willing to gamble on his fame and his readers’ appetites by launching his own newspaper, Ming Pao. Ming Pao’s first edition, featuring the initial installment of Heroes’ sequel, Shendiao xialü (titled in English as The Giant Eagle and Its Companion, hereafter referred to as Companion), appeared on May 20, 1959, the day after Heroes’ completion. The loose linkages between the characters and events of Heroes and those of Companions were continued in a third novel, Yitian tulong ji (titled in English as The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre,

National Passions

81

hereafter referred to as Dragon Sabre) (serialized from July 6, 1961, to September 2, 1963), and the three novels of this “trilogy” constitute the fruit of the author’s early maturity. In Heroes the central concerns of Jin Yong’s earliest novels—the fate of the Chinese empire in the face of foreign aggression, played out against the background of the historical record and a geographical imaginary of homeland and exilic periphery—are recapitulated, given their most positive affirmative articulation to date in the heroic and unconflicted character of Guo Jing, yet modified in character and intensity by the increasing prominence of another set of interlocking concerns: the elaboration of the narrative labyrinth; a focus on the life history and personal development of the protagonist; an exploration of passions and vendettas within the Rivers and Lakes largely unrelated to the political struggle for the Chinese nation; the association of the martial arts with the protagonist’s personal journey as well as with the struggle for power; and the central role of a secret text in both the articulation of the martial arts and the disposition of the narrative. Intimations of these latter concerns appear even in Book and Sword, and Royal Blood develops several of them to a degree that more clearly anticipates Heroes. But it is in Heroes, the novel widely considered the “classic” work of Jin Yong’s early oeuvre, that these elements achieve a fuller development, a more complex interrelationship, and a prominence that harbors the potential of overshadowing the narrative of dynastic crisis. Dynastic Struggle and Exile in The Eagle-Shooting Heroes Heroes’ historical framework restages key elements from Book and Sword and Royal Blood—foreign invasion, corruption within the Chinese court, and a flight to the south. In this case, however, the setting is not the Qing conquest of the Ming, but the Song dynasty’s (960–1279) struggles against northern invaders. In 1127 CE, Jurchen tribesmen, who had established themselves as the Jin dynasty, seized the Song capital of Kaifeng and took the Huizong and Qinzong emperors hostage. One of the Huizong emperor’s sons established himself as the Gaozong emperor with his capital in Lin’an (modern Hangzhou), south of the Huai River. Half of the nation’s territory now lay in enemy hands; but rather than fighting to regain it, the emperor, according to popular tradition, heeded the counsel of traitorous ministers, executed the heroic general Yue Fei, made shameful peace with the barbarians, and gave himself up to luxury and pleasure amidst the scenic beauty of the southern capital’s West Lake.6

82

Chapter 4

Heroes’ primary narrative begins some decades later, in the reign of the Southern Song Ningzong emperor (r. 1195–1224), with two refugees from the north now dwelling in a village not far from Lin’an: Guo Xiaotian, a descendant of Guo Sheng, one of the 108 heroes of the Water Margin band; and Yang Tiexin, a descendant of Yang Zaixing, one of the generals who served under the martyred Yue Fei. The two heroes’ ancestries both establish their identities as “goodfellows”—they practice the martial skills handed down by their forefathers, have met through their involvement in the society of the Rivers and Lakes, and have sworn the traditional oaths of brotherhood—and frame these identities within a patriotism defined by resistance to foreign aggression.7 Their patriotism establishes a bond with a Daoist priest, Qiu Chuji of the Quanzhen (Complete Reality) sect, whom they encounter as he returns from assassinating a Song minister engaged in treacherous alliance with the Jin. Qiu Chuji chooses names for the sworn brothers’ unborn children: Guo Jing and Yang Kang. The names allude to the Jingkang reign title, the year of the fall of the Northern Song. The children will enter the world marked with the sign of the nation’s humiliation, and with the burden of redeeming this loss. Guo Xiaotian and Yang Tiexin agree that if their children are of the same sex they too will become sworn brothers or sisters, and if of different sexes will be betrothed to one another. These plans are disrupted when the two heroes are struck down by Song troops dispatched by the pro-Jin factions at court. Their wives escape the carnage. Yang Tiexin’s wife becomes the concubine of a Jin prince, Wanyan Honglie. Guo Xiaotian’s wife flees to the northern steppes, where she finds refuge with nomadic Mongol tribesmen. Both women give birth to sons, who will grow up among two different non-Chinese peoples. The youngsters’ pre-birth affinity is reinforced, however, when the Quanzhen Daoists and the Seven Eccentrics of the South (Jiangnan qi guai), a sworn band of chivalrous fighters, agree to settle a dispute by providing the young Yang Kang and Guo Jing with their respective martial tutelage and matching them against one another when they reach maturity. Heroes further refines the schematic geography we first discerned in Book and Sword. In place of the latter work’s binary division of the landscape into a heartland occupied by aliens and a region beyond the passes roamed by displaced Chinese and sympathetic minorities, it offers a threefold division: a still-unconquered heartland in the south, the Chinese territory usurped by the Jin, and the steppes beyond the empire’s borders in which the Mongol tribes hold sway. It then distributes its paired protagonists among the latter two locales—the equivalent, within this scheme, of

National Passions

83

Book and Sword’s allocation of its siblings to occupied China and the unconquered outlands. The non-Han peoples dwelling in Heroes’ occupied China and non-Chinese periphery display moral qualities commensurate with their relationship to the Chinese empire. The usurping Jin are portrayed as treacherous, cruel, and corrupt, while the Mongols, roaming free beyond the passes, appear as barbarian heroes—bloodthirsty, indeed; uncouth and exotic; but admirable in their bravery, loyalty, frankness, and largesse. It is only at the end of the novel, when they too set their ambitions on Chinese territory, that they take on the villain’s role. The novel’s two protagonists, in turn, enact the moral qualities allocated to their respective foster peoples. Guo Jing, raised among the rude but valiant Mongols, becomes the hero of the tale, redeeming his innate slow-wittedness through his perseverance and unshakeable sense of loyalty. Though raised to high status among the Mongols for his devotion and military service, he sets himself against them when they threaten his ancestral home. Yang Kang, raised as the scion of a Jin prince, is far more clever than Guo Jing, but cowardly and self-serving. When his natural father reappears and reveals the truth of his birth, Yang Kang rejects him—not out of affection for the man who has actually raised him, as might be expected, but out of horror at Yang Tiexin’s poverty—and dreams of attaining yet greater wealth and power when the Jin complete their conquest of the Song.8 Like Book and Sword, then, Heroes dramatizes the choices of Chinese placed among non-Chinese peoples. Yang Kang’s fatal weakness, like that of Book and Sword’s Qianlong emperor, is his willingness to “accept a villain as his father” (ren zei zuo fu), while Guo Jing’s crowning virtue is a loyalty akin to that of Chen Jialuo and Yuan Chengzhi. The culminating expression of this loyalty occurs at the end of the novel, when Guo Jing, having learned of the Khan’s imminent attack against the Song, rushes to the strategic city of Xiangyang. He finds the military official in charge cowardly and inept, and he takes over the defense himself, aided by the people of the city who flock to his banner, young and old, in a spontaneous display of patriotism. In the context of dynastic struggle, then, the China to which the novel’s protagonist owes his loyalty is a territorial imperative, organically linked to a protective ardor on the part of its (rather faceless) natives, but markedly disjunct from the interests and actions of the agents of the state as such. For all the devotion Guo Jing commits to it, and the eminence accorded to this devotion by the novel’s narrative structure, China in its dynastic aspect—China in its role as an element in political struggle—seems remarkably amorphous, even empty of content,

84

Chapter 4

when compared with a second, “cultural” model, which we shall shortly examine. The Mongol army attacking Xiangyang is commanded by Tuo Lei, Guo Jing’s own longtime comrade and sworn brother. Realizing that his militia, for all their zeal, will never hold up against the seasoned Mongol warriors, Guo Jing resolves to assassinate Tuo Lei and so throw the attackers into confusion. Just as he is about to strike, however, a messenger arrives to report the Khan’s illness and order the Mongols’ withdrawal. Tuo Lei and Guo Jing return together to the north for a final interview with the dying Khan. Narrative sleight of hand thus permits Guo Jing to demonstrate his devotion to nation over personal loyalties without forcing him to pay the unchivalric price of actually murdering his sworn brother. It also allows Heroes to end on a markedly different note than its predecessors. Book and Sword closes with the failure of Chen Jialuo’s dream of a Ming restoration, Royal Blood with the imminent triumph of the Qing, and both with the protagonists’ flight beyond the borders of their lost homeland. Heroes, in contrast, avoids decisive confrontation of the fact of the Mongols’ historic conquest of the Chinese empire. It ends on an elegiac note, to be sure, as Guo Jing and his beloved contemplate the lives sacrificed to the Khan’s ambition; but the fall of the Southern Song is deferred, and Guo Jing’s patriotism rewarded, through the invaders’ providential retreat. A Second Imaginary Heroes’ evasion of the historical inevitability of the Mongol conquest allows a celebration of Chinese patriotism while withdrawing from the urgency of the first two novels’ confrontations with dynastic change and the experience of exile. This withdrawal appears also, and perhaps even more strikingly, in the novel’s elaboration of a second geographic imaginary, a second narrative complex, and a second vision of China’s identity, linked to, yet existing at a definite remove from, the tale of the struggles between the Song, the Jin, and the Mongols. The center of the novel’s second geography is Huashan, one of the five sacred peaks of China, and the center of the second narrative complex is a competition that took place here years before the novel’s primary narrative begins—a mountaintop battle known as “The Dispute of the Swords on Huashan” (Huashan lunjian), a contest for the title of supreme martial artist under heaven. Five masters joined the contest: the Heterodoct of the East, Huang Yaoshi; the Venom of the West, Ouyang Feng; the Emperor

National Passions

85

of the South, Duan Zhixing; the Beggar of the North, Hong Qigong; and the Plenipotent of the Center, Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen Daoist sect. After seven days and seven nights of struggle, Wang Chongyang established mastery over his rivals, winning as his prize not only the title of supreme martial artist but also a treasure over which the denizens of the Rivers and Lakes had warred bitterly for years—a manual revealing the most profound principles and invincible techniques of the martial arts, The Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin (Jiuyin zhenjing). The circumstances of the Dispute of the Swords, its significance, and the degree to which it saturates the events of the novel, emerge only gradually as the narrative unfolds. The novel’s text relates Guo Jing’s life and adventures and the struggle between the Song, the Jin, and the Mongols in normative chronological order. As this narrative (which we may call primary in the sense of its providing the novel’s most conspicuous narrative and chronological framework) proceeds, it offers, through analeptic interludes (flashbacks), incremental glimpses of the constellation of characters and events surrounding the Dispute and the Veritable Scripture. When the Seven Eccentrics, traveling to the Mongolian steppes to train the young Guo Jing, encounter the ghoulish Blackwind Demons (Heifeng shuangsha), Bronze Corpse Chen Xuanfeng and his wife Iron Corpse Mei Chaofeng, the Eccentrics’ leader tells of his earlier battle with these villains; the narrator then briefly sketches out how the pair stole the Scripture from their teacher, Eastern Heterodoct Huang Yaoshi (chapter 4, revised edition). Guo Jing encounters Mei Chaofeng again on the steppes (chapter 6), and then at the manor of a Jin prince (chapter 10). During the latter episode, Mei Chaofeng’s recollections and the narratorial voice combine to reveal both unexplained aspects of the earlier encounters and further details of the theft of the scriptures; at the same time, Huang Rong, the mischievous lass with whom Guo Jing has become romantically involved, declares herself to be Huang Yaoshi’s daughter and thus Mei Chaofeng’s Swordsister. Some while later, another character, Qiu Qianren, offers the first intimations of the Dispute of the Swords and of the Veritable Scripture’s role in this event, and suggests as well that a second Dispute will soon occur (chapter 13). It is only when Guo Jing travels to Peach Blossom Isle (Taohua dao), Huang Yaoshi’s mysterious refuge, that he hears from the eccentric master Zhou Botong something like the full story of the Scripture and the Dispute (chapters 16–17); but Zhou Botong’s tale, while answering some questions, presents many new puzzles about the history of and ongoing relationships between the masters who met upon Huashan and their present-day disciples.

86

Chapter 4

There is no need to rehearse here all the details of the plot or the complexities of its narrative presentation. The point is that as the novel proceeds, the reader gradually becomes privy to information that allows him or her to reconstruct the tale of the Dispute of the Swords and the Veritable Scripture. The Dispute occurred twenty-five years in the past; the narrative’s revelations, however, concern not merely these long-gone events in themselves but also the extent to which they shape and provide connections between the at first seemingly unrelated characters and events of the narrative present. A second meeting upon Huashan, moreover, emerges as the climax toward which the novel is tending. And indeed, this second Dispute takes place in the last chapters, immediately prior to Guo Jing’s final confrontation with the Mongols. The narrative strategy through which the novel presents the story of the Dispute of the Swords upon Huashan intensifies the reader’s experience of the episode’s significance. The story is, in and of itself, epic in proportions and mythic in its imagery. Chronologically it envelops the events of the primary narrative, both preceding their commencement and paralleling their resolution. But the affective significance inherent in the events themselves is magnified by the indirect, gradual, and accretive technique of their narrative presentation. The reticence with which the text affords knowledge of these events, the prolongation of both the reader’s and the characters’ experience of understanding, grants to the events the stature and resonance of a revelation; the technique resembles that of a mystery novel, in which the dynamic of discovery affords compelling significance to events that might attract much less interest if presented as a simple chronology of fact. This technique of back-narration, the deepening of the narrative through the cumulative revelation of an ever-expanding complex of antecedent events, becomes a hallmark of Jin Yong’s fictional technique. Book and Sword first intimates the technique with the episode of Mamir and the desert necropolis; Royal Blood moves it toward the center of the novel, with the tale of the Lord of the Golden Serpent; 9 Flying Fox on Snowy Mountain deploys the device almost to formalistic excess. In Heroes, the technique helps imbue the events, characters, and locales of the Dispute of the Swords with an affective power that overshadows that of the “primary” events and their straightforward linear narration. Huashan and the five masters who meet in combat thereon suggest a geographic imaginary disassociated, and quite different in character, from the primary narrative’s division of the map according to ethnic affiliation and political control. The actual Huashan is located in the modern People’s Republic’s province of Shaanxi, and at the supposed historical

National Passions

87

moment of the novel’s primary events, this area is already under Jin rule. It is possible to trace certain connections between the five masters and the political map: the Emperor of the South, for instance, Duan Zhixing, is the ruler of the non-Chinese kingdom of Dali, while the Venom of the West, Ouyang Feng, hails from the non-Han deserts of some distant occidental region. But such associations are partial and nonschematic, and just as the Dispute of the Swords bears no direct relation to the saga of dynastic struggle sketched out above, so Huashan and the five masters’ emblematic locations are free of any clear association with that ethnic and political geography of homeland, occupied territory, and borderlands which acts as the stage for the sagas of Guo Jing and Yang Kang. The masters mark out instead the compass points of traditional cosmography, and the mountain serves as the cosmic axis where the fate of the world is decided. Mountain and masters together construct a world imagined as mandala. The mythic contours of this world—this jianghu, “Rivers and Lakes,” existing alongside the jiangshan, “rivers and mountains,” of the political struggle—accord with the transcendent, ahistorical concerns of realization and mastery that lie at its heart. Perhaps the most striking representative of these concerns is the character Zhou Botong, the younger Swordbrother of Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen sect and victor in the first Dispute of the Swords. Zhou Botong’s nickname is “Old Bratkin” (Lao wantong), an appellation referring to his exaggeratedly childish temperament—his fascination with games and practical jokes, his rapid swings between delight and peevishness, his utter disinterest in propriety and convention, his capacity for undivided absorption in the pleasures of the moment. The matter most likely to compel his absorption is the study and practice of the martial arts. As he declares to Guo Jing: “The study of the martial arts offers inexhaustible pleasure. There’s really nothing in this life of ours that’s nearly as much fun. Sure, there are amusements aplenty in this wide world, but sooner or later they all turn out to be pretty dull. It’s only the martial arts that get more and more fun the more you play!”(666).

Wang Chongyang entrusts upon his death the Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin to Zhou Botong, enjoining Zhou never to practice the arts inscribed therein. Huang Yaoshi, playing on Zhou Botong’s passion for games, tricks Zhou into letting Huang’s new wife take a look at the second of the Scripture’s two constituent scrolls. When Zhou Botong discovers

88

Chapter 4

that the canny young woman has in fact memorized the text, he flies into a passion and destroys his own copy. He later travels to Peach Blossom Isle and becomes embroiled with Huang Yaoshi in a contest for the first half, still in Huang’s possession. When Guo Jing encounters Zhou Botong, the contest has already continued for fifteen years. Zhou Botong dwells in a cave, which he has vowed not to leave until he has bested Huang Yaoshi. Huang Yaoshi, for his part, delivers food and drink to his guest, and refrains from seizing the Scripture when Zhou must step away to relieve himself. Every day and night for fifteen years they have matched their martial arts and internal powers against one another. The contest is not for mastery of the Veritable Scripture’s potent arts per se: Zhou Botong religiously respects his pledge to safeguard the scroll while refraining from practicing these arts himself, and Huang Yaoshi has vowed to destroy the Scripture as a sacrifice to the spirit of his wife, who died trying to reconstruct the text (and giving birth to Huang Rong) after Mei Chaofeng and her lover had stolen the original copy. What drives the two masters in their endless contest is the vindication of their honor through the fulfillment of their respective vows, and the sheer fascination of pitting their skills against an equal. Zhou Botong, whose love of the martial arts is not sated by the daily combats with Huang Yaoshi, spends his leisure moments inventing new techniques. Inspired by the teachings of softness and emptiness in the Daoist classic The Way and Its Virtue (Daode jing), he develops a style he dubs “Empty Radiance Boxing” (Kongming quan). Bored with his solitary life in the cave, he further devises the astonishing ability to let the two sides of his body operate independently and battle one another. When Guo Jing arrives upon the island, Zhou Botong, won over by his earnest simplicity, swears brotherhood with the youth and teaches him his new techniques. Then, consumed with curiosity about the Scripture’s arts and delighted with the thought of playing a practical joke on his new friend, he has Guo Jing memorize the contents of both scrolls—without revealing to him the identity of the texts he is learning. The text refrains from giving the Old Bratkin’s pranks unqualified endorsement. Zhou Botong himself reports how his elder Swordbrother chastised him for his heedless addiction to the raptures of martial practice. Wang Chongyang’s critique is couched in terms of the Daoist ideals of quietude and nonaction (wuwei); an opposite critique, privileging patriotic service over Zhou Botong’s self-centered enthusiasms, is implicit in the novel’s choice of Guo Jing—who is both passionate and painstakingly literal in the discharge of his responsibilities to his friends, his compatri-

National Passions

89

ots, and his nation—as its chief protagonist. Nonetheless, Zhou Botong remains one of the novel’s most memorable supporting characters, and he serves as a spokesman for a radical vision of the martial arts: as not merely a tool in the service of public allegiances or even personal gain, but as a realm of delight, self-justifying and self-sufficient. The martial arts in this guise represent the quintessential practice of a jianghu independent of the political imperatives of jiangshan. The Martial Arts, the Scripture, and Peach Blossom Isle Just as Jin Yong’s previous novels offer foreshadowings of Heroes’ narrative construction, so too they provide rudimentary versions of one of the primary constituents of this novel’s plot: the protagonist’s gradual maturation in the practice and mastery of the martial arts. Book and Sword’s Chen Jialuo enters the novel as an accomplished martial artist, trained beyond the passes and outside the narrative perimeter of the text. When he exits at the novel’s close, having failed in his personal and political endeavors, he remains in much the same condition as that in which he began: the episode of his learning new martial skills from the ancient scroll, rich as it is in symbolic resonance, effects revolutionary change in neither the fortunes of his enterprise nor his already eminent stature as a martial artist. Royal Blood’s Yuan Chengzhi, in contrast, first appears as a mere child, and matures into a supreme martial master and leader of the society of the Rivers and Lakes before the novel’s end. The text devotes considerable attention to the process of his martial education. A great deal of this education occurs under the tutelage of his master Mu Renqing, in the secure geographical retreat of Huashan and in a narrative sequence largely segregated from the events that occur after he leaves the mountain. It is during his years upon the mountain, however, that he discovers the remains of the Young Lord of the Golden Serpent and his mysterious Secret Scroll. The Secret Scroll then serves as the basis for a part of his continuing martial development, while the unraveling of the Young Lord’s debts of passion and vengeance motivates a significant portion of the subsequent narrative. Heroes expands upon this dimension of Royal Blood’s narrative structure and establishes it as the pattern for much of Jin Yong’s later fiction: Guo Jing’s gradual mastery of the martial arts, preparing him for the final battle upon Huashan that proves his mastery, is interwoven with his romance with Huang Rong, his relationship with his doomed sworn brother Yang Kang, and the struggle for the fate of the Chinese realm, as one of the primary strands of the novel’s plot.

90

Chapter 4

The martial arts structure the experiences of Guo Jing and other characters in several discrete ways. The complex hierarchical relationships that define the Martial Grove in its social aspect provide the ground for many of the moral and emotional conflicts that drive the plot. Different styles of martial arts reflect and shape different individuals’ distinctive personalities. And the gradual mastery of martial skills serves as the vehicle for broader processes of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual maturation.10 Jin Yong represents the martial arts in this last aspect as inextricably linked with other practices and principles of the Chinese cultural tradition; and a crucial aspect of this linkage is the role of texts and textuality in education, both martial and otherwise. The interlocking of philosophical principle, textual tradition, culturespecific arts, and martial realization emerges in the scene where Guo Jing witnesses a contest between Huang Yaoshi and Ouyang Feng. On the face of it, the masters’ contest is not martial at all, but rather a duet between Huang on the flute (xiao) and Ouyang on an iron-stringed zither (zheng). As Guo Jing listens, however, he realizes that the music serves as a channel for the rivals’ deadly cunning and awesome internal power. At this juncture he recalls Zhou Botong’s Daoist-inspired “Empty Radiance Boxing”: Now it seemed to Guo Jing as he listened that Huang Yaoshi would soon be crushed by Ouyang Feng’s thunderous and unremitting onslaught. But the music of the flute flashed and darted hither and thither, slipping through the slightest break in the zither’s sound. After a while the zither gradually slackened; the song of the flute, for its part, swelled with ever more fervent emotion. Guo Jing suddenly thought of a couplet from the “Empty Radiance Boxing” formula that Zhou Botong had taught him: “The hard cannot endure for long, the weak’s defense cannot be strong.” “The zither’s going to have a chance to strike back,” he thought. And indeed, just as the music of the jade flute soared into flight, with a sudden and mighty clamor the iron zither again brandished its awesome tones. Although Guo Jing had learned the boxing formula by heart, he was by nature rather unperceptive, while Zhou Botong was not particularly good at explanations. He had understood scarcely a tenth part of its inner meaning. But now as he listened to Huang Yaoshi and Ouyang Feng’s musical battle, their strikes and parries, advances and retreats all seemed to be in subtle accord with the formula he had memorized. He realized, to his great joy, that through the incessant combat of these two musical forces, he was gradually beginning to grasp some of the secrets of those parts which he had not previously understood. Guo Jing had also learned by heart the text of the first and second

National Passions

91

scrolls of the Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin. He suddenly had the dim sense that certain phrases from the Scripture somehow corresponded to the music of the zither and the song of the flute. But the text of the Scripture was profound and abstruse, and he had never had it expounded to him in any detail; even if he were to puzzle over it for a year or two, he would find it hard to make any sense of it. Now, with the waves of music assailing his ears, no sooner did he think of the Scripture than his mind was thrown into turmoil. Realizing the peril, he quickly shied away, and didn’t dare let his thoughts stray again toward the text of the Scripture. (714–715)

We see again, as we did in the case of Chen Jialuo’s learning from the Zhuangzi, that the text is a necessary but not a sufficient cause of understanding. The text uninterpreted is meaningless, a source of confusion and even of peril. Verbal explanation may contribute to the elucidation of the text, but real understanding depends on the illumination of the text by nontextual, nonverbal information: images, sounds, and other sensory impressions, mediated through individual psychic and somatic experience. Yet such experience, conversely, would apparently remain inert without the structures of language, principle, and cultural reference that the text is uniquely capable of providing. The most important text within Heroes is the Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin. Although the quoted passage shows Guo Jing unprepared to digest or utilize the knowledge that Zhou Botong’s mischievousness has recently bestowed upon him, very soon in the plot’s development the Scripture comes to play a key role in his fortunes. Forced to face Ouyang Feng’s nephew Ouyang Ke in a series of trials for Huang Rong’s hand, he wins the contest and astounds all present by faultlessly reciting the text of the second half of the Scripture. Zhou Botong subsequently reveals to Guo Jing that the text he has learned is in fact the Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin, declares to Huang Yaoshi that he has given him the Scripture by presenting him with Guo Jing as a son-in-law, and impulsively destroys the original text. Through the remainder of the novel, the text Guo Jing has memorized serves him as a guide to the further development of his inner power and martial skills—most notably when he employs its teachings to heal himself of a grievous wound and, in the process, brings his powers to an unprecedented level. And yet Guo Jing’s relationship to the Scripture has now become even more intimate than that of reader to text or practitioner to manual. Once Zhou Botong has destroyed the only written copy of the text, Huang Yaoshi attempts to send Guo Jing to his death in order to fulfill his vow to sacrifice the Scripture to his late wife’s spirit; Ouyang

92

Chapter 4

Feng and his nephew, for their part, try to kidnap the young hero in order to possess the Scripture’s secrets for themselves. As the Old Bratkin suggests, Guo Jing has now himself become, in some fundamental sense, the Scripture; the text is incarnate in the man. In sum, then, the importance of the Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin lies in its function as a narrative device, driving the plot forward through the narration of the protagonist’s encounters with this text and simultaneously “backward” through the analeptic narration of the volume’s origins; and also in its function as a figural device, weaving together the discourses of textuality, the martial arts, cultural knowledge, and personal maturation through the internalization and embodiment of such knowledge. In terms of the novel’s geographic imaginary, a similarly comprehensive role is played by the figure of the Peach Blossom Isle. Peach Blossom Isle’s function within the text not only reinforces our understanding of the ties between the martial arts, more general cultural knowledge, and the bildungsroman of the protagonist’s growth but also, through comparison with the geographic imaginary of the earlier novels, allows us to measure the direction and scope of the development of Jin Yong’s fictional imaginary. Book and Sword’s generalized vision of the lands beyond the passes as a realm of exile and refuge from political disaster assumes a more definite form in Royal Blood, concretized as the specific locale of the island in the southern seas to which Yuan Chengzhi leads his companions. Huang Yaoshi’s Peach Blossom Isle can be seen as playing a similar role within the plotting and geography of Heroes. After the second Dispute of the Swords, Guo Jing, Huang Rong, and Huang Yaoshi descend from Huashan and learn of the Mongols’ impending attack upon the Song. Huang Yaoshi counsels Guo Jing and Huang Rong to speed to Xiangyang to lead the defense while he returns to his island to await them: “Once the deed is accomplished, return as we have planned. Even if the court should offer position and reward, pay them no heed” (1554). The Mongols do in fact withdraw from Xiangyang, although their retreat, as we have seen, is providential and temporary at best. In the novel’s final scene, Guo Jing and Huang Rong leave the Mongol camp, sadly surveying the devastation of war; and the clear implication is that they are returning not to the embattled Song realm but to the haven of Peach Blossom Isle. The novel’s deferral of the Song realm’s ultimate defeat makes the Isle’s status as a haven in exile less pronounced, perhaps, than that of its predecessors. Even more significant, though, is another distinction: the fact that Peach Blossom Isle plays a prominent role within the unfolding

National Passions

93

of the narrative. Yuan Chengzhi’s southern island exists both outside the boundaries of the empire and beyond the limits of the tale; we know of it only as the place for which the hero departs once his adventures have played out to a conclusion. Peach Blossom Isle, in contrast, serves as the stage for extended portions of the novel’s narrative and crucial events in the unfolding of the plot. It is the site for dramatic conflicts between the masters of the Martial Grove, their comrades and families, and for significant episodes in the chief protagonist’s maturation—through encounters with the transformative text of the Scripture, and through interwoven developments in his romantic history. The earlier novels’ congruence between the limits of the narrative and the borders of the empire has loosened. Peach Blossom Isle extends the second imaginary’s claims upon the text beyond what has already been established by Huashan and the masters of the five directions. A locale poised on the waters outside the empire’s boundary occupies significant narrative space with tales of a world of Rivers and Lakes only tenuously associated with the fate of the “rivers and mountains.” Peach Blossom Isle’s very name declares its apolitical status, invoking Tao Qian’s (365–427) classical fable of Peach Blossom Spring, the timeless and idyllic community of refugees from political strife. The island, lying somewhere in the Eastern Sea off Zhejiang province, presents a riot of color and gusts of enrapturing scents to those who draw near, but is shunned by local sailors for its mystery and hidden menace. Strangers who venture onto its shores are lost within moments, bemazed by labyrinthine paths and byways patterned on the Eight Diagram Formation of the wizard Zhuge Liang. Huang Yaoshi has made his home here, not in retreat from political disaster but in avoidance of social convention. Paired though he is with Ouyang Feng, his “Heterodoxy” is quite different from his inveterate foe’s “ Venom,” motivated not by cruelty and lust for power but by contemptuous disregard for the vulgar world. Here on his isle he indulges his passion for the esoteric arts. In Zhou Botong’s words, “old Heterodoct Huang is terribly smart. The zither, chess, calligraphy and painting; medicine, divination, astrology and physiognomy; even agriculture and hydraulics, economics and military strategy—there’s not a one he doesn’t know, not a one he hasn’t studied to perfection” (671). Although not explicitly flagged here as “Chinese,” Huang Yaoshi’s arts are in effect the emblematic cultural accomplishments of Chinese civilization. Heroes may be set at a moment of crisis in Chinese dynastic history, and a major strand of its protagonist’s destiny is played out against the fate of the empire; in Peach

94

Chapter 4

Blossom Isle, however, Jin Yong imagines the possibility of a Chinese cultural terrain, beautiful, perilously entrancing perhaps, yet inexhaustibly fertile, existing in timeless independence from the vicissitudes of the political struggle. The fact that Peach Blossom Isle is home not only to Huang Yaoshi, the master and embodiment of the riches of Chinese culture, but also to his daughter Huang Rong, Guo Jing’s love interest, points to an intersection of Heroes’ romantic elements with its culturalist themes. And indeed the narrative of Guo Jing’s romantic travails not only runs parallel to that of his martial development but is deeply implicated with it as well. Huang Rong’s mother, exhausted by the stress of trying to reproduce the lost Scripture from memory, dies giving birth to her daughter. Huang Rong is therefore in some sense the Veritable Scripture incarnate in female form, and so (as well as through the conventional logic of opposite personalities that accordingly attract) the perfect match for the text’s male master Guo Jing. A conjoining of the textual, the martial, the feminine, and the erotic informs not only Guo Jing’s history but also those of Huang Yaoshi (who pines for his lost bride) and Mei Chaofeng (who simultaneously steals the Scripture and elopes with her Swordbrother, and who later carries the stolen text inscribed on a scroll made from her slain husband’s skin). Heroes thus offers rich opportunities for further analysis of the role of romance. Rather than availing itself of these opportunities, however, the next section of this chapter turns to even more fertile ground: Heroes’ sequel, The Giant Eagle and Its Companion, the novel widely regarded as Jin Yong’s boldest and most focused exploration of the theme of love within the universe of martial arts fiction. The Giant Eagle and Its Companion Companion’s story features Guo Jing, Huang Rong, and other characters from the successful Heroes, while focusing on the next generation, above all on Yang Guo, the son of Guo Jing’s ill-fated sworn brother Yang Kang. In its broadest contours, Yang Guo’s story could be said to parallel Guo Jing’s. A fatherless, displaced, and unpromising child undergoes a series of bizarre and perilous encounters that refine his character and build his martial skills to the point where he takes his place as the foremost champion of the age. His adventures culminate in a triumphant defense of the Chinese nation against foreign aggressors, after which he withdraws from the stage hand in hand with the warrior maid to whom he has pledged his

National Passions

95

heart. A summary at this level of abstraction, of course, could apply to any of hundreds of works of martial arts fiction. More importantly, it obscures Jin Yong’s deliberate creation of Yang Guo’s character, and of the motives impelling his maturation, as diametrically opposed to Guo Jing’s. “Guo Jing is simple and sincere, Yang Guo passionate and unrestrained,” as the author notes in comparing the protagonists of the three works in his trilogy.11 While Guo Jing’s journey is a dogged progress through challenges that polish and reveal a solid core of honesty and righteousness never far from the surface, Yang Guo’s is that of the shaping, through wounding and healing, of an emotionally and morally complex character. Midway through the novel, Huang Rong speaks of “the two insoluble knots” in Yang Guo’s heart (838): one, his birthright, is the mystery of his father’s death, and the other, tied fast early in the course of the narrative, is his romantic entanglement with the fey Xiao Longnü. On the narrative level the tortuous quest to loosen these two knots sets Yang Guo directly against Guo Jing and Huang Rong, who are implicated in Yang Kang’s demise and who stand as guardians of the social and moral norms threatened by Yang and Xiao Longnü’s relationship. On the level of characterization this quest reveals Yang Guo as “passionate” both in the broadest sense—sensitive, willful, and vehement—and in a narrower sense, profoundly invested in the arena of romance. Yang’s fire and psychological complexity make Companion a milestone in the evolution of Jin Yong’s successive novels toward a more central interest in the depiction of character as such. And through Yang Guo, Companion affirms a vision of romance—in the sense of heterosexual sentimental and erotic relationships—as paramount in the portrayal of character and the expression of individual identity. Some of the differences between Heroes and Companion are blazoned in the two novels’ titles.12 The shared “eagle,” which declares their affiliation, is paired with “hero(es)” in the first instance and with “chivalric companion(s)” or “lover(s)” (xialü) in the second. More specifically, the first novel’s title refers to the feat of arms by which the young Guo Jing proves his strength and skill, felling two black eagles with a single arrow from his massive bow. “Eagle-shooting” is thus an iconic act of martial prowess; one that does not, however, remain unencumbered by romantic entanglements. When Genghis Khan offers Guo Jing a reward for his deed, the lad begs him to release his daughter from an unwelcome betrothal—a request into which the Mongol princess reads more than the naive Guo Jing perhaps intends. Guo Jing and the princess then watch as a white eagle kills itself rather than survive the mate that perished under the black eagles’

96

Chapter 4

claws. They rescue two orphaned white eagle chicks and rear them together, an implicit symbol of their own prospective pairing. But when Guo Jing returns to the central plains, the princess presents the eagles to him as a gift, and the birds subsequently serve as the companions and allies of Guo Jing and his beloved Huang Rong. In this guise they reappear in Companion, heralding in fact Guo Jing and Huang Rong’s first arrival in the narrative. Toward the end of the tale, the eagles replay their parents’ fate from the earlier novel. When one of the pair is fatally wounded while rescuing Guo and Huang’s youngest daughter, Guo Xiang, the other brains itself against a cliff, preferring death over life without its mate. This avian act of sacrifice is modeled on an incident celebrated by the Jin dynasty poet Yuan Haowen (1190–1257), who erected a tomb to a pair of geese, one of whom had escaped a hunter’s nets only to kill itself out of loyalty to its slaughtered companion. Yuan Haowen’s plaintive lyric upon this occasion becomes a persistent refrain within Companion, recited by several of its lovelorn characters.13 And the novel’s human protagonists serially seek to recapitulate the birds’ ultimate expression of obsessive devotion. Guo Jing’s younger daughter Guo Xiang flings herself over the cliff to follow Yang Guo, for whom she has conceived a hopeless adolescent passion; Yang Guo has made the jump rather than live without his beloved Xiao Longnü; and Xiao Longnü has hurled herself into the invisible depths below Heartbreak Cliff in an attempt to conceal her imminent death from Yang Guo, whom she knows will refuse to live on if certain of her demise. The martial aspect of the eagle is present in Companion as well, in Yang Guo’s apotheosis as the “knight of the divine eagle” (shendiao xia), aided and mentored in his chivalric wanderings by a giant, ill-favored raptor. The publisher’s English title, The Giant Eagle and Its Companion, renders Shendiao xialü in this sense. But the Chinese title can equally be read in the plural, as “divine eagles, chivalric companions,” suggesting Guo Jing and Huang Rong’s paired birds and their various human counterparts discussed here; and this reading would weight the interpretation of the word lü towards “(romantic) companions,” that is, “lovers.” The ambiguity is presumably intentional. The dominating role of romantic passions within Companion raises the eagle’s value as a symbol of erotic devotion—a more grandiose version of Yuan Haowen’s goose or the conventional mandarin duck—to a prominence it lacks in Heroes. And it is the relationship between the erotic and the heroic, their interwoven roles in the formation of the protagonist’s character, which serves as the novel’s central thread.14

National Passions

97

The Tomb of the Living Dead and the Jade Maiden’s Heart Scripture As this study’s analysis of Jin Yong’s earlier novels has focused in good part on the works’ evolving geographic imaginary and on the narrative and symbolic roles of the martial arts, it will be useful to begin the further exploration of Companion along similar lines. How does the deepening interest in individual experience and the arena of romance affect the organization of the novel’s fictional landscapes? And what are the fate and function of martial practice under the recalibrated thematic agenda? The governing structures of Heroes’ geography—the political division of the map between a Chinese heartland and an alien periphery, and a more mythic organization of space around an axial sacred mountain— reappear in Companion. The former continues to find its chief representation in the city of Xiangyang, where Guo Jing defied the Mongol invaders in the first novel’s final chapters. He leaves Peach Blossom Isle to resume this post in the sequel, holding the line against the foe through the years of the narrative, and is joined here, at the end, by Yang Guo for another climactic confrontation and a victory over the Mongols even more resounding than the first. Heroes’ Huashan, likewise, plays a prominent role in Companion’s mythic geography and its associated narrative of martial and moral development. At a key point in his wanderings, Yang Guo finds his way to this mountain and witnesses the final duel between Venom of the West Ouyang Feng and Beggar of the North Hong Qigong. The experience not only deepens his mastery of the martial arts—in the later stages of the contest the exhausted combatants employ him as a living model for their rival techniques—but also, as he watches the inveterate foes die in a final flash of illumination and a mutual embrace, opens his eyes to the vanity of striving and the preciousness of human life. At the close of the novel, after victory at Xiangyang, Yang Guo and Guo Jing return together to Huashan and are recognized as Ouyang Feng’s and Hong Qigong’s successors, the Madman of the West and the Knight (xia) of the North, respectively, in a reconstituted pentarchy of the martial universe. But Huashan’s dominance of Companion’s mythic terrain is far from absolute. The sacred mountain’s heaven-piercing heights are mirrored and paradoxically overshadowed by its topographic inverse—the recesses of a cave. While various grottoes, tombs, and holes have played significant narrative and symbolic roles in Heroes, and the earlier novels as well, in Companion they claim priority as an alternate, subterranean version of the world navel, characterized by darkness, cold, and death; by the emotional

98

Chapter 4

pain of loss and rejection; by the feminine, the erotic, and the ultimately redemptive energies of desire. This constellation of images and significations is foreshadowed in Yang Guo’s first appearance; he is discovered when a battle between characters driven mad by thwarted passions leads to the abandoned kiln where he lives as an orphan. But fuller elaboration of the symbolism of the underground lair comes slightly later in the narrative, with the Tomb of the Living Dead (Huosiren mu). The Tomb of the Living Dead lies adjacent to Zhongnanshan, the seat of the Quanzhen Daoist sect founded by Wang Chongyang, victor at the first Dispute of the Swords on Huashan. As a young man, Wang was a leader of Han loyalist resistance against the Jin invaders, and he had disguised his underground arsenal and base of operations as an ancient tomb. With Jin victory and the failure of the Han cause, he vowed never to live under the same heaven as his foes, named himself the Living Dead Man, and immured himself in his erstwhile headquarters, which he fortified with further mazes and booby traps. After eight years he was lured from his subterranean retreat by a former rival from the Rivers and Lakes, the female champion Lin Zhaoying, who longed for Wang to make her his wife. Wang Chongyang, though not unmoved by her beauty and skill, was too obsessed with the national tragedy to accept her suit. The warrioress, stung by Wang’s rejection, challenged him to a contest. If victory fell to him, she would kill herself, but if to her, he would have to choose between either letting her join him in the tomb as his wife or ceding it to her, renouncing the world, and erecting a temple on nearby Zhongnanshan. Her (rigged) triumph resulted in the founding of the Quanzhen sect; the female disciples of her own lineage continue to inhabit the tomb, forbidden to leave its precincts. The Tomb of the Living Dead simultaneously challenges the novel’s political and mythic geographies. It is the burial ground of Wang Chongyang’s patriotic ambitions, and a monument to dynastic tragedy. It is the genetrix of Zhongnanshan’s Quanzhen sect, the chthonic female obverse of the male-dominated mountain (and by extension of the other peak, Huashan, on which its master wins fame), and a reproachful reminder of the passion, pain, and unresolved enmity that undergird its veneer of otherworldly transcendence. It marks private experience in its most intense form—the erotic— as sundered from and antagonistic to public heroism in both its historic and mythic manifestations. The reader learns the history of the Tomb of the Living Dead when it is related to Guo Jing, who has come to Zhongnanshan to deliver Yang Guo to the Quanzhen sect for tutelage. Yang Guo’s earlier apprenticeship

National Passions

99

to Guo Jing and his wife has been sabotaged by his own willful, sensitive nature and by Huang Rong’s distrust of his character and parentage. Guo Jing’s second attempt to do right by his sworn brother’s offspring fares no better. Yang Guo, scornful of the Daoists into whose care he has been delivered, and cheated and bullied by them in turn, flees the mountain and finds refuge in the tomb. The Ancient Tomb sect’s present mistress, the young Xiao Longnü, violates the lineage’s precepts and accepts him as its first male disciple. And so it is neither Guo Jing and Huang Rong’s Peach Blossom Isle nor the sacred mountain of the Quanzhen sect but the Tomb of the Living Dead, which becomes the true cradle of Yang’s development. The fit is a good one, despite Yang’s anomalous gender, for the new disciple’s life is already marked by losses, misunderstandings, and harbored enmities not dissimilar to those that motivated the sect’s founding. Just as the Ancient Tomb is the topographical obverse of Zhongnanshan, so too are its martial arts an inverted mirror of the Quanzhen sect’s, designed by Lin Zhaoying to counter and defeat the skills of her nemesis. Ancient Tomb disciples first learn their own sect’s basic practices, then the fundamentals of Quanzhen martial arts, and in a third and culminating stage the energy training and sword techniques of the Jade Maiden’s Heart Scripture (Yunü xinjing), which match and neutralize the Quanzhen techniques move for move, point by point. It is not only in this obsessive mirroring of Wang Chongyang’s arts, however, that the practices passed down by Lin Zhaoying embody her heartbreak and resentment. The guiding principle of all of the Ancient Tomb’s esoteric techniques is an uncompromising detachment from emotional excitation, which might disorder their painstakingly cultivated psychosomatic energies. The sect’s female adherents are indeed the living dead, forbidden to leave the Tomb’s precincts and following a meditative regime that leaves them unfeeling, expressionless, and physically cold to the touch. Predictably, the fixation on emotional and erotic energy that undergirds the Jade Maiden’s Heart Scripture produces results opposite to its consciously articulated goals of chastity and detachment. Not only do the icy virgins of the Ancient Tomb sect excite the unwelcome attention of males who encounter or even hear of them, but they themselves prove catastrophically susceptible to those energies, the denial of which structures their practice. Xiao Longnü’s renegade Swordsister Li Mochou is a vengeful demoness twisted by thwarted desire. And Xiao Longnü herself opens the gate to the return of the sect’s repressed through her transgressive act of accepting a male disciple. Once Yang Guo has mastered the Ancient Tomb sect’s first-stage techniques of control—sleeping on Xiao Longnü’s

100

Chapter 4

bed of frigid jade, capturing eighty-one sparrows in flight—the knowledge of Quanzhen formulae he has brought with him enables him and his teacher to quickly master the second stage. The third stage, the practices of the Jade Maiden’s Heart Scripture proper, require master and disciple to practice together—in physical proximity, lest either require assistance, and unclothed, so that the powerful energies involved may circulate and disperse freely. Yang Guo, a naive adolescent, sees no impediment to their initiating this stage of practice, but Xiao Longnü, several years older and more steeped in her sect’s suspicions of the ways of the world, demurs until her disciple discovers an ideal locale: a dense thicket of crimson flowers just outside the tomb that will allow them to meditate side by side but screened from one another’s sight. So here, by night, they practice, as the intensifying heat of their bodies carries the scent of the blossoms into the air. However foreseeable the ultimate outcome of their practice may be, the vicissitudes interposed between its commencement and the pair’s ultimate union as husband and wife fully vindicate Jin Yong’s reputation as a master of narrative retardation and baroquely inventive plotting. Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü are discovered by two Quanzhen Daoists, one of whom already harbors a secret passion for Zhongnanshan’s bewitching neighbor. Yang drives the two away, but not before the interruption of her practice at a critical juncture—together with mortification at the accusations the Daoists have voiced concerning her behavior—leaves Xiao Longnü stricken with a grievous internal wound. Yang Guo heals her by feeding her with his own hot blood. He further shows himself ready to die for his teacher and benefactor when the renegade Li Mochou attacks. A man’s willingness to give up his life for her releases Xiao Longnü from the sect’s stricture that she spend her life within the tomb, and she leaves with Yang to resume their joint practice in a secluded mountain valley. Here, though, while temporarily alone and incapacitated, she is found and violated by the lustful Daoist. Believing that it is Yang Guo who has taken such liberties with her, she asks him to address her as his wife, not his teacher; taking his perplexed and embarrassed demurral as a sign of faithlessness, she flees. Thus is tied the second of the knots that twist Yang Guo’s path. Although Xiao Longnü’s sentimental education, the awakening of the ice maiden, is well under way, Yang’s, the recognition of the character and depth of his feelings for the woman he thinks of as his teacher, has only begun. The chain of partings and reunions that ensues serves as one of the primary narrative engines for the rest of the novel’s forty chapters. The practices of the Jade Maiden’s Heart Scripture validate emotional

National Passions

101

and erotic experience by positing it as integral to development in the martial arts. The path that leads Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü from joint meditation to romantic union is not, as it first appears, a perversion of the Ancient Tomb sect’s teachings, but rather a revelation of their unacknowledged essence. This point becomes most evident during the first of Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü’s reunions. The pair’s confessions of mutual devotion and delight in one another’s renewed company are interrupted by contests with a series of foes led by the Mongols’ chief martial champion, the Tibetan lama Jinlun Fawang. Even the Jade Maiden Swordplay fails to subdue this adversary. But in the heat of battle, Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü suddenly discover that if they deploy Ancient Tomb and Quanzhen techniques in tandem, the apparently antagonistic styles prove to be in fact complementary, and in synthesis form a martial art far more formidable than either wielded alone. The passage describing their resulting performance bears quoting at length: Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü had practiced this sword technique several times without success. But now, as they faced unprecedented peril, their foremost feelings were of closeness and concern for one other, and each placed the beloved’s well-being above personal safety. This accorded precisely with the sword technique’s guiding principle. Each move within the set suggested a romantic pastime; and whether “stroking the lute and playing the flute,” “sweeping the snow to brew tea,” “playing chess beneath the pines,” or “sporting with cranes beside the pond,” each reflected the joining of man and woman in an inexpressible delicacy of sentiment. Lin Zhaoying had met with disappointment on the field of love and ended her days in sorrow within the Ancient Tomb. She was skilled in both the martial and the civil arts: the zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting—there was not one she had not mastered, and in the end she poured the accomplishments of her entire lifetime into this set of martial techniques. She created it merely to ease the feelings harbored within her own breast; never did she dream that decades later a pair of lovers might appear who would actually employ it to foil a powerful foe. When they first began using the technique, Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü did not fully grasp its subtleties, but the more they fought on the more their mastery increased. Many of this swordplay’s more profound aspects were simply impossible to grasp if the man and woman practicing it were not lovers. Without that communion of souls, a pair joining their swords as friends would be hindered by courtesy; master and disciple would unavoidably be overprotective on the one hand and overdependent on the other; and husband and wife, even if they might master some part of the art’s subtleties, would yet find

102

Chapter 4

themselves lacking to a certain degree the lover’s myriad moods of amorous languor, of bashful eagerness, of hesitation poised expectantly between union and parting. At this time Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü’s love for one another was at its most profound, but they had not yet joined the silken bonds of matrimony, and deep in their hearts could feel that the road ahead was full of trials and snares. They were filled with both sweet joy and bitter apprehension; and this emotion gradually became identical with the very spirit in which Lin Zhaoying had created the Jade Maiden Swordplay. Watching the battle from the side, Huang Rong saw that an awkward shyness had tinted Xiao Longnü’s cheeks with a blush, while time and again Yang Guo stole longing and protective glances in her direction. Even as they joined in battle against a powerful foe, they revealed the deep passion and ardent affection of the love shared between man and woman. Huang Rong couldn’t help but be astonished, yet at the same time was so affected by the pair that she began to recall the time when love had first blossomed between herself and Guo Jing. The clamorous violence that filled the tavern was somehow suffused with a boundless tenderness of passion. (564–565)

Like Huang Yaoshi, Lin Zhaoying is depicted as steeped in the artistic traditions of “the zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting” and effecting a synthesis of the civil and martial arts. But where her arts diverge from the model established by Huang Yaoshi is in the primacy of the erotic—the energies of affection and desire that alone give power to the synthesis. Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü’s discovery of the inner energies of the Jade Maiden Swordplay serves in part to motivate the action of the novel, affecting the course of the present combat as well as their subsequent adventures. Its significance, however, is not merely confined to its utility to the protagonists and its narrative function, for the erotic energies become also an occasion for lyrical celebration. Delight in the experience and exchange of sentiment dominates the lovers’ consciousness, overshadowing their investment in the contest against their foe; their feelings are powerful enough to quicken a similar emotional experience in the interdiegetic onlooker; and all this is conveyed to the reader by the text’s own choice to delay the forward impetus of incident and outcome in favor of a descriptive and discursive tour de force. Through both emplotment and textual discourse, the validation of erotic experience is thus affirmed for the novel’s characters and offered to its readers as well. The description here of the lovers’ state as that of neither friends nor spouses and as “poised expectantly between union and parting” suggests that the erotic energies flow most powerfully when triggered by the uncer-

National Passions

103

tainty and urgency that attend a crossing of thresholds. Transgression, indeed, is a central theme throughout the narrative of Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü’s romance. The emotional—and consequently, as we see here, martial—power of their erotic connection serves as the mainstay of a personal integrity unbowed by convention and societal demands. Yang Guo violates the rules of martial society by abandoning his sworn teachers in the Quanzhen sect, and Xiao Longnü the strictures of her own order by accepting a male disciple. Their joint practice of the Jade Maiden Heart Scripture, though ostensibly innocent in motivation, clearly threatens the norms of propriety governing male-female relations. And in the immediate antecedent to the episode discussed here, they overtly reject social precepts, stunning a plenary gathering of the heroes of the Martial Grove by declaring their intention to marry despite Confucian insistence on the inviolability of the hierarchy separating master from disciple. Originally ignorant of such prohibitions, they are no less dismissive of them when lectured by Guo Jing as the presiding elder. Their intransigence nearly moves Guo Jing to execute Yang Guo, and it is Huang Rong’s warning to Xiao Longnü that she will be subjecting her beloved to a life of ridicule if she takes him as her husband that drives the lovers apart once again. Their mutual devotion eventually reunites them, of course, and their longdelayed wedding epitomizes the linkage between romantic experience and defiantly individualistic integrity: they take their vows before the image of Wang Chongyang in the Quanzhen sect’s inner sanctum, using a hostage to hold at bay the mob of murderously outraged Daoists. But while Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü’s union at one level underscores the rift between the Ancient Tomb and the Quanzhen sect and the antagonism between the private and the public that we earlier noted as structuring this rivalry, at another level it points to the potential healing of these divisions. This is one of the possibilities indicated by the pair’s discovery of the hidden complementarity of the Jade Maiden and Quanzhen sword techniques, even if at this point the harmonizing of opposites remains within the realm of individual practice, its wider implications only symbolized. Their wedding brings the vision home to the geographic centers of both camps; after swearing their vows in the Quanzhen sanctum, they return to the Tomb of the Living Dead, where Xiao Longnü dons Lin Zhaoying’s never-used wedding finery. Yang Guo explicitly defines their union as redressing the failure of the two sects’ founders: “Founding Master Wang and the Founding Mistress were heroes a hundred times greater than you or I, yet they never dared to wed. If the two of them are watching us from the netherworld, I’m not so sure they would say that we’ve

104

Chapter 4

done wrong!” (1132). Even the most persuasive championing of the prerogatives of sentiment, however, does not in and of itself resolve the more fundamental divide between private integrity and public duty. Yang Guo’s road toward healing the wider divide is first intimated in the fact that the secret of the Jade Maiden/Quanzhen swordplay is discovered in combat against a champion of China’s Mongol invaders. This hint is reprised in the wedding scene, when the newlyweds discover in Lin Zhaoying’s bridal chest a packet of letters from Wang Chongyang in which he faithfully reports his successes and setbacks in the campaign against the Jin. While personal integrity as crystallized in erotic experience stands defiantly independent from social morality, it seems to entertain the possibility of a more productive dialogue with another aspect of public life—devotion to the nation. This sketch of the romantic facets of Yang Guo’s development is therefore incomplete until viewed alongside his education as a loyalist hero. The Education of a Loyalist From its earliest pages, Comrade appears to relegate the questions of nation and history to secondary status relative to the life of the heart. Heroes’ opening episodes, as we have seen, directly involve Song loyalist heroes in the struggle against the Jin invaders, and the narrative and thematic frameworks established in these episodes inform the entire novel. While the opening of Comrade quickly identifies the historical setting—the Lizong reign (1225–1264) of the Southern Song—it provides no further details of the political situation; and while the initial narrative sequence serves the same function of adumbrating the work’s themes and circuitously initiating its plot lines, the figures it presents are not loyalist champions but grief-maddened lovers. As the main characters are introduced and more central strands of the plot engaged, the problem of the nation’s fate remains in the background. Wang Chongyang’s struggles against the Jin are a bit of backstory, an element in the account of the founding of the Ancient Tomb and Quanzhen sects. And when the Mongols and their allies first appear upon the stage, it is as importunate suitors of the virginal Xiao Longnü; their villainy first manifests itself in erotic rather than political guise. It is only a good quarter of the way through the novel that the national crisis gains prominence, when Guo Jing convenes a Feast of Heroes to rally the champions of the Martial Grove against an imminent renewal of the Mongol assault on Xiangyang. From the perspective of Yang Guo, however,

National Passions

105

as well as of the narrative that remains centered on his adventures, the Feast of Heroes is important less for its contribution to the patriotic cause than for its role in the evolving melodrama of his relationship with Xiao Longnü. Yang, making his way to the gathering after his encounter with Ouyang Feng and Hong Qigong on Huashan, is moved by the displays of patriotic fervor he sees, even though “he had been deprived of education since childhood and didn’t know the weighty significance of the word ‘loyalty’ (zhongyi)” (471). But the sudden appearance of Xiao Longnü absorbs his entire attention; when Jinlun Fawang and his disciples arrive to challenge the assembly, the pair remains oblivious to the savage duels being waged scant feet away from their persons until a flying shard from a shattered weapon bruises Xiao Longnü’s toe. Yang Guo enters the fray to avenge this slight, and he and his beloved win glory for the Han heroes by besting the alien challengers. It is at the banquet held in their honor that they shatter the goodwill they have earned, by announcing their intention to marry in the face of Confucian prohibitions. Their subsequent departure from the company, and so from the defense of Xiangyang, declares the priority of their romantic relationship not only over moral convention but over any patriotic duty as well. The issue of Yang Guo’s involvement in the loyalist project has nonetheless been raised. What moves the issue toward a crisis is not his relationship with his teacher/lover, but the other “knot” governing his course —the mystery of his father’s death. After Huang Rong’s warnings have prompted Xiao Longnü to abandon Yang Guo once again, the distraught young hero discovers information that seems to confirm his lurking suspicions that it was Huang Rong and Guo Jing who killed Yang Kang. Half mad with grief, he happens to encounter a party of pillaging Mongols, outriders from the advance upon Xiangyang, one of whom flaunts on his spear a not-quite-dead Chinese infant. The enraged Yang Guo slays the Mongol, releases the child from its misery, and gives it a proper burial. He meditates on the cruelty of the invaders; but his thoughts then turn from his compassion for the infant he has just buried to his still-raw indignation over the fate of his father, whose corpse was left for the crows. He interprets this harrowing incident, in other words, in terms not of national peril but of personal injury. Resolving to avenge himself upon his father’s murderers, he establishes a tentative alliance with Jinlun Fawang and his followers—unconvincingly stipulating that he will not directly aid them against the Song—and sets off for a pivotal confrontation with Guo Jing and Huang Rong at Xiangyang. The climactic encounter is delayed. While such delay is a sine qua non

106

Chapter 4

of Jin Yong’s narrative art, the particular content of the episodes intervening and complicating the plot in this instance has direct bearing on the novel’s calibration of the erotic and patriotic imperatives. No sooner has Yang Guo allied himself with the Mongols than he and his companions find themselves diverted into a hidden valley. The vale is inhabited by a sect in antique garb, devoted to quietistic practices (and of course martial arts) centered on the quelling of the passions. Growing within the vale are thickets of a strange flower with luxuriant blossoms and nearly invisible thorns. A small dose of the venom carried by the thorns will cause a victim pain each time he or she feels the stirring of desire; a large dose will prove, in time, fatal. The plant’s fruits vary in taste, one in ten being delicious while the others are inedible, but their multicolored skins offer no clues for distinguishing the succulent from the foul. The flower is the passion flower (qinghua), and the valley is named Passion’s End Vale (Jueqing gu). In Passion’s End Vale Yang Guo rediscovers Xiao Longnü, who, in a despairing attempt to sever her seemingly ill-fated ties with her disciple, has agreed to marry the valley’s master. Her resolve crumbles with Yang Guo’s reappearance. But leaving the valley proves far from easy: the valemaster refuses to relinquish his bride; his daughter conceives a passion for Yang Guo; Yang and this maiden, cast together into a crocodile pit, discover the valemaster’s abandoned and crippled first wife, a crone nursing scores against her faithless husband and against her brother’s killer, Guo Jing. Poisonings by the thorns of the passion flower and struggles over the antidote further complicate the mare’s nest of feuds and alliances. After Yang Guo has fed his dose of the antidote to Xiao Longnü, the crone promises to cure his own poisoning once he brings her the heads of Guo Jing and Huang Rong. And so, after an interval of some chapters and (in the book edition) several hundred pages, Yang Guo resumes his mission to Xiangyang. This first sequence in Passion’s End Vale ensures that Yang Guo’s mission against Guo Jing is motivated by both of the fixations that drive him, the need to avenge his father and his devotion to Xiao Longnü (who will refuse to live on if he himself perishes). It also establishes numerous ancillary plot lines and an inevitable return to the vale. Besides playing these roles in the architecture of the plot, the vale also elaborates the novel’s symbolic topography. Just as its inhabitants’ quietistic practices recall the Ancient Tomb sect’s insistence on detachment and emotional control, so do its contours echo those of that previous subterranean space. It is a cavity in the earth; and its general depression is punctuated by two more dramatic chasms—the pit in which the vale master’s wife is entombed, and

National Passions

107

the abyss of Heartbreak Cliff, into which Xiao Longnü will later hurl herself. As with the Tomb of the Living Dead itself, a space ostensibly dedicated to the burial of passion thus proves to be a womb in which the passions fester and incubate, building strength for their inevitable return. For Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü, this second tomb/womb of passion serves as the proving ground where the love engendered in the Tomb of the Living Dead is sacrificed and reborn. But where does this erotically symbolic terrain stand in relation to the problem of public duty raised by Yang Guo’s determination to assassinate China’s defender against the Mongols? A clue may be found in the vale master’s account of the vale’s settlement in the wake of the chaos of the Tianbao reign (742–756) of the Tang. The vale’s origin as a refuge from political disorder evokes—as do the antique garb of its inhabitants, its hidden grottolike entrance, and its ubiquitous blossoms—the model of Tao Qian’s Peach Blossom Spring. Unlike the Qin oppression from which the founders of that utopia sought refuge, however, the chaos that drove the vale master’s ancestor into reclusion carries erotic connotations. It was infatuation with his consort Yang Guifei that led the Tang emperor to neglect his duties and allow the revolt of the barbarian An Lushan. Indignation at passion’s subversion of the empire motivated the vale’s founding and implicitly informs its regime of rigorous detachment. Passion’s End Vale manifests a conventional view of erotic passion as subversive of both the personal microcosm and the political macrocosm. It is thus no accident that soon after entering the vale, Yang Guo, flirting with the vale master’s daughter, evokes another classic parable of this worldview, the story of the ruler whose attempts to amuse a concubine by lighting beacon fires leads to the destruction of his reign. Like the Tomb of the Living Dead, Passion’s End Vale raises the question of the compatibility of private passion and public duty. The web of myth and blatant allegory of which the vale is composed poses the question in even more absolute terms than the Ancient Tomb’s more closely textured interweaving of fiction and history. And the very transposition of the problem onto such dehistoricized and fabulous terrain grants a clear advantage to the claims of a transcendent passion. So too, of course, does the rapidly emergent hypocrisy of the vale master’s puritanical position. In order to vindicate the compatibility of duty and passion, Yang Guo must leave the allegorical precincts of the vale and return to the Mongolinvested city of Xiangyang. There Guo Jing, sharing his couch with his former disciple, declares that the epitome of chivalry is service to the nation and the people (wei min wei guo, xia zhi da zhe). Though moved by these

108

Chapter 4

ideals, by Guo Jing’s personal cordiality, and by awareness of the terrors of a Mongol conquest, Yang Guo persists in his assassination attempt and is foiled only by accident. The next day, the oblivious Guo Jing takes him on a tour of the defenses that becomes a patriotic review of the city’s historical and cultural heritage—the stream across which the future emperor Liu Bei escaped his enemies, the birthplace of the great poet Du Fu, the hermitage of the immortal minister Zhuge Liang. When Guo Jing rides to the rescue of a mob of civilian refugees, Yang Guo saves him from a deadly attack by Jinlun Fawang. This deed is perhaps motivated by Yang’s desire to strike the fatal blow himself. But when Guo Jing enters the Mongol camp alone to negotiate the release of hostages, Yang Guo, who had originally planned to take this opportunity to strike, ends up fighting off his supposed allies and rescuing the wounded hero single-handed. Even this act, however, stems from personal loyalty rather than a sense of public duty; Yang is unable to raise his hand against the man who (still unaware of Yang’s intentions) has just risked his own life to defend him. The final stage in the extended subversion and transformation of Yang Guo’s mission occurs when Jinlun Fawang enters the city to attack the grievously injured Guo Jing and the imminently expectant Huang Rong. Guo Jing seeks to stand between his wife and their foe; Huang Rong asks him who is more important to the city’s defense, he or she; and Guo Jing concedes: “The nation comes first!” Witnessing this demonstration of a patriotism that takes precedence even over their undeniable mutual devotion, Yang Guo finds his own private commitments bowing to something greater: In an instant, the texts that Huang Rong had taught him as a child on Peach Blossom Isle, with their phrases about “sacrificing one’s self to realize benevolence” and “giving up life to gain righteousness,” 15 became extraordinarily lucid in his mind, and he found himself filled with both a profound sense of shame and a feeling of exalted purpose. Facing an attack from a fearsome foe, with life and death poised in the balance, he suddenly understood with utter clarity a host of matters to which he had never given the slightest conscious thought. As his spirit soared, it seemed as if his whole body grew taller, and his expression grew radiant, almost as if he had become a different person entirely. (892–893)

Here at the midpoint of the novel, as Huang Rong gives birth to twins who will be named for the bastion she and her husband are defending, Yang Guo himself is reborn as a hero devoted to his nation and its people. The problem remains of reconciling his reordered priorities with the

National Passions

109

still insistent claims of vengeance and love. The immediate need to procure an antidote to the passion flower’s poison is mitigated by an act of altruism that providentially delays the venom’s effects until an alternate cure is discovered. The need to avenge Yang Kang, repressed rather than resolved by the patriotic apotheosis, is relinquished when Yang Guo finally learns the truth of his father’s character and deeds and the precise circumstances of his death. Yang Guo’s willingness to subjugate fierce filial loyalty to the dictates of higher moral and public values thus stands in contrast to Yang Kang’s betrayal of his own father (in Heroes) for personal interest. It could be argued, even so, that Yang Guo’s loss of an arm to the blade of the spoiled and spiteful Guo Fu is in part a payment of the symbolic price for the abandonment of a fundamental obligation owed to his patriarchal heritage. However that may be, it is the balance between the public and patriotic roles of the xia and the private passions of the lover that is of primary concern through the remainder of the novel. The most basic level on which this balance is weighed is, of course, the disposition of the plot. Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü are separated yet again in the aftermath of the events at Xiangyang. Yang loses his arm, but at the novel’s third significant sub-terrene locale, the Sword Tomb of Dugu Qiubai (literally “the solitary seeker of defeat”), begins to learn this departed master’s martial skills under the tutelage of a mystic eagle. He rejoins Xiao Longnü at Zhongnanshan, where the pair helps prevent the Quanzhen sect from falling under Mongol control and then declares through their marriage a rejection of that rupture between the private and the public that shadowed the lives of Wang Chongyang and Lin Zhaoying. But their vision still awaits testing. They return to Passion’s End Vale, where Xiao Longnü wins the final dose of the passion flower antidote for Yang Guo, only to see him toss it over the cliff—he is unwilling to live on knowing that she has received incurable wounds. Huang Rong discovers an herb that will cure Yang’s poisoning and informs Xiao Longnü, who disappears, leaving only a note charging Yang to make use of the cure and rejoin her at Heartbreak Cliff in sixteen years. The note is a decoy; Xiao Longnü has hurled herself over the cliff in order to conceal her imminent demise and left the message in order to trick Yang Guo into preserving his own life. Yang falls for the ploy and, after healing himself, resumes his training under the eagle. The narrative jumps forward almost sixteen years. Chapter 33 opens with a set piece in a snowbound inn, where a gathering of travelers from all regions of China shares tales of the one-armed Knight of the Divine Eagle, who has touched

110

Chapter 4

each of their lives with his chivalry, defense of justice, and uncompromising resistance against the Mongol oppressors. Yang Guo soon appears in person and befriends Guo Jing’s younger daughter, Guo Xiang. The resumed narrative labyrinth winds its way once again toward the city of Guo Xiang’s birth, Xiangyang, now girding itself against yet another renewal of the Mongol assault. At a birthday celebration that coincides with a meeting to plan the city’s defense, Guo Xiang receives astounding gifts from the Knight of the Divine Eagle: the ears of the Mongol vanguard, fireworks heralding the burning of the enemy’s granaries, a captured Mongol champion. Yang Guo himself, however, does not attend, for he has returned to Passion’s End Vale to keep his appointment with Xiao Longnü at Heartbreak Cliff. There he finally realizes that her promised return was only a ploy, and he throws himself from the precipice. Back at Xiangyang the city is about to fall and Guo Xiang about to perish under Jinlun Fawang’s hand—when Yang Guo reappears. He has discovered Xiao Longnü alive and miraculously healed in a grotto beyond the pool at the bottom of Heartbreak Cliff. He slays Jinlun Fawang and then the Mongol Khan; the invaders are routed. All lingering misunderstandings between Yang Guo and Guo Jing are resolved. Yang and Guo travel to Huashan and are enrolled among the five paramount masters of the martial world. Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü depart bathed in moonlight, hand in hand. On the face of it, the narrative affirms the compatibility of the public and the private, the erotic and the patriotic: Yang Guo succeeds as both devoted lover and champion of the nation, and he fulfills the promise of healing the wound that sundered Wang Chongyang’s mountain from Lin Zhaoying’s cave. On closer examination, though, the equation uniting the two poles of experience remains complex. Are the patriotic and the erotic truly of commensurate value? One might argue that on some moral or karmic scale it is Yang Guo’s sixteen years of chivalric and loyalist service that win Xiao Longnü’s miraculous return, and his routing of the nation’s enemies that earns him the right to leave the stage at her side. It is not difficult, however, to turn this argument around and point out that it is his beloved’s absence and the hope of her return that move him to fill the long years with chivalric endeavor, and that if their reunion is his reward, then it is also the ultimate end to which patriotic service is an instrumental or obligatory means. Certainly the plot’s final pivot and the novel’s climactic act, Yang Guo’s leap from Heartbreak Cliff, is motivated—whatever its providential consequences—by a romantic devotion that rejects the imminent crisis at Xiangyang and all other competing claims. The most cursory look at the secondary literature likewise confirms that while read-

National Passions

111

ers dutifully admire the novel’s patriotism, it is its exploration of erotic experience that inspires their identification, analysis, and tireless debate.16 This is not to deny that Comrade represents Jin Yong’s perhaps most stirring rendition of the notion that “the epitome of chivalry is service to the nation and the people.” Yang Guo is a more convincing embodiment of this ideal than Guo Jing precisely because of the competing demands on his allegiance and his need to undergo a painful education in what Guo seems to take for granted. On the levels both of plot and of textual performance, though, the novel grants private erotic experience a power that harbors the potential to subvert its ostensible allegiance with the public and patriotic project. Chapter 6 will examine the flowering of this potential in a later novel, The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. The novel’s exploration of the public and the private casts the Chinese cultural tradition in a complex set of roles. The key text within the narrative, the Jade Maiden Heart Scripture, represents, as we have seen, an apparently seamless fusion of Lin Zhaoying’s mastery of the culture’s civil and military arts with her plumbing of her own emotional experience, and through its power—activated by Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü’s own emotional integrity—testifies to a productive synthesis between the individual and the cultural heritage. Guo Jing’s literary and historical citations during the tour of Xiangyang and Yang Guo’s sudden grasp of the classics at his moment of patriotic illumination indicate a similarly fruitful relationship between the tradition and the public virtues, and so corroborates the novel’s overall harmonization of the public with the private. What complicates the picture is the fact that the tradition appears in another role as well: for what if not “tradition” and the classics are the source of the Confucian morality that heaps shame upon Yang Guo and his beloved at the Feast of Heroes and drives them once more apart? We see here an echo, perhaps reflexive, of the tension between modernism and iconoclasm on the one hand and cultural nationalism on the other, which has played out in China’s life and literature since at least the late Qing era.17 “Confucian morality” seems rather an opportunistic target here, as the violent and fantastic world in which the novel’s characters operate bears only the most tenuous relationship to the social conditions of historical Song China. What is noteworthy in any case is the fact that a rejection of the tradition’s supposed subjugation of individual desire to public morality does not preclude the reification of that same tradition as a public “Chinese culture” worthy of the individual’s allegiance. Both the erotic and the patriotic are constructed through the individual’s relationship with an other. But in Comrade, as throughout Jin Yong’s

112

Chapter 4

oeuvre, the ultimate focus of both types of relationship is the individual himself (I use the pronoun advisedly, for the protagonists are uniformly male). Yang Guo’s engagement in public duty is not participation in a community but the heroic and solitary rendering of services that win him renown and the right to leave the scene with his beloved. As for his union with Xiao Longnü, not only does it assert the traditional hierarchy of male over female—even she is delighted when he first begins to command her as his wife rather than heed her as his teacher—but it also provides psychic energies that further his quest for individual and exclusive mastery. It is during his final long separation from her that he devises a consummate set of martial techniques, the Desolate Soul-Dissolving Palm (Anran xiaohun zhang), which derives not only its name but its very spirit and power from the extremes of his emotional desolation; its effectiveness wanes under the joy Yang Guo feels at Xiao Longnü’s reappearance.18 Jin Yong’s novels are bildungsromans, as has been noted before, and as such their fundamental interest is in the shaping of the central protagonist. To once more compare Yang Guo with Guo Jing, we may say that the course of the latter’s development is his perfect fulfillment of the roles laid out for him, while the former’s requires the blazing of his own path. It is facile but not entirely inapt to correlate the two protagonists with the place of their respective novels within Jin Yong’s career. Heroes’ success strengthened the author’s reputation and finances to the point where he felt ready to launch a paper of his own. Jin Yong’s Companion and his Ming Pao entered the world together, with the first issue of the newspaper carrying the novel’s first installment, and the serialization, for its part, carrying the lion’s share of the burden of selling the fledgling paper. “The three years [of Companion’s serialization] were that most arduous period of Ming Pao’s earliest publication,” writes the author in the afterword to the revised edition. “As I revised it once again, it seemed that with each episode of the story I recalled the scenes of our small group of colleagues’ laborious efforts in years gone by” (1671). We will turn now from the analysis of Jin Yong’s texts to a study of this crucial period in the development of the institutional contexts within which they materialized.

National Passions

113

Chapter 5 The Empire of the Text Jin Yong and Ming Pao

n November 1998 the Republic of China’s Center for Chinese Studies, the China Times Literary Supplement, and Yuanliu Publishing Company Ltd. cosponsored the International Academic Conference on Jin Yong’s Novels. The three days of the conference featured presentations by scholars and critics from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese mainland, other Asian countries, Europe, and the United States. The meeting was convened in the International Conference Hall at the National Central Library in Taipei, where speakers mounted the dais beneath an immense reproduction of the landscape painting commissioned for the latest Yuanliu edition of Jin Yong’s works. Opening remarks were offered by no less a dignitary than the vice president of the Republic of China, Lian Zhan, who noted the need for those involved in politics to keep abreast of cultural phenomena, recycled several inescapable tropes of Jin Yong criticism (the role of the novels’ characters as universal types of human nature and society, the ubiquity of Jin Yong’s works, and their importance as a bridge to Chinese culture for the Chinese overseas), and closed with a reference to President Li Teng-hui’s call to elevate the people’s spiritual life through culture.1 The vice president’s presence and remarks, no less than the conference as a whole, testified to the interest and respect now widely accorded to a body of work that forty years ago first appeared in one of the least regarded of “subliterary” forms—as martial arts adventure stories serialized a few hundred characters at a time in the entertainment and fiction sections of Hong Kong’s daily newspapers. It has been noted that Jin Yong is likely to enjoy the extraordinary good fortune of “seeing the complete ‘canoniza-

I

114

tion’ (jingdianhua) of his works within his own lifetime.”2 This good fortune sheds its blessings also on students of literature and literary history, who have the opportunity to observe firsthand so dramatic a shift in the status of an author and a body of writing. And the first question evoked by even a cursory observation of the “Jin Yong phenomenon” is that of the alleged canonization’s precise contours and status. The 1998 conference not only confirmed the extent to which some sort of “canonization” of Jin Yong and his works is an established fact but also revealed the multiplicity and sometimes disharmony of the voices raised in Jin Yong’s acclaim. The hosting of the conference at the Center for Chinese Studies in Taipei would seem to guarantee the event and its subject an aura of consummate scholarly respectability.3 The event’s cosponsors, however—the China Times and Yuanliu Publishing—were institutions deeply involved in the commercial distribution of Jin Yong’s works; and the conference coincided with an island-wide frenzy of marketing of Jin Yong–related products. The summer and fall of 1998 saw the simultaneous broadcasting of three different serialized versions of The Giant Eagle and Its Companion—a new production by Taiwan’s TTV competing with a 1998 version from Singapore and a 1995 Hong Kong effort.4 Also flooding Taiwan were comic book adaptations of Jin Yong’s works. By the end of October, Yuanliu Publishing had issued the third volume of a projected eighteen-volume version of The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, adapted and illustrated by a Hong Kong comic artist, Li Zhiqing, known for his previous comic-art renditions of the historical and military classics Three Kingdoms and Sunzi’s Art of War. Jin Yong had recently pronounced himself pleased with Li’s style, influenced by the artist’s training in traditional Chinese painting, and established a company, Minghe chuangwenshe gongsi, to support Li’s further adaptations of his work. Li himself traveled to Taiwan during the conference to hold book signings at the island’s two largest bookselling chains, Eslite and Kingstone. His Eagle-Shooting Heroes followed on the heels of a Giant Eagle and Its Companion adapted by the Singapore comic artist Huang Zhanming, and of a Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils illustrated by Huang Yulang which had been the hit of the 1997 Hong Kong Book Fair. Taiwan’s Dongli Publishing Company was now distributing Huang’s Semi-Devils, Ma Rongcheng’s adaptation of Dragon Sabre, and He Zhiwen’s version of Flying Fox to compete with Yuanliu’s Heroes and Companion. A spokesman for Dongli noted that adaptations of Jin Yong’s works were reliable best sellers, even in the weak comic market of the last two years in Taiwan; he attributed their suc-

The Empire of the Text

115

cess to the appeal of the original works and the support of the television serializations. Individual volumes of the various comic adaptations were reported to be selling in the range of 70,000–100,000 copies.5 A visit to any bookstore in Taipei would verify the continuing popularity of Jin Yong’s original novels, prominently displayed in the latest printing of Yuanliu’s authorized edition of the thirty-six-volume Collected Works of Jin Yong. Some outlets sold The Giant Eagle and Its Companion packaged with a CD of the television serial’s theme songs. Also present in bookstores was Jin Yong’s latest work, just published: Tanqiu yige canlan de shiji (Compassionate light in Asia)—not a martial arts novel but a collection of conversations between Jin Yong and the Japanese educator and philosopher Ikeda Daisaku. In this “epochal dialogue between two outstanding representatives of Chinese and Japanese culture,”6 published in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Japan as well as in Taiwan, the two share their views on topics including Hong Kong’s future, China’s place in the Pacific Rim, SinoJapanese relations, literature, peace, and human existence. Jin Yong himself visited Taiwan during the conference. He was met at the airport by representatives of the conference’s sponsors, stars from the television serialization, and a crowd of reporters, and was given “a movie star’s reception by the customs workers present: besides bouquets of flowers and cries of excitement, more than a few offered him copies of his books for him to sign, while passengers waiting in the terminal crowded around and stared.” 7 Jin Yong personally attended most sessions of the conference, commenting on some of the papers, offering remarks at the closing session, and sometimes accepting questions from the audience during the periods nominally set aside for discussion of the presentations. He participated as well in other activities organized for his visit. On his first evening in Taipei he attended a reception and dinner at TTV, the most prominent Taiwan producer of Jin Yong serializations; he received there a “hero’s welcome,” posed with the prop department’s Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, and received a medallion inscribed “Master of the martial arts, chief of the alliance of the Martial Grove” (wuxue dashi, Wulin mengzhu).8 Toward the end of his visit he was the guest of honor at “A Night at the Jin Yong Teahouse,” an event organized by the China Times Literary Supplement. Since March of 1997 the China Times had been publishing a weekly “Jin Yong Teahouse” column, linked with Yuanliu’s book series of the same name, where readers and fans published articles and exchanged letters commenting on Jin Yong’s novels, critiquing the television adaptations, comparing different characters’ relationships and martial skills, and speculating on their blood types. The paper also sponsored associated

116

Chapter 5

polls and contests and assisted Yuanliu in maintaining one of the more popular Jin Yong Web sites. 9 Tickets to the “Night at the Jin Yong Teahouse” were awarded to a group of four hundred readers selected from some two thousand who had applied by submitting questions and pointing out inconsistencies or puzzles in Jin Yong’s works. Those not privileged to attend in person could watch on television or participate via a live internet link, as the guests “crossed swords with the master” and applauded his sagacity and wit.10 Jin Yong attracted the attention of Taiwan’s political world as well, as evidenced not only by the vice president’s opening speech but even more colorfully at the “Feast of the Eagle-Shooting Heroes” (Shediao yingxiong yan). Produced by the Sherwood, one of Taipei’s five-star hotels, in cooperation with Hong Kong’s renowned Yung Kee Restaurant, the “Feast” was a theme dinner along the lines of the “Dream of the Red Chamber” banquets popular in recent years. It featured elaborate dishes inspired by Jin Yong’s novels (in particular Heroes, wherein the clever Huang Rong courts the favor and martial tutelage of the chief of the Beggars’ Gang with a succession of culinary delights), served by waiters dressed as Jin Yong’s characters in a hall decorated with Jin Yong–related couplets, martial props, centerpieces in the form of miniature landscapes, and an enormous carved eagle. While the “Feast” was to be available to paying customers over the course of several weeks, the first sitting was scheduled for the opening night of the conference, with the participants, including Jin Yong and his entourage, as the guests of honor. Also appearing at the head table were all three mayoral candidates for the fiercely contested Taipei elections: the Nationalist Party’s Ma Ying-jeou, the Democratic Progressive Party’s Chen Shuibian, and the New Party’s Wang Chien-shien. Reporters and camera crews mobbed the table for shots of the politicians paying their respects to Jin Yong and suspending their venomous struggle for handshakes and courteous toasts. The media had to be expelled from the hall before the banquet proper could be served. Reports of the event ran as the lead story in Taipei’s newspapers and broadcasts; the media’s portrayal of the banquet as a “meeting of heroes” worthy of Jin Yong’s novels, and narrated in the novels’ own imagery and vocabulary, found echo in the comments of the candidates themselves: As to his views on Jin Yong’s fiction, [Nationalist candidate] Ma Ying-jeou remarked that more than a few people had compared him to the patriotic and public-spirited Guo Jing [protagonist of Heroes]. He opined that Guo Jing’s personality—tough and determined, earnest and slow of speech, dedicated to

The Empire of the Text

117

his ideals—was not dissimilar to his own: “This is unquestionably a role I’m willing to take on.”

The “Feast of the Eagle-Shooting Heroes,” he noted, had allowed him to seek instruction from the master himself; truly, he had not made this trip in vain. Upon his departure, Ma Ying-jeou uttered an expression from the Rivers and Lakes: “The green hills change not, the blue waters flow on, and we shall meet again,” and took his leave of the reporters with a bow.11 The Taipei Jin Yong Conference and the events surrounding it testify to the astounding degree to which a “Jin Yong phenomenon” has grown beyond the pages of the Hong Kong newspapers’ serialized fiction supplements in which the author’s martial arts novels first appeared. Jin Yong’s works are now known not only as novels, but as comic books, television serials, films, and computer games. In these various media, they circulate not merely in Hong Kong but among Chinese speakers around the world, from overseas communities in the United States and Europe to the Chinese mainland itself. In such forms as films and electronic games, moreover, as well as in translated editions, they have reached beyond Chineselanguage communities to international audiences in both hemispheres of the globe. Their widespread circulation is spurred in good part by relentless marketing strategies, in which the different incarnations of Jin Yong’s works and their respective corporate producers and media distributors unflaggingly promote one another and both excite and feed the appetites of an enthusiastic fan culture. Neither the exuberant commercialism of the phenomenon, though, nor the proliferation of such nonliterary forms as video games and television serials has precluded the works’ acquiring the status of literary masterpieces. If the conference itself serves as sufficient testimony of the attention now given to Jin Yong’s works by academic and intellectual communities, the almost fetishistic aura accruing to his writing was dramatized by the conference’s final ceremony—the author’s presentation to Taiwan’s Center for the Preservation and Study of Cultural Materials of framed pages from his original handwritten manuscripts. Jin Yong’s status and reputation have expanded well beyond those of an ordinary novelist, extending, on the one hand, into the kind of celebrity commonly associated with movie stars and, on the other, into veneration of the sort reserved for cultural spokesmen and gatekeepers of the high tradition. No simple analytical model, whether of literary excellence or of mass appeal, can do justice to this interweaving of artistic prestige, marketing savvy, fan culture, celebrity worship, political theater, and media fomentation.

118

Chapter 5

The character and status of the “Jin Yong phenomenon”—its components, structure, and continuous renegotiation—is a recurrent theme for study in the remaining chapters of this book, and this chapter begins with what is perhaps the innermost of the concentric circles linking Jin Yong’s fiction with the phenomenon at large: Jin Yong’s publishing enterprises. Jin Yong’s newspaper, Ming Pao, served as the primary medium for the presentation of his fiction to its audience, serializing each of his major novels beginning with The Giant Eagle and Its Companion. The novels, in turn, played a crucial role in ensuring the paper’s survival, especially during the precarious early days. As the newspaper, growing in prestige and commercial strength, became the keystone of an expanding press and financial empire, Jin Yong’s fiction was not infrequently called upon to bestow a measure of the author’s cachet upon subsidiary publications. In turn, again, the rising status of the newspaper, Jin Yong’s reputation as author of its influential daily editorials, and the power and prestige of Ming Pao Enterprises and its chairman within Hong Kong’s commercial world, all played a role in shaping perceptions of Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction. Whereas preceding chapters of this book discussed Hong Kong’s newspapers primarily in order to establish New School martial arts fiction’s historical and social context, this chapter expands the focus to consider institutional aspects of Jin Yong’s publications: the financial and institutional growth of Jin Yong’s publishing enterprises, the concomitant elevation in the publisher’s cultural status, and the ways in which both spheres of growth facilitated and were facilitated by the enunciation of a particular political and cultural stance—a Chinese cultural nationalism that defined itself in large measure against the excesses of the mainland’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In the 1990s Ming Pao’s luster dimmed somewhat with Jin Yong’s withdrawal from the paper, scandal-tinged changes of ownership, the editorial board’s settling into stodgy pro-business, pro-mainland conservatism, and shifts in audience habits and media dynamics favoring obstreperous newcomers such as the Apple Daily (Pinguo ribao).12 During the 1960s, however, Ming Pao garnered wide attention with its independent stance and incisive reporting and commentary on mainland China. Its coverage of mainland affairs won notice and consideration in government circles in China and abroad, while within Hong Kong the combination of distinctive political reportage with popular columns, fiction, and entertainment coverage won a loyal and prestigious readership of students, intellectuals, civil servants, and white-collar workers. It became one of Hong Kong’s most influential papers, enjoying the third-largest local circulation of the

The Empire of the Text

119

Chinese dailies through the end of the 1980s and a reputation as the newspaper of the international Chinese intelligentsia. The early Ming Pao, modest in size and circulation, gives at first glance little promise of these later developments. But a review of its history and character during the first months and years of its publication provides valuable insights into the future development of this newspaper, of Zha Liangyong /Jin Yong’s expanding print empire, and of the relationships between his fiction and these organs of its dissemination. The Early Ming Pao’s Voice and Stance (“Some Remarks on the Miss World Pageant”) It is difficult not to read Ming Pao’s history teleologically, as a narrative of gradual but inevitable progress from humble beginnings to its maturation as central pillar of Jin Yong’s publishing empire and medium for the expression of its founder’s influential views on politics, society, and culture. Inasmuch as the paper’s founders and staff engaged in a conscious and continuing search for formulae that would ensure the publication’s success, such a reading is valid and, in fact, essential to our understanding of Ming Pao and the Jin Yong phenomenon. A central point of Cheung Kwai-yeung’s recent study of Ming Pao, however, is that many of the key decisions in the course of its development were adventitious, made not according to any preexisting vision but in response to changing social circumstances and market opportunities. In contemplating the relationship between Jin Yong’s fiction and Jin Yong’s publishing enterprises, it behooves us therefore to pay attention to elements that fit less neatly into a grand narrative of the author/publisher’s imminent ascendancy—elements that point not only to alternative possibilities, “roads not taken” by Ming Pao and its publisher, but also to persistent tensions and discontinuities in Jin Yong’s enterprises as they have in fact developed. Zha Liangyong, born in Haining county, Zhejiang, in 1924, to a family that prided itself on the poets, scholars, and government officials in its ancestry, entered the newspaper world in 1945, working as a reporter at the Dongnan ribao in Hangzhou. He had previously studied international relations at the Nationalist Party’s Central Political Academy in Chongqing, and then international law at Shanghai’s Dong Wu faxueyuan, but personal circumstances and the vicissitudes of the war years had prevented him from completing either degree. In 1947 he joined the staff of Shanghai’s Dagong bao and, in 1948, was sent to Hong Kong to assist in the establishment of the paper’s Hong Kong edition. For the next ten years

120

Chapter 5

he worked at Dagong bao and its sister paper Xin wanbao, at the latter publication serving as an editor of the supplement and writing film reviews under the name Yao Fulan (i.e., “Your Friend”). During the second half of this period, he was involved in Hong Kong’s film industry as well, producing screenplays for the Great Wall Company under the name Lin Huan, writing articles and reviews for its pictorial Changcheng huabao, and codirecting several films.13 The growing popularity of his martial arts fiction, and in particular the success of Heroes, afforded both the means and the motivation for Zha Liangyong /Jin Yong to launch his own publication in 1959. The project was inspired in part by frustration at seeing the potential profits from his work diverted by contraband editions.14 Together with Shen Baoxin, a high school classmate now managing a print shop in Hong Kong, and Pan Yuesheng, a writer and editor whose career in the newspaper and film worlds Jin Yong had assisted, Jin began to lay plans for a ten-day fiction magazine, Yema (Mustang). Several months before the first issue appeared, the group, responding to vendors’ suggestions, altered their plans and devised a daily publication, to be entitled Ming Pao, with “Yema” serving as the name for the central fiction section.15 In terms of its organization and financing, the Ming Pao, which commenced publication on May 20, 1959, was what was called at the time a “collegial” paper (tongren bao), namely one whose production was in the hands of a small group of associates whose personal investments also constituted the publication’s financial base.16 In Ming Pao’s case, Zha Liangyong provided 80 percent of the original capital, and Shen Baoxin the remaining 20 percent; they divided the editorial and business duties between them, and Pan Yuesheng and a proofreader completed the staff. In terms of its physical size, circulation, and contents, Ming Pao was a typical “little paper” or “tabloid” (xiaobao): produced in quarto (sikai, half the dimensions of a full-sized duikai or folio newspaper), printed in a run of only eight thousand, and devoted entirely to fiction and entertainment.17 Despite featuring Jin Yong’s new The Giant Eagle and Its Companion as its centerpiece, and fiction and columns by such prominent authors as Song Yu and Gao Xiong (San Su) besides, the fledgling fiction paper failed to attract the hoped-for readership. Its publishers responded with frequent adjustments to its contents and format. On June 6, the eighteenth day of its publication, the paper expanded to full folio size and recast its scope to include local and international news. On the front page appeared the first Ming Pao editorial (sheping), entitled “Our Standpoint.” Where the inaugural remarks (fakan ci) in the first edition had declared the paper’s watch-

The Empire of the Text

121

words to be “impartiality, goodwill, liveliness, and beauty” (gongzheng, shanliang, huopo, meili), “Our Standpoint” struck a more serious tone, restricting the list to “impartiality and goodwill.” “If we report war and chaos, murder, and suicide,” the editorial announces, “we shall do it with regret; if we report peace and stability, joy and prosperity, we will do it with the greatest satisfaction.” 18 Whatever pangs of regret the editors may have felt at reports of chaos and murder, they apparently saw in them the promise of attracting a readership as well. In the first months of the paper’s publication, extracts from the international wire services jostle for attention with photographs of bathing beauties and sensationalistic reports of car wrecks, abductions, and crimes of passion. These items, together with advertisements and the still occasional editorial, occupy the first and last of the four daily pages; the second page contains columns, feature articles, and film reviews, and the third the fiction supplement. Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction, scoops from the entertainment world by Liu Wenying (Lei Weipo), and a gradually expanding racing sheet made up Ming Pao’s most reliable draws for the first two years of its existence. At least one of Jin Yong’s hagiographers portrays the early Ming Pao as an unavoidable hodgepodge of the piquant and the sober: On the market at the time were tabloids such as Xiangwei she (The rattlesnake), Xiangwei long (The rattle-dragon), and Chaoran (The impartial), which used sex to attract their audience and enjoyed fairly large readerships. This of course was not a path that Ming Pao could follow; yet neither could the fledgling Ming Pao follow the example of such major papers as Xingdao ribao, Huaqiao ribao, or Gongshang ribao. Zha Liangyong therefore chose a “middle path”. . . The result was a rather mismatched appearance. At first glance, Ming Pao’s pages were tremendously incongruous, simultaneously presenting both Zha Liangyong’s sober and serious editorials and other authors’ “erotic fiction.” The overall effect was quite disjointed.19

Such remarks compel us to consider once again the fundamental question of how to read a poly-vocal artifact such as a daily newspaper. What, if any, relationship obtains between its apparently discrepant and unrelated voices? It is only reasonable to concede that, for the sake of attracting the broadest possible range of readers, the editors might collect within their pages materials generated by a variety of sources and aimed at quite disparate interests and tastes. At the same time, though, as we assumed

122

Chapter 5

earlier in our survey of the contents of the Xin wanbao, both the notion of editorial agency and the simple coexistence of certain materials within the physical space of a newspaper circulated within given social and geographic communities on a given date seem to presume some sort of dialogic (if not necessarily harmonious) interaction. In the case of the early Ming Pao and its editorials, in fact, it is possible to discover evidence of quite deliberate transgression of what the passage just quoted assumes to be boundaries. The front-page editorial of November 13, 1959, is entitled “Some Remarks on the Miss World Pageant”: To begin with we must make it clear that this paper is merely a tabloid (xiaobao). We don’t pretend to the dignified and sober mien of the major papers, whose honorable chief writers lift their pens only to speak of weighty matters of war and peace, the nation’s future, and the people’s fortunes. We naturally feel that the nation’s future and the people’s fortunes are matters of the greatest importance. In this life of ours, though, it doesn’t do to be overly solemn, and so it is that we feel free to mention “the wind and the flowers, the snow and the moon” [i.e., romance and the life of pleasure]. Today’s editorial therefore offers some comments on the Miss World Pageant in London. As everyone is aware, the Miss World competition is at present divided into the English and the American Pageants. Miss Japan bore away the prize at the American Pageant, while the British Pageant went to Miss Holland. Holland produces cow’s milk in abundance, and this Miss, having drunk a great deal of milk, had skin as white as snow, tender and flushed with pink, wherefore her charms stole the crown from the assembled belles. This, however, is not our subject here. What’s worthy of remark is that when Miss America was eliminated from the contest, she could not contain her indignation and cried out, “Those are falsies!” Miss America’s eyes at this juncture were brimming with tears, and, to borrow a catch-phrase from the left, “Such a reaction is entirely understandable.” But the word “falsies” seems to betray a certain lack of character. Now this “character” may seem at first glance hardly worthy of remark; and yet it’s something that cannot be cultivated without undergoing the shaping and refinement of a long course of history and an eminent culture. Whether in small matters such as ball games and beauty pageants, or in large matters such as diplomatic affairs and military operations, one can tell at a glance who has “character” and who does not. When Miss America cried out about the falsies, Miss India came to Miss Holland’s defense, saying she was the real McCoy,

The Empire of the Text

123

with the honest-to-God goods and so forth and so on. Miss India had been eliminated at the same time, yet she spoke up in the cause of justice without thinking twice. This truly is the mark of a great nation. But when we take a glance at the opinions in India’s major newspapers, there really ain’t no character at all. The CCP’s proposal that both sides withdraw twenty kilometers and hold talks on the border dispute can certainly be called fair and reasonable, yet India’s papers jabber on and on, determined to hold on to a slice of China’s territory by force. It’s clear that this Miss India is not only more comely in face and figure than the chief writers of India’s major papers, but that in her character and integrity as well, she far surpasses them all.

What we find here is not a “dignified and sober” discussion of the 1959 Sino-Indian border disputes incongruously framed by journalistic sensationalism, but a gleeful and self-referential deployment of the prerogatives of a “tabloid” newspaper, drawing on techniques of irony elevated to a key status in journalistic commentary by Lu Xun and his peers in the 1920s. The editorial begins by distinguishing itself from Hong Kong’s “major papers.” This act of apparent self-deprecation already holds a hint of mockery—the phrase “dignified and sober mien” (daomao anran) often suggests pompousness or hypocrisy—and sets the stage for the later caustic remarks on the “major papers” of India. The paper ’s confessed status as a tabloid allows, or even calls for, discussion of the Miss World Pageant. When the pageant then becomes the pretext for comments on those very affairs of state on which the editorialist had disavowed any qualification to speak, the discussion reveals itself to be double-voiced; it harbors international affairs as its “real” topic, yet at the same time indulges a candid interest in the charms of the contestants, their “falsies” and fits of pique, that is entirely congruent with the more univocally sensational contents of other parts of the paper. In the article’s Chinese-language original, self-conscious poly-vocality is evident on the level of linguistic practice as well. The standard vernacular (baihua wen) of the text is sprinkled here and there with Cantonese idioms (indicated by italics in the preceding translation), some used apparently at random but others (“Those are falsies!” and “There really ain’t no character at all”) clearly reinforcing a punch line. At other points (suggested in the quoted editorial through the register of the English prose) it veers toward a humorously grandiose classical (wenyan) diction. In language as in discursive stance, the early Ming Pao employs its allegedly exclusionary “minor” status as a privilege to express itself freely and indulge in some fun while doing so. The sober and

124

Chapter 5

the sensational do not preserve a strained coexistence; neither do they merge into a single mid-range or muddled voice; they provide the opportunity, rather, for enunciating meaning through deliberate manipulation of distinctions, overlaps, and interactions. In terms of position as distinct from rhetoric, the stance the editorial adopts in addressing China’s border dispute with its southern neighbor is not dissimilar to the variety of nationalism discernible in Heroes. Ardent defense of China’s territorial integrity is combined with an implicit pride in its “long history and eminent culture.” Patriotism here remains free of alignment with any particular political party. Although the defense of China’s sovereignty coincides in this case with the policies of the Chinese Communist Party, the left is not spared a mild gibe, 20 which serves as a reminder that the paper stands as distant from that camp as it does from the Indians, the presumably characterless Americans, or Hong Kong’s other newspapers. But while holding itself aloof from political partisanship, the editorial clearly signals positions of other kinds; the same Cantonese usages that make up part of the text’s play with linguistic register also help flag its perspective on mainland affairs as originating from the privileged geographic position of Hong Kong and belonging to its particular Chinese community. As Ming Pao ventured into news coverage and commentary it repeatedly asserted a nonaligned stance, a pride in Chinese cultural identity coupled with a refusal to demonstrate allegiance to either of the parties seeking to claim the nation’s fate. The July 5, 1959, editorial, “The Dignity of the Chinese,” notes with regret the role of Chinese individuals in recent international incidents of smuggling and drug trafficking, and quotes with pride an American official’s assessment of the Chinese as America’s most law-abiding community. “We hope that every Chinese will constantly bear in mind that China is a nation with an ancient cultural tradition, a ‘realm of propriety and justice’ (li yi zhi bang)”; Chinese traveling abroad in particular should act as representatives of their nation’s glory. The following day’s editorial, “The Great Man Uses Words, Not Force,” addresses reports of air combat between mainland and KMT forces over the Matsu islands. It expresses the hope that the conflict across the straits, and the problems in “backward” Tibet as well, can be solved as quickly as possible and without loss of Chinese life, so that “rather than wasting their energies in struggling against one another, everyone can join minds and hands in building China.” The editorial of October 16, 1959, is one of several that addresses the question of the paper’s neutral (zhongli) posture even more directly. Individual news reports might at times bear a right- or left-

The Empire of the Text

125

ward slant, it admits, depending on their source; the paper’s own stance, however, is resolutely nonaligned, and any apparent leftward bias merely a reflection of the predominantly rightward bent of the majority of Hong Kong’s papers. Despite such protestations, and despite Jin Yong’s growing personal disenchantment with the left, 21 the fact that he and much of his staff had begun their careers in media enterprises supportive of and supported by the CCP fostered a widespread assumption that Ming Pao too fell within that camp. The refugee crisis of 1962 redefined the paper’s stance. The mainland at this time was still suffering widespread famine as a result of the disastrous economic policies of the Great Leap Forward coupled with natural disaster and the loss of Soviet aid. When the Guangdong government opened the border with Hong Kong’s New Territories early in 1962, desperate mainlanders began streaming toward the perceived wealth and security of the British colony. By May, when the flood of refugees reached its height, hundreds if not thousands were struggling across the territories’ rugged hills each day. The British authorities, already burdened by the colony’s rapid population growth, sought to seal the border and detain and return illegal arrivals. Those Hong Kong newspapers sympathetic to the right (Huaqiao ribao, Xingdao ribao, Gongshang ribao, etc.) ran extensive reports on the crisis, highlighting the catastrophic conditions on the mainland, its government’s failures and its irresponsibility in opening the border; the left’s papers (Dagong bao, Xin wanbao, Wenhui bao, etc.) afforded the refugee situation minimal coverage or none at all. In the early months of the crisis, Ming Pao likewise avoided any mention of the situation. Beginning on the eighth of May, however, the refugee crisis suddenly began claiming front-page headlines, photographs, extensive original reporting, and the attention of impassioned editorials. At first the paper focused on the human tragedy of the refugees’ plight and the commonality of Hong Kong readers’ experience. “Urgent! Help!” was the title of the May 15 editorial, which, after portraying the desperate situation in the hills, noted that “we residents of Hong Kong have fortunately not been threatened with starvation, but most of us have come from the mainland too—it’s merely that we came a bit earlier on,” and called on the governments of both the mainland and the colony to come to the refugees’ aid. On the same day, the paper announced that it was taking the unprecedented step of organizing an aid-drive on its own and appealed directly to its readers to donate funds and goods for their compatriots. Subsequent editions published the names and contributions of donors. On May 18, the British government, alarmed at the confusion caused by aid groups

126

Chapter 5

and the encouragement they seemed to offer illegal immigrants, forbade unauthorized entry into the border areas. Ming Pao responded by suspending its aid operations the following day and then began devoting editorial space to support of the government’s policies, arguing that sympathy for compatriots had to be balanced against the threat to stability and prosperity posed by unchecked immigration. Ming Pao’s leap from ignoring the refugee problem to placing itself in the center of controversy and action is said to have transpired almost in spite of its publisher’s wishes. As the crisis developed in the early months of the year, Jin Yong was unwilling to publicly alienate the left and his many friends and colleagues within that camp by reporting on the situation. It was only the protests of his reporters and editorial staff, coupled with the argument that readers would be lost to the papers that were covering the story, that eventually caused him to relent.22 Ming Pao’s extensive coverage and aid efforts (the uniqueness of which the paper lost no opportunity to trumpet) allowed it to give a concrete demonstration of “nonaligned” solidarity with the Chinese people, won it greater journalistic authority than it had hitherto enjoyed, and paid off in a dramatic rise in daily circulation, from slightly above twenty thousand before the crisis to over thirty thousand during its height. It also laid the groundwork for precisely those confrontations with the left that Jin Yong had originally hoped to avoid. Ming Pao built upon its newfound credibility and reinforced its reputation as a forum for critique of the CCP with the institution in June 1962 of the column “Free Discussion” (“Ziyou tan”—the name was borrowed from the influential literary supplement of Shanghai’s Republican-era Shen bao), a supposedly wide-ranging venue that soon came to focus on contributions addressing mainland affairs. In late 1963 an editorial piece mocking Foreign Minister Chen Yi’s unfortunate remark that China would develop the atom bomb even if the Chinese people had to pawn their trousers drew furious attacks on Ming Pao’s “anti-Chinese” (fanhua) stance from the papers on the left. Hostilities simmered through most of 1964 and erupted into a prolonged war in October and November, when Ming Pao responded to the CCP’s proud announcement of a successful nuclear test with editorial denunciations of nuclear weapons as a threat to peace and human existence. Dagong bao and its satellites published a series of blistering denunciations of Ming Pao and its publisher, accusing him of betraying Chinese interests on a wide range of issues. Jin Yong replied with gusto, penning twenty-six daily editorials challenging his accusers point by point, declaring Ming Pao’s patriotism, and insisting upon a distinction

The Empire of the Text

127

between the spirit and achievements of the Chinese people and the policies of the current regime. 23 By the time the Cultural Revolution began to unfold on the mainland, Ming Pao had developed the features, sources, and reputation for independence that positioned it to serve as a noteworthy (though not infallible) channel for information. Jin Yong’s insightful, sometimes seemingly prescient editorial commentary drew additional attention not only within Hong Kong but from observers abroad and in the PRC itself as well. The paper was subject to continual and vicious attack from the press on the left, and when the Cultural Revolution spilled over into Hong Kong in May through August of 1967 with strikes, riots, bombings, and calls for the end of British colonial rule, Ming Pao and its publisher were the objects of more-direct action. The June 23 issue of the paper was sabotaged by the insertion of a manifesto from a leftist committee within the print shop; later in the summer a package bomb was delivered to Jin Yong’s residence, and his name was subsequently discovered to be on a blacklist of apparent assassination targets. Jin Yong found it prudent to remove himself to Singapore for part of this period. Ming Pao nonetheless maintained a vigorous editorial campaign, pointing out that the mainland had no practical interest in assuming control over Hong Kong, condemning the left for inciting extremist violence, and voicing support for the British colonial government as the upholder of the stability which was in all Hong Kong residents’ best interest. Jin Yong set out essential elements of his defense of the status quo in an editorial from early in this period, the May 10, 1967, “We’ve Settled Down Here and Don’t Care to Leave!”: By far the great majority of Hong Kongers, with the exception of a certain portion of born-and-bred natives, have come here for reasons that have nothing to do with any revolutionary objectives. . . . To put it bluntly, we escaped to this place because we aren’t willing to live under CCP rule. . . . Even though there are a thousand things, ten thousand things wrong with Hong Kong, still, under present circumstances, the great majority of residents hope to keep on living as they do now; our dwellings may not be as peaceful, our livelihoods as happy as we might wish, but in comparison, this is the way we like it. . . . We have gathered together here from every corner of the land; we’ve settled down here, and don’t care to leave. 24

Each successive clash with the left increased Ming Pao’s visibility, bolstered its credibility, and raised its circulation. In the case of the 1964 editorial wars, the paper benefited primarily from the fact that the feud

128

Chapter 5

cast it as a feisty and independent voice capable of holding its own against some of the territory’s, and indeed China’s, most powerful journalistic opponents. The events of 1967 garnered sympathy for the paper and its publisher as the objects of extremist attack, but more importantly confirmed Jin Yong’s Ming Pao as a prominent and articulate voice for attitudes shared by the majority of Hong Kong’s Chinese residents, for whom the disturbances reinforced a rejection of the path taken by the mainland and inspired more conscious appreciation for the benefits of the British colonial system.25 It is often said, and justly, that Hong Kong’s Ming Pao owed its success to the mainland and to the Chinese Communist Party against which it defined itself. It need not cast any doubt on the sincerity and depth of Jin Yong’s commitment to the political stances that helped make his reputation to note that the paper’s entry into news reporting and the articulation of its critical standpoint were adventitious in origin and validated at least in part by demonstrable commercial dividends. A stance critical of the CCP yet independent of the financial and political institutions associated with the Nationalists and their allies was made possible by Hong Kong’s unique geopolitical situation. Commitment to this political stance necessarily involved commitment to a particular attitude toward Hong Kong itself: an extension of the “Central Plains syndrome,” which evaluated the colony entirely in terms of its relation to the heartland on whose margins it stood. The Miss World editorial discussed gives evidence of the extent to which the early Ming Pao experimented with interests, attitudes, and linguistic practices associated with local Guangdong /Hong Kong journalistic traditions. 26 Local news, service to local Hong Kong readers, and selective use of Cantonese (primarily in columns and other fukan features) remain integral parts of the paper to this day. But as the fame of Jin Yong’s editorials grew during the 1960s, these pieces indulged less and less in the mixing of linguistic and discursive registers; and the allegiance of the paper’s defining public voice to standard Mandarin Chinese indicates both the assumption of the “dignified and sober mien” proper to a major paper and a commitment to the affairs of the nation over those of a “certain portion of born-and-bred natives.” In this sense the voice of Jin Yong’s newspaper follows the path we have already seen marked out in his fiction. The Growth of a Publishing Empire Jin Yong’s ventures into additional publications began as early as six months after Ming Pao’s inauguration, with the January 11, 1960, debut of

The Empire of the Text

129

Wuxia yu lishi (Martial arts and history). This periodical revived Jin Yong’s earlier plans for a weekly fiction magazine; a second, later (1962–1967) fiction periodical, more heterogeneous in content, was to employ the originally projected title, Yema. Ming Pao ran front-page advertisements for Martial Arts and History a month before its first appearance, headlining its exclusive presentation of a new Jin Yong novel, Feihu waizhuan (The Young Flying Fox), a prequel to Flying Fox on Snowy Mountain. The paper continued to advertise the magazine for the first months of its existence, often publishing each new issue’s table of contents. Prepublication advertisements promised a range of contents, including contemporary adventure tales, traditional tales retold, sketches from history and historical fiction, and the early issues did in fact offer something of this variety. Soon, though, the periodical settled into a solid diet of martial arts stories in the New School style by authors such as Ni Kuang (writing as Yue Chuan), Zhang Menghuan, Sanfa Sheng, and Gu Long. One of its primary selling points, of course, was Jin Yong’s fiction; after its exclusive publication of The Young Flying Fox, it regularly reprinted the previous week’s installments of the novel currently featured in Ming Pao, offering readers an alternative or supplement to the newspaper’s rhythm of daily serialization. Martial Arts and History demonstrates several aspects of Jin Yong’s publishing strategies. The first is the continuation and extension of a process begun with the founding of Ming Pao itself: the employment of Jin Yong’s fictional product as capital for the establishment of a new publishing enterprise—both, that is, as literal capital, with the earnings from already published fiction helping to finance a new product, and as literary capital, with new fiction serving to raise the new product’s value and appeal. The second, closely related to the first, is the careful cultivation of a synergistic relationship among the various elements of this enterprise. Not only does Jin Yong’s fiction serve as a fundamental selling point for both the newspaper and the magazine, but the former publication actively promotes the latter, heralding its presentation of a Jin Yong story nowhere else available. The magazine, in turn, later in its run features regular advertisements for others of Jin Yong’s publications, including Ming Pao Monthly and Ming Pao Weekly. A third aspect of Martial Arts and History’s publication practice worthy of remark is its participation in the project—analyzed further in chapter 6—of defining contexts for the genre of martial arts fiction. The ambitious vision of presenting martial arts tales in company with historical studies and reworkings of traditional material, sketched out in the prepublication advertisements and realized to some extent in the earliest issues, seems to have faded quickly over the subsequent months. But early

130

Chapter 5

articles such as those in a series by Jin Yong entitled “On Several Questions Concerning Martial Arts Fiction” (“Guanyu wuxia xiaoshuo de jige wenti”), and regular “Editor’s Remarks” commenting on the themes, characters, and style of the stories in current serialization, maintained a selfconsciousness about the genre and encouraged habits of readerly appreciation. The magazine’s covers likewise contributed to the positioning of the genre. They occasionally presented scenes from the stories (similar to the illustrations by Yun Jun and others accompanying the text within), and for a period in the early 1970s featured movie stills or photos of luminaries from the Bruce Lee–inspired craze for kung fu movies. For the greater part of the magazine’s run, however, the covers were dedicated to photographs of scenic and historical sites in China or reproductions of traditional art and scenes from classical novels and drama. A paragraph of text on the inside cover identified the image and explained its significance. The covers thus asserted, however casually, a continuity between contemporary martial arts fiction and China’s geography, history, and artistic and narrative traditions; and as such they prefigured practices we shall find developed further in Ming Pao Monthly and in the Collected Works of Jin Yong. The scope, both conceptual and geographic, of Ming Pao–related publications expanded dramatically with the 1966 appearance of Ming Pao Monthly (Ming bao yuekan), “A Non-Profit Magazine Promoting Culture and Understanding.” 27 Under the editorship of Jin Yong and then of the columnist and literary critic Hu Juren (Hu Bingwen, b. 1933), who succeeded to the post in 1967, Ming Pao Monthly emerged as a general intellectual review for the international Chinese community. The breadth and variety of its content are difficult to characterize succinctly. The first issue alone contains scholarly articles (on historical method and the sociology of youth crime), biographical studies (of Albert Schweitzer, Mao Zedong, and the young Chinese Go [weiqi] champion Lin Haofeng), and travel writing (from Tokyo and Moscow). Subsequent issues include (besides expanding coverage of the Cultural Revolution) notes on the activities of Chinese scholars overseas; reports on contemporary art, literature, and entertainment; debates on problems in education; and presentations and analysis of historical documents. The range of the articles is echoed by that of the magazine’s illustrations, in particular the covers and the eye-catching monthly selection of color plates. In the first issue, the plates are devoted to reproductions of classic Chinese artwork—Su Dongpo’s (1037–1101) calligraphy, an eighth-century mural from Dunhuang; soon, though, the scope expands to include modern Chinese woodcuts, oils by European masters, “primitive” art from Africa and Oceania, and photographs of con-

The Empire of the Text

131

temporary political figures and celebrities. The list of the magazine’s contributors and editorial board over the years constitutes a virtual who’s who of the overseas Chinese intelligentsia. Its readership was similary widespread; 35 percent of the December 1979 run of nearly 35,000 copies was distributed overseas, half of this portion in the United States, Canada, and Britain, and the rest distributed among Chinese communities in Singapore, Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and beyond.28 Jin Yong’s fiction and Ming Pao’s political reporting had attracted for the paper a growing readership among Chinese communities abroad since the early 1960s. Ming Pao Monthly, with its active solicitation of overseas contributors and readers, represented a more deliberate institutional involvement with these communities. Jin Yong further expanded his overseas enterprises with the inauguration of the daily newspaper Xingming ribao in Singapore in March 1967 and the establishment of a Malaysian edition the following month. Both papers were joint enterprises with local businessmen; news and financial reporting varied to suit local conditions, but the entertainment and fiction supplements replicated those of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao. A North American edition of Ming Pao, essentially an abbreviated version of the Hong Kong edition, again with the fiction supplement intact, was later to follow. In Hong Kong itself, meanwhile, Jin Yong experimented with adding an evening paper to the Ming Pao roster. The first attempt, Huaren yebao, commenced publication in September 1967 but folded in its second year, allegedly due to disagreements among the staff. Ming bao wanbao, founded in December 1969 and offering an emphasis on financial reporting, enjoyed greater success and continued to publish until 1988. The other significant member of the Ming Pao family was the Ming Pao Weekly (Ming bao zhoukan). Ming Pao Weekly commenced independent publication in November 1968 but was in essence an extension of the Southeast Asia Weekly (Dongnanya zhoukan), a supplement distributed free of charge with Ming Pao and Singapore’s Nanyang shangbao since 1963. Southeast Asia Weekly’s early issues had featured the exclusive serialization of yet another Jin Yong martial arts novel, Suxin jian, later renamed Liancheng jue (A deadly secret).29 In the latter half of 1969 the Weekly’s editorial responsibilities passed from Pan Yuesheng, now put in charge of the nascent Ming bao wanbao, to Lei Weipo, whose scoops from the film and opera worlds had been one of the infant Ming Pao’s chief draws. Under his direction the magazine reconstituted itself as Hong Kong’s premier entertainment weekly and quickly began to attract a broad readership and hefty advertising revenues.30

132

Chapter 5

The second half of the 1960s thus saw not only the consolidation of Ming Pao’s identity and status through its reporting on mainland affairs but also its growth from a Hong Kong newspaper with a pair of ancillary pulpfiction weeklies to the keystone of a publishing enterprise that included a transnational family of daily papers, an influential intellectual review, and a widely popular entertainment pictorial. The Ming Pao family’s range of appeal and adaptable deployment of discursive strategies reflected on a larger scale those of the parent publication. The newspaper’s increasingly respected political reporting and analysis maintained a happy coexistence with its lively fiction supplement, entertainment columns, and ever more daring photos of models and bathing beauties; the Weekly’s contributions to the readership pool and advertising coffers were similarly matched by the Monthly’s confirmation of Jin Yong and his enterprises’ cultural weight. The expansion and variegation of Jin Yong’s publishing concerns involved not only financial growth and the cultivation of a broad and multifaceted readership but the cultivation of an extensive network of professional relationships as well. A decade of employment in the newspaper and motion picture industries had allowed Jin Yong to develop widespread connections and friendships within Hong Kong’s close-knit and overlapping literary, publishing, entertainment, and business communities even before he established his own newspaper. While his break with the left ruptured or attenuated some of these early relationships, any losses in his social capital were more than recouped through the opportunities afforded by his successful establishment of publications covering a range of topics and styles and addressed to varied audiences. The Ming Pao family of publications served as a cradle for several generations of cultural professionals, ranging from gossip columnists to economic reporters, popular novelists to exiled mainland political pundits, proofreaders and print-room workers to general editors. By the 1970s and 1980s personal and professional affiliations with Jin Yong’s enterprises ran throughout the journalistic, literary, and publishing worlds of Hong Kong and the overseas Chinese communities, and these webs of personal connection were as integral to the establishment of Jin Yong’s social and cultural status as his financial success and the loyalty of his audiences.31 The period that saw such substantial expansion of Jin Yong’s publishing enterprises is also often noted as having witnessed the emergence of a distinctive local identity in Hong Kong. The new Hong Kong identity was sketched in Hugh Baker’s 1983 article on “Hong Kong man,” and affirmed by a frequently cited 1985 poll in which a majority of respondents identified themselves as “Hongkongese” (Xianggangren) rather

The Empire of the Text

133

than Chinese.32 Most scholars see its birth pangs, however, in the disturbances of 1966 and 1967, which confirmed Hong Kong’s immigrants’ sense of alienation from current trends on the mainland and commonality of interest with the colonial government and marked the coming of age of a new generation born and raised in the colony itself. Over the subsequent years, shifting relationships between the British colonial government and the Chinese population provided social and institutional contexts for the indigenous Hong Kong identity; new media and popularculture forms, especially television, fostered its expression; and the 1984 signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, establishing the groundwork for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, instilled it with a sense of precarious mortality and an urgent self-consciousness.33 Jin Yong was to serve as a prominent Hong Kong voice in the lead-up to 1997 as he had during the Cultural Revolution. But his voice, whether in his fiction or in his political commentaries, no more articulated the emerging Hong Kong “nativism”—cosmopolitan, hybrid, consciously differentiating itself from the mainland—than it had the Guangdongoriented local identity that preceded it. While championing the affluence, independence, and opportunity available in Hong Kong, in its cultural vision it remained loyal to the “Central Plains syndrome,” valuing Hong Kong not so much for any identity unique to itself as for its status as a central node in a diasporic network that paradoxically laid claim to a uniquely authentic Chinese identity. Ming Pao Monthly offers the most explicit expressions of this cultural vision. Indeed, it is largely through expressing this particular vision that the publication stakes its claim to gravitas and cultural capital. In terms of social position, the readership the Monthly envisions for itself closely resembles that bourgeois intelligentsia for whom (in the West at least) the periodical press facilitated the creation of a public sphere of discourse. From the inaugural issue, though, the magazine’s community is explicitly imagined as diasporic: geographically dispersed while rooted in a common Chinese heritage. Its readers and contributors are scattered around the world, throughout Asia, Europe, and America; but they are united, implicitly, by the Chinese language, and more explicitly by a desire for a periodical that can “objectively report on the true conditions of Chinese society (Huaren shehui) in every locale.” The concern for China comprehends a respect for the “traditions and values of several thousand years of Chinese culture,” but also an eagerness to keep abreast of the “newest tides of thought, the important works and writings” of a rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected world.34 The periodical that will serve this

134

Chapter 5

community models itself on “Peking University during the May Fourth period” and “Dagong bao (L’Impartial) during the War of Resistance Against Japan.” 35 And it requires, as its fundamental principles of operation, the tolerance and nonalignment essayed on a more modest scale by Ming Pao’s “Free Discussion” columns—meaning both an unbiased openness to any reasonable point of view and a freedom from the ideological and financial pressures of any outside party.36 Ming Pao Monthly’s birth coincided with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, and political reporting inevitably came to occupy a greater part of the magazine’s contents than its editors had perhaps originally envisioned. By the same token, however, the crisis helped to define the periodical’s sense of mission.37 Like Ming Pao itself, Ming Pao Monthly was valued in Hong Kong and abroad as a source of information relatively free of the cant of left and right; the magazine additionally assumed the role of articulating an alternative vision of China’s past and future course. Some of the readers whose letters are published soon after the 1967 disturbances had quieted encourage the magazine to “preserve the culture of our ancestral nation and carry on the traditions of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor” in the face of the Cultural Revolution’s assault upon the past.38 Editorial remarks published in the same issue echo the newspaper’s stance during the 1967 disturbances but give special attention to the significance of the geopolitical parameters of the war for cultural survival, emphasizing the privileged relationship of the overseas Chinese communities and Hong Kong in particular to the Chinese heritage and its future: Not only must we depend on this seaport to live our lives in peace, make a home, and raise our children; with respect to China, and especially with respect to China’s culture, Hong Kong may also have a great contribution to make. With China presently in a condition of chaos, Hong Kong is one of the few places to offer the freedom and the opportunities that will allow Chinese people to create a scholarly culture. Therefore, Hong Kong’s unique environment seems to require that we take on a special mission.39

The illustration on the first issue’s cover casts the mission in graphic form. Featured is a photograph of a white jade ring (bi) from the ancient Zhou dynasty, dated to the fourth century BC; text on the inside cover identifies and describes the piece. The object itself suggests wholeness, elegance, and strength, while the identification and description contribute the powerful connotations of antiquity, cultural accomplishment, and historical continuity. It is easy to read this range of connotations as consciously

The Empire of the Text

135

intended by the editor to symbolize the magazine’s mission. One wonders, though, whether the additional implications of the last line of the interior text are deliberate or providential. “Currently preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago in America,” it reads—a telling reminder of the dispersal of the antique cultural heritage outside the confines of its geographical homeland. What allows the recirculation of this image of the Zhou dynasty jade are the technology and commercial institutions of the twentieth-century periodical press. And the press, in granting the jade new life, subjects it to at least two forms of radical dislocation: it causes it to act as an emblem for a community quite alien (in time, space, and social constitution) from the community that produced and used the original piece; and it circulates not the jade itself but a mass-produced reproduction of the work. Ming Pao Monthly may in fact participate in the continuing transmission of an integral Chinese cultural heritage, but it also deploys the simulation of such a heritage as a token of significance and value, and stakes its own claims to significance upon the continuing currency of this token. Chapter 7 resumes examination of Jin Yong’s publishing enterprises and considers the ways in which their institutional resources and discursive stance were brought to bear upon the specific problem of the status of martial arts fiction. First, though, chapter 6 returns to analysis of the fiction itself. It presents a reading of Jin Yong’s penultimate novel, The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, written and first serialized at the height of the mainland’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and at the moment of the Ming Pao empire’s most significant expansions. In exploring the development within this “mature” work of themes and narrative strategies identified in the preceding chapters’ discussions of Jin Yong’s earlier novels, this reading will also attempt to identify the shifting points of contact between the text and its historical context—the points at which the political events of the day, and the author’s increasingly confident sense of cultural mission, both shaped the novel and served as objects of the text’s conscious attention.

136

Chapter 5

Chapter 6 Beyond the Rivers and Lakes The Smiling, Proud Wanderer

iaoao jianghu (titled in English as The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, and referred to hereafter as Wanderer) was serialized in Ming Pao from April 20, 1967, through October 12, 1969; a revised version first appeared in 1977–1978. The publisher’s English version of the title does not convey the full range of meaning suggested by the original. Since jianghu, here rendered with the sense of “one who wanders (the Rivers and Lakes),” more directly denotes the Rivers and Lakes themselves, the title can also be understood as implying “scornfully laughing at the Rivers and Lakes”—a gesture succinctly expressive of the work’s themes. Beyond representing the author’s imaginative and narrative powers at their conjoined heights of complexity and controlled extravagance, the novel stands out among Jin Yong’s works for its focused and emotionally powerful treatment of some of the author’s recurrent thematic concerns. Wanderer’s subject is the struggle for power, its clear moral the futility and viciousness of political struggle and the emptiness of the ideologies that variously motivate and mask it. This perspective has been adumbrated in many of Jin Yong’s earlier works; in order to achieve its definitive articulation, Wanderer reimagines the relationship between imperial authority and the Rivers and Lakes within the world of the novel, and, even more strikingly, alters the terms by which the fictional world refers to the real world in both its historical and its contemporary aspects. It casts the Rivers and Lakes as a comprehensive metaphor for the political arena; and as an alternative to the dystopia of political life, it offers a vision of reclusion, of individual liberty given solace and substance by romantic fulfillment on the one hand and transmitted cultural practices on the other. In so doing, it extends the author’s use of martial arts fiction to interrogate the prob-

X

137

lems of politics, culture, and individual identity to a point from which the gleeful subversion of the genre’s paradigms in The Deer and the Cauldron seems almost inevitable. Yet Wanderer’s significance lies not only in its importance for a mapping of the oeuvre’s thematic development but also in the position it bespeaks for the political function of Jin Yong’s fictional project as a whole. The initial focus of the novel’s narrative is Lin Pingzhi, the pampered heir apparent of a prosperous caravan security agency (biaoju) in the city of Fuzhou. Returning from a hunting trip, Lin assays an iconic act of xia chivalry, defending a tavern-keeper’s daughter from the unwanted attentions of a boorish stranger, and inadvertently kills his opponent in the ensuing broil. The dead man turns out to have been the son of Yu Canghai, chief of the powerful Qingcheng School, whose subsequent destruction of the Lin family and its concerns seems at first to be a simple act of vengeance. But as Lin flees for his life, he discovers that the attack has been long in the planning and has as its real aim the seizure of a hidden manual of supreme martial skills, the Evil-Quelling Sword Technique (Pixie jianfa), rumored to have belonged to his renowned great-grandfather. Lin’s travels bring him to Heng Shan City,1 where a grand convocation of the denizens of the Martial Grove offers him hope of intercepting his foes and rescuing his captured parents. The extended sequence in and around Heng Shan (chapters 2 through 7) begins to unveil the epic scope of a plot to which the catastrophe that has struck Lin Pingzhi serves as a mere prelude. It reveals the extent and configuration of, and the principal players within, the novel’s Rivers and Lakes, the imagined society of the martial arts. It introduces key narrative elements and the novel’s real protagonist—the errant Huashan disciple Linghu Chong. And it propounds the work’s dominant themes through a melodramatic enactment of the cruelty of political struggle, the problematic validity of its ideological motivations, and the chimeric dream of an alternative. The inhabitants of the novel’s Rivers and Lakes, or Martial Grove—to the extent that they serve as general references to the society of martial artists, the two terms are here virtually synonymous—see their world as structured around a fundamental opposition between the forces of good (zheng) and the forces of evil (xie). In representing the good, the venerable powers of Shaolin and Wudang are joined by an alliance of the sword schools of the Five Sacred Mountains (Wuyue) and by several other sects and clans, Sichuan’s Qingcheng School among them. The opposing camp comprises a large and motley assortment of bandits, gangs, underworld societies, and heterodox sects; its recognized leader, though, to which the

138

Chapter 6

other elements recognize formal or informal allegiance, is the dreaded Divine Sect of the Sun and Moon (Riyue shenjiao), known to its foes as the Demon Sect (Mo jiao). Though not as powerful as Shaolin and Wudang, the schools of the Five Mountains—Taishan in the east, Huashan in the west, Heng Shan in the south, Hengshan in the north, and Songshan in the center—have borne the brunt of the struggle against the Demon Sect over the last hundred years, and their formal alliance, headed by Songshan, was created specifically to counter their foe’s increasing might. Wanderer’s use of China’s five sacred mountains echoes the fivefold organization of the mythic and martial universe in Heroes and its sequels; and although Huashan, the axis of that earlier cosmography, topographically here assumes its traditional place as the westernmost of the five peaks, it occupies a central position in the novel’s plotting. The occasion that early in the narrative draws together many of the luminaries of this world is a grand ceremony at which Liu Zhengfeng, a senior disciple of the Heng Shan School, will wash his hands in a golden basin to declare his retirement from the Rivers and Lakes. It is because he knows that both his foes and his potential allies will be present at the ritual that the desperate Lin Pingzhi betakes himself to Heng Shan City. Once there, though, he becomes involved—first as an eavesdropper, later as a participant—in a series of events initially unconnected (or so it seems) with either his own predicament or Liu’s abjuration of the Martial Grove. He first overhears disciples of a school he eventually learns is Huashan joking in a teahouse about the raucous deeds of their hard-drinking eldest Swordbrother. He then watches as the nuns of Hengshan School appear to demand that this individual—now named as Linghu Chong—be handed over to them, accusing him of kidnapping one of their Swordsisters and forcing her to drink together with him and the notorious rapist Tian Boguang. Lin Pingzhi follows the Huashan and Hengshan disciples to Liu Zhengfeng’s manor, where the Taishan and Qingcheng Schools further accuse the absent Linghu Chong of violence and murder. The beautiful young nun Yilin, Linghu’s supposed victim, now reveals through an extended narration, punctuated by the questions and comments of her audience, that Linghu Chong’s evident transgressions were in fact a valiant ploy to rescue her from Tian’s attentions—a ploy that succeeded, but only at the cost (she believes) of the young hero’s own life. At this point Yilin inherits from Lin Pingzhi the burden of focalizing the narrative. She is taken to minister to a wounded man who reportedly knows the whereabouts of her savior’s mysteriously missing remains. The location to which she is led turns out to be a brothel, and the wounded man is (as the reader

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

139

realizes long before Yilin) none other than Linghu Chong, who only now makes his entrance into the primary diegesis. This sequence exemplifies Jin Yong’s mature mastery of the narrative strategies of delayal, indirection, and anticipation deployed with such formalistic heavy-handedness in the early Flying Fox. The interruption of the forward momentum of Lin’s adventures, and the deferral of information on the recently introduced element of Liu’s retirement, is joined by the tantalizingly gradual revelation of the actions, character, and even the identity of the narrative’s new focus. The sequence’s primary function is not the simple accretion of narrative information but rather the intensification of the reader’s involvement through the simultaneous excitation and deferred gratification of the desire for knowledge. In terms of content, the knowledge doled out does establish deepening connections between the various strands of the plot: Lin Pingzhi learns that Huashan has been aware of, and even seems to have some interest in, Qingcheng’s plot against his family. But the central figure in this particular revelatory progression is Linghu Chong, and the elaborate preparation for his appearance both underscores his centrality within the story and throws the constitutive elements of his personality into high relief. It is his generosity, forthrightness, high-spiritedness, impetuous courage, innate sense of chivalry, and lack of regard or even mischievous disdain for convention that embroil him in his misadventures. And if these misadventures have a motif beyond or within the illumination of the character that drives them, it is the problematization of conventional moral categories. Yilin’s recital reveals, and her audience’s reactions approve, the altruistic motives underlying Linghu Chong’s apparently transgressive behavior but cannot mask the delight with which he embraces the transgression. Other actors in the episode similarly defy easy moral characterization: the lustful Tian Boguang is not only refreshingly frank in his villainy but also proves himself openhanded and scrupulously true to his word, while the Qingcheng and Tianshan disciples, ostensibly champions of the good, distinguish themselves by their pettiness, vindictiveness, and opportunism. The broader thematic implications of these moral uncertainties emerge when the narrative finally arrives (in chapter 6) at the moment of Liu Zhengfeng’s hand-washing ceremony. Liu’s invited guests have been speculating as to the motives behind his proposed retirement from the martial world. They are stunned when he announces his intention to take up a minor post in the imperial military bureaucracy. Their shock increases when the ceremony is abruptly halted by an emissary of Zuo Lengchan,

140

Chapter 6

chief of the Songshan School and head of the Five Mountain alliance, who accuses Liu of consorting with one Qu Yang, an elder of the Demon Sect. Liu readily admits his association with Qu but claims that theirs is a friendship based on a shared love of music, free of any political designs; it is precisely in order to pursue their shared passion that the two friends —whose very names embody the supposed dichotomy between the “straight” (zheng) and the “bent” (qu)—have decided to renounce their respective allegiances and withdraw from the Rivers and Lakes altogether. The Songshan envoy rejects the very possibility of apolitical motives or actions, maintaining that at best Liu has fallen victim to a Demon Sect plot to undermine Heng Shan’s strength and the Five Mountains’ unity. He demands that Liu kill Qu in order to prove his loyalty. When Liu continues to demur, the Songshan disciples begin to systematically execute his family and followers. Liu Zhengfeng moves to end the slaughter by killing himself, only to be snatched from the scene by none other than Qu Yang, who receives a mortal wound during the course of his rescue. The scene of the hand-washing ceremony exemplifies one of Jin Yong’s characteristic narrative tactics: the staging of a confrontation between key characters, enacted in almost ceremonial fashion (in this case the ceremony is literal) before an assembled crowd of onlookers, extended and elaborated through a series of revelations, the introduction of new participants, and repeated shifts in alliances and reversals of the issues at stake, leading finally to a violent denouement that complicates rather than resolves the multiple strands of the plot. Among the more important of the complications introduced by this particular episode is that of Zuo Lengchan’s ambitions. Evident in his actions here is a desire not only to combat the Demon Sect but to assert his dominance over the allied Five Mountain schools as well; and as the novel progresses, the reader learns, through events witnessed and information discovered by Linghu Chong and other characters, that the Songshan chief aims to unite the Five Mountain schools into a single sect under his command as the first step toward establishing complete hegemony over the Rivers and Lakes. Zuo Lengchan’s readiness to use any means necessary to accomplish his goals reinforces the perception suggested by Linghu Chong’s earlier adventures that there is no simple correlation between the ostensible camps of good and evil and actual devotion to principled or moral behavior. “You Songshan disciples are a thousand times more vile than the Demon Sect!” cries Liu Zhengfeng’s daughter before being cut down in cold blood (256). Indeed, as what is at first cast as a battle between the Demon Sect and the allied

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

141

forces of light is joined by the struggle for control of the alliance and by internecine warfare both within the Demon Sect and within various of the Five Mountain schools, the ideology of good and evil is increasingly revealed to be no more than a veil for the naked struggle for power. It is this struggle that characterizes, even constitutes, the world of the Rivers and Lakes. It is this struggle that Liu Zhengfeng and Qu Yang seek to transcend through their embrace of friendship and music. But the tragic outcome of their attempt raises doubt as to whether any form of transcendence or withdrawal is ultimately realizable. As with all of Jin Yong’s novels, the text’s primary vehicle for tracing the multilayered conflicts of its plot and the thematic issues they raise is the developmental trajectory of its protagonist. Linghu Chong makes his entrance, as we have seen, wounded and under suspicion of moral laxness. He is absent from the scene of Liu’s hand-washing ceremony but entangled in its ideological thickets when Liu Zhengfeng reveals that it was Qu Yang, struck by his courage and flair, who saved him from his seemingly mortal wounds. Liu offers this information in testimony to Qu’s renunciation of the feuding between the Demon Sect and the Five Mountains, but one of the Songshan representatives reads it as further evidence of the foe’s cunning; might not Linghu Chong’s natural gratitude lead, “hypothetically” (249), to the emergence of another traitor within the Five Mountains’ ranks? The immediate sequel to the hand-washing ceremony casts Linghu Chong even more unequivocally as the bearer of its thematic burdens. Liu and Qu, fleeing to the wilderness outside Heng Shan City to expire from their wounds, encounter Linghu, recovering from his, and, before breathing their last, pass on to him the score they have composed, charging him with finding a pair who can perform it and make their shared music live on. The name of their duet is “Xiaoao jianghu,” the title of the novel itself. With this score hidden in the breast of his garments, Linghu Chong embarks on a journey of further wounding, unjust accusations, disillusionment, healing, vindication, martial mastery, reluctant leadership, scornful rejection of power, and eventual fulfillment as he and the daughter of the Demon Sect’s chief withdraw to the mountains to play “Xiaoao jianghu” together on lute (qin) and flute (xiao). There is no need to continue tracing the novel’s intricate plot in exhaustive or sequential fashion; readers interested in the unfolding of the narrative are urged to turn to the original work. We shift here instead to a topical discussion of the work, beginning with the representation of the martial arts within its thematic exploration of political struggle and its alternatives.

142

Chapter 6

The Viciousness and Perversity of Martial Technology Within the generic conventions of the martial arts novel it is a given that the struggle for power will involve the acquisition and deployment of supreme martial skills. So it is in Wanderer. In all of the interlocking conflicts noted above, the antagonists seek to possess and master the technologies that they see as the key to supremacy. In each case, furthermore, the desire to master martial techniques itself turns out to be one of the original sources of contention. In particular, the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual, which initiates the unfolding of “text-time,” is revealed through accretive analepses to lie at the root of the tale’s various struggles and thus serves as the prime mover of “story-time” as well. The gradual discovery of the manual’s role in driving events and the revelation of the true nature of the techniques it contains function as primary engines of the novel’s narrative development. In all these respects the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual’s functions within Wanderer resemble those of the Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin within Heroes and of similarly potent texts in the intervening novels. Where Wanderer surpasses its predecessors is in the ingenuity and affective force with which it integrates its representation of the pivotal martial techniques’ nature and history with the novel’s central thematic concerns. It represents the Evil-Quelling Swordplay—and through it the martial arts in general—not merely as a tool for the ambitions of the ruthless and hypocritical, and not merely as inhumanly savage in the most significant instances of its deployment, but also as structured around an intrinsic perversity that comes to symbolize the violence and unnaturalness of the quest for power. The martial arts, the defining practice of the Martial Grove and the Rivers and Lakes, become homologous with the Rivers and Lakes as an expression of the inalienable viciousness of political life. Of the many characters in the novel who manipulate the martial arts for personal and political ends, perhaps the most emblematic is Yue Buqun, Linghu Chong’s master and father-surrogate and the chief of the Huashan School. Known by the cognomen “The Righteous Sword” (Junzi jian), Yue is in bearing and by reputation a gentleman-scholar whose scrupulous devotion to altruistic Confucian principles elevates him (as the name Yue, literally “sacred mountain,” Buqun, “not [of the] crowd,” suggests) far above the plane of petty men (xiaoren). He first appears in the narrative as a champion to the desperate Lin Pingzhi, godlike in the eyes of the recipient of his grace. But subsequent developments gradually reveal that even this seemingly chivalric act is but one element in a deep-laid plan to seize the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual and the dominance it prom-

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

143

ises. Yue has a penchant for pietistic oration, including a forbidding lecture to his disciples on the inviolable distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy that several generations ago plunged his school into warfare between a spirit sect and a sword sect. But when his own schemes and reputation are at stake, he does not hesitate to employ a martial technique from the supposedly apostate branch. Yue Buqun is easily as ambitious, cunning, and ruthless as Zuo Lengchan or the chiefs of the Qingcheng School and the Demon Sect; he is more false and vicious than any of them by virtue of the pieties with which he masks his lust for power. If the enterprise of the martial arts is compromised by its hypocritical manipulation at the hands of Yue Buqun and his ilk, it is darkened also by the inhuman savagery of the climactic combats within the novel. Like all of Jin Yong’s works, Wanderer abounds in lyrical descriptions of martial exercise, in fusions of the martial and civil arts (discussed further below), and in baroquely plotted encounters that explore not only the shifting relationships between the combatants but the arcana of martial techniques and the niceties of the Martial Grove’s code of honor as well. The battles that resolve the primary plot lines, however—such as the duel between the rival claimants to the Demon Sect’s throne, the contest for leadership of the newly unified Five Mountain School, Lin Pingzhi’s vengeance upon his enemies, or the last general melee among the Five Mountain disciples—uniformly degenerate into savagery of the sort adumbrated in the narrative’s first fight, the fatal tavern brawl between Lin Pingzhi and the scion of the Qingcheng School. Perhaps the most grotesque of these combats is Lin Pingzhi’s accomplishment of his long-sought revenge. Having recovered his family’s stolen manual and (at a cost discussed below) mastered its techniques, he cold-bloodedly stalks his foes, toying with them and murdering them one by one before being forced into a final confrontation. In the fight that follows he lames one of his opponents, the hunchback Mu Gaofeng, then blinds Yu Canghai and hacks off both his arms. Crazed with delight and taunting the ruined Yu, he stumbles against Mu, who locks his arms around Lin’s legs: Lin Pingzhi gave a start. Seeing several dozen Qingcheng disciples rushing toward him, he struggled to pull his legs free, but Mu Gaofeng’s arms encircled them like hoops of iron, and he struggled in vain. He raised his sword and stabbed straight down at the hump on Mu’s back. With a splat a gout of black and fetid liquid came gushing forth. Utterly unprepared for this event, Lin thrust his legs against the ground, intending to dodge to one side. He had forgotten though that his legs were

144

Chapter 6

still locked in Mu’s grasp. The stinking liquid sprayed right into his face, and he screamed in pain. It was in fact a virulent poison; Mu Gaofeng had carried a sack of venoms hidden in his hump. Shielding his face with his left hand and closing his eyes, Lin Pingzhi raised his sword and began hacking madly at Mu’s body. The strokes fell thick and fast. Powerless to avoid them, Mu could only hold fast to Lin’s legs. And now Yu Canghai, divining the pair’s location from their cries, rushed forward, opened his mouth, and sank his teeth deep into Lin Pingzhi’s right cheek. The three locked themselves in a tangled heap, their minds in chaos. . . . Mu Gaofeng’s wild cries began to fade as Lin Pingzhi sank his sword into his back over and over again. Yu Canghai, bloody from head to toe, kept his teeth still locked in Lin’s face. Lin finally gave a mighty shove with his left arm that sent Yu flying, and at the same time let out a horrible cry. His right cheek was soaked with gore; Yu Canghai had bitten a great chunk of flesh right off his face. Though Mu Gaofeng had already breathed his last, he still held tight to Lin Pingzhi’s legs. Lin used his left hand to locate Mu’s arms, then raised his sword and slashed down, lopping both arms off and only thus freeing himself from his grip. . . . Lin Pingzhi gave a wild laugh. “I’m avenged! I’m avenged!” he cried. Every one of the [watching] Hengshan disciples blanched in shock at this astonishing and horrendous spectacle. (1447–1448)

The focus here on the brutality of the combatants’ emotions and actions heightens the dramatic spectacle of the scene but robs it of any heroism or martial grace; while gratifying the reader’s desire for narrative resolution, the text also directs him/her to feel the same horror imputed to the fictional onlookers. In a number of its narrative elements, as well as in the general tone of gothic extravagance, the passage is comparable to the climactic sequence in Lu Xun’s “Zhu jian” (Forging the swords, 1926), with which it shares the aim of dramatizing the self-consuming violence of revenge.2 Where Lu Xun’s tale operates in the spare and abstract mode of mythic archetypes, however, Jin Yong’s scene draws additional pathetic force from the reader’s extended involvement in the characters and their histories. Yet the melodramatic dimension does not exclude the symbolic power of the images of entanglement, dismemberment, and blindness.3 In this and similar scenes in Wanderer, martial conflict serves as a vehicle for the simultaneously visceral and allegorical expression of a horror so overwhelming as to invalidate any narrative justification for the characters’ actions or intrinsic value of the martial arts themselves.

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

145

At one level of signification, then, both the general subjection of the quest for martial mastery to selfish ends and the brutish and futile denouements to various characters’ endeavors render void any distinction between “good” and “bad” martial techniques such as that hypocritically advanced by Yue Buqun, reducing the martial arts in their entirety to a value-neutral instrument at best. At another level, however, the text expressly identifies certain martial technologies as evil. Chief among these is the plot’s primary narrative engine, the ironically named Evil-Quelling Swordplay. The inalienable wickedness of this art is vouched for both by authorial providence, which assigns wretched fates to all those who practice it, and by the reactions of such presumptively normative characters as the protagonist Linghu Chong. Linghu is described as feeling a frisson of horror and disgust each time he encounters the Evil-Quelling Swordplay, and it is the realization that Yue Buqun has embraced this technique that finally demolishes his desperately held faith in his master’s virtue. In performance, the techniques of the Evil-Quelling Swordplay are distinguished only by a preternatural speed and suddenness. The aura of abomination associated with the art lies not in its moves as such but rather in the changes it effects in the person of the practitioner, who undergoes a process of feminization explicitly marked as perverse. Linghu Chong (and through him the reader) first encounters these changes when he accompanies Ren Woxing, the deposed chief of the Demon Sect whose escape from a subterranean prison he has unwittingly aided, to the sect’s headquarters at Blackwood Crag to confront the usurper Dongfang Bubai. After passing in disguise through a series of impregnable defenses and casting down the body-double seated on the sect’s throne, Ren, Linghu, Ren’s daughter Yingying and his faithful lieutenant Xiang Wentian make their way to Dongfang’s secret lair. They are astonished to discover that the sanctum of the most dreaded champion of the Martial Grove is a boudoir decorated with embroidery and paintings of famous beauties, set in the midst of a garden full of intoxicating scents. Linghu Chong’s speculation that this is a love nest to which the sect leader has retired with a favorite concubine is confuted when the interlopers follow a shrill, hackle-raising voice to discover Dongfang Bubai himself seated before a makeup stand, smooth-cheeked, daubed with makeup and reeking of perfume, dressed in robes “whose style was that of neither man nor woman, and whose seductive colors would have looked rather too feminine, rather too garish, even if Yingying had been wearing them” (1282). In the furious combat that follows, Dongfang’s weapon of choice is the emblematically female embroidery needle, which he flings at his opponents’ eyes and other vital points. So

146

Chapter 6

formidable are his skills that he is defeated only when Yingying succeeds in shattering his focus by torturing his hapless male favorite. Dongfang Bubai’s martial power, the political power that rests squarely on this martial might, the feminization of his being, all spring simultaneously from a single source: the techniques he has learned from the Sunflower Scripture (Kuihua baodian). And this text, the Demon Sect’s most fiercely guarded treasure, turns out to be the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual in another guise. The abbot of Shaolin discloses its history to Linghu Chong in the chapter preceding the showdown on Blackwood Crag. The Scripture’s author was a eunuch of the imperial household. The volume in which he recorded the secrets of his supreme martial technique passed through various hands in the centuries after his death, ending up in the possession of the southern Shaolin temple, whose abbot refused to practice or teach its methods. But two visiting disciples of the Huashan school stole glimpses of the manuscript and, on the basis of their furtive and partial readings, established Huashan’s rival sword and spirit sects. A Shaolin monk sent to warn Huashan of the dangers of the Scripture made a copy of the two sects’ fragmentary texts instead, then disappeared. The Demon Sect, learning that a copy of the manuscript existed on Huashan, attacked, was driven back by the allied Five Mountain Schools, but succeeded in making off with the reconstructed Sunflower Scripture. A second retaliatory attack some years later resulted in the decimation of both the Demon Sect and the Five Mountain Schools. The vanished Shaolin monk, meanwhile, returned to lay life, changed his name to Lin, and used the arts he studied from his own stolen copy of the scripture to establish a caravan security agency. The Demon Sect’s Sunflower Scripture is thus the original of the Lin clan’s Evil-Quelling Sword Manual. And the key to the technique taught by the varied recensions of this text is the well-nigh-unbearable first step in its practice: self-castration. The most potent technology of the Martial Grove is based paradoxically on emasculation. Castration allows the aspirant to the text’s secrets to manipulate the formidable energies involved, free from the danger that they might be catastrophically diverted by surges of sexual desire. This rationale, a fictional elaboration of the strictures against sexual activity associated with many martial traditions, provides the author with an emotionally charged and symbolically rich figure for the self-destructiveness of the quest for power —a figure that is constructed on presumptions of a male, phallic, heterosexual, and patrilineal norm. The cultivation of power requires violence against one’s physical masculinity; it is the results of this violence that are manifested in the substitution of the needle for the sword and in the per-

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

147

formance of an exaggerated and grotesque femininity. It requires a corresponding rejection of heterosexual relationships: Dongfang Bubai, after beginning his practice, executes his concubines and takes up with a male favorite, while Lin Pingzhi chooses the Evil-Quelling Swordplay and the promise of revenge over consummation of his marriage to Yue Buqun’s daughter, murdering her in the end. And it requires the disruption and perversion of the transmission of power and knowledge from father to son. Thus Lin Pingzhi learns that the revered ancestor who founded the Lin family enterprise was not in fact his grandfather’s sire—could not have been, given the fundamental demand of his art. His own father’s dying wish is not that he inherit the ancestral art, but rather that he not recover or study the family’s heirloom manual. And by then contravening this command, Lin Pingzhi makes himself guilty not only of disobedience but also of the obliteration of the family line, which traditional Chinese morality ranks as the most cardinal of sins. Ren Woxing, for his part, enacts a vicious distortion of transmission, entrusting the perilous Sunflower Scripture to his protégé Dongfang Bubai precisely in order to test his loyalty and to lead him to ruin in the event his suspicions prove correct. The Evil-Quelling Swordplay, structured around the destruction and perversion of multiple aspects of masculinity, is the martial technology within the novel most clearly marked by an intrinsic evil; it is not, however, the only martial art to bring harm to its practitioner and bear an attendant burden of negative symbolic connotations. Ren Woxing’s distinctive technique, the Star-Absorbing Thaumaturgy (Xixing dafa), works by draining an opponent’s internal energies, augmenting the wielder’s potency while rendering the attacker helpless. Its fatal flaw lies in the difficulty of controlling and integrating the energies absorbed, and the danger that energies not properly neutralized will bring madness or death to the user. This is precisely the fate that consumes Ren Woxing, who perishes at the zenith of his triumph, exhausted by the need to incessantly repress the forces raging within him. Where the symbology surrounding the Evil-Quelling Swordplay seems designed to connote an irreducible perversity, that associated with the Star-Absorbing Thaumaturgy functions as a simpler metaphor for the perils of hegemony.4 That it represents evil on a less inalienable level—functional, perhaps, rather than intrinsic—is suggested by the fact that Linghu Chong acquires the art yet ends the narrative physically and morally whole. He learns the technique during a sequence at the novel’s halfway point that marks the reversal of his personal fortunes and a turning point in the plot. Imprisoned in the underground cell formerly occupied by Ren Woxing, for whom he has been unwittingly substituted,

148

Chapter 6

he discovers the characters of the Thaumaturgy’s formulae impressed upon his flesh by the bars of the cage onto which Ren had engraved them. He memorizes the text, ignorant of its nature, and begins practicing the technique subconsciously in his dreams. The method proves capable of relieving the symptoms of the unique internal wounds he has suffered. Though he subsequently has occasion to employ its deadly martial capabilities, most notably in his final confrontation with Yue Buqun, such uses are always inadvertent or compelled, and he readily renounces the vicious and danger-fraught practice in the end, turning instead to healing arts transmitted by the abbot of Shaolin. The novel portrays no convincing rival to the sinister power of the Evil-Quelling Swordplay. Many of the other contending martial technologies are conceived of as not merely inferior in potency but also negative in their operation—that is, centered on the dispersal of power or the neutralization of technique. The Star-Absorbing Thaumaturgy, which drains in order to (perilously) amass, is an obvious example. The other arts mastered by the novel’s protagonist can be similarly characterized as well. While confined to Huashan’s Crag of Penance to reflect on his transgressions, Linghu Chong comes into possession of two bodies of martial lore that carry him through his subsequent adventures. One is a compendium of the techniques of the Five Mountain Schools, with the countermoves that render them useless, inscribed on the walls of a cavern by the Demon Sect champions immured there several generations ago. This knowledge so demolishes Linghu Chong’s faith in his own school’s techniques that he can scarcely bring himself to practice; it also bears with it the first evidence (which he is not yet ready to credit) of the Five Schools’ perfidy and hypocrisy. The second art he acquires is that known as the Solitary Champion’s Nine Sword Techniques (Dugu jiu jian), which contains the secrets of defeating or neutralizing all other martial methods, known or yet uninvented. The existential emptiness inherent in this form of supremacy is evident in the name and fate of the technique’s inventor, Dugu Qiubai, “the solitary seeker of defeat” introduced (as here, indirectly) in Companion, who spent his life in a fruitless quest for a worthy opponent. A distinctive feature of the Nine Sword Techniques is that they rely entirely on subtlety of method; it is this that allows Linghu Chong to deploy them to great effect even when his wounds have left him completely bereft of internal power. Neither Linghu’s repertory, in sum, nor that of any other character contains a constructive or positive martial counterbalance to the EvilQuelling Swordplay. As the supreme martial technology, the Evil-Quelling Swordplay represents, in one sense, the martial arts’ quintessence, and

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

149

casts the shadow of its power and its perversity over the enterprise as a whole. The alternative the novel imagines to this baneful practice is not some other, more positively valuated martial technique, but a fundamental rejection of the martial arts and of the Rivers and Lakes in which they hold sway. Reclusion, Romance, and the Role of Culture The dream of forsaking the Rivers and Lakes is first articulated in the novel by Heng Shan’s Liu Zhengfeng and the Demon Sect’s Qu Yang. Music, epitomized in their joint composition and performance of “Xiaoao jianghu,” serves as the medium of their friendship and the aim of their intended withdrawal; just as the martial arts define and epitomize the political world of the Rivers and Lakes, so music does the opposed terrain of reclusion. The text’s representation of Qu and Yang’s musical communion is informed by several allusions. The first is to the notion of the zhi yin, “the one who understands the music.” The term derives from the story (found in the Lie zi and other early texts) of the Spring and Autumn Period lute player Bo Ya, who destroyed his instrument at the death of Zhong Ziqi, the one man who could intuit and appreciate the music’s intent and thus the heart of the player. The concept of the zhi yin speaks to central tenets of Chinese aesthetics and is also a close variant of the zhi ji trope so central to the xia tradition (see chapter 1 herein). Wanderer’s implicit evocation of the story of Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi both invests Qu and Liu’s friendship with the gravitas of cultural precedent and affirms the ideal xia’s allegiance to values transcending the raw exercise of power. These values, and the impediments to their realization, are the subject of a second and more explicit allusion. As Qu Yang and Liu Zhengfeng await death in the hills outside Heng Shan City, Qu compares their final performance with that of the Jin dynasty scholar-official Xi Kang (223–262). Xi Kang is known as one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, a fraternity of scholar-officials whose cultivation of artistic and philosophical pursuits in a retreat near Luoyang serves as one of China’s most enduring images of reclusion—a principled withdrawal from public life, motivated by Confucian condemnation of the political and moral status quo and/or by Daoist yearnings for spiritual freedom.5 Xi Kang, condemned to death by his political enemies, is said to have played the lute piece “Guangling san” with unruffled composure while facing execution, then sighed that after his death the music would be lost to the world. The overt points of Qu Yang’s reference to Xi Kang are the passion of the music—Qu actually

150

Chapter 6

claims that in this respect the “Guangling san” was no match for his and Liu’s “Xiaoao jianghu”—and the player’s grief at the imminent loss of his art. Other, unstated elements of the story are, however, also relevant to Qu and Liu’s situation: the contrast between a private and transcendent vision and the sordid politics that condemn the artist to death, and the general air of chivalry and unbowed heroism associated with the figure of Xi Kang.6 And the connection between the Jin dynasty scholar and Jin Yong’s characters turns out to be one not of mere homology but of concrete filiation. Before handing the manuscript of “Xiaoao jianghu” over to Linghu Chong and entrusting him with the task of finding a worthy pair of inheritors, Qu Yang proudly reveals (274–276) that the lute’s portion of the score is adapted from the music that supposedly perished with Xi Kang’s death. Reasoning that even if the transmission of “Guangling san” ended with Xi Kang, it did not begin with him, Qu has plundered dozens of preJin tombs to find an ancient copy of the score, then used this unique relic as the basis for the music that is the consummate expression of his transcendent relationship with his zhi yin. Through the tale of its creation, thus, no less than through the charge laid upon Linghu Chong, the “Xiaoao jianghu” manuscript interweaves the concerns of apolitical transcendence and unique mutual understanding with those of transmission and inheritance. Linghu Chong’s struggles to free himself from the vicissitudes of the Rivers and Lakes and to discover his soul mate are of a piece with his quest to find the score’s rightful heirs—heirs who are, in the end, himself and his beloved Yingying. As a textual vehicle of transmitted knowledge, the “Xiaoao jianghu” manuscript functions as the narrative counterpart to the pernicious legacy of the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual. The correspondence between the two is suggested by the fact that Linghu Chong receives the key to the latter’s location from Lin Pingzhi’s dying father immediately after accepting the former from Qu and Yang. The point is further driven home when in-laws of the Lin clan, suspecting Linghu Chong of having seized the manual for himself, capture and search him and take the undecipherable (to them) score as proof of his alleged treachery. Indeed, if we view Linghu Chong’s adventures in terms of the transmission of knowledge and power, we find that his acceptance of the legacy of Qu and Yang’s music stands in contrast to his varying responses to an array of alternative inheritances that present themselves to him during the course of the novel. As an orphan adopted by Yue Buqun and his wife, their daughter Yue Lingshan’s childhood playmate, and the highest ranking Huashan disciple, he is his master’s virtual son, presumed son-in-law,

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

151

and anticipated heir as chief of the Huashan School. Throughout the novel he displays a heartbreaking and ultimately futile longing to maintain these roles in the face of the mounting tension between his conscience on the one hand and the inescapable knowledge of his master’s perfidy on the other. In this set of roles, he is darkly mirrored by Lin Pingzhi, who not only lusts after that knowledge of the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual, which has passed by chance into Linghu Chong’s unwilling hands, but also replaces Linghu in Yue Lingshan’s affections and (for a time) in her father’s schemes. A second inheritance offered to the protagonist, parallel in many ways to that of the Huashan School, is the Demon Sect’s. Linghu Chong’s role in Ren Woxing’s liberation from his underground prison, his mastering (albeit unwittingly) the Star-Absorbing Thaumaturgy, his deepening involvement with Ren Yingying, and certain underlying concords in personality, all move the once-and-future chief of the Demon Sect to nominate Linghu Chong as his own son-in-law and successor. Linghu rejects the mantle offered him by Ren Woxing, with the same fervor—and not infrequent doubt—he displays in fighting to regain his place in the Huashan succession. And if his doppelgänger in the latter lineage is Lin Pingzhi, in the former it is Ren Woxing’s erstwhile protégé Dongfang Bubai. An element in each of Linghu Chong’s possible martial inheritances is a potential romantic partner—the daughter of the chief of the respective school or sect. His final choice, though, is not of one martial lineage over another but of disengagement from the world of the martial arts as a whole. And so before he can consummate his union with Ren Yingying, he must dissociate it from the quest for martial supremacy and political power. He does so by repeatedly declining the union as long as it is implicated in these martial and political contexts. The pair weds only after Ren Woxing has died; and Yingying’s observation of the traditional three years of mourning for her father’s death, and her resignation of the chieftainship of the Demon Sect before the wedding, underscore their determination to establish a union free of the inherited burdens of the Rivers and Lakes. They mark their success by playfully replacing the Demon Sect’s hegemonic mantra, “For a thousand autumns, for a myriad of years, the Rivers and Lakes shall be united!” (Qianqiu wanzai, yitong jianghu), with a celebration of romantic union, “For a thousand autumns, for a myriad of years, we shall be husband and wife forever!” (Qianqiu wanzai, yong wei fufu) (1684). It is important to note that in the act of declaring their union’s independence from the shadow of the Rivers and Lakes, the revision of the slogan additionally posits romantic love itself as one primary alternative to

152

Chapter 6

political struggle. In accepting and fulfilling Qu Yang and Liu Zhengfeng’s legacy of apolitical transcendence through music, Linghu Chong and Ren Yingying also transform it, transposing it from the homosocial context of male zhi yin in the mode of Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi to a heterosexual model of romantic relationships. The trope of the “fair-faced zhi ji” (as Linghu Chong refers to Yingying during the scene in which they finally clarify their mutual devotion [1452]) has deep roots in Chinese romantic literature of the “scholar and beauty” (caizi jiaren) tradition. Its appearance here accords with a predilection for happy romantic endings in Jin Yong’s work and in certain strands of New School martial arts fiction in general. In terms of Wanderer’s particular thematic concerns, though, the romantic denouement of the protagonist’s trials both draws validity from and simultaneously serves to buttress the work’s deployment of normative heterosexuality as a standard of difference and moral evaluation. The mutual implication of manhood, heterosexual union, and inheritance in Linghu Chong’s fulfillment of the ideals symbolized by the music of “Xiaoao jianghu” mirrors and rectifies the perversions surrounding the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual. Details of narrative figuration persistently reinforce the correspondences and crucial distinctions between the two. When Linghu Chong and Yingying accompany Ren Woxing into Dongfang Bubai’s sanctum, for instance, not only does Linghu misrecognize the garden as a retreat for the sect leader and a presumed female companion, he further imagines himself and Yingying playing their music together in this paradise once Dongfang has been defeated; and when Yingying expresses satisfaction at the destruction of the Sunflower Scripture, he jests that she must have been worried that he too would be tempted to practice its arts. The text’s use of masculinity and heterosexual desire to distinguish the martial traditions and political roles, which Linghu Chong declines, from the tradition of transcendence and reclusion, which he embraces, illuminates the most significant exception to the rejection of the burdens of martial transmission that otherwise characterize his path: his accession to the post of chief of Hengshan. The members of Hengshan, one of the Five Mountain Schools, are all Buddhist nuns or female lay practitioners. Linghu’s involvement with the school begins with his rescue of Yilin from the attentions of Tian Boguang. He clears himself from suspicion that his own designs on the beautiful young nun might have been less than honorable even as she is ensnared by worldly passion for her dashing benefactor. Linghu Chong’s subsequent acts of selfless chivalry toward the school inspire the abbess Ding Jing, an unyielding opponent of Zuo Lengshan’s plans for hegemony, to make the dying request that he succeed her as its

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

153

chief. His consequent position as leader and sole male member of a school of unattached females draws responses ranging from good-natured merriment to derision and imputations against his and his charges’ integrity: on the one hand he is suspected of debauchery, and on the other symbolically emasculated by his occupation of a historically female role. Yingying soon affirms Hengshan’s masculine credentials by commanding hundreds of the Demon Sect’s allies to enroll in an all-male auxiliary branch. Linghu Chong, for his part, indulges in meat and wine but maintains scrupulous decorum in his dealings with his female subordinates; he teaches them Hengshan techniques he has learned in the cavern beneath Huashan, safeguards them against the perils of the Rivers and Lakes, and turns leadership of the school over to a worthy nun at the earliest decent opportunity. Linghu Chong’s acceptance of the chieftainship is thus explicable as an act of chivalry whose apparent dissonance with his reclusive tendencies is mitigated by its temporariness and by the Hengshan School’s relative freedom from the contagion of political ambition. Femininity combines with religious otherworldliness to construct the nuns as pure, principled, and benevolent; misconstructions of Linghu’s position or his relationship with his charges merely prove the sordidness of the world from which he and they hold themselves apart. But adding depth to this surface level of signification are more complex resonances within the novel’s symbolic system. Linghu Chong’s scrupulous propriety with the nuns and his resistance of the temptation that Yilin might present differentiate him from the lustful Tian Boguang and so validate the moral authority of his heterosexuality. His principled and willed abjuration of masculine sexuality in the limited context of these relationships, moreover, stands in contrast to the violent, instrumental, and perverse emasculation required by the EvilQuelling Swordplay. In this light, Linghu Chong’s role as leader of the Hengshan School constitutes one facet of a cross-reflection between emasculation on the one hand and Buddhist renunciation on the other that is sustained throughout the novel. The essential configuration of the elements of this cross-reflection appears in the story of the sword manual’s genesis: it is created by a eunuch, hidden away by a virtuous Shaolin abbot, then stolen, practiced, and disseminated by an apostate and self-castrating monk. On the level of foregrounded narrative action rather than that of the story’s mythic underpinnings, the same themes animate a series of burlesque incidents: Yilin’s father turns out to be a monk, Bujie (“no prohibitions”), who took the tonsure in order to “marry” a nun with whom he was smitten; Bujie makes a monk out of Tian Boguang by castrating him, and gives him the name Buke Bujie (“no choice but to follow the

154

Chapter 6

prohibitions”); Yilin’s mother tries to force Linghu Chong to take her lovesick daughter as his wife, threatening him with the alternative of the same irreversible “monkhood” that Tian Boguang has suffered. The fact that the text plays these incidents for comedy, however grotesque, reinforces the status of Buddhist renunciation as a more benign mirror of the perversions of the Evil-Quelling Swordplay. Linghu Chong’s path, as we have seen, lies with neither of the complementary terms of this dyad, but with an alternative form of renunciation: reclusion from the struggles of the world in an idyll suffused with the transcendent powers of music and shared with his beloved. He first recognizes music’s fidelity to a realm beyond politics and ideology during his fateful encounter with Qu Yang and Liu Zhengfeng. He discovers its importance to his own fate when, in disgrace, humiliated, and accused of treachery, he is brought to the bamboo-shadowed retreat of a lute master who not only identifies the manuscript he carries as a musical score, and so vindicates his innocence, but also uses music to salve his wounds and begins to teach him to play. The mysterious lute master is in fact none other than Ren Yingying, hidden from sight and masquerading as a wizened crone.7 Her sympathy for Linghu Chong’s plight and her admiration for his talents and untrammeled spirit plant the seeds of their subsequent romance, in which music serves as both a narrative thread and a governing image.8 The linkage between music and the garden retreat established in their first meeting is reprised in Linghu’s fantasy of Dongfang Bubai’s lair as a refuge for himself and his beloved, and is realized later in the narrative when the pair find temporary sanctuary—a presentiment of their retirement to the mountains at the novel’s close—in an unpeopled valley where they perfect their musical communion. The flowering peach trees that fill this vale make clear its affinity with Tao Qian’s rustic and apolitical utopia of Peach Blossom Spring. In order to appreciate the continuities and shifts in the configuration of Jin Yong’s imaginary universe, it will be useful to recall an earlier blossom-filled cradle of traditional arts: The Eagle-Shooting Heroes’ Peach Blossom Isle. Here the military and civil arts found union; Huang Yaoshi, the Heterodoct of the East, practiced his music and other accomplishments not as alternatives to his martial skills but as complements to and even vehicles for them, as witnessed by his duel with Ouyang Feng on zither and flute. Wanderer presents at one point an almost identical fusion of the martial arts with traditional artistic and cultural practices, giving it extended and programmatic treatment—while at the same time representing it as essentially flawed. When Linghu Chong, innocent of his compan-

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

155

ion’s designs, is brought to Plum Manor near Hangzhou’s West Lake to aid in releasing Ren Woxing from his subterranean prison, he is matched in a series of duels against the four squires who dwell there in bucolic reclusion. Each of the squires devotes his leisure to one of the arts cultivated by the traditional Confucian scholar, and each has made his art an expression of his formidable martial skills. The fourth squire demonstrates swordplay informed by his landscape-painting techniques; the third wields an iron brush in moves based stroke for stroke on the calligraphy of famous masters; the second brandishes a magnetic chessboard in chess-inspired strategies; and the first and senior squire engages Linghu Chong in a duel of flute and lute that evokes simultaneously the precedent of Huang Yaoshi and the defining image of Linghu’s romance with Yingying. This dramatic and inventive set piece is perhaps the best-known of Jin Yong’s fictional weddings of China’s martial and cultural arts. Its moral, however, is the fatal limitations of such a wedding. The four squires are seduced by their lust for the cultural treasures offered as stakes in the contest—fabulously rare paintings, calligraphy, chess manuals, and the “Guangling san” score unearthed by Qu Yang—into compromising their duties as Ren Woxing’s jailers. Their martial techniques’ fidelity to their respective artistic inspirations ultimately limits their combat effectiveness, leaving them open to defeat by Linghu Chong’s intuitive, free-form talents. And just as the attempted fusion cripples their martial skills, so too does it sabotage their dreams of scholarly reclusion; the willingness to serve Dongfang Bubai, which gains them twelve idyllic years at Plum Manor, also leaves them vulnerable to the catastrophic consequences of Ren Woxing’s escape. The first squire returns “Guangling san” to Linghu Chong before taking his own life. Where The Eagle-Shooting Heroes envisions the China’s martial and cultural arts as complementary and mutually fulfilling, Wanderer suggests that for all their structural and stylistic affinities, their fundamental aims are incompatible. Qu Yang and Liu Zhengfeng propose, and Linghu Chong and Ren Yingying confirm, that the value of music, and by extension of the artistic and cultural heritage as a whole, lies precisely in its capacity to create an alternative to the Rivers and Lakes and to the martial arts that are this arena’s defining practice. In censuring the inhumanity of the martial arts and the Rivers and Lakes, the text makes an ostensible rejection of what it implicitly embraces as the very building blocks of its existence. The novel is a martial arts novel, and in most readers’ eyes a fine one, depending for its success on the author’s mastery of and the audience’s fascination with the formulae and assumptions of the genre. The struggles of the Rivers and Lakes make

156

Chapter 6

up the warp and woof of its engrossing narrative, and an innate talent for and innocent delight in the martial arts are central features of the sympathetic protagonist’s character. While certain key passages dramatize the brutality of violent conflict, many others delight in the beauty, spirit, and complexity of martial performance. There is no need to belabor the martial arts’ centrality to the work, nor the apparent dissonance (far from unique, either to this work or to martial arts fiction) between stated moral and generic imperative. What is perhaps most interesting, or at least most germane to the present argument, is the reorientation of the fundamental cosmology of the martial arts novel that enables the expression of Wanderer’s themes. Book and Sword and its more proximate successors set their tales of struggle and maturation, romance, and martial and cultural inheritance in a world of Rivers and Lakes defined by its contingency to and antagonism with the historic Chinese imperial order. Wanderer makes but the most perfunctory of gestures toward the martial world’s defining and limiting counterpart. It allows the Rivers and Lakes to become in effect a self-subsistent universe, incorporating within itself issues previously constructed through tension with its other. The reflexive and critical perspective that arises alongside the Rivers and Lakes’ emergent self-sufficiency can be understood in part as a conscious exploration of the assumptions and limitations of the martial arts novel, by a master of the genre at the apex of his authorial career. Yet this critical turn involves not only the genre’s reflection upon itself but also a shift in its referential coordinates. Where the previous sections of this chapter have sought to elucidate the internal logic of Wanderer’s narrative and symbolic structures, the final section will therefore address the relationship between the novel’s fictional Rivers and Lakes, its representation of Chinese history, and its provocative evocations of contemporary events. Terms of Reference: China’s Past and China’s Present The novel’s very title promises (at least in the Chinese) a thematic treatment of the Rivers and Lakes, and the text explicitly addresses the question of the nature of this realm, beginning in the first chapter when Lin Pingzhi’s father delivers a lecture on the history of the family business and the secrets of its success. The old caravan guard preaches that survival and prosperity within the Rivers and Lakes’ treacherous tides depend less on martial skill than on the canny cultivation of wide-ranging and cordial relationships. The catastrophe that soon befalls the Lin family lays bare the insufficiency of this worldly but essentially benign perspective and

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

157

thrusts Lin Pingzhi out into an environment he has previously experienced only from the shelter of his father’s accomplishments. As discussed, the assembly for Liu Zhengfeng’s hand-washing ceremony serves to reveal the Rivers and Lakes’ internal configuration. The same scene also reasserts a familiar conception of the milieu as separate from and opposed to the world of officialdom and the orthodox structures of imperial power. The assembled heroes greet with suspicion and aggression the arrival of a government official; their reflexive defensiveness turns to disbelief, scorn, and bemused tolerance at the revelation that he has come to confer a minor post on Liu Zhengfeng. Liu’s ploy of intended “retirement” thus confirms the division between, and complementarity of, the two worlds. It also reverses, however, their respective roles. The Rivers and Lakes, traditionally conceived as a place of exile from the center of power and the struggles surrounding it, here become a zone of peril from which officialdom promises (vainly) an escape. The “reek of blood” that Chen Pingyuan notes as characterizing the Rivers and Lakes of traditional vernacular fiction had never obscured the fact that they shared their position at the margins of orthodox authority with the hills and forests of the recluse; 9 in Wanderer, though, it is the savagery of the Rivers and Lakes themselves that defines the peaceful disengagement of reclusion as an alternative. The contemptible official who appears at the hand-washing ceremony is almost the sole representative within the novel’s pages of the constituted imperial authority in whose margins and interstices the Rivers and Lakes traditionally find their existence. He is joined only by a buffoonish general whose armor and beard Linghu Chong borrows for an extended slapstick masquerade. As Linghu Chong accompanies Ren Woxing on his journey to confront Dongfang Bubai, the text notes that local officials in the vicinity of Blackwood Crag have all but relinquished their authority before the might of the Demon Sect, which parades unchallenged through the streets. The Rivers and Lakes’ dominance of this specific locale, justified on the narrative level, can stand as a figure for its virtual monopoly over the novel’s discursive terrain; and while this monopoly is only proper to the genre, and shared with the majority of works of martial arts fiction, in Wanderer it explicitly assumes a specific representational function. Continuing his progress up Blackwood Crag, Linghu Chong notes with amusement the increasingly elaborate ceremonies and trappings of authority with which Dongfang Bubai has vested the Demon Sect and his own position. “This is just like when the eunuch reads the imperial edict in a play!” he notes at one point (1257). His amusement, though not his distaste, diminishes as he recognizes the depth of the power the sect has gathered,

158

Chapter 6

and the ease with which the victorious Ren Woxing succumbs to the lure of the pomp and flattery that the usurper has made the norm. The Demon Sect has become a mirror of imperial authority—a perverse and distorting mirror, as the image of the eunuch makes clear. Zuo Lengchan’s ambitions imitate the same model. As the champions of the Martial Grove converge upon Songshan to choose the leader of the newly unified Five Mountain Sect, Zuo’s disciples pointedly remind them of the central sacred mountain’s proximity to ancient imperial capitals; when they crowd the Songshan School’s main hall, Zuo himself suggests, with false diffidence, that they remove to a more commodious terrace nearby, where emperors once made ritual offerings. “He’s leading us all out to this Dais of Sacrifice,” muses Linghu Chong; “Don’t tell me he really sees himself as emperor?” (1317–1318). The Shaolin abbot has in fact already warned that Zuo’s ambition might extend this far; after vanquishing the Demon Sect and unifying the Rivers and Lakes, “who knows but what he might want to make himself emperor; and once he’s made himself emperor, he might want to live forever, deathless and immortal!” (1224). The abbot’s warning may be only metaphorical; in any event, whether or not Zuo Lengchan or one of his rivals might actually extend his power beyond the Rivers and Lakes to claim the throne of Wanderer’s fictional China is in an important sense irrelevant. For within a fictional world where imperial authority has attenuated to near invisibility, the Rivers and Lakes have become not a liminal territory on the margins of political struggle but the site and representation of that struggle itself; and the battles for hegemony over this terrain replace on the narrative level, and on an analogical level subsume, the battles for imperial hegemony that underpin the author’s earlier works. The Rivers and Lakes’ metaphorical assumption of the role of empire is facilitated not only by the paucity of characters representing the actual imperial order but also by the absence of referents that might fix the narrative’s place within the chronology of Chinese history. Wanderer “has no historical background,” as the author puts it in his 1980 afterword to the revised edition; “this signifies,” he continues, “that similar situations can occur in any dynasty” (1692). The novel and its immediate predecessor Xiake xing (titled in English as Ode to Gallantry, first serialized from June 11, 1966, through April 19, 1967) share the distinction of being the only two among Jin Yong’s full-length works neither set at an identifiable historical moment nor tying their plots to a particular crisis or problem in the history of a Chinese dynasty. This is not to say that references to China’s historical past are entirely absent from the text. The novel’s geography is made recognizably Chinese through place-names implicitly and sometimes

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

159

explicitly linked with historical events, and the cultural landscape of such scenes as Linghu Chong’s duels with the four squires of Plum Manor is similarly concretized through references to artists and works of identifiable periods. These clues have allowed aficionados to specify a terminus post quem for the narrative’s events, which many accordingly place during the Wanli period of the Ming (AD 1573–1620). The contributions these references make to the conjectural dating of the story are perhaps less significant than the perspective they provide on the text’s general posture toward the Chinese past. The past is first of all celebrated as the source of that solace and meaning available through the cultural practices associated with reclusion. Xi Kang and his lute score epitomize this function. Xi Kang’s era clearly lies distant from the events of the novel. It provides the tale’s “historical background,” though, in the sense that the common perception of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove as principled abstainers from the cruel and Byzantine factionalism of the Jin imperial court provides the model for the novel’s conceptual framework. By specifying a physical linkage (in the form of the lute manuscript) between Xi Kang and its characters, the text suggests that the past does not merely exist as a pattern of immanent meaning but in fact transmits its value through a tangible patrimony, an unbroken inheritance. The patrimony is not however immutable; the more important of the two scores in the text is not the original “Guangling san,” recovered from a tomb and so fatally appealing to the eldest Plum Manor squire’s antiquarian passions, but the “Xiaoao jianghu,” created by Qu and Liu with the relic as one of its constituent elements and passed on to become a vehicle of Linghu Chong and Ren Yingying’s renunciation and romance. The novel’s appropriation of the latter score’s title for itself implies that it too not only extols the same world-spurning values but also does so by carrying on the tradition of excavating and reinterpreting the past. And yet this validation of the Chinese past as the source of cultural values inherited through concrete acts of transmission is accompanied by and even facilitated by the flattening and abstraction of the political aspects of history. Linghu Chong’s conference with the Shaolin abbot and the chief of Wudang in chapter 30, which lays bare the causal roots and thematic implications of the novel’s chief conflicts, begins with the trio gazing out from Hengshan upon a road cut through the rugged mountains of the north China landscape. The two elders cite the historical annals to explain how tens of thousands of laborers built the highway at the command of a campaigning emperor of the Northern Wei dynasty (AD 386–534). Linghu Chong expresses awe at the power of the throne,

160

Chapter 6

and remarks that it’s no wonder that men have fought so fiercely to claim that seat. “Countless heroes and champions through the ages have found the lure of power impossible to resist,” replies the Wudang chief. “Never mind the imperial throne; the turmoils that rock the Martial Grove this very day, these never-ending struggles, are all due to nothing other than this thing called ‘power ’” (1222). And so commence their discussions of the Five Mountain Schools, the Demon Sect, and the Evil-Quelling Sword Manual. The passage confirms the virtual identification of the empire with the Rivers and Lakes (here the Martial Grove) and at the same time demonstrates how such identification empties historical reference of any specific value. The aims, justification, and results of the Wei emperor’s acts are irrelevant. He stands only as a representative of the presumably universal dynamics of power, ambition, and (implicitly) oppression. Absent are the earlier novels’ partisan investment in, even their interest in the concrete details of, the triumphs and tragedies of dynastic history. Wanderer’s distance from Jin Yong’s earlier works in this regard is further underscored by an incident in which Yue Buqun visits the site of a famous victory by the Song general Yue Fei over the armies of the barbarian Jin. “There was not a single exponent of the martial arts who didn’t cherish the greatest admiration for Yue Fei, foe of the Jin and defender of the nation” (581); the chief of Huashan has the further honor of sharing a surname with the hero. But a battlefield temple dedicated to the general Yang Zaixing becomes the site first for Yue Lingshan’s amorous comparisons between the image of the martyr and her handsome fiancé, then for raucous and irreverent nonsense from the novel’s recurrent comic figures, the Six Immortals of the Peach Vale. The occasion’s rich historical and patriotic possibilities are left inert and quickly vanish before the claims of other narrative and discursive agendas. The relegation of Yue Fei and the Yang generals to an iconic yet essentially irrelevant status stems from a reconsideration of the ethnic nationalism tragically embodied in Book and Sword’s Chen Jialuo and given triumphant expression by Heroes’ Guo Jing and Companion’s Yang Guo. One can trace the gradual progress of this reconsideration across the author’s middle-period works; its defining figure is Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils’ Xiao Feng, who gives his life to seal a truce between the Liao whose bloodline he carries and the Han Chinese by whom he was raised. In Wanderer the ethnic other is as rare as the government official, and represented primarily by the Miao chieftainess of the Five Venoms Sect, Lan Fenghuang. Lan and her followers belong firmly in the tradition of exoticized and eroticized ethnic females inaugurated by Book and Sword’s Princess Fragrance.

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

161

As one of Linghu Chong’s staunch allies, she contributes to the validation of the protagonist’s normative heterosexuality and to the exposure of the hypocritical Puritanism of Yue Buqun and other “upright” figures; but the ancillary nature of her role only underlines the extent to which questions of ethnicity are peripheral to the tale’s main concerns. The attenuation of the problem of ethnicity dissolves in turn the divisions of the political map. While Chen Jialuo and Yuan Chengzhi retire beyond the borders of an ethnically contested empire, the final scene of Wanderer finds Linghu Chong returning to Huashan. His struggles transcend geography, and his withdrawal is not from a politically defined locale but from the realm of political activity. For it is not only ethnic and territorial definitions of nationalism that are repudiated in the aftermath of the martyrdom of Semi-Devils’ Xiao Feng. Faith in the integrity of any attempt to guide the nation’s fate through political action seems to be disavowed as well. Intimations of this loss of faith can be found prior to Semi-Devils, most notably in Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, the conclusion of the trilogy begun by Heroes and Companion. The protagonists of those two novels, it will be remembered, won the right to idyllic retirement with their beloveds through devoted and triumphant discharge of their duties to the nation and its people. Dragon Sabre’s Zhang Wuji similarly dedicates his own skills and Yue Fei’s long-hidden manual of military strategy to the cause of driving the Mongols from the central plains but then cedes the stage to the treacherous Zhu Yuanzhang, future founder of the Ming dynasty, and withdraws to a life of marital bliss with a Mongol princess. His choice represents transcendence of ethnic divisions, but also disenchantment with the martial and political struggles that have secured a Han Chinese victory at the clearly implied price of tyranny. As a rejection of ethnic, dynastic, and political struggle, Zhang Wuji’s withdrawal from public life is trumped by Xiao Feng’s engaged yet annihilative sacrifice of life itself. And in the two novels that follow Semi-Devils, it is not Jin Yong’s protagonists who withdraw from the arena of dynastic contestation but dynastic history itself that vanishes from the narrative. The specificity of political history is replaced by a more abstract vision of politics itself as a realm of violence and delusion. It is as a representation of political strife in an essentialized form that the Rivers and Lakes come to stand in for the historically specific empire. And it is as the alternative to the increasingly discredited and abstracted political arena that China’s cultural past assumes a central role as the positively valuated constituent of inherited identity.10

162

Chapter 6

It would be naive to take at face value the ostensibly apolitical character of this culturalist stance. The previous chapter of this study has noted how Jin Yong’s publications in the later 1960s gave explicit voice to calls for the preservation of Chinese culture in the face of the devastation threatened by the mainland’s Cultural Revolution. In the context of the upheavals reported daily on the pages of Ming Pao and critiqued in its editorials, a reverent evocation of China’s cultural past, even one appearing in the fiction supplement, inevitably assumed a contingent political significance. Even more charged, of course, were Wanderer’s representations of the political arena itself. The novel’s portrait of ruthless power struggles hypocritically justified and but thinly masked by appeals to morality and orthodoxy closely paralleled Jin Yong and his fellow commentators’ pathbreaking analysis of the Cultural Revolution as factional warfare waged under a veil of ideology. And the general homology between contemporary politics and the novel’s events was reinforced by numerous details of language, plot, and imagery. Wanderer’s first clear echoes of contemporary events appear in the scene of Liu Zhengfeng’s hand-washing ceremony. As already noted, the episode’s basic structure resembles that of similar scenes throughout Jin Yong’s oeuvre. Here, though, the shifting confrontation played out before a crowd of witnesses is furnished with particulars—the demand for a public recantation of error and renunciation of ties with the enemy, the insistence that the audience both bear witness to the confession and declare their own allegiance to orthodoxy, the son’s betrayal of his father under threat of humiliation and torture, and Liu Zhengfeng’s attempt at suicide as his world turns against him—that clearly evoke the public struggle sessions developed by the Communist Party over two decades of political campaigns and implemented with renewed intensity during the Cultural Revolution. Later in the novel, as Linghu Chong and his companions approach the Demon Sect’s headquarters, allusions to the politics of the Cultural Revolution and the cult of Mao proliferate. The sect’s leader is described as having withdrawn from public view and allowed authority to pass into the hands of his handsome young favorite; one of his venerable comrades-in-arms is accused of treachery, bound and beaten, and paraded through the streets; Dongfang Bubai’s elevation to nearly divine status has replaced strategy with sycophancy in the sect’s councils and made shrill and hollow slogans the sole language of communication among its members. Dongfang Bubai’s very name, which might be translated as “the invincible east,” evokes the solar imagery of the Mao cult, as does the

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

163

title of the sect’s secret manual, The Sunflower Scripture; the ruthless Ren Woxing’s name, literally “I do as I will,” calls to mind Mao Zedong’s notorious characterization of himself as “a monk with a parasol—without hair or heaven” (wu fa wu tian, homophonous with “defying law and nature”). Jin Yong’s afterword simultaneously acknowledges and disavows the novel’s references to contemporary events: In writing martial arts fiction, my aim is to write about human nature, the same as with any fiction. During the years when I was writing The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, the power struggles of the Communist Party’s Cultural Revolution were raging like wildfire. In the battle for authority and control, those in power and those in revolt against them shirked no extremes, and the foulest aspects of human nature were revealed in their most concentrated form. Every day I was writing editorials for Ming Pao, and my violent reaction against the sordidness of political events was naturally reflected in the daily installments of my martial arts fiction. This novel does not however intentionally allude to the Cultural Revolution. It intends rather to employ characters within the novel to depict certain universal phenomena from the three thousand years of Chinese political life. Romans à clef are not all that interesting, for the political situation changes very quickly; it is only the depiction of human nature that has relatively lasting value. The ruthless struggle for power is the basic condition of political life, from antiquity to the present, in China and abroad. So it has been for several thousand years, and so I fear it is likely to be for several thousand years in the future. In planning the novel I thought of Ren Woxing, Dongfang Bubai, Yue Buqun, Zuo Lengchan, and others not primarily as masters of the Martial Grove, but rather as political figures. . . . Characters of all these types have existed under every dynasty, and most likely in other countries as well. (1690) 11

There is no question but that Wanderer cannot be reduced to a simple roman à clef. Vast stretches of the narrative bear no discernible reference to specific contemporary events, and even those characters and incidents that do, fail to cohere into any comprehensive or consistent allegory; both Dongfang Bubai and Ren Woxing, for instance, seem to refract elements of Mao’s persona and political role, and while much of the Cultural Revolution imagery clusters around the Demon Sect, it is the Songshan School that first raises the specters of ideological orthodoxy and the public struggle session. On the other hand, however, given the aptness and acerbity of such correspondences as are noted above, the unequivocal claim that the novel does not specifically refer to the personalities and events of the Cul-

164

Chapter 6

tural Revolution, or that any apparent references result only from the persistence of universal political phenomena, seems so disingenuous as to raise the question of its motivation. The dating and provenance of the afterword provide keys to an answer. By 1980 Jin Yong, increasingly welldisposed toward the incipient economic and social reforms of the Deng Xiaoping era, may have wished to distance himself from the bitter antagonism that had existed between him and an earlier stage of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. At the same time, with the revised editions of his novels to which this and other authorial reflections were appended, he was deeply engaged in the project of refashioning and repackaging his serialized fiction as a body of literary work with enduring appeal. Publication in book form does much in and of itself to liberate the text from the fragmentation, transience, and contingency of publication in a daily newspaper; to this the author adds his endorsement of an interpretive strategy emphasizing the “timeless” themes of human nature and political archetypes over limiting situational references. Jin Yong’s efforts to shape the reception and reputation of his fiction and his evolving relationship with the mainland regime will be discussed in the following chapters of this book. Before moving on to these topics, it may be fruitful to consider from a broader perspective the question of how Wanderer’s direct yet parabolic address of contemporary political reality positions Jin Yong’s work relative to the overall project of twentieth-century Chinese fiction. To speak of an “overall project” is admittedly problematic from the outset. Theodore Huters has reminded us of the danger of drawing too facile comparisons between works hailing from different temporal and geographic regions of a literary history “marked by ideological and political interventions that have been at once crude, intricate, subtle, and absolute.” 12 And Jin Yong’s work suffers the additional disadvantage of belonging to a popular genre commonly held to lie outside or beneath the purview of this history altogether. On the other hand, however, it is precisely the martial arts novel’s disengagement from the fractious and divisive tides of consciously political literature that has allowed it to claim temporal continuity and geographical universality undreamed of by ideologically more contingent schools. Independence from instrumental political agendas has by no means liberated the genre from the “obsession with China” so famously (or infamously) held by C. T. Hsia to be one of the hallmarks of twentieth-century Chinese literature; 13 to the contrary, as illustrated here, martial arts fiction may testify better than any other body of literature to the shadow this obsession has cast in the popular imagination. What makes Wanderer distinctive is its

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

165

shift from a generalized evocation of Chinese identity in the face of cultural dislocation and historical crisis to a deliberate deployment of generic conventions in a critique of contemporary (though not exclusively contemporary) political conditions. With this shift, Jin Yong moves closer to the express engagement intended by Hsia’s formulation. Wanderer’s strategy may be likened to that of the early Ming pao editorial on the Miss World Pageant; both employ an ostensibly marginal and unserious medium to address matters of grave concern. In so doing, while they exploit the chosen medium’s freedom of expression and the novelty of its application to the topic at hand, they allow the topic to invest the medium with an unexpected dignity. The editorial cloaks its gravity in the declared status of a minor tabloid paper, in the use of vernacular Cantonese, and in the choice of an apparently nugatory topic for discussion. The case of the novel is more complex. Martial arts fiction’s stock in trade of life-and-death struggle constitutes a surface of melodramatic gravity that is conventionally discounted by assumptions of the genre’s essential triviality. Wanderer calls upon its readers to see the masque as real—to recognize that the divertingly bloody show is no show at all but a window both topical and universal on the world’s horrors. The stance taken by Wanderer has implications beyond the imputation of gravitas to a particular genre banned by the Communist regime and dismissed as inconsequential by the Chinese literary establishments outside the mainland. It assumes an independent and potentially critical role for fiction in general in the definition of individual and national identity. In this sense Wanderer, far from merely satirizing the personae and politics of the Cultural Revolution, challenges the exclusive arrogation of discursive power by the political sphere on the mainland and abroad.14 Maoist orthodoxy’s requirement that culture dance anxious attendance upon the designs of the political authorities, although a narrowing of the moral and exploratory aspects of the May Fourth tradition, derives in part from that tradition’s utilitarian concept of literature as the handmaid of nationalist ideological projects; and in its inheritance of this utilitarian directive, mainland literature from the decades after 1949 was less distant from its counterparts in Taiwan and Hong Kong than the overt divergence of political stance might suggest. Bodies of literature, whether popular or avantgarde, that sought to evade the utilitarian tradition’s limitations most often did so through the disavowal of political concerns. Jin Yong’s approach is not so much apolitical as metapolitical. It critiques the project of politics itself, rejecting political activity as a fruitful site for the production of

166

Chapter 6

meaning and identity and asserting the competing and even superior claims of cultural practices operating outside the political realm. Such is the message of Wanderer’s narrative, as we have seen; but as I argue in the next chapter, such also is the operating assumption and hence the message of Jin Yong’s own project. Not merely in the contents of his fiction but through his efforts to define the contexts of that fiction’s reception as well, he asserts culture’s claim to a voice independent of politics narrowly defined and one empowered to articulate its own visions of Chinese and, more broadly, human identity.

Beyond the Rivers and Lakes

167

Chapter 7 Revision and Canonization From Ming Pao to The Collected Works of Jin Yong

he manipulation of the supposed boundaries between entertainment and serious journalism evident in such early editorials as “Some Remarks on the Miss World Pageant” represents a first step in the canny leveraging of Ming Pao’s credibility, which over the years garnered increasing respect and status for the paper and its sister publications. This increasing status inevitably reflected upon the paper’s publisher and editorialist, and upon the fiction he published in its pages as well, while the particular cultural and political stances articulated in Ming Pao’s editorials and through the Ming Pao Monthly supplied the fiction with potential (though not restrictive) interpretive contexts. But Jin Yong did not abandon the fate of his fictional work to the operation of such fortuitous and imprecise engines alone. Beginning from Ming Pao’s earliest days, he used his unique role as both author and publisher to shape the conceptual contexts for the acceptance of martial arts fiction and to open the possibility of his own work’s serving as a bearer of literary and cultural capital.

T

A Tradition and an Aesthetics for Martial Arts Fiction Liu Yichang’s (b. 1918) novel Jiutu (The drunkard), first serialized in 1962– 1963 in the literary supplement of Xingdao wanbao and now recognized as one of the classics of literary modernism in Hong Kong, offers a snapshot of the status of martial arts fiction at that moment in the colony’s cultural history. The novel’s nameless protagonist and first-person narrator is a would-be author, a disciple of Hemingway and The Dream of the Red Chamber, who faces with despair the necessity of penning martial arts fiction

168

and pornography in order to pay the rent and supply the alcohol into whose embrace his philistine society compels him. For this anguished soul, the demands of art and of the marketplace are incommensurate; the former is in fact recognized and defined by its uncompromising rejection (a rejection that he himself lacks the strength to realize) of the latter. The martial arts novels he pens in the novel’s early scenes and the pornography at which he temporarily succeeds as his degradation progresses are guaranteed both moral turpitude and lack of artistic merit by the very fact that editors and readers are willing to accord them a different order of value in the form of cold hard cash. The perspective of Liu Yichang’s protagonist replicates at least in broad outline the model of the cultural economy proposed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Seeking to account for the mechanisms by which, and ends to which, cultural and literary value or “capital” are socially constructed, Bourdieu describes the literary field—the community of those involved in the material and symbolic production of what a given society defines as “literature”—as existing within the larger networks of society, and yet finding autonomous definition only to the extent that it articulates values unique to itself, distinct from the values and power structures of the society within which it is embedded. Its structure and hierarchies are therefore generated by the continually shifting tension between its unique autonomous principles and the heteronomous principles of political and economic authority in effect throughout society at large.1 Bourdieu believes the literary and cultural fields achieved the above-described configuration in France during the nineteenth century and continue to function essentially unaltered through the present day, at least in the society that gave them birth.2 We might trace the model’s reflection in the consciousness of The Drunkard’s late-twentieth-century Hong Kong writer in part to this figure’s absorption of the social and aesthetic presumptions of his pantheon of Western modernist literary heroes (Proust, Faulkner, etc.). But at least some of its antecedents are closer to home. The novel’s protagonist also sees himself as a (potential) heir to China’s May Fourth literary tradition, a movement that was constructed in opposition to and contradistinction from the commercial and popular publications of its day. The leaders of the May Fourth movement (themselves, of course, influenced by Western models) articulated their aims in ideological terms, as rejecting benighted forms of “entertainment”—of which martial arts fiction and film were among the most regressive—in favor of socially and morally responsible art. But intertwined with these ideological arguments were the Chinese intellectual’s traditional disdain for the world of com-

Revision and Canonization

169

merce, and the prejudice of the academy, based in the north near the seat of political power, against the southern (Shanghai) nexus of the publishing industry.3 The Drunkard’s linkage of martial arts fiction with pornography merges the disdain for these genres’ contents with an abhorrence for their commercial imperative and inherits the May Fourth tradition’s scorn for “literary beggars” (wengai) and “literary prostitutes” (wenchang) who write for the market. In his yearning to realize a literary space unsullied by economic concerns, Liu Yichang’s protagonist exemplifies Bourdieu’s autonomous principle, the articulation of the artistic domain per se precisely through the “loser wins” logic of spurning the common markers of societal achievement. His attitudes also illustrate the role of journalism (one of the “seemingly most heteronomous forms of cultural production”) and the modes of (sub-)literature associated with it (serialized fiction and its thematic subgenres) in defining those reaches of the literary field most barren of symbolic capital.4 What the novel presents is of course a fictional portrait, and it is possible to read The Drunkard’s protagonist ironically, as the self-destructive architect of the system of belief that imprisons him. But the author Liu Yuchang clearly seconds his fictional offspring’s views. This prominent spokesman for Hong Kong’s literary circles has frequently dismissed the bulk of his own writing, produced for newspaper serialization, as “trash,” 5 and in a representative passage reads another author’s tale of a woman forced into prostitution as a figure for the plight of the writer in postwar Hong Kong.6 Liu Yichang and his protagonist can be taken as speaking for intellectual critics of popular fiction in general and the martial arts genre in particular who believed that the commercial imperative fostered formulaicism and an appeal to the readership’s baser emotions, which consigned such works to the realm of the subliterary, or even constituted the antithesis that might define pure literature as such. The newspapers themselves, not surprisingly, did not regard the contents of their fiction supplements in quite so harsh a light. What anguished literati viewed as commercialism, they regarded as popularity; and they often presented this popularity, whether of their fiction sections or of their editorial policies more generally, as a form of populism, a solidarity with the political tendencies or social and cultural affinities of their readerships. Ming Pao’s marketing of and self-marketing by means of Jin Yong’s fiction begin during its first week of publication, with the third issue (May 22, 1959) featuring the first in a series of banners announcing the serialization of The Giant Eagle and Its Companion within. Subsequent weeks

170

Chapter 7

and months present persistent advertisements for the bound editions of Jin Yong’s earlier novels, for radio broadcasts of storytellers’ renditions, for film adaptations, and, by the end of November 1959, for the soon-toappear Martial Arts and History. Promotion is not limited, however, to such straightforward reminders of the availability of Jin Yong’s works in their various adaptations. It also includes material integrated with the newspaper’s other contents in a variety of ways and suggesting several distinct strategies for evaluating Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction. One prominent strategy is an insistence on the popularity of Jin Yong’s work, cast not as mere self-celebration but as an extension of the newspaper’s overall populist stance, an expression of solidarity between the paper and its readers. Perhaps the earliest expression of this stance is the May 22 front-page “story” on the enthusiasm for Jin Yong’s fiction among Chinese students in England. And one of its more melodramatic manifestations is a notice printed on September 28 in the upper-right-hand corner of the fiction supplement, the place of honor reserved for the daily installment of Companion, following upon the previous day’s brief notice of the novel’s suspension on account of the author’s illness: Mr. Jin Yong Indisposed: Readers’ Letters and Calls Pour In Novel to Appear Tomorrow: Eagle Fans Please Be At Ease Since the onset of Mr. Jin Yong’s illness, this paper has received numerous telephone calls and letters personally delivered by our readers, inquiring after Mr. Jin Yong’s health and asking whether Companion will be published today. The response has been truly moving. When the editor reported this news to Mr. Jin Yong yesterday on his sickbed, he felt quite distressed, and originally intended to write in spite of his illness. In the end, though, his strength did not match his desire, and he was unable to write. Today we are forced to suspend Companion for another day. The editor is himself an “Eagle Fan,” and once Mr. Jin Yong is fully recovered, we will definitely ask him to make up for lost time, and never allow him to make apologies to his readers again!

The serialization’s absence is thus parlayed into a celebration of the practice of dedicated, involved readership and the community it creates among newspaper, author, and readers. The foundation for such a move had been previously laid through direct exchanges between Jin Yong and his readers, published primarily in the “Jin Yong Mailbox” (“Jin Yong xinxiang”), which first appeared on June 6, and then at irregular intervals thereafter. Most of the letters presented through this feature begin with the writer identifying himself (the writers seem to be all, or almost all,

Revision and Canonization

171

male) as a fan, and some, like that published on July 3,7 take the trouble to detail how the correspondent has followed Jin Yong’s work from novel to novel, from one newspaper to another. Jin Yong is equally cordial in his responses; his reply in this case, for instance, is devoted more to thanking the fan for his support, praising his success as a self-taught writer (the letter mentions a lack of education), and expanding on the column’s possibilities as an avenue of communication, than it is to providing substantive responses to his comments on Jin Yong’s fiction. In the process of fostering a readership community, nonetheless, these exchanges also suggest certain parameters for discussing and evaluating the content of Jin Yong’s work. Most noticeably, they privilege those emotional and character-driven aspects of the fiction that we have already noted as assuming progressive prominence as Jin Yong’s work develops from Book and Sword to Heroes. “Eagle Fan Number Two,” writing to the “Jin Yong Mailbox” on June 18, locates the reason for Jin Yong’s work’s surpassing all other fiction, whether ancient or modern, in the fact that “any character whatsoever needs only to undergo description at your hands to become as real as life.” In comments on Book and Sword printed in the “Ming Pao Club” (“Ming bao julebu”) on June 23, another correspondent similarly opines that “as to the characters, each and every one is drawn with great success,” and goes on to add that “the descriptions of romance are a unique characteristic of Mr. Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction.” The previously cited letter of July 3 notes Heroes’ success as a bildungsroman: In [this novel] your writing focused on depicting the protagonist Guo Jing from his birth though the course of his maturation. That story left a deep impression on us readers; we were moved by Guo Jing’s heroic character throughout his tortuous and winding experiences, and grew to respect him more and more, until he became the “idol of our hearts.”

Jin Yong not only endorses such readings by affording them publication but also, in the “Mailbox” of October 6, explicitly points out the current novel’s shift from historical themes to character portrayal: “Companion will touch upon historical events, but the historical component is not so strong, and the focus will be on depicting the characters and experiences of several protagonists.” A character-driven aesthetic’s claim to validity is often simply presumed, on the basis perhaps of the vague humanism and populism that serve as the paper’s guiding lights. At times a moral prerogative is implied, as when the June 23 letter praises Book and Sword for elevating the altru-

172

Chapter 7

ism of xia over the violence of wu and asserts that its depiction of principled, self-sacrificing love might serve as a model for the youth of today. In yet other instances, however, the standards appealed to are what we might call “canonical,” in the sense that they consist of identifying literary affiliations and precedents for Jin Yong’s work. The October 5 “Mailbox” thus begins by paraphrasing several readers’ letters questioning the credibility of scenes in which Jin Yong’s characters ride a shark or are carried off by eagles. The author goes on to describe a recent dinner conversation with a lung specialist and an editor at Xin wanbao, who debated the plausibility of Zhou Botong’s character, adducing biology, IQ studies, and examples of historical personages in support of their views. “I believe,” says Jin Yong, “that examining the plausibility of a fictional personality represents a very elevated perspective”—rather more lofty than the weighing of mere phenomenal likelihood. He cites the authority of the English novelist Thomas Hardy, paraphrasing him to the effect that “the crux of the matter is whether or not something is possible in terms of personality, not whether or not it is possible in terms of events.” Further quoting the Chinese proverb “without coincidence there’s no story” (wu qiao bu cheng shu), he admits the irrationality of some fictional plots, and then closes with an episode from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms that illustrates how psychological plausibility can overcome apparent arbitrariness in plotting. The appeal to character is thus consecrated by reference to two venerable literary traditions—that of the Chinese historical romance, and that of the European novel of psychological realism. While such remarks open the possibility of evaluating Jin Yong’s work in accordance with standards derived from other, recognizably “literary” bodies of fiction, Jin Yong elsewhere addresses the more limited question of the traditions of the martial arts novel per se. Beginning from June 6, 1959, Ming Pao’s fiction page includes a column entitled “Selections from the Classics of Martial Arts Fiction” (“Wuxia mingzhu jingxuan”), consisting of excerpts from the work of prewar authors introduced by Jin Yong himself. The introduction to the first selection briefly sketches out a lineage reaching from antiquity to contemporary Hong Kong. “Martial arts fiction has a long history in our nation,” beginning with Sima Qian and expressing itself in a variety of literary forms over the ages. The primary exponents of the genre in recent years have been Bai Yu, Huanzhu Louzhu, and Zheng Zhengyin (1900–1960); these three authors excelled in the creation of characters, in fantastic imagination, and in writing combat scenes respectively. It is from Zheng’s Yingzhua wang (King of the “eagle’s talons”), serialized in 1941, that the first selection is taken.

Revision and Canonization

173

The topic of Zheng Zhengyin’s combat scenes recurs in the introduction to the next selection (June 25), from Bai Yu’s The Dozen Gold Coin Darts. Here it is linked to an explicit statement of the possibility that martial arts fiction may have “literary value,” and to an enunciation of the criteria for such value: the creation of memorable characters and the exploration of their relationships. Jin Yong mentions the story that it was actually Zheng who drafted the fight scenes in Bai Yu’s novel, as Bai Yu himself knew almost nothing of the martial arts. Bai Yu’s work as a whole is nonetheless superior to Zheng’s. “It is clear that although combat is an important part of martial arts fiction, in essence it is still about characters and events.” Bai Yu’s strengths lie in creating characters and telling stories of human relationships. Hong Kong’s authors of martial arts fiction are all indebted to him; and though he is often mentioned together with Huanzhu Louzhu, “he far surpasses him in literary value.” Jin Yong’s account of martial arts fiction’s venerable heritage is by no means original; its predecessors can be found in prefaces and other writings by some of the very prewar authors excerpted in this feature (and elaborations of it in recent years’ proliferating histories of the genre). By rehearsing this genealogy in “Classics of Martial Arts Fiction,” Jin Yong reasserts the identity and dignity of his chosen genre, while at the same time staking contemporary Hong Kong practitioners’ claim to membership in the lineage and establishing himself as arbiter and spokesman for the tradition. In propounding here his view that the delineation of character lies at the heart of martial arts fiction’s aesthetic, finally, he both demonstrates and makes use of his self-appointed role. The same issue of Ming Pao (June 6, 1959) that published the first installment of the “Classics of Martial Arts Fiction” series also contained a review of a film adaptation of one of Jin Yong’s works: The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, Part II.8 Under the title “A Martial Arts Film with Feeling” (“You ganqing de wuxia pian”), the paper’s film critic, Ye Qin, begins by describing her younger brother, who is a fan who reads martial arts fiction far into the night, smuggling a flashlight under the covers to evade his angry mother’s interdiction, and whose speech has begun to mimic the bravado and curious locutions of a character from the Rivers and Lakes. The writer’s assumption that martial arts fiction is “something for the kids” is shaken when a university professor of her acquaintance shows up for tea with, tucked under his arm, a history of the English novel, a study of the Dumas family, and two volumes of Jin Yong’s The Eagle-Shooting Heroes. The critic expresses surprise; the professor paraphrases Zola and urges her to try it for herself; the kid brother collects the various volumes of Heroes lent out

174

Chapter 7

to his friends; the critic begins to read and is utterly entranced; and so it is that she, who has never before bothered with martial arts films, now finds herself recommending the film version of the novel to her readers. There are three aspects of this brief review worthy of special notice, in part because they establish the pattern for many future discussions of Jin Yong’s work. The first is the fact that what is ostensibly a film review actually serves as an advertisement. The promotional aspect of this and other items appearing in publications owned and operated by Jin Yong is quite evident, yet should not be underestimated as a force in the distribution of his works and the elevation of their status. Ming Pao was only the first step in what was to become an enormously successful publishing and financial empire. There have been many press barons and financial magnates in Hong Kong, and many popular authors of martial arts novels or other genre fiction; but Jin Yong is the only figure to have combined the roles of producer of a fictional product and manager of the print media through which it was distributed. In the symbiosis of these two roles can be found at least part of the momentum behind his success in each. And while the symbiosis is on one level financial—the fiction provided the starting capital for the paper and drove its circulation, while the paper and its subsequent affiliates provided the media for the distribution of the fiction—it is also, and in a perhaps more important sense, discursive. The cultural field is constituted not merely by the artists and writers who produce cultural works but also by the brokers—publishers, critics, gallery owners, and such—who produce and negotiate the works’ value. In the act of consecrating particular works, these brokers also consecrate themselves, that is, affirm that they have the power to perform such consecration.9 Endorsements of Jin Yong’s work in his publications, like such critical interventions as Jin Yong’s comments on the “Classics of Martial Arts Fiction,” both directly promote the works in question and stake a claim on the cultural capital, which alone can give the endorsements force. Jin Yong’s publishing empire has thus allowed him to combine the roles not only of author and of financier but of cultural broker as well. A second striking aspect of the review of Heroes, Part II is the fact that less than half the article is devoted to appraisal of the film itself; the greater part addresses the original novel and the question of its literary value. The early Cantonese film versions of Jin Yong’s fiction were only the first step in a process of adaptation into film, television, comic books, and computer role-playing games that continues through the present day. These adaptations have introduced Jin Yong’s works to larger and larger audiences and, undoubtedly, drawn many new readers to the original nov-

Revision and Canonization

175

els. In addition, the adaptations have worked to elevate the cultural status of the texts through the logic of differentiation. If we follow Bourdieu in understanding the cultural field as structured in hierarchies of opposition, we can appreciate that the increasing dominance of film and television as media of large-scale production and mass audiences have allowed the novel, as a literary form, to define itself more credibly as a medium of (relatively) restricted distribution and to ally itself symbolically with the elite arts of the culture. As early as this film review, we can see this dynamic playing itself out in the specific case of the book and film versions of Jin Yong’s works.10 The third paradigmatic aspect of the review is its use of recognizable emblems of high culture to define the position of Jin Yong’s fiction. These emblems include representatives of the European fiction tradition, Dumas and Zola; most prominent, though, is the figure of the university professor as champion of Jin Yong’s work. The professor’s presence is important in part because it allows us to discern more precisely the status that Jin Yong’s work seeks to attain. By priding themselves in, and marketing themselves through, the same populist stance that is the basis for the newspaper’s editorial voice, Jin Yong’s novels disavow any claim to the most autonomous heights of the literary field, which are defined precisely by restricted appeal and severely limited circulation. What they do aspire to, as we shall see more clearly later, is the transmutation of popular appeal into something akin to what Bourdieu calls “bourgeois consecration,” “the consecration bestowed by the dominant fractions of the dominant class and by private tribunals, such as salons, or public, state-guaranteed ones, such as academies, which sanction the inseparably ethical and aesthetic (and therefore political) taste of the dominant.”11 The university professor in this film review—the first avatar of a figure whose further appearances are examined in chapter 9—evokes the authority of the academy, one of the key institutions in the bestowal of such “bourgeois consecration.” An evocation of the academy by a popular film reviewer is, of course, something quite different from an endorsement by the academy’s own institutions of evaluation. But we see here at least the limning of a desideratum. The episodes of Xiao Longnü and Yang Guo’s practice of the Jade Maiden’s Heart Scripture and of Xiao Longnü’s subsequent rape and its consequences afford a concrete instance of the early Ming Pao’s joint deployment of orchestrated reader involvement, appeal to a characterdriven aesthetic, and allusion to recognized literary models in shaping the perception and assessment of Jin Yong’s fiction. Read in their original serialized context—accompanied by Yun Jun’s illustrations of the bare-shoul-

176

Chapter 7

dered protagonists nestled among the flowers, surrounded by the racy tales that fill out the fiction supplement, the photos of starlets and pageant queens that grace the entertainment columns, and the vignettes of violence and scandal that claim the larger share of the local news—the episodes seem of a piece with the early Ming Pao’s frequent appeal to the prurient and sensational. But commentary by both readers and the author quickly works to establish a quite different context for Xiao Longnü’s tale, validating it as an instance of an emergent aesthetic. Reader speculation about Yang Guo’s romantic prospects appears quite early during Companion’s serialization, with a letter published on July 3, 1959, musing that an eventual union between him and Guo Jing’s daughter Guo Fu might heal the tragic rift between the Yang and Guo clans. As the tale progresses, though, Xiao Longnü evidently wins the readers’ favor, and her rape, quarrel with Yang Guo, and subsequent disappearance elicit impassioned response. The sporadic “Jin Yong Mailbox” revives from an extended dormancy to appear on seven of the eight days between October 3 and October 10, bearing titles such as “Xiao Longnü’s Future,” “Sympathy for the Virginal Xiao Longnü,” “I Too Am Deeply Fond of Xiao Longnü,” and “Yang Guo’s Worst Enemy Is Himself.” The readers’ letters, some published in full and others summarized by Jin Yong in his responses, strike common notes: affection and sympathy for the character of Xiao Longnü; distress at what she has suffered, and anxiety that she and Yang Guo may not in the end enjoy union, or that some even worse fate may befall her; appeals to the author to grant her a happy denouement, and suggestions as to how this might be achieved. Only one letter, printed without response in the column of October 10, takes a different stance, arguing that Xiao Longnü deserves punishment for breaking the rules of her lineage (by accepting a male disciple) and expressing the hope that Guo Fu will emerge as an even more sympathetic character, “so that [readers’] preference for Xiao Longnü will gradually fade.” In his responses, Jin Yong seeks to reassure his readers while at the same time preserving suspense about future developments in his tale. The question of whether Yang Guo will be eventually paired with Xiao Longnü or with Guo Fu “has become a focus of interest in this tale, and of course I can’t reveal it in advance,” he notes on October 10. “We can only ask that, as Shakespeare puts it, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ What I can promise is that the conclusion of this story will definitely not cause my readers to feel revulsion or grief.” The author’s reticence may be due not only to a storyteller’s need to maintain interest in the denouement but to his own indecision about the outcome as well. Writing each day’s installment the

Revision and Canonization

177

night before, he may not have plotted the entire tale in advance; or, as one tradition maintains, he may have been moved by his readers’ demands to reconsider his original intention to let Xiao Longnü die.12 The “Mailbox” of October 8 insists that she is only a subordinate character, and offers the ominous comparison with Ivanhoe’s Rebecca, “who is unable to wed the protagonist.” At the end of the serialization, nonetheless, Xiao Longnü returns from what seemed certain death, and a sixteen-year absence from the events of the plot, to exit the tale on Yang Guo’s arm. Beyond seeking to allay readers’ anxieties, Jin Yong’s remarks join his readers’ voices in asserting the fascination and validity of character-based storytelling. The author reminds his fans that this is only a novel but admits that he too cannot help but feel a deep sympathy for his characters (October 8): I imagine very concretely their voices and expressions, I imagine their joy, anger, grief and pleasure. As time goes on, an empathy arises, gradually and imperceptibly, so that when I close my eyes, these characters all appear within my mind, and when I sleep, I often dream of them.

The model posited here is of a fundamental consonance of human experience between author, characters, and readers. Citations of the European fiction tradition of psychological realism, as we have seen, invest this consonance with the dignity of an artistic pedigree, and Jin Yong further contributes to the construction of this aura by calling attention to his own artistic intentionality: “I intend to write Yang Guo’s personality in a way different from that of any previous martial arts novel” (October 10). He also makes some claim to supporting moral standards through his work: “Since what I’m writing is a martial arts novel, there are very clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil. . . . Actually, the laws of human life would seem to be much the same as well” (October 3). The ultimate authority appealed to, however, is not so much an abstract morality as a fidelity to presumably universal human experience (October 10): In the usual martial arts novel, the most formidable enemy and opponent is some other person, but Yang Guo’s most formidable enemy is himself. . . . The most intense battles in this life often occur within a person’s heart.

We can only speculate on the ways in which readers’ reactions to the tribulations of Yang Guo and Xiao Longnü might or might not have resembled their responses to the misfortunes and crimes of passion reported in

178

Chapter 7

the paper’s news columns. The extended length and steady accretive pace of serialization, as opposed to the brief, eruptive reporting of real world events; the novel’s invitation to be privy to the inner thoughts and feelings of the participants in its events; the cocoon of irreality surrounding fiction, and the added envelope of distance and romance inherent in the martial arts genre; the opportunity to communicate directly with the writer fashioning events, and not merely read accounts of incidents already irrevocably transpired—all of these may well have encouraged a more intense emotional involvement with the characters and events of the fiction, and/or a greater willingness to admit and communicate fascination or concern. What is clear from the pages of Ming Pao, in any case, is that Jin Yong is a master not only of composing his tales but of exploiting their role within the medium of his newspaper as well. His fiction helps support Ming Pao during its early days, and the paper in turn serves as a forum for the promotion of his fiction. This promotion is in part a matter of simply putting his work before the public’s eye; more importantly, though, it involves deliberately constructing a context and a set of standards for a more serious valuation of martial arts fiction. The enunciation of the author’s artistic intentions and the honoring of readers’ responses lay the groundwork, establishing the simple but novel proposition that martial arts fiction is in fact worthy of consideration. Upon this framework, Jin Yong, working in concert with his readers, articulates more specific standards: a relationship with certain literary traditions, and an aesthetic of reader/character/author identification through psychological verisimilitude. These standards shift the center of gravity in Jin Yong’s fiction away from those public, political events that provided an important context for its first appearance and that continue to play a crucial role for Ming Pao as a whole. We should perhaps resist the temptation to make too much of Ming Pao’s promotion and definition of Jin Yong’s fiction. In some respects its activities are far from unique. Not only was martial arts fiction common to the majority of Hong Kong newspapers of the time, but many of them published occasional commentary on the genre or on particular works as well. Jin Yong’s remarks on his own works in Xin wanbao predate and mirror his subsequent efforts in Ming Pao.13 Self-celebration, promotion of featured works and authors, and active cultivation of the community of readers through the publication of letters, sponsorship of contests, and so forth, were common newspaper strategies, not at all limited to the martial arts genre. Discussions of martial arts fiction were occasionally printed in forums with no direct financial stake in the works considered (though

Revision and Canonization

179

obviously with a general desire to engage readers’ interest). The most notable example is the essay “Xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo liang da mingjia: Jin Yong Liang Yusheng helun” (The two great masters of new school martial arts fiction: a joint discussion of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng), serially published in 1966 in the first three issues of Haiguang wenyi, an arts journal seeking a broad-based audience. Signed “Tong Yanzhi,” it was long assumed to be the work of the magazine’s editor, Luo Fu, the two novelists’ erstwhile superior at Xin wanbao, but was eventually revealed to be from the pen of Liang Yusheng himself.14 The most extended early discussion of New School fiction to see publication, the article balances an overall gravity of tone and a scrupulous apportioning of praise and critique to each of its subjects against a decidedly conservative assessment of the genre’s place in the grand scheme of things: I am not opposed to martial arts fiction, nor do I particularly advocate it. At this time and place, there is no serious harm in reading martial arts fiction for entertainment. If martial arts fiction of a relatively high artistic level should appear, it would be even more worthy of our welcome. But because martial arts fiction suffers from the innate restrictions of its form, I have no high hopes for its artistic quality.15

Liang Yusheng’s essay, together with Jin Yong’s brief and modest response in Haiguang wenyi’s fourth issue, thus conditions our understanding of Ming Pao’s activities, reminding us, on the one hand, that Jin Yong’s newspaper had no monopoly on the discussion of martial arts fiction, and, on the other, that any claims made for this fiction’s value were still fairly restricted. Ming Pao’s efforts in cultivating its audience and sketching a discursive context for martial arts fiction were unique, nonetheless, because of the newspaper’s mutual implication of authorial, editorial, and institutional agency and its focused development of what we might today think of as a Jin Yong /Ming Pao “brand.” Moreover, in providing a forum in which Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction exists in fruitful tension with other modes and levels of journalistic and fictional discourse, in which discursive and commercial projects can mutually support one another, and through which readers can be simultaneously catered to and enlisted in the furtherance of these projects, the early Ming Pao establishes strategies that will continue to serve Jin Yong in his expanding career as author, journalist, media magnate, and cultural spokesman. The most significant deployment of these strategies was to be in Jin Yong’s revising of his serialized fiction for a thirty-six-volume Collected Works.

180

Chapter 7

The Collected Works of Jin Yong The earliest “book” versions of Jin Yong’s novels were the compilations of devoted readers, who cut the daily installments from the newspapers and pasted or sewed them into homemade volumes.16 Scarcely less immediate were danxing ben (“single,” i.e., “individual” volume editions) containing a week or two’s worth of reprinted text, issued as soon as the requisite quantity had appeared in serialization.17 Once a novel’s serialization had been completed, the danxing ben were succeeded by heding ben “combined” editions of some eighty pages of text per volume, then by versions presenting the entire work in (depending on the novel’s size) as few as two to five volumes.18 In the afterword to the revised edition of Flying Fox, Jin Yong himself mentions the proliferation and variety of early editions of his work, and addresses a problem with which this proliferation was inextricably involved—that of unauthorized publication: After the novel’s newspaper serialization in 1959, no book versions of Flying Fox were published with the author’s permission. On the basis of what I have seen, booksellers issued a total of eight different versions, in single-volume, two-volume, three-volume, and seven-volume editions. All of these were the booksellers’ own reprints. Given that they demonstrated at least a certain appreciation of my work, I never troubled myself about them. They were full of misprints, however; they also divided the text into sections and chapters at random, and devised their own chapter titles, not necessarily in accord with my original intention. Nor did the illustrations included in some editions meet with my approval. (247)

The laissez-faire attitude toward unauthorized editions expressed here is not always evident during the period of the novels’ newspaper serialization. A notice appearing in Xianggang shangbao during Royal Blood’s run takes pains to steer readers toward the authorized version of the text: Volume One of This Paper’s Popular Novel Royal Blood Now Available Since Mr. Jin Yong’s martial arts novel Royal Blood first began serialization on the pages of this newspaper, it has won tremendous appreciation from our readers on account of its astounding and intricate storyline and the extraordinary martial skills of its protagonist, the Guangdong native Yuan Chengzhi. Already three or more pirated reprint editions have been produced by unscru-

Revision and Canonization

181

pulous booksellers; they are replete with errors and omissions, and have given their readers considerable disappointment. Now Mr. Jin Yong has revised the original manuscript and given it to Sanyu Book Company for publication, with Mr. Yun Jun’s illustrations included. Professionally printed in large characters, $1.40 a volume, for sale at all major booksellers.19

Frustration over the pirates’ command of the market was allegedly a prime motivation for Jin Yong’s establishing his own publishing concern. Jin Yong’s novels appeared not only in editions from unauthorized publishers, but in disguised editions as well, omitting or changing the author’s name and offering the text under altered titles.20 And joining the publishing maelstrom were spurious works issued under the author’s name, often continuing the adventures of his novels’ protagonists. Thus, only a few months after the completion of Book and Sword’s serialization, Jin Yong felt compelled to add the following note to the day’s installment of Royal Blood: To Mssrs. Yu Tian, Zhang Xin, and others: Tianchi guaixia (The strange knight of Heaven’s Lake [the name of a character from Book and Sword]) and Shujian enchou lu xuji (A sequel to Book and Sword) are works by others appropriating my name, and were not written by me. I am grateful for your concern. —Jin Yong 21

Nonetheless, Jin Yong’s own publications were not entirely innocent of this sort of dissimulation. Several novels serialized in Ming Pao in 1966 and 1967 as jointly authored by Ni Kuang and Jin Yong were in fact written by Ni Kuang alone but used Jin Yong’s more prominent name as a lure.22 As advertisements and notices such as those cited above make clear, the earliest authorized editions of Jin Yong’s novels were those issued by Sanyu Book Company. Historical Novels Publishing Company later published its own editions as well. The authorized book editions participated in the synergistic cross-marketing of Jin Yong’s works: a 1963 edition of Dragon Sabre from Historical Novels, for instance, alerts readers to the current serialization of Semi-Devils in Ming Pao and Martial Arts and History and to the fact that bound volumes of that novel (with color covers and illustrations by Yun Jun) have already begun to appear. They also carried on the struggle for sole claim over Jin Yong’s texts: a 1960 edition of Companion from Sanyu, for example, carries a notice, signed by Jin Yong, listing the titles of his authentic works; naming various novels and sequels spuriously attributed to him; warning readers against inferior, pirated edi-

182

Chapter 7

tions; and threatening transgressors with legal action. The competition between authentic and spurious works, authorized and unauthorized editions, continues to the present day. But a signal moment in the definition and control of Jin Yong’s texts occurred with the author’s establishment of Ming Ho Publications Corporation Limited (Minghe she chuban youxian gongsi), a company devoted exclusively to the publication of his own novels. Ming Ho copyrighted its editions of Book and Sword and Royal Blood in 1975, and by 1981 had completed The Collected Works of Jin Yong (Jin Yong zuopin ji), a comprehensive, standardized edition of the author’s martial arts fiction in thirty-six matching volumes of intensively revised text. The earliest danxing ben book editions of Jin Yong’s novels already included certain revisions of the original serialized text. Some erroneous characters were corrected (although new mistakes also crept in, even in the authorized editions, to say nothing of the pirated texts); paragraph and chapter divisions were often altered, and chapter headings revised; minor changes in continuity were made, in conformity, for example, with the book edition’s freedom from the need to continually reidentify a scene’s participants or speakers in each daily installment; and some of the inconsistencies natural to the hurried and piece-meal process of writing for serialization were amended, as a notice appended to a late installment of Royal Blood demonstrates: To Mr. Liang Shizhuo: Since He Hongyao has already chopped off her left arm, she should be “holding in her right hand” the skull of Jinshe Langjun, not “bearing [it] in both hands.” This was a careless mistake on my part, and I am extremely grateful for your correction; it should be rectified in the single volume edition. —Jin Yong 23

Beginning around 1969, however, Jin Yong undertook a systematic revision of the texts of all of his martial arts novels. The revised Book and Sword began serialization in Ming bao wanbao in December of that year; 24 Ming Pao was featuring at the time The Deer and the Cauldron; after this novel concluded, in September 1972, Jin Yong produced no further new martial arts novels but dedicated his fiction-writing energies entirely to the task of revision. The revised texts were published in Ming bao wanbao through the 1970s, as well as in Martial Arts and History and Ming Pao’s overseas affiliates. After serialization they were published in book form by Ming Ho, beginning with Book and Sword in 1975 and culminating in the completion of The Collected Works of Jin Yong in 1982. Until the appearance in 2001 and 2002 of the first volumes of a long-rumored second

Revision and Canonization

183

revised edition, this Ming Ho edition of Jin Yong’s revised works served as the basis for all subsequent editions, including those published in Taiwan by Yuanjing beginning in 1979 (transferred in 1986 to Yuanliu); those in simplified characters distributed by Ming Ho in Singapore and Malaysia; the unauthorized editions that began flooding the mainland in the 1980s; and the first complete authorized Collected Works of Jin Yong published in the mainland by Beijing’s Sanlian in 1994.25 A number of commentators have criticized the revised texts for their repression of at least some part of the originals’ rough vigor and unbridled imagination.26 An opposing view, however, points out that the continuing popularity of Jin Yong’s works rests primarily on the revised versions, which have circulated exclusively for over twenty years. Li Yijian, an editor at Ming Ho, provides the most systematic elaboration of this perspective. He reminds us that the project of revision occupied ten years, fully two-fifths of Jin Yong’s twenty-five-year career as an active author of fiction. It is the fruits of this project, Li argues, that have extended Jin Yong’s fame beyond the confines of genre fiction, to the point where he now receives consideration as one of the great novelists of twentieth-century China. The revised texts are “better” in the sense of being more literary than the originals; they transcend the formulae and limitations of popular newspaper fiction and hew more closely to the standards and values of “classic” literature.27 My aim here is not so much to evaluate the literary merits of Jin Yong’s revisions as to examine the related but rather different question of how the project of revision participates in the process of establishing literary and cultural value. A case study of Royal Blood will demonstrate that the revision process involves both the delineation of standards of value and the presentation of the revised text as conforming to these same standards. These acts of definition and presentation, moreover, are carried out not only in and through the text itself but also by the text’s packaging as an element of The Collected Works of Jin Yong. Royal Blood serves as a useful object of analysis in part because its contents have already been introduced, and in part because it received some of the heaviest revision of any of Jin Yong’s texts.28 Royal Blood holds further interest for a study of the development of Jin Yong’s fiction because of the fact that the author returned several times to the material of this early novel. From May 23 through June 28, 1975, Ming Pao serialized Jin Yong’s Guangdong yingxiong Yuan Manzi: Yuan Chonghuan pingzhuan (The Guangdong hero “ Yuan the Barbarian”: a critical biography of Yuan Chonghuan), an account of the historical father of Royal Blood’s fictional protagonist. This short work, inspired by

184

Chapter 7

the author’s research in connection with the second revision of the novel, is included in revised and expanded form as an appendix in the Collected Works edition (737–863). In addition to the Critical Biography, Jin Yong revisited Royal Blood in his final work of fiction, The Deer and the Cauldron. First serialized in Ming Pao contemporaneously with Ming bao wanbao’s presentation of the revised Royal Blood, The Deer and the Cauldron not only incorporates several of the earlier work’s characters but also represents, as shown in this chapter and the next, a reassessment of some of its central concerns. Commenting on the revision of Book and Sword, Jin Yong remarks that “nearly every sentence has been altered at some point.” 29 A comparison of the Ming Ho revised edition of Royal Blood with the 1956 newspaper serialization confirms that the alterations to this text are equally painstaking. Almost every line from the newspaper version can be matched with one in the book; yet each such matching reveals at the same time a recalculation of one or two items of vocabulary, an adjustment of syntax and sentence structure, or a reorganization of the punctuation. Such ubiquitous stylistic alterations are further joined by changes in the narrative information relayed by the text. While these occasionally involve modifications in the action or in a character’s role, they most frequently take the form of clarifications of the protagonists’ motivations and expanded exploration of their thought and emotions. Here, for instance, is the 1956 text’s account of Wen Qingqing’s realization that Ironhand He (He Tieshou), mistress of the Five Venom Sect, has fallen in love with her: Qingqing thought about Ironhand He’s speech and bearing towards her these last few days; she really did appear as if she had set her heart on someone. She had been smitten at first sight, and hadn’t realized that she herself was a woman in man’s disguise. She couldn’t help but feel amused. “What can I do?” she asked. “You’ll just have to take Madam Five Venoms as your wife!” said Chengzhi. (November 6, 1956)

The revised text offers a fuller explanation of how her erstwhile captors had failed to perceive her true gender: Qingqing thought back on Ironhand He’s speech and bearing toward her these last few days; she really had seemed to be brimming with affection. She had been smitten at first sight, and her wits were all befuddled. He Hongyao for her part had been poisoned by resentment and ready to burst with rage. These

Revision and Canonization

185

two women were actually quite canny in the ways of the world, but one was smitten by love while the other nursed her hate; both of them in the end were as good as blind, and hadn’t realized that she herself was a woman in man’s disguise. She couldn’t help but feel amused. “What can I do?” she asked. “You’ll just have to take Madam Five Venoms as your wife!” laughed Yuan Chengzhi. (616)

Another example occurs when Yuan Chengzhi, who yearns to assassinate the Ming emperor in vengeance for his father’s execution, actually ends up saving the ruler’s life in order to foil a plot by traitors in league with the Manchus. The emperor is unaware of his savior’s identity: Yuan Chengzhi gazed at Chongzhen and thought how his father had given his life to protect his country, rendering heroic service, only to have this very emperor send him to death by dismemberment. He felt grief, pain, rage, and hatred. Chongzhen had no notion of this. He spoke in a kindly voice: “What is your name? In which department do you serve?” (November 15, 1956)

The revised text adds to Yuan Chengzhi’s vengeful thoughts a sudden spasm of compassion: Yuan Chengzhi gazed at Chongzhen, and thought how his father had given his life to protect his country, rendering heroic service, only to have this very emperor send him to death by dismemberment. Grief, pain, rage, and hatred filled his heart. But when he looked closely at his foe, his father’s murderer, he saw that his cheeks were deeply sunken, the hair on his temples white, and his eyes shot through with red—an utterly haggard appearance. By now the plot to dethrone him had been foiled and the chief villain eliminated, but Chongzhen’s face showed nothing but care and unease, without the slightest trace of gladness. Yuan Chengzhi thought: “Being emperor is nothing but a torture to him; he isn’t happy at all!” Chongzhen had no notion of the thoughts passing through Yuan Chengzhi’s mind. He spoke in a kindly voice: “What is your name? Where do you serve?” (633–634)

Changes such as these tighten the narrative logic of the tale and add some depth to the characters’ psychological lives. They do not, however, alter the overall contours of the plot. For the most part it is possible to match the original and final texts scene by scene, paragraph by paragraph, and even (allowing for such expansions as just described) sentence by sen-

186

Chapter 7

tence. More extended and substantial alterations to the plot and narrative of the original text occur at four points. The first is an expansion and modification of the novel’s opening sequence. The second is the addition of the episode of Yuan Chengzhi’s attempt to assassinate the Manchu emperor. The third is an elaboration of events in Beijing after the capital’s fall to Li Zicheng. And the fourth is a fuller development of the original text’s rather abrupt conclusion. Reserving consideration of the reworked opening for last, let us begin with an examination of the other revised sequences and their bearing upon the novel’s representation of politics and history. In both versions of the text, Yuan Chengzhi, journeying to Beijing in order to assassinate the Ming emperor, encounters the Portuguese mercenaries, destroys their cannon, and receives from them the map to the island in the southern seas. He then proceeds to the capital, where, in the 1956 text, he makes his first entry into the imperial palace. In the revised text, however, the sufferings of the warplagued populace along the road arouse in him the determination to assassinate the Manchu ruler, Huang Taiji (Abahai). He therefore merely pauses in Beijing before journeying on to the northeast and the Qing capital at Shengjing. Infiltrating the palace, he is astounded to find the Manchu emperor speaking the Chinese tongue, quoting Chinese classics and histories in his deliberations with his Chinese-born advisors, sighing over the follies of the Ming court and vowing to ease the people’s sufferings when he attains the throne. Yuan proceeds with his assassination attempt nonetheless, fired by his aversion to foreign rule and by knowledge of Huang Taiji’s role in his father’s ruin. He fails, is captured and entrusted to a lieutenant of his late father, now serving the foe; when this worthy releases him, he enters the palace for a second attempt, only to witness Huang Taiji’s murder at the hands of his brother Dorgon. Yuan Chengzhi then returns to Beijing, and the revised text’s plot merges once again with that of the newspaper text. The entire episode, inserted at the point of Yuan’s arrival in the capital in the September 5 installment of the serialization, occupies some twenty-nine pages in the Ming Ho edition (487– 516, including a chapter break and illustration), comprising nearly 18,000 characters. The next major amendment in the text occurs after Li Zicheng’s seizure of the capital. Certain minor changes appear during the course of Li Zicheng’s assault. The revised text omits, for instance, the 1956 text’s account of Yuan Chengzhi’s bribing the Ming soldiery to relax their defense, perhaps deeming this strategy unheroic (November 25, absent from Ming Ho 652); it adds Li Zicheng’s address to his troops, forbidding

Revision and Canonization

187

them to loot or harm the capital’s inhabitants (Ming Ho 660, absent from November 28). The primary revision, however, appears with Yuan Chengzhi’s audience with Li Zicheng after the city’s fall and the Ming emperor’s suicide. In the November 30 installment of the serialization, Yuan refuses Li Zicheng’s offer to marry him to the Ming princess and is gazed upon with suspicion by Li’s chief advisor. When a messenger reports looting by some of Li Zicheng’s troops, and the advisors begin debating how to handle this matter, Yuan takes his leave. Returning to his residence, he finds a summons from his master, and (in the December 2 installment) leaves the capital for the novel’s final sequence of adventures. Before Yuan’s departure from Beijing, the revised text adds over 7000 characters (Ming Ho 663–674), dramatizing the matter mentioned so briefly in the serialization—the new regime’s rapid plunge into pillaging and internal strife. Returning from his audience, Yuan Chengzhi is drawn into a brawl with rebel troops seeking to pillage his own residence. He returns to the palace, expecting Li Zicheng to enforce his earlier decree, but finds him at a feast, surrounded by greedy generals and treacherous advisors, drunken with wine and besotted with lust for the ravishing Chen Yuanyuan. Li Zicheng’s desire for this beauty leads him to betray the general Wu Sangui, who holds the passes against the Manchu armies. Yuan departs, heavyhearted, and witnesses ever greater excesses of looting and rapine. The next day, Li Zicheng, closeted with his new paramour and swayed by his advisors’ whispers of treachery, refuses him audience; Yuan wanders the terrorized capital and hears a blind street-singer’s ominous lament; returning home, he receives his master’s summons, and so prepares to depart. The final major revision, that of the novel’s ending, has clear aesthetic motivations and also reinforces the themes brought out in the expanded treatment of Li Zicheng’s victory. Jin Yong replaces the last several hundred characters of the final newspaper installment (December 31, 1956) with six pages of new text (730–736), some 4000 characters in all. The new material narrates in some detail Yuan Chengzhi’s journey to aid his beleaguered comrade Li Yan, their meeting, Li Yan’s despair over the corruption of the rebellion, and the suicides of Li Yan and his wife. The additions ameliorate the abruptness of the original conclusion (brought about in part, perhaps, by the need to finish the story on the last day of the calendar year).30 They also produce a certain structural symmetry between the work’s beginning and ending. The novel’s opening sequence (to be discussed in detail) features a young student attacked by rapacious Ming soldiery as he travels through China. In the original conclusion this stu-

188

Chapter 7

dent, now aging and careworn, appears suddenly at Li Yan’s tomb to recite a lament, then disappears once again. In the expanded conclusion, Yuan Chengzhi encounters the student on the road—assaulted not by Ming troops this time but by Li Zicheng’s rampaging followers. The episode both mirrors the opening more closely, and reemphasizes the degeneration of Li Zicheng’s uprising. Indeed, these paired scenes of the ravages of the Ming and rebel troops can be further matched with the scenes of Manchu depredation at the beginning of the Shengjing episode, demonstrating the sufferings of the populace at the hands of all three contenders for the throne and justifying Yuan Chengzhi’s final departure for an island far from the suffering empire. Lin Baochun, noting the addition and amplification of historical material as one of the most salient characteristics of Jin Yong’s revision of his novels, takes Royal Blood as a prime illustration of this trend.31 And indeed the revisions to Royal Blood examined here all concern the novel’s treatment of its historical background and the protagonist’s response to China’s political crisis, rather than his tangled romantic adventures or the debts and vendettas within the world of the martial arts that occupy so much of the narrative. If the original texts of Jin Yong’s novels are marked by a shift of emphasis from dynastic history to character-driven plots, the reemphasis on history in the revised texts represents the pendulum’s return. The changes made, moreover, do not constitute a simple increase in the novel’s quotient of a neutral “historicity”; they adjust and amplify its assessment of China’s political situation at a moment of historical crisis. The novel’s fundamental assumption is that political legitimacy rests upon the ruler’s concern for the best interests of the common people. By this yardstick, the Ming brings about its own downfall. “The Ming dynasty destroyed itself, it was not overthrown by the Manchus,” states the Critical Biography (784). This point is implicit in the first days of the novel’s serialization, which show Ming troops ravaging the coutryside, and is explicitly stated by Yuan Chengzhi as he views the Chongzhen emperor’s corpse: “If you had understood to begin with what it meant to cherish the people, instead of driving the starving masses of the empire to desperation, you would never have come to the state you’re in today.” (November 29, 1956; cf. Ming Ho 661)

What the revised text adds to this assignation of blame for the Ming collapse is, as we have seen, a more developed representation of Li Zicheng’s failure to achieve legitimacy by the same criteria. More surpris-

Revision and Canonization

189

ingly, perhaps, it also adds a more complex and even sympathetic view of the eventual victors in the imperial struggle, the Manchu Qing. The original text operates within the parameters of the anti-Manchu patriotism common to much martial arts fiction, including the works of the Guangdong School and Jin Yong’s own Book and Sword, and takes its protagonist’s resistance to the Qing for granted. But in the revised text, Yuan Chengzhi, poised to assassinate Huang Taiji, is impressed not only by his formidable cunning (which he suspects is superior to that of the Ming emperor and even of Li Zicheng, and which reminds him of the devious wisdom of the text from which he himself has studied the martial arts) but by his knowledge of Chinese language and history and by his concern for the sufferings of the common people.32 Yuan proceeds with his assassination attempt nonetheless; capitulation to Manchu rule is not an option for this character, the son of a renowned anti-Manchu general. Yet the depiction of the capable and compassionate Huang Taiji brings the vision of the novel as a whole much closer to the point of view expressed in Jin Yong’s Critical Biography of that general: “It was necessary that the Ming dynasty perish. For the Chinese people, the Qing dynasty was far better than the Ming” (857). This same viewpoint receives an even more compelling fictional expression in The Deer and the Cauldron. In this novel, discussed in detail in chapter 8, the narrative’s adulatory representation of the Qing Kangxi emperor as an enlightened ruler is matched by the conversion of the novel’s protagonist, Wei Xiaobao, who spends much of the novel bouncing between the Qing court and an anti-Manchu revolutionary society, first cynically playing both sides to his personal advantage, then torn between their rival claims to his loyalty. By the end of the tale, however, he admits that he “can’t jump his way out of his imperial highness’s Buddha palm” (1960), and dedicates his services to his friend and master, the Kangxi emperor.33 If, as argued here, the changes made to Royal Blood bring the 1975 revised text closer to the point of view of the 1975 Critical Biography and the 1969–1972 The Deer and the Cauldron; if they reframe the tale of Yuan Chengzhi’s despair over the fate of China in such a way as to allow the possibility of Wei Xiaobao’s capitulation to the new order of things—what then? What interest or implications do these revisions hold beyond their evidence of the author’s judgment on this specific moment in Chinese history? And how do we reconcile the reemphasis on history and the willingness to weigh the relative merits of political solutions with the political agnosticism and attenuation of historical specificity evident in Wanderer? In the case of Royal Blood we might imagine the author as constrained by

190

Chapter 7

the focus on dynastic crisis in the original text; but this explanation will not account for The Deer and the Cauldron’s apparent reversal of Wanderer’s direction. The answer lies, I believe, not so much in the judgment passed on history as in the criteria by which this judgment is rendered. The revised Royal Blood, like The Deer and the Cauldron, reapplies to political history the culturalism articulated in Wanderer as the political arena’s other. And the logic of the culturalist criteria is spelled out in the rewriting of the novel’s opening. Textuality and Cultural Stewardship As narrated in Xianggang shangbao beginning January 1, 1956, the novel opens during the reign of the Ming Chongzhen emperor (1628–1644) with the young student Hou Chaozong, son of a retired official from Henan, who, despite his parents’ warnings about the perilous state of the country, sets out with his servant to see a bit of the world. He witnesses the misery of the peasantry and soon runs afoul of a troop of rapacious Ming soldiers. Only the fortuitous appearance of the caravan guard Yang Pengju saves him from robbery and worse at the hands of the government troops. The warrior Yang and the scholar Hou receive aid from a group of mysterious recluses who are training a young boy in the arts of war. They eventually find themselves at a gathering of the followers of the patriotic general Yuan Chonghuan, and learn that the child is the general’s orphaned son, Yuan Chengzhi, who is being raised to take vengeance on the traitors who executed his sire. Thus it is by gradual stages that the narrative leads the reader to the tale’s protagonist: presenting first a stranger to the Rivers and Lakes, the callow and bookish Hou Chaozong; then a classic type of the “goodfellow,” the formidable and chivalrous Yang Pengju; and then finally the particular characters and situations that will structure the rest of the novel. The revised text in the Ming Ho edition provides an even more circuitous entry to the main characters and events of the story. It first tells how the king of Brunei traveled to the court of the Ming Chengzu emperor in 1408. “Although [Brunei] was separated from the mainland by thousands of leagues of ocean, it had long held China in reverence” (7). The narrative details the gifts presented by the king and traces the history of Brunei’s tributary missions since Song times. The present king of Brunei, entranced by the splendors of the middle kingdom, lingers there and passes away. The Ming emperor enfeoffs his son and indites an elegy, which is subsequently inscribed on Brunei’s sacred mountain. Brunei continues

Revision and Canonization

191

to send tribute to the Ming court, and Chinese travel to Brunei, often serving there as court officials. In later years one of these overseas Chinese, remembering his homeland, names his only son Zhang Chaotang (“facing the Tang,” i.e., the Chinese empire), secures for him a classical education from an itinerant scholar, and sends him back to his native land to complete his education and win success through the imperial examinations. The revised text’s Zhang Chaotang is the reincarnation of the earlier version’s Hou Chaozong. When he arrives on the mainland, only to find it ravaged by bandits and equally rapacious government soldiery, the two versions of the text begin to run parallel.34 The revised opening does nothing to alter the tale of Yuan Chengzhi’s adventures, whether private or public. Its function is rather to offer a larger frame for the significance of Yuan’s personal and political travails by foregrounding the importance of China as the fountainhead of cultural meaning. Brunei’s reverence for Chinese culture, the king’s visit and presentation of tribute, and the importance of Chinese officials and merchants in Brunei’s government and society, all affirm the preeminence and influence of the Chinese cultural tradition. One of the few alterations between the opening in the first revised version serialized in Ming bao wanbao and the final text presented in book form makes this point even more strongly. In the Ming bao wanbao version the king appears as something of an awestruck tourist: When the king had arrived in China, he beheld this dazzling world, strange and novel in every way; the Ming emperor moreover received him with the greatest generosity, and in the end he simply could not bear to take his leave. (Ming bao wanbao, May 24, 1971)

The final version, however, explicitly attributes his response to an admiration of China’s cultural achievements: The king beheld the imperial court of this exalted nation, the people’s prosperity and the abundance of goods, the cultured governance and the civilizing balm of the teachings, the elegant attire and cunning utensils—none of these but gladdened his heart and made him sigh with admiration. The Ming emperor moreover received him with the greatest generosity, and in the end he simply could not bear to take his leave. (Ming Ho edition, 7)

The conjoining of “cultured governance and the civilizing balm of the teachings” with “elegant attire and cunning utensils” suggests that virtu-

192

Chapter 7

ous government is inseparable from the artifacts of the cultural tradition. This same linkage is evident in Yuan Chengzhi’s perception of the Manchu emperor Huang Taiji, and associated there even more specifically with the linguistic and literary manifestations of the tradition: Yuan’s understanding that this supposed tyrant actually feels concern for the people dawns in the wake of the realization that he speaks the Chinese language and is versed in China’s histories and scriptures. The revision of Royal Blood thus reflects the same shift from concern with the ethnic and political terms of the empire’s governance to concern with the continuity of Chinese cultural values, which we found progressively elaborated in Jin Yong’s work from Heroes to Wanderer. If the king of Brunei’s respect for China’s culture parallels that of the Manchu emperor, it also matches that of the character with whom the monarch shares the revised text’s opening—Zhang Chaotang. This youth’s schooling in the classics and return to the mainland to seek advancement through the examinations reflects an acceptance of the centrality of China’s cultural and literary traditions equivalent to that of the king. It is not surprising that these fictional or fictionalized characters, imagined as living during the Ming era, should demonstrate “traditional” attitudes toward Chinese tradition and literary cultivation. But the deployment of these attitudes by Jin Yong for his twentieth-century readership carries two significant implications for the author’s own literary practice and selfpositioning. The first point to note is that the revised text does not merely narrate the story of two individuals seeking instruction in the Chinese cultural tradition. It also enacts such a process of cultural initiation: it makes gestures toward providing the reader with instruction in the content and value of the Chinese literary and cultural heritage similar to that undergone by Zhang Chaotang and the king of Brunei. On the narrative level, the story of the king of Brunei has but a tenuous link to the events of the primary narrative. The main purpose of this episode, as already noted, is to establish an image of Chinese cultural supremacy. In the course of establishing this image, the text takes pains to offer explanations of geographic and linguistic material likely to be unfamiliar to the modern reader. It reproduces in full the text of the Ming emperor’s verses for Brunei’s sacred mountain; and in an endnote to the first chapter, it explicates these verses in modern vernacular Chinese (8, 40). Historical glosses within the text are sometimes enclosed in parentheses or set off by a variant typeface. This typographical practice highlights the authorial voice’s departure from simple narrative and engagement in a more schoolmasterly practice of instruc-

Revision and Canonization

193

tion. The adoption of an instructional stance extends far beyond the revised opening. Several of the later chapters of the novel are provided with endnotes explaining the background of the tale, elucidating historical and literary allusions, or quoting historical sources. At several points the author takes pains to make clear his story’s divergence from the verifiable historical record. “Historians need not inquire too closely into a novelist’s tales” (524). By so carefully circumscribing the territory of fiction, of course, he demonstrates a consciousness of responsibilities beyond those of a mere entertainer—responsibilities explored in the extended piece of historical writing appended to the revised novel, the Critical Biography. The inclusion of chapter endnotes, intratextual glosses, and historical appendices is the most obvious textual feature differentiating the revised texts of the Collected Works from the form in which they first appeared in Ming bao wanbao. These textual excrescences, however, are in turn only one in a set of fundamental divergences of aspect and import between the book and serialized (whether original or revised) versions of Jin Yong’s novels. The mere fact of publication in book form, complete from beginning to end and free of any textual material (with the minor exceptions of advertisements and publishing data) unrelated to the narrative proper, liberates a novel from the fragmentation, contextuality, and poly-vocal contingency intrinsic to the text’s serialization in a daily newspaper. Such textual independence was enjoyed even by the early, unrevised danxing ben and heding ben editions of Jin Yong’s novels. The Ming Ho edition of the Collected Works elevates the texts’ autonomy and prestige in several further respects. First of all, it invests the novels with a new aura of artistic effort and a unique claim to authoritativeness. The ten years Jin Yong spent in polishing his texts are frequently referred to in the commentarial and appreciative literature, often as “unprecedented in the history of martial arts fiction.” Quite apart from any concrete results realized within the texts, that is, the effort has acquired an iconic status in the Jin Yong legend, certifying the author’s credentials as a dedicated literary artist. In Bourdieu’s terms, it marks Jin Yong’s turning away from a short-term production cycle (daily serialization) geared toward immediate financial profits and toward the longer production cycle necessary for the generation of more purely cultural capital.35 Secondly, the Collected Works gather the individual novels together into a larger system, a corpus that is simultaneously grand in scale and exclusionary in its completeness—not incidentally, as Ye Hongsheng has pointed out, numbering a cosmographically significant total of thirty-six volumes.36 The range of expository apparatus included within the volumes of

194

Chapter 7

the Collected Works extends the cultural didacticism represented in the novels’ diegetic world into extra-diegetic textual space, a space more plainly oriented toward interaction with the reader. The Collected Works further extend this didacticism and cultural appropriation in nontextual directions as well. The front of each volume in the set features a collection of captioned plates, many in full color, reproducing works of art, cultural relics, historical documents, maps, portraits, and photographs of famous sites associated with the events of the novels. The 1975 afterword to the Ming Ho edition of Book and Sword introduces the plates as follows: We estimate that the Collected Works of Jin Yong will comprise about forty volumes in all. Full-color illustrations will be added to each volume; we hope that this will allow our readers (especially our readers abroad) to gain some further acquaintance with China’s cultural artifacts and works of art. (870)

It is instructive to compare these plates with the black-and-white illustrations at the head of each chapter, line or wash illustrations by Yun Jun or his colleague Wang Sima. The latter, reworkings of the illustrations that accompanied the daily newspaper serializations, offer imaginative renditions of the characters and scenes of the narrative. But the former in effect set the novels within a museum of Chinese history and culture. The practice of the Collected Works here replicates that of Ming Pao Monthly (also adumbrated on a more modest scale in the covers of Martial Arts and History). This practice vests the novels with both a pedagogical mission and the dignity of association with artifacts of recognized cultural significance; beyond its explicit pedagogical intent, that is, it makes the implicit claim that The Collected Works of Jin Yong have a rightful place within the Chinese cultural museum.37 In expressing the wish that the plates inserted in the Collected Works will allow readers “to gain some further acquaintance with China’s cultural artifacts and works of art,” Jin Yong specifies “readers abroad” as the primary beneficiaries of this educational agenda; and this focus on the diasporic readership, together with the intimate linkage between the diaspora and the text’s assumption of the duties of cultural stewardship, constitutes the second noteworthy feature of the revision of Royal Blood’s opening sequence. The revised opening emphasizes the essential role played by individuals from outside the Chinese heartland in the validation and sustenance of China’s cultural traditions. The king of Brunei, whose story frames the tale from a certain distance, is a foreigner, drawn to China by its glories and unable to depart. Zhang Chaotang, whose travels and tra-

Revision and Canonization

195

vails lead directly into the primary narrative, is not the Henan native of the original text but an overseas Chinese, schooled in the traditional arts while growing up abroad, then sent by his father to fulfill his cultural destiny back in his ancestral land. On the structural level, Zhang Chaotang’s arrival from abroad establishes a parallelism with his final departure in Yuan Chengzhi’s company for a haven overseas. In terms of emotional impact, the idealism of his vision of the cultural heartland augments the poignancy of his encounter with the brutal reality of the empire’s condition; his teacher, who has instructed him in the classics, is slaughtered by pirates as soon as they reach the mainland. To this extent, then, Zhang Chaotang’s tale echoes and supports the theme of exile sounded by Yuan Chengzhi’s narrative. Yet even though Yuan and Zhang exit the tale together, the trajectories of their stories are differentiated by the fact that, while Yuan was born within the troubled heartland, Zhang has entered it from without. His exit, consequently, suggests not hopeless banishment from the cultural homeland but the possibility at least of return to those lands overseas that educated him in its values to begin with. Through the figure of Zhang Chaotang, the tragic condition of the Chinese mainland serves to highlight the importance of its admirers and descendants overseas—both in affirming the central culture through their adulation, and in sustaining it through their extraterritorial transmission of its literature and values. The nameless, foreigner-infested island to which Yuan Chengzhi must journey to carve out a new kingdom is joined and tempered by the image of the overseas kingdom of Brunei, blessed with a stele inscribed by the Ming emperor; and in this latter image, in turn, we may discern an echo of the island in Ode to Gallantry, the inscriptions within whose caverns bestow upon the questing hero the ultimate rewards of understanding and power. Just as the revised Royal Blood’s celebration of literature’s importance as a steward of the cultural inheritance is replicated extratextually in the presentation and marketing of The Collected Works of Jin Yong, so its vision of the role of expatriate Chinese in the preservation of that inheritance is played out in the history of the production and circulation of Jin Yong’s novels. Distributed throughout Southeast Asia, Taiwan, North America, and Europe, Jin Yong’s novels related to the dispersed Chinese-language communities of these locales a narrative of the Chinese homeland and the Chinese past—a narrative which, for all its reverence for the cultural heritage, had been crafted not within that homeland but in the geographically and politically alienated territory of Hong Kong, sundered from the storied past as well by the historical ruptures of the mid-twentieth century.

196

Chapter 7

In the 1980s Jin Yong’s vision of China returned to the homeland of which it had dreamed so long. With mainland China’s economic reforms and opening to the outside world, millions of readers whose distance from an idealized tradition stemmed not from geographic displacement but from sociopolitical trauma found in Jin Yong’s work the double appeal of a voice from the world outside and an echo of their own remembered or imagined birthright. The “return” of Jin Yong’s fiction to the Chinese mainland, as prefigured in his final novel and played out in the economic, social, and critical tides of the 1980s and 1990s, is the burden of the final chapters of this book.

Revision and Canonization

197

Chapter 8 Beyond Martial Arts Fiction The Deer and the Cauldron

he September 1981 issue of Ming Pao Monthly eschewed the multiple titles and leads that customarily vied for attention on its cover in favor of a single dramatic headline, printed against a photograph of the red walls of Tiananmen, gateway to the historic seat of China’s emperors and symbolic center of the Communist regime: “Mr. Zha Liangyong on his Journey to China.” The issue featured an interview with Zha on his month-long trip to the mainland in July and August, and a report of his personal meeting with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on July 18, 1981.1 The trip, and the meeting with Deng in particular, represented a milestone in Zha Liangyong /Jin Yong’s relations with the Chinese Communist Party. It was the Party that had proposed and arranged the visit in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s consolidation of power, the removal of his rival Hua Guofeng, and the convention of the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, whose most dramatic task was the “resolution of certain historical questions”— i.e., the formal repudiation of the Cultural Revolution and a measured critique of certain aspects of Mao Zedong’s actions and legacy. The audience with Deng served to recognize the steady support for Deng’s pragmatic policies of economic and social reform, which Zha Liangyong had been voicing in Ming Pao’s editorials for several years, and likewise granted qualified recognition to the paper’s criticisms of the Cultural Revolution and the excesses of the left. In broader terms it was meant to signal, to the Chinese people and perhaps more importantly to Chinese and non-Chinese observers abroad, the new leadership’s break with the past and its openness to the outside world. For Zha Liangyong, the first representative (albeit unofficial) of Hong

T

198

Kong to be granted audience with Deng, the meeting was a powerful validation of his cultural and political status, and marked the expansion of his role from that of publisher and political commentator into that of a direct participant in the political maneuverings between Hong Kong and the mainland. Over the next decade and a half, through a series of sometimes dramatic advances and withdrawals, Zha not only negotiated a personal rapprochement with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party but also played a part in facilitating the return of the British colony of Hong Kong to mainland sovereignty. After the 1981 meeting with Deng, Ming Pao became an ever more enthusiastic supporter of the mainland’s reforms, and established a cooperative relationship with the official Xinhua News Agency. When readers in Hong Kong and abroad voiced fears that Ming Pao had “changed sides,” Zha responded that the crucial change was not in his own or his newspaper’s principles but rather in the leadership and policies of the mainland government itself. Besides analyzing mainland affairs, Ming Pao’s editorials began to deal extensively with the question of Hong Kong’s own future.2 After the 1984 signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration announcing the colony’s return to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997, Zha Liangyong was among those named by Beijing to the Basic Law Draft Committee charged with planning the transition. His sponsorship in late 1988 of a “Mainstream Model” calling for only the most conservative implementation of democratic political reforms drew charges that he was serving as a mouthpiece of the mainland government and led to student protests outside the offices of Ming Pao. In the spring of 1989, however, as a democracy movement sprung up in Beijing and other Chinese cities, Ming Pao offered exhaustive and sympathetic coverage, while Zha’s editorials strongly supported the mainland students’ positions and called on the authorities to enter into dialogue with the student leaders. When Premier Li Peng declared martial law on May 20, 1989—the thirtieth anniversary of Ming Pao’s founding—Zha resigned from the draft committee. This action, together with a tearful television appearance and a passionate signed editorial in the wake of the events of June 4, made Zha Liangyong a prominent and revered representative of the Hong Kong population’s concerns. He took pains, nonetheless, to distance himself from the more virulent critics of the Communist leadership, counseling that the return to mainland sovereignty was inevitable and a strategy for cooperation therefore of the utmost importance. In late 1992 he penned a series of editorials severely critical of Governor Chris Patten’s new package of democratic reforms. A meeting with Secretary General Jiang Zemin in March of 1993 reaffirmed Zha’s importance as spokesman for and guarantor of the main-

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

199

land’s vision of a stable transfer of sovereignty.3 Zha was soon appointed to the Advisory Council for Hong Kong Affairs, and in December 1995 named to the preparatory committee charged with establishing the political institutions for post-1997 Hong Kong. He subsequently emerged as an early and influential supporter of shipping magnate Tung Chee-hwa, who was in due course chosen by the selection committee to serve as the first chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The October 1981 issue of Ming Pao Monthly—the issue immediately following that which reported Zha Liangyong’s meeting with Deng Xiaoping—continued the theme of support for Deng with a series of articles on the Special Economic Zones, which played a central role in his economic reforms. It also included a section devoted to Jin Yong’s final novel, Luding ji (titled in English as The Duke of the Mount Deer, hereafter referred to as The Deer and the Cauldron).4 The Deer and the Cauldron had originally been serialized in Ming Pao from October 24, 1969, through September 23, 1972. Ming Pao Monthly’s special section of October 1981 celebrated Ming Ho’s publication of the revised version and included the afterword and a historical appendix from the new edition, and an essay by Jin Yong on the novel’s protagonist: “That Little Rascal Wei Xiabao!” 5 If the meeting with Deng in July was a milestone in Zha Liangyong’s public and political career, the publication of the revised edition of The Deer and the Cauldron in August was equally a milestone in his career as an author, for it marked the completion of the thirty-six-volume Collected Works of Jin Yong. The Deer and the Cauldron has been the most controversial of Jin Yong’s novels ever since its first serialization. It has attracted attention in part as Jin Yong’s final work; after the completion of this novel, the author, apparently at the height of his talent and productivity, “laid down his brush” as far as new composition was concerned and turned instead to the task of revision. But controversy over the work began early during its serialization, before its status as the author’s final novel was apparent. At the time, in fact, its authenticity as a work from Jin Yong’s hand was frequently questioned, so radically did its contents diverge from what his readers had come to expect.6 The root element in this divergence and the resultant controversy is the figure of the novel’s protagonist, Wei Xiaobao, the antithesis of Jin Yong’s previous heroes. A brat from the brothels of Yangzhou, he perversely resists all opportunities to travel the familiar road of martial and moral education, rising instead to the twin apexes of the Qing imperial court and the Rivers and Lakes through the exercise of native wit, a glib tongue, and naked self-interest, while crowning an eventful erotic career with the acquisition of seven comely and submissive wives. Commentators, beginning with Ni Kuang, have seen a necessary connection between 200

Chapter 8

Jin Yong’s creation of Wei Xiaobao and his abandoning the composition of new martial arts fiction. With The Deer and the Cauldron, declares Ni Kuang, Jin Yong had reached the “terminus” of the martial arts novel, a fulfillment and pressing of the limits that was at the same time a transcendence of the genre. “If he were to write any more, all he could do would be to hover at the borders of this terminus. Wasn’t it better simply not to write?” 7 Ni Kuang rates The Deer and the Cauldron not only first among Jin Yong’s works but “the best novel of all time, Chinese or foreign.”8 To the character of Wei Xiaobao he assigns a ranking of “supreme” and explicitly contrasts this “true-to-life” character, whose flaws are the flaws of Everyman, with the unnatural perfection of Heroes’ Guo Jing, whose importance in Jin Yong’s oeuvre he acknowledges while discreetly declining to offer a rating.9 Subsequent commentators have hotly contested Ni Kuang’s evaluation of The Deer and the Cauldron and its protagonist and, in doing so, confirmed his overall view of their significance. When a panel ostensibly on the subject of “Jin Yong’s fiction” was held in Taipei in conjunction with the publication of the Taiwan edition of the author’s works, “in the end, three quarters of the time was devoted to debates over the personality of Wei Xiaobao.”10 Nearly two decades later, at the Boulder conference on “Jin Yong’s Fiction and Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature,” the most frequent and heated topics of discussion were The Deer and the Cauldron and its protagonist Wei Xiaobao. Is The Deer and the Cauldron a historical novel or a martial arts novel? Is Wei Xiaobao a tragic character, a comic character, or a tragicomic figure whose serious import merely assumes the guise of humor? Can he hold his own alongside the archetypal figure of Ah Q? How does his sociocultural or psychological significance differ from that of Ah Q? Many of the papers addressed these questions and offered a variety of perspectives.11

Wei Xiaobao and The Deer and the Cauldron have thus played a crucial role in the introduction of Jin Yong’s work to the purview of academic criticism and analysis. The questions asked about this novel more than about any other of Jin Yong’s works—questions of genre, of the fictional representation of personality and human nature, of typicality (dianxing) and national character (guominxing), of parity with such universally recognized literary creations as Lu Xun’s Ah Q—are questions the very posing of which concedes a certain degree of literary value and cultural significance. It is not surprising that The Deer and the Cauldron has been chosen for the first highprofile publication of one of Jin Yong’s works in English translation.12 Jin Yong’s publication of the essay “That Little Rascal Wei Xiaobao!” in Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

201

the pages of Ming Pao Monthly may be seen as another instance of his lending the material and discursive support of his publishing enterprises to the promotion (again, both commercial and discursive) of his fiction. In its content, however, as indeed in its very title, the essay reveals a complex and even conflicted attitude toward the author’s most famous literary creation. While doubting that any single fictional character can serve as an epitome of the Chinese people, Jin Yong allows that Wei Xiaobao, like Ah Q, Lin Daiyu from The Story of the Stone, or the heroes of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, possesses certain uniquely Chinese traits. His two most distinguishing characteristics, in fact, his capacity to adapt to his environment and his loyalty to friends (jiang yiqi), are among the major reasons for the Chinese people’s (Zhonghua minzu) survival and historically unique resilience. Personal loyalty is perhaps the most deeply held value of the Chinese people; it is at the heart of the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, yet has often stood in opposition to the moral codes imposed by the ruling stratum of society. A popular, oppositional spirit stands at the heart of classical Chinese fiction, and the continuance of this spirit represents one of the ways in which the modern martial arts novel continues classical fiction’s traditions. Concrete or literal manifestations of the xia’s oppositional spirit are nonetheless unsuited to modern societies, in which the interests of the rulers and those of the people are (in theory) in accord; the lying and scheming to which Wei Xiaobao’s “adaptability” lead him should be understood as revealing the weaknesses of the Qing society in which he lived, and would properly disappear under more enlightened social conditions; indeed, the prevalence of the “Wei Xiaobao style” (Wei Xiaobao fengdu) of croneyism, self-interest, and disregard for the law “has a great deal to do with the Chinese government’s continued failure to get on the right track.” Jin Yong’s pride in Wei Xiaobao’s uniquely Chinese attributes is thus balanced against a critical and “progressive” vision for a modern Chinese society. And further complicating the author’s stance is a large measure of personal affection: “By the time I had written the first fifth of The Deer and the Cauldron, I already looked upon ‘that little rascal Wei Xiaobao’ as a close friend. I felt rather partial to him, and inclined to let him do as he pleased; that bad Chinese habit of putting feelings (qing) over reason (li) was acting up again.” 13

Jin Yong’s ambivalent relationship with his “little rascal,” condemning him from a rational distance while confessing an affection that is given a backhanded validation as distinctly “Chinese,” is mirrored within the novel in the complex relationship between Wei Xiaobao and the Qing 202

Chapter 8

Kangxi emperor (r. 1662–1722). This same relationship is significant also for the extent to which it represents Jin Yong’s own approach to a “resolution of certain historical questions.” The Deer and the Cauldron returns from the historically unmoored Rivers and Lakes of Ode to Gallantry and The Smiling, Proud Wanderer to the concrete dynastic setting of the earlier novels, and to the particular historical problem of Manchu rule over the Han Chinese. In place of Book and Sword and Royal Blood’s narratives of failure and exile, however, it offers a triumphal representation of the consolidation of power and enlightened rule by the second Qing emperor. In the course of so doing, moreover, it presents an exploration of the landscapes of literary and cultural practice, revealing a vision of the structure, tensions, and political functions of Chinese culture, and suggesting its own position within this complex system.14 This chapter thus undertakes to read The Deer and the Cauldron as engaging both political issues that were to become prominent in Zha Liangyong’s rapprochement with the Communist regime and Hong Kong’s return to mainland rule, and the cultural questions that arose when Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction entered the Chinese mainland’s rapidly changing fields of literary and cultural practice. Narrative Structure, the Political Dilemma, and the Dual Cultural Terrain The parameters of The Deer and the Cauldron’s approach to the political problem of Manchu rule and to the representation of the territory of cultural practice are sketched out in the doubled opening sequences contained in the text’s first two chapters. The first chapter of the novel portrays the anti-Manchu activities of a group of Ming loyalist scholars during the early years of Kangxi’s reign.15 The eminent literati Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu pay a visit to their friend Lü Liuliang at his retreat in Zhejiang province. The three discuss the Ming History case, in which dozens of scholars and their families stand in danger of execution over the Zhuang family’s publication of a history whose use of the former dynasty’s reign-titles intimates treason against the Manchu Qing.16 Fearing for their own liberty and lives, the loyalist scholars take flight. On a boat upon the Grand Canal, their conversation turns to the anti-Manchu Heaven and Earth Society (Tiandihui) and its leader Chen Jinnan. When Manchu agents suddenly attack, they are rescued by a young gentleman whose scholarly appearance belies his formidable martial prowess—a hero who turns out to be none other than Chen Jinnan himself. The first chapter’s opening image of Han captives tormented by their Manchu guards recalls the similar tableaux of suffering at the hands of forBeyond Martial Arts Fiction

203

eign oppressors in various of Jin Yong’s previous works. It is significant, though, that the victims here are not the “common folk” but scholars and their families; for if the anti-Manchu sentiments of Lü and his comrades recall those of earlier novels’ loyalist protagonists, their means of expressing these sentiments are unique to their status as literati. They view paintings and recite and compose verse in which loyalist allegiance is encoded in historical, literary, and artistic allusion. In these activities, and in the Ming History case, which is the focus of their immediate concern, what is at issue is not physical conflict or direct political action but ideology and representational practice. This representation, moreover, occurs in cultural forms—painting, poetry, the writing of history—traditionally understood as “high” culture, the domain of an educated and (at least potentially) politically privileged elite. Within the discourse of this elite, men of action and the heroes of the Rivers and Lakes appear only at a certain narrative remove, as in the scholars’ discussion of the Heaven and Earth Society and their recounting of a colleague’s encounter with a stalwart beggar. The eruption of violence within the primary diegetic field at the chapter’s end, with Gu Yanwu’s display of his “scant, crude skills of self-defense” (37) and the appearance of the elegant but lethal Chen Jinnan, moves the text toward the familiar territory of martial arts fiction, yet at the same time marks a somewhat startling break with what has come before. The novel’s second scene of combat, the brawl that breaks out at the commencement of the second chapter, may dismay the wealthy salt merchants who have gathered at the Vernal Delights brothel in Yangzhou, but it is less likely to disorient the reader, as the violence seems in keeping both with the more earthy milieu of this scene and with the participants in the fight—toughs from a smugglers’ gang and Mao Shiba, a seasoned goodfellow of the Rivers and Lakes. It is in this setting and in the course of this brawl that we first encounter The Deer and the Cauldron’s protagonist, Wei Xiaobao, the rascally offspring of one of Vernal Delights’ singsong girls. And one of the first traits attributed to Wei Xiaobao is an intimate familiarity not with the culture of the previous chapter’s scholars but with the arts and entertainments of his native turf, the pleasure quarters of a wealthy city: In the markets and teahouses of Yangzhou were a great number of storytellers who recounted the heroic tales of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Water Margin, the Tale of the Heroes and Martyrs of the Great Ming, and so forth. This lad spent his days and nights scurrying about the brothels, gambling dens, teahouses, and taverns, running errands and buying odds and ends for peo-

204

Chapter 8

ple, skimming a little off the top and begging a few pennies in tips. Whenever he had the time he would squat beside a table in a teahouse and listen to the storytelling. He was always obsequiously polite to the waiters, calling them uncle this and uncle that, and so they didn’t kick him out. He had heard the stories time and again, and was utterly besotted with the heroes and goodfellows of the tales. Seeing how this fellow [Mao Shiba], grievously wounded though he was, yet battled on against the smugglers’ champions, he was filled with admiration, and the phrases spoken by the heroes in the tales spilled naturally from his mouth. (54)

As this passage suggests, Wei’s engagement with the storytellers’ art goes far beyond that of a passive listener. The stories he has heard define his perceptions of Mao Shiba; they inspire him to respond to Mao on the basis of yiqi, “honor,” specifically the loyalty to friends and to one’s word, which is the highest virtue of the heroic milieu of the tales; and they even provide him with the vocabulary and verbal stylings with which to address his newfound comrade. Later in the chapter Wei plays the role of storyteller himself, recounting to Mao his version of a tale from the Da Ming yinglie zhuan (Heroes and martyrs of the Ming).17 The fact that Wei’s tale is in its own way a “Ming History” highlights the homology between the storytelling and plays of the marketplace and the high cultural practices of the first chapter’s literati. But the illiterate Wei’s garbling of historical details and verbal formulae underscores the gulf that separates him from the scholars’ specific modes of communication and representation; and his high-handed approach to his material, unapologetically altering or eliding bits he knows he doesn’t understand and gleefully twisting the tale in order to insult his hapless listener, suggests a liberty from the burdens of history and national destiny that weigh so heavily upon the shoulders of Huang, Gu, and Lü.18 The narrative trajectory of the second chapter resembles that of the first, as Wei’s association first with Mao Shiba and then, through Mao, with members of the Heaven and Earth Society mirrors the scholars’ gradual approach to an encounter with Chen Jinnan.19 These two paths toward a meeting with the anti-Manchu resistance have very different starting points, however; the scholars begin from their own loyalist convictions, but Wei Xiaobao is motivated by an admiration for the heroic ideal of yiqi, which is for him at least innocent of any specific political allegiance. And while Wei’s path leads him too to an eventual encounter with Chen Jinnan himself, it does so only through a detour into that terrain which is the geographic and discursive antithesis of the Rivers and Lakes—the Forbid-

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

205

den City, seat of the Manchu imperial court. He is taken into the palace, assumes the identity of a young eunuch, and becomes a favored wrestlingpartner and companion of the young Kangxi emperor, thus introducing this novel’s version of Book and Sword’s kinship between Qianlong and Chen Jialuo and of the pairing and doubling that runs through so many of Jin Yong’s subsequent works. He renders the ruler invaluable service by capturing and then assassinating the menacing regent Oboi. Oboi had been not only an arrogant threat to the boy emperor’s authority but also one of the most ruthless foes of the Ming loyalists and the Han Chinese in general. Wei’s role in his overthrow results in his being accepted as Chen Jinnan’s personal disciple and named as master of the Society’s local Green Wood Lodge. Thus is established the novel’s most fundamental tension: Wei Xiaobao’s bifurcated loyalties, on the one hand to his friend and liege the Kangxi emperor and on the other to his master Chen Jinnan and his sworn brothers of the Heaven and Earth Society. As the novel proceeds, Wei finds himself in a range of situations and takes on a bewildering variety of roles and names. But whether as master of the Green Wood Lodge, court official, imperial envoy, general in the Manchu army, monk at Shaolin Temple, or White Dragon Marshal in the fanatical Divine Dragon Sect, he remains, at the most fundamental level, torn between his allegiances to Kangxi and to Chen Jinnan and so embodies in his person the problem of the legitimacy of Manchu rule. Legitimation and Exclusion: The Role and Fate of Wei Xiaobao The novel as a whole responds to this problem with the solution already noted in the revised text of Royal Blood—the Manchu emperor’s achievement of legitimacy through enlightened rule under the guidance of the textual authority of the Chinese tradition. The regent Oboi is a virulent opponent of Chinese learning. “When your servant followed the Founder and his late Majesty on campaign,” he tells the young emperor, who has just quoted a classical text on benevolent governance, “and we fought our way into the passes, winning glory by the sweat of our brows, we didn’t know a single Chinese character, but we still killed these southerners by the thousands!” (162). Oboi’s elimination is thus, among other things, the removal of reactionary Manchu resistance to Chinese culture. Kangxi’s sinification and education as a ruler thereafter proceed apace; he takes to heart and increasingly puts into practice the central tenet (according to the novel) of the Chinese classics, that the welfare of the people takes precedence over all. Even the anti-Manchu leader Chen Jinnan is forced to voice

206

Chapter 8

concern over the prospects of restoring the Ming, as “the people’s memory of the former dynasty gradually fades, and the barbarian emperor exercises fair and benevolent rule” (1403). The standards for imperial legitimacy are first articulated within the novel by the literati who open the first chapter. Here Lü Liuliang, turning from the spectacle of the convict-train of scholars, tutors his young son in the meanings of the “deer” and the “cauldron” which give the book its name. The phrases “inquiring after the cauldrons [of state]” (wen ding) and “chasing the deer” (zhu lu), derived from passages in the classical histories, refer to the contest for the imperial throne; at the same time, though, both the helpless deer and the cauldrons of sacrifice connote the sufferings of the people at the hands of their rulers. The classical images thus conflate the struggle for dominion with the compassion that alone grants rulership legitimacy. Kangxi’s achievement, as represented in the novel, lies in fulfilling the essential requirement for enlightened rulership by displaying benevolence toward his subjects. Beyond this, though, it lies also in mastering the discourse in which this requirement has been articulated, that is, in acquiring and expressing his practice of governance through the medium of classical literary culture. It is the culture of the Chinese scholars themselves, in short, which provides the rationale for the legitimation of Kangxi’s rule. Kangxi’s assimilation of Chinese cultural practice in general, and the redress in particular of the Ming History incident that epitomized the scholars’ plight at the opening of the novel, can be seen in the final chapter, where the emperor reviews a text that has been submitted to him for interdiction and ends up quoting with approval its pronouncements on the ruler’s proper relationship to his people. It soon falls to Wei Xiaobao to report the emperor’s views to a group of Ming loyalist literati, including Huang Lizhou, the author of the volume in question, and Gu Yanwu and Lü Liuliang, two of the scholars from the opening chapter: “So the barbarian emperor can tell right from wrong after all,” said Huang Lizhou. “That’s right,” said Wei Xiaobao, seizing his opportunity. “The young emperor said that he’s no “bird-born fish chowder” [niaosheng yutang, the illiterate Wei’s garbling of Yao Shun Yu Tang, a proverbial reference to the sageemperors of antiquity]; but compared to the emperors of the Ming dynasty, he’s not necessarily any worse, and maybe even a bit better. With him as their ruler, the people of the empire get along better than they did under the Ming. I haven’t got a scrap of learning or education myself, so I can’t say whether he’s right or not.”

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

207

Gu, Zha, Huang, and Lü looked at one another, thinking of the various emperors of the Ming. From the Founder down to the last emperor Chongzhen, if they weren’t ruthless tyrants, then they were muddle-headed incompetents; was there one among them who could match Kangxi? These four were among the great scholars of their age, deeply versed in history and unwilling to speak against their consciences; and they had no choice but to silently nod in agreement. (2108)

The scene is significant not only for its representation of the Confucian elite’s recognition, however grudging, of the Kangxi emperor’s legitimacy but also for the fact that it is Wei Xiaobao who mediates between the emperor and his opponents. Wei’s service to Kangxi is scarcely limited to his befriending the lonely boy emperor and aiding him in removing Oboi early in the tale and to his acting as his apologist here in the final chapter. Throughout the length of the novel he performs deed after deed aiding the emperor in his private affairs, his defense of the realm against foreign menace, his consolidation of his rule in the face of dissidents and traitors, and his cultivation of a rapprochement with the people of the empire. 20 On one level the novel is a fictional portrait of the achievements of Kangxi, the most illustrious of the Qing emperors, and of the role of the emperor’s alter ego Wei Xiaobao in forging these achievements; numerous commentators, indeed, have identified Wei Xiaobao and Kangxi as co-protagonists of the work, or even named the emperor himself as its real subject. Given Wei Xiaobao’s pivotal role in the negotiation of mutual understanding between the Manchu ruler and the Han ruled, it is remarkable that he himself declines to fully participate in the triumph of Kangxi’s reign. He makes a meteoric rise through the hierarchy of the Qing court, to be sure, ascending from assistant manager of the Imperial Catering Department after the victory over Oboi to Duke of the First Level after the defeat of the Russians and the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk. His title, in fact, is Duke of Ludingshan (Luding gong), “Duke of Mount Deer” in Jin Yong’s original English version of the novel’s title; and the identity of the Luding of Wei’s honorific with the lu and the ding of the first chapter’s exposition of the empire’s plight perfectly summarizes the glory (and attendant wealth) that Wei Xiaobao gains from his role in engineering Kangxi’s resolution of the problem of the cauldrons and the deer. Shortly after first receiving his (at this point Third Level) dukedom, however, he renounces his service to the emperor and retires with his seven wives to the desert island he has christened Winner Takes All (Tongchidao). His

208

Chapter 8

rank is later restored and elevated in reward for his further deeds; yet he finally abandons not only his dukedom but even the possibility of claiming the imperial throne itself, and ends the novel living incognito in the distant province of Yunnan. Wei Xiaobao’s final retreat cannot be characterized as mean or renunciatory, as he takes with him a substantial portion of his wealth and his harem of seven wives. It is in fact in the interlinked modes of sexual conquest, phallic self-aggrandizement, and mastery of the symbolic and social economies of patriarchy that Wei’s accomplishments over the course of the novel find their most evident and unqualified expression. He enters the narrative at the lowest rung of the patriarchal order, the son of a prostitute, ignorant of his own father’s name.21 The symbolic castration implicit in his assuming the identity of a eunuch throws his claim to phallic agency into further question,22 which on one level may be read as the price he pays for apparent collusion with the foes of the goodfellows (“true men” —the han of the Chinese conflates manhood and Han ethnic identity) of the Rivers and Lakes and the anti-Manchu resistance. Wei’s dreams of success take the form of imagining himself as owner and master of a brothel of his own; and this polygamous fantasy, the inversion of his original identity as offspring of a woman “owned” by many men, is in one sense realized through his accumulation of a growing number of female playmates, lovers, and wives. Many of his female companions are originally foes, or associated with figures and forces opposed to Wei and to the Kangxi emperor. His accumulation of the patriarchal capital of women is thus closely linked both with victories over male rivals and with his contributions to the establishment of the Qing emperor’s sovereignty. The supreme example of the linkage between service to the empire, sexual conquest, the “unmanning” of foes, and phallic celebration appears in Wei’s negotiation of the Treaty of Nerchinsk with the Russian aggressors. His military success involves humiliating his “big-pistoled” captives and threatening them with castration, and “pissing” the Russian fortifications into submission with hose-cannons. During the subsequent treaty negotiations, he hums a ditty from the brothels, “The Eighteen Feels,” as the Russian negotiator’s finger retreats before the Qing negotiator’s over the surface of the map; and in signing the treaty, he overcomes his illiteracy just enough to scrawl the simplest of the characters in his name, the central xiao (“small”): He picked up the brush, and drew a round ball on the left, a round ball on the right, and then a long stick standing straight up in the middle. . . . “Look at this

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

209

character,” he laughed. “A chicky and two eggs—it sure does look like a youknow-what!” The high officials of the Qing delegation couldn’t help but burst out laughing, and even their attendants and guards joined in the merriment. [The Russian negotiator] stared at them, wondering what was so funny. Wei Xiaobao then signed his name to all four copies of the treaty, and on the copy written in Russian he made that brushstroke in the middle especially huge. (2050–2051)

Wei accompanies the treaty with a personal gift to the Russian czarina, his former lover—a naked statue of himself, “one piece” of which eventually becomes a fertility fetish for Russian peasant women. The clear linkage between Wei’s attainment of phallic mastery and patriarchal authority and his contributions to the establishment of the empire only throws into higher relief his abdication from full participation in the Qing’s political triumph. What evidently prevents Wei’s complete assimilation to the Qing imperial order is the irreconcilable conflict between his allegiance to the Kangxi emperor and his loyalties to his comrades of the Heaven and Earth Society. He retreats to the desert island after worming his way out of a harrowing incident in which the Society tries to force his cooperation in the emperor’s assassination while the emperor tries to compel his acquiescence to the destruction of Chen Jinnan and his followers. He fakes his own death and flees to Yunnan when the final interview with the Ming loyalist scholars (described above) is followed by an encounter with die-hard members of the Society, who still expect him to assassinate the emperor or pay the price himself. Both Wei and the emperor at times describe this dilemma as a conflict between zhong, loyalty to a liege, and yi or yiqi, honorable dealings with friends.23 But Wei’s relationship with Kangxi was first established as a friendship between palace youths whom Wei, at least, understood to be equals; and even those deeds of Wei’s that most benefit the empire as a whole are often motivated not by allegiance to Kangxi as a sovereign but by affection and concern for him as a friend. Discovering Russian incursions in the north, for instance, and fearing that these raids betoken revolt by Wu Sangui in the south, Wei is consumed with worry, not for the nation, but for “little Xuanzi,” the name under which the emperor wrestled with him in the palace: “If Wu Sangui has raised his troops in revolt, the little emperor is sure to have an awful lot of things to talk over with me. Even if I can’t come up with any ideas, talking with him and helping him out with his worries is the right thing to do” (1486). In the end, then, Wei Xiaobao’s conflict is less one of

210

Chapter 8

political “loyalty” against brotherhood’s ties of “honor” than of “honor” owed to two different and opposing parties.24 Discongruous Cultures: The Cultural Economy in The Deer and the Cauldron The fact that the demands of yiqi (honor) prevent Wei’s full assimilation into the enlightened Qing imperium is symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: a disjunction between those cultural practices that allow for the validation of Manchu rule and that cultural terrain from which Wei springs and which he continues to embody throughout the course of the novel. As we have already seen, the book’s opening chapters portray the culture of the literate elite and the oral popular culture of the marketplace as occupying two distinct social and discursive spheres within the larger field of “Chinese culture.” Something of the relationship between these two realms becomes evident in the scene (also alluded to earlier) of Wei’s recounting an episode from the storytellers’ version of Ming history: the popular culture is a sort of fun-house mirror of the culture of the elite, replicating some of its major themes and concerns but marked by exaggerations, variant points of focus, and simple misunderstandings. These errors, distortions, and alternate intentions afford popular culture a comic vitality that is double-faced, on the one hand providing a burlesque of the gravity of elite discourse but on the other hand betraying the immaturity and risibility of the popular culture itself. An episode later in the novel, when Wei Xiaobao travels to Yangzhou as the emperor’s personal envoy, affords a study of the two realms of the cultural field in direct confrontation. As his first return to his birthplace since entering the palace, the journey is a landmark for Wei himself. It also marks a defining moment in the emperor’s program of nurturing the bonds between the Manchu rulership and the largely Han population of the empire; for Wei’s mission is to win the hearts of the people and atone for the atrocities committed by conquering Manchu troops during the notorious Yangzhou Massacres, by declaring a three-year amnesty on taxes and erecting a Shrine of the Loyal Martyrs dedicated to a leader of the Ming resistance. “We of the Qing revere loyal subjects and righteous men,” explains the emperor, “and scorn rebels and dissidents” (1546). Wei is conscious enough of the gulf between his role as imperial envoy and his origins as an urchin from the brothels to conceal his personal history from his official associates and to stifle the impulse to establish the

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

211

envoy’s formal residence within the pleasure quarters. His cultural predilections surface nonetheless at a dinner party arranged in his honor by the prefect of Yangzhou, Wu Zhirong. Wei, “quite a vulgar fellow, without a refined bone in his body” (as the narrator interjects, 1603), mistakes the elaborate landscaped arbors erected for his delectation for the sheds in which funeral rites are conducted and is barely dissuaded from destroying one of the city’s scenic landmarks in vengeance for a grudge harbored since childhood. Though delighted by the stories with which a perceptive courtier regales him, he is utterly bored by songstresses’ recitations of Tang and Song verse. “If Wei was to listen to songs, his first requirement was that singer be young and pretty, the second that her songs be a bit risqué, and the third that she sing in a saucy and lascivious style” (1611). When one of Yangzhou’s most accomplished courtesans presents a ballad by a contemporary master, Wei calls for the “old whore” to sing his favorite bit of bawdry, “The Eighteen Feels”—causing the officials around him to blanch in shock and embarrassment, and the songstress to flee the hall in tears. In this banquet scene, the gulf between Wei’s and his hosts’ cultural styles is exploited primarily for its comic possibilities. The grotesque humor generated by the spectacle of literati culture’s carnivalesque subjection to the tyranny of a “hoodlum from the marketplace” serves in the end to reaffirm “high” culture’s proper position of hierarchical authority. A subsequent audience between Wei Xiaobao and the prefect both restages this carnivalesque dynamic and introduces some of the situation’s more specific political and ideological implications. Prefect Wu is none other than the official whose invidious reports first set in motion the Ming History affair; it was those efforts, in fact, that won him his current position. Wu now seeks to curry favor with the imperial envoy by offering new evidence of sedition by Gu Yanwu and his associates. Wei is less uninterested in the political import of the writings Wu presents than simply bored with their dense and (to him) incomprehensible classical idiom. He dismisses Wu’s sedulous decodings with indifference or downright hostility; he is roused to excitement only by a reference to historical figures whom he knows from the Heroes and Martyrs of the Ming—a reference that spurs him to subject the hapless prefect to a demonstration of his own storytelling abilities. “He had learned these tales from the mouths of the storytellers, and needless to say there was more nonsense to them than solid truth” (1675). It falls to Wu to remind his superior of the seditious implications of these stories of the Ming generals’ wars against the barbarian usurpers.25 Wei finally awakens to the danger posed by Wu’s evidence of a conspiracy between the scholars and his comrades of the Heaven and Earth Society.

212

Chapter 8

Guided by the code of yiqi, he confiscates the evidence, frees the scholars, frames Wu, and ultimately contrives to send him to his death. It is important to note that the code of yiqi that Wei has learned from his beloved tales does not, in itself, position him on one side or other of the contest for dynastic legitimacy; it disengages him, rather, from the appeals to historical and ideological validation through which this contest is waged. His freeing the Ming scholars expresses neither allegiance to their credo nor opposition to Qing policy; it follows simply from the personal ties binding Wei to the scholars via his sworn brethren. If his elimination of Wu Zhirong clearly aids the loyalists and the heroes of the Heaven and Earth Society, it may equally be seen as prefiguring the emperor’s final rejection of the politics of censorship and the consequent resolution of the paradigmatic tensions of the Ming History affair. The crucial difference, of course, is that the cultural parameters within which Wei operates exclude him from participation in the ideological synthesis that informs the emperor’s actions. The staging of the interview between Wei and Wu as an encounter between a storyteller and a literary exegete underscores the fundamental discontinuity not just between the principals’ political positions but between the cultural practices that support these positions as well. The same disconnection appears in the final interview between Wei and the Kangxi emperor. The emperor breaks off from his admiring recitation of Huang Lizhou’s treatise on rulership to admonish himself: “What’s the point of discussing such lofty principles with this little hoodlum? If I keep on talking, I’m afraid he’ll start yawning his head off” (2103). When Kangxi nonetheless proceeds to explicate the text, Wei responds with the proverb of the “bird-born fish chowder.” His garbling of the proverb’s historical allusions and substitution of the homophones of oral perception for the referents of the written characters epitomize his inability to do ought but parrot the literary culture of the sage-kings.26 Wei goes on to report the emperor’s enlightened views to the loyalist scholars—indeed, he is perhaps the only person capable of performing this mediatory role. Lacking “the slightest bit of learning or education,” however, he himself is unqualified to fully comprehend or share in their capitulation and must face the demands of yiqi in the form of the intractable warriors of the Heaven and Earth Society. It is not the demands of yiqi alone, then, but in the larger sense his allegiance to a cultural milieu removed from that of the literate elite and insusceptible to its suasions that leaves Wei Xiaobao with no recourse save flight to Yunnan. The position he finds for himself in this distant outpost of the empire is in fact analogous to the place of the popular culture that has nourished him relative to the high literate

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

213

culture that provides the empire’s mantle of authority: within its bounds, posing in the end no credible challenge to its hierarchical eminence, yet operating at a distance that allows for discongruity, oppositional display, and incomplete assimilation. The Swan Song of Jin Yong’s Martial Arts Fiction The preceding discussions of Wei Xiaobao’s role and fate and of the novel’s representation of China’s cultural realms allow us to now readdress, from several perspectives, the question of The Deer and the Cauldron’s role within Jin Yong’s work as a whole. To begin with, how does Wei’s final-chapter withdrawal compare with his predecessors’ “rides into the sunset”? Earlier chapters of this study have noted how the exits made by the protagonists of Jin Yong’s previous novels assume a variety of geographical forms and embody a developing range of political implications. Chen Jiaoluo’s flight beyond the passes and Yuan Chengzhi’s migration to a southern island express these heroes’ fundamental opposition to Qing rule, their recognition of defeat, and the political and moral need to remove themselves from an occupied heartland. Victory (even if temporary) against foreign aggressors wins Guo Jing and Yang Guo the right to retire to an idyllic space, unthreatened by political turmoil and fructified with the twin blessings of culture and romance. For Linghu Chong, the enjoyment of aesthetic and erotic delights is not a reward for political victory gained through martial prowess but a hard-won and transcendent alternative to the poisonous practices of which both politics and the martial arts are constituted. Wei Xiaobao’s final retreat is not a flight from foreign domination; Manchu domination has been achieved in good part through his own efforts, and in any case the abstract questions of political and ethnic allegiance are moot to him. In some sense his retreat might be seen as a flight from politics but not from its practices of self-interest, deceit, and manipulation, for he is, if anything, the world’s greatest master of these modes of operation. What he flees is simply the knot of conflicting loyalties in which he has become enmeshed. His first refuge, upon Winner Takes All, offers physical removal from the mainland and the paradisiacal possibilities of life on a desert island with his seven comely wives, yet it fails to liberate him from the emperor’s persistent emissaries and his own still conflicted allegiances. His final retreat in Yunnan lies upon the mainland and within the boundaries of the now consolidated Qing imperium. The siting of Wei’s refuge—at a comfortably anonymous remove, yet still within the bounds of the empire—gives geographical expression to the imagined reconjunc-

214

Chapter 8

tion of Chinese (high) culture and a Chinese polity in enlightened Qing rule. The earlier novels’ visions of political exile or diasporic cultural recuperation have been superseded by a China imagined as re-centered and inclusive. A second island featured in the narrative both reconfirms The Deer and the Cauldron’s geographic re-centering of an imagined China and illuminates the relationship between this imaginary and the political realities of the period of the novel’s creation. The Isle of the Divine Dragon (Shenlongdao), located in the seas off the northeast coast of China, is the lair of the Divine Dragon Sect (Shenlong jiao). The members of the sect practice a deadly form of martial arts that includes the chanting of mantras or slogans, which drive them into a frenzy and hypnotize their opponents with fear. They are led by the aged Sect Master Hong, who rules as much through the idolatry and terror he cultivates among his followers as by his powerful martial skills, and who is accompanied by a young and seductive consort. The sect is riven by violent factional strife; its elders, seasoned companions of the master, live in fear of bands of arrogant youths, armed and organized into color-coded brigades. The Divine Dragon Sect, in short, resumes Wanderer’s various evocations of the Cultural Revolution—down to the corpses bobbing in the waters off the isle, an echo of the bodies floating down the Pearl River, one of Hong Kong residents’ most direct and chilling reminders of the turmoil within mainland China. After entering the palace early in the novel, Wei Xiaobao gradually becomes aware of the Divine Dragon Sect and its efforts to seize copies of the mysterious Scripture in Forty-Two Sections (Sishier zhang jing). Captured by one of the sect’s elders, he wins his freedom after pretending to be able to read the ancient script on a temple stele, fabricating a “text” that reveals the scriptures’ locations and fulsomely praises the master of the sect. His trick backfires, however; he is lured to the island by sect members hoping to win their master’s favor by having Wei present his reading in person. One of the engineers of this plan, Mr. Lu, probes Wei’s learning by inviting him to critique his collection of paintings and calligraphy. As Wei has not yet been told the identity of the island or the reason for his presence, Lu veils his inquiries with the platitudes of an artistic connoisseur: “We dwell upon this wild and forsaken island, isolated and cut off from tidings of the world. Young master Wei has come from the glorious central plains, and is a scion of the Chinese race; his experience is vast, and his taste undoubtedly exquisite. Please have a glance at these scrolls—can they bear the scrutiny of so eminent an expert?” (776)

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

215

When he discovers that Wei is an imposter, not merely unschooled in the fine arts but utterly illiterate, he flies into a rage, to which Wei responds by defacing his artworks with obscene scribblings. But Lu still faces the terrifying prospect of presenting Wei and his reading of the stele text to Sect Master Hong. Working from a rubbing of the text, he painstakingly concocts an interpretation containing the required content and forces Wei to memorize it word for word. The full force of this episode is best revealed by recalling the opening of the revised Royal Blood. There a “scion of the Chinese race” from a faroff island where Chinese culture has been reverently preserved returns to the mainland only to find it wracked by turmoil. Here the inhabitants of the island look to the mainland and its antiquities for validation of their ideological project—for though Lu’s pose as a disinterested connoisseur is false, his need for the substantiation of the temple stele’s text is real indeed. The choice of Wei Xiaobao as a cultural ambassador is, of course, unfortunate, and in one respect the episode serves as merely another illustration of Wei’s ignorance of and disrespect for the high cultural tradition. Beyond this, however, the episode reflects upon the cultural character of the island itself. The Divine Dragon Sect’s thirst for validation through the mainland’s cultural heritage is exceeded only by their capacity for self-delusion, their willingness to invent whatever reading of this heritage bests suits the requirements of political expediency and personal survival. The Isle of the Divine Dragon is neither an island of refuge nor a harbor for the transplanted culture of the heartland, but, rather, a false pretender to political and cultural authority, a lair of terror and deception. As such it confirms the novel’s retransferral of cultural authenticity back to the imagined space of the mainland. And at the same time, it denies this cultural authenticity to the actual Chinese mainland’s current regime, projecting an acerbicly satiric rendition of that regime away from the heartland and onto this dreadful island.27 In chapter six I noted how Wanderer’s abandonment of a historically grounded setting seems to enrich the possibilities for topical and allegorical readings of its narrative. Yet The Deer and the Cauldron’s reembrace of historical specificity entails no dismissal of topicality; on the contrary, the novel surpasses even Wanderer in the breadth and mordancy of its allusions to contemporary events. References to the Cultural Revolution can be discerned not only in the Divine Dragon Sect but also in the first chapter’s literary inquisition and the sixth’s incident of the Sayings of the Empress Donggo (Duanjing hou yülu). 28 The extended treatment of the Qing conquest of Taiwan and the fate of Koxinga’s feckless heir unavoidably invites

216

Chapter 8

reflection on cross-strait relations in the Cold War era. Even the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands, which flared up during the period of the novel’s serialization, leaves its mark on the text—for Diaoyutai is one of the names of the temporary refuge that Wei Xiaobao dubs “Winner Takes All.” A detailed analysis of the stances revealed by these various references is beyond the aim of our discussion here. In broad terms, though, it is clear that by reembracing history and imagining the possibility of a political incarnation for Chinese cultural identity, the novel establishes standards that almost reflexively call for the evaluation of contemporary political reality. If we return from the novel’s refractions of contemporary politics to the design and symbolic implications of its imagined landscape, we may note that, as in Jin Yong’s earlier works, questions of geography overlap with questions of textuality. The text most crucial to the novel’s plot is the aforementioned Scripture in Forty-Two Sections. The multiple copies of this text emerge as the focus of struggles as fierce as those occasioned by earlier novels’ manuals of the martial arts. Wei eventually discovers that there are eight copies in all, originally distributed by the founding emperor of the Qing among the eight banners of the Manchu military organization. Among them, the copies of the scripture contain a map to a geomantically potent site in the Manchu ancestral lands to the north, where the ancestral kings are buried and where a vast treasure amassed in the conquest and pillaging of the Chinese empire has been hidden. Discovery of the site, excavation of the treasure, and disruption of the currents of geomantic power would destroy the fortunes of the Qing dynasty. The Chinese name of the critical site (the “original” Manchu is not given) is Ludingshan, “Deer Cauldron Mountain.” Wei Xiaobao is markedly uninterested in the prospect of destroying the Qing regime, which drives the other seekers of the scriptures; the thought of the treasure, however, excites his avarice.28 He collects all eight copies of the text, solves the puzzle of the map they contain, and then destroys the crucial evidence, leaving only himself and his current female companion in possession of the secret. As he eventually finds his way north to Ludingshan, he still harbors dreams of making off with the treasure. Upon arriving, though, he discovers the area under the sway of raiders from the aggressively expanding Russian empire. Concern for his friend “the little emperor” distracts Wei from his covetous fantasies; a series of adventures involving an affair with the Princess Sophia leads to the signing of a treaty with the Russians and Wei’s triumphant return to Beijing, where he is first enfeoffed as Duke of Luding. When later in the tale the Russians again

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

217

encroach upon Chinese territory, it falls to Wei Xiaobao to lead the Qing troops to victory and oversee the signing of the treaty of Nerchinsk. The association between the Scripture in Forty-Two Sections and Ludingshan echoes the linkages between potent texts and crucial geographic sites in Jin Yong’s earlier novels.29 But where such texts as the Veritable Scripture of the Nine Yin convey the keys to individual mastery of the martial arts, and sites such as Huashan stand at a discursive or physical remove from the geopolitics of dynastic struggle, the secret of the Scripture in Forty-Two Sections is precisely that of Qing political authority as materialized in the physical space of the Manchu heartland. Wei Xiaobao’s decision to relinquish the personal advantage to be gained through the decoding of the text in favor of his friendship with the Kangxi emperor is a crucial moment in his (and the novel’s) acceptance of the non-Han authority, which earlier novels’ martial masters had striven against or avoided. And the occasion of his decision—the discovery of a threat to China as a whole by non-Chinese foreigners—throws into sharper relief the essential terms of this acceptance: the assertion of pan-ethnic Chineseness, of the unity of the “races” through the transformative influence of the Chinese cultural tradition.30 Although the text as guide to the cultural legitimation of political authority displaces the text as key to supremacy in the martial arts, the familiar trope of the martial arts manual is not entirely absent from The Deer and the Cauldron. After accepting Wei Xiaobao as his disciple, the leader of the Heaven and Earth Society, Chen Jinnan, gives him a manual of the Society’s basic martial techniques and oral instructions on how to practice. Wei lacks the discipline to persevere in the training, however, and finds the manual a far less interesting object of study than the wads of cash he has amassed through his part in the confiscation of Oboi’s property. The failure to master Chen Jinnan’s martial arts is only one instance of Wei Xiaobao’s repeated disregard of fortuitous opportunities to study with eminent teachers—opportunities that served as the essential elements of earlier protagonists’ careers of martial and personal growth.31 The only technique for which he shows any real affinity is a footwork pattern, the Divine Ambulation in a Hundred Variations (Shenxing baibian), which he refines into an almost preternatural skill in fleeing danger. Otherwise he relies not on martial techniques but on a collection of semimagical objects (corpse-dissolving powder, armor of invulnerability, a razorsharp blade) or on his true talents of flattery, manipulation, chicanery, and deceit. Wei Xiaobao’s brief and fruitless encounter with a manual of the martial arts is but one facet of his general rejection, subversion, and

218

Chapter 8

fraudulent mimicry of the normative role of the martial arts novel’s protagonist. Wei Xiaobao the antihero is not only the Kangxi emperor’s shadow, the appetite-driven obverse of his sovereign and wrestling-partner’s allegiance to principle; he is also a manifestation of the state to which the xia is reduced under the reign of an enlightened ruler. Jin Yong has written of his protagonists as belonging to the traditionally paired categories of rushi, “entering (engaging) the world,” and chushi, “withdrawing from the world.” 32 The Deer and the Cauldron’s reembrace of history and willingness to imagine political solutions to historical conflicts implicitly reject the renunciatory apoliticism of such chushi heroes as Linghu Chong. At the same time, the particular solution it envisions—the transcendence of ethnic rivalries through the enlightened teachings of the cultural tradition—undercuts both the loyalist ends and the martial means of the rushi champions. The xia’s resultant plight is manifest in the character of Chen Jinnan. Both his surname and his position as chief of an anti-Manchu secret society mark him as an avatar of Jin Yong’s first protagonist, Book and Sword’s Chen Jialuo. In the universe of The Deer and the Cauldron, however, the martial champion and resistance hero’s fate is not a starring role crowned by tragic retreat to the geopolitical margins of the empire, but narrative marginality and an ignoble death. The rascal who usurps his place at center stage resembles Linghu Chong in his cold-eyed discernment of the futility and hypocrisy of rushi ideals, yet chooses the path not of withdrawal but of enthusiastic and self-serving gamesmanship. Wu Aiyi aptly dubs this third path wanshi, “toying with the world.” It is through the mutual emergence of the enlightened ruler and the manipulative anti-xia that The Deer and the Cauldron abandons the familiar realm of the martial arts novel.33 The Song of Chen Yuanyuan We saw in the previous chapter how the representation of textuality within Jin Yong’s novels affects the works’ representation and enactment of their own status as literary artifacts. The foregrounding of artifacts and practices of the literate high cultural tradition within the diegesis of the revised Royal Blood joins with the greater “historicization” of the story line, extradiegetic textual features such as explanatory notes and appendices, and extratextual features including documentary illustrations and publication in “masterpiece” format, to claim a place for Jin Yong’s work within a tradition of literary practice dedicated to transmitting the fundamental knowledge and

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

219

values of “Chinese culture.” In Royal Blood as in the majority of Jin Yong’s novels, this Chinese culture seems to be a homogenous system. There is nothing within the texts, that is, to challenge the identity, or at least the homology and functional overlap, of the literary classics of the high cultural tradition, the manuals of the martial arts to which the novels’ protagonists dedicate their efforts and attention, and the texts that Jin Yong’s readers find in their hands. The linkage between the spheres is in fact asserted through such devices as Wanderer’s employment, for its Chinese title, of the name of a key text within the tale it narrates, and celebrated extradiegetically in fans’ description of the practice of reading Jin Yong’s novels as liangong, “working out,” that is, practicing the martial arts. The Deer and the Cauldron’s portrayal of a multi- (or at least bi-) level and less than fully harmonious cultural system complicates this picture. The novel’s argument for the authority of the high cultural tradition— embodied in its narrative of the Qing empire’s attainment of internal unity and external strength, as well as in its portrait of the Kangxi emperor as sage-king—is the most overt of any of Jin Yong’s novels. This triumph is achieved, however, at the cost of a widening disjunction between the high tradition and the martial arts. Despite the novel’s acknowledgment of the Manchu’s military virtues, the martial arts remain associated primarily with the Han chauvinists of the Heaven and Earth Society, and the Society’s final-scene appearance as embittered intransigents seems to exclude not only them but all of Jin Yong’s earlier paladins as well from the reconciliation here offered under the aegis of the sages’ teachings. An even greater challenge to the status of the martial arts is presented, of course, by the novel’s protagonist. Wei’s obdurate and self-satisfied refusal to walk the path laid down by previous protagonists further displaces the martial arts from the center of the novel’s vision. In this respect Wei can be said to share discursive terrain with the Kangxi emperor and the literate cultural tradition he embraces. Yet Wei Xiaobao, as we have seen, is only slightly more successful than the Heaven and Earth Society in finding a place for himself within the Kangxi emperor’s reaffirmed cultural order. Unassimilability arises in his case neither from racialist convictions nor from the problematic character of the martial arts, but from an even more radical disjunction from the discourse of the sage-kings: his illiteracy, and his allegiance to a cultural sphere that mimics but does not totally submit to the values and practices of the high tradition. If the earlier novels’ assumption of a homogenous cultural system allowed for the possibility of the novels’ own participation in an unproblematized cultural project, The Deer and the Cauldron’s representation of differentiated cultural spheres raises anew the

220

Chapter 8

question of the novel’s own status. The question arises not only from the complexity of the interaction between the high culture of the literate elite and the oral culture of the marketplace—the former claiming ultimate authority, the latter apparently acknowledging this authority through imitation, demonstrating inferiority through errors in its mimicry, yet mocking its “superior” through irreverence and bowdlerization, and gleefully pursuing aims unsanctioned by its counterpart—but also from the dissonance between the novel’s stated and affective loyalties: for while the narrator and the arc of the narrative endorse the cultural accomplishments of the Kangxi emperor, most readers understand the novel as a celebration (for better or for worse) of the character and culture of Wei Xiaobao. How, then, do the cultures represented in Jin Yong’s final novel illuminate the novel’s understanding of its own fictional and cultural practice? There is a prima facie case for associating the material, themes, and narrative techniques of martial arts fiction with the oral entertainment culture of the marketplace rather than with the literary artifacts of the high cultural tradition. Jin Yong in fact explicitly evokes this association in the revised opening to Heroes, which takes background information concerning Jin assaults upon the Song out of the hands of the serialized edition’s extradiegetic narrator and places it in the mouth of an intradiegetic storyteller, whose vivid narrative arouses his listeners’ patriotic passions. In the afterword to the revised edition, Jin Yong remarks that “our nation’s traditional fiction had its origins in storytelling; using a storyteller in my introduction is my way of paying homage to the source.” 34 It is noteworthy, then, that one of the stylistic changes Jin Yong has made to the text of this and others of his novels is the systematic removal of one of traditional Chinese fiction’s most concrete and characteristic linkages with the oral tradition: the verbal tags such as qie shuo (“now let us speak of . . .”), zhanqie bu biao (“but no more of this for the moment . . .”), and so forth, associated with traditional vernacular fiction’s “simulated context of oral storytelling.” 35 For all its willingness to acknowledge its venerable progenitors, Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction does not offer an artless continuation of their practices; rather, it lays claim to the antiquity and popular appeal of the traditional narrative arts of the marketplace from a respectful but conscious distance. This simultaneous appropriation of and distancing from the culture of the marketplace is even more pronounced in the opening chapters of The Deer and the Cauldron. The first chapter’s movement from scholarly deliberation to hand-to-hand combat, and the second chapter’s forthright plunge into a brothel brawl, seem to constitute a progressive entry into the

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

221

“natural” discursive terrain of the martial arts novel; and the affinity of this generic terrain with the culture of the marketplace seems affirmed by Wei Xiaobao’s imitation of his beloved legendary heroes and his eager assumption of the storyteller’s role. Yet Wei’s mimicry, whether of characters from the stories or of the teller of the tales, opens a gap even as it claims an affiliation. For his mimicry is imperfect: his employment of ignoble strategems (throwing lime into a foeman’s face), and his contemptuous rejection of the exemplary goodfellow Mao Shiba’s precepts and offer of discipleship, belie the heroic characterization promised by his embrace of the ethics of yiqi; while both deliberate manipulations and ignorant errors mar his reproduction of the art of the storyteller. It is the very imperfection of his mimicry, moreover, which is offered for the reader’s enjoyment. The surprises, pleasures, and passions of Wei’s character and his adventures emerge only from the fertile incongruity between his tale and its purported models. The Deer and the Cauldron represents, rather than naively reproduces, the sphere of popular marketplace culture. The equivocal stance toward popular narrative traditions implicit in the novel’s diegesis surfaces also in the narratorial voice. At the point in the tale at which Wei Xiaobao intrudes upon a confrontation between the Kangxi emperor and the regent Oboi, we find an example of the text’s many narratorial asides: When Kangxi (Note: “Kangxi” is actually a reign title, but it is the custom of vernacular fiction [tongsu xiaoshuo] to refer to the emperor as “Kangxi” and not by his given name “Xuanye”) suggested that it was personal ambition that moved [Oboi] to seek Suksaha’s death, it touched him right at his sorest point. (165)

The narratorial voice here assumes a particularly intrusive form, abruptly interrupting the flow of the diegetic presentation, its invasiveness highlighted in the original by the use of a variant typeface. The novel’s text frequently offers explanatory material through the voice of the anonymous implied narrator; here, though, it is as if another speaker—perhaps the implied author, Jin Yong himself—were stepping in to provide necessary information. The information supplied bears directly upon the novel’s discursive register and generic status. The author places his novel within the tradition of vernacular fiction by informing us that its usage conforms with that literature’s standard practice. The very fact of identifying and explaining this practice, however, betrays a self-conscious removal from the practice’s unmediated transmission. What is more, the need to correct the prac-

222

Chapter 8

tice, to ensure that the reader is aware of just how it departs from proper historiographic usage, reveals that the text’s allegiance is twofold; while manifestly aligning itself with vernacular fiction, it also assumes a weight of responsibility toward historical and literary orthodoxy. The imperative to provide access to the literary and historical traditions motivates most of the appearances of the authorial voice within the text. One form these appearances take is that of correctives and supplements to the novel’s diegetic material—notes, appendices, and narratorial digressions that fill in historical background or explain how the novel’s versions of characters and events differ from the historical record. At times the text provides direct quotation of the literary or historiographic sources from which the novel takes its inspiration. And such direct incorporation of material from the high literary tradition occasions another characteristic form of the novel’s authorial interventions: exegesis of the high tradition for readers who may lack the linguistic and cultural knowledge to decipher it on their own. These exegetical excursions often appear as direct communications from the author to the reader. The most striking case is perhaps that of the novel’s chapter headings. As Jin Yong explains in an extended note at the end of the first chapter, the classical poetic couplets that serve as chapter titles are all taken from the collected works of his own ancestor, the eminent Qing era scholar and poet Zha Shenxing.36 Zha Shenxing makes an indirect diegetic appearance as the author of the lyrics that the middleaged geisha sings (to Wei’s disgust) at the banquet in Yangzhou, and of some of the “seditious” writings that the prefect Wu Zhirong presents for Wei’s examination. The honor and priority given to his work in the extradiegetic space of the chapter headings demonstrates once again how the discourse of the novel as a whole contains and is not contained by the discursive range of its unlettered protagonist, and how it claims instead the authority of the culture embraced by the sage-kings: “The reason I wanted to use Zha Shenxing’s poetry,” notes Jin Yong, “is that most of these poems were read by Kangxi himself” (44). The reader’s joining the emperor in appreciation of this poetry, however, requires the author’s active intervention. Notes at the end of the individual chapters carefully explain recondite vocabulary and classical allusions contained in the couplets, as well as smoothing over any gaps between the excerpts’ original signification and their applicability to the chapters’ contents. The pedagogic function performed by such extradiegetic interventions also occurs within the body of the tale. An example appears in the first pages of the novel, when the Confucian scholar Lü Liuliang, contemplat-

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

223

ing the sufferings of the people of the empire, utters the lament, “They are the cleaver, we are the meat; they are the cauldron, we are the deer,” and then retreats to his study to explain these allusions to his school-age son (8–9). His explication, complete with citations from the various historiographic classics, serves to edify not only his son but also the novel’s reader, who is instructed in both the connotations of the phrase and the literary tradition that informs it. The most salient case of such intra-/extra- diegetic pedagogy in The Deer and the Cauldron is Wei’s encounter with Chen Yuanyuan, the courtesan whose involvements with the Ming general Wu Sangui and the rebel leader Li Zicheng allegedly contributed to the downfall of the Ming dynasty.37 When Wei Xiaobao meets this aging but still beautiful femme fatale at the cloister to which she has retired in Yunnan, his defense of her reputation leads her to believe that he possesses extraordinary insight into her place in the nation’s history. But as the narrator points out, Wei Xiaobao was actually ignorant and muddle-headed as far as the “great affairs of the nation” were concerned. He hadn’t the foggiest idea whether or not she had been unjustly accused; but at the first sight of her dazzling and exquisite countenance, he had been completely bowled over. (1308)

He has the presence of mind at least to decline her praise of him as a scholar: “I can’t read a single character, even if you write it as big as a barn. If you want to call me a scholar, you’d better add the word ‘bullshit’—the Bachelor of Bullshit, Wei Xiaobao, that’s me!” Chen Yuanyuan assures him that it is insight and responsibility, not the ability to pen poetry and essays, that makes the true scholar, and proceeds to relate her history in detail. This she does by picking up a pipa, the courtesan’s traditional instrument, and performing “The Song of Yuanyuan” (“Yuanyuan qu”) by the Qing poet Wu Meicun (1609–1671). After each stanza of the verse (which the text reproduces in the same variant typeface employed for interpolated notes), she pauses and explains its import to her young listener, filling in the historical background and rendering classical diction and allusions into vernacular speech—performing the same functions, in short, that the author elsewhere directly performs for his readers. “On the face of things,” remarks Joseph Lau in his comments on this passage, “Chen Yuanyuan is offering her explanation to Wei Xiaobao; but the real beneficiaries are in fact those youngsters . . . who have already lost the opportunity to receive an education in Chinese.”38 The previous chapter has touched upon the historical and social identity of these “real ben-

224

Chapter 8

eficiaries”; of relevance to the present discussion of the novel’s rhetorical stance is the apparent identification of the novel’s readers with Wei Xiaobao. As Lin Linghan notes, the narrator’s and author’s need to provide careful explanations of Wei’s characteristic misuse of chengyu betrays the unflattering assumption that the reader’s level of cultural literacy is not much higher than that of the protagonist.39 Nonetheless, the identification cannot be complete: apart from the obvious fact that Jin Yong’s audience must possess at least a functional competence in reading modern Chinese prose, we may note also that Wei Xiaobao is offered not only for the reader’s identification but also for his or her privileged amusement. The reader is given the opportunity to laugh both with and at Wei Xiaobao. And the establishment of a space from which one can laugh at Wei—even if the reader’s claiming of this space requires the author’s sedulous assistance, and even if Wei Xiaobao’s own talents include a capacity for joining in the laughter at his own expense (“the Bachelor of Bullshit”)—shows once again that the novel imagines both its own discursive stance as extending beyond that of the marketplace culture it imitates and represents, and its readers as familiar with or capable of introduction to this wider cultural terrain. Song Weijie’s characterization of Wei Xiaobao’s mode of cultural knowledge as “the historical memory of the weak,” the process of amnesia and self-distancing mythicization through which weak nations and colonized peoples collude in stronger powers’ erosion of their native cultures, posits the relationship between the popular and elite cultural spheres represented in the novel as primarily one of degradation and bowdlerization.40 Lin Linghan draws out explicitly the relationship between the cultural dynamics of the diegesis and the cultural function of Jin Yong’s novels themselves, arguing that the works’ commercial and “inauthentic” (in the Frankfurtian sense) reproduction of Chinese language, history, and art constitutes a fetishistic compensation for the symbolic emasculation suffered by Hong Kong’s Chinese population under colonial rule.41 Early in his analysis, Lin invokes Matei Calinescu’s discussion of “kitsch” as the culture industry’s mimicry and commodification of the artifacts and practices of high culture.42 Such kitsch offers “easy catharsis” and all too readily transmutes insight into cliché; in its fashion, however, it does offer a point of access to other cultural terrains. It is this mediatory role, this bidirectional linkage between the culture of the marketplace and the high cultural tradition, that The Deer and the Cauldron claims for itself. Chen Yuanyuan’s recitation can be read as an epitome of this mediatory position within the cultural economy. Her performance transmutes a

Beyond Martial Arts Fiction

225

specimen of elite literary production into a more accessible register. The transmutation bears a formal resemblance to the genres of marketplace culture, 43 and both the association with teahouse storytelling and Chen Yuanyuan’s own status as a (former) courtesan earmark this culture’s commercial character. The original literary artifact nonetheless remains embedded within her performance, and the performance’s intention is clearly pedagogic, placing high culture within the marketplace for the express purpose of drawing the audience out into an appreciation of literature and the “great affairs of the nation.” From this perspective, the arts of the marketplace are in service to the high tradition; and it is upon this pedagogic function, whose final loyalty seems to belong to the high tradition, that Chen Yuanyuan’s performance (and by extension Jin Yong’s) bases certain claims to cultural authority. In a world that contains a Wei Xiaobao, however, high culture’s authority cannot be seen as comprehensive or uncontested. Chen Yuanyuan also embodies the purely sensual pleasures of marketplace culture, gendered as female for the gaze of the irrepressible polygamist. Wei Xiaobao, the narrator notes, “had listened to the song for so long only because of the beauty of the songstress and the delight of the melody; in the rapture of his spirits, he had completely lost track of why he had come” (1314). There is no guarantee, likewise, that the novel’s reader will perform more than perfunctory obeisance to the trappings of historical and literary orthodoxy. It is entirely possible that the reader will seek some pleasant corner of the discursive empire, ostensibly within the purview of the high tradition yet distant enough to allow untroubled enjoyment of the novel’s narrative and sensual pleasures, which have rendered their own service to the narrative’s ideological project and yet refuse to be contained by any complete submission. The novel itself thus proffers a bifocal frame for reference and evaluation: on the one hand the commanding hierarchy of cultural forms, the apex of which is claimed by the Kangxi emperor, and on the other the space opened up by the incomplete concordance between elite and popular cultures—the space exploited by Wei Xiaobao. Far from being unique to The Deer and the Cauldron’s selfpresentation, these same terms come into play in the history of the reception and criticism of Jin Yong’s works, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s when—like Wei Xiaobao, Zha Liangyong, and the territory of Hong Kong —the body of Jin Yong’s fiction negotiated a reentry into the sphere of authority of the powers to the north.

226

Chapter 8

Chapter 9 Coming Home Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

in Yong’s fiction entered mainland China as one part of the massive influx of “Gang-Tai” (Hong Kong and Taiwanese) popular culture in the 1980s. The spread of this Gang-Tai culture was a major aspect of what was sometimes called a “popular culture craze” (tongsu re); and the conditions for the increasing commercialization of the mainland cultural sphere, and its development in directions increasingly independent of the central authorities’ ideological agendas, were established by the pragmatic reform policies instituted under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. Thomas Gold sketches the circumstances as follows:

J

[T]he Party undertook economic reforms to regain the legitimacy damaged by the Cultural Revolution. It redefined its primary task as modernization, which involved marketizing and privatizing the domestic economy and opening to foreign investment, trade, tourism, experts, students, and so on. The Party greatly relaxed its control over the superstructure, both in terms of ideology and directed culture. Rapid, although unequally distributed, economic development ensued, with shops well stocked with consumer goods, and citizens with money to spend. The state stressed the importance of the tertiary sector, legitimizing personal enjoyment and leisure time, and leaving it to individuals to decide how to structure it. Gangtai popular culture demonstrated its appeal to mainland Chinese, and aggressive domestic and external enterpreneurs moved to cultivate and satisfy this market.1

The “popular culture craze” of the 1980s thus grew from the confluence of new kinds of cultural products with new habits of leisure and con-

227

sumption. It manifested in an expanding variety of media; the increasing affluence of the mainland population was accompanied by the progressively wider distribution of radios and cassette players, then of televisions and video recorders, facilitating the seemingly universal dissemination of such cultural products as the popular songs of the Taiwanese songstress Deng Lijun and the films and serial melodramas of Hong Kong movie and television stars. But a major component of the new entertainment culture was popular fiction. The loosening of restrictions on material approved for publication, publishing houses’ new opportunities (and need) to reap profits from their products, the dissolving of Xinhua’s monopoly on distribution, and the even more dramatic proliferation of independent booksellers (most evident as streetside and train station bookstalls) dovetailed with the public’s seemingly unquenchable appetite for entertainmentoriented reading material. This appetite was answered by publishers’ swelling catalogs and soaring print runs, by the mushrooming of book rental shops, and by the establishment of dozens and even hundreds of new entertainment papers (xiaobao) and popular literature (tongsu wenxue) periodicals. The fiction filling the magazines and bookstalls was in part domestically produced but in large part imported from overseas, from Hong Kong and Taiwan in particular. And while the thematic genres represented included romance, crime and detective fiction, science fiction, and espionage thrillers, leading the field both in imports and in domestic production was the genre of martial arts fiction.2 The Spread of Jin Yong’s Fiction in the Mainland The production and distribution of martial arts fiction had essentially ceased on the mainland after the establishment of the Peoples’ Republic, in 1949. A small number of Republican-era works were reprinted in the few years before the complete centralization of the publishing industry; a few premodern works with martial and chivalric themes, such as the late Qing Three Heroes and Five Gallants, were allowed to remain in print even then.3 Preliberation editions of martial arts novels might still be found at bookstalls through the early 1950s, and several veteran authors, including Huanzhu Louzhu and Bai Yu, made stilted attempts at creating new martial fiction with socialist themes under the guidance of the new regime.4 The increasing stringency of political and artistic campaigns from 1957 on, however, and then the virulence of the Cultural Revolution’s rejection of “poisonous weeds” and the “four olds,” saw the almost complete

228

Chapter 9

expunging of both twentieth-century martial arts fiction and premodern literature on chivalric themes from the public arena.5 Traces of martial and chivalric material persisted nonetheless in the hand-copied entertainment fiction that circulated underground during the 1960s and 1970s.6 And even some of the most exemplary works of revolutionary culture carry strong echoes of the martial arts tradition. The plot of The White-Haired Girl (Baimao nü) in its various adaptations replicates the classic paradigm of the heroine’s flight to the mountains, transformation, and vengeful return, while Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (Zhi qu Weihushan) makes free use of the vocabulary, imagery, and narrative ploys of The Water Margin and its successors. One can only speculate on the relative weight of the traditional narrative elements and the reformed ideological message in audiences’ reception of such works.7 The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, in December 1978, where intellectuals were encouraged to “liberate thought,” and the Fourth Congress of Literary and Art Workers, in October 1979, where Deng Xiaoping decried the “bureaucratic style” of artistic production and encouraged writers to learn from the more illustrious examples of foreign and traditional literature, opened the door to a variety of changes in literary activity. The years 1979 and 1980 saw a reinvigoration of literature addressing social concerns (beginning with the flourishing of “scar literature”) and experimentation with new fictional forms; the same period also witnessed the resurgence of popular themes of romance and adventure.8 Although knight-errant (wuxia) stories . . . were still not deemed fit for publication, there were obvious signs of reader interest in them. Examples brought in from Hong Kong were highly coveted. And when the French-Italian film Zorro (a surrogate for the Chinese knight-errant if ever there was one) was shown in major cities, tickets on the black market reached ten times their face value. 9

Martial arts fiction drew yet closer to the sphere of allowed discourse with such phenomena as The People’s Daily’s 1979 serialization of the mainland author Liu Junxiang’s Wu Hao zhi jian (The sword of Wu Hao), an adventure tale combining elements of martial arts fiction and espionage.10 The early 1980s surge in the popularity of pingshu storytelling, much of it on historical and adventurous themes, and the loosening of restrictions on the publishing of Ming and Qing fiction, further whetted the public’s appetite for related material.11 The impetus for the martial

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

229

arts genre in an unadulterated form, however, came in good part from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Direct imports such as those mentioned above were succeeded by (and often served as the basis for) instances of republication for limited circulation,12 and then by public reprinting and distribution. The year 1981 saw what was apparently the first such public distribution of Hong Kong martial arts fiction, with Guangzhou’s Keji chubanshe publishing Jin Yong’s Book and Sword, Huacheng chubanshe issuing Liang Yusheng’s Pingzong xiaying lu, and the Guangzhou-based martial arts periodical Wulin serializing portions of Jin Yong’s Heroes.13 As these cases make clear, the beachhead for martial arts fiction’s reentry into the Chinese mainland was the city of Guangzhou, and Guangdong province more generally. This situation was only natural, given Guangzhou’s proximity to Hong Kong and its leading role in exploiting the fruits of ties with the outside world and economic development. It is worth remarking nonetheless that the mainland craze for martial arts fiction in the 1980s was deeply indebted to the same geocultural sphere that had fostered the Guangdong School fiction which served as the background and foil for Liang Yusheng’s and Jin Yong’s creations—but that the flow was now reversed, with the fictional imaginary traveling from Hong Kong (and through Hong Kong from the world beyond) back into the Chinese heartland.14 One scholar’s sketch of the dissemination of Hong Kong and Taiwan martial arts fiction in the mainland describes a three-stage process: the first publications in the provinces around the Pearl River delta beginning in 1981; further distribution, up to 1984, through the proliferating xiaobao and the efforts of publishing companies along the southeast coast; and a spread from the coast to publishing companies throughout the nation in 1985.15 A few years into the decade, domestic authors were making notable contributions to the martial arts fiction craze. Nie Yunlan’s 1983 Yu Jiaolong, a reworking of a martial arts novel by the Republican-era author Wang Dulu, propelled the journal in which it was serialized into a circulation of over two and a half million; 16 Feng Yu’nan’s Jinmen daxia Huo Yuanjia (The paladin of Tianjin, Huo Yuanjia) was published in 1984 with a first printing of nearly a million copies;17 and Feng Jicai’s Shenbian (The miraculous pigtail) of the same year received both popular welcome and critical acclaim. But such native efforts were still dwarfed by the appeal of Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, and Gu Long. It is impossible to estimate with any accuracy the number of copies of their works circulated in the mainland. Twenty or more publishing companies vied in printing New School

230

Chapter 9

novels; 18 print runs of a novel by Jin Yong or Liang Yusheng might run into the millions; 19 the head of the National Publishing Bureau is reported to have told Jin Yong that in 1985 alone forty million volumes of his fiction were sold in the Chinese mainland.20 In the increasingly chaotic and irregulable publishing world of the 1980s, not a few of these editions were illegal, bending or evading altogether the laws governing the registration of publications. And they were almost without exception unauthorized. Prior to the publication of the authorized Sanlian shudian edition of Jin Yong’s Collected Works in 1994, a 1985 edition of Book and Sword by Tianjin’s Baihua wenyi chubanshe was the sole mainland edition of any of the novels to receive the author’s consent.21 The pirate editions were often full of errors or alterations; and the unauthorized editions of Jin Yong and his peers’ actual works were joined by a flood of fakes—any martial arts novel was guaranteed greater sales if blazoned with the name of Jin Yong or Liang Yusheng.22 By the mid- to late 1980s Jin Yong had emerged as one of the most recognizable representatives not only of martial arts fiction but of popular fiction in general, and, further, of popular fiction as a force in the radically shifting and heatedly contested configuration of the mainland’s literary and cultural fields. Debates on popular culture often cited Jin Yong, and discussions of Jin Yong could scarcely avoid the larger questions of the nature and role of popular culture. Along with Jin Yong’s works, of course, the mainland also inherited the popular and critical treatment accorded these works in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Chinese-language communities abroad. Although the mainland debates on Jin Yong were in many ways generated by the mainland’s particular conditions, they were influenced as well by this preexisting discourse. I have suggested in preceding chapters the parallels between the developing spatial imaginary within Jin Yong’s novels and the historical changes in the works’ geocultural circulation. And as already suggested in the discussion of the revised editions’ claims to educational authority, the geographic element is also relevant to the story of the critical reception of Jin Yong’s fiction. As the novels traveled from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia to legalized publication in Taiwan at the end of the 1970s, inundated the Chinese mainland during the 1980s, and in 1994 received authorized publication there as well, the social, commercial, political, and critical environments of each of these locales left their stamps on the terms in which Jin Yong’s work was discussed and the type and degree of status it was accorded. Before considering the details of Jin Yong’s reception in the mainland, then, it is neces-

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

231

sary to pick up where chapter 7 left off and review the prior history of “Jinology”—commentary on and study of Jin Yong and his novels. “Jinology” in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Overseas In 1966 and again in 1970, Professor Chen Shih-hsiang (1912–1971), a Beijing University graduate who long taught at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote to Jin Yong to share his thoughts on Jin Yong’s novel The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils. In his letters Professor Chen describes how he often discusses Jin Yong’s novels with his students and colleagues, including another prominent overseas scholar, Hsia Tsi-an (1916–1965), and states that “what compels my admiration for the accomplishment of Jin Yong’s fiction is the way that artistry and talent continually overcome the limitations of form and material.”23 He explains in greater detail that readers of martial arts fiction generally develop a habit of casualness; you could say that they read by rote, just as opera fans tend to listen by rote. Once this habit has been formed, what the reader or listener asks for is quite limited and narrow, and so what they get is equally limited or narrow. Ordinary books can be read, and ordinary opera listened to, in this manner; but Jin Yong’s novels are not the same. The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils must not be read by rote; if you bear the prologue firmly in mind, you will find the themes of karma and transcendence developed to their fullest throughout the work.24

Besides praising the novel’s transcendence of genre limitations and the profundity of its insights on human life, Chen Shih-hsiang lauds its wedding of form with content and likens Jin Yong’s achievement to the sudden flourishing of drama in the Yuan era: “the only difference is that in the present age there is still only the one [writer] who has appeared.”25 The terms in which Professor Chen chooses to commend Jin Yong’s fiction are significant; yet even more significant for our understanding of the presentation and reception of Jin Yong’s work is not the content of these letters but their fate. They were penned as a private communication, not designed for publication, but in 1978 were printed as an appendix to Ming Ho Publishing’s revised edition of Semi-Devils. In the afterword also appended to the new edition, Jin Yong admits that he is pleased to be able to share this eminent scholar’s favorable appraisal of his own work and his open-minded attitude toward the potential of martial arts fiction as a whole; he feels profoundly embarrassed, however, by the fulsomeness of Chen’s praise. “Given the level of his erudition and his scholarly status,

232

Chapter 9

such accolades are really a bit excessive. They stem perhaps from his affection for the traditional Chinese novel form, or from certain similarities in our perspectives on human life” (2125). Jin Yong had hoped, he writes, to have Chen pen a preface for the new edition; but Chen having passed away, Jin appends these letters in respectful memory of his friend and dedicates the novel to his memory. Within the letters, Chen Shih-hsiang himself brings up the notion of publishing something on Jin Yong’s fiction. He mentions that he has considered writing up his thoughts in a formal article but has never gotten around to it; and as far as publishing such an article in Jin Yong’s new Ming Pao Monthly, that might smack too much of toadying on his part, or of blowing one’s own horn on the part of the magazine.26 Jin Yong, for all his modesty, was evidently less hindered by such compunctions. An article in memory of Chen Shih-hsiang published in Ming Pao Monthly shortly after his death includes an extended discussion of his and other overseas scholars’ fondness for martial arts fiction and respect for Jin Yong’s work.27 His letters, as we have seen, were included as part of the packaging of the new edition; certain printings, indeed, include both typeset transcriptions and photographic reproductions of the handwritten originals, thus elevating Professor Chen’s calligraphy to the level of the cultural artifacts displayed in plates at the front of each volume.28 And in the preface to the series of criticism and commentary on Jin Yong’s fiction published by Taipei’s Yuanliu Publishing in 1987, chief editor Wang Rongwen cites Chen Shih-hsiang as one of the pathbreaking academics who helped found the new field of “Jinology” (Jinxue).29 But what role, exactly, can Chen be said to have played in the founding of this “field”? Discussion and appreciation of Jin Yong’s fiction within the culturally influential circles of overseas Chinese scholars of Chen’s generation undoubtedly contributed to the validation of Jin Yong’s work as literature. Yet none of these scholars published on Jin Yong or made his work a formal part of his professional life.30 We know of their views through accounts circulated in Jin Yong’s own periodicals, in appendices to the novels themselves, or in appreciative volumes from the author’s publisher on Taiwan.31 The role Professor Chen Shih-hsiang finds himself playing is thus representative of the early phase of public commentary on Jin Yong’s fiction, in which tokens of cultural authority are deployed within a field whose underlying imperative is that of the marketplace— the world of commercial publishing and, more specifically, publications with a direct economic stake in Jin Yong’s status. Jin Yong’s control of such organs both provided him with obvious opportunities to promote him-

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

233

self and his work and at the same time inherently limited the influence of such promotion. Jin Yong was preaching to the choir, to an audience made up primarily of already engaged readers and fans; and to critical or academic groups on the outside, the complicity of producer and critic could not but render somewhat suspect the substance of the critique. Chapter 7 traced the origins of this strategy in the early days of Jin Yong’s publishing enterprises, and discovered there, as well, the basic forms of the various cultural authorities invoked: a Chinese literary heritage (“the traditional Chinese novel form,” as Jin Yong terms it in his remarks on Chen’s letters); Chinese history and culture more generally; aesthetic excellence (Chen’s “artistry and talent [that] continually overcome the limitations of form and material”); humanistic values (“our perspectives on human life”); the prestige of the academy. Over the next two decades discussion of Jin Yong’s fiction expanded in scope and confidence while obeying the same essential logic. The most dramatic growth occurred at the very end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. Just as the Collected Works of Jin Yong (which itself employed the strategy described, in its textual revisions and its publication practice) was nearing completion, the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan lifted its long-standing ban against the publication and circulation of Jin Yong’s fiction.32 Liancheng jue (A deadly secret) began serialization in Taiwan’s Lianhe bao on September 7, 1979, and Dragon Sabre in Zhongguo shibao immediately thereafter. In that same month Yuanjing Publishing issued Ode to Gallantry, the first title in its authorized edition of the Collected Works of Jin Yong. In a letter to his Taiwan publisher, Jin Yong expressed his hopes not for an expanded market but for a more refined evaluation of his work: I too am extremely pleased that my novels will be distributed in Taiwan. There is a real love of reading in Taiwan, and its cultural level is quite high. Every author hopes that his works can reach a readership of a high cultural level— can be appreciated, and receive a more elevated response. I hope that even more people will come to understand that my martial arts fiction is scarcely just a matter of mayhem and slaughter. 33

Jin Yong’s novels made their official entry into Taiwan already in their polished revised forms, and preceded by a renown only heightened by the drama of interdiction. They were serialized in literary supplements that were a respected part of the island’s cultural scene (unlike Hong Kong’s fiction supplements, generally segregated from their “literary” (wenyi)

234

Chapter 9

counterparts), 34 and were accompanied in their first appearances there by a collection of appreciations of the genre and introductions to the author that stressed his credentials as journalist, publisher, and political commentator as well as his fiction.35 The bulk and visibility of secondary writing on the topic of Jin Yong’s novels vastly increased, and the field of “Jinology” was formally inaugurated, with Yuanjing’s 1980 publication of the first volume in its Studies in Jinology series, Ni Kuang’s Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo (My reading of Jin Yong’s fiction). Jin Yong’s ambitions for a “higher level” of reception for his fiction were clearly being realized. The most conspicuous representatives of this elevated reception, however—the successive volumes of the Studies in Jinology collection—reveal the extent to which consideration and evaluation of Jin Yong’s work continued to be practiced primarily in what Bourdieu would characterize as the more heteronomous reaches of the literary field, those dominated by the forces (primarily economic) not uniquely literary but operant in society at large. The Studies in Jinology were issued and marketed by the Taiwan publisher of Jin Yong’s works themselves; an advertisement soliciting manuscripts for the series appeared in Jin Yong’s flagship publication, Ming Pao; and most of the authors in the series were either aficionados of the novels or members of Jin Yong’s network of friends and colleagues in the newspaper and publishing world. Ni Kuang, who penned the first volume and four sequels, was both. A close enough associate of Jin Yong’s to have taken over the serialization of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils while the author was abroad, he identifies himself in his first preface as a devoted fan of novels in general and Jin Yong’s fiction above all. “A fiction reader’s perspective on fiction is naturally not the same as that of a literary critic or a scholar of ethics.”36 His breezy, enthusiastically opinionated rankings of the novels and his remarks on their characters, and his opening characterization of Jin Yong’s work as “surpassing all others, never to be surpassed, from ancient times to the present day, in China and abroad” (gujin Zhongwai, kongqian jue hou), set the tone for subsequent volumes in the series. Other authors attempted more systematic or philosophically ambitious approaches, but the series as a whole unquestionably warrants Chen Mo’s 1993 critique of Jinology to date: “most of the articles and monographs remain at the preliminary level of appreciation, response, and impressions; they lack a sound scholarly foundation, and, even more, any clear or sufficient scholarly standard.” 37 The academy’s internal agendas and inevitable (though culturally and historically variable) involvement with the institutions of social and polit-

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

235

ical authority deny it claim to the more rarified pinnacles of “purely” (elite or avant-garde) cultural authority dreamed of by The Drunkard’s protagonist and modeled by Bourdieu. At the same time, however, these factors guarantee it a powerful though not exclusive gatekeeping role in adjudicating the distribution of symbolic capital to other players in the literary and cultural fields. Independent academic recognition of Jin Yong and the genre in which he wrote thus marks an important stage in the definition of the author’s cultural status. A certain measure of such recognition was certified by the convening of an International Conference on Chinese Martial Arts Fiction at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in December of 1987. The organizers considered the incorporation of martial arts fiction within the sphere of serious academic scrutiny one of their primary goals for the meeting; and they succeeded in this endeavor at least to the extent that some martial arts fiction enthusiasts in attendance found the proceedings discouragingly arid.38 The papers presented at this conference did not focus exclusively on the literary status or characteristics of martial arts fiction. Some dealt with the genre as a social phenomenon, while others addressed the question of the social and historical origins of the figure of the xia.39 The conference nonetheless offered powerful support for granting a greater measure of cultural authority to martial arts fiction, in particular through the proposition, advanced by several speakers, that this traditionally disdained form of writing might serve as an educational tool. One of the European speakers, Professor Jacques Pimpaneau, suggests in his paper that martial arts novels could provide the Western reader with an accessible introduction to the history and cultural values of China.40 Huang Weiliang argues that Jin Yong’s novels in particular might serve the same function for Chinese youth; that for a generation increasingly attuned to technologized modes of communication and the global cultures of science and finance, Jin Yong’s novels can offer, in an enjoyable form, both essential knowledge of Chinese history, geography, and customs, and a sound model of prose undisfigured by imitations of Western syntax.41 Liu Shaoming (Joseph Lau) is essentially in accord with Huang Weiliang’s position. To Huang’s prescription of Jin Yong as a textbook for cultural literacy he adds the acknowledgment that for many young people this practice is an established fact, and the observation that the principal beneficiaries of this sort of education are young Chinese overseas. He relates the archetypal anecdote of a young man from Hong Kong boarding an overseas flight, to begin his college education, who opens for the first time a Jin Yong novel given him as

236

Chapter 9

a parting gift by a relative; the student ends up begging for the rest of Jin Yong’s work as a Christmas present, and as he pursues his education in a foreign language abroad, embraces Jin Yong as his sole link with Chinese literacy. Professor Lau makes the further point that this educational function is explicitly claimed by the novels themselves, asserted by Jin Yong in an authorial postscript and prefigured in the scene of Wei Xiaobao’s enjoyment of Chen Yuanyuan’s “annotated” performance.42 The 1987 conference by no means marked the end of old-style Jinology with its strong air of boosterism. The meeting itself was scarcely exempt from uses with promotional and self-congratulatory overtones: Ming Pao Monthly featured reports on the event (at which Jin Yong gave a keynote address), and Jin Yong’s Ming Ho published the conference papers.43 As we have already seen, Jin Yong and his publishers were to be actively involved in the organization and promotion of future academic conferences as well. Meanwhile, both the adulatory commentarial approach and the frankly commercial publication strategy of Yuanjing and Yuanliu’s Jinology series have been continued and imitated. A notable example, though only one of many, can be found in the writings of Wu Aiyi, whose essays, taking Jin Yong’s characters and tales as texts for ruminations on human nature and the relations between the sexes, first ran as columns in Ming Pao and were then issued in book form by Mingchuang Publishing, another of its affiliates.44 The academy, for its part, did not universally or uncritically welcome Jin Yong and martial arts fiction into the sphere of academic discourse in the wake of the Chinese University conference. As Bourdieu points out, however, “participation in the struggle—which may be indicated objectively by, for example, the attacks that are suffered—can be used as the criterion establishing that a work belongs” to the negotiation and differentiation of positions that constitute the literary field.45 And so the importance of the conference lies not merely in the pronouncements of several scholars, who would explicitly grant a role in the work of cultural transmission to works that began by incorporating chunks of the cultural heritage within tales of martial adventure, but more broadly in the simple fact that credentialed representatives of the academy now admitted the status of martial arts fiction and Jin Yong’s work as topics worthy of formal deliberation. And nowhere were the effects of this admission felt more strongly than on the Chinese mainland, where reports of the Hong Kong conference added a voice to a growing discussion of the nature and status of popular literature, martial arts fiction, and the novels of Jin Yong.

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

237

The Mainland’s “Jinology”: Terms of Reception In the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of the same conditions that allowed the emergence of commercially successful entertainment fiction and the resurgence of the martial arts genre in mainland China also contributed to a stunning reinvigoration of the “serious” literary scene. The institutions—journals, publishing houses, writers’ associations, and so forth—of what Perry Link dubs the “socialist Chinese literary system” were reestablished after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution years.46 On this foundation, writers encouraged by the authorities’ calls for “opening new ground” and reversals of earlier judgments against artists and intellectuals produced works that engaged passionate and nationwide response. Literature marked by explicit social and moral engagement seemed to have reclaimed the key role in society envisioned for it by the May Fourth generation and its historical progenitors, and intellectuals to have regained recognition as the conscience of the nation. Amid the vigor and prestige of this literary scene, mainstream writers and critics had minimal attention for the gathering momentum in the realm of popular literature. Discussions published through 1983 consisted primarily in appraisals of individual works and of the thematic genres (detective stories, science fiction) that first made their appearance on the literary scene. By 1984–1985, however, with the “popular literature craze” in full flood, discussion broadened into analysis of and debate on the phenomenon as a whole, published in forums ranging from the popular literature periodicals themselves to academic journals and the arts supplements of national newspapers.47 The new attention was due not merely to the increased volume and visibility of popular fiction but also to the shifts it heralded in the literary field as a whole. Divisions within literature and in its publics were becoming evident. The specter of government restrictions raised by the 1981 attacks against “bourgeois liberalism” and the 1983 campaign against “spiritual pollution” dampened writers’ enthusiasm for tackling key issues of national concern even as a flood of modernist and postmodernist literature from the West tempted them toward formalist experimentation. Subscriptions to literary journals dropped as the general reading public found “serious” literature increasingly abstruse and its own tastes more easily gratified by popular fiction on the one hand and the increasing availability of nonliterary forms of entertainment on the other. It was the intellectual elite’s increasing marginalization and the apparent reemergence of a bifurcated “elite (versus) popular” (yasu) cultural field that generated a new critical interest in popular fiction.

238

Chapter 9

Some commentators lauded the emergent literature in terms derived from those articulated by Zheng Zhenduo (1898–1958) and others in prewar discussions, characterizing su or tongsu literature as somehow akin to “folk” literature, the voice of the masses and an expression of the spirit of the nation. Others penned jeremiads against the corruption of the Maoist cultural orthodoxy.48 But by the latter half of the 1980s a broad consensus emerged recognizing this literature, however appraised, as unique to the social and economic conditions of the era of reforms. Frequent invocations of the “broad masses of the population” and their innate affection for “traditional forms” associated “popular literature” with a concept of the nation that joined a sense of historical continuity to a vague and populist class analysis. Other characteristics of popular literature commonly cited were its “entertainment nature” (yulexing), that is, its relative freedom from the overtly ideological imperative of the arts of the Maoist era, and its “commodity nature” (shangpinxing), or, its responsiveness to the economic imperatives increasingly dominant in the cultural field—and increasingly problematic for the literary elite. In Bourdieu’s terms, the popular literature of the 1980s manifested the new strength of economic heteronomous principles in a field previously shaped by almost complete political heteronomy. It is not surprising, then, that the early objections of the party faithful were succeeded by the scorn of an emergent avant-garde, a group that saw in the new freedoms an opportunity to advance a claim for art as an autonomous realm.49 Jin Yong, for the most part, escaped both groups’ censures. Commentary on his novels published in the mainland during the 1980s was from the beginning almost unanimously enthusiastic, and while repeating the critical trope of his transcendence of the clichéd martial arts genre, at the same time often upheld his work as proof of popular fiction’s positive potential and a model for other authors to follow. A prestigious beginning to the mainland critique of Jin Yong’s works was provided by Feng Qiyong’s “Du Jin Yong” (Reading Jin Yong), published in 1986.50 Feng praises Jin Yong’s novels for the breadth and depth of the knowledge they display of history and human society; for their upright ideological bearing (which he perceives as containing strong elements of patriotism and national consciousness); for their unforgettable characters and extraordinary plotting; and for the literary quality evinced in their language and their evocation of a poetic atmosphere. Feng ends by endorsing the notion of “Jinology” (Jinxue); though he characterizes his own article as only a reader’s comments, lacking any systematic scholarly approach, his status as a recognized expert in “Redology” (Hongxue, the study of the classic novel

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

239

Honglou meng) invests his endorsement with considerable authority, which is reinforced by the explicit citation of various classics of traditional fiction within the body of his essay. The beginning of Feng Qiyong’s article, in which he describes how he first encountered Jin Yong’s works in the home of the historian Yu Yingshih while a visiting scholar at Stanford, links this opening effort in mainland “Jinology” (quotation marks to be henceforth understood) to the overseas circulation of Jin Yong’s work and the network of overseas scholars so influential in the protohistory of the “field.” 51 Several articles of this period make direct reference to the state of Jinology in Hong Kong and Taiwan, specifically citing the Chinese University conference and Yuanjing Publishing’s Jinology series, and so buttressing the claim to discursive validity advanced through their positive valuation of Jin Yong’s works in themselves through this appeal to the authority of overseas scholarship. Among them is Liu Su’s “Jinse de Jin Yong” (The golden Jin Yong), published in the February issue of Dushu, which explains to its readers: Things are different overseas from what they are on the mainland. Martial arts fiction is something that can enter the halls of elegance and the grove of literature. Quite a few scholars and specialists will admit without the slightest reservation that they read martial arts fiction, including Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, and so forth; among them are famous names in Confucian studies, literature, history, and the natural sciences. In this area, Jin Yong’s status as an author is well-established. His works and those of Liang Yusheng have advanced the formerly outworn [genre of ] martial arts fiction into a new world, marked by creative accomplishment and greater literary artistry, causing them to win acclaim as New School martial arts fiction. In Taiwan, there is even the phrase “Jinology,” and Jinology Societies have been formed which take Jin Yong’s works as the object of study. Despite the fact that there is a large element of publishing promotion in all this, there are indeed certain specialists and scholars who have written careful and conscientious articles analyzing Jin Yong’s works.52

Though not an honor reserved for Jin Yong alone—this article was but one in a series of sketches of Hong Kong authors penned under the name Liu Su by Luo Fu, Jin Yong’s editor during his Xin wanbao days and a longtime stalwart of the mainland-affiliated press in Hong Kong 53 —the publication of an article on Jin Yong in the leading-edge intellectual journal Dushu was nonetheless significant. Also noteworthy is the uniformly positive and favorable tone Luo Fu’s essay adopts, and the fact that it offers

240

Chapter 9

almost nothing in the way of concrete discussion of Jin Yong’s novels, focusing instead on the career and character of Jin Yong the man. It includes in its account an outline of his political involvements, from his break with the left during a period of extremism to his present role in Hong Kong’s Draft Committee and his status as “a journalist who maintains excellent relations with Beijing.” And it describes his financial success, balancing descriptions of his wealth with characterizations of his largesse and cultural refinement. He is thus a man who has “made his fortune through culture” (yi wenhua qijia de jufu); hints of the value of his palatial residence on Hong Kong’s Peak lead into an account of his opening his home to the chess champion Chen Zude, and an anecdote about the donation to Hong Kong University that preceded the institution’s awarding him an honorary doctorate illustrates both his astonishing wealth and his openhandedness in dispensing it. Luo Fu’s article thus suggests a role for Jin Yong as a possible model of, or even for, the “new era” intellectual, and helps set the stage for the full-blown emergence of Jin Yong as celebrity, which we shall see in the 1990s. Without discrediting honest enthusiasm for Jin Yong’s fiction as a primary motivation for his generally positive critical reception during the latter part of the 1980s, we must also appreciate the larger stakes involved in arguing for a reorganization of the critical field that would grant a place to Jin Yong and to the new popular literature in general. The most naked revelation of at least some of these stakes comes in a 1988 article by Zhang Peiheng, whose comparison of Jin Yong’s works with the historical novel Li Zicheng gleefully savages the “realist” aesthetics and ideological servitude of Maoist-era literature.54 From this perspective, a voice for Jin Yong is, at least in part, a voice against the historical ghost and still quite influential presence of Marxist literary orthodoxy.55 Such oppositional readings of Jin Yong, and martial arts fiction in general, echoed even more strongly in the wake of the events of June 1989, which for many intellectuals put the nails in the coffin of any hopes for a vital role in the development of a more open and progressive society. He Ping, in an article published in Dushu in 1991, undertakes to investigate both “a question particular to ‘Jinology’—the reason for Jin Yong’s setting aside his pen at the height of his powers”—and the larger question of “the vicissitudes of the Chinese cultural tradition in the present age.” 56 He reads the protagonists of Jin Yong’s successive novels as shifting from an ambition (generally thwarted) to realize Confucian political and ethical values to an embrace of a Buddhist philosophical vision, and arriving finally at Wei Xiaobao’s mockery of the Chinese tradition as a whole. This shift, he surmises, reflects the

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

241

evolution of Jin Yong’s thought as he contemplated the fate of Confucian values and the Chinese tradition in the turmoil of his own time. The turmoil specifically alluded to, of course, is that of the Cultural Revolution, at its height when Jin Yong penned The Deer and the Cauldron; but it is easy to hear the echo of more recent events, and the disillusionment and alienation of the intellectual elite, in He Ping’s closing remarks on the preference of most readers for the bright-eyed heroes of the early works over the cynical Wei Xiaobao: “Perhaps it is still the tradition which most closely suits the cultural vision of the great majority of the Chinese, while the enlightenment of the wise will always be the lonely concern of the wise man himself.”57 In early 1992 Deng Xiaoping made a highly publicized “tour of the south” highlighted by a series of speeches in which he urged the expansion and acceleration of economic reform. Like the similar excursions of various of Deng’s predecessors, including the fictionalized Qianlong emperor (see chapter 2), the tour served to reassert the northern-based rulers’ authority over the southern regions of the empire; at the same time, though, it in some sense recognized an inversion of the north-south relationship, by authorizing the nationwide extension of the market-based reforms previously concentrated in the southern and coastal Special Economic Zones.58 The cultural and literary fields were among those most profoundly affected by the ensuing economic restructuring. On the one hand, official publishing houses and literary periodicals were faced with the withdrawal of most of their remaining state support (though not of state oversight); 59 on the other, the state and the previously marginalized commercial cultural enterprises discovered a new commonality of economic and ideological interest.60 During the 1980s the witticism “Deng Xiaoping rules by day, Deng Lijun by night” expressed a perceived split between the official and the popular; during the 1990s the division became more an amicable pooling of authority. The redoubled energy of the marketized cultural sphere combined with the ideological chill of the post-Tiananmen years to deepen the mainland Chinese intelligentsia’s sense of alienation. One trend evident in intellectual circles was a neoconservatism, which found expression as “national studies” (guoxue), an academic complement to the patriotic nationalism through which the Party sought a new basis of popular support. Another was a retreat to more rarified realms of aesthetics and scholarship, whether in the revival of the casual essay or in the enthusiasm for contemporary Western critical theory. And yet another was the embrace of the marketplace dubbed “taking the plunge” (xiahai).61 Many writers and intellectu-

242

Chapter 9

als attempted to reap the benefits of the new order of things by writing would-be best sellers, joining the television or advertising industries, or reconfiguring literary journals to appeal to popular tastes. Others lent support to the cultural marketplace in theoretical terms. The most controversial of the latter efforts was the essay “Shunning the Sublime,” published in 1993 by the former Minister of Culture Wang Meng.62 Wang Meng casts the market economy as the cradle of a cultural diversity that might challenge China’s long-standing authoritarian traditions, and voices particular enthusiasm for the fiction of Wang Shuo. Wang Shuo’s stories of rootless, opportunistic, and seemingly amoral denizens of China’s contemporary urban landscapes, written in a prose that makes heavy use of lively Beijing slang, had been widely popular among readers since they first began appearing in the mid-1980s, but frequently castigated by critics as a “hoodlum literature” that implicitly promoted the nihilistic lifestyle it represented. In praising Wang Shuo’s protagonists for puncturing the hypocrisy prevailing in Chinese public life, Wang Meng adds his influential voice to what in the 1990s was becoming a chorus of intellectual enthusiasm for Wang Shuo’s work. The elite’s admiration for Wang Shuo was not reserved for his fictional creations alone: as the center and stage-manager of a “Wang Shuo phenomenon,” an author who reveled in the public image of a bad boy, who packaged his fiction into a best-selling Collected Works, and who made a highly visible transition to the film and television industries, Wang Shuo served as the model for a new breed of worldly and successful cultural professionals.63 There is potential for friction between various of the elements of the 1990s’ cultural scene suggested above—the increasing visibility and authority of economic factors in the cultural field, the economic and political integration of Hong Kong with the mainland, a neoconservatism calling for a return to tradition and core Chinese values, the popularity of new models of the public cultural figure. But there are at least equal possibilities for synergy among them as well; and each in its own way helped prepare a fertile ground for the progress of Jin Yong and his works from widespread popularity in the 1980s to an unprecedented degree of consecration by the institutions of academic and public authority in the 1990s. Zha Liangyong’s post-1989 reintegration into the processes facilitating Hong Kong’s return to mainland authority was thus paralleled by the reintegration of his work and his public persona into the 1990s’ “national nostalgia for a traditional discourse characterized by ethical conformism, the search for meaning, and a congenial yearning for harmony.” 64 Nineteen ninety-four stands as the defining year in this reintegration. Within

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

243

this year a series of events—the first authorized mainland publication of Jin Yong’s Complete Works, the author’s being anthologized as one of the “masters of twentieth-century Chinese fiction,” and his receiving an honorary degree at Beijing University—confirmed the discursive framework for such subsequent events as the 1996 establishment of a Jin Yong study society,65 the series of conferences on his work held in 1998, and his assuming in 1999 the position of Dean of Humanities at Zhejiang University. The events of 1994 were not uncontested however; and it was the debates occasioned by Jin Yong’s recognition as much as that recognition itself which defined his complex status within the mainland’s literary and cultural fields. The publication by Beijing’s distinguished Sanlian (Joint Publishing) of the authorized mainland edition of Jin Yong’s Complete Works in May of 1994 (this press’s first publication of any author’s collected works) and the publication of Jin Yong’s preface to the edition in the March issue of Sanlian’s Dushu exemplify the bidirectional adjustments characteristic of the cultural field in the 1990s; on the one hand the eagerness of institutions possessing a certain measure of cultural authority to pursue opportunities in the burgeoning cultural marketplace, and on the other a willingness to position Jin Yong’s work within a framework identifying itself as intellectual and cultural rather than nakedly economic. An even more aggressive attempt at such positioning came in October of that year, with the publication of the Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue dashi wenku (Treasury of the masters of twentieth-century Chinese literature). This anthology, edited by academics from several Beijing universities, undertakes to select, rank, and present representative selections from the greatest twentieth-century Chinese “masters” of the genres of fiction, poetry, drama, and the essay. It declares its mission to be jettisoning of the “nonliterary” considerations— political objectives and academic prejudices—that have heretofore shaped literary history, and their replacement with purely aesthetic standards. Such reevaluation, the editors point out, inevitably requires the elimination of certain hoary favorites and the inclusion of figures previously ignored. In this spirit, the “Fiction” volumes of the anthology include Jin Yong, ranked fourth, behind Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, and Ba Jin; while Mao Dun, one of the canonical masters of China’s “new literature,” is absent from the selection.66 For all their iconoclastic ambitions, the Treasury’s editors presumably never anticipated that their anthology, issued by a midlevel publisher in a first run of only three thousand copies, would attract such attention as was generated by a short report published in Beijing’s Zhongguo qingnian

244

Chapter 9

bao in late August. The article makes the question of Jin Yong the chief focus in its account of an interview with the fiction editor, Beijing Normal University’s Wang Yichuan. “Can Jin Yong be Reckoned a Master?” runs the headline, with the subheading “Some Surprises in the Treasury of the Masters of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature”; the lead paragraph moves immediately to the matter of Jin Yong’s selection and Mao Dun’s elimination. While the rest of the article includes a reasonable summary of the anthology’s general aims and criteria, it also emphasizes the youth of the editors and implies a capriciousness (at best) to their choices: “Can authors and their works be assessed by some measurable standard?” it inquires, “And how can this standard be made scientific and precise? The Treasury’s say-so alone is not enough. . . .”67 The Zhongguo qingnian bao article was widely reprinted and reported, and generated a number of responses in the press, mostly critical of the Treasury’s rankings and of the sensationalism the article imputed to the editors (while so successfully creating a sensation itself ). Typical is an article by Chen Liao appearing in Wenyi bao. The author, who has apparently not seen the anthology himself, vigorously defends Mao Dun’s place in the canon. He grants that Jin Yong’s accomplishment is considerable, but opines that even in the realm of popular literature it falls short of that of Zhang Henshui. He credits the anthologists’ choices to (unspecified) political motivations as prejudiced as those they claim to be overturning, and repeats the Zhongguo qingnian bao’s assertion that the ranks of the masters are not to be determined by a small number of upstarts.68 Within two months of the Treasury’s appearance occurred an event that offered weightier if less deliberately melodramatic confirmation of Jin Yong’s acceptance into the purview of the contemporary academy: his reception on October 25 of an honorary professorship at Beijing University. In his remarks at the award ceremony, Professor Yan Jiayan attributed to Jin Yong’s work “an entrancing cultural atmosphere, a rich knowledge of history, and a profound national spirit,” which caused them to transcend the limits of their genre, and he credited Jin Yong with “a quiet literary revolution,” completing the May Fourth writers’ work of bringing the novel into the domain of serious literature by carrying the neglected genre of martial arts fiction onto that hallowed ground as well.69 Professor Yan was an eminent member and former chair of the university’s Chinese department, among whose contributions to his field was a key role in reawakening scholarly interest in the “neo-sensationalist” school (xin ganjue pai), a group of prewar Shanghai writers long excluded from the post–May Fourth canon. He was to emerge as a prominent spokesperson

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

245

for Jin Yong’s works, frequently cited by the media as a scholarly expert. Within the academy proper, his offering a course on Jin Yong’s novels and his writing numerous essays on Jin Yong’s work were instrumental in confirming the respectability of Jin Yong’s fiction as an object of scholarly inquiry.70 Beijing University was neither the first school nor the last to present Jin Yong with an honorary professorship or degree, but its unquestioned status as China’s premier institute of higher learning and its geographic and institutional proximity to the organs of governmental power guaranteed its recognition of Jin Yong an unparalleled academic cachet and unmistakable political overtones. The honoree recognized both in his acceptance speech, praising the university’s history of intellectual openness and service to the nation. His citation of the May Fourth movement as the prime example of this service could not but suggest the pregnant omission of the 1989 demonstrations in which Beida students had played a prominent role, and so signal his rapprochement with the political realities of the present. The speech went on to address not martial arts fiction but history, and by attributing the “continuous unbroken development of Chinese civilization” from antiquity to the present to the Chinese nation’s ability to counter foreign aggression with a flexible combination of “openness and reform,” proffered an essentialized image of nationality and tradition in homage to the policies of the current regime.71 At a second public lecture two days after the award ceremony, Jin Yong satisfied his fans’ thirst to hear him speak on martial arts fiction. He attributed his works’ popularity to their continuation of the cultural tradition but declared himself unqualified to be considered a “master.” 72 But neither this characteristic show of modesty nor the imprimatur of Beijing University’s honors quieted the debates over Jin Yong’s status; the latter in fact added fuel to the fire. In “Jujue Jin Yong” (Reject Jin Yong), published in the popular Nanfang zhoumo (Southern Weekend) in December, the essayist Yan Lieshan, proudly declaring that he has never read any of Jin Yong’s works, rejects the genre of martial arts fiction and derides Beijing University and its spokesman Yan Jiayan for degrading the May Fourth heritage. Yan Jiayan’s reply to this piece includes a polite but earnest questioning of Yan Lieshan’s qualifications to speak of matters on which he has himself professed ignorance, and seeks to clarify his own stance by reprinting portions of his October speech.73 An article published at roughly the same time in Wenxue ziyou tan deploys the events at Beijing University for a rhetorical effect opposite to Yan Lieshan’s, citing Jin Yong’s honorary professorship and the opinions of the distinguished Feng Qiyong as cor-

246

Chapter 9

roboration for the author’s approval of the Treasury’s electing Jin Yong to the status of a “master.” 74 Within the academy, the Beijing University honors served more to give public recognition to Jin Yong and the already accepted importance of his work than to break any dramatic new ground.75 Heat was generated primarily by the publicness of the recognition, and by the mass media’s seizing upon the opportunity to portray events at the university as a sequel to the already sensationalized “literary masters” affair. It was in the mass media, rather than in organs of scholarly communication, that the ensuing “debates” were primarily conducted, and at issue in the discussions and opinionating were not only Jin Yong and his work but the current health and proper social role of the academy itself as well. As far as Jin Yong was concerned, the incident marked a certain de facto acceptance within those realms of academic discourse to which his works and his publications had long voiced a claim; at the same time, it marked the maturation of the “Jin Yong phenomenon” as a force no longer nourished principally by the Ming Pao and Yuanliu conglomerates and other institutions with a direct financial interest, but riding free and evidently self-sustaining on the seas of media attention. A key element in this attention was the celebrity status accorded to the figure of Jin Yong himself. This status was marked and further nurtured by the appearance in 1994 of two book-length popular biographies. Leng Xia’s Jin Yong zhuan (A biography of Jin Yong) was published in Hong Kong in December, and issued (with modifications to accommodate the local political climate) in Taiwan and the mainland the following year.76 Its publication by Ming Pao in Hong Kong and Yuanliu in Taiwan marks it as tied to the Jin Yong promotional machinery. Evidently more independent, and slightly preceding the Leng Xia volume, was the volume published in Beijing under the collective authorship of Guiguan gongzuoshi (Laurel Wreath Workshop). The title, Xia zhi dazhe: Jin Yong pingzhuan (Greatest among the xia: an evaluative biography of Jin Yong), applies to its subject the appellation the author himself had bestowed upon his hero Guo Jing. A uniformly hagiographic tone marks both volumes, as it does subsequent biographies. The Guiguan gongzuoshi effort is perhaps the more effusive of the two: As a martial arts novelist, Jin Yong has won success and fame that are the astonishment and envy of his colleagues. His fourteen martial arts novels have not only caused him to become the wealthiest of all Chinese authors at home or abroad but, more important, have caused his name to become a kind of

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

247

symbol: a symbol of learning, a symbol of success, a symbol of ideals, and the symbol of a kind of cultural phenomenon. Since Taiwan’s Yuanliu Publishing Company published its series of Jin Yong Studies in 1984 [sic], there has appeared within the groves of overseas academia a great banner snapping resoundingly in the wind: Jinology. Before long, the wind of scholarship swept north, and the mainland’s Jin Yong fans also gathered to respond to the call and display their might.77

While the title of the volume repeats the familiar trope by which the author of martial arts fiction is cast as a chivalric champion, its contents perform an equally fascinating conflation of modern enterpreneurial success with the imagery of traditional Chinese scholarship in their portrait of Jin Yong as the ideal intellectual: There is nothing extraordinary about Jin Yong’s progress as an author: pursuing his studies, working, writing—the road that he has walked is the road steadily trodden by generation after generation of Chinese intellectuals. But natural gifts, wealth of experience, and the favor of Providence allowed Jin Yong to make the most of his abilities, and he has not only succeeded in his own career, but fulfilled the unrealized dreams of traditional Chinese intellectuals as well. For a hundred thousand years, the road of Chinese scholars has been clear and straightforward: “ten years’ study at the chilly window,” “the dragon leap to the golden register,” “serving in office and taking a wife,” “leaving a name in the annals of history,” and then “retiring to solitude among the woods and hills.” And yet the shaded mountain path has proven elusive—tortuous and long, strewn with disappointments, and beset with perils. It is only in the endless heartfelt chantings of the scholars, it seems, that the winding path can be followed to its end. Yet the ideal has been passed on from generation to generation in the very heart’s blood of China’s scholars. This is precisely the Confucian ideal. In prosperity, one brings benefit to all under heaven; in poverty, one cultivates one’s own person. Jin Yong appears to be the very incarnation of this ideal. He has realized the ideal dreams of a hundred thousand years of scholars.78

It was in this guise—that of both dashing and triumphant knight and wise and benevolent literatus, enjoying the fruits of this world while commanding and validating an ancient and venerable cultural tradition—that Jin Yong came to figure prominently in the Chinese media of the 1990s. So seamlessly did the legend cloak the man, Jin Yong was routinely addressed

248

Chapter 9

in public and referred to in the media as “Jin daxia,” literally “great xia Jin.” Oppositional voices incited from time to time by the man’s involvement in realpolitik seemed to sound only in a world disjunct from that warmed by this resplendent image, leaving it undimmed in the public eye.79 And the legend or persona of Jin Yong, the romanticized projection upon his person of a romantic image of a benevolent and distinctly Chinese cultural authority, the continuing validity of which is attested by his success, came to take its place alongside other discursive and institutional factors in negotiating Jin Yong’s position in the cultural field. In chapter 10 I will recount and analyze the encounter between Jin Yong’s image and another distinctive persona in one of the most prominent recent incidents in this ongoing negotiation. Whereas we opened with the story of New School fiction through the “duel” between Wu Gongyi and Chen Kefu, we close with another “exhibition match”: the encounter between Jin Yong, “the greatest among the xia,” and the “hooligan” author Wang Shuo.

Jin Yong’s Fiction in Mainland China

249

Chapter 10 Jin Yong at the Century’s End The Wang Shuo Incident and Its Implications

n November 1, 1999 the high-circulation Beijing daily Zhongguo qingnian bao published an essay by Wang Shuo entitled “Wo kan Jin Yong” (Reading Jin Yong).1 The title (which translates more literally as “I read Jin Yong” or “I look at Jin Yong”) may recall that of Ni Kuang’s first volume of Jinology but is also so generic a heading for a piece of literary criticism or commentary as to attract attention only for its utter plainness. Plainspokenness is in fact the author’s aim and chief technique. Wang Shuo begins by explaining that he has always been dismissive of Hong Kong and Taiwan authors such as Jin Yong and the romance writer Qiong Yao, disdaining to read their work and looking down on those who do. Although unimpressed by Jin Yong’s rising critical status, he was once swayed by the urgings of friends to try one of the novels—which one, he can’t recall, as he quickly gave up in disgust:

O

The plot was repetitive, the style long-winded. As soon as [the characters] ran into one another they would fall to blows, incapable of straightening out matters that could have been made clear with a simple word or two. But nobody ever finished anybody off; every time someone was about to give up the ghost, a savior would come dropping down out of the skies. They were all mixed up in a great muddle of feuds and enmities, which were the only things that kept the plot moving along. (4)

Despite the fact that his first reading of Jin Yong was “a wretched experience,” his friends’ remonstrations (how can you condemn what you haven’t even read?) and the popularity of the television adaptations compelled him to make a second attempt. “Holding his nose,” he made it

250

through to the end of the first volume of The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils. It only confirmed his earlier impressions. “The author evidently put some effort into it,” he concedes; “he made every single blunder you can make in writing fiction” (5). The language was clichéd, antique, divorced from living speech. The characters were one-dimensional plot-driven constructions running unerringly in whatever direction the author pointed them, “like pigs driven through a narrow alley”; they were recognizable neither as human beings nor as Chinese. The content as a whole echoed that of traditional fiction, indulging in violence and depravity under the sanctimonious guise of moral teaching. The only reason Wang Shuo can imagine for this stuff ’s popularity is the possibility that it serves as a kind of “head massage” for the overstimulated victims of modern life. Jin Yong’s fiction belongs, in sum, together with the “Four Heavenly Kings” of Cantopop music, Jacky Chan’s action films, and Qiong Yao–inspired television soap operas, as the “four great vulgarities” (si da su) of our time.2 “I don’t mean to say that I’m not vulgar myself—it’s just that my own vulgarity is of a different sort. We used to have a taste of our own” (7). Standing against the “four great vulgarities” were once the “four mainstays” of New Era literature, rock and roll, the Beijing Film Academy, and the Beijing Television Arts Center. But the four mainstays’ accomplishments have been obliterated by the tide of the four vulgarities’ success. “Where the problem lies, I don’t know. It may be that in China whatever is old, naive, and selfmythologizing has a greater life force than anything else” (7). Jin Yong’s first public response, in a letter printed in Shanghai’s Wenhui bao on November 5 under the title “Bu yu zhi yu he qiu quan zhi hui” (Unexpected praise and perfectionist criticism),3 was brief and pointedly understated. The letter makes four seemingly unconnected points. In the face of Wang Shuo’s attack, Jin Yong first reminds himself of the Buddhist precept that one should strive to remain unmoved by external influences, whether favorable or malign, and of Mencius’s teaching that one should not be surprised by “unexpected praise and perfectionist criticism”; 4 he suggests that Wang Shuo’s expectations of his work may be too high, and carefully lists a series of honors—his ranking among the masters of twentieth-century fiction, his works’ selection as the subject of a class at Beida, the Colorado conference on his fiction—of which, he assures us, he feels entirely unworthy. He then notes with surprise his being ranked with the “Four Heavenly Kings” and the rest, and is grateful that Wang Shuo has not given the group a less flattering name. He recalls his own positive if measured remarks on Wang Shuo’s fiction, at a forum at Beijing University. And he points out that he knows of no edition of The Demi-Gods and

Jin Yong at the Century’s End

251

Semi-Devils in the “seven volumes” that Wang Shuo claims to have purchased—suggesting that his critic had obtained an inferior or pirated edition, or perhaps more generally impugning the substantive basis of Wang Shuo’s critiques. Jin Yong closes by thanking his legions of readers for their appreciation, and Heaven for the favor it has shown him; in the face of such good fortune, a few balancing words of abuse cannot make him too unhappy. Jin Yong characterizes Wang Shuo’s essay as “the first vigorous attack to be made against my fiction.” In their introduction to Wang’s original piece, the editors of the Zhongguo qingnian bao had likewise asserted that its significance lay in part in the fact that “a challenger to Jin Yong has never before appeared.” Actually, as we have seen, attacks against Jin Yong and the wider bodies of martial arts fiction and popular fiction he is held to represent appeared periodically in both academic and journalistic forums during the 1980s and 1990s. Joining the roster of these critiques during 1999 was a series of newspaper articles by He Manzi, a scholar of traditional Chinese fiction. As several commentators were to point out, He Manzi’s critiques anticipated many aspects of Wang Shuo’s essay. In “Wei jiu wenhua xuming de yanqing xiaoshuo yu wuxia xiaoshuo” (Romance and martial arts fiction: prolonging the life of the old culture), for instance, which appeared in Guangming ribao on August 12, 1999, one finds not only the same choice of targets (Qiong Yao and Jin Yong) but also such shared details as the opening gambit of mocking Qiong Yao’s fans and the ready avowal that the critic himself hasn’t the time to waste on reading the “literature” he assaults.5 But whereas He Manzi’s essays had evoked only mild response, Wang Shuo’s provoked a firestorm of reaction. The article was reprinted and reported upon in newspapers nationwide, and elicited a flood of followup articles, readers’ responses, and interviews with anyone considered qualified to comment. Even more immediate and voluminous than the reaction in the print media was that on the Internet. The article and its sequels circulated widely in electronic form, and within a day of the essay’s first appearance, sites such as the online Zhongguo qingnian bao, Wang Shuo’s personal Web page, and various Jin Yong discussion forums were overwhelmed with commentary and debate. The heat and volume of the reaction to Wang Shuo’s remarks can be attributed to the pungency of their expression (like his best-known fiction, the essay excels in the display of outspoken opinions, mordant characterizations, and witty and colorful language) and the celebrity of their author. Wang Shuo was in fact widely accused of seeking to stir up hype and interest in the wake of the tepid

252

Chapter 10

response to his attempted return to the literary scene with his first novel in years, Kanshangqu hen mei (Nice enough to look at), released several months earlier. If Wang Shuo was in fact guilty of seeking to generate hype (a charge he shrugged off in several interviews), he was not alone. Print and other media moved quickly to exploit the popular interest in what appeared to be a colorful spat between two literary celebrities, and the proliferating articles in newspapers and popular periodicals were joined before the month was out by the first book-length compilation of materials on the “debate.” 6 The range and sheer quantity of Internet discussion nonetheless testifies to the fact that the response to Wang Shuo’s article, however much encouraged and exploited by the media, still drew much of its initiative from widespread and passionate reader engagement. Indeed, the very heat and volume of reader response, and the Internet’s role in facilitating its expression, soon attracted notice as one of the controversy’s points of interest. Internet responses ranged from brief jibes and angry screeds to carefully articulated opinions on the issues raised. Jin Yong’s supporters in the Internet forums greatly outnumbered Wang Shuo’s, at a ratio of eight to one by some estimates.7 While some respondents focused on the substance or internal consistency of Wang Shuo’s remarks, many chose to challenge his credentials as a critic and impugn his motives, or to extol the virtues of Jin Yong’s oeuvre. Wang Shuo’s supporters defended his right to express his opinions and voiced their own disdain for Jin Yong and his legions of fans. Discussion continued for months on the Internet and in the periodical and academic presses, engaging issues ranging from the evaluation of the two authors’ works and personal characters to the nature of popular literature, the responsibilities of literary critics, and the state of Chinese literary culture at the turn of the millenium.8 If we return for a moment to the content of Wang Shuo’s original essay, we may note that he attacks Jin Yong’s novels on several fronts. One is that of what he considers sheer literary incompetence. Another is that of their alleged enslavement, both aesthetic and ideological, to the limitations of traditional Chinese fiction. While Wang Shuo objects to this archaism in part on the grounds of its clichédness and irrelevance to modern life, he also makes gestures toward an orthodox Marxist view of the historical development of society and culture, as in his closing paragraph: “The art which China’s bourgeois class is capable of producing is essentially rotten; they can imitate the newest [trends], but their spiritual world is forever steeped in and intoxicated with the old and resplendent dreams of the past” (7). Here the iconoclastic Wang Shuo puts himself in surprising if

Jin Yong at the Century’s End

253

casual alliance with He Manzi and other neoconservative cultural critics, who take pride in reasserting, in unmodified form, the May Fourth generation’s blanket characterization of all cultural production not explicitly aligned with its own enlightenment projects as “feudal,” outmoded, and pernicious.9 Jin Yong’s defenders eagerly seized upon the irony of the master of “hoodlum literature” attacking Jin Yong as “vulgar,” while Wang Shuo’s supporters argued that in this essay, as in his fiction, Wang’s apparent crassness and irreverence only mask an essential integrity.10 But the most significant element in Wang Shuo’s evocation of su is his remark that “my own vulgarity is of a different sort.” The heart of his concerns lies not in any opportunistic rehearsal of orthodox literary historiography but rather in his re-evocation of the cultural geopolitics of north and south, center and periphery. “The real point of that article of mine,” he explained in a subsequent interview, “was actually in the last section”—the expression of puzzlement and dismay at the capitulation of Beijing’s New Era culture of the 1980s to the flood of Hong Kong and Taiwan imports.11 Though set forth most clearly in the closing juxtaposition of the “four great vulgarities” against the “four mainstays,” this thread runs throughout the essay, beginning with the opening sentence’s characterization of Jin Yong as “a native of Zhejiang living in Hong Kong and writing martial arts fiction.” Charging Jin Yong’s grotesque characters with misrepresenting the Chinese to themselves and to the world, Wang Shuo states that “I have lived among Chinese people my whole life,” clearly implying that Jin Yong’s errors spring from the fact that he has not. And in critiquing Jin Yong’s prose for its reliance on the hackneyed models of traditional fiction, he speculates that it is the Zhejiang and Guangdong dialects’ unsuitability for prose writing that has barred the novelist from devising a more modern and natural style. The overall burden of such remarks is clear: Wang Shuo’s standard of value is a “Chineseness,” the authenticity of which is measured by allegiance to the cultural and linguistic standards of Beijing. Considerations of class, commerce, genre, and political ideology are ancillary to this paramount geocultural criterion. It is their identity both as southerners and as products of the foreign-tainted periphery that condemns Jin Yong and his peers to the category of the “four great vulgarities.” The Jin Yong /Wang Shuo incident thus testifies both to the continuing importance of geocultural categories in the Chinese literary world and to the instability of membership in such categories. As we have seen, the constant reimagining of geographic expressions of identity and orthodoxy within Jin Yong’s fiction is paralleled by the crucial role played by geocul-

254

Chapter 10

tural categories in the negotiation of that fiction’s own status—from the New School’s establishing its identity in terms of a “Central Plains mentality,” articulated within the geographically and politically peripheral space of Hong Kong, to the symbiosis between Jin Yong’s political rapprochement with the mainland political establishment and his fiction’s acceptance as a cultural product both fragrant with visions of a Hong Kong–inspired future and redolent of roots in a central tradition allegedly disrupted on the yellow soil of its birth. Wang Shuo peremptorily rejects this exquisite balancing of “central” and “peripheral” credentials, invoking his linguistic and cultural authority as a Beijinger to unmask Jin Yong as an imposter from the tawdry margins to the south. The association of the south with commercial and entertainment-oriented forms of culture suspected of neglecting or explicitly violating art’s proper moral and social responsibilities traces its modern-era genealogy to the May Fourth generation, as we have seen, and has roots much further back in Chinese history. A number of the commentators on the current incident follow Wang Shuo’s own lead in reprising these themes in terms relevant to the reform era.12 And while Jin Yong declines to engage this aspect of Wang Shuo’s critique in his initial response, a subsequent, longer reply focuses exclusively on the question of southern writers, citing a battery of authors and texts from both twentieth-century literature and traditional fiction to build the case that stylists from Zhejiang and other regions of the south stand at the heart of China’s orthodox literary tradition.13 There is a markedly performative aspect to the incident as a whole. This performativity is perhaps most evident—and the long-ago match between Chen Kefu and Wu Gongyi most strongly evoked—in fans’ and the media’s penchant for describing the encounter between the two literary figures as a contest between two martial artists. “The madman Wang Shuo sinks another knife into Jin Yong; the great xia Jin Yong first yields two swordstrokes to Wang Shuo.”14 While the characterization of Jin Yong as a “great knight” (daxia) and the general employment of the language of martial arts fiction in commentary upon that fiction are well-established clichés, they are given new life by the occurrence of a seemingly combative exchange of views and the opportunity of assigning complementary roles to the disputants. Jin Yong is the “great xia” or the “chief of the alliance of the Martial Grove” to Wang Shuo’s “madman” or “outlandish bravo of the Rivers and Lakes.”15 It is journalists, fans, and other commentators who bestow such titles. But the principals themselves display an umistakable awareness of and allegiance to their established public personae, whether in Wang Shuo’s noisy and irreverent challenge or in Jin

Jin Yong at the Century’s End

255

Yong’s magnanimous and somewhat condescendingly pedantic response; and it is in this sense too, of the rehearsal and reinforcement of familiar roles, that the “debate” may be considered performative.16 A complex relationship obtains between the public personae adopted by the two authors and their jockeying for the high or more properly central ground in the geocultural framing of the issues involved. Wang Shuo, in championing the culture of the north and the principled legacy of New Era culture against the encroaching tides of southern vulgarity, positions himself as a defender of a certain orthodoxy. At the same time, by voicing an outspoken and even rude assault on what he portrays as the new orthodoxy of the day, he plays the outsider, the troublemaker, and seeks to reinvigorate the identification between the authorial persona and the devilmay-care hoodlums peopling his works that was so central a part of the “Wang Shuo phenomenon.” To employ (against Wang Shuo’s certain objections) an analogy from Jin Yong’s oeuvre, in the former role, Wang Shuo is the earnest Kangxi emperor, in the latter the irreverent and mischievous Wei Xiaobao.17 By the terms of the same analogy, Wang Shuo’s critiques clearly cast Jin Yong as the vulgar and mendacious southern upstart. As we have seen, however, since at least the publication of the essay “That Little Rascal Wei Xiaobao!” Jin Yong has striven to maintain a strict if not entirely unaffectionate distance between his own image and that of his most notorious fictional character. The roles generally imputed to him, and reprised by him in the incident under discussion, are those of Guo Jing, the brave and stolid defender of the nation and its people, and of the Kangxi emperor, dedicated patron of an ancient yet still vital cultural heritage. The notion of performativity entails not only the actors’ adoption of certain positions and roles but also the performance of those roles on a certain stage and for a defined audience. And indeed the arena in which the encounter between Jin Yong and Wang Shuo was played out is at least as significant for our understanding of the former’s status in the contemporary Chinese literary field as are the particular roles rehearsed by the principals. While statements made within the debate engaged the spatial imaginaries of north and south, center and periphery, the metaphorical geography most germane to the conduct of the debate itself is that of Bourdieu’s literary field, the social space within which cultural authority is assigned and given weight. We have already noted that the details of Bourdieu’s scheme and analyses are not likely to conform to the social and historical conditions of late-twentieth-century China. His general approach, however, of analyzing the accumulation of cultural capital in

256

Chapter 10

terms of the homologies and tensions between a heteronomous axis of social power measured in economic and political terms and an autonomous axis of “purely” artistic value remains useful. Some analysts have described mainland China’s cultural scene, seemingly monolithic during the Mao era, as fragmenting during the 1990s into distinct spheres of mainstream or official culture, elite culture, and mass or popular culture.18 We may think of a system in which both the economic and cultural fields were formerly held in close (if frequently flawed) alignment to political authority devolving into one in which an official culture is marked (and limited) by its continued allegiance to the political status quo, a mass culture thrives through the authority of the marketplace, and an elite culture seeks to find validation despite or through its increasing neglect by both. The discussions between and about Jin Yong and Wang Shuo, while engaging issues of artistic value and social authority and responsibility, took place to a large extent in the commercial mass media, operating within limits established by the political authorities but, within those limits, driven primarily by the logic of the marketplace. This forum determined the scope of the debate, established its degree of legitimacy, and in a certain sense made the specific content of the statements by various agents irrelevant to its “outcome.” The editors of Zhongguo qingnian bao, in their brief introduction to Wang Shuo’s opening essay, explained themselves to be motivated in part by their hope that the publication of the piece would help breathe life into the languishing literary scene. A number of commentators during the ensuing debate, and in its aftermath, seconded this viewpoint, noting with satisfaction the unusual interest and heat generated by a topic of literary interest. But cynics noted, early on, the degree to which the “literary world” seemed to be dancing to a measure set by the newspapers’ entertainment supplements, and wondered why literary critics had left it to a publicity hound like Wang Shuo to challenge Jin Yong’s hegemony over the reading public.19 To a reader of the popular press, the coverage of the Jin Yong / Wang Shuo incident was continuous with and largely indistinguishable from the relentless flood of reporting on a series of other Jin Yong–centered stories—his appointment at Zhejiang University, his court battles with a group of publishers, the first mainland filming of a television serial based on one of his novels. The media coverage included and indeed actively solicited the opinions of writers and academics. Of the authors who might be reckoned as belonging to the more autonomous reaches of the literary field, some preferred to decline any involvement in the imbroglio, while those willing to offer an opinion tended to voice support for Wang Shuo’s views or at least

Jin Yong at the Century’s End

257

his right to express them.20 Academics and professional critics were in a number of cases more forthcoming, and some of their pronouncements are among those already noted. Many couched their views on Jin Yong, whether positive or negative, in terms not only of judgment of his works alone but also of the increasing prominence of popular culture; and some took particular note of the extent to which the tide of the popular had reached the realms of criticism and historiography as well: In the past it was professional literary historians who composed literary history, and theorists and critics who chose and evaluated the masters, but now they have to take into consideration the author’s relationship with his readers. We can deny Jin Yong from the point of view of scholarship, and in the halls of the university we can drive Jin Yong out the doors, but there’s not a single owner of a book rental stall who would reject Jin Yong.21

Even within the halls of academe, as we have seen, Jin Yong’s works had already won an established place. This place was limited in scope, however, as can be judged by a glance at two literary histories published in the last years of the decade. Hong Zicheng’s Zhongguo dangdai wenxue shi (History of contemporary Chinese literature), published by Beijing University Press in 1999, discusses changes in the literary environment, including the influence of overseas culture and the marketplace, in its overviews of the 1980s and 1990s; in its discussions of individual authors and works, though, it limits itself to the mainland’s various schools of serious or elite literature, excluding altogether Hong Kong and Taiwan authors and popular writers of any stripe from the field of its investigation. In contrast, the Zhonghua wenxue tongshi (General history of Chinese literature) published under the direction of the Academy of Social Sciences in 1997 seeks to distinguish itself by its catholic scope and its attention to such neglected categories as popular literature, the literature of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the literatures of various national minorities.22 Jin Yong not only appears in these pages but enjoys quite favorable treatment. The authors note the artistic advances and patriotic and historic elements in Hong Kong’s New School martial arts fiction; they proclaim Jin Yong the master of this school, and record his seemingly universal appeal; they consider the strengths of his writing and the themes (the cruelty of the struggle for power, the complexity and weakness of the human character) of his work. The positive elements of this account are nonetheless hedged by its segregation according to the logic of the history as a whole. The ninth of the set’s ten volumes covers contemporary fiction and drama; a chapter on

258

Chapter 10

Hong Kong is the last in the fiction section (following chapters on military fiction, historical fiction, minority authors, and Taiwan); this Hong Kong chapter begins with sections on the “realist” and “modernist” schools, followed by the discussion of “Liang Yusheng, Jin Yong, and various types of popular fiction” (519–531). Only romance writers are left to bring up the rear. From the perspective of this orthodox literary history, the place that Jin Yong can claim is limited and defined by a powerful set of geographic, generic, and aesthetic hierarchies. One academic commentator on a roundtable on the Wang Shuo/ Jin Yong affair demanded a reaffirmation of the academy’s critical prerogatives: Our view is that in literary criticism’s current environment, we should distinguish two kinds of criticism: one is media criticism, and another is scholarly criticism in the true sense of the word. We can say that media criticism is that which is influenced by mass culture and commercial promotion. Criticism of this kind may of course at times contain some element of scholarly criticism, but due to promotionalism it may have certain specious elements as well, and because of this its value is suspect. The existence of media criticism has its significance, of course, but it stands at a definite distance from real scholarly criticism. We should distinguish between criticism of these two kinds, and, as far as their value and significance, we should treat them in different lights.23

Another participant, however, suggested that the reaffirmation of this distinction would not address the more basic problem of the waning influence in Chinese society of (serious) literary criticism and indeed of literature itself—a loss of influence due in part to critics’ failings, in part to the emergence of other social and cultural factors.24 One factor pointed out in this roundtable and elsewhere as being of particular importance in the Wang Shuo incident was the development of the Internet. “Besides being the biggest literary row in years in China, the controversy [was] also the first interactive one.” 25 The volume and intensity of activity in chat rooms and bulletin boards renders insufficient a portrayal of the incident, and the cultural field on which it was played out, as structured simply by the tensions between the economically aligned mass media and an academy jealous of its dwindling claims on the more heteronomous (politically and socially recognized) funds of cultural capital. Reader response on the Internet was enmeshed, to be sure, with the media’s economic interests, by means, for example, of corporate management of Web sites and the culling of Internet comments for print publication.26 The Internet nonethe-

Jin Yong at the Century’s End

259

less allowed an unprecedented eruption onto the public stage of the hitherto marginalized passions and dynamics of fan culture, and at least suggested the possibility of a “democratization” of cultural discourse different in degree and kind from the brute economic maneuvering of the marketplace.27 The Jin Yong /Wang Shuo debate was shaped by, and by the same token illuminates, a variety of social and cultural agents’ efforts to redefine the Chinese literary field, and to establish their own position and prerogatives within that field, during a period of profound change in Chinese society in general. The fact that the changes at several levels are still ongoing renders premature any attempt to offer a definitive characterization of the status of Jin Yong and his works; so too does the fact that the works themselves, and the “Jin Yong phenomenon” of which they are a part, are also in a continuing state of evolution. Jin Yong has begun publishing a new revision of his corpus of texts. A flood of television adaptations from the mainland, different in style and attempted scope from their predecessors, represents the latest wave of adaptations into other media. Jinology continues, reinventing itself in such novel forms as the irreverent Dianfu Jin Yong (Subverting Jin Yong) series published in both Taiwan and the mainland; it is flanked and intersected, on the one hand, by attempts to approach Jin Yong’s oeuvre from established academic perspectives and, on the other, by the sometimes anarchic currents of readership and fan culture. Jin Yong /Zha Liangyong himself continues both to garner media attention and to function in a range of cultural and political roles. These and other phenomena, as well as the multilevel fascinations of the texts themselves, ensure that the study of Jin Yong and his works will continue to play a fruitful role in our evolving understanding of the literature and culture of contemporary China.

260

Chapter 10

Notes

Chapter 1: Introduction 1. Ni Kuang, Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, 6–7, gives one of the simplest versions of an oft-repeated and almost tautological definition of the genre: “The characteristics of wuxia xiaoshuo are: wu, xia, and xiaoshuo. Wu: wuxia xiaoshuo must contain descriptions of martial arts, and the martial arts described must be traditional Chinese martial arts. . . . Xia: wuxia xiaoshuo must contain xia . . . [a]nd the xia in wuxia xiaoshuo derives from China’s traditions of the chivalric spirit (xiayi jingshen). . . . Xiaoshuo: wuxia xiaoshuo must be fiction (xiaoshuo). . . . with fiction’s power of fascination (xiyinli).” The English term “martial arts fiction” is admittedly inadequate in that it translates the wu but not the xia of the Chinese original. I follow John Minford in choosing it over other equally misleading or awkward renditions such as “chivalric fiction,” “knight-errant fiction,” “gallant fiction,” et cetera: see his “Translator’s Introduction,” 1–3, especially notes 2 and 10. 2. For a characterization of the scope of the Jin Yong phenomenon in its literary aspect, see Yan Jiayan, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lun gao, 8–13; for an account and analysis of its multimedia and extraliterary dimensions, see Song Weijie, Cong yule xingwei dao Wutuobang chongdong, 11–59. 3. The following account is based on reports in Xin wanbao, Xingdao ribao, and Hong Kong Standard. 4. Great Britain Colonial Office, Colonial Reports: Hong Kong 1953, 117. 5. Ming Kwan Lee, “Hong Kong Identity—Past and Present,” 156f. 6. “‘Battle to Death’ Terminated by Seven Judges in Second Round Following an Emergency Decision,” Hong Kong Standard, January 18, 1954, 7. 7. See Andrew David Morris, Cultivating the National Body. 8. “‘Battle to Death.’” The exact meaning of the article’s claim is unclear, and its factual validity dubious; it is useful, though, in pointing out that one aspect of the Republican elevation of the martial arts was the purging of elements (“superstitious” or “unscientific” training methods, “backwards” social practices) unsuited to the modernizing project. 9. See “Charity Boxing Tournament Staged in Aid of Shumshuipo Fire Victims’ Fund Proves Great Success,” Hong Kong Standard, January 15, 1954, 7. 261

10. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities; Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation. 11. “Xinhuayuan li baixia leitai” [Leitai erected in Xinhua Park], Xin wanbao, January 3, 1954, 4. 12. Liang Yusheng, “Taiji quan yi ye mishi” [A page from the secret history of taiji quan], Xin wanbao, January 17, 1954, 4. 13. Drawing heavily on published studies of the genre, I make no claims to originality. The earliest full-length study of martial arts fiction, and still the only one in English, is James J. Y. Liu’s The Chinese Knight-errant. It is largely an anthology of translations and summaries with notes and commentary, and is strongest on the earlier material. In Chinese, Ye Hongsheng’s “Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lun” provides an excellent overview. Wang Hailin’s Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lüe, Luo Liqun’s Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi, and Cao Zhengwen’s Zhongguo xia wenhua shi offer narrative histories within sometimes limiting interpretive frameworks. Among the most perceptive analytical studies are Chen Pingyuan’s Qiangu wenren xiake meng and the essays in Xu Sinian’s Xia de zongji. Specialized studies of various periods, works, and authors abound; a few are mentioned in the notes that follow. 14. Zhang Gansheng, Minguo tongsu xiaoshuo lungao, 338; Ye Hongsheng, “Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lun,” 11–14. On the Japanese fiction to which the term wuxia (bukyö) was applied, see Okazaki Yumi, “Wuxia yu ershi shiji chuye de Riben jingxian xiaoshuo.” 15. Han Fei Tzu: Basic Writings, 105. 16. Ping-ti Ho, “Records of China’s Grand Historian: Some Problems of Translation: A Review Article,” 176–182. 17. Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 2:453. 18. Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Records of the Historian: Chapters from the Shih chi of Ssuma Ch’ien, 48. 19. Ibid., 67. 20. Gong Pengcheng and Lin Baochun provide in Ershisi shi xiake ziliao huibian a useful compendium of relevant materials from the histories. 21. Yu Yingshi’s “Xia yu Zhongguo wenhua” and Lin Baochun’s “Cong youxia, shaoxia, jianxia dao yixia” provide analysis of the historical roots and development of the xia image. Attempts to survey the extraliterary dimensions of “xia culture” include Chen Shan, Zhongguo wuxia shi, and Wang Yonghao, Zhongguo youxia shi. 22. Most studies of xia and wuxia xiaoshuo contain analyses of the “essential,” “defining,” or “ideal” qualities of the xia. James Liu, for example, defines them as altruism, justice, individual freedom, personal loyalty, courage, truthfulness and mutual faith, honor and fame, and generosity and contempt for wealth (The Chinese Knight-errant, 4–6). Xu Sinian pares his own list down to “disdain for wealth” and “disdain for [one’s own] life” (“Yuanxia ji qi jingshen,” 2). Most important for

262

Notes to Pages 10–14

literary study, however, is the point that all such essentializing definitions are abstractions that should not be confused with the xia’s specific and contingent manifestations in particular works. As Y. W. Ma puts it, “One would expect that different periods have brought forth different chivalric figures who in turn appear differently in their literary representations, the shaping of which is further governed by the particularity of generic forms and the cumulative effects of traditions” (“The Knight-errant in hua-pen Stories,” 266–267). 23. Sima Qian’s biography of Jing Ke refers to fabulous stories already in circulation, and the classical-language tale Yan Danzi has often been presumed to be of pre-Qin origin. But scholars since the nineteenth century have argued that the extant text is of considerably later origin. See Y. W. Ma, “Yen Tan-tzu,” and DeWoskin, “The Six Dynasties Chih-kuai and the Birth of Fiction,” 47 n. 54. 24. Translation from Liu, The Chinese Knight-errant, 68. 25. Studies of the “swordswoman” figure include Lin Baochun, “Zhongguo gudian xiaoshuo zhong de ‘nüxia’ xingxiang,” and Altenburger, “The Sword or the Needle.” 26. “Zhao Taizu” is the twenty-first tale in Feng Menglong’s (1574–1646) 1624 collection Jingshi tongyan [Comprehensive words to warn the world]; “Cheng Yuanyu” is the fourth in Ling Mengchu’s (1580–1644) 1628 Pai’an jing qi [Slapping the table in amazement]. Both are discussed in Ma, “The Knight-errant in hua-pen Stories,” and in Cui Fengyuan, Zhongguo gudian duanpian xiayi xiaoshuo yanjiu, among other places. On the second story see also Altenburger, “The Sword or the Needle,” 117–144. 27. See Ge, Out of the Margins, for a recent review and reappraisal of scholarship on the novel’s development. 28. Chen Pingyuan, Qiangu wenren xiake meng, 192–200. Chen actually makes a threefold distinction between the reclusive “hills and woods,” the politically charged “Rivers and Lakes,” and the criminal “greenwood” (lülin). His distinctions are invaluable for identifying the conceptual issues at stake, although particular works—The Water Margin included—more often than not conflate several of these categories. 29. Almost every study of wuxia xiaoshuo discusses The Water Margin. For a focused and informed study of the novel’s influence on the tradition, see Ma Youyuan, “Shuihu zhuan yu Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo de chuantong.” For an introduction to the novel’s place within the broader study of traditional Chinese fiction, see C. T. Hsia’s essay in The Classic Chinese Novel, and Andrew Plaks’ analysis and reviews of the scholarship in The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel. 30. Yu’s “Shuihu zhuan (Water Margin) as Elite Cultural Discourse” studies the novel’s interpretation over the centuries, and Widmer’s Margins of Utopia addresses the Shuihu houzhuan and other sequels.

Notes to Pages 14–19

263

31. For further discussion of Shengchao ding sheng wannian qing, see chapter 2. On Jigong zhuan, see Meir Shahar, Crazy Ji. 32. Xu Sinian and Liu Xiang’an, “Wuxia danghui bian.” In addition to Xu and Liu’s work, Ye Hongsheng’s “Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lun” and Zhang Gansheng’s Minguo tongsu xiaoshuo lungao are particularly valuable on Republican-era martial arts fiction. 33. Chen Pingyuan, Qiangu wenren xiake meng, 7. See also Zheng Shusen, “Dazhong wenxue, xushi, wenlei,” 114: “Do the traditional ethics and Rivers and Lakes morality that appear so often in martial arts fiction represent a kind of attachment to or nostalgia for the old order and the old ethics? In other words, are they a way of expressing the psychological anxieties and external pressures brought by modern industrial civilization and society?” 34. See especially Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies; Chow, “Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies”; Fan Boqun, ed., Zhongguo jin xiandai tongsu wenxue shi; and on a slightly earlier period, Denise Gimpel, Lost Voices of Modernity. 35. Mao Dun, “Ziranzhuyi yu Zhongguo xiandai xiaoshuo.” Contemporary critiques of Mandarin Ducks literature can be found collected in Wei Shaochang, ed., Yuanyang hudie pai yanjiu ziliao, and Rui Heshi et al., eds., Yuanyang hudie pai wenxue ziliao. For discussion of May Fourth attitudes and criticisms see also Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies. 36. Mao Dun, “Fengjian de xiao shimin wenyi,” 360. 37. I have not yet been able to establish the exact provenance or earliest appearance of this application of the term “New School”; it was in circulation by at least the beginning of the 1960s. 38. For example, Chen Pingyuan, Qiangu wenren xiake meng, 98; Ye Hongsheng, “Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lun,” 62–63. 39. Chen Pingyuan, Qiangu wenren xiake meng, 98. 40. Chen Mo, Xin wuxia ershi jia, 5, 7. 41. Thus Wang Hailin, Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lüe, 174–177, attributes the New School’s appearance to the internal evolution of the tradition of martial arts fiction, the genre’s capability for dominating the literary field of commercialized societies, and Hong Kong and Taiwan literary circles’ relative acceptance of popular literature. Luo Liqun, Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi, 276–278, explains that New School fiction “fits the requirements of economic competition and accords with the entertainment consciousness of the social psychology [of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities],” and that “Chinese martial arts fiction as a unique literary form has long made a place for itself deep in people’s hearts; its source is in the people (minjian), and it has a powerful life force.” 42. Chen Mo, Xin wuxia ershi jia, 5. 43. C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel, 30: “Probably, in their impotence to

264

Notes to Pages 19–24

relieve the suffering of their compatriots under Communist rule, these readers [in Hong Kong and Taiwan] have turned to a simpler world of fantasy where the champions of justice have never failed to punish the oppressors.” Lin I-Liang (Stephen Soong) similarly refers to the view that the popularity of martial arts fiction is due to the “extreme spiritual dejection” of “Chinese intellectuals overseas”; see his “Jin Yong de wuxia shijie” [The martial arts world of Jin Yong], in Wuge fangwen, 52. 44. See Ma Kwok-ming, “Hong Kong Martial Arts Novels: The Case of Louis Cha,” and, for an earlier and more telegraphic exposition of portions of the argument, “Jin Yong de wuxia xiaoshuo yu Xianggang.” 45. Lin Linghan, “Wenhua gongye yu wenhua rentong.” 46. The phrasing quoted here is from Song Weijie’s article “Minzu guojia, geren shenfen, lishi jiyi,” 74; the argument is restated in revised and expanded form in chapter 4 (138ff.) of his Cong yule xingwei dao Wutuobang chongdong. 47. Song Weijie, Cong yule xingwei dao Wutuobang chongdong, 146–148; see on the same pages his remarks on Ma’s and Lin’s interpretations of this novel. 48. In Wu Aiyi’s introduction to her Jin Yong xiaoshuo de nanzi, 1–5. 49. For accounts and critiques of the culturalism-to-nationalism thesis see James Townsend, “Chinese Nationalism,” and Prasenjit Duara, “De-Constructing the Chinese Nation.” 50. Tu Wei-ming, “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center,” 34. For an overview of recent conceptualizations of a global Chinese culture, see Harry Harding, “The Concept of ‘Greater China’: Themes, Variations and Reservations.” 51. Rey Chow, “Between Colonizers.” 52. These readings are meant to supplement the internal and appreciative readings that have dominated the secondary literature on Jin Yong to date. They do not, of course, claim to be definitive or exhaustive. To posit that reading Jin Yong’s novels against their historical context may both illuminate certain aspects of the novels and allow the novels in turn to shed some new light on the thought and society of their era (I hope the process is not tautological) is not meant to suggest that the historical context is the sole generative impulse behind the novels or their most important “meaning.” 53. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed.” 54. Ibid., 51. Chapter 2: Local Heroes 1. “Wuxia mingzhu jingxuan” is further discussed in chapter 6. 2. See Ye Hongsheng’s “Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shilun,” 60–62, and “Xianggang ‘xinpai’ wuxia xiaoshuo fazhan gaikuang,” 483–484. 3. In some editions the last character of the title is rendered as the name of the

Notes to Pages 25–34

265

dynasty (qing /Qing). The novel has circulated under a variety of other titles as well, including Wannian qing qicai xinzhuan [The new tale of the marvelous hero of the everlasting Qing], Qianlong xunxing Jiangnan ji [An account of Qianlong’s procession through Jiangnan], and Qianlong huang you Jiangnan [The Qianlong emperor’s travels in Jiangnan]. Citations here will be to the Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe 1993 edition. I am indebted to Ng Ho for suggesting this novel as the starting point for inquiry into Guangdong School martial arts fiction. I have also profited from consulting Lin Baochun’s “Huashuo Fang Shiyu,” an article provided in manuscript by the author. 4. The novel presumably draws on legends that grew up around the six official processions through the Jiangnan region made by the historical Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–1795); see the foreword to the 1989 Shanghai guji chubanshe edition of Qianlong xunxing Jiangnan ji. For an overview of the legends of the Southern Shaolin heroes, see Ng Ho, “Dang chuanshuo siwang de shihou.” 5. David Wang’s rereading of late Qing chivalric fiction in chapter 3 of his Finde-siècle Splendor is perhaps relevant here. He argues that rather than expressing, as most critics have suggested, a co-optation of the spirit of altruism and resistance by the forces of orthodoxy and repression, these novels’ portrayal of a complicitous relationship between law and violence suggests a profound questioning of the parameters of imperial and ideological legitimacy. 6. Editions of Shaolin xiao yingxiong include Shanghai: Dada tushu gongying she, 1935, and Shanghai: Xinmin shudian, 1936. For a modern edition, see Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 1987. 7. Liu Xinfeng et al., eds., Zhongguo xiandai wuxia xiaoshuo jianshang cidian, 544. 8. At a later date the text was again revised to present the Guangdong heroes in a more favorable light. Their use of unfair tactics is minimized; much of the responsibility for the continuation of the feuds is shifted from them to their foes; in the final chapter Fang Shiyu is betrothed to a pair of young warrioresses attendant upon Wumei, transformed from the middle-aged nuns of the earlier version. It is not clear when this revision first appeared. Editions in circulation include Fang Shiyu da leitai [Fang Shiyu fights on the leitai], in Zhongguo minjian tongsu xiaoshuo, and Woshi Shanren (a spurious attribution?), Fang Shiyu zhengzhuan [The true story of Fang Shiyu]. 9. It was not only the writers of martial arts fiction who employed pen names declaring local allegiance. Wu Woyao (1866–1910), the region’s most famous late Qing novelist, styled himself Wo Foshanren (“A Native of Foshan”), and our authors’ pseudonyms must be understood in part as honoring this renowned literary precursor.

266

Notes to Pages 34–38

10. Li Jiayuan, Xianggang baoye zatan, 121, 129–131; Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 19–20. 11. Li Jiayuan, Xianggang baoye zatan, 133. 12. Fang Jigen and Wang Guangming, Gang Ao xinwen shiye gaiguan, 71–72. 13. Woshi Shanren’s novels of the late 1940s and 1950s are the only Guangdong School works to have remained in print. They were reprinted in the 1970s by Hong Kong’s Nanfeng chubanshe, and in the 1980s by Chen Xiang ji shuju. The latter editions were widely available in Hong Kong bookstores during the 1990s. 14. See the author’s preface in Woshi Shanren, Sande heshang. 15. Li Jiayuan, Xianggang baoye zatan, 111–112. 16. Woshi Shanren, Hong quan dashi Tieqiao San, 2. The preface is undated, and the publication referred to here unidentified. The preface to Woshi Shanren’s Shaolin shi hu nao Yangcheng is dated August 1955 from the offices of Wushu zazhi [Martial arts magazine], and it seems likely that Tieqiao San was first serialized in this or a similar publication. 17. See Li Heiweng, “Ji Nanhai Zhu Yuzhai.” On Lin Shirong, see Lin Zu, Lin Shirong xianshi teji, and “Xianshi Lin Shirong xiansheng shilüe,” printed as a preface to Zhu Yuzhai’s Hu he shuangxing and Tiexian quan. 18. The boxing manuals Hu he shuangxing [Tiger-crane double form] and Tiexian quan [Iron thread boxing] are illustrated with drawings, apparently rendered from photographs, of Lin Shirong himself executing the various forms. Zhu’s newspaper serializations included the column “Wushu sancao” [Casual notes on the martial arts], which began publication in Hong Kong’s Gongshang ribao on October 28, 1947, and later moved to the Gongshang wanbao. The first installment mentions a similar column carried in the Gongshang wanbao some ten years previous. 19. On the Huang Feihong films, see Hu Peng, Wo yu Huang Feihong. On the historical Huang Feihong and the dissemination of his legend, see Ng Ho, “Huang Feihong: yingxiong? caomang?” 20. Ng Ho, “Huang Feihong,” 148–149. 21. Li Gucheng discusses, in his Xianggang baoye bainian cangsang, “thwarted literati” of the late Qing and their experiences with the press in Hong Kong, 79–116, and Sun Yatsen and the Zhongguo ribao, 117–152. Among the most helpful entries into the considerable literature on Wang Tao are Paul A. Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity, and Elizabeth Sinn, “Fugitive in Paradise: Wang Tao and Cultural Transformation in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong.” On the revolutionary and Republican periods see also Li Jiayuan, Xianggang baoye zatan, 25–29, and Fang Jigen and Wang Guangming, Gang Ao xinwen shiye gaiguan, 23–33. And on the early history of the press in Hong Kong and China generally, see Roswell S. Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press 1800–1912.

Notes to Pages 38–41

267

22. The activities of the South-bound Authors constitute the most thoroughly studied topic in the spottily covered terrain of Hong Kong literary history. Useful works include Lu Weiluan, Xianggang wenzong; and Zheng Shusen et al., eds., Guo Gong neizhan shiqi Xianggang bendi yu nanlai wenren zuopin xuan and Guo Gong neizhan shiqi Xianggang wenxue ziliao xuan. For an account from the perspective of mainland literary history, see e.g. Liu Denghan, Xianggang wenxue shi, 105–133, 149–174. For consideration of the implications and various interpretations of the term, see Lu Weiluan, “‘Nanlai zuojia’ qianshuo.” For an interesting reevaluation of South-bound Authors’ contributions to Hong Kong literature as such, see Wong Wang-chi et al., Foxiang Xianggang: lishi, wenhua, weilai, 105–115. And for an account of the South-bound Authors’ activities in the wider context of the relations between Hong Kong and Shanghai, see Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Shanghai Modern, 324–331. 23. See Fang Jigen and Wang Guangming, Gang Ao xinwen shiye gaiguan, 63–66 for Dagong bao, and 33–35 on Hong Kong newspaper activity during the period of the Sino-Japanese War more generally; also Li Gucheng, Xianggang baoye bainian cangsang, 153–188. 24. Fang Jigen and Wang Guangming, Gang Ao xinwen shiye gaiguan, 26–27, 76–82. 25. Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 18–19. 26. Poshek Fu, “Between Nationalism and Colonialism,” 207–208. This essay adopts the contemporary phrase “Central Plains syndrome” to elucidate attitudes toward Hong Kong’s film and culture on the part of both wartime émigrés and subsequent critics. I have benefited from personal communications from Professor Fu on the subject as well. 27. Li Gucheng, Xianggang baoye bainian cangsang, 156–157. 28. Xingdao ribao, August 1, 1938. 29. Population figures from Hong Kong Annual Report 1952, 27, and Hong Kong Report 1966, 2. 30. Fang Jigen, Gang Ao xinwen shiye gaiguan, 43–46. Other newspapers, less prominent and/or directly backed by the Japanese administration, also published during this period. 31. Ibid., 48–49. The source for these figures is not cited. The 1948 through 1950 editions of the Xianggang nianjian [Hong Kong yearbook] published by Huaqiao ribao list 18 dailies in 1946, 13 in 1947, 18 in 1948, and 23 in 1949; subsequent editions, unfortunately, lack corresponding listings. 32. On the affiliation of newspapers and other publications, and on the background of Hong Kong’s postwar literary activity in general, see William Tay, “Colonialism, the Cold War Era, and Marginal Space.” On political affiliations see also Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 11–17.

268

Notes to Pages 41–44

33. Fang Jigen, Gang Ao xinwen shiye gaiguan, 29, 71–72; Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 20–21. On the paper’s history see also the commemorative volume Cheng bao sishi zhounian jinian, 1939–1979, and the articles published in the fifty-fifth anniversary issue of the newspaper, May 1, 1994. 34. The term “supplement” (fukan) here refers not to physically separate additions to a newspaper (such as the New York Times Book Review) but rather to regularly published subsections within the paper. I give the romanized titles of Chinese newspaper supplements in roman type within quotation marks, to distinguish them from the names of newspapers. Li Jiayuan traces the flourishing of serialized fiction in Hong Kong to Tianguang bao’s (est. 1933) presentation of the works of Jie Ke (Huang Tianshi), Wang Yun (Zhang Wenbing), and Ping Ke (Ceng Zhuoyun) in his Xianggang baoye zatan, 125–128. On the history of China’s newspaper supplements generally, see Wang Wenbin, ed., Zhongguo baozhi de fukan. 35. Fiction already running, respectively: an historical novel by Hu An, a series of mini-mysteries, and an erotic historical tale by Xia Bo (San Su; see the next chapter). 36. On Mou Songting see Ye Hongsheng, “Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lun,” 74. 37. Mr. Stephen Teo has suggested (in an e-mail message dated September 19, 2001) that the term may be a derogatory refererence to South Asian (particulary Tamil) immigrants to southeast Asia. Chapter 3: The Marshes of Mount Liang Beyond the Sea 1. Hong Kong Report 1952, 7. 2. Compare the sketches of postwar Hong Kong’s separation from China in Eric Kit-wai Ma, Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong, 25–28, and in Mingkwan Lee, “Hong Kong Identity—Past and Present.” Ng Ho, “Ai hen Zhongguo: lun Xianggang de liuwang wenyi yu dianying,” analyzes representation of post-1949 exiles in literature and film. The “railway station” metaphor is from (ex-governor) Alexander Grantham, Via Ports (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965), 112, as cited in Ming-kwan Lee, “Hong Kong Identity,”159. 3. Eric Kit-wai Ma, Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong, 25–27; see also Poshek Fu, “Between Nationalism and Colonialism.” 4. One-day stories were frequently labeled as such (yitian wan xiaoshuo), suggesting that the form carried a certain novelty value. 5. Jin Guangyu writes of reading serialized wuxia xiaoshuo during his school days in Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s: “The loyalty of readers in those days was something that the best-selling authors of today can only dream about. A single full-length wuxia novel would be serialized over the span of two or three years, and we would read it without missing a single day. Wolong Sheng’s epic Jinjian diaoling

Notes to Pages 44–51

269

[Golden sword, eagle’s plume] stretched out even further, to some six or seven years. A sixth grader could read it up until the time he entered college; before he knew it, the grim months and years of the awkward age would have passed in an airy fantasy of struggle and bloodshed.” “Yingxiong de yiqian mian,” 24–25. 6. Robert Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 79, as cited in E. K. Ma, Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong, 198. 7. On the role of the newspaper in facilitating the joint imagining of a community, see Anderson, Imagined Communities, especially 32–36. 8. Jin Yong’s Book and Sword was the successor in Xin wanbao’s pages to Liang Yusheng’s second martial arts novel, Caomang longshe zhuan [Dragons and serpents outside the law], which had run from August 11, 1954, through February 5, 1955. Liang’s next work, Qi jian xia Tianshan [Seven swords from Tianshan], began serialization in Dagong bao on February 15, 1956. 9. Xianggang xiaojie riji (the title can also be read as “The Diary of Miss Hong Kong”) was the novel that established the reputation of Xia Yi (Chen Xuanwen, 1922– ), one of Hong Kong’s first successful female writers. Her fiction (romances and social melodramas set in contemporary Hong Kong), essays, and reviews appeared in various newspapers into the 1980s. 10. San Su is the pen name by which the writer born Gao Dexiong (1918– 1981) is most commonly known. San Su, born in Guangzhou, came to Hong Kong in 1944 and soon began working as an editor for Xinsheng wanbao’s fukan supplement. His popular and prolific works appeared in this and other papers for over three decades, at times in as many as fourteen different newspapers on a given day. Certain of his serials also ran for astounding lengths of time: Shigougong ziji continued for more than ten years, with the June 1, 1965, issue of Xin wanbao carrying installment 3085. Some of San Su’s writings will be discussed later in this chapter. See Luo Fu, “Gao Xiong: Xiaosheng Xing Gao.” 11. Hu An was a pen name of the painter and novelist Ren Zhenhan (1907– 1993). His historical romances appeared in Xianggang shangbao and other newspapers during the 1950s and 1960s. Like his better-known contemporary Nangong Bo (Ma Hanyue, 1924–1983), the author specialized in tales of the tragic heroines and femmes fatales of Chinese history. The choice of subject matter for Tianguo yingxiong may have been influenced by the sudden popularity of martial arts fiction. 12. Tang Ren (Yan Qingshu, 1919–1981), originally on the staff of the Shanghai Dagong bao, was transferred to the fledgling Taiwan branch in 1947 and then to Hong Kong in 1949; there he soon moved to the staff of Xin wanbao. His novelizations of modern Chinese history (patriotic in tone, uncompromisingly leftist in viewpoint, and styled on the model of traditional zhanghui fiction) and his

270

Notes to Pages 51–54

“social realist” novels of Hong Kong life were nearly the only fiction from the colony circulated on the mainland prior to the liberalization policies of the 1980s. 13. Compare Leo Ou-fan Lee and Andrew Nathan’s remarks on the periodical press of the first half of the century: “The public . . . read the news much as they read fiction, for gossip and sensationalism. Their own political history as it occurred was perceived by many as a tale of duplicity and revenge no different from the ancient legends of the Three Kingdoms or Water Margin.” “The Beginnings of Mass Culture,” 394. 14. Ng Ho, “Dang chuanshuo siwang de shihou,” 49, 59. 15. Precedents for the psychological and interpersonal dimensions of Jin Yong’s novels can be found in both Liang Yusheng and in certain Old School works, particularly the martial arts melodramas of Wang Dulu. That readers nonetheless saw these aspects of Jin Yong’s work as both distinctive and valuable is suggested by a letter entitled “Shujian enchou lu du hou” [After reading Book and Sword], which appeared in Ming Pao on June 23, 1959. Even allowing for the promotional aspect of its publication, this piece is useful as an early articulation of responses to Jin Yong’s work. It lauds the novel’s exaltation of the chivalric xia spirit, the excitement of its plot, and the variety and lifelikeness of the characters’ personalities. Over a third of its (brief ) length is devoted to discussion of the romantic plots: “An additional point is the portrayal of the romantic aspect; this is a unique characteristic of Mr. Jin Yong’s martial arts novels.” 16. Shujian enchou lu appeared with this title in Taiwan editions, both unauthorized and authorized, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 17. The opening sequence provides an exception that proves the rule. Li Yuanzhi, a secondary character, discovers her tutor’s martial abilities and begs him to accept her as a disciple. The narrative then summarizes her five years of training and progress in two brief paragraphs. 18. Poshek Fu, “Between Nationalism and Colonialism,” 208. 19. Xianggang shangbao, September 5, 1956; the corresponding passage appears in the Ming Ho edition of Bixue jian (Hong Kong, 1975) on pp. 486–487. 20. In its original version, the novel begins with a callow scholar who sets out from his home to see the empire and becomes embroiled with rapacious Ming troops and valiant rebels; this opening constitutes an entry into the Rivers and Lakes, though not from outside the empire’s borders (Xianggang shangbao, January 1–7, 1956). The revised text transforms the young scholar into an overseas Chinese visiting the mainland for the first time—a change that reinforces the paradigm here proposed. For further discussion of this revision see chapter 7. 21. See Ralph C. Croizier, Koxinga and Chinese Nationalism. 22. The original text states that Yuan Chengzhi sets off to “establish a new

Notes to Pages 54–66

271

kingdom overseas” (Xianggang shangbao, December 31, 1956), while the revised version relates that the enterprise involves first driving off the Dutch (Hongmaoguo) pirates infesting the islands (Bixue jian, 736)—an elaboration that reinforces the allusion to Zheng Chenggong. 23. Although Royal Blood avoids the endorsement of Marxist historiography that can be found in Liang Yusheng’s early work, it is certainly possible to read Yuan Chengzhi as a hero concordant with the left’s ideals and interpretations of the past. He supports the common people’s rebellion against a corrupt regime, thwarts the oppressors’ attempts to deploy foreign assistance, and wars against another invading power. He departs the motherland only when all hope of instituting a just and native government seems to have failed. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that Jin Yong offers a less positive picture of Li Zicheng’s uprising than is common in postliberation mainland historiography and historical fiction, portraying it as sliding toward tyranny and debauchery even before the Manchu victory. In this sense Royal Blood may be seen as carrying premonitions of Jin Yong’s later break with the left in both his fiction and his commercial and political careers. 24. See Ng Ho’s suggestion, in relation to Guangdong School martial arts fiction and film, that “certain authors (and film-makers) [may] find in the allegiances sworn at the Red Flower Pavilion a political metaphor for the Communist takeover in China and the consequent rise of ‘underground’ groups dedicated to the restoration of the Republic,” in “Dang chuanshuo siwang de shihou,” 49, 59. 25. I borrow the term “chronotope” from M. M. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” though my usage here is not strictly in line with his theoretical model. 26. Yun Jun’s (Jiang Yunxing) work first appeared in Xianggang shangbao with his illustrations for Royal Blood’s predecessor, Mou Songting’s Highwaymen of Shandong, the illustrating of which he took over from one Huang Shan. Yun Jun’s illustrations thereafter accompanied the serializations and book publications of almost all of Jin Yong’s novels. 27. Classic early works in this vein include Huang Guliu (1908–1977), Xiaqiu zhuan [The tale of Xiaqiu], first serialized in Huashangbao in 1947; Lü Lun (Li Lin, 1911–1988), Qiong xiang [The slums], serialized in the same paper in 1947–1948; and Luo Feng (another pen name of Yan Qingshu, i.e., Tang Ren), Mou gongguan sanji [Notes from a certain villa], serialized in Xin wanbao in 1950 and published in book form as Renzha [Dregs of mankind]. 28. E.g., Zhao Zifan (1924–1986), Ban xialiu shehui [A half-degenerate society], first published in 1953. 29. Jingji riji was serialized in Xinsheng wanbao beginning in 1947. A portion

272

Notes to Pages 66–68

was republished in book form by Dagong shuju, 1953, and a short selection can be found in Huang Jichi et al., eds., Xianggang xiaoshuo xuan, 1948–1969, 1–13. 30. Li Jiayuan, Xianggang baoye zatan, 40–41, traces the use of Cantonese-flavored prose in Hong Kong newspapers (a feature, as we have seen, of some Guangdong School martial arts fiction) to the work of Zheng Guangong (1880–1906) in Zhongguo ribao and other papers during the first decade of the century. Liu Yichang, “Xianggang wenxue de qidian,” 81, argues that the tradition goes back to Wang Tao and the late-nineteenth-century Xunhuan ribao. The postwar sanjidi style is commonly attributed to San Su, though Luo Fu, Nandou wenxing gao, 70–71, argues that San Su’s colleague Liang Houfu deserves equal credit for the innovation. 31. I am indebted to Karen Chan of the Programme in Hong Kong Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for illuminating discussions on San Su and Jingji riji. 32. Huang Zhongming, “Zhu Bajie xiafan ji: Gao Xiong de ‘jie xian feng jin’ xiaoshuo,” surveys Gao Xiong’s (i.e., San Su) work in this genre and mentions related fiction by other authors. 33. According to Mr. Rong Ruo in a letter published in Ming bao yuekan 33.9 (September 1998), 114. I am grateful for the information. 34. Yu Wanchun’s 1851 Shuihu zhuan sequel Dangkou zhi also begins its chapters with 71. The narrator of Beyond the Sea mentions this and other sequels in his self-mocking prefatory remarks: Xianggang shangbao, June 1, 1953. 35. The resonance between this scene and the Xingdao ribao editorial cited in the previous chapter was of course unintended by either author; in the context of the present argument, nonetheless, it offers a suggestive and unifying image of the “harbor of exile.” 36. Scenes in nightclubs, strip bars, and brothels are the sine qua non of this genre, with some tales staging variations on the situation every few episodes. 37. See Wang, Fin-de-siècle Splendor, 271–275. 38. Huang Zhongming “Zhu Bajie xiafan ji,” 204–210. 39. Luo Fu, “Gao Xiong: Xiaosheng Xing Gao,” 72–73. 40. Appearing in Xinsheng wanbao, Guailun lianpian was one of the features that established San Su’s reputation, and inspired numerous imitations. 41. Displacement comedies featuring martial arts heroes are far fewer than those featuring characters such as Sun Wukong or Lü Dongbin; apart from Red Flower Society and Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas, the few examples I have seen include Zhang Yufeng, Yunlei chu nao yezonghui [Yun Lei first raises a ruckus in a nightclub], Dagong bao, January 10, 1960, which stars the heroine of Liang Yusheng’s Pingzong xiaying lu, currently in serialization in the same paper. Legendary characters’ relatively greater affinity for displacement comedy may be due

Notes to Pages 68–74

273

to the deeper sense of cultural familiarity they carry and to their traditional association (in many cases) with tales of fantasy and satire. It also stems from the fact that, as I argue here, while the New School heroes may be borrowed for comedy of this type, their raison d’être has more to do with nostalgia and idealized cultural values than with burlesque as such. 42. See the scene where Yuan Chengzhi and his companions have captured several pistols from the foreigners: “Chen Qingzhu said, ‘Gunpowder was originally a Chinese product. We’ve used it for hunting and making firecrackers, but since these Westerners learned about it they’ve used it to go and kill people. There are a hundred or more foreign soldiers in this troop; a hundred or more guns firing is no joke.’ They all realized that the power of these firearms was more than a match for the martial arts, and they fell silent, searching for a plan” (482). The original version in Xianggang shangbao, September 2, 1956, puts the spoken lines in Yuan Chengzhi’s mouth, and omits the explicit statement that “the power of the firearms was more than a match for the martial arts”; the implication, however, is the same. 43. Poshek Fu, “Between Nationalism and Colonialism,” 213. 44. For Xin Yan as narrator, see the first installment, Ming Pao, February 21, 1960, where his voice is strongest; he actually fades from the text rather quickly, leaving his supposed amanuensis Mai Xuan to take over narratorial responsibility. For the characters’ linguistic difficulties, see, for example, in the February 27 installment, Zhou Qi’s conversation with a bellhop. Note that upon arriving in Hong Kong, the heroes do speak Cantonese (which of itself produces the same humorous incongruity as does Xin Yan’s narration) but are confounded by new coinages and Hong Kongisms. 45. The Guangdong heroes have also enjoyed continuous rebirth in Hong Kong’s television serials and film, up through (and presumably not ending with) the Huang Feihong movies and serials of the 1990s. Chapter 4: National Passions 1. John Durham Peters, “Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora,” 20. 2. Ibid. 3. “Exile,” “diaspora”—both the terms themselves and the various formations they have referred to are deeply implicated with the classical and Judaeo-Christian traditions of the West. Among the Chinese terms carrying related associations is of course that with an intimate affinity with the genre of martial arts fiction: the Rivers and Lakes (jianghu). The implications of political misfortune, geographic removal from the political and cultural center, and yearning for a lost home carried by the term “exile” are all associated with the notion of the Rivers and Lakes in its early usages. Associations later accruing to the Rivers and Lakes, in turn, bear

274

Notes to Pages 75–80

some resemblance to aspects of the modern usage of “diaspora.” The “brotherhood of the Rivers and Lakes” of Chinese fiction and the popular imaginary was rarely, if ever, conceived of as existing outside the geographical limits of the Chinese empire as a whole. Nonetheless, this community’s intrinsic mobility, and its reliance on lateral bonds of association to create a society functioning by its own rules in geographical and discursive spaces neglected by or inaccessible to the centers of orthodox authority, endow it with structural and metaphoric similarities to modern models of diaspora. On the history of the meanings and associations of the Rivers and Lakes, see Chen Pingyuan, Qiangu wenren xiake meng, 187–228. 4. A locus classicus for comments on both points is Ni Kuang, Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, 23–29. Jin Yong himself defends the ending in the 1976 afterword to the revised edition. 5. Besides discussion within the works of Ni Kuang, Chen Mo, and others, Flying Fox has inspired at least two monographs to date: Wen Ruian, Xi Xueshan feihu yu Yuanyang dao, and Kai Portmann, Der Fliegende Fuchs vom Schneeberg. An abridged translation of the novel by Robin Wu appeared in the New York–based bimonthly Bridge in 1972; a full translation by Olivia Mok, Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, was published by Hong Kong’s Chinese University Press in 1993. For comparison of the English versions, see Sharon Lai, “Translating Jin Yong: A Review of Four English Translations.” 6. This version of the historical background is offered by the extra-diegetic narrator in the first day of the novel’s newspaper serialization, and provided in a somewhat different form by a storyteller within the diegetic world in the revised version of the novel. 7. The characters’ ancestries also, of course, make a claim for the literary and generic ancestors of the novel in which they appear, asserting its affiliation with The Water Margin and with Shuo Yue quan zhuan [The complete story of Yue Fei], a Qing novelization of the patriotic general’s career. 8. In the fates of the two protagonists’ mothers, likewise, we see the projection of this equivalence of personal morality and patriotic loyalty onto the domain of female virtue. Yang Tiexin’s wife, Bao Xiruo, becomes the concubine of a foreign prince, only to discover that her husband is still alive; though she abandons the usurper’s household, she and her husband end up committing suicide in shame over their son’s disloyalty. Guo Xiaotian’s wife, Li Ping, leads the life of a virtuous widow among the Mongols, and finally kills herself before the Mongol Khan to protest his plans to invade her homeland. 9. In the afterword to the revised edition (864), Jin Yong asserts that the “true protagonist” of the novel is not Yuan Chengzhi but “Yuan Chonghuan, and after him the Young Lord of the Golden Serpent—two characters who do not actually appear in the book,” that is, who are present only through analeptic narration.

Notes to Pages 81–87

275

10. Discussions of the martial arts within Jin Yong’s novels naturally abound in the secondary literature. Among the most perceptive is Yan Jiayan, “Bianhuan baiduan bi sheng hua”; see also the extended treatments in Chen Mo, Jin Yong xiaoshuo zhi wuxue; Ni Kuang, Zai kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo; and Pan Guosen, Wu lun Jin Yong. 11. Jin Yong’s afterword to Dragon Sabre, 1661. 12. Chen Mo, Langman zhi lü, 88–93, offers a perceptive comparison of the two novels, which addresses several of the points discussed here. 13. The original, together with the preface that narrates the story of the geese, can be found, for example, in Yuan Haowen shi ci ji, 636–637. 14. In this sense Companion can be seen as reviving or reinventing a popular subgenre of Qing vernacular fiction, the ernü yingxiong xiaoshuo (lover/hero novel), named for Wen Kang’s 1878 Ernü yingxiong zhuan and often characterized as a cross-grafting of caizi jiaren (scholar-beauty) romance with xiayi chivalric fiction. For a recent study of this subgenre, see Martin Huang, “From Caizi to Yingxiong.” 15. The phrases cited here derive from the Analects and Mencius respectively. 16. An analysis of Companion’s characterizations and treatment of romance, Zeng Zhaoxu’s “Jin Yong bi xia de xingqing shijie” [The emotional world of Jin Yong’s fiction] appears as a special appendix to Ni Kuang’s Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, the first published volume of Jin Yong commentary. Subsequent discussions of the topic are too numerous to detail here. 17. See, for example, Denton, Modern Chinese Literary Thought, 5–12. 18. The technique takes its name from the first line of Jiang Yan’s (444–505) Rhapsody on Separation: “Of the things that bring gloom and dissolve the soul, / Nothing can match separation!” (Translation by David R. Knechtges from Xiao Tong, Wen Xuan, 3:201). The allusion expressly marks the grief of parting as Yang Guo’s primary psychic motivation; given the role of other erotic energies in his development, however, it is not inappropriate to note that in the idiom of Hong Kong’s popular fiction the phrase “soul-dissolving” (xiaohun) often connotes sexual climax. Chapter 5: The Empire of the Text 1. Zhongguo shibao (Taipei), November 4, 1998, 5. The description of the conference is based on my own observations and on reports published in Zhongguo shibao and Lianhe bao, November 4–8, 1998. For an overview of the conference and of the Jin Yong phenomenon in Taiwan, see also Teng Sue-feng, “Jianghu lushang bu duxing: Huashan lun Jin Yong,” and “Yijiujiuba Jin Yong lai Tai quancheng zhuizong baodao.” Papers from the conference have been published in Wang Qiugui, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji.

276

Notes to Pages 91–114

2. Wang Rongwen, “Jin Yong yanjiu de xin qidian,” 4. 3. The Taipei conference was not the first of its kind. Academic conferences devoted to Jin Yong and his works were held in March 1998 at Dali and Hangzhou and in May of that year at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Conferences on the martial arts novel more generally began with the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s 1987 International Conference on Chinese Martial Arts Fiction and a similar meeting at Taiwan’s Tamkang University in 1990. Of the 1998 Jin Yong conferences, the Boulder meeting has figured most prominently in subsequent reports, in part because of the international prestige suggested by its setting and participants; see Ming bao yuekan 33.8 (1998), 21–50, and the conference papers published as Jin Yong xiaoshuo yu ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue, ed. Lin Lijun. While in session, nonetheless, it attracted fairly little on-site attention, and I have chosen the Taipei conference for discussion here because the “native” setting allowed for a much fuller display of the intersection of academic, commercial, media, and fan elements characteristic of the Jin Yong phenomenon. 4. The duelling broadcasts of Companion within Taiwan were only one facet of the wider circulation of Jin Yong–based serials throughout the Chinese-speaking world. “At present,” noted Jiang Xuewen in a November 2, 1998, article in Beijing wanbao, “Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland are all broadcasting the television serial The Giant Eagle and Its Companion, based on the work of Jin Yong. The versions apparently differ, with the mainland watching a Hong Kong production, Hong Kong watching a Taiwan production, and Taiwan watching one from Singapore—rather an interesting phenomenon.” The Companion broadcasts in Taiwan had ended before the opening of the conference, but TTV was now rebroadcasting its 1993 production of the novel’s sequel, Dragon Sabre. 5. On the comic adaptations see Zhongguo shibao, November 4, 1998, 3; Zhongguo shibao, November 8, 1998, 11; and Lianhe bao, November 8, 1998, 14. 6. Translator’s note in Jin Yong and Ikeda Daisaku, Tanqiu yige canlan de shiji, 473. 7. Zhongguo shibao, November 4, 1998, 3. 8. Ibid.; see also Lianhe bao, November 4, 1998, 14. 9. The Jin Yong Web site, “Jin Yong chaguan,” http://jinyong.ylib.com.tw/. 10. Zhongguo shibao, November 4, 1998, 3; November 8, 1998, 11. 11. Zhongguo shibao, November 4, 1998, 5. 12. Jin Yong withdrew from editorial and financial control of Ming Pao in a gradual and complex series of maneuvers beginning with the announcement of his retirement in 1989 and the company’s going public in 1991. His sale of controlling interest to the relatively unknown Yu Pun-hoi (Yu Pinhai) excited considerable rumor and speculation, some of which is recounted in Jianying Zha, China Pop,

Notes to Pages 115–119

277

168–169. In October 1994 Yu was investigated by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for concealing a criminal record, and this scandal and subsequent financial difficulties led to the sale of the controlling stake in Ming Pao Enterprises to Malaysian timber magnate Tiong Hiew King (Zhang Xiaoqing) in 1995. See Jonathan Karp, “Yu Should Know,” and Faith Keenan, “Heir to Misfortune,” as well as the relevant sections of Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jing Yong yu baoye. 13. There exists no authorized or fully researched biography of Jin Yong. The earliest effort, Leng Xia’s Jin Yong zhuan, published in Hong Kong in 1994 and subsequently in revised editions in the mainland and Taiwan, is sometimes cited here as a source or example of “common knowledge”; it recycles previously published material and has been repudiated by its subject. Yang Lige’s Jin Yong chuanshuo offers some new information and a less uniformly hagiographic perspective but is otherwise largely derivative of Leng Xia’s volume. Other publications representative of the “legend” include Fei Yong and Zhong Xiaoyi’s Jin Yong chuanqi; Guiguan gongzuoshi’s Xia zhi dazhe: Jin Yong pingzhuan; and Sun Yixue’s Jin Yong zhuan. The latter is useful for its coverage of more recent events and incidents. Cheung KwaiYeung’s Jin Yong yu baoye, though focused on Jin Yong’s journalistic career, sets new standards for original research. I have just received Fu Guoyong’s Jin Yong zhuan, which despite the limits of its access to archival materials appears exemplary in its thoroughness and careful documentation. 14. Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 40–41. 15. Jin Yong and Shen Baoxin subsequently revived their original plan, publishing the fiction magazine Yema from 1962 to 1969. See ibid., 169. 16. For an analysis of the economics of tongren bao in 1950s Hong Kong, see ibid., 21–23. 17. Circulation figures here and elsewhere are from ibid., 414–415. Cheung’s account of the early Ming pao (44–82) is made particularly valuable by the author’s success collecting early issues of the newspaper absent from, or present only in mutilated form within, the available microfilms. He gives a complete (although illegibly reduced) reproduction of the first issue on pages 62–65. 18. The bulk of the June 6, 1959, editorial is quoted in Leng Xia, Jin Yong zhuan, 82–83. 19. Ibid., 84. Often the sensationalist elements of the early Ming Pao are overlooked or simply not known, as in a Hunan Television reporter’s question in a September 2000 interview with Jin Yong reprinted in Jiang Di and Yang Hui, eds., Jin Yong: Zhongguo lishi dashi, 35: “Ming Pao, which you established, is universally recognized as a clean and serious newspaper. Today competition in the media is extremely fierce, and a tendency toward disregard for the truth and malicious hype is on the rise. What is your opinion of this unfortunate atmosphere?”

278

Notes to Pages 121–122

20. I have not identified the source or specific referent of the “catch-phrase borrowed from the left.” The comment, on its face unremarkable, had perhaps recently been employed by some leader or spokesman of the Communist Party. 21. A 1950 journey to Beijing in hopes of joining the foreign service evidenced Jin Yong’s enthusiasm for the promise of the new China. But problems with his family background and wartime education at the KMT’s Central Political Academy in Chongqing apparently thwarted his plans; and this disappointment, together with his father’s subsequent execution as a member of the landlord class, presumably added a personal color to his evolving assessment of the Communist regime. Criticism of his work at Great Wall as “bourgeois” in 1957 encouraged his withdrawal from the film world and stoked his interest in leaving the left’s newspapers to found his own publication. See Leng Xia, Jin Yong zhuan, 39–44, 73–78, and Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 26–41. 22. Cheung Kwai-yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 107–110; Leng Xia, Jin Yong zhuan, 97. 23. Summaries of the “atom bombs and britches” controversy and of the editorial wars of 1964, together with excerpts from a number of the relevant columns, can be found in Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 126–133, and Leng Xia, Jin Yong zhuan, 108–137. Much of this material is missing from the Ming Pao microfilms generally available. 24. Quoted in Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 150–151. 25. Ian Scott, Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong, 104. 26. On the local, “Cantonese” flavor of the early Ming Pao, and Jin Yong’s emulation of Sing pao in particular, see Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 69, 89–90. 27. The term “nonprofit” indicated the publication’s ideals rather than its financial or institutional basis and was subsequently removed from the masthead as potentially misleading. 28. Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 172. 29. Jin Yong’s afterword to the revised edition of A Deadly Secret gives the date of the original serialization in Southeast Asia Weekly as 1963. Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 173, dates Southeast Asia Weekly from 1964. I have not obtained the access to the original publications, which would resolve this discrepancy in dates. 30. For overviews of Ming Pao’s sister publications see Cheung Kwai-Yeung, Jin Yong yu baoye, 168–177, and Leng Xia, Jin Yong zhuan, 140–144, 162–167. 31. Huo Jingjue makes this general point in Jinxue da chendian, 48–49. Cheung Kwai-Yeung’s Jin Yong yu baoye introduces a number of the figures involved in Jin Yong’s various publications.

Notes to Pages 125–133

279

32. See Hugh D. R. Baker, “Life in the Cities: The Emergence of Hong Kong Man,” and Lau Siu-kai and Kuan Hsin-chi, The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese, 2. 33. On the political framework, see Ian Scott, Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong, and on its implications for identity formation, Ming Kwan Lee, “Hong Kong Identity—Past and Present.” Eric Kit-wai Ma’s Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong gives a useful overview of discussions of Hong Kong identity formation as well as detailed analysis of the role of television. 34. “Fakan ci” [Inaugural remarks], Ming bao yuekan 1.1 (January 1966): 2. For similar sentiments see also, in the same issue, the editor’s remarks on page 101, and Chen Wanru, “Haiwai xuyao yiben sixiangxing de kanwu” [The overseas Chinese need an intellectual journal], 3–8. 35. Jin Yong and Jiang Jingkuan, “Qiao he lu” [A bridge and a road], Ming bao yuekan 1.1 (January 1966): 10. 36. “Fakan ci,” 2. 37. See, for example, Jin Yong’s remarks on the magazine’s thirty-fifth anniversary in “Qunxing canlan yue huaming.” 38. Letter from Li Liming, Ming bao yuekan 2.8 (August 1967): 97. 39. Ming bao yuekan 2.8 (August 1967): 100. Chapter 6: Beyond the Rivers and Lakes 1. The narrative involves two different locations named “Hengshan,” represented by different initial characters but homophonous in Mandarin and identical in pinyin romanization. For the sake of clarity in this English-language discussion, I will refer to the first (the southern Hengshan, in modern Hunan province) as Heng Shan and the second (the northern Hengshan, in modern Shanxi) as Hengshan. 2. For a reading of this story’s treatment of the theme of revenge, see Leo Oufan Lee, Voices from the Iron House, 34–37. 3. The trope of blindness, a leitmotif throughout the work, is a central figure in the last of the climactic combats as well, the chaotic and aimless slaughter in a lightless cavern beneath Huashan that annihilates three of the Five Mountain schools. 4. For an example of such an interpretation, see Lin Baochun, Jiegou Jin Yong, 13–19. 5. For a recent study of the theme of reclusion and an introduction to the vast literature on the topic, see Berkowitz, Patterns of Disengagement. In the preface to a collection of essays on his fiction, Jin Yong identifies (Confucian /Mohist) action and (Buddhist /Daoist) reclusion as two fundamental paths available to men in the Chinese tradition, and attributes his characters’ overall predilection for the latter

280

Notes to Pages 134–150

to his own views and life experiences; see “Xiao xu: nan zhujue de liangzhong leixing.” The aim of the present discussion is to read Linghu Chong’s choice of reclusion in the light of Wanderer’s specific thematic agenda. 6. One version of the story of Xi Kang’s death can be found in the fifth-century collection of anecdotes Shishuo xinyu [A new account of tales of the world], 6/2. The novel gives its account of Xi Kang in Qu Yang’s voice on pp. 266 and 275–276. For a study of this figure, see van Gulik, Hsi K’ang and His Poetical Essay on the Lute. 7. The retreat is located outside Luoyang, the site of the bamboo grove made famous by Xi Kang and his companions; Linghu Chong and Ren Yingying’s meeting in this setting is thus another element in the novel’s recasting of the traditions of homosocial reclusion into the revised context of heterosexual romance. 8. The role of music in Linghu Chong and Yingying’s relationship is mirrored by its role in that of Lin Pingzhi and Yue Lingshan: Yue Lingshan’s humming of a folk song from Lin’s Fujian home is the first sign of their budding intimacy, and she dies with this tune still on her lips. 9. Chen Pingyuan, Qiangu wenren xiake meng, 192. 10. One distinction between the perspectives of Ode to Gallantry and Wanderer is that the former work represents the martial arts as a practice retaining the potential for transcendence. Vanished champions of the Martial Grove, presumed victims of the strife of the Rivers and Lakes, are discovered in the caverns of a mysterious island, blissfully lost in the unending exegesis of a poem by Li Bo carved upon the walls and understood to conceal the key to martial mastery. The protagonist’s solving of the riddle induces an ecstatic enlightenment. In Wanderer the martial secrets inscribed in the caves beneath Huashan lead to an orgy of blind slaughter; the martial arts as a practice have become functionally equivalent to the Rivers and Lakes as a milieu, and similarly represent the irredeemable viciousness of the quest for power. 11. The authorized mainland edition published by Sanlian in 1994 omits the text commencing with (in my translation) “During the years . . .” and ending with “. . . intentionally allude to the Cultural Revolution.” The 1998 commentary edition from Wenhua yishu chubanshe omits most of the same text but includes within Feng Qiyong’s comments on relevant passages of the novel itself many pointed references to “the events of thirty years ago.” 12. Huters, “Lives in Profile,” 269. 13. “Obsession with China: The Moral Burden of Modern Chinese Literature,” in Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 533–554. 14. Compare Theodore Huters’ perception of a parity between literature and politics hidden at the heart of the Chinese realist project, inherent in the sharing of “an ideal of the powers of representation to bring imagined worlds into exis-

Notes to Pages 151–166

281

tence” (“Ideologies of Realism in Modern China,” 161), and his coeditors’ more general reflections on the distribution of discursive power, in the introduction to Huters et al., Culture and State in Chinese History. Chapter 7: Revision and Canonization 1. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. 2. See the historicized account in Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. For an exploration of the applicability of Bourdieu’s theories to twentieth-century China, see Michel Hockx’s introduction to The Literary Field of Twentieth-Century China, and other essays collected in this volume. 3. See Chen Pingyuan, “Literature High and Low: ‘Popular Fiction’ in Twentieth-Century China.” 4. Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed,” 45, 51. 5. Wendy Larson, “Liu Yichang’s Jiutu: Literature, Gender, and Fantasy in Contemporary Hong Kong,” 89. 6. “Foreword,” in Xianggang duanpian xiaoshuo xuan (wushi niandai), ed. Liu Yichang, 5. 7. In the “Friends of Ming Pao” (“Ming bao zhi you”) letter column, which had started publication two days earlier, on July 1. 8. Shediao yingxiong zhuan, er ji, from Emei Studios, directed by Hu Peng from a screenplay by Yu Fei, starring Cao Dahua and Rong Xiaoyi, released June 3, 1959. 9. Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production,” 42; “The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods,” 76–77. 10. Huo Jingjue, Jinxue da chendian, 50, makes the simpler but equally cogent point that the poor scripting and production values of many of the television and film adaptations may encourage readers to perceive the more polished novels as “higher quality” works of art. 11. Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production,” 51. 12. Ni Kuang first voices these suspicions concerning the novel’s resolution— which he sees as a betrayal of its properly tragic essence—in Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, 34–36. 13. See Jin Yong, “Man tan Shujian enchou lu,” and “Xueshan feihu you meiyou xiewan?” 14. Luo Fu identifies Liang Yusheng as the author in Liu Su (Luo Fu), “Xiaying xia de Liang Yusheng,” 141–142. 15. Tong Yanzhi (Liang Yusheng), “Xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo liang da mingjia,” 149. 16. I am grateful to Mr. Liao Futian for allowing me to examine his bound collections of the original newspaper printings of Xiake xing and Tianlong babu.

282

Notes to Pages 169–181

17. A danxing ben edition of Jin Yong’s Tianlong babu from Wushi chubanshe (the publisher of Martial Arts and History) provides the exact date of publication for most of its thirty-five volumes, and so gives evidence of the speed with which book publication followed the appearance of the text in the newspapers. Volumes appear at regular four-week intervals. Volume 7, for example, dated March 20, 1964, presents material that ran in Ming Pao between February 18 and March 16. The final volume is dated June 3, 1966, only a week after the novel’s conclusion in the newspaper on May 27. 18. The account in this chapter of early editions is based primarily on my own research in Hong Kong. See also Lin Baochun, “Jin Yong xiaoshuo banben chakao” for invaluable information on early Taiwan editions. 19. Xianggang shangbao, October 19, 1956, 6. 20. Ye Hongsheng gives examples of variant editions of Shediao yingxiong zhuan in “Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shilun,” 108–109 n. 66. For a more detailed table of pirated and altered editions in Taiwan, see Lin Baochun, “Jin Yong xiaoshuo banben chakao,” 203–206. 21. Xianggang shangbao, December 18, 1956. 22. Leng Xia, Jin Yong zhuan, 136. 23. Xianggang shangbao, December 15, 1956. 24. The January 1, 1970, edition of Ming bao wanbao carries installment 32 of the “Completely New Revised Edition: Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge: All Rights Reserved: With Additions and Deletions, Rewritten and Revised.” Although I have not been able to consult the previous month’s issues, the revised edition’s serialization evidently began on December 1, 1969. Unlike the serialization of subsequent revised texts, the presentation of the revised Book and Sword seems not to have been continuous; the novel is absent from the March and September issues of the paper that I have seen, and the March 1, 1971, Ming bao wanbao carries installment 152. Access to a more complete run of Ming bao wanbao would allow clarification of the timetable of Book and Sword’s revision and republication; in any event, the situation seems somewhat at odds with Jin Yong’s statement in the afterword of The Deer and the Cauldron (2132) that he began the entire project of revision in March 1970. 25. The second revision of Book and Sword was published in a deluxe largeprint edition by Taiwan’s Yuanliu in 2001, and the Ming Ho edition was a center of attention at the 2002 Hong Kong Book Fair. In early 2003 Guangzhou chubanshe, which took over the mainland rights from Sanlian, published a Collected Works containing the “final revised editions” (zhongdingben) of both Book and Sword and Royal Blood. 26. See, for example, Ni Kuang, Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, 14–18; and Yang Xing’an, Jin Yong xiaoshuo shi tan, 93–107. Ye Hongsheng views the “literarization”

Notes to Pages 181–184

283

of Jin Yong’s novels as unfair to the practice of other martial arts authors: see his “‘Toutian huanri’ de shi yu fei.” 27. Li Yijian, “Yi jingdian wenxue ‘gaixie’ de Jin Yong xiaoshuo.” 28. In general, Jin Yong seems to have revised his early works more extensively than the later ones, a circumstance presumably reflecting reconsideration of his early efforts in the light of standards and preferences developed over the course of his writing career. (This point awaits verification through systematic studies of all of the revisions.) With regard to Royal Blood in particular, Jin Yong has several times remarked on the extent of his revisions. The revised text was first serialized in Ming bao wanbao beginning May 24, 1971. Here the novel is entitled Bixue Jinshe jian, and in his introductory remarks to the first day’s installment, the author describes the process of revision as follows: “The conclusion to the original work was far too perfunctory and has been completely rewritten. A few secondary characters, such as Hou Fangcheng, Zu Dashou, Zu Zhongshou, and others, have also been reworked. Internal discrepancies and careless language have been polished and revised. The original book’s twenty-five chapters have been changed to twelve, and the chapter titles also altered.” In the afterword to the Ming Ho edition of 1975, the author explicitly states that “Royal Blood has undergone two fairly major revisions, which have added some 20 percent to its length. The effort I have put into revision has been greatest for this book” (864). 29. See Jin Yong’s afterword for Shujian enchou lu, 869. 30. Yang Xing’an, Jin Yong xiaoshuo shi tan, 94–97, points out how the revised ending is integrated with the new episode set in Shengjing—at the price, he deems, of weakening the original’s characterizations and thrillingly precipitous plotting. 31. See Lin Baochun, Jiegou Jin Yong, 181–183, 211, 231. 32. Ma Kwok-ming makes mention of this aspect of the revision in “Jin Yong de wuxia xiaoshuo yu Xianggang,” 91. 33. On the affinity between the perspectives of Sword of Loyalty and The Deer and the Cauldron, see also Song Weijie, “Minzu guojia, geren shenfen, lishi jiyi,” 77, and the discussion of The Deer and the Caldron in chapter 8 of this book. 34. When I presented this portion of my research as a paper at the International Conference on Jin Yong’s Novels in Taipei, November 1998, Jin Yong, who was present in the audience, commented that his reworking of the opening of the novel was inspired in part by his acquaintance with several overseas Chinese from Indonesia who returned to China with idealistic hopes of aiding in the rebuilding of the nation, only to run afoul of the Cultural Revolution’s purges and paranoia toward outside influences. 35. Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, 142–143. In Jin Yong’s case, of course, the risks commonly associated with the long production cycle were actually quite small; the popularity and commercial value of his fiction were already proven, and even

284

Notes to Pages 184–194

during the course of his ten years of labor, he offered the fruits to his readers on a daily basis through serialization in Ming bao wanbao. 36. “‘Toutian huanri’ de shi yu fei,” 333; see likewise Yang Xing’an, Jin Yong xiaoshuo shi tan, 106. 37. On the “fetishization” of traditional Chinese culture in the Ming Ho editions, see Lin Linghan, “Wenhua gongye yu wenhua rentong,” 232–236. Huo Jingjue, Jinxue da chendian, 27, derides the revised edition’s “elevation” of Jin Yong’s work through the expenditure of effort on factors (binding, illustrations, poetic chapter headings, historical footnotes, etc.) extrinsic to the texts themselves. Lin Boachun, Jiegou Jin Yong, 212–221, offers a detailed analysis of Jin Yong’s reworking of his chapter titles, which he judges a virtuoso display of literary talent not entirely harmonized with the body of the texts. Wu Hongyi, “Jin Yong xiaoshuo zhong de jiu shici,” argues that the pains Jin Yong took in this regard were a response to the criticisms of his early use of verse advanced in Tong Yanzhi’s “Xinpai wuxia xiaoshu liang da mingjia.” Chapter 8: Beyond Martial Arts Fiction 1. The relevant articles are “Zhonggong zhongyang fu zhuxi Deng Xiaoping de tanhua jilu,” and Zhe Hui, “Zhongguo zhi lü: Zha Liangyong xiansheng fangwen ji.” See also the accounts of this trip in Cheung Kwai-yeung and Leng Xia. 2. Jin Yong’s editorials on the Hong Kong question from this period are collected in Jin Yong, Xianggang de qiantu. 3. For Jin Yong’s account of this meeting see Jin Yong /Zha Liangyong, “Beiguo chuchun you suo si.” 4. In this case I make an exception to my general use of the Ming Ho editions’ English titles for Jin Yong’s works, adopting instead the title of John Minford’s translation, published by Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, beginning in 1997. Translations from the novel included in this chapter are nonetheless my own unless otherwise indicated. 5. Jin Yong, “Wei Xiaobao zhe xiao jiahuo!” The essay has been frequently reprinted, for example, in Ni Kuang, San kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, and Liu Tianci, Wei Xiaobao shengong. Citations of the essay in this chapter are keyed to the Ming bao yuekan publication. 6. Jin Yong, afterword to The Deer and the Cauldron, 2131. 7. Ni Kuang, Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, 73. 8. Ibid., 80. 9. Ibid., 92–93, 130–133. 10. Jin Yong, “Wei Xiaobao zhe xiao jiahuo!” 26. 11. “Luoji shan xia zhengshuo Wei Xiaobao,” 27. 12. Another index of the unique interest, affection, and controversy aroused

Notes to Pages 194–201

285

by the figure of Wei Xiaobao is the continued appearance within the field of appreciative “Jinology” of monographs devoted to him alone, including Liu Tianci, Wei Xiaobao shengong; Feng Liangnu, Chuangye yu Luding ji; Jin Ge, Wei Xiaobao qishi lu; and Zhang Mu, Keyi de xiaolian: huashuo Wei Xiaobao. These are popular rather than scholarly works; several of them expound upon Wei Xiaobao’s lessons for the conduct of business and life. 13. Jin Yong, “Wei Xiaobao zhe xiao jiahuo!” 26. 14. This aspect of my reading takes inspiration from (though it does not pretend to the theoretical rigor of ) Bourdieu’s analysis of Flaubert’s Sentimental Education as a work that “reconstitutes in an extraordinarily exact manner the structure of the social world in which it was produced and even the mental structures which, fashioned by these social structures, form the generative principle of the work in which these principles are revealed” (The Rules of Art, 31–32). It is inspired also by Lin Linghan’s approach to The Deer and the Cauldron in his “Wenhua gongye yu wenhua rentong.” 15. The material included in chapter 1 of the 1981 revised edition was designated a prologue (xiezi) in the 1969 newspaper serialization. Minford returns to the latter usage in his 1997 translation. 16. Biographical information about the historical Huang, Gu, and Lü can be found in Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 351–354, 421–426, and 551–552 respectively; a sketch of the Ming History incident appears on 205–206. On Gu and Lü’s views in the context of seventeenth-century anti-Manchuism, see Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, 25–26, and the references therein. 17. The novel Yinglie zhuan, known under a variety of titles, recounts the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty and the establishment of the Han Ming dynasty by Zhu Yuanzhang (who reigned as the Hongwu emperor, 1368–1399) and his generals. Extant editions of the novel date from as early as the late sixteenth century; The Deer and the Cauldron represents this material as a favorite theme of seventeenth-century storytellers. 18. Wei Xiaobao’s practice resembles the creation of “popular culture” in the sense outlined by (among others) Fiske: ephemeral, situational, and functional, constructed by individuals out of the materials made available to them by the “culture industries.” See John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 103ff. Whether Fiske’s model or others of cultural production can be properly applied to the historical conditions of early Qing China is of course not at issue in the present analysis of Jin Yong’s fictional representation of a cultural terrain. 19. This narrative path also recalls that of Royal Blood, which leads a young scholar through encounters with marauders, with a righteous goodfellow, and finally with a Ming loyalist organization and the novel’s protagonist.

286

Notes to Pages 202–205

20. Wei himself tries in vain to tally up his services to the emperor (Luding ji, 2092): “I’ve already done the seven great deeds,” he thought to himself. “The first was killing Oboi; the second was saving the old Emperor; the third was saving his Majesty by throwing myself in front of his body on Wutaishan; the fourth was saving the Empress Dowager; the fifth was hooking up with Mongolia and Tibet; the sixth was destroying the Divine Dragon Sect; the seventh was capturing Wu Yingxiong; the eighth was recommending Zhang Yong and Zhao Liangdong for the quelling of Wu Sangui; the ninth was the taking of Albazin—too many, there are too many! If I don’t count the small deeds, there are exactly seven great ones, no more and no less.” At this point he couldn’t be bothered to say exactly which seven of these deeds should be the great ones. . . . 21. The details of his first appearance are telling: Mao Shiba, confronted by a salt-smuggler within the Vernal Delights brothel, insults him by challenging his paternity and his mother’s virtue: “Have you forgotten your own father’s name?” One of the prostitutes present laughs out loud at this barb, and receives a slap from another of the smugglers—at which point a youth of twelve or thirteen years dashes out, spouting obscenities at the man who has assaulted his mother. 22. Minford points out a fundamental association between the (loss of the) penis and Wei Xiaobao’s name (“Trinket” in Minford’s rendition): “Castration [of the court eunuchs] was performed by a specialist for a fee of six taels, and both the scrotum and the penis were removed. The severed parts, known as the bao or ‘treasure’ (it is interesting to note that Trinket’s Chinese name, Xiaobao, means ‘little treasure’), were processed, placed in a container, sealed, and then placed on a high shelf.” Jin Yong, The Deer and the Cauldron: the First Book, trans. John Minford, xxvi. 23. Thus Wei, on 1957: “Toward Your Majesty I maintain loyalty (zhongxin), and toward my friends I maintain honor (yiqi). But you can’t have your cake and eat it too, so all your servant could do was put his tail between his legs and go off fishing on Winner Takes All.” 24. The emperor evidences this understanding of Wei’s motives in their final interview, when Wei pledges money for the relief of typhoon victims on Taiwan. Kangxi praises his “loyalty to the sovereign and love of the people” while musing to himself that “he’s honoring our friendship (yiqi), but I doubt that there’s any real love of the people involved” (2101, 2102). 25. The scene thus recapitulates an earlier conversation between Wei and the Kangxi emperor. Enthusiastic over the emperor’s plan to dedicate a shrine to the Ming loyalist Shi Kefa, Wei offers that “according to the storytellers, the greatest of the ‘loyal subjects and righteous men’ were Lord Yue Fei for one and His Lordship

Notes to Pages 208–212

287

Guan Di for another.” When he proposes that Kangxi dedicate shrines to these two heroes as well, the emperor patiently explains that “Yue Fei’s foes were the Jin troops. The Qing was originally called the Latter Jin; Jin is the same as Qing, and the Jin troops are the same as Qing troops. We’re not going to concern ourselves with a temple for Lord Yue” (1547–1548). The tales that constitute Wei’s stock of learning have failed to equip him with what the emperor’s formal schooling has provided, an understanding of recent events’ historical and ideological context. 26. Wei Xiaobao’s mangling of proverbs (chengyu) is perhaps the most characteristic expression of his position in the cultural system—his illiteracy, his gleeful willingness to (mis)appropriate, ape, and distort the cultural practices of his social superiors. Nor is it by chance that the two proverbs he most frequently miscites— niaosheng yutang for Yao Shun Yu Tang, and si ma nan zhui (“a dead horse cannot overtake [a true man’s word]”) for si ma nan zhui (“a team of horses cannot overtake [it]”)—refer respectively to enlightened kingship and to the code of yiqi, the two imperatives between which he finds himself suspended. The fact that the Kangxi emperor, for his part, has mastered the usage of Chinese proverbs is one indication of his assimilation of Chinese literary culture in general. It also suggests the imbalance of power between literate culture and the oral culture of the marketplace: while Wei’s appropriations of proverbs and other artifacts of “high” culture are limited to comic misconstructions, the emperor’s accomplishments in literary culture are matched by a successful study of Wei’s arts of vulgarity and invective. 27. See Jin Yong’s own notes on this point at 40 ff. and 232. 28. As an exposition of Wei’s attitude toward the crucial problem of Manchu domination, a passage on page 624 is worth quoting at some length. A loyalist foe of the Qing has just explained the secret of the scriptures and declared that “to allow the Manchu barbarians to continue to rule the mountains and rivers of the Han would be the ultimate crime”: [Wei] thought to himself, “Not to have a chance to take those heaps of silver, gold, and jewels on a spending spree—that would be the ultimate crime.” He was quite young; he had heard from the mouths of his elders how the Manchu troops had slaughtered the Han population, but he had not seen these events himself. During these months in the palace, only the Empress Dowager had treated him badly. . . . But everyone else, from the emperor on down, had treated him really quite well, and he didn’t see the Manchus as all that ruthless or cruel. He understood, of course, that if he hadn’t happened to be favored by the emperor, these Manchu nobles and ministers would never treat him with such warmth and respect. All in all, though, he’d met with much more kindness than abuse, and so it was that he had no deep feelings for “the shame of the nation” or “the vengeance of the race.”

288

Notes to Pages 213–217

29. The association of the Scripture in Forty-Two Sections with the earlier novels’ martial arts manuals is further reinforced through a direct linkage with the characters and events of Royal Blood. At the point in the tale at which Wei Xiaobao has collected several copies of the Scripture in Forty-Two Sections but not yet solved the secret of the map they jointly contain, he receives assistance from a white-robed nun who is in fact the Changping Princess, daughter of the last Ming emperor, one of several characters from Royal Blood who reappear in The Deer and the Cauldron. The nun /princess, puzzling over the volume in her hand, “suddenly remembered how Yuan Chengzhi obtained the Secret Scroll of the Golden Serpent those many years ago” (1037), and so discovers the map fragments concealed within the volume’s binding. 30. The final page of the novel demonstrates how Wei personally embodies (inevitably in the mode of vulgar burlesque, rather than that of high principle) the “Brotherhood of the Five Races” and, furthermore, how the apparent transcendence of race through cultural unity is actually predicated upon the distinction of the Chinese from the racial and cultural other. When Wei, returning to Yangzhou, asks his mother who his father was, she replies that she has no idea which of her many customers might have sired him. When he asks if her customers were all Han Chinese, she admits that they included Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Muslim, and Tibetan. “Wei Xiaobao asked, ‘There weren’t any foreign devils, were there?’ ‘Do you think I’m some filthy slut?’ snapped Wei Chunfang. ‘You think I’d even entertain foreign devils? Hot mama, if some Russian devil or hairy Dutchman ever showed up at Vernal Delights, your old mom would beat him out the door with a broom!’ Wei Xiaobao breathed a sigh of relief: ‘That’s all right then!’” (2120). Song Weijie reads this passage in terms of Homi Bhabha’s notions of colonial hybridity, in Song Weijie, “Minzu guojia, geren shenfen, lishi jiyi,” 79–81. 31. Lin Baochun argues in his “Jin Yong xiaoshuo banben chakao,” 225–226, that the original serialized versions of early episodes of the novel suggest, as originally conceived, Wei Xiaobao was to mature from ignorance to adventitious mastery; the figure of the completely nonmartial Wei crystallized as the serialization proceeded, and was then rewritten into the early episodes during revision. Ni Kuang suggests this possibility, without offering specific textual evidence, in Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, 75. 32. See Jin Yong, “Xiao xu: nan zhujue de liangzhong leixing.” 33. Wu Aiyi, Jin Yong xiaoshuo de nanzi, 1–5. My comparison here of Chen Jialuo, Chen Jinnan, Linghu Chong, and Wei Xiaobao is much indebted to Wu’s remarks. 34. Heroes, 1620. Lin Linghan discusses this passage in “Wenhua gongye yu wenhua rentong,” 245.

Notes to Pages 218–221

289

35. Ye Hongsheng points out the excision of these formulae, in “‘Toutian huanri’ de shi yu fei,” 336. For a discussion of the “storyteller’s manner” in traditional fiction, see Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story, 20–22 passim. 36. For a biography of Zha Shenxing (1650–1727), see Hummell, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 21–22. 37. Chen Yuanyuan is absent from the original serialized version of Royal Blood but appears as a character in the revised edition; besides strengthening the novel’s portrait of the failure of Li Zicheng’s rebellion (as previously discussed), her appearance serves to link the revised work more closely with The Deer and the Cauldron and its representation of history. 38. Liu Shaoming (Joseph S. M. Lau), “Jin Yong xiaoshuo yu qiaojiao,”444. 39. Lin Linghan, “Wenhua gongye yu wenhua rentong,” 242. 40. Song Weijie, “Minzu guojia, geren shenfen, lishi jiyi,” 81–82. 41. Lin Linghan, “Wenhua gongye yu wenhua rentong,” 235–236, 247–251. 42. Ibid., 233, citing Matei Calinescu, Faces of Modernity: Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977). 43. Wei muses to himself: “When she alternates singing and reciting like this, it’s just like when the Yangzhou storytellers sing tanci [a prosimetric narrative form]. And when I chime in, moving things along by swapping a few remarks back and forth, I’m like the storyteller’s assistant. If the two of us were to set up shop in a teahouse in Yangzhou, we’d turn the town upside down—that teahouse would be packed so full it would split! I could make quite a name for myself if I hitched my wagon to her star” (1314). Chapter 9: Coming Home 1. Gold, “Go With Your Feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwanese Popular Culture in Greater China,” 922–923. 2. For overviews of developments in popular fiction in the 1980s, see Kaikonnen, “From Knights to Nudes: Chinese Popular Literature since Mao”; Wang Chungui, “Bashi niandai dalu wuxia xiaoshuo re”; Wang Chungui and Liu Bingze, Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo gailun; and Wang Xianpei and Yu Kexun, eds., 80 niandai Zhongguo tongsu wenxue. 3. Hu Wenbin, “Lun Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo zhi chuban ji qi yanjiu,” 229. 4. Feng Yu’nan, “Qiantan wuxia xiaoshuo zai dalu shengxing zhi yinsu,” 396–398. 5. Most histories of martial arts fiction briefly attribute its disappearance from the mainland to “political reasons”; Yan Jiayan’s “Wenhua shengtai pingheng yu wuxia xiaoshuo mingyun” gives a somewhat fuller (if polemic) account of postliberation evaluations of the genre.

290

Notes to Pages 221–229

6. See Perry Link, “Hand-Copied Entertainment Fiction from the Cultural Revolution.” 7. See Hegel, “Making the Past Serve the Present.” Link, The Uses of Literature, 228, also notes evidence of the “strong and enduring appeal of xia stories in Chinese culture” in such “surrogates” as modern military novels and the Soviet spy fiction popular in the 1950s. Chen Ying’s Zhongguo yingxiong xiayi xiaoshuo tongshi represents an unusual attempt to construct an integrated history of premodern and postliberation “heroic and chivalric” fiction. 8. See Link’s “Introduction” to Roses and Thorns, 19–24, and his more detailed sketch of the period 1976–1983 in The Uses of Literature, 15–36. 9. Link, Roses and Thorns, 24. 10. Wang Xianpei and Yu Keshun, 80 niandai Zhongguo tongsu wenxue (hereafter Wang and Yu), 182. 11. Marja Kaikonnen, “Stories and Legends,” 134. For a brief account of the pingshu fad see Wang and Yu, 270–271. 12. Wang and Yu, 282, give the example of Gu Long’s Lu Xiaofeng, included in a set of Gang-Tai wenxue yanjiu ziliao [Materials for the study of Hong Kong and Taiwan literature] published by Zhongshan University in 1980 and widely circulated among the university’s students. 13. Wang and Yu, 281 n. 1. Copies of Wulin I have examined contain the first four chapters of Heroes in issues 1–8 (July 1981–May 1982). Wang and Yu state that the novel serialized in Wulin was Liang Yusheng’s Baifa monü zhuan [The legend of the white-haired demoness]. Jin Can gives the date of the Wulin serialization of Heroes as October 1980 in his “Zhongguo dalu Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yanjiu qianshu,” 96. 14. Link, The Uses of Literature, 15, notes that Guangzhou editors were also the first to experiment with the new freedoms in the realm of “serious” literature. 15. Jin Can, “Zhongguo dalu Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yanjiu qianshu,” 96. Other accounts are broadly similar: Wang and Yu, 281–282, describe a high tide in 1985 and a leveling off by 1987; Wang Chungui, “Bashi niandai dalu wuxia xiaoshuo re,” 78, recounts that the martial arts fiction craze began on a nationwide scale in 1984 and had reached even higher levels by 1987. 16. Kaikonnen, “Stories and Legends,” 148; Feng Yu’nan, “Qiantan wuxia xiaoshuo zai dalu shengxing zhi yinsu,” 402. 17. Wang and Yu, 182. See also Feng Yu’nan’s own remarks in his “Qiantan wuxia xiaoshuo zai dalu shengxing zhi yinsu,” 405, 410–413. 18. Jin Can, “Zhongguo dalu Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yanjiu qianshu,” 96. 19. Wang Chungui, “Bashi niandai dalu wuxia xiaoshuo re,” 77. 20. Jin Can, “Zhongguo dalu Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yanjiu qianshu,” 96.

Notes to Pages 229–231

291

21. Jin Yong, “Jin Yong zuopin ji ‘Sanlian ban’ xu” [Preface to the Sanlian edition of The Collected Works of Jin Yong], 2. 22. Hu Wenbin, “Lun Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo zhi chuban ji qi yanjiu,” 238–257, gives a checklist of Hong Kong and Taiwan martial arts fiction reprinted in the mainland (up through 1987) and personally seen by the author. Of the over 150 titles listed, 85 are attributed to Jin Yong, of which only 9 are titles from the author’s oeuvre (although some may represent alternate titles for actual Jin Yong texts). 23. Letter of November 12, 1970, reprinted in The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, 2129. 24. Letter of April 22, 1966, in ibid., 2127. 25. Letter of November 12, 1970, in ibid., 2129. 26. Letter of April 22, 1966, in ibid., 2128. 27. Shi Chengzhi, “Taoli chengxi nanshan hao: dao Chen Shixiang jiaoshou.” An article in memory of Chen in the literary journal Chun wenxue also mentions his fondness for Jin Yong’s fiction, but only in passing: see Ye Shan, “Bokelai: huainian Chen Shixiang xiansheng,” 77. 28. E.g., Taipei: Yuanliu, 1990. 29. Wang Rongwen, “Jin Yong yanjiu de xin qidian,” 2. Yuanliu’s 1987 Jinxue yanjiu ji [Collected studies in Jinology] was a reissue and extension of the Jinxue yanjiu congshu [Collectanea of studies in Jinology] published by Yuanjing beginning in 1980. In its latest incarnation, as Yuanliu’s Jin Yong chaguan [Jin Yong teahouse], the series currently numbers nearly forty titles. Beijing’s Wenhua yishu chubanshe now publishes the series on the mainland. 30. The minor exceptions include a note appended by C. T. Hsia (Hsia Tsi-an’s brother) to his discussion of the figure of the swordsman in traditional fiction: “Most aficionados consider the postwar period to be the golden age of wu-hsia hsiao-shuo [wuxia xiaoshuo] and the Hong Kong author Chin Yung [Jin Yong] to be the reigning practicioner of the genre. Many readers of cultivated taste compare him seriously to Alexander Dumas, père.” C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel, 331 n. 49. 31. Again, with exceptions. Lin I-Liang (Stephen C. Soong, b. 1919), for instance, himself associated with the intellectual circles that included Chen and Hsia, mentions these scholars’ esteem for Jin Yong in a 1969 interview with the author independently published in 1972. Lin I-Liang, Wuge fangwen, 70. 32. The Guomindang government mounted several campaigns against martial arts fiction in general but maintained a particular ban against the works of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng because of their associations (early in Jin Yong’s case, continuing in that of Liang Yusheng) with newspapers sponsored by the Commu-

292

Notes to Pages 231–234

nist Party. These policies stimulated the circulation of Jin Yong’s novels as contraband imports and in disguised pirate editions; see Lin Baochun, Jiegou Jin Yong, 201–206. When the general ban against Jin Yong’s work was rescinded, difficulties remained with The Eagle-Shooting Heroes because of the title’s perceived reference to the “eagle-shooting” (shediao) in a poem by Mao Zedong. Even distribution of the novel under the revised title Damo yingxiong zhuan [Legend of the heroes of the great desert] failed for some years to resolve the problem. See Shen Dengen, “Wo yu Jin Yong xiaoshuo,” written during the midst of the controversy. 33. Quoted in Shen Dengen, “Wo yu Jin Yong xiaoshuo,” 214. 34. On the blurring of the distinction between “elite” and “popular” literature in Taiwan’s newspaper supplements, see Weng Wenxin, “Cong fukan lianzai kan wuxia de wenxue huodong.” 35. In his capacity as journalist and at the invitation of the ruling Nationalist Party, Jin Yong had traveled to Taiwan in 1973. He published his account of his travels and interviews in Zai Tai suo jian, suo wen, suo si. See also Leng Xia, Jin Yong zhuan, 211–223. 36. Ni Kuang, Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo, ii. 37. Chen Mo, “‘ Jinxue’ yinlun,” 10. It is noteworthy that one of the most extended discussions of martial arts fiction produced outside of the Yuanjing series during this period, and one of the most academically rigorous, takes a markedly different view of the genre. Hou Jian, in his “Wuxia xiaoshuo lun,” confesses himself to be an avid reader of martial arts fiction, and names Jin Yong as his favorite author. He grants that martial arts fiction is “literature” in the broad sense of being a work of the imagination in the medium of the written word. “The mansion of literature has many rooms; not all of them, however, are on the same floor.” Unless an extraordinary talent should appear, martial arts fiction is unlikely to escape the contingent defects of careless workmanship and the more intrinsic generic defects of escapism and encouragement of unhealthy spiritual tendencies. This judgment obviously denies Jin Yong the “transcendence of the genre” that Chen Shih-hsiang grants him. 38. Fan Zhihou, “Wuxia xiaoshuo chu deng xueshu diantang.” 39. For a general account of the conference see ibid. Many of the conference papers, some in revised form, supplemented with additional articles and essays, are collected in Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, eds., Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan. 40. Jacques Pimpaneau, “Chinese Wu-hsia hsiao-shuo and Their Western Counterparts,” 374. 41. Huang Weiliang, “Tongmeng ke du ci er xue wen: Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yuyan de chouyang fenxi.” Huang’s illustrative “translations” of several brief passages from Jin Yong’s novels into May Fourth–style prose (661–662) are delightful.

Notes to Pages 234–236

293

42. Liu Shaoming, “Jin Yong xiaoshuo yu qiaojiao,” 434–465. 43. For the Ming Pao Monthly reports, see Fan Zhihou’s article and its companion piece, Kuang Jianxing’s “Tupo yu buzu.” For the conference papers see Liu and Chen, eds., Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan. 44. Wu Aiyi, Jin Yong xiaoshuo de nüzi and its three sequels. 45. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed,” 34. 46. Link, The Uses of Literature, 4–5, 13–14, passim, on “the socialist Chinese literary system,” and 15–33 on the fluctuations of the literary “weather” over this period. For a historical overview see also Hong Zicheng, Zhongguo dangdai wenxue shi, 225–255. 47. For an overview of the course and major topics of the discussions of popular literature in the 1980s, see Wang and Yu, 62–86, and the invaluable bibliography in Appendix 4 (696–714) of this same volume; also Wang Chungui, Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo gailun, 286–308. 48. Thus Yao Xueyin (b. 1910), author of the Maoist-era historical novel Li Zicheng, writing in 1987 and quoted in Wang and Yu, 74: “In recent years [popular literature] has abandoned the socialist road, and with profit as its motive has catered to readers through vulgarity and low taste. It consists primarily of filth, slaughter, violence, superstition, oddities and absurdities, and has corrupted the spirit of the masses. It is an amalgam of the dregs of colonial culture. . . . [and represents] a tide of rightist thought.” 49. On intellectuals’ responses to the popular literature craze, see Kaikkonen, “Stories and Legends,” 154–158; on the vicissitudes of the élite during the 1980s more generally, Jing Wang, High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China. 50. Ding Jin, “Zhongguo dalu Jinxue lunzhu mulu (1985–1996),” 105, identifies Feng’s article as “an important early contribution to Jinology” and lists only one earlier article published on the mainland: Zhang Fang, “Jin Yong xin wuxia xiaoshuo chutan” [A preliminary investigation of Jin Yong’s new martial arts fiction], Keshan shizhuan xuebao 1985 no. 4. I have not yet seen this latter article. 51. Yu Yingshi is part of the network of Jin Yong fans described in Shi Chengzhi, “Taoli chengxi nanshan hao: dao Chen Shixiang jiaoshou,” 16–18, and presented the paper “Xia yu Zhongguo wenhua” at the Chinese University conference. 52. Liu Su (Luo Fu), “Jinse de Jin Yong,” 139. Other articles mentioning overseas Jinology include Zhang Xun, “Tai-Gang ‘Jinxue’ yipie,” and Qiu Xiaolong et al., “Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo sanren tan.” Liu Su’s article is the only one among these to explicitly acknowledge a commercial motive behind the Yuanjing Jinology series.

294

Notes to Pages 237–240

53. These sketches are collected in Luo Fu, Nandou wenxing gao: Xianggang zuojia jianying. 54. Zhang Peiheng, “Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yu Yao Xueyin de Li Zicheng.” 55. This is similar to the argument that Yan Jiayan makes more explicitly in his “Wenhua shengtai pingheng yu wuxia xiaoshuo mingyun.” It also anticipates in some respects the position taken with regard to the novelist Wang Shuo, and popular culture in general, by Wang Meng in his controversial “Duobi chonggao.” 56. He Ping, “Xiayi yingxiong de rong yu shuai: Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo de wenhua jieshu,” 46. 57. Ibid., 55. Chen Pingyuan’s “Ye yu wuxia xiaoshuo jieyuan” [A fated affinity with martial arts fiction], published in the same volume of Dushu as He Ping’s article (pp. 56–61) and serving as a preface to his 1992 Qiangu wenren xiake meng, strikes similar notes, though it deals with martial arts fiction as a whole rather than Jin Yong’s novels in particular. In this essay the author recounts how he had never understood the appeal of the genre until the summer and fall of 1989 when, with time heavy on his hands, he began reading Jin Yong and others and learned to appreciate their novels’ dreams of a righteous and powerful savior as expressions of the helplessness against fate felt by all human beings, and especially keenly by Chinese intellectuals in the twentieth century. 58. See Barmé’s remarks on the tour in In the Red, 179–181. 59. For an excellent case study, see Shuyu Kong, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Chinese Literary Journals in the Cultural Marketplace.” 60. Barmé, In the Red, 283: “Kong-Tai [Hong Kong and Taiwan] investors were not only interested in financing pop and alternative culture. Capital was also available for patriotic theme parks, film projects, and exhibitions. In particular, Hong Kong businesspeople were investing in an accommodation with the Beijing authorities [in the lead-up to 1997], and in the process they became an integral part of the cosmetic reconstruction of the face of Chinese socialism. Party culture was thus enmeshed in a dynamic of being both the colonizer of imported and avantgarde popular culture and also being colonized by it.” 61. For overviews of cultural and intellectual trends during the 1990s, see ibid.; Liu Qingfeng, “The Topography of Intellectual Culture in 1990s Mainland China: A Survey”; Qi Shuyu, Shichang jingji xia de Zhongguo wenxue yishu; and Jianying Zha, China Pop. 62. Wang Meng, “Duobi chonggao.” For a discussion of Wang Meng’s activities during this period, including this essay, see Barmé, In the Red, 287–301. 63. On Wang Shuo and his work, see Barmé, In the Red, 62–98; Qi Shuyu, Shichang jingji xia de Zhongguo wenxue yishu, 85–99; and Jing Wang, “Wang Shuo: ‘Pop Goes the Culture?’,” in High Culture Fever, 261–286.

Notes to Pages 240–243

295

64. Jing Wang, High Culture Fever, 266. 65. The Jin Yong Academic Research Society (Jin Yong xueshu yanjiu hui), established in Haining in the summer of 1996. 66. Wang Yichuan, ed., Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue dashi wenku: xiaoshuo juan. On the anthology’s conception and aims, see the general preface, “Shiji de kuayue: chongxin shenshi 20 shiji Zhongguo wenxue” [Straddling the century: a reevaluation of 20th century Chinese literature], i–vi, and Wang Yichuan’s preface to the fiction volumes, “Xiaoshuo Zhonguo” [Fictional China], i–vii. 67. Tian Li, “Jin Yong keneng dang dashi?” 68. Chen Liao, “Qie shuo ‘Wenxue Dashi.’” Peng Jingfeng, “Paipai zuo chi guoguo? Ye shuo ‘Wenxue dashi’” is a response to Chen’s article, even more dismissive of the anthologists than he; Peng defends Shen Congwen against Chen’s aspersions, but more fundamentally rejects the whole notion of rankings in literary history. 69. Yan Jiayan, “Yichang jingqiaoqiao de wenxue geming.” 70. Yan Jiayan’s essays on Jin Yong’s fiction are collected in Jin Yong xiaoshuo lun gao. 71. The text of this speech is published as Jin Yong, “Jin Yong de Zhongguo lishi guan.” 72. According to comments in Zeng Chufeng, “Jin Yong zhi zheng,” in an untitled article by Jin Yongquan in Zhongguo qingnian bao, October 28, 1994, and elsewhere; I have not seen a full text of this speech. 73. Yan Jiayan, “Da ‘Jujue Jin Yong.’” 74. Wang Xihua, “Ye shuo Jin Yong ‘deng tang.’” 75. See Chen Pingyuan’s remarks on the cultural politics of Beijing University’s recognition in “Literature High and Low,” 113–115. 76. By Taipei’s Yuanliu and, as Wentan xiasheng: Jin Yong zhuan [The divine knight of the literary world: a biography of Jin Yong] by Guangzhou’s Guangdong renmin chubanshe. 77. Guiguan gongzuoshi, Xia zhi dazhe: Jin Yong pingzhuan, 2. 78. Ibid., 2–3. 79. For an example of a contrary voice, see the critique of Jin Yong’s remarks on freedom of the press in the mainland and Hong Kong in Hu Ping, “Jin Yong jianghua zixiang maodun.” Chapter 10: Jin Yong at the Century’s End 1. Widely reprinted, including in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 3–7 (page citations refer to this edition), and Wang Shuo, Wuzhi zhe wuwei, 73–78.

296

Notes to Pages 243–250

2. The precise meaning of su here is indefinite—deliberately, one presumes. The monosyllable equally suggests tongsu, “vernacular” or “popular”; yongsu, “crass” or “vulgar”; and meisu, which Barmé (In the Red, 281ff.) renders as “kowtowing to the vulgar.” 3. Reprinted in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 8–9. 4. Mencius IV.1.21: “Mencius said, ‘There is unexpected praise; equally, there is perfectionist criticism.’” Mencius, trans. Joseph Lau, 155. 5. Reprinted in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 43–46. See also the essays reprinted on pp. 38–42 and 47–51 of this collection. 6. Zhang Feng, ed., Wang Shuo tiaozhan Jin Yong. 7. A Beijing chenbao article of November 11, 1999, reproduced by Sina.com at http://dailynews.sina.com.cn/culture/1999-11-11/30734.html (accessed December 21, 1999), cites “a certain website’s” survey of 3000 individuals, of whom 56 percent considered Wang Shuo’s remarks groundless and excessive, 7 percent expressed agreement, and the remainder declined to offer an opinion. 8. Liao Kebin’s introduction, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, vi. 9. This position maintained a steady presence (and an immunity to appeals for relevance and logical consistency) in the ensuing debate, represented most prominently in one of the academy’s first entries into the fray, the article by Yuan Liangjun (a researcher at the Academy of Social Sciences) entitled “Zai shuo yasu: yi Jin Yong wei li” [More on the elite and the popular: Jin Yong as an example], reprinted in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 70–75. Yuan asserts that “martial arts fiction’s [intrinsically] low grade and low caliber are in the end Mr. Jin Yong’s fatal flaws”; also that “literary value as such has always stood in inverse proportion to an author’s wealth and social status.” For a broader view of the neoconservative response to popular culture in the 1990s, see Geremie R. Barmé, “Kowtowing to the Vulgar,” in In the Red, 281–315. 10. See for instance Ge Hongbing, “Butong wenxue guannian de pengzhuang: lun Jin Yong yu Wang Shuo zhi zheng” [A collision between different literary views: on the dispute between Jin Yong and Wang Shuo], in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 127–128: “Jin Yong accommodates the philistine (yongsu) tastes of the masses and intellectuals by using an ostensibly elevated approach, while Wang Shuo does exactly the opposite, using an ostensibly philistine approach to challenge the masses’ and the intellectuals’ philistine tastes.” 11. As quoted in Chen Xin, “Wang Shuo: Wo wuyi dui Jin Yong renshen gongji,” in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 15–16. 12. Thus Ge Hongbing in his “Butong wenxue guannian de pengzhuang”: “From the perspective of the influence of Hong Kong literary thought and style on mainland literature, Jin Yong’s transition from not being recognized by the main-

Notes to Pages 251–255

297

stream literary system to being praised as a master is an extremely significant token. It signifies southern commercial culture’s infiltration of the cultural system of the central plains: a leisure-style aesthetic culture, which is inseparably linked with the ancient Chinese tradition and at the same time even more closely linked with modern commercial culture, has begun to travel north from Hong Kong island to the central plains and to be accepted by mainland culture.” Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 124. 13. Jin Yong, “Zhejiang Gang Tai de zuojia: Jin Yong huiying Wang Shuo,” in ibid., 10–14. 14. The title of an article published in Guangzhou ribao, November 4, 1999, and reprinted in Zhang Feng, Wang Shuo tiaozhan Jin Yong, 43–45. 15. For the latter terms in each pair, see Song Yuan et al., “Ta zou ta de lu, wo zou wo de lu: Jin Yong Shanghai tan Wang Shuo,” in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 17–18. 16. Each reveals an appreciation of his opposite’s role as well as of his own. Jin Yong remarks in a phone interview that he does not take Wang Shuo’s outspokenness personally, since a certain exaggeration is essential to Wang Shuo’s style; see Wan Runlong, “Jin Yong: Wo yu Wang Shuo meiyou geren enyuan.” Wang Shuo in turn remarks on the “poise” (fengdu) of Jin Yong’s response: “I can’t imagine that he would respond any differently.” See Zhang Ying, “Wang Shuo: Jin Yong he tongsu xiaoshuo,” in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 19–20. 17. Several critics have pointed out the affinity between Wei Xiaobao and Wang Shuo’s hoodlums: see John Minford, “Translator’s Introduction” to Louis Cha, “The Deer and the Cauldron: The Adventures of a Chinese Trickster,” especially pp. 10–12 and notes 28–30; and Geremie R. Barmé, “Trinket, A Common Property.” 18. Hong Zicheng both notes this model and cautions against the oversimplifications it embodies: Zhongguo dangdai wenxue shi, 386. 19. See for example Zhou Wei, “Pinglun: Wang Shuo de jiaosheng tingqilai shengsi lijie.” 20. See the selection in Tan Fei and Lin Yongbing, “Jia Ping’ao, Liu Xinwu deng mingjia pingdian ‘Wang Shuo feidao.’” 21. Ge Hongbing, in Ge Hongbing et al., “Jin Yong: bei baogao de ‘dashi,’” in Liao Kebin, 78. For a more extended discussion of these issues see also Chen Hong and Sun Yongjin, “Shiji huishou: Guanyu Jin Yong zuopin jingdianhua ji qita.” 22. Zhang Jiong et al., eds., Zhonghua wenxue tongshi. 23. Wang Guangdong in Xu Junxi et al., “Piping, you hua haohao shuo,” in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 118. 24. Wang Xiaoming in ibid., 120–121. 25. Bruce Gilley, “King vs. Commoner,” 36.

298

Notes to Pages 255–259

26. For examples, see Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 329–333, and Zhang Feng, passim. Taiwan, somewhat ahead of the mainland in the development and social penetration of Internet culture, has taken the lead as well in the co-optation of fan culture by the commercial media. Yuanliu, Jin Yong’s Taiwan publisher, runs one of the major Jin Yong–oriented Web sites (http://jinyong.ylib .com.tw), and in its Jin Yong Teahouse series has published two volumes based largely on Internet-generated material: Jinmi liaoliao tian [Jin Yong fan chat], vols. 1 and 2. 27. On fan culture’s internal economy and its relation to Bourdieu’s model of the cultural field, see John Fiske, “The Cultural Economy of Fandom.”

Notes to Pages 259–260

299

Select Glossary of Chinese Characters

In order to include as many unfamiliar names and terms as possible in this glossary, I have economized by omitting a number of more commonly known items (Hangzhou, Deng Xiaoping, Lu Xun, Qing dynasty, Kangxi, etc.). With the exception of Jin Yong and the titles of his novels, authors and literary works for which characters are supplied in the bibliography are also omitted from this list. Terms are romanized by Hanyu pinyin. In a few cases where published sources employ an alternate romanization, that spelling is given precedence and the Hanyu pinyin is placed in parentheses following the Chinese characters. Anran xiaohun zhang ï6·BŒ Bai YuÈ }½ Baifa monuÈ zhuan }îTs³ baiguan yeshi ˜Îò Baihe quan }´ó Baimao nuÈ }Ûs Baimei Daoren } Sº Ban xialiu shehui JA> Bao Xiruo Ü1 Baxian nao Xianggang kÙ'™/ Bei Jia  bi § biaoju â@ Bixue jian §@ Bixue Jinshe jian §@ÑǍ Bo Ya /Y bu yu zhi yu he qiu quan zhi hui ^K }ŒBhKÀ

Bujie  Buke Bujie ï  Buxiaosheng – caizi jiaren MPsº Canningren ²çº Cao Dahua ùTï Cao Mei ù« Caomang longshe zhuan I½Ç³ Ceng Zhuoyun ‘Sò Changcheng huabao wÎk1 Chaoran bao …61 Chen Chen sñ Chen Guang sI Chen Jialuo s¶ Chen Jin sÁ Chen Jinnan sÑW Chen Kaige sñL Chen Kefu sK+

301

Chen Shih-hsiang sd (Chen Shixiang) Chen Wentong s‡q Chen Xiang ji shuju sXø@ Chen Xiazi sP Chen Xuanfeng s„¨ Chen Xuanwen sb‡ Chen Yuanyuan s Chen Zude sV· Cheng Yuanyu diansi dai shang qian, Shiyi niang Yungang zong tan xia C‰ —†ã"
A ò¡1Zà chengyu ž chuanqi ³G chushi ú ci ^ Cike liezhuan :¢³ Cuihua à± Cuiwen Louzhu ‡; ``Da gongyuan'' 'l Da Ming yinglie zhuan 'ñȳ da zhongyuan xingtai '-ŸbK Dagong bao 'l1 Dagong shuju 'lø@ Dahua Xiyouji 'qJ Dai Zhaoyu 4-‡ ``Dajia tan'' '¶Ç Damo yingxiong zhuan ' ñij Dangkou zhi iÇ× danxing ben ®L, Daode jing S·“ daomao anran SŒ¸6 Daquan Didan '0½ Deng Lijun '— Deng Yugong '½l Dianfu Jin Yong [†Ñ¸ dianmai Þ dianxing x‹ Dong Wu faxueyuan q3Õxb Dongfang Bubai q¹ W

302

Glossary of Chinese Characters

Dongnan ribao qWå1 Dongnanya zhoukan qWžh

Du Guangting \I­ Duan Zhixing µz Duanjing hou yuÈlu ïlž Dugu jiu jian hd] Dugu Qiubai hdBW duikai ‹ ``Dushi xiao jingtou'' ýáErnuÈ yingxiong zhuan Rsñij Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue dashi wenku ŒA -‡x'+‡« fakan ci | ^ Fang De ¹· Fang Shiyu ¹‰ Fang Shiyu da leitai ¹‰SÂð Fang Shiyu xia Nanyang ¹‰W Fang Yanfen ³w¬ fanhua Íï Feihu waizhuan Ûг Feng Jicai ®eM Feng Menglong ®" Feng Qiyong ®v¸ Feng Yu'nan ®²` fengdu ¨¦ fukan o

Gang-Tai /ð Gao Dexiong Ø·Ä Gao Xiaofeng Øð Gong Zhuxin ®ùÃ Gongshang ribao åFå1 Gongshang wanbao åFZ1 gongzheng, shanliang, huopo, meili lc
„o
;Q
Ž— Gu Long ä Gu Mingdao gS Gu Yanwu gŽf Guailun lianpian *Ö#Ç Guan Di Ü Guangdong shangbao ãqF1

Guangdong yingxiong Yuan Manzi: Yuan Chonghuan pingzhuan ãqñÄ ;PeU³ Guangling san ãuc Guangpai wuxia xiaoshuo ã>fઠ``Guanyu wuxia xiaoshuo de jige wenti'' ܼf઄~OL gujin Zhongwai, kongqian jue hou äÊ -zMUŒ Gumu pai ä“> Guo Fu í™ Guo Jing íV Guo Sheng íÛ Guo Xiang íD Guo Xiaotian í/) guominxing ' guoshu S guoshu heyan S guoxue x guoyu ž Gushu hanqie ji ä Ò Guxing xuelei d@Ú Haiguang wenyi wI‡Ý Haijiao Liangshanbo wҁqÊ Hanfeizi Ó^P Hanren de shu "º„ø hao ë haohan }" He Hongyao Uå He Tieshou U5K He Wenfa U‡Õ He Zhiwen Uׇ heding ben , Heifeng shuangsha ѨÙ^ Heng Shan aq Hengshan Fq Hong * Hong Qigong *l Hong quan dashi Tieqiao San *ó'+ 5K

Hong Xiguan *™˜ Honghuahui ± Honghuahui qunxiong nao Xiangjiang ±¤Ä'™_ HongluÈ ribao  å1 Hongmaoguo Û Hongxian Ú Hongxue x Hou Chaozong ¯— Hsia Tsi-an ߉ (Xia Ji'an) Hu An ýµ Hu Bingwen áɇ Hu Fei áS Hu Juren áʺ Hu Peng ál Hu Wenhu á‡N Hua Qiao ï¬ huaben q, Huang Feihong shifu zhuan ÃÛ;+ …³ Huang Feihong zhengzhuan ÃÛ;c³ Huang Guliu Ã7ó Huang Hanxi Ã"™ Huang Jian Ãe Huang Lizhou ÃÎ2 Huang Rong ÃÉ Huang Shan Ãq Huang Taiji ‡*u Huang Tianshi Ã)ó Huang Yaoshi Ãå+ Huang Yulang ÉΠHuang Zhanming ÃUô Huang Zongxi ײ Huanqiu bao °1 Huanzhu Louzhu „à; Huaqiao ribao ïÑå1 Huaren shehui ïº> Huaren yebao ïº1 Huashan ïq Huashan lunjian ïq֍

Glossary of Chinese Characters

303

Huashangbao ïF1 Huazi ribao ïWå1 huigui Þx Huo Qingtong RP Huoshao Hongliansi kÒîú Huosiren mu ;{º“ Jia Dao Èö Jiang Diedie _‹‹ jiang yiqi ©# Jiang Yunxing ÜòL jianghu _V Jianghu qixia zhuan _VGà³ Jiangnan qi guai _W* jiangshan _q jianke ¢ Jianquan taiji she QÉ*u> ``Jiating'' ¶­ Jie Ke ‘K jie xian feng jin Ù÷Ê Jigong xinzhuan ßl°³ Jigong zhuan ßl³ Jin Shengtan ÑV Jin Yong Ѹ Jin Yong chaguan Ѹ6( ``Jin Yong xinxiang'' ѸᱠJin Yong xueshu yanjiu hui ѸxS v Jin Yong zuopin ji Ѹ\ÁÆ Jindai xiayi yingxiong zhuan Ñãà© ñij Jing Ke Jû Jing Ke ci Qin wang Jû:æ‹ jingdianhua “x Jingji La “ É Jingji riji “ å Jingkang V· Jingshi tongyan f Jinjian diaoling эpÎ Jinling chunmeng Ñu%" Jinlun Fawang Ñ*Ջ

304

Glossary of Chinese Characters

Jinmen daxia Huo Yuanjia %€'à

C2 Jinshe Langjun ÑÇÎ Jinshe miji ÑÇU Jinxue Ñx Jinxue yanjiu congshu Ñxvâø Jinxue yanjiu ji ÑxvÆ jiupai > Jiuyin zhenjing ]p“ jizhang shi 3 Jueqing gu UÅ7 juezhan z0 Junzi jian P Kangle tiyu hui ·Ô² Kanshangqu hen mei  »ˆŽ Keji chubanshe ÑÊúH> Kong Dong Ò Kongming quan zó Kuihua baodian N±öx Lan Fenghuang Íóð Lao wantong
å Laopo huangdi
F‡ Lei Laohu ÷
N Lei Weipo ÷Ra leitai Âð Leizhu Louzhu ÷à; li  Li Jing NV Li Kui N5 Li Liming Η Li Lin N Li Mochou N«
Li Ping N Li Shimin N Li Shoumin Ný Li Yan N© li yi zhi bang ®©K¦ Li Yuanzhi N…· Li Zhiqing N× Li Zicheng Nê

Liancheng jue #Î# Liang Houfu š+ Liang Qichao _… Liang Yongheng 8¨ Liang Yusheng ½ liangong IŸ Liangshan po qÊ Lianhe bao o1 Liaozhai zhiyi JKŒp Libailiu pai ®Üm> Libao Ë1 Lichunyuan —%b Lin Haifeng —wð Lin Huan —a Lin Pingzhi —sK Lin Shirong —® Lin Zhaoying —ñ Ling Mengchu ÌÛ Linghu Chong äЖ Liu Junxiang ‰ûd Liu Wenying ó^¯ Liuhu xiayin óVà± longhu dou N% Longhu dou jinghua N%¬ï Lu x LuÈ Dongbin xiafan BÓá Lu Feiqing xòR Lu Junyi ìÊ© LuÈ Liuliang BYo LuÈ Lun ¶+ Lu Xiaofeng x+¨ Luding gong l Luding ji  Ludingshan q luÈlin  — Luo Feng ¨ Luo Fu …Z Luo Guanxi …« Luo Guanzhong …«Ma Hanyue ¬"½

Ma Rongcheng ¬® Mai Xuan ¥Ë Mao Shiba Ak Mei Chaofeng ……¨ meisu š× Miao × Miao Renfeng ׺ó Miao Xian ×o ``Ming bao julebu'' 1ñè Ming bao wanbao 1Z1 Ming bao yuekan 1

``Ming bao zhi you'' 1KË Ming bao zhoukan 11

Ming Ho ³ (Minghe) Ming Pao 1 (Ming bao) Minghe chuangwenshe gongsi ³ u‡>lø Minghe she chuban youxian gongsi ³>úH Plø minjian “ Mo jiao TY Mou gongguan sanji Ðl(c Mou Songting _~­ Mu Gaofeng (Øð Mu Renqing Fº muwu (K Nanfeng chubanshe W¨úH> Nangong Bo W® Nanlai zuojia W†\¶ Nanyang shangbao WF1 neidi g0 Ni Kuang *! Nianfo Shanren õ[qº niaosheng yutang åZo Nie Yinniang v± Nie Yunlan vòP nuÈxia sà Ouyang Feng P}Ò Pai'an jing qi ÍHZG Pan Yuesheng Xµ

Glossary of Chinese Characters

305

Pei Xing ôv Ping Ke sï pingdian Ux pingshu Uø Pinguo ribao œå1 Pingzong xiaying lu dàq pipa 56 Pixie jianfa ŸªÕ Qi J Qi jian xia Tianshan )q Qianlong huang you Jiangnan ~†‡J _W Qianlong xunxing Jiangnan ji ~†áx _W Qianqiu wanzai, yitong jianghu CË , q_V Qianqiu wanzai, yong wei fufu CË , 8º+f qie shuo ª qigong #Ÿ qin 4 qing Å qinghua ű Qiong xiang ®÷ Qiu Chuji U_ Qiu Qianren ØCÞ Qiuran ke zhuan o Quanzhen h Ren Woxing û' ren zei zuo fu Ê\6 Ren Zhenhan û" Renzha º# Riyue shenjiao å^Y Rong Xiaoyi ¹ Ru  rushi e San Su  San xia wu yi à”© Sanfa Sheng cî sanjidi Ê,

306

Glossary of Chinese Characters

Sanlian shudian oø— shangpinxing FÁ' shanlin q— Shaolin — Shaolin xiao yingxiong —ñÄ Shaolin yingxiong xuezhan ji —ñÄ @0 Shediao yingxiong yan pñÄ´ Shediao yingxiong zhuan pñij Shen bao 31 Shen Baoxin ˆö° Shenbian ^® Shendiao xialuÈ ^pචShengchao ding sheng wannian qing V Û,tR() Shenlong jiao ^Y Shenlongdao ^ö Shenxing baibian ^L~Š sheping >U Shi ji ò Shi Naian ½µ shi wei zhi ji zhe si ëºåñ{ Shi Yukun ó‰ Shier jinqian biao AŒÑ"â Shigougong ziji ó×lê Shishuo xinyu ª°ž Shisui Վ Shu shan jianxia zhuan qà³ Shuihu houzhuan 4øŒ³ Shuihu zhuan 4ø³ Shujian enchou lu øiÇ  Shujian enchou lu xuji øiÇŒÆ Shujian jiangshan ø_q Shuo jian ª Shuo Yue quan zhuan ª³h³ ``Shuodi'' ª0 ``Shuoyue'' ª si da su Û'× si ma nan zhui ß({)¬ãý sikai ۋ

Sing pao 1 (Cheng bao) Sishier zhang jing ÛAŒà“ Song Jiang ‹_ Song Yu ‹‰ Songshan iq su × Su Dongpo qa Suxin jian Í Ta si zai di er ci y{(,Œ! taiji quan *uó Taiping shan *sq Taishan ðq Taishan ðq Taishan jianshen xueyuan ðqe« xb ``Tanfeng'' Ǩ Tang Ren º Tanhai deng ¢wÈ ``Tantian'' Ç) Taohua dao C±ö ti Tian xing dao ÿ)LS Tianchi guaixia )`*à Tiandihui )0 ``Tianfang yetan'' )¹Z Tianguang bao )I1 Tianguo yingxiong )ñÄ ``Tianxia shi'' )‹ tianxia taiping )*s Tiong Hiew King 5É (Zhang Xiaoqing) Tong Yanzhi _oK Tongchidao ö tongren bao Á1 tongsu × tongsu re ×± tongsu wenxue ׇx tongsu xiaoshuo ת Tuo Lei Ö÷ waisheng baozhi 
1 waishengren 
º

Wan e yin wei shou ,á뺖 Wang Baoxiang ‹Fe Wang Chongyang ‹Í} Wang Dulu ‹¦ì Wang Guangdong ‹Iq Wang Sima ‹ø¬ Wang Xiangqin ‹™4 Wang Xiaoming ‹É Wang Yun ò Wannian qing qicai xinzhuan ,t GM°³ Wanyan Honglie ŒO*È wei min wei guo, xia zhi da zhe º º àK' Wei Xiaobao Ëö Wei Xiaobao fengdu Ëö¨¦ weiqi Ë wen ‡ wen ding O Wen Qing «R Wen Qingqing «RR Wen Tailai ‡ð† wenchang ‡< wengai ‡ Wenhui bao ‡/1 Wenkang ‡· wenyi ‡Ý Wo Foshanren [qº Wohu canglong åNύ Wolong Sheng å Woshi Shanren /qº wu f Wu du ”9 wu fa wu tian !Õ(î)!) Wu Gongyi 3l Wu Hao zhi jian jK Wu Jianquan 3QÉ Wu Meicun 3…Q wu qiao bu cheng shu !ç ø Wu Quanyou 3hQ

Glossary of Chinese Characters

307

Wu Woyao 3ƒ/ Wu Yue chunqiu 3Š%Ë Wu Zhaozhong 3‡~ Wu Zhirong 3K® Wuchen !u Wudang fv wulin f— Wumei ”š Wushi chubanshe fòúH> ``Wushu sancao'' fScx Wushu zazhi fS܌ wutai ð wuwei !º ``Wuxia mingzhu jingxuan'' fà W ¾x wuxia xiaoshuo fઠWuxia yu lishi fàwò wuxue dashi, Wulin mengzhu fx '+
f—ß; Wuyue ”³ Xi Kang G· xia à Xia Bo / Xia Yi  xiahai w Xiang Kairan 76 Xiang Wentian O) Xianggang shangbao ™/F1 Xianggang shibao ™/B1 Xianggang xiaojie riji ™/Ðå Xianggangren ™/º Xiangwei long ÿ> Xiangwei she ÿ>Ç Xiangxiang gongzhu ™™l; Xiangyang D} xianuÈ às xiao + Xiao Feng mð Xiao LongnuÈ s Xiaoao jianghu ²_V

308

Glossary of Chinese Characters

xiaobao 1 xiaoren º Xiaosheng Xing Gao ÓØ ``Xiaoshuo mi'' ª ``Xiaoshuo tiandi'' ª)0 Xiaqiu zhuan f³ ``Xiawu chazuo'' H6§ xiayi gongan xiaoshuo à©lHª xiayi jingshen ੾^ xie ª xiezi TP xin ganjue pai °º> Xin Jiaxuan ›fઠXinsheng wanbao °Z1 Xixing dafa 8'Õ xiyinli 8› Xu Kairu 1ñ‚ Xu Tianhong ) Xueshan feihu êqÛÐ Xunhuan ribao ª°å1 Yan Danzi Õ9P Yan Qing ÕR Yan Qingshu ´v Yang Daming J' Yang Guo JN Yang Kang J·

Yang Luchan J2ì Yang Mei Ú Yang Pengju Jl Yang Tiexin J5à Yang Zaixing J ``Yanlin'' — Yao Fulan Ú¥Yao Shun Yu Tang /¹o Yao Xueyin Úê  yasu Å× Ye Chucang IZ– Ye Qin I Ye Xiaofeng Ió Yema ά yi © yi wenhua qijia de jufu å‡w¶„ èÌ Yilin 3 yingxiong ñÄ Yingying ÈÈ Yingzhua wang ù*‹ yiqi ©# Yitian tulong ji )` yitian wan xiaoshuo )Œª yongsu ¸× You Cao }I ``You ganqing de wuxia pian'' Å „fàG ``Youxia lie zhuan'' 8à³ Yu Canghai YÄw Yu Fei ŽÛ Yu Jiaolong ‰ß Yu Rang k“ Yu Wanting Ž,­ Yu Yingshi YñB Yu Yutong YZ Yuan Chengzhi × Yuan Chonghuan e Yuan Jiao Ê yuanyang hudie pai &tv>

``Yuanyuan qu'' ò Yue Buqun ³ ¤ Yue Chuan ³Ý Yue Fei ³Û Yue nuÈ Šs Yugong bao ½l1 yulexing ' Yumian hu ‰bÐ Yun Jun ò Yunlei chu nao yezonghui ò~' = YunuÈ xinjing ‰sÓ Zha Liangyong åoÞ Zha Shenxing åNL Zhai Gong Kl Zhang Chaotang 5 Zhang Henshui 5h4 Zhang Kuoqiang 5ô7 Zhang Menghuan 5"„ Zhang Wenbing 5‡³ Zhang Wuji 5!Ì Zhang Yimou 5Ý Zhang Yufeng 5èð zhanghui xiaoshuo àÞª zhanqie bu biao « h Zhao Huanting ™e­ Zhao Taizu qian li song Jingniang ™*V CÌ
¬ Zhao Zifan ™ËC Zhenben Shandong xiangma quanzhuan ,qqÿ¬h³ zheng c zheng  Zheng Chenggong -Ÿ Zheng Guangong -«l Zheng Zhenduo -/8 Zheng Zhengyin -Ià zhi ji åñ Zhi qu Weihushan zÖ
Nq zhiguai ×*

Glossary of Chinese Characters

309

Zhishan ó„ Zhishan san you Nanyue ji ó„ J WŠ zhong à Zhong Ziqi ~P zhongdingben B, Zhongguo qingnian bao -Rt1 Zhongguo ribao -å1 Zhongguo shibao -B1 Zhongguo zhi wushi dao -KfëS Zhonghua minzu -ïÏ zhongli -Ë Zhonglian -o Zhongnanshan BWq

310

Glossary of Chinese Characters

zhongyi à© Zhongyi Xiangren à© º Zhou Botong h/ Zhou Qi hº Zhou Riqing håR Zhu Bajie you Xianggang lkJ™/ Zhu jian D zhu lu  Zhu Yuzhai 1K Zhuangzi ŠP Zhuge Liang ø[® Zhuo Wenjun S‡ Zuo Lengchan æ·ª

Bibliography

Jin Yong zuopin ji Ѹ\ÁÆ [The collected works of Jin Yong] Jin Yong's works of martial arts fiction are listed below in the order in which they appear in the 36-volume Jin Yong zuopin ji published by Ming Ho Publications in Hong Kong. Following the volume numbers within the set are the title in Hanyu pinyin; the title in Chinese characters; (in brackets) the English title provided by the publisher; (in parentheses) the abbreviated or alternate title (if any) used in the body of this study; and the copyright date of the Ming Ho revised edition. Also provided are notes on the original serialization, other contents of the volumes in question, and published English translations. Volumes 1±2: Shujian enchou lu øiÇ [Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge] (Book and Sword); (1975. Serialized in Xin wanbao, February 8, 1955±September 5, 1956. The Book and the Sword. Translated by Graham Earnshaw. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2004. Volumes 3±4: Bixue jian §@ [The Sword Stained with Royal Blood] (Royal Blood); (1975. Serialized in Xianggang shangbao, January 1, 1956±December 31, 1956. Volume 4 also includes Yuan Chonghuan pingzhuan eU³ [A critical biography of Yuan Chonghuan], originally serialized in Ming Pao, May 23±June 28, 1975, as Guangdong yingxiong Yuan Manzi: Yuan Chonghuan pingzhuan ãqñā;PeU³ [The Guangdong hero: Yuan the Barbarian].

311

Volumes 5±8: Shediao yingxiong zhuan pñij [The Eagle-Shooting Heroes] (Heroes); (1978. Serialized in Xianggang shangbao, January 1, 1957±May 19, 1959. Volumes 9±12: Shendiao xialuÈ ^pàB [The Giant Eagle and its Companion] (Companion); (1976. Serialized in Ming Pao, May 20, 1959±July 5, 1961. Volume 13: Xueshan feihu êqÛÐ [Flying Fox on Snowy Mountain] (Flying Fox); (1976. Serialized in Xin wanbao, February 9, 1959±June 18, 1959. Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain. Translated by Robin Wu. In four installments in Bridge, a magazine from the Asian-American Resource Center (New York), 1972. Jin Yong. Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain. Translated by Olivia Mok. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1993. Volume 13 also includes Baima xiao xifeng }¬/¨ [The white horse neighs in the western wind] and Yuanyang dao & [Mandarin duck blades], both serialized in Ming Pao, 1961. Volumes 14±15: Feihu waizhuan Ûг [The Young Flying Fox]; (1976. Serialized in Wuxia yu lishi magazine, 1960±1961. Volumes 16±19: Yitian tulong ji )` [The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre] (Dragon Sabre); (1976. Serialized in Ming Pao, July 6, 1961±September 2, 1963. Volume 20: Liancheng jue #Î# [A Deadly Secret]; (1978. Serialized in Dongnanya zhoukan, 1963, under the title Suxin jian

Í.

Volumes 21±25: Tianlong babu )kè [The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils] (SemiDevils); (1978. Serialized in Ming Pao, September 3, 1963±May 27, 1966. Volumes 26±27: Xiake xing à¢L [Ode to Gallantry]; (1977. Serialized in Ming Pao, June 11, 1966±April 19, 1967. Volume 27 also includes YuenuÈ jian Šs [Sword of the Yue maiden] and Sanshisan xiake tu A ࢠ[Illustrations of the thirty-three swordsmen], originally published in Ming bao wanbao, January±February, 1970.

312

Bibliography

Volumes 28±31: Xiaoao jianghu ²_V [The Smiling, Proud Wanderer] (Wanderer); (1978. Serialized in Ming Pao, April 20, 1967±October 12, 1969. Volumes 32±36: Luding ji  [The Duke of the Mount Deer] (The Deer and the Cauldron); (1981. Serialized in Ming Pao, October 24, 1969±September 23, 1972. The Deer and the Cauldron. Translated by John Minford. 3 vols. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997±2003.

Works Cited The body of secondary literature on martial arts fiction is large, and growing rapidly; the literature on Jin Yong and his works is even more voluminous. The bibliography that follows is by no means an exhaustive guide to this literature, but only an index of works directly used in the preparation of this study. Useful bibliographies of secondary literature on Chinese martial arts fiction include those in Cao Zhengwen, Zhongguo xia wenhua shi, 289±299; Hu Wenbin, Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo cidian, 963±982; Luo Liqun, Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi, 376± 381; and Ning Zongyi, Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo jianshang cidian, 750±758. For bibliographies specifically of ``Jinology'' see Lin Baochun and Wu Huizhen, ``Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzhu mulu,'' and (for mainland material) Ding Jin, ``Zhongguo dalu Jinxue lunzhu mulu (1985±1996).'' Details on these publications appear below. Items are listed by the name under which they were published; added in brackets in some instances are the given names of authors publishing under pen names, or the anglicized names by which the authors are commonly known in the Western academy. An exception is made for the works of Jin Yong/Louis Cha/Zha Liangyong, which for convenience's sake are all listed under ``Jin Yong,'' with the name under which they were published, if different, provided in parentheses. Hanyu pinyin is used for the romanization of Chinese. In cases where published sources employ an alternate romanization, that spelling is given preference, and the Hanyu pinyin appears in parentheses following the Chinese characters. In the publication information, Taipei is used rather than Taibei; Hong Kong is used for English-language publications, Xianggang for publications in Chinese. English translations of Chinese titles, in brackets following the characters, are my own if unitalicized and using sentence-style capitalization, and based on a published source if italicized and capitalized in headline style.

Bibliography

313

Altenburger, Roland. ``The Sword or the Needle: The Female Knight-errant (xia) in Traditional Chinese Fiction.'' Habilitationsschrift, University of ZuÈrich, 2000. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso, 1991. Bakhtin, M. M. ``Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.'' In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, 84±258. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Baker, Hugh D. R. ``Life in the Cities: The Emergence of Hong Kong Man.'' China Quarterly 95 (September 1983): 469±479. BarmeÂ, Geremie R. In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. ÐÐÐ. ``Trinket, A Common Property.'' In The Question of Reception: Martial Arts Fiction in English Translation, ed. Liu Ching-chih, 41±64. `` `Battle to Death' Terminated by Seven Judges in Second Round Following an Emergency Decision.'' Hong Kong Standard, January 18, 1954, 7. Berkowitz, Alan J. Patterns of Disengagement: The Practice and Portrayal of Reclusion in Early Medieval China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. ÐÐÐ. ``The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed.'' In The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, 29±73. ÐÐÐ. ``The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods.'' In The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, 74± 111. ÐÐÐ. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Britton, Roswell S. The Chinese Periodical Press 1800±1912. Shanghai: Kelly and Ross, 1933; reprint, Taipei: Chengwen, 1966. Bu Dazhong \'-. ``Xin wuxia xiaoshuo de yishi xingtai zhengzhi'' °fઠ„XbK?» [The ideological politics of the new martial arts fiction]. Ming bao yuekan 1 31.2 (February 1996): 26±28. Cao Zhengwen ùc‡. ``Wuxia xiaoshuo re dui dalu wentan de chongji'' fà ª± 'x‡Ç„]Ê [The martial arts fiction craze's assault on the mainland literary world]. Ming bao yuekan 1 31.2 (February 1996): 12± 14. ÐÐÐ. Zhongguo xia wenhua shi -à‡ò [A history of Chinese xia culture]. Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe w‡ÝúH>, 1994. Chan Lau Kit-ching. China, Britain and Hong Kong 1895±1945. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1990.

314

Bibliography

``Charity Boxing Tournament Staged in Aid of Shumshuipo Fire Victims' Fund Proves Great Success.'' Hong Kong Standard, January 15, 1954, 7. Chen Hong s* and Sun Yongjin kÇ2. ``Shiji huishou: Guanyu Jin Yong zuopin jingdianhua ji qita''  ޖܼѸ\Á“xÊvÖ [Turn-ofthe-century retrospective: on the classicization of Jin Yong's works and other matters]. Nankai xuebao zhexue shehui kexue ban W‹x1òx>ÑxH, 1999 no. 6; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 82±95. Chen Liao s|. ``Qie shuo `Wenxue Dashi' '' ª`‡x'+' [On the subject of ``literary masters'']. Wenyi bao ‡Ý1, October 22, 1994. Chen Mo s¨. Jin Yong xiaoshuo zhi wuxue ѸªKfx [The martial arts in Jin Yong's fiction]. Nanchang: Baihua zhou wenyi chuban she ~±2‡Ýú H>, 1996. ÐÐÐ. `` `Jinxue' yinlun'' ÑxÖ [A preface to ``Jinology'']. Tongsu wenxue pinglun ׇxUÖ 5 (1993 no. 3): 4±11. ÐÐÐ. Langman zhi luÈ: Jin Yong xiaoshuo shenyou j+KÅѸª^8 [The journey of romance: a voyage of the spirit through Jin Yong's fiction]. Shanghai: Sanlian shudian oø—, 2000. ÐÐÐ. Shangxi Jin Yong ސѸ [An appreciative analysis of Jin Yong]. Zhonghe: Yunlong chuban she òúH>, 1997. ÐÐÐ. Xin wuxia ershi jia °fàŒA¶ [Twenty masters of the new martial arts fiction]. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe ‡ÝSúH>, 1992. Chen Pingyuan. ``Literature High and Low: `Popular Literature' in TwentiethCentury China.'' In The Literary Field of Twentieth-Century China, ed. Michel Hockx, 113±133. Chen Pingyuan ssŸ. Qiangu wenren xiake meng: wuxia xiaoshuo leixing yanjiu C䇺à¢" fàª^‹v [The literati's chivalric dreams: narrative models of Chinese knight-errant literature]. Taipei: Maitian ¥0, 1995 (originally published Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe º‡xú H>, 1992). ÐÐÐ. ``Wuxia xiaoshuo, dazhong qianyishi ji qita: huiying Zheng Shusen xiansheng'' fઠ'>[XÊvÖÞÉ-9îH [Mass Subconsciousness, Wuxia Fiction and Others: A Response to Zheng Shu-sheng (sic)]. Ershiyi shiji ŒA  5 (June 1991): 155±160. ÐÐÐ. ``Ye yu wuxia xiaoshuo jieyuan'' _fàªPã (A fated affinity with martial arts fiction). Dushu €ø 145 (April 1991): 56±61. Chen Qingqiao sÑ [Chan, Chingkiu Stephen], ed. Wenhua xiangxiang yu yishi xingtai: dangdai Xianggang wenhua zhengzhi lunping ‡óÏXbKv ã™/‡?»ÖU [Cultural imaginary and ideology: essays in contemporary Hong Kong cultural politics]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bibliography

315

Chen Shan sq. Zhongguo wuxia shi -fàò [A history of China's wuxia]. Shanghai: Sanlian shudian oø—, 1992. Chen Wanru sŒ‚. ``Haiwai xuyao yiben sixiangxing de kanwu'' w  , ó'„ i [The overseas Chinese need an intellectual journal]. Ming bao yuekan 1 1.1 (January 1966): 3±8. Chen Xin s°. ``Wang Shuo: Wo wuyi dui Jin Yong renshen gongji'' ‹!  Ѹº«;Ê [Wang Shuo: I had no intention of attacking Jin Yong personally]. Beijing qingnian bao ¬Rt1, November 5, 1999; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 15±16. Chen Ying sN. Zhongguo yingxiong xiayi xiaoshuo tongshi -ñÄ੪ò [A general history of Chinese heroic and chivalric fiction]. Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe _Y²úH>, 1998. Cheng bao sishi zhounian jinian 1ÛAht õ [Sing pao fortieth anniversary, 1939±1979]. Xianggang: Sing pao, 1979. Cheung Kwai-Yeung 5-} (Zhang Guiyang). Jin Yong yu baoye Ѹ1m [Jin Yong (Louis Cha) and the Press]. Xianggang: Ming bao chubanshe 1úH >, 2000. Chi, Pang-yuan, and David Der-wei Wang, eds. Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Chow, Rey. ``Between Colonizers: Hong Kong's Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s.'' Diaspora 2.2 (1992): 151±170. ÐÐÐ. ``Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: An Exercise in Popular Readings.'' In Woman and Chinese Modernity, 34±83. ÐÐÐ. Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading between East and West. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. ÐÐÐ. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. Cohen, Paul A. Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'ao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974; reprint, Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. Croizier, Ralph C. Koxinga and Chinese Nationalism: History, Myth, and the Hero. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. Cui Fengyuan I. Zhongguo gudian duanpian xiayi xiaoshuo yanjiu -äxí Ç੪v [A study of classical Chinese chivalric short fiction]. Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi o“úH‹mlø, 1986.

316

Bibliography

Danjiang daxue Zhongguo wenxue xi á_'x-‡xû, ed. Zongheng wulin: Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo guoji xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji 1kf—-f છxSÖ‡Æ [Ranging through the Martial Grove: collected papers from the International Academic Conference on Chinese Martial Arts Fiction]. Taipei: Xuesheng shuju xø@, 1998. Danjiang daxue Zhongwen xi á_'x-‡û, ed. Xia yu Zhongguo wenhua à -‡ [The knight-errant and Chinese culture]. Taipei: Xuesheng shuju xø@, 1993. Davis, Gloria, ed. Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Denton, Kirk A., ed. Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893± 1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. DeWoskin, Kenneth. ``The Six Dynasties Chih-kuai and the Birth of Fiction.'' In Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, ed. Andrew H. Plaks, 21±52. DikoÈtter, Frank. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Ding Jin
2. ``Jinxue de sige xiangguan xueke'' ÑxÛøÜxÑ [Four related topics in Jinology]. Jin Yong yanjiu Ѹv 1 (November 1996): 109±116. ÐÐÐ. ``Zhongguo dalu Jinxue lunzhu mulu (1985±1996)'' -'xÑxÖW î (1985±1996) [A bibliography of works of Jinology from the Chinese mainland (1985±1996)]. Tongsu wenxue pinglun ׇxUÖ 19 (1997 no. 1): 105±110. Duara, Prasenjit. ``De-Constructing the Chinese Nation.'' In Chinese Nationalism, ed. Jonathan Unger, 31±55. ÐÐÐ. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Elegant Simon. ``The Storyteller: What Makes Louis Cha's Martial-Arts Novels So Wildly Popular in Asia?'' Far Eastern Economic Review, September 5, 1996, 38±44. Fan Boqun /¤, ed. Zhongguo jin xiandai tongsu wenxue shi -Ñþãׇ xò [A history of recent and modern Chinese vernacular literature]. 2 vols. Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe _Y²úH>, 1999. Fan Zhihou ׌. ``Wuxia xiaoshuo chu deng xueshu diantang'' fàª{ xS¿ [Martial arts fiction first enters the halls of academe]. Ming bao yuekan 1 23.2 (February 1988): 60±62. Fang Jigen ¹M9 and Wang Guangming ‹I. Gang Ao xinwen shiye gaiguan /³°‡‹m‚À [A general survey of the news industry in Hong Kong and Macau]. Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe °ïúH>, 1992. Fei Yong »Ç and Zhong Xiaoyi ÉÅ, eds. Jin Yong chuanqi Ѹ³G [The

Bibliography

317

romance of Jin Yong]. Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe ãqº úH>, 1995. Feng Liangnu ®iª. Chuangye yu Luding ji um [Entepreneurship and The Deer and the Cauldron]. Xianggang: Mingchuang chubanshe —ú H>, 1992. Feng Qiyong ®v¸. ``Du Jin Yong'' €Ñ¸ [Reading Jin Yong]. Zhongguo wenxue yuekan -‡x 14 (1986 no. 8): 99±102. Feng Yu'nan ®²`. ``Qiantan wuxia xiaoshuo zai dalu shengxing zhi yinsu'' úÇfàª('xÛLKà [Remarks on factors in the vogue for martial arts fiction in the mainland]. In Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 396±415. Fiske, John. ``The Cultural Economy of Fandom.'' In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, 30±49. New York: Routledge, 1992. ÐÐÐ. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Fonoroff, Paul. Silver Light: A Pictorial History of Hong Kong Cinema, 1920±1970. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1997. Fu Guoyong …Œ. Jin Yong zhuan Ѹ³ [A biography of Jin Yong]. Beijing: Beijing shiyue wenyi chubanshe ¬A ‡ÝúH>, 2003. Fu, Poshek. ``Between Nationalism and Colonialism: Mainland EÂmigreÂs, Marginal Culture, and Hong Kong Cinema 1937±1941.'' In The Cinema of Hong Kong, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser, 207±208. Fu, Poshek, and David Desser, eds. The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ge Hongbing [u.``Butong wenxue guannian de pengzhuang: lun Jin Yong yu Wang Shuo zhi zheng'' ‡xÀõ„°žÖѸ‹K- [A collision between different views of literature: on the dispute between Jin Yong and Wang Shuo]. Tansuo yu zhengming ¢"-ô 2000 no. 1; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 123±131. Ge Hongbing [u et al. ``Jin Yong: bei bagao de `dashi' '' Ѹ«Ô؄``' +'' [Jin Yong: the elevation of a `'master'']. Nanfang luntan W¹ÖÇ 1999 no. 5; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 76±81. Ge, Liangyan. Out of the Margins: The Rise of Chinese Vernacular Fiction. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2001. Gilley, Bruce. ``King vs. Commoner.'' Far Eastern Economic Review 162.48 (December 2, 1999): 36±37. Gimpel, Denise. Lost Voices of Modernity: A Chinese Popular Fiction Magazine in Context. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2001. Gold, Thomas B. ``Go With Your Feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwanese Popular Culture in Greater China.'' The China Quarterly 136 (December 1993): 907±925.

318

Bibliography

Goldman, Merle, ed. Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. Gong Pengcheng ”l. Daxia 'à [The great xia]. Taipei: Jinguan chubanshe & úH>, 1987. Gong Pengcheng ”l and Lin Baochun —Ýó, eds. Ershisi shi xiake ziliao huibian ŒAÛòà¢Ç™/è [Compendium of materials on xiake from the Twenty-four Histories]. Taipei: Xuesheng shuju xø@, 1995. Great Britain Colonial Office. Colonial Reports: Hong Kong 1953. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1954. Guiguan gongzuoshi B å\¤, ed. Xia zhi dazhe: Jin Yong pingzhuan àK'  ѸU³ [Greatest among the xia: an evaluative biography of Jin Yong]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe ->úH>, 1994. Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Han Fei Tzu: Basic Writings. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. Hanan, Patrick. The Chinese Vernacular Story. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. Harding, Harry. ``The Concept of `Greater China': Themes, Variations and Reservations.'' In Greater China: The Next Superpower?, ed. David Shambaugh, 8±34. He Lin À—. ``Dui daoguang jianying de wenxue chensi'' Iq„‡x‰ [Reflections on the literature of flashing blades and gleaming swords]. Wenyi bao ‡Ý1 436 (1985.4): 25±26. He Manzi UÿP. ``Wei jiu wenhua xuming de yanqing xiaoshuo yu wuxia xiaoshuo'' º ‡qŒ}„ Ūfઠ[Romance fiction and martial arts fiction: prolonging the life of the old culture]. Guangming ribao I å1, August 12, 1999; reprinted in Liao Kebin, Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 43±46. He Ping Us. ``Xiayi yingxiong de rong yu shuai: Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo de wenhua jieshu'' à©ñĄ®p Ѹf઄‡ãð [The rise and fall of the chivalric hero: a cultural explication of Jin Yong's martial arts fiction]. Dushu €ø 145 (April 1991): 46±55. Hegel, Robert E. ``Making the Past Serve the Present: From the Yan'An Forum to the Cultural Revolution.'' In Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts from the People's Republic of China, 1949±1979, ed. Bonnie S. McDougall, 197±223. Ho, Ping-ti. ``Records of China's Grand Historian: Some Problems of Translation: A Review Article.'' Pacific Affairs 36.2 (Summer 1963): 171±182. Hockx, Michel, ed. The Literary Field of Twentieth-Century China. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 1999.

Bibliography

319

Hong Kong Annual Report 1951. Hong Kong: Government Printing Office, 1951. Hong Kong Report 1952. Hong Kong: Government Printing Office, 1952. Hong Kong Report 1966. Hong Kong: Government Printing Office, 1966. Hong Zicheng *P . Zhongguo dangdai wenxue shi -vã‡xò [A history of contemporary Chinese literature]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe ¬' xúH>, 1999. Hou Jian ¯e. ``Wuxia xiaoshuo lun'' fàªÖ [On martial arts fiction]. In Zhongguo xiaoshuo bijiao yanjiu -ªÔv [Comparative studies in Chinese fiction]. Taipei: Dongda tushu gongsi, 1983. Hsia, C. T. The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. ÐÐÐ. A History of Modern Chinese Fiction. 3rd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Hu Peng ál. Wo yu Huang Feihong ÃÛ; [Huang Feihong and I]. Xianggang: Sanhe maoyi gongsi Œ¿lø, 1995. Hu Ping ás. ``Jin Yong jianghua zixiang maodun'' ѸqêøÛþ [Jin Yong's statements are self-contradictory]. Beijing zhi chun ¬K% 81 (February 2000): 3. ÐÐÐ. ``Tongsu wenxue de xianzhuang yu fazhan'' ׇx„þÀ|U [The present condition and development of popular literature]. Tongsu wenxue pinglun ׇxUÖ 1992.1:24±39. Hu Wenbin á‡l. ``Lun Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo zhi chuban ji qi yanjiu'' Ö-fàªKúHÊvv [On the publication of Chinese martial arts fiction and its study]. In Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 228±264. Hu Wenbin á‡l et al. Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo cidian -fભx [A dictionary of Chinese martial arts fiction]. Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi chubanshe ïq‡ÝúH>, 1992. Huang Jichi Ã|
, Lu Weiluan çK~, and Zheng Shushen -9î, eds. Xianggang xiaoshuo xuan, 1948±1969 ™/ªx 1948±1969 [Selected Hong Kong fiction, 1948±1969]. Series Xianggang wenhua yanjiu congshu ™/‡ vâø [Hong Kong cultural studies]. Xianggang: Xianggang zhongwen daxue ™/-‡'x, 1997. Huang, Martin. ``From Caizi to Yingxiong: Imagining Masculinities in Two Qing Novels, Yesou puyan and Sanfen meng quan zhuan.'' Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 25 (2003): 59±98. Huang Weiliang í. ``Tongmeng ke du ci er xue wen: Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yuyan de chouyang fenxi'' å™ï€d x‡Ѹfઞ „ ½# [A path to literacy for youth: a selective analysis of the language

320

Bibliography

of Jin Yong's martial arts fiction]. In Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 648±667. Huang Zhongming Ãòô. ``Zhu Bajie xiafan ji: Gao Xiong de `jie xian feng jin' xiaoshuo'' lkáØĄ Ù÷Ê ª [Zhu Bajie's visit to the mortal world: Gao Xiong's fiction of `satiric fantasy']. In Xianggang wenxue jie yantao hui jianggao huibian, ed. Shizhengju gonggong tushuguan, 202± 213. Hummel, Arthur W. Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644±1912). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943. Huo Jingjue Zº. Jinxue da chendian Ñx'‰± [Sifting out ``Jinology'']. Xianggang: Yuelin tushu gongsi ±—ølø, 1990. Huters, Theodore. ``Ideologies of Realism in Modern China: The Hard Imperatives of Imported Theory.'' In Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China, ed. Liu Kang and Xiaobing Tang, 147±173. ÐÐÐ. ``Lives in Profile: On the Authorial Voice in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature.'' In From May Fourth to June Fourth, ed. Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang, 269±294. Huters, Theodore, R. Bin Wong, and Pauline Yu, eds. Culture and State in Chinese History: Conventions, Accommodations, and Critiques. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Irwin, Richard Gregg. The Evolution of a Chinese Novel: Shui-hu-chuan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953. Jiang Di _$ and Yang Hui J‰, eds. Jin Yong: Zhongguo lishi dashi Ѹ- wò'â [Jin Yong: the momentum of Chinese history]. Changsha: Hunan daxue chubanshe VW'xúH>, 2001. Jiang Diedie _‹‹. Shaolin xiao yingxiong —ñÄ [Young heroes from Shaolin]. Heilongjiang: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe э_ºúH>, 1987. Jiang Xuewen Üx‡. ``Jin Yong yuanzhu de yanyi banben'' ѸŸW„yH, [The adaptations of Jin Yong's works], Beijing wanbao ¬Z1, November 2, 1998, 15. Jin Can Ñæ. ``Zhongguo dalu Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yanjiu qianshu'' -' xѸfàªvúð [A brief account of the study of Jin Yong's martial arts fiction in mainland China]. Jin Yong yanjiu Ѹv 1 (November 1996): 95±108. Jin Ge Ñ. Wei Xiaobao qishi lu Ëö_: [Inspirations from Wei Xiaobao]. Guangdong: Zhuhai chubanshe àwúH>, 1998. Jin Guangyu ÑIÕ. ``Yingxiong de yi qian mian'' ñĄ Cb [The thousand faces of the hero]. Ming bao yuekan 1 31.2 (February 1996): 24± 25.

Bibliography

321

Jin Yong. ``Against the Authors of `Foreign Books in Chinese Language'ÐAn Interview with China's Most Popular Writer of Adventure Novels.'' In Modern Chinese Writers: Self-Portrayals, ed. Helmut Martin and Jeffrey Kinkley, 171± 178. Armonk, N.Y.: East Gate, 1992. ÐÐÐ (Zha Liangyong åoÞ). ``Beiguo chuchun you suo si'' % @ [Reflections on early spring in the north]. Ming bao yuekan 1 28.6 (June 1993): 81±91. ÐÐÐ (Louis Cha). The Deer and the Cauldron: The Adventures of a Chinese Trickster. Translated by John Minford. Canberra: Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, 1994 (reprinted from East Asian History 5). ÐÐÐ (Louis Cha). The Deer and the Cauldron: The First Book. Translated by John Minford. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997. ÐÐÐ (Louis Cha). The Deer and the Cauldron: The Second Book. Translated and edited by John Minford. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999. ÐÐÐ (Louis Cha). The Deer and the Cauldron: The Third Book. Translated and edited by John Minford. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002. ÐÐÐ. Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain. Translated by Olivia Mok. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1993. ÐÐÐ. ``Jin Yong de Zhongguo lishi guan'' Ѹ„-wòÀ [Jin Yong's view of Chinese history]. Ming bao yuekan 1 29.12 (December 1994): 12± 17. ÐÐÐ. ``Jin Yong zuopin ji `Sanlian ban' xu'' Ѹ\ÁÆ`` oH'' [Preface to the `'Sanlian edition'' of the Collected Works of Jin Yong]. Dushu €ø 180 (March 1994): 100±103. ÐÐÐ. ``LuÈyou jijian: Riben'' ÅJÄ! å, [Notes from abroad: Japan]. Ming bao yuekan 1 1.1 (January 1966): 67±68. ÐÐÐ. ``Man tan Shujian enchou lu'' +Ç øiÇ [A few remarks on Book and Sword]. Xin wanbao °Z1, October 5, 1955, 9. ÐÐÐ. ``Qunxing canlan yue huaming'' ¤æï [The moon radiant among the gleaming stars]. Ming bao yuekan 1 36.1 (January 2000): 24±25. ÐÐÐ. ``Wei Xiaobao zhe xiao jiahuo!'' Ëö¢
[That little rascal Wei Xiabao!]. Ming bao yuekan 1 16.10 (October 1981): 20±32. ÐÐÐ. Xianggang de qiantu ™/„M [Hong Kong's future]. Xianggang: Ming bao 1, 1984. ÐÐÐ. ``Xiao xu: nan zhujue de liangzhong leixing'' 7;҄i.^‹ [A brief preface: the two types of male protagonists]. In Wu Aiyi, Jin Yong xiaoshuo de nanzi, i±v. ÐÐÐ. ``Xueshan feihu you meiyou xiewan?'' êqÛÐ ’ ëŒ [Is Flying Fox finished or not?], Xin wanbao °Z1, October 5, 1960, 14.

322

Bibliography

ÐÐÐ. Zai Tai suo jian, suo wen, suo si (ú@‹
@^
@ [Observations and reflections on a visit to Taiwan]. Xianggang: Ming bao youxian gongsi 1 Plø, 1973. ÐÐÐ. ``Zhejiang Gang Tai de zuojia: Jin Yong huiying Wang Shuo'' Y_/ð„ \¶ ѸÞɋ [Zhejiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan authors: Jin Yong responds to Wang Shuo]. Ming bao yuekan 1 34.12 (December 1999); reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 10±14. Jin Yong Ѹ and Ikeda Daisaku `0'\. Tanqiu yige canlan de shiji ¢B æ „ [Compassionate Light in Asia]. Taipei: Yuanliu `A, 1998. Jin Yong Ѹ and Jiang Jingkuan Ülì. ``Qiao he lu'' KŒï [A bridge and a road]. Ming bao yuekan 1 1.1 (January 1966): 9±10. Jin Yong chaguan bianji shi Ѹ6(è/¤, ed. Jinmi liaoliao tian (er) Ñ÷JJ )(³) [Jin Yong fan chat, volume two]. Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi `A úHlø, 1999. Johnson, David, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski, eds. Popular Culture in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Kaikonnen, Marja. ``From Knights to Nudes: Chinese Popular Literature since Mao.'' The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies 5 (1994): 85±110. ÐÐÐ. ``Stories and Legends: China's Largest Contemporary Popular Literature Journals.'' In The Literary Field of Twentieth-Century China, ed. Michel Hockx, 134±160. Karp, Jonathan. ``The Nearly Departed: Ming Pao's Yu Pun-hoi Is Down but Not Out.'' Far Eastern Economic Review 157.44 (November 3, 1994), 62. ÐÐÐ. ``Yu Should Know: Scandal Embroils Chief of Hong Kong's Ming Pao.'' Far Eastern Economic Review 157.42 (October 20, 1994), 85±86. Keenan, Faith. ``Heir to Misfortune: Stake in Hong Kong's Ming Pao Is Up for Grabs.'' Far Eastern Economic Review 158.36 (September 7, 1995), 64±65. Kong, Shuyu. ``Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Chinese Literary Journals in the Cultural Marketplace.'' Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 14.1 (Spring 2002): 93±144. Kuang Jianxing :eL. ``Tupo yu buzu'' 4 ³ [Breakthroughs and shortcomings]. Ming bao yuekan 1 23.2 (February 1988): 62±64. ÐÐÐ. ``Xingdao shuiqiong chu, zuo kan yunqi shi'' L04®U PòwB [Walking to where the waters end, sitting and watching the clouds arise]. Ming bao yuekan 1 31.2 (February 1996): 15±17. Lai, Sharon. ``Translating Jin Yong: A Review of Four English Translations.'' In Jin Yong xiaoshuo guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji, ed. Wang Qiugui, 355± 384. Larson, Wendy. ``Liu Yichang's Jiutu: Literature, Gender, and Fantasy in Contemporary Hong Kong.'' Modern Chinese Literature 7.1 (Spring 1993): 89±103.

Bibliography

323

Lau Siu-kai and Kuan Hsin-chi. The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1998. Lee, Leo Ou-Fan. ``On the Margins of the Chinese Discourse: Some Personal Thoughts on the Cultural Meaning of the Periphery.'' In The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, ed. Tu Wei-ming, 221±241. ÐÐÐ. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930± 1945. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. ÐÐÐ. Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Lee, Leo Ou-fan, and Andrew J. Nathan. ``The Beginnings of Mass Culture: Journalism and Fiction in the Late Ch'ing and Beyond.'' In Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski, 360±395. Lee, Ming Kwan. ``Hong Kong IdentityÐPast and Present.'' In Hong Kong Economy and Society: Challenges in the New Era, ed. Wong Siu-lin and Toyojiro Maruya, 153±175. Leng Xia ·. Jin Yong zhuan Ѹ³ [A biography of Jin Yong]. Xianggang: Ming bao chubanshe 1úH>, 1994. Li Gucheng N7Î. Xianggang baoye bainian cangsang ™/1m~tÄQ [A Comment on the Press of HK]. Xianggang: Ming bao chubanshe 1úH>, 2000. Li Heiweng NÑÁ. ``Ji Nanhai Zhu Yuzhai'' Ww1K [An account of Zhu Yuzhai of Nanhai]. In Zhu Yuzhai, Lu Acai biezhuan, 161±163. Li Jiayuan N¶. Xianggang baoye zatan ™/1mÜÇ [Miscellaneous remarks on the Hong Kong newspaper business]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1989. Li Yijian Nåú. ``Yi jingdian wenxue `gaixie' de Jin Yong xiaoshuo: jian tan zuowei baozhi lianzai ti de wuxia xiaoshuo'' å“x‡x``9ë''„Ѹª| Ç\º1# Ԅfઠ[On the ``rewriting'' of Jin Yong's fiction as classic literature, with remarks on martial arts fiction in newspaper serialization]. Jintian Ê) 43 (1998.4): 60±73. Liang Bingjun É, ed. Xianggang de liuxing wenhua ™/„AL‡ [Hong Kong's popular culture]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1993. Liang Yusheng. ``Taiji quan yi ye mishi'' *uó
Uò [A page from the secret history of taiji quan]. Xin wanbao °Z1, January 17, 1954, 4. Liao Kebin ÖïŒ, ed. Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji ѸªÖ-Æ [The debate on Jin Yong's fiction: a collection]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang daxue chubanshe Y_'xúH>, 2000. Lin Baochun —Ýó. ``Cong youxia, shaoxia, jianxia dao yixia: Zhongguo gudai xiayi guannian de yanbian'' ž8à
à
à0©à -äãà©À

324

Bibliography

õ„Š [From youxia, shaoxia, and jianxia to yixia: the evolution of the ancient Chinese concept of ``chivalry'']. In Xia yu Zhongguo wenhua, ed. Danjiang daxue Zhongwen xi, 91±130. ÐÐÐ. Jiegou Jin Yong ãËѸ [Deconstructing Jin Yong]. Taipei: Yuanliu `A, 2000. ÐÐÐ. ``Jin Yong xiaoshuo banben chakao'' ѸªH,å [An investigation into the editions of Jin Yong's novels], in Jiegou Jin Yong, 197±241. ÐÐÐ. ``Jiujiu Taiwan de wuxia xiaoshuo'' QQðc„fઠ[Save Taiwan's martial arts fiction]. Ming bao yuekan 1 31.2 (February 1996): 18± 20. ÐÐÐ. ``Zhongguo gudian xiaoshuo zhong de `nuÈxia' xingxiang'' -äxª -„ sà ba [The Images of Lady Knight-Errants in Classic Chinese Fiction]. Zhongguo wen zhe yanjiu jikan -‡òvÆ 11 (September 1997): 43±88. Lin Baochun —Ýó and Wu Huizhen 3gž. ``Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzhu mulu'' ѸªÖWî [A bibliography of works on Jin Yong's fiction]. In Lin Baochun, Jiegou Jin Yong, 251±266. Lin I-Liang —å® (Lin Yiliang) [Stephen C. Soong]. Wuge fangwen ”*O [Five interviews]. Xianggang: Wenyi shuwu ‡ÝøK, 1972. Lin Lijun ——, ed. Jin Yong xiaoshuo yu ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji ѸªŒA -‡x›xS [Collected papers from the International Conference on Jin Yong's Fiction and Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature]. Xianggang: Minghe she ³>, 2000. Lin Linghan —Ìð. ``Wenhua gongye yu wenhua rentong: lun Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo chengxian de zhimin chujing'' ‡åm‡ ÖѸfà ªHþ„–Uƒ [Culture industry and cultural identity: on the representation of the colonial situation in Jin Yong's martial arts fiction]. In Wenhua xiangxiang yu yishi xingtai: dangdai Xianggang wenhua zhengzhi lunping, ed. Chen Qingqiao, 229±253. Lin Zu —V et al. Lin Shirong xianshi teji —®H+y/ [Memorial publication for our late Master Lin Shirong]. Xianggang: privately printed, 1951. Link, E. Perry, Jr. ``Hand-Copied Entertainment Fiction from the Cultural Revolution.'' In Unofficial China: Popular Culture and Thought in the People's Republic, ed. Perry Link et al., 17±36. ÐÐÐ. Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. ÐÐÐ. ``Traditional-Style Popular Urban Fiction in the Teens and Twenties.'' In Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, ed. Merle Goldman, 326± 349.

Bibliography

325

ÐÐÐ. The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Link, Perry, ed. Roses and Thorns: The Second Blooming of the Hundred Flowers in Chinese Fiction, 1979±80. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Link, Perry, Richard Madsen, and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds. Unofficial China: Popular Culture and Thought in the People's Republic. Boulder, San Francisco, and London: Westview Press, 1989. Liu Ching-chih, ed. The Question of Reception: Martial Arts Fiction in English Translation. Hong Kong: Centre for Literature and Translation, Lingnan College, 1997. Liu Denghan ‰{ð. Xianggang wenxue shi ™/‡xò [A history of Hong Kong literature]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe º‡xúH>, 1999. Liu, James J. Y. The Chinese Knight-errant. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. Liu Kang and Xiaobing Tang, eds. Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China: Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993. Liu Qingfeng. ``The Topography of Intellectual Culture in 1990s Mainland China: A Survey.'' Translated by Gloria Davis. In Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry, ed. Gloria Davis, 47±70. Liu Shaoming ‰9˜ [Joseph S. M. Lau]. ``Jin Yong xiaoshuo yu qiaojiao'' Ѹ ªÑY [Jin Yong's fiction and overseas education]. In Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 434±465. Liu Shaoming ‰9˜ [Joseph S. M. Lau] and Chen Yongming s8, eds. Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan fàªÖw [Papers on martial arts fiction]. 2 vols. Xianggang: Minghe she ³>, 1998. Liu Su ‰ [Luo Fu …Z]. ``Jinse de Jin Yong'' Ñr„Ѹ [The golden Jin Yong]. Dushu €ø 107 (February 1988): 135±142. ÐÐÐ. ``Xiaying xia de Liang Yusheng'' àq„½ [In the shadow of the xia: Liang Yusheng]. Dushu €ø 108 (March 1988): 138±144. Liu Su ‰ [Luo Fu …Z] et al. Liang Yusheng de wuxia wenxue ½„fà‡x [The martial arts literature of Liang Yusheng]. Taipei: Fengyun shidai chuban gongsi ¨òBãúHlø, 1988. Liu Tianci ‰)Ü. Wei Xiaobao shengong Ëö^Ÿ [The mystical arts of Wei Xiaobao]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1985. Liu Xinfeng ‰°¨, Chen Mo s¨ et al., eds. Zhongguo xiandai wuxia xiaoshuo jianshang cidian -þãfàªûÞ­x [A connoisseur's dictionary of modern Chinese martial arts fiction]. Beijing: Zhongyang minzu xueyuan chubanshe -.ÏxbúH>, 1993. Liu Yichang ‰å/. Jiutu R’ [The drunkard]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1979.

326

Bibliography

ÐÐÐ, ed. Xianggang duanpian xiaoshuo xuan (wushi niandai) ™/íǪx (”Atã) [Selected Hong Kong short fiction (The 1950s)]. Xianggang: Tiandi tushu )0ø, 1997. ÐÐÐ. ``Xianggang wenxue de qidian'' ™/‡x„wÞ [The starting point of Hong Kong literature]. Jintian Ê) 28 (1995): 81±83. Liu Yinbo ‰-Ï. Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi: gudai bufen -fàªòä ãè [A history of Chinese martial arts fiction: antiquity]. Shijiazhung: Huashan wenyi chubanshe ïq‡ÝúH>, 1992. Lu Dunji çfú. ``Jin Yong xin wuxia xiaoshuo de wenhua yu fan wenhua'' Ѹ °f઄‡͇ [Culture and counterculture in Jin Yong's new martial arts fiction]. Zhejiang xuekan Y_x 66 (1991 no. 1): 90± 96. Lu Hsun. A Brief History of Chinese Fiction. Translated by Yang Hsien-Yi and Gladys Yang. 3rd edition. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1976. Lu Weiluan ìK~. `` `Nanlai zuojia' qianshuo'' W†\¶ úª [Brief remarks on the ``South-bound Authors'']. In Sishi nian lai Zhongguo wenxue, ed. Shao Yuming et al., 397±410. ÐÐÐ. Xianggang gushi ™/E‹ [Hong Kong story]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996. ÐÐÐ. Xianggang wenzong: neidi zuojia nanlai ji qi wenhua huodong ™/‡1g 0\¶W†Êv‡;Õ [Flights of Hong Kong literature: mainland authors' southern sojourns and their cultural activities]. Xianggang: Huahan wenhua shiye chuban gongsi ï"‡‹mlø, 1987. Luo Fu …Z. ``Gao Xiong: Xiaosheng Xing Gao'' ØÄÓØ. In Nandou wenxing gao, 67±80. ÐÐÐ. ``Jin Yong Liang Yusheng de shici huimu'' Ѹ½„i^Þî [Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng's verse chapter titles]. Ming bao yuekan 1

36.6 (June 2001): 105±106. ÐÐÐ. Nandou wenxing gao: Xianggang zuojia jianying W—‡Ø™/\¶j q [The star of literature high in the southern sky: sketches of Hong Kong authors]. Xianggang: Tiandi tushu )0ø, 1993. ``Luoji shan xia zhengshuo Wei Xiaobao'' ïq-ªËö [Disputing Wei Xiaobao beneath the Rockies]. Ming bao yuekan 1 33.8 (August 1998): 27. Luo Liqun …ˤ. Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi -fàªò [A history of Chinese martial arts fiction]. Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe |çº úH>, 1990. ÐÐÐ. ``Zhongguo xiaoshuo yasu lun'' -ªÅ×Ö [On the elite and the popular in Chinese fiction]. Shehui kexue zhanxian >Ñx0Ú (1993.4): 253±257.

Bibliography

327

Ma, Eric Kit-wai. Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Ma Kwok-ming. ``Hong Kong Martial Arts Novels: The Case of Louis Cha.'' Masters thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1995. Ma Kwok-ming ¬ (Ma Guoming). ``Jin Yong de wuxia xiaoshuo yu Xianggang'' Ѹ„fઙ/ [Jin Yong's martial arts fiction and Hong Kong]. In Xianggang de liuxing wenhua, ed. Liang Bingjun, 84±94. Ma, Y. W. ``The Knight-errant in hua-pen Stories.'' T'oung pao 61.4±5 (1975): 266±300. ÐÐÐ. ``Yen Tan-tzu.'' In The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. William H. Nienhauser Jr., 930±931. Ma, Y. W., and Tai-loi Ma. ``Shui-hu chuan.'' In The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. William H. Nienhauser Jr., 712±716. Ma Youyuan ¬|£ [Y. W. Ma]. ``Shuihu zhuan yu Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo de chuantong'' 4ø³-f઄³q [The Water Margin and the tradition of Chinese martial arts fiction]. In Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 1:298±327. Mao Dun þ. ``Fengjian de xiao shimin wenyi''
ú„‡Ý [The feudalistic literature and arts of the urban petty bourgeois]. In Mao Dun wenyi zalun ji, 359±362. ÐÐÐ. Mao Dun wenyi zalun ji þ‡ÝÜÖÆ [Mao Dun's miscellaneous essays on literature and the arts]. Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe w ‡ÝúH>, 1981. ÐÐÐ. ``Ziranzhuyi yu Zhongguo xiandai xiaoshuo'' ê6;©-þ㪠[On naturalism and modern Chinese fiction]. In Mao Dun wenyi zalun ji, 83±99. McDougall, Bonnie S., ed. Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts from the People's Republic of China, 1949±1979. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Mencius. Trans. Joseph Lau. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1984. Ming bao congkan bianweihui 1â èÔ, ed. Ming bao ``Ziyou tan'' xuanji: di yi ji, 1962±1965 1 ê1Ç x/, /, 1962±1965 [Selected articles from Ming Pao's ``Free Discussion'': Volume I, 1962±1965]. Xianggang: Ming bao chubanbu 1úHè, 1969. Minford, John. ``Translator's Introduction.'' In ``The Deer and the Cauldron: The Adventures of a Chinese Trickster: Two Chapters from a Novel by Louis Cha.'' Canberra: Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, 1994. Morris, Andrew David. Cultivating the National Body: A History of Physical Culture in Republican China. Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998.

328

Bibliography

Naficy, Hamid, ed. Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. Ng Ho 3 (Wu Hao). ``Ai hen Zhongguo: lun Xianggang de liuwang wenyi yu dianying'' h-֙/„A¡‡Ýûq [Exile, A Story of Love and Hate]. In Urban Council of Hong Kong, The China Factor in Hong Kong Cinema, 21±41. ÐÐÐ. ``Dang chuanshuo siwang de shihou: chongti Lingnan Shaolin jiushi'' v ³ª{¡„BÍкW— ‹ [When the Legends Die: A Survey of the Tradition of the Southern Shaolin Monastery]. In Urban Council of Hong Kong, A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, 47±70. (Chinese version reprinted in Ng Ho, Xianggang dianying minsu xue, 91±113.) ÐÐÐ. ``Huang Feihong: yingxiong? caomang?'' ÃÛ;ñÄI½ [Huang Feihong: hero? vagabond?]. In Xianggang dianying minsu xue, 147±154. ÐÐÐ. Xianggang dianying minsu xue ™/ûq×x [Folklore Studies in Hong Kong Cinema]. Xianggang: Ci wenhua tang !‡, 1993. Ni Kuang *!. San kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo Ѹª [A third reading of Jin Yong's fiction]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1982. ÐÐÐ. Si kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo ÛѸª [A fourth reading of Jin Yong's fiction]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1983. ÐÐÐ. Wo kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo Ѹª [My reading of Jin Yong's fiction]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1980. ÐÐÐ. Zai kan Jin Yong xiaoshuo Ѹª [Another reading of Jin Yong's fiction]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1981. Nienhauser, William H. Jr., ed. The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Ning Zongyi ç— et al., eds. Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo jianshang cidian -fà ªûÞ­x [An appreciative encyclopedia of Chinese martial arts fiction]. N.p.: Guoji wenhua chubanshe ›‡úH>, 1992. Okazaki Yumi ¡1Ž. ``Wuxia yu ershi shiji chuye de Riben jingxian xiaoshuo'' fàŒA I„å,Zªª [Martial arts and early twentiethcentury Japanese thrillers]. In Jin Yong xiaoshuo yu ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji, ed. Lin Lijun, 211±225. Ong, Aihwa, and Donald M. Nonini, eds. Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism. New York: Routledge, 1997. Pan Guosen Xî. Wu lun Jin Yong fÖѸ [A martial perspective on Jin Yong]. Xianggang: Mingchuang chubanshe —úH>, 1995. Peng Jingfeng mJ¨. ``Paipai zuo chi guoguo? Ye shuo `Wenxue dashi' '' ’’P œœ_ª`‡x'+' [Lining up for goodies? More on ``literary masters'']. Wenyi bao ‡Ý1, November 26, 1994. Peters, John Durham. ``Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility

Bibliography

329

in the Western Canon.'' In Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, ed. Hamid Naficy, 17±41. Pimpaneau, Jacque [sic]. ``Chinese Wu-hsia hsiao-shuo and Their Western Counterparts.'' In Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 358±374. Plaks, Andrew H. The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. ÐÐÐ, ed. Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Portmann, Kai. Der Fliegende Fuchs vom Schneeberg: Die Gattung des chinesischen Ritterromans (wuxia xiaoshuo) und der Erfolgsautor Jin Yong [Flying Fox on Snowy Mountain: the genre of the Chinese knight-errant novel and the best-selling author Jin Yong]. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1994. Qi Shuyu AðÕ. Shichang jingji xia de Zhongguo wenxue yishu ÿ4“ß„- ‡xÝS [Chinese literature and art under the market economy]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe ¬'xúH>, 1998. Qianlong xunxing Jiangnan ji ~†áx_W [An account of Qianlong's procession through Jiangnan]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe wäMúH >, 1989. Qiu Shan ±ª. ``Xin wuxia zai Xianggang'' °fà(™/ [New martial arts fiction in Hong Kong]. Ming bao yuekan 1 31.2 (February 1996): 14. Qiu Xiaolong ؍, Zhang Wenjiang 5‡_, and Lu Hao x]. ``Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo sanren tan'' ѸfઠºÇ [A three-way conversation on Jin Yong's martial arts fiction]. Shanghai wenlun w‡Ö 10 (1988 no. 4): 63±69. Rui Heshi ®Œ+ et al., eds. Yuanyang hudie pai wenxue ziliao &tv>‡xÇ ™ [Materials on Mandarin Duck and Butterfly literature]. Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe úºúH>, 1984. San Mao Û et al. Zhuzi baijia kan Jin Yong (yi) øP~¶Ѹ( ) [The ``Hundred Schools'' read Jin Yong (1)]. Taipei: Yuanliu `A, 1987. Scott, Ian. Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 1989. Shahar, Meir. Crazy Ji: Chinese Religion and Popular Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998. Shambaugh, David, ed. Greater China: The Next Superpower? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Shao Yuming µ‰˜, Zhang Baoqin 5ö4, and Ya Xuan ^&, eds. Sishi nian lai Zhongguo wenxue ÛAt†-‡x [Chinese literature of the last forty years]. Taipei: Lianhe wenxue chubanshe o‡xúH>, 1994.

330

Bibliography

Shen Dengen ‰{i. ``Wo yu Jin Yong xiaoshuo'' Ѹª [Jin Yong's fiction and I]. In San Mao et al., Zhuzi baijia kan Jin Yong (yi), 211±218. Shengchao dingsheng wannian qing VÛ,tR [The sacred dynasty's tripods flourish, verdant for ten thousand years]. Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe ¬+Ä'xúH>, 1993. Shi Chengzhi ò K. ``Taoli chengxi nanshan hao: dao Chen Shixiang jiaoshou'' CNJWq“ ¼sdYˆ [Peaches and plums throng the paths, whitening the southern mountains: in memory of Professor Chen Shixiang]. Ming bao yuekan 1 6.8 (August 1971): 14±22. Shizhengju gonggong tushuguan ?@lqø(, ed. Xianggang wenxue jie yantao hui jianggao huibian ™/‡xÀ?/è [Collected talks from the Hong Kong literature festival forum]. Xianggang: Shizhengju gonggong tushuguan ?@lqø(, 1997. Sinn, Elizabeth. ``Fugitive in Paradise: Wang Tao and Cultural Transformation in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong.'' Late Imperial China 19.1 (June 1998): 56±81. Song Weijie ‹Ip. Cong yule xingwei dao Wutuobang chongdong: Jin Yong xiaoshuo zai jiedu žLº0ÏX¦]ÕѸªã€ [From entertainment activity to Utopian impulse: a rereading of Jin Yong's fiction]. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe _ºúH>, 1999. ÐÐÐ. ``Minzu guojia, geren shenfen, lishi jiyi: lun Jin Yong xiaoshuo de `Hu Han enchou' '' ϶º«wò¶ ÖѸª„ á"iÇ [Nation-state, personal identity, and historical memory: on barbarians and Han Chinese in Jin Yong's fiction]. Jintian Ê) 43 (1998.4): 74±84. ÐÐÐ. `` `MinzuÐguojia' zhuti de duochong yuyi: jiedu Jin Yong xiaoshuo de yige cemian'' `Ï-¶';L„ÍÓã€Ñ¸ª„ tb [The multiple implications of the theme of ``nation-state'': a reading of one aspect of Jin Yong's fiction]. Tongsu wenxue pinglun ׇxUÖ 20 (1997.2): 115±122. Song Yuan ‹C et al. ``Ta zou ta de lu, wo zou wo de lu: Jin Yong Shanghai tan Wang Shuo'' Öpքïp„ï Ѹ wq‹ [He goes his way, I go mine: Jin Yong's remarks on Wang Shuo in Shanghai]. Qingnian bao R t1 November 27, 1999; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 17±18. Ssu-ma Ch'ien [Sima Qian]. Records of the Grand Historian of China. Translated by Burton Watson. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. ÐÐÐ. Records of the Historian: Chapters from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Su Dengji ±ú. Jin Yong de wuxia shijie Ѹ„fàL [The martial arts world of Jin Yong]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1984.

Bibliography

331

Sun Lichuan kËÝ. ``Xin wuxia xiaoshuo chengwei juexiang'' °f઺ Uÿ [The voice of new martial arts fiction is stilled]. Ming bao yuekan 1  31.2 (February 1996): 9±11. Sun Yixue kœx. Jin Yong zhuan Ѹ³ [A biography of Jin Yong]. Beijing: Tuanjie chubanshe PúH>, 2001. Tan Fei ZÛ and Lin Yongbing —8³. ``Jia Ping'ao, Liu Xinwu deng mingjia pingdian `Wang Shuo feidao' '' Èsù
‰ÃfI ¶UÞ``‹Û '' [Jia Ping'ao, Liu Xinwu, and other experts' comment on ``Wang Shuo's flying blade'']. Chengdu shangbao ýF1, November 5, 1999; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 154±156. Tay, William. ``Colonialism, the Cold War Era, and Marginal Space: The Existential Conditions of Five Decades of Hong Kong Literature.'' In Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey, ed. Pang-yuan Chi and David Der-wei Wang, 31±38. Teng Sue-feng ÕѬ (Teng Shufen). ``Jianghu lushang bu duxing: Huashan lun Jin Yong'' _Vï

hL ïqÖѸ [Everybody was kungfu writing! Academia looks at Jin Yong and the martial arts novel]. Guanghua Iï [Sinorama] 24.1 (December 1998): 32±45. Teo, Stephen. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions. London: BFI Publishing, 1997. Tian Li 0—. ``Jin Yong keneng dang dashi?'' Ѹïýv'+ [Can Jin Yong be reckoned a master?]. Zhongguo qingnian bao -Rt1, August 25, 1994. Tong Yanzhi _oK (Liang Yusheng). ``Xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo liang da mingjia: Jin Yong Liang Yusheng helun'' °>fàªi' ¶Ѹ½Ö [The two great masters of new school martial arts fiction: a joint discussion of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng]. In Liu Su ‰ (Luo Fu …Z) et al., Liang Yusheng de wuxia wenxue, 112±150. Originally published in Haiguang wenyi wI‡Ý (Xianggang) 1±3 (1966). Townsend, James. ``Chinese Nationalism.'' In Chinese Nationalism, ed. Jonathan Unger, 1±30. Tu Wei-ming. ``Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center.'' In The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, 1±34. ÐÐÐ, ed. The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Unger, Jonathan, ed. Chinese Nationalism. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Urban Council of Hong Kong. Cantonese Opera Retrospective: The 11th Hong Kong International Film Festival, 1987. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1987. ÐÐÐ. The China Factor in Hong Kong Cinema: The 14th Hong Kong International Film Festival, 1990. 2nd edition. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1997.

332

Bibliography

ÐÐÐ. A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film: The 4th Hong Kong International Film Festival, 1980. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980. ÐÐÐ. A Study of the Hong Kong Swordplay Film (1945±1980): The 5th Hong Kong International Film Festival, 1981. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1981. Van Gulik, R. H. Hsi K'ang and His Poetical Essay on the Lute. Revised edition. Tokyo: Sophia University and Charles E. Tuttle, 1969. Wan Runlong ,d. ``Jin Yong: Wo yu Wang Shuo meiyou geren enyuan'' Ñ ¸‹’ ºi( [Jin Yong: There's no personal grudge between me and Wang Shuo]. Chengdu shangbao ýF1, November 3, 1999. Reproduced by Sina.com at http://dailynews.sina.com.cn/culture/1999-11-3/ 28350.html (accessed November 16, 1999). Wang Chungui ‹%B. ``Bashi niandai dalu wuxia xiaoshuo re'' kAtã'xf ઱ [The 1980s craze for martial arts fiction on the mainland]. Tongsu wenxue pinglun ׇxUÖ 5 (1993 no. 3): 77±84. (Also published, in slightly different form, as ``Bashi niandai dalu tongsu wenxue xingsheng zhi fengjiang: wuxia xiaoshuo re'' kAtã'xׇxÛKÒ f ઱ [The vanguard of the resurgence of popular fiction on the mainland in the 1980s: the craze for martial arts fiction], in Xia yu Zhongguo wenhua, ed. Danjiang daxue Zhongwen xi, 57±75.) Wang Chungui ‹%B and Liu Bingze ‰³¤. Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo gailun ת‚Ö [An overview of Chinese popular fiction]. Taiyuan: Beiyue wenyi chubanshe ³‡ÝúH>, 1993. Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-de-siecle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849±1911. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang Hailin ‹w—. Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi luÈe -fàªòe [A general history of Chinese martial arts fiction]. Taiyuan: Beiyue wenyi chubanshe ³‡ÝúH>, 1988. Wang Jiancong ‹â. Xianggang wenxue shi ™/‡xò [A history of Hong Kong literature]. Nanchang: Baihuazhou wenyi chubanshe ~±2‡ÝúH >, 1995. Wang, Jing. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng's China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Wang Meng ‹™. ``Duobi chonggao'' ²Ø [Shunning the sublime]. Dushu €ø 166 (January 1993): 10±17. Wang Qiugui ‹ËB, ed. Jin Yong xiaoshuo guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji Ѹ ª›xSÖ‡Æ [Proceedings of the International Conference on Jin Yong's Novels]. Taipei: Yuanliu `A, 1999. Wang Rongwen ‹®‡. ``Jin Yong yanjiu de xin qidian'' Ѹv„°wÞ [A new starting point for Jin Yong studies]. In San Mao et al., Zhuzi baijia kan Jin Yong (1), 4.

Bibliography

333

Wang Shuo ‹. Wuzhi zhe wuwei !å!O [The ignorant are unafraid]. Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe %¨‡ÝúH>, 2000. Wang Wenbin ‹‡l, ed. Zhongguo baozhi de fukan -1„o [The supplements of China's newspapers]. Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe -‡ òúH>, 1988. Wang Xihua ‹ ï. ``Ye shuo Jin Yong `deng tang' '' _ªÑ¸`{' [More on Jin Yong's ``elevation'']. Wenxue ziyou tan ‡xê1Ç 46 (1995 no. 1): 122± 124. Wang Xianpei ‹H and Yu Kexun Žï, eds. 80 niandai Zhongguo tongsu wenxue 80tã-ׇx [Chinese popular literature in the 1980s]. Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe VY²úH>, 1995. Wang Yichuan ‹ Ý, ed. Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue dashi wenku: xiaoshuo juan ŒA -‡x'+‡«ª# [Treasury of the masters of twentiethcentury Chinese literature: fiction]. 2 vols. Haikou: Hainan chubanshe wW úH>, 1994. Wang Yonghao jŒj. Zhongguo youxia shi -8àò [A history of China's youxia]. Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe w‡úH>, 1994. Wei Shaochang O9 , ed. Yuanyang hudie pai yanjiu ziliao &tv>vǙ [Materials for the study of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school]. Xianggang: Sanlian shudian oø—, 1980. Wen Ruian «^‰. Xi Xueshan feihu yu Yuanyang dao êqÛÐ& [An analysis of Flying Fox on Snowy Mountain and The Mandarin Duck Blades]. Taipei: Yuanjing `o, 1985. Weng Wenxin Á‡á. ``Cong fukan lianzai kan wuxia de wenxue huodong'' žo

# fà„‡x;Õ [Martial arts fiction's literary activity from the perspective of supplement serialization]. In Zongheng wulin: Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo guoji xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji, ed. Danjiang daxue Zhongguo wenxue xi, 121±145. Widmer, Ellen. The Margins of Utopia: Shui-hu hou-chuan and the Literature of Ming Loyalism. Harvard East Asian Monographs 128. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987. Widmer, Ellen, and David Der-wei Wang, eds. From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Wong, Siu-lin, and Toyojiro Maruya, eds. Hong Kong Economy and Society: Challenges in the New Era. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1998. Wong Wang-chi ‹× (Wang Hongzhi), Li Siu-leung No (Li Xiaoliang), and Chan Ching-kiu Stephen sÑ (Chen Qingqiao). Foxiang Xianggang:

334

Bibliography

lishi, wenhua, weilai &ó™/wò ‡ *† [Hong Kong Un-Imagined: History, Culture, and the Future]. Taipei: Maitian ¥0, 1997. Woshi Shanren /qº (attrib.). Fang Shiyu zhengzhuan ¹‰c³ [The true story of Fang Shiyu]. Xianggang: Chen Xiang ji shuju sXø@, n.d. ÐÐÐ. Hong quan dashi Tieqiao San *ó'+5K [The Hong boxing grandmaster ``Iron Bridge the Third'']. Xianggang: Nanfeng chubanshe W¨úH >, n.d. ÐÐÐ. Sande heshang ·Œ [The monk Sande]. Xianggang: Chen Xiang ji shuju sXø@, n.d. ÐÐÐ. Shaolin shi hu nao Yangcheng —AN'ŠÎ [The ten tigers of Shaolin raise a ruckus in Guangzhou]. Xianggang: Nanfeng chubanshe W¨úH>, n.d. Wu Aiyi 3D . Jin Yong xiaoshuo de nanzi Ѹª„7P [The men of Jin Yong's fiction]. Xianggang: Mingchuang chubanshe —úH>, 1989. ÐÐÐ. Jin Yong xiaoshuo de nuÈzi Ѹª„sP [The women of Jin Yong's fiction]. Xianggang: Mingchuang chubanshe —úH>, 1989. Wu Hongyi 3 . ``Jin Yong xiaoshuo zhong de jiu shici: Liang Yusheng yu Jin Yong anzhong jiao jin'r'' Ѹª-„ i^½Ѹ—-ÁR [The old-style verse in Jin Yong's fiction: the behind-the-scenes contest between Liang Yusheng and Jin Yong]. Ming bao yuekan 1 36.3 (March 2001): 77±83. Xiao Tong. Wen Xuan, or, Selections of Refined Literature, Volume Three. Translated by David R. Knechtges. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. ``Xinhuayuan li baixia leitai'' °±áúÂð [Leitai erected in Xinhua Park]. Xin wanbao, January 3, 1954, 4. Xu Junxi Ê et al. ``Piping, you hua haohao shuo'' yU q}}ª [In critique, keep your cool]. Wenhui bao ‡/1, December 11, 1999; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 116±122. Xu Sinian ¯t. Xia de zongji à„dá [Traces of the xia]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe º‡xúH>, 1995. ÐÐÐ. ``Yuanxia ji qi jingshen'' ŸàÊv¾^ [The original xia and his spirit]. In Xia de zongji, 1±16. Xu Sinian ¯t and Liu Xiang'an ‰e‰. ``Wuxia danghui bian'' fàèè [Martial arts and the underworld]. In Zhongguo jin xiandai tongsu wenxue shi, ed. Fan Boqun /¤, 1:439±735. Yan Jiayan ´¶Ž. ``Bianhuan baiduan bi sheng hua: shuo Jin Yong bi xia de `wu' '' Š{~ïF±ªÑ¸F„``f'' [A hundred variations spring from the tip of the brush: on the ``martial'' in Jin Yong's writing]. In Jin Yong xiaoshuo lun gao, 46±65.

Bibliography

335

ÐÐÐ. ``Da `Jujue Jin Yong' '' T`ÒUѸ' [In response to ``Reject Jin Yong'']. Nanfang Zhoumo W¹h+, January 13, 1995. ÐÐÐ. Jin Yong xiaoshuo lun gao ѸªÖ? [A draft discussion of Jin Yong's fiction]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe ¬'xúH>, 1999. ÐÐÐ. ``Wenhua shengtai pingheng yu wuxia xiaoshuo mingyun'' ‡Ks afàª}K [The balance of the cultural ecology and the fate of martial arts fiction]. In Zongheng wulin: Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo guoji xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji, ed. Danjiang daxue Zhongguo xi, 147±165. Also in Jin Yong xiaoshuo lun gao, 14±32. ÐÐÐ. ``Xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo de xiandai jingshen'' °>f઄þã¾^ [New school martial arts fiction's modern spirit]. Ming bao yuekan 1

31.2 (February 1996): 21±23. ÐÐÐ. ``Yichang jingqiaoqiao de wenxue geming'' 4\„„„‡xi} [A quiet literary revolution]. Ming bao yuekan 1 29.12 (December 1994): 18±20. Also in Jin Yong xiaoshuo lun gao, 208±213. Yan Lieshan "Èq. ``Jujue Jin Yong'' ÒUѸ [Reject Jin Yong]. Nanfang zhoumo W¹h+, December 2, 1994. Yang Lige J‰L. Jin Yong chuanshuo Ѹ³ª [The legend of Jin Yong]. Xianggang: Ci wenhua tang !‡, 1997. Yang Xing'an J‰. Jin Yong xiaoshuo shi tan ѸªAÇ [Ten talks on Jin Yong's fiction]. Xianggang: Mingchuang chubanshe —úH>, 1989. Ye Hongsheng I*. `` ` Toutian huanri' de shi yu fei: bijiao Jin Yong xin, jiuban Shediao yingxiong zhuan'' w)Ûå „/^ÔѸ°
H

pñ ij[The truth about the ``switch of the century'': a comparison of the old and new editions of Jin Yong's The Eagle-Shooting Heroes]. In Ye Hongsheng lun jian: wuxia xiaoshuo tan yi lu, 333±363. ÐÐÐ. ``Xianggang `xinpai' wuxia xiaoshuo fazhan gaikuang'' ™/``°>''fà ª|U‚Á [An overview of the development of Hong Kong's ``New School'' martial arts fiction]. In Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo mingzhu daguan, ed. Zhou Qinglin, 483±484. ÐÐÐ. Ye Hongsheng lun jian: wuxia xiaoshuo tan yi lu I*֍fàªÇ Ý [Ye Hongsheng speaks of the sword: talks on the art of martial arts fiction]. Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi o“úH‹mlø, 1994. ÐÐÐ. ``Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo shi lun'' -fàªòÖ [On the history of Chinese martial arts fiction]. In Ye Hongsheng lun jian: wuxia xiaoshuo tan yi lu, 3±110. A slightly earlier version appears as ``Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo zonglun'' -fàª=Ö, in Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 1:78±175. Ye Shan IÊ. ``Bokelai: huainian Chen Shixiang xiansheng'' ÏK ÷õs

336

Bibliography

dH [Berkeley: in memory of Professor Chen Shih-hsiang]. Chun wenxue ‡x 10.2 (August 1971): 69±78. ``Yijiujiuba Jin Yong lai Tai quancheng zhuizong baodao'' ]]kѸ†ðh ýd1 [A complete report of Jin Yong's 1998 visit to Taiwan]. In Jinmi liaoliao tian (er), ed. Jin Yong chaguan bianji shi, 221±297. Yu, Hongyuan. ``Shuihu zhuan (Water Margin) as Elite Cultural Discourse: Reading, Writing, and the Making of Meaning.'' Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 1999. Yu Yingshi YñB. ``Xia yu Zhongguo wenhua'' à-‡ [The xia and Chinese culture]. In Wuxia xiaoshuo lun juan, ed. Liu Shaoming and Chen Yongming, 4±76. Yuan Haowen C}O. Yuan Haowen shi ci ji C}Oi^Æ [Collected poems and lyrics of Yuan Haowen]. Ed. He Xinhui À°. Beijing: Zhongguo zhanwang chubanshe -UúH>, 1987. Yuan Liangjun oÿ. ``Zai shuo yasu: yi Jin Yong wei li'' ªÅ× åѸ º‹ [More on the elite and the popular: Jin Yong as an example]. Zhonghua dushu bao -ï€ø1, November 10, 1999; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 70±75. Zeng Chufeng þZ¨. ``Jin Yong zhi zheng'' ѸK- [The controversy over Jin Yong]. Zhonghua wenzhai -ï‡X 5 (1995): 4±10 (reprinted from Jinri mingliu Êå A, March 1995). Zha, Jianying. China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers are Transforming a Culture. New York: The New Press, 1995. ÐÐÐ. ``China's Popular Culture in the 1990s.'' In China Briefing: The Contradictions of Change, ed. William A. Joseph, 109±150. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. Zhang Feng 5ð, ed. Wang Shuo tiaozhan Jin Yong ‹0Ѹ [Wang Shuo challenges Jin Yong]. Guangzhou: Guangzhou chubanshe ãÞúH>, 1999. Zhang Gansheng à. Minguo tongsu xiaoshuo lungao תÖ? [A draft study of Republican vernacular fiction]. Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe ÍvúH>, 1991. Zhang Jinbang 5ќ. ``Wuxia xiaoshuo zai jinri Taiwan'' fàª(Êåðc [Martial arts fiction in today's Taiwan]. Ming bao yuekan 1 31.2 (February 1996): 20. Zhang Jiong 5¯, Deng Shaoji '9ú, and Fan Jun ÿ, eds. Zhonghua wenxue tongshi -ï‡xò [A general history of Chinese literature]. 10 vols. Beijing: Huayi chubanshe ïÝúH>, 1997. Zhang Mu 5î. Keyi de xiaolian: huashuo Wei Xiaobao ÉqªËö

Bibliography

337

[A suspicious smile: on Wei Xiaobao]. Shanghai: Shanghai yuandong chubanshe w`qúH>, 1998. Zhang Peiheng àùF. ``Jin Yong wuxia xiaoshuo yu Yao Xueyin de Li Zicheng'' ѸfàªÚꠄ Nê[Jin Yong's martial arts fiction and Yao Xueyin's Li Zicheng]. Shulin ø— 72 (November 1988): 2±7. Zhang Xun àý. ``Tai-Gang `Jinxue' yipie'' ð/``Ñx'' ¥ [A glance at ``Jinology'' in Taiwan and Hong Kong]. Wenyi bao ‡Ý1, April 30, 1988. Zhang Ying 5ñ. ``Wang Shuo: Jin Yong he tongsu xiaoshuo'' ‹Ѹ× ª [Wang Shuo: Jin Yong and popular fiction]. Zhongguo qingnian bao - Rt1, December 8, 1999; reprinted in Liao Kebin, ed., Jin Yong xiaoshuo lunzheng ji, 19±20. Zhe Hui òg. ``Zhongguo zhi luÈ: Zha Liangyong xiansheng fangwen ji'' -K Å åoÞH*O [Travels in China: an interview with Mr. Zha Liangyong]. Ming bao yuekan 1 16.9 (September 1981): 6±14. Zheng Shusen -9î [William Tay]. ``Dazhong wenxue, xushi, wenlei: wuxia xiaoshuo zhaji sanze'' '>‡x
X‹
‡^fàª- G [Popular literature/narration/genre: notes on wuxia literature]. Ershiyi shiji ŒA  4 (1991): 113±119. Zheng Shusen -9î, Huang Jichi Ã|
, and Lu Weiluan çK~, eds. Guo Gong neizhan shiqi Xianggang bendi yu nanlai wenren zuopin xuan qg0B ™/,0W†‡º\Áx [Selected works of local and south-bound Hong Kong authors from the period of the Chinese Civil War]. Xianggang: Tiandi tushu youxian gongsi )0ø Plø, 1999. ÐÐÐ, eds. Guo Gong neizhan shiqi Xianggang wenxue ziliao xuan qg0B™ /‡xǙx [Selected material on Hong Kong literature from the period of the Chinese Civil War]. Xianggang: Tiandi tushu youxian gongsi )0 ø Plø, 1999. Zhong Zi ~+, ed. Xianggang baoye chunqiu ™/1m%Ë [Annals of the Hong Kong newspaper business]. Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe ã qºúH>, 1991. ``Zhonggong zhongyang fu zhuxi Deng Xiaoping de tanhua jilu'' -q-.o;'s„Çq [Record of a conversation with Deng Xiaoping, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the CCP]. Ming bao yuekan 1

16.9 (September 1981): 2±5. Zhongguo minjian tongsu xiaoshuo -“ת [Vernacular Chinese folk novels]. Taipei: Wenhua tushu gongsi ‡ølø, 1990. Zhou Qinglin h, ed. Zhongguo wuxia xiaoshuo mingzhu daguan -fàª

W'À [A panorama of masterworks of Chinese martial arts fiction]. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian wø—, 1996. Zhou Wei h/. ``Pinglun: Wang Shuo de jiaosheng tingqilai shengsi lijie'' UÖ

338

Bibliography

‹„ër}w†r6›í [Commentary: Wang Shuo's cries sound hoarse and weak]. Nanfang ribao W¹å1, November 14, 1999. Reproduced by Sina.com at http://dailynews.sina.com.cn/comment/1999-11-14/31496. html (accessed December 21, 1999). Zhu Yuzhai 1K. Hu he shuangxing N´Ùb [Tiger-crane double form]. Xianggang: Chen Xiang ji shuju sXø@, n.d. (reprint of 1923 edition). ÐÐÐ. Lu Acai biezhuan x?Ç%³ [The unofficial history of Lu Acai]. Xianggang: Dagong shuju 'lø@, 1950. ÐÐÐ. Tiexian quan 5Úó [Iron thread fist]. Xianggang: Chen Xiang ji shuju s Xø@, n.d. (reprint of 1923 edition). ÐÐÐ. Yuepai dashi Huang Feihong biezhuan µ>'+ÃÛ;%³ [The unofficial history of the Guangdong school grandmaster Huang Feihong]. Xianggang: Guoshu congshushe Sâø>, 1934.

Bibliography

339

Index

Agent’s Diary, An (San Su), 68, 70, 71, 73 Ah Q, 201, 202. See also Lu Xun Anderson, Benedict, 10, 28, 29

Cantonese language: in Guangdong School fiction, 37–38, 47, 77; in “local” Hong Kong newspapers, 50; in Ming Pao, 124, 129; in work of San Su, 54, 68

Bai Yu, 21, 32, 173, 174, 228 Beyond the Sea, 68–72, 74 bildungsroman, 60, 93, 113, 172. See also Jin Yong’s fiction: focus on character in Bixue jian. See Royal Blood Book and Sword, 3, 26, 52, 55–64, 85, 87; anti-Manchu resistance in, 55, 56–57; context of serialization, 52–55; gender in, 62–63; geographic imaginary of, 58–60, 62–64, 157, 162; and Guangdong School fiction, 56; Han and nonHan in, 58–59, 62–63, 161; mainland editions, 230, 231; martial arts in, 60–62, 90; spurious sequels to, 182; texts and textuality in, 60–62 Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge. See Book and Sword Bourdieu, Pierre, 30, 169, 170, 176, 194, 235, 236, 237, 239, 256–257 Buxiaosheng, 20

Central Plains syndrome, 42, 50, 66, 129, 134, 255

canonization. See Jin Yong’s fiction: status and critical reception of

Cha, Louis. See Jin Yong Chen Jialuo: in Red Flower Society, 73–74. See also Book and Sword Chen Kefu. See Chen-Wu match Chen Mo, 23–24, 235 Chen Pingyuan, 23, 158, 195 n.57 Chen Shih-hsiang, 232–233 Chen Wentong. See Liang Yusheng Chen Xiazi, 68–69 Chen Yuanyuan, 188, 224–226, 237 Chen-Wu match, 3–11, 249, 255 Chinese cultural heritage: in Book and Sword, 61–62; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 203–205, 206–207, 211–214, 218–226; in Heroes, 91–92, 94–95, 155–156; Jin Yong’s fiction as vehicle for, 193–197, 219–226, 236–237, 246, 253–254; in Royal Blood, 191–197; in Wanderer, 150–151, 155–156, 160–162 Collected Works of Jin Yong, The, 30,

341

116, 131, 180, 181–197, 200, 234: mainland edition, 231, 244; Taiwan edition, 234 “comedies of displacement,” 50, 67–75; and Red Flower Society, 73–74 Companion, 26–27, 79–80, 95–113, 149; Chinese cultural identity in, 79–80; geographic imaginary of, 98–99, 107–108; martial arts in, 100–103; patriotic and nationalistic themes in, 98–99, 104–113, 161, 162; romantic and erotic themes in, 96–97, 101–104, 106–108, 111–113; serialization of, 170–172, 176–179, 182 Complete Works of Jin Yong. See Collected Works of Jin Yong, The Cultural Revolution, 198, 227, 228, 238, 242; coverage in Ming Pao family publications, 119, 128–129, 134–136, 163, 164; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 215–216; in Wanderer, 163–165, 166 “Curly-Bearded Stranger, The,” 16, 65, 75 Deadly Secret, A, 132; publication in Taiwan, 234 Deer and the Cauldron, The, 25, 28, 29, 200–226; anti-Manchu resistance in, 203–211, 217–218; Chinese cultural heritage in, 203–205, 206–207, 211–214, 218–226; Cultural Revolution and, 215–216; gender in, 209–210; geographic imaginary of, 214–215, 217–218; Han and non-Han in, 75, 209–210, 217–218; martial arts in, 218–219;

342

Index

political allegory in, 215–217; popular culture represented in, 204–205, 211–214, 221–226; and Royal Blood, 185, 190–191, 289 n.29, 290 n.37; subversion of genre in, 200–201, 218–219, 220; texts and textuality in, 217–218 Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, The. See Semi-Devils Deng Xiaoping, 30, 198, 200, 227, 229, 242 Deng Yugong, 37, 38 diaspora, 27–28, 79–80, 134–136, 195–197. See also overseas Chinese Dragon and Tiger Vie in the Capital (Liang Yusheng), 3, 7–8, 11 Dragon Sabre, 26, 81–82, 162, 234 Drunkard, The (Liu Yichang), 168–170, 236 Duke of the Mount Deer, The. See Deer and the Cauldron, The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, The. See Heroes Everlasting, 19, 34–37 Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas, 46, 47–48 Fang Shiyu xia Nanyang. See Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas Fang Shiyu: in Everlasting, 35–36; in Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas, 47–48; in Young Heroes from Shaolin, 36 Feihu waizhuan. See Young Flying Fox, The Feng Qiyong, 239–240, 246 Flying Fox on Snowy Mountain. See Flying Fox Flying Fox, 80–81, 87, 130, 181

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain. See Flying Fox gender: in Book and Sword, 62–63; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 209–210; in Wanderer, 146–148, 153–155 geographic imaginary: of Book and Sword, 58–60, 62–64, 157, 162; of Companion, 98–99, 107–108; of The Deer and the Cauldron, 214–215, 217–218; of Guangdong School fiction, 58; of Heroes, 83–84, 85, 87–88, 93–95; of Royal Blood, 65–67, 93; of Wanderer, 138–139, 157–159, 161–162 Giant Eagle and Its Companion, The. See Companion Gu Long, 130, 230 Guangdong School fiction, 26, 32–48, 230; anti-Manchu resistance in, 56; and Book and Sword, 56, 58; Cantonese language in, 37–38, 47, 77; and “comedies of displacement,” 47–48; cultural context of, 33, 37–40, 47–48; geographic imaginary of, 58; literary origins in Everlasting, 34–37; and New School fiction, 33, 50, 76–78 Guo Jing: as role model, 117–118, 172, 247, 256; and Wei Xiaobao, 201, 256; and Yang Guo, 95–96, 112, 113. See also Companion; Heroes Haijiao Liangshanbo. See Beyond the Sea Han and non-Han: in Book and Sword, 58–59, 62–63, 161; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 75, 218; in Heroes, 83–85, 87–88; in Royal Blood, 75; in Semi-Devils, 161–162; in Wan-

derer, 161–162. See also Manchus, resistance to haohan (“goodfellow”), 17–19, 83; in Everlasting, 35–36 He Wenfa, 38, 44 Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre, The. See Dragon Sabre Heroes, 25, 26, 27, 79–95; Chinese cultural heritage in, 91–92, 94–95, 155–156; film adaptation of, 174–176; geographic imaginary of, 83–84, 85, 87–88, 93–95; Han and non-Han in, 83–85, 87–88; martial arts in, 88–92; patriotic and nationalistic themes in, 83–85, 93–95, 161–162; published in mainland, 230; romantic and erotic themes in, 95; texts and textuality in, 91–93 Hong Kong: cultural identity, 9–10, 24–25, 32–33, 40–43, 49–51, 128–129, 133–134 (see also Central Plains syndrome); newspapers (see Hong Kong press); representation in postwar fiction, 67–68 (see also “comedies of displacement”); retrocession (1997), 2, 28, 134, 199–200 Hong Kong press, 10–11; development of, 38–39, 40–45; fiction in, 44–46, 51; “local” and “outland” distinction, 41–42, 50. See also Ming Pao; Sing pao; Xianggang shangbao; Xin wanbao; Xingdao ribao Honghua hui qunxiong nao Xiangjiang. See Red Flower Society Hsia, C. T., 165–166 Huang Feihong, 37, 39, 40, 46, 78

Index

343

Huanzhu Louzhu, 21, 32, 76, 173, 174, 228 huigui. See Hong Kong: retrocession (1997) Jiang Zemin, 199 jianghu. See Rivers and Lakes Jin Yong: biographies of, 278 n.13; career, 1–3, 80–82, 113, 120–121, 198–200, 241; image and status, 1–3, 116–117, 241, 246–249, 255–256, 260; and the “Jin Yong phenomenon,” 1–3, 115, 118, 260; and mainland regime, 28, 125–129, 198–200, 279 n.21; source of pseudonym, 32. See also Jin Yong’s fiction; Ming Pao; Ming Pao publication family Jin Yong’s fiction: the academy and, 30, 176, 201, 233–234, 235–237, 257–259; adaptation into other media, 1, 115–116, 118, 171, 174–176, 250, 260; conferences on, 114–118, 201, 236–237, 240, 277 n.3; focus on character in, 57–58, 96, 271 n.15, 172–174, 176–179, 185, 189; in mainland China, 28, 30–31, 227–232, 238–249, 250–260; narrative strategies of, 80–81, 86–87, 140, 141–142; pirated and spurious editions, 181–183, 231, 252; promotion of, 30, 118–119, 129–131, 201–202, 233–235, 237, 247, 257, 259; publication and circulation of, 29–30, 52–55, 121, 129–131, 181–184, 196–197, 229–231, 234–235; revision of, 183–197, 260, 283 n.25; status and critical reception of, 1–2,

344

Index

29–31, 114–120, 168–197, 201, 231–249, 250–260; thematic evolution of, 24–28, 79–80, 90, 95–97, 137–138, 156–157, 161–162, 172, 189–191, 203, 214, 219, 241–242; as vehicle for cultural transmission, 193–197, 219–226, 236–237, 246, 253–254. See also Collected Works of Jin Yong, The; and the titles of individual works Jin Yong zuopin ji. See Collected Works of Jin Yong, The Jingji La, 68, 70. See also San Su Jingji riji. See An Agent’s Diary Jinology (Jinxue), 232–237, 239–241, 247–248, 250, 260. See also Jin Yong’s fiction: status and critical reception of Jinxue. See Jinology Jiutu. See Drunkard, The Kangxi emperor. See Deer and the Cauldron, The knight-errant. See xia Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), 65–66, 216 Lau, Joseph, 224, 236–237 Li Zicheng, 64, 65, 81, 187–189, 224, 241 Liancheng jue. See Deadly Secret, A Liang Yusheng, 3, 7–8, 11, 32, 46, 75, 77, 180, 230, 231, 240, 270 n.8 Lin Linghan, 25, 225 Linghu Chong. See Wanderer Liu Yichang, 168–170 Longhu dou jinghua. See Dragon and Tiger Vie in the Capital Louis Cha. See Jin Yong

Lu Xun, 1, 124, 145, 201, 244. See also Ah Q Luding ji. See Deer and the Cauldron, The Luo Fu, 70, 180, 240–241 Ma Kwok-ming, 24–25 Manchus, resistance to: in Book and Sword, 55, 56–57; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 203–211, 217–218; in Guangdong School fiction, 56; in Royal Blood, 187, 189–190, 206 Mao Dun, 22, 42, 244, 245 Marshes of Mount Liang Beyond the Sea, The. See Beyond the Sea martial arts: in Book and Sword, 60–62, 90; in Companion, 100–103; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 218–219; in Heroes, 88–92; in Royal Blood, 90; in Wanderer, 143–150 Martial Arts and History, 129–131, 171, 182, 183, 195 martial arts fiction: definition and origins of term, 1, 11–12, 261 n.1; Guangdong School of (see Guangdong School fiction); in Hong Kong and Taiwan (see New School fiction); late Qing and Republican, 19–21, 173–174; literary status of, 21–23, 130–131, 165–167, 168–170, 173–174, 179–180 (see also Jin Yong’s fiction: status and critical reception of ); in PRC, 23, 228–231; pre-modern history of, 11–19 May Fourth, 238, 245, 246; critiques of popular culture by, 21–23, 169–170, 254, 255 Ming bao. See Ming Pao

Ming bao yuekan. See Ming Pao Monthly Ming bao zhoukan. See Ming Pao Weekly Ming Ho Publications, 183–184, 194–195, 200, 232, 237. See also Collected Works of Jin Yong, The; Ming Pao publication family Ming Pao, 2, 120–129: editorials, 119, 121–122, 123–129, 198–199; history of, 81, 113, 119–120, 121–122, 168; Hong Kong identity in, 123–129; linguistic register of, 124, 129; and mainland regime, 125–129, 198–200; role in promotion of Jin Yong’s fiction, 30, 168, 170–180. See also Hong Kong press; Jing Yong: career; Ming Pao publication family Ming Pao Daily News. See Ming Pao Ming Pao Monthly, 131–132, 134–136, 198–200. See also Ming Pao publication family Ming Pao publication family, 2, 27; Chinese cultural identity in, 119, 133–136; growth and status of, 119, 120, 129–133; and mainland regime, 119, 135–136, 198–200; role in promotion of Jin Yong’s fiction, 119, 130–131. See also Ming Ho Publications; Ming Pao; Ming Pao Monthly; Ming Pao Weekly Ming Pao Weekly, 130, 132. See also Ming Pao publishing family Minghe she chuban youxian gongsi. See Ming Ho Publications nationalism. See patriotic and nationalistic themes New School fiction, 1, 23–24; and Chen-Wu match, 3–11; chronotope

Index

345

of, 67, 72–75; cultural context of, 33–34, 46–47, 50–51, 75–78; and Guangdong School fiction, 33, 50, 76–78; linguistic register of, 77; in mainland China, 230–231; and prewar “Old School” fiction, 23–24, 32–33 Ni Kuang, 130, 182, 200–201, 235, 250 1997. See Hong Kong: retrocession (1997) Ode to Gallantry, 159, 196, 234, 281 n.10 overseas Chinese: circulation of Jin Yong’s fiction among, 171, 195–197, 236–237, 240; in Jin Yong’s fiction, 191–193. See also diaspora Pan Yuesheng, 121, 132 patriotic and nationalistic themes: in Companion, 98–99, 104–113, 161, 162; in Heroes, 83–85, 93–95, 161–162; in Wanderer, 160–162. See also Chinese cultural heritage; Manchus, resistance to Peach Blossom Spring, 94, 108, 155 Personal Diary of Shigougong, The (San Su), 54, 68, 70 political allegory: in Book and Sword, 56–57; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 215–217; in Royal Blood, 66; in Wanderer, 163–165 popular culture: May Fourth critiques of, 21–23, 169–170, 254, 255; in post-Mao PRC, 227–232, 238–249, 251, 254–260; represented in The Deer and the Cauldron, 204–205, 211–214, 221–226

346

Index

Princess Fragrance, 161; in Red Flower Society, 73–74. See also Book and Sword Qianlong emperor: in Book and Sword, 55–59; in Everlasting, 34–36, 56 Qiong Yao, 250, 252 “Qiuran ke zhuan.” See “CurlyBearded Stranger, The” Red Flower Society, 73–74, 77 Rivers and Lakes (jianghu), 17–19, 83, 88, 274–275 n.3; in Book and Sword, 59, 62, 63–64; as chronotope of New School fiction, 67, 72–76; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 200, 203–206, 209; in Heroes, 82, 83, 87–88, 93–94; in “Old School” and Taiwan martial arts fiction, 75–76; referenced in non-fictional contexts, 118, 174, 255; in Royal Blood, 65, 191; in Wanderer, 137, 138–139, 143, 150–151, 156–160. See also geographic imaginary romantic and erotic themes: in Companion, 96–97, 101–104, 106–108, 111–113; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 209–210; in Heroes, 95; in Jin Yong’s fiction generally, 172, 271 n.15; in Wanderer, 137, 152–157 Royal Blood, 26, 64–67, 74, 75, 85, 87; anti-Manchu resistance in, 187, 189–190, 206; Chinese cultural heritage in, 191–197; and The Deer and the Cauldron, 185, 190–191, 289 n.29, 290 n.37; geographic imaginary of, 65–67, 93; historical and political themes in, 187–191;

martial arts in, 90; publication and revision of, 181–197, 219 San Su, 54, 68, 70, 121 San xia wu yi. See Three Heroes and Five Gallants Semi-Devils: Chen Shih-hsiang’s evaluation of, 232–233; contributions of Ni Kuang to, 235; Han and nonHan in, 161–162; Wang Shuo’s critique of, 251–252 serialization: in Hong Kong newspapers, 44–46; literary status of, 170, 194; as reading context, 51–52, 178–179, 194 Shaolin xiao yingxiong. See Young Heroes from Shaolin Shaolin: in Book and Sword, 56; in Everlasting, 34–36; in Guangdong School fiction, 37, 38; in Wanderer, 138, 139 Shediao yingxiong zhuan. See Heroes Shen Baoxin, 121 Shendiao xialü. See Companion Shengchao ding sheng wannian qing. See Everlasting Shigougong ziji. See Personal Diary of Shigougong, The Shuihu zhuan. See Water Margin, The Shujian enchou lu. See Book and Sword Sing pao, 38, 42, 43, 44, 46, 68, 77 Sino-British Joint Declaration (1984). See Hong Kong: retrocession (1997) Smiling, Proud Wanderer, The. See Wanderer Song Weijie, 25–26, 225 Sword Stained with Royal Blood, The. See Royal Blood

tabloid (xiaobao): early Ming Pao as, 121, 122, 124–125; in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, 38; in mainland China, 228, 230 texts and textuality: in Book and Sword, 60–62; in The Deer and the Cauldron, 217–218; in Heroes, 91–93; in Wanderer, 143, 147, 150–151, 160 Three Heroes and Five Gallants, 19, 35, 228 Tianlong babu. See Semi-Devils Wanderer, 27, 28, 136, 137–167; Chinese cultural heritage in, 150–151, 155–156, 160–162; Cultural Revolution and, 163–165, 166; gender in, 146–148, 153–155; geographic imaginary of, 138–139, 157–159, 161–162; Han and non-Han in, 161–162; martial arts in, 143–150; patriotic and nationalistic themes in, 160–162; political allegory in, 163–165; reclusion in, 137, 140–142, 150–156; representation of political life in, 137, 143, 160–162, 166; Rivers and Lakes in, 137, 138–139, 143, 150–151, 156–159; romantic and erotic themes in, 137, 152–157; texts and textuality in, 143, 147, 150–151, 160 Wang Dulu, 21, 230, 271 n.15 Wang Meng, 243 Wang Shuo, 243, 249; critique of Jin Yong, 250–260 Wang Yichuan, 245 Water Margin, The, 17–19, 35, 36, 83, 204, 229; and Beyond the Sea, 69–72

Index

347

Wei Xiaobao, 25, 28, 200–202, 241–242, 256. See also Deer and the Cauldron, The Woshi Shanren, 37, 38–39, 40, 77 Wu Aiyi, 26, 219, 237 Wu Gongyi. See Chen-Wu match wuxia xiaoshuo. See martial arts fiction Wuxia yu lishi. See Martial Arts and History xia, 11; female (nüxia, xianü), 15; in history and historiography, 11–14; in literature (see martial arts fiction) Xiake xing. See Ode to Gallantry Xianggang shangbao, 44, 45–47; comedies of displacement in, 68–69; Fang Shiyu Journeys to the South Seas in, 46; Heroes in, 77, 80; Royal Blood in, 64, 67, 74, 181, 191 Xiaoao jianghu. See Wanderer xiaobao. See tabloid Xin wanbao, 44, 51, 68, 121, 123, 126,

348

Index

173, 179, 180, 240; Book and Sword in, 3, 46, 52–54; Chen-Wu match and Liang Yusheng’s fiction in, 3, 7, 11, 46; Flying Fox in, 80 Xingdao ribao, 41–43, 44, 45, 122, 126 Xueshan feihu. See Flying Fox Yan Jiayan, 245–246 Yang Guo, 95, 161, 176–179; compared with Guo Jing, 95–96, 112, 113. See also Companion Ye Hongsheng, 33, 37 Yitian tulong ji. See Dragon Sabre Young Flying Fox, The, 130 Young Heroes from Shaolin, 36 Yuanliu Publishing, 114, 115, 116–117 Yun Jun, 67, 131, 176, 182, 195 Zha Liangyong. See Jin Yong Zheng Zhenduo, 239 Zhongguo qingnian bao, 250, 252, 257 Zhu Yuzhai, 37, 39–40, 46, 78