Louis Cha - Profile of a Contemporary Legend among Chinese Authors

Louis Cha, who was most commonly known as Jin Yong, his pen name when writing martial arts novels, came from a long line of illustrious names dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Cha family were natives of Haining, Zhejiang Province, in the region south of the lower Yangtze River (Jiangnan). Many family members achieved great success in the imperial examinations of the Ming and Qing. One of the family’s distinguished mementos is a plaque bestowed by Emperor Kangxi written in his own handwriting and still adorns the family’s ancestral hall. Louis Cha was born in 1924 and went on to gain success and recognition as one of the world’s most famous Chinese authors and journalists.

Cha received his primary and secondary education in Zhejiang. An avid reader from an early age, he would devote his after-school hours to reading. By eight years of age, he already completed The Lady of Steel and other martial arts novels. As he grew older, he became so well read that his favourite books included Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the tome on historiography titled Zizhi Tongjian (literally translated as Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Governance), as well as the works of the French writer, Alexandre Dumas. Cha demonstrated his outstanding writing talent at an early age and was a frequent contributor to the supplement of the Southeast Daily newspaper.

During the Japanese invasion of China, Cha suffered great hardship when he joined his teachers and classmates to take refuge in mountainous and rural areas. He was admitted to the Central School of Governance in Chongqing upon leaving secondary school. After the war, Cha was employed at the Southeast Daily in Hangzhou before taking a job at the Ta Kung Pao in Shanghai, during which time he also studied international law at Soochow University of Shanghai.

In 1948, Cha was posted by the Ta Kung Pao to work in Hong Kong. Soon he began translating documentary reports under the pen name Le Yi. In the 1950s, he established his own film critique columns in the New Evening Post and Ta Kung Pao, using pen names such as Yao Fu Lan, Xiao Zi Jia, Lin Zi Chang and Yao Jia Yi. At the same time, he wrote film reviews in the magazine The Great Wall Pictorial. He even wrote the lyrics for the song scores in these films. He left the Ta Kung Pao in 1957 and took up a post as a film director at Great Wall Movie Enterprises Limited, where he teamed up with Cheng Bugao and Hu Siao-fung to produce The Nature of Spring and Bride Hunter, a Shaoxing opera movie.

Cha first adopted the pen name Jin Yong in 1955 to publish his first martial arts novel, The Book and the Sword, in the New Evening Post. The work caused an immediate stir and established Cha’s position as a martial arts novelist. On 20 May 1959, Cha joined forces with Shen Pao-sing, a friend from junior secondary school, to found the Ming Pao Daily News in Hong Kong. To gain market share, they began serialising Cha’s martial arts novels, and Cha also contributed editorials on current affairs to provide content for the newspaper. He continued using the pen name Jin Yong to publish his serialised novels, as one of the contributors to a column entitled Sanjianlou Suibi (Essays Written on Three-Sword Mansion), and for his serious academic writings. He also used other pen names in writing for the Ming Pao Daily News, such as Huang Aihua for his social commentary series, On Issues of Our Motherland, in the Open Forum column. He used the name Xu Huizhi to contribute to the column Ming Chuang Xiao Zha (Notes by the Bright Window). In the following years, he founded the Ming Pao Monthly (1966), Ming Pao Weekly (1968) and Ming Pao Evening News (1969) in Hong Kong and the Southeast Asia Weekly (1964) and Shin Min Daily News (1967) in Singapore.

When Ming Pao Enterprise Corporation Limited went public in Hong Kong in 1991, it marked the most glorious period of Cha’s newspaper domain. Cha resigned from his post as chairman in 1993 and then gradually withdrew from the company’s management. He officially announced his retirement in 1994, bringing to a conclusion almost 50 years of an outstanding career in journalism.