Jin Yong's World of Martial Arts

The martial arts novel is a unique genre of Chinese literature. Jin Yong duly credited Qiuranke Zhuan (The Man with the Curly Beard), by Du Guangting of the late Tang dynasty, as the genre’s pioneering work. During the early Republican Era, the most well-known martial arts novelists included Pingjiangbuxiaosheng, Zhao Huanting and the five leading authors of the Northern School: Huanzhulouzhu, Bai Yu, Wang Dulu, Zhu Zhenmu and Zheng Zhengyin.

The advent of the modern martial arts novel in Hong Kong can be traced back to the 1930s. Storylines at the time largely revolved around the heroic deeds of two martial arts masters of Guangdong, Hung Hei Koon and Fong Sai Yuk. The focus was on martial arts prowess, with vivid descriptions of the characters’ kung fu moves. This style of fiction is categorised as the Guangdong School, and among the representative authors who wrote in this style were Tang U Kong, Chu Yu Chai and Ngo Si Shan Yan.

In early 1954, a sensational match was held in Macao between Wu Kung I, a direct descendant of the founder of the Wu style Tai Chi Chuan, and Chen Kefu, a master of the White Crane School. It gave rise to what is considered the New School of martial arts novels in Hong Kong. New School novels differed from their predecessors in both style and content. Riding on the media hype generated from the Wu-Chen contest, the New Evening Post launched the serialised novel Boxer Rebellion in the Capital City by Liang Yusheng (whose real name was Chen Wentong), and it became a hit with readers. Luo Fu, the then editor-in-chief of the New Evening Post, asked another employee, Louis Cha, to also contribute a serial martial arts novel, culminating in the release on 8 February 1955 of The Book and the Sword under Cha’s pen name, Jin Yong.

The initial instalments of The Book and the Sword met with only mediocre reception, but the serial gradually captured the imagination of its readership following the introduction of more characters coupled with the story’s unique historical backdrop, the intrigue of the developing plot and the lively fighting scenes. It eventually gained huge popularity and carved a special place for itself in the market for martial arts novels. Having made a name for himself, Jin Yong followed up with two more novels, The Sword Stained with Royal Blood and The Eagle-shooting Heroes, both serialised in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily. The acclaim from these two titles laid the foundation for Jin Yong’s career as a best-selling author in the genre.

In total, from 1955 to 1972, Jin Yong wrote 15 popular martial arts novels, successfully creating unforgettable characters like Guo Jing, Huang Rong, Yang Guo, Xiaolongnu, Xiao Feng, Duan Yu, Linghu Chong and Wei Xiaobao. Apart from The Young Flying Fox and Su Xin Jian (subsequently retitled A Deadly Secret), which were serialised in magazines, Jin Yong’s works were all released as daily instalments in newspapers. Most of the manuscripts were hardly ever retained for posterity after they had been dispatched to the typesetting room.

To cater to readers who preferred to follow a more extensive portion of the story in one stretch, Jin Yong periodically compiled the contents and illustrations from the newspaper serials into book form, rearranging chapter lengths and matching illustrations before having them printed and published. The earliest book versions were The Book and the Sword, The Sword Stained with Royal Blood and The Eagle-shooting Heroes, published by San Yu Stationery and Publishing Company.

The runaway popularity of Jin Yong’s serials in the dailies sparked widespread piracy. To counteract such infringements, Jin Yong abandoned his original compile-revise-publish method. Instead, he elected to release a paperback edition with seven days’ worth of content simultaneously with the serialised content for the seventh day. He also combined every four paperbacks into a single volume so that each bound volume comprised the serialised content for 28 days. Using this model, Kwong Sup Kee published authorised versions of the paperback editions and bound volumes of Jin Yong’s The Giant Eagle and Its Companion, The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre, Ode to Gallantry, A White Horse Neighs in the Western Wind, The Young Flying Fox and Su Xin Jian.

With the completion of The Deer and the Cauldron in 1972, Jin Yong retired from writing new novels. He spent the next 10 years revising the first editions of his own work. The revised novels were first serialised in the Ming Pao Evening News, and subsequently published by Ming Ho Publications as part of The Jin Yong Novel Collection. To further hone the revised collection, Jin Yong undertook yet another complete round of revisions between 2000 and 2006 to produce The New Revised Jin Yong Novel Collection.