In this Hong Kong name, the surname is Cha (Zha). In accordance with Hong Kong custom, the Western-style name is Louis Cha and the Chinese-style name is Cha Leung-yung.
Louis Cha Leung-yung[1]GBMOBE (Chinese: 查良鏞; 6 February 1924 – 30 October 2018),[2][3] better known by his pen nameJin Yong (Chinese: 金庸), was a Hong Kong wuxia novelist. He was Hong Kong's most famous author[4] and the newspaper Ming Pao's co-founder and first editor-in-chief. Cha has been named along with Gu Long and Liang Yusheng as the "Three Legs of the Tripod of Wuxia". He has also been known as one of the "Four Great Talents of Hong Kong".
Cha's novels have a widespread following in Chinese communities worldwide. His 15 works written between 1955 and 1972 earned him a reputation as one of the greatest and most popular wuxia authors ever. By the time of his death, he was the best-selling Chinese author, and over 100 million copies of his works have been sold worldwide[5] (not including an unknown number of pirated copies).[6] According to The Oxford Guide to Contemporary World Literature, Cha's novels are considered to be of very high quality and are able to appeal to both highbrow and lowbrow tastes.[4] His works have the unusual ability to transcend geographical and ideological barriers separating Chinese communities of the world, achieving a greater success than any other contemporary Hong Kong author.[4]
His works have been translated into many languages including English, French, Indonesian, Catalan, Spanish, Finnish, Korean, Japanese, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, and Malay. He has many fans outside of Chinese-speaking areas, as a result of the numerous adaptations of his works into films, television series, comics and video games.
Early life
Born on 10 March 1924, in Haining, Zhejiang in Republican China, Cha was named Zha Liangyong and is the second of seven children. He hailed from the scholarly Zha clan of Haining (海寧查氏),[7] whose members included notable literati of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties such as Zha Jizuo (1601–1676), Zha Shenxing (1650–1727) and Zha Siting (查嗣庭; died 1727).[8] His grandfather, Zha Wenqing (查文清), obtained the position of a tong jinshi chushen (third class graduate) in the imperial examination during the Qing dynasty. His father, Zha Shuqing (查樞卿), was arrested and executed by the Communist government for allegedly being a counterrevolutionary during the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries in the early 1950s. Zha Shuqing was later posthumously declared innocent in the 1980s.[9]
Zha Shuqing used to read him excerpts from the wuxia Huangjiang Nüxia (荒江女侠; "Woman Warrior of the Wild River") by Gu Mingdao (顧明道) every day, which aroused Cha's strong interest in the genre. Later, Cha took the initiative to read other works like Water Margin and The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, which laid the foundation of his future as a wuxia novelist.
In 1937, Cha studied at Jiaxing No. 1 Middle School. In 1938, the Japanese army invaded Zhejiang, and the Jiaxing Middle School had to move hundreds of miles south to Lishui city in order to survive. Cha, as one of the students, only carried a quilt and a change of clothes, and the students had to trek on foot for 60 to 70 miles a day.
Cha was later expelled in 1941 after he wrote an article called "Alice's Adventures" which satirized the training director sent by the Kuomintang for being vicious towards the students. Cha later reflected on this period as one of the most significant crises in his life. The expulsion not only deprived him of the opportunity to pursue his studies but he suddenly faced the issue of finding food and accommodation. Fortunately, with assistance from the principal, Zhang Yintong, Cha resumed his high school education at Quzhou No. 1 Secondary School and graduated in 1943.[10]
Education
Cha was admitted to the Department of Foreign Languages at the Central University of Political Affairs in Chongqing.[11] Cha later dropped out of the school. He took the entrance exam and gained admission to the Faculty of Law at Soochow University, where he majored in international law with the intention of pursuing a career in the foreign service.
In 2005, Cha applied at the University of Cambridge for a doctorate in Asian Studies, which he obtained in 2010.[12] In 2009, Cha applied for another doctorate in Chinese literature at Peking University, which he earned in 2013.[13]
Career
Cha was a journalist. To help support his studies, he began work in 1947 as a journalist and translator for the Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Shanghai. He moved to Hong Kong in 1948 to work for the paper's office in the city. When Cha was transferred to New Evening Post (of British Hong Kong) as Deputy Editor, he met Chen Wentong, who wrote his first wuxia novel under the pseudonym "Liang Yusheng" in 1953. Chen and Cha became good friends and it was under the former's influence that Cha began work on his first serialised martial arts novel, The Book and the Sword, in 1955. In 1957, while still working on wuxia serialisations, he quit his previous job and worked as a scenarist-director and scriptwriter at Great Wall Movie Enterprises Ltd and Phoenix Film Company.
In 1959, Cha co-founded the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao with his high school classmate Shen Baoxin (沈寶新). Cha served as its editor-in-chief for years, writing both serialised novels and editorials, amounting to some 10,000 Chinese characters per day. His novels also earned him a large readership. Cha completed his last wuxia novel in 1972, after which he officially retired from writing novels, and spent the remaining years of that decade editing and revising his literary works instead. The first complete definitive edition of his works appeared in 1979. In 1980, Cha wrote a postscript to Wu Gongzao's tai chi classicWujia Taijiquan, where he described influences from as far back as Laozi and Zhuang Zhou on contemporary Chinese martial arts.[14]
By then, Cha's wuxia novels had gained great popularity in Chinese-speaking areas. All of his novels have since been adapted into films, TV shows and radio dramas in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. The important characters in his novels are so well known to the public that they can be alluded to with ease between all three regions.
Cha's parents were Zha Shuqing (查樞卿) and Xu Lu (徐祿). He had four brothers and two sisters, and was the second oldest among the seven of them. His brothers were Zha Liangjian (查良鏗; 1916–1988),[18] Zha Lianghao (查良浩; b. 1934),[19] Zha Liangdong (查良棟; fl. 1930s)[20] and Zha Liangyu (查良鈺; b. 1936).[21] His sisters were Zha Liangxiu (查良琇; b. 1926) and Zha Liangxuan (查良璇; 1928–2002).[22][23] His cousin was educator and philanthropist Cha Liang-chao (查良釗: 1897 – 1982).
Cha married three times. His first wife was Du Zhifen (杜治芬), whom he married in 1948 but divorced later. In 1953, he married his second wife, Zhu Mei (朱玫), a newspaper journalist. They had two sons and two daughters: Zha Chuanxia (查傳俠), Zha Chuanti (查傳倜), Zha Chuanshi (查傳詩) and Zha Chuanne (查傳訥). Cha divorced Zhu in 1976 and married his third wife, Lin Leyi (林樂怡; b. 1953), who was 29 years his junior and 16 years old when they first met.[24] In 1976, his son Zha Chuanxia, then 19 years old, committed suicide after a quarrel with his girlfriend while studying at Columbia University.[25][26]
When receiving his honorary doctorate at the University of Cambridge in 2004, Cha expressed his wish to be a full-time student at Cambridge for four years to attain a non-honorary doctorate.[32] In July 2010, Cha earned his Doctor of Philosophy in oriental studies (Chinese history) at St John's College, Cambridge with a thesis on imperial succession in the early Tang dynasty.[33][34]
Works
Cha wrote a total of 16 fictional works, of which only one is a non-wuxia autobiographical short story (Yue Yun). His wuxia works are made up of a novella (Blade-dance of the Two Lovers), 2 standalone novels (White Horse Neighs in the Western Wind and Ode to Gallantry), 11 interconnected novels of varying lengths, and a novelette ("Sword of the Yue Maiden"). Most of his novels were first published in daily instalments in newspapers, then later in 3 authorised book editions each with various changes to the plots and the characters. There are 4 editions of his novels:
Serialised newspaper/magazine version (1955–1972)
Old edition/1st edition (book form) (1956–1972)
Revised edition/2nd edition (c.1970-1980)
New Revised edition/3rd edition/Century edition (1999–2006)
In a very brief inner monologue in The Deer and the Cauldron, Chengguan, a knowledgeable but naïve Shaolin monk, ponders two great swordsmen in the past who performed swordplay without following any defined stances: Dugu Qiubai and Linghu Chong. A few major characters from Sword Stained with Royal Blood also appear as minor characters. Wu Liuqi, a historical character from The Deer and the Cauldron, is mentioned in the third edition of A Deadly Secret as the martial arts master of Mei Niansheng.
Numerous characters from The Book and the Sword appear in The Young Flying Fox, including Chen Jialuo. Hu Yidao, Miao Renfeng, Tian Guinong and the Feng family in The Young Flying Fox are the fictional descendants of the four bodyguards of Li Zicheng, who appears in the Sword Stained with Royal Blood and The Deer and the Cauldron. The Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain is the sequel to The Young Flying Fox.
Couplet
After Cha completed all his works, it was discovered that the first characters of the first 14 titles can be joined to form a couplet (duilian) with 7 characters on each line:
Shooting a white deer, snow flutters around the skies;
Smiling, [one] writes about the divine chivalrous one,
leaning against bluish lovebirds (or lover)
Cha stated that he had never intended to create the couplet. The couplet serves primarily as a handy mnemonic to remember all of Cha's works for his fans.
"Sword of the Yue Maiden" was left out because it would be an odd number, thus the couplet would not be complete, also because the "Sword of the Yue Maiden" was so short it was not even considered a book.
Editions
Most of Cha's works were initially published in installments in Hong Kong newspapers, most often in Ming Pao. The Return of the Condor Heroes was his first novel serialised in Ming Pao, launched on 20 May 1959. Between 1970 and 1980, Cha revised all of his works. The revised works of his stories are known as the "New Edition" (新版), also known as "Revised Edition" (修訂版), in contrast with the "Old Edition" (舊版), which refers to the original, serialised versions. Some characters and events were written out completely, most notably mystical elements and 'unnecessary' characters, such as the "Blood Red Bird" (小紅鳥) and "Qin Nanqin" (秦南琴), the mother of Yang Guo in the first edition.
In Taiwan, the situation is more complicated, as Cha's books were initially banned. As a result, there were multiple editions published underground, some of which were revised beyond recognition. Only in 1979 was Cha's complete collection published by Taiwan's Yuenching Publishing House (遠景出版社).
In China, the Wulin (武林) magazine in Guangzhou was the first to officially publish Cha's works, starting from 1980. Cha's complete collection in Simplified Chinese was published by Beijing's SDX Joint Publishing in 1994. Meanwhile, Mingheshe Singapore-Malaysia (明河社星馬分公司) published his collection, in Simplified Chinese for Southeast Asian readers in 1995.
From 1999 to 2006, Cha revised his novels for the second and last time. Each of his works was carefully revised, re-edited and re-issued in the order in which he wrote them. This revision was completed in spring 2006, with the publication of the last novel, The Deer and the Cauldron. The newer revised edition, known variably as the "New Century Edition" (世紀新修版), "New Revised Edition" (新修版) and "New New Edition" (新新版), is noted for its annotations where Cha answers previous criticisms directed at the historical accuracy of his works. In the newer revision, certain characters' personae were changed, such as Wang Yuyan,[37] and many martial art skills and places have their names changed.[citation needed] This edition faced a number of criticisms from Cha's fans, some of whom prefer the older storyline and names. The older 1970–80 "New Edition" (新版) is no longer issued by Cha's publisher Mingheshe (明河社). In mainland China, it is re-issued as "Langsheng, Old Edition" (朗聲舊版) in simplified Chinese characters.
Chinese nationalism or patriotism is a strong theme in Cha's works. In most of his works, Cha places emphasis on the idea of self-determination and identity, and many of his novels are set in time periods when China was occupied or under the threat of occupation by non-Han Chinese peoples such as the Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols and Manchus. However, Cha gradually evolved his Chinese nationalism into an inclusionist concept which encompasses all present-day non-Han Chinese minorities. Cha expresses a fierce admiration for positive traits of non-Han Chinese people personally, such as the Mongols and Manchus. In The Legend of the Condor Heroes, for example, he casts Genghis Khan and his sons as capable and intelligent military leaders against the corrupt and ineffective bureaucrats of the Han Chinese-led Song dynasty.
His works show a great amount of respect and approval for traditional Chinese values, especially Confucian ideals such as the proper relationship between ruler and subject, parent and child, elder sibling and younger sibling, and (particularly strongly, due to the wuxia nature of his novels), between master and apprentice, and among fellow apprentices. However, he also questions the validity of these values in the face of a modern society, such as ostracism experienced by his two main characters – Yang Guo's romantic relationship with his teacher Xiaolongnü in The Return of the Condor Heroes. Cha also places a great amount of emphasis on traditional values such as face and honour.
In all but his 14th work, The Deer and the Cauldron, the protagonists or heroes are explored meticulously through their relationships with their teachers, their immediate kin and relatives, and with their suitors or spouses. In each, the heroes have attained the zenith in martial arts and most would be the epitome or embodiment of the traditional Chinese values in words or deeds, i.e. virtuous, honourable, respectable, gentlemanly, responsible, patriotic, and so forth.
In The Deer and the Cauldron, Cha departed from his usual writing style, creating in its main protagonist Wei Xiaobao an antihero who is greedy, lazy, and utterly disdainful of traditional rules of propriety. Cha intentionally created an anticlimax and an antihero possessing none of the desirable traditional values and no knowledge of any form of martial arts, and dependent upon a protective vest made of alloy to absorb full-frontal attack when in trouble and a dagger that can cut through anything. Wei is a street urchin and womanizer and seems to have no positive qualities based on a superficial assessment; but he actually embodies the same essential qualities of the heroes from Cha's earlier novels. The fiction writer Ni Kuang wrote a critique of all of Cha's works and concluded that Cha concluded his work with The Deer and the Cauldron as a satire to his earlier work and to restore a balanced perspective in readers.[38]
Criticisms
The study of Cha's works has spun off a specific area of study and discussion: Jinology. For years, readers and critics have written works discussing, debating and analysing his fictional world of martial arts; among the most famous are those by Cha's close friend and science fiction novelist, Ni Kuang. Ni is a fan of Cha, and has written a series of criticisms analysing the various personalities and aspects of his books called I Read Jin Yong's Novels (我看金庸小說).
Despite Cha's popularity, some of his novels were banned outside of Hong Kong due to political reasons. A number of them were outlawed in the People's Republic of China in the 1970s as they were thought to be satires of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution; others were banned in Taiwan as they were thought to be in support of the Chinese Communist Party. None of these bans are currently in force, and Cha's complete collection has been published multiple times in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many politicians on both sides of the Straits are known to be readers of his works; Deng Xiaoping, for example, was a well-known reader himself.
In late 2004, the People's Education Publishing House (人民教育出版社) of the People's Republic of China sparked controversy by including an excerpt from Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils in a new senior high school Chinese textbook. While some praised the inclusion of popular literature, others feared that the violence and unrealistic martial arts described in Cha's works were unsuitable for high school students. At about the same time, Singapore's Ministry of Education announced a similar move for Chinese-learning students at secondary and junior college levels.[39]
Official English translations currently available include:
03. The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2018–2021; four volumes) – published by MacLehose Press (an imprint of Quercus Publishing), translated by Anna Holmwood, Gigi Chang, and Shelly Bryant. The volumes are titled A Hero Born, A Bond Undone, A Snake Lies Waiting, and A Heart Divided.[40][41]
08. The Deer and the Cauldron (1997–2002; abridged in three volumes only 28 chapters) – published by Oxford University Press, translated by John Minford.
Laughing in the Wind – DVD collection of the 2001 CCTV series with English subtitles released in the United States.
As film director
Jin Yong co-directed 2 films produced by Hong Kong's Great Wall Movie Enterprises. In both films he is credited as Cha Leung-yung, his official name in Hong Kong.
^"Jin Yong and Quzhou". Zhejiang Quzhou No. 1 Middle School (in Chinese). 1 October 2004. Archived from the original on 21 August 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
^ abcdThe dates conform to the data published in 陳鎮輝,《武俠小說逍遙談》, 2000, 匯智出版有限公司, pp. 56–58; 創意寫作系列：書寫香港@文學故事, 2008, Hong Kong Educational Publishing Company, p. 169; and the website 世上所有的正版金庸小说清单, authorised by the author
^While Wang Yuyan accompanied Duan Yu back to Dali in older revisions, in the new revision she refused and stayed to serve Murong Fu instead. See Chapter 50 of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.
