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Thread: Jin Yong aka Louis Cha

  1. #16
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    Loads of Fan translations of JY stories here: http://www.spcnet.tv/forums/forumdis...a-Translations

    You'll have to dig around to find the threads though.

  2. #17
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    http://members.cox.net/foxs/home.html

    Full translations of the entire Condor Heroes Trilogy... in PDF format.

  3. #18
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    I've heard that there's a whole field of scholarship in mainland China and Taiwan researching Jin Yong. Here's what seems a good book on his novels.

    http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-3598-9780824828950.aspx

  4. #19
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    Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel by J. Hamm

    Yes, I've read that. Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel is an academic work, so it's dry and dense, but simply fascinating if you know anything about Jin Yong. Jin Yong is a must read for serious martial arts researchers, because it's a cypher for many origin myths and movies. A lot of his work has been translated and they are entertaining reads. Of course, there's a lot of movies too, but those are often hard to decode without knowing the stories. The serials are long, so most of those movies are like making an hour and a half long film from one chapter of Lord of the Rings.

    Jin Yong is hard to fathom. Imagine if Stephen King was crossed with William Randolph Hearst and instead of writing horror, it was martial arts serials. Jin Yong built an empire - his books are the most widely read in China outside of Mao's Little Red Book (and you had to read that or be shot). His stories have become movies, videogames, comic books, and the formation myths of many martial arts styles. His impact on Chinese culture is astounding and to think it was all built on these cheesey pulp martial arts stories. He started writing these serials for the newspapers and they became so popular that he started his own paper with his stories as a centerpiece.

    I highly recommend Paper Swordsmen.
    Gene Ching
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  5. #20
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    You've sold me on that book now, Gene! I'll take a look when I finish my present research (which is not at all related to martial arts).

    I've only read one Jin Yong book in Chinese so far, Liancheng Jue 连城诀, which wikipaedia tells me is entitled 'A Deadly Secret' in English. I got interested in that book after watching a 2005 or 2006 version of it (I think) done as a TV serial, and because it was a one book tale I guess.

    I'm working my way, slowly, through 'The Legend of the Condor Heroes' 射雕英雄传 at the moment. I got interested in this one from watching a wonderful series too: the 1983 one, which I saw dubbed into Mandarin years ago. I like this older version a great deal, so bought a copy of it while in China. I'd recommend that 1983 version, and the Return of the Condor Heroes made around the same time, to anyone.

  6. #21
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    I'm in the fourth volume(fan translation) of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre now.... great stuff. I think HSDS is my favorite of the Condor Trilogy. I think it's a combination of having watched Evil Cult/Lord of the Wu Tang/Kung Fu Cult Master years ago as a first intro to the story, reading the ComicsOne translation of the HSDS manhua, and the situation with the Ming Jiao and it's reputation being familiar to the perception of Muslims in the world. I.E. the Ming Jiao are demonized, in this case literally being dubbed the Devil/Evil Cult, because of some members doing seemingly wicked things in Jiang Hu while the intentions of the Jiao and the teachings of their religion(the religion of Mani) being righteous.

    Anyway, really enjoying it.

  7. #22
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    Dr. Cha

    Congrats to Louis Cha. He has shaped modern-day Kung Fu more than any other living writer.
    Martial arts novelist Louis Cha earns doctorate from Peking University, say reports
    Ernest Kao ernest.kao@scmp.com

    BIO
    Born and raised in Hong Kong, Ernest is an online news producer for SCMP.com. He read journalism and international politics at the University of Hong Kong and graduated in 2012. Follow him on Twitter @ernestkao


    Louis Cha Leung-yung. Photo: SCMP

    Hong Kong novelist Louis Cha Leung-yung – who wrote The Legend of the Condor Heroes and is better known by his pen name Jin Yong – will be adding another doctorate to his long list of scholarly and literary achievements, said mainland media reports.

    Peking University told the Beijing Youth Daily on Tuesday that the renowned writer of wuxia martial arts novels from the 1960s-80s had been pursuing a doctorate in Chinese literature there since September 2009 and had recently completed his thesis.

    Professor Chen Pingyuan, a former dean at the university’s Department of Chinese Language and Literature, confirmed to media that Cha, 89, had been a doctoral candidate at the department.

    However, he said Cha did not have to attend classes there and had no information as to when the writer was scheduled to graduate.

    Cha’s mentor was Yuan Xingpei, head of the Communist Party-affiliated Central Research Institute of Culture and History, Chen said.

    A photo of Cha’s diploma, dated July 2013 complete with the institution’s seal and signature of university president Wang Enge, was published on social networking site Renren this week. Its authenticity could not be confirmed.

    Cha earned a doctoral degree in oriental studies from Cambridge University in 2010 after completing his thesis on Tang dynasty imperial succession.

    Cha, who co-founded Hong Kong daily Ming Pao, recently had his 1957 martial arts classic The Legend of the Condor Heroes added to the required reading list for primary school students in Beijing.

    Cha’s literary works, many of which contain themes of chivalry, martial arts and patriotism, are among the most widely read in the Chinese-speaking world and have been translated into many languages.

    Legend, the first instalment of the Condor trilogy, is widely considered to be one the writer’s best work along with other titles such as The Book and the Sword (1955) and The Deer and the Cauldron (1969).

    Some of Cha’s works were banned on the mainland during the 1970s because they were thought to mock Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. Ironically, Taiwan once banned his novels as well, billing them pro-Communist literature. Most of the bans were gone by the 1980s.
    Gene Ching
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  8. #23
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    That's really cool! If anyone deserves a doctorate in Chinese literature he does.
    Simon McNeil
    ___________________________________________

    Be on the lookout for the Black Trillium, a post-apocalyptic wuxia novel released by Brain Lag Publishing available in all major online booksellers now.
    Visit me at Simon McNeil - the Blog for thoughts on books and stuff.

  9. #24
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    Just a teaser

    You need to subscribe to get the whole article, but there's enough info in this teaser to convey the point.

    Swordfighting legend Jin Yong to get permanent gallery in Hong Kong
    PUBLISHED ON MAR 3, 2015 5:46 PM


    A permanent exhibition gallery honouring swordfighting novelist Louis Cha will be set up as Hong Kong prepares to celebrate the 60th year of the appearance of the writer's first gongfu novel. -- PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO FILE

    HONG KONG - A permanent exhibition gallery honouring swordfighting novelist Louis Cha will be set up as Hong Kong prepares to celebrate the 60th year of the appearance of the writer's first gongfu novel.

    The Ming Pao newspaper reported that Jin Yong Gallery will be up next year at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum at Sha Tin.

    It will introduce the writer's work and the journey he underwent in his creative processes.

    On display will be exhibits such as his manuscripts, translated novels, screenplays and video of TV serials adapted from the novels and his correspondences with his friends.
    Gene Ching
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  10. #25
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    This is four years late...

    ...but still cool.

    Louis Cha's martial arts classic to become 'required reading' for Beijing pupils
    PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 02 April, 2013, 6:02pm
    UPDATED : Tuesday, 02 April, 2013, 6:30pm



    Ernest Kao
    ernest.kao@scmp.com
    http://twitter.com/ernestkao

    Renowned Hong Kong novelist Louis Cha Leung-yung – read by many Hongkongers growing up – will soon be incorporated as “required reading” for Beijing primary school students, the Beijing Evening News reported on Tuesday.
    The 89-year-old Cha, better known by his pen name Jin Yong and as founder of Hong Kong daily Ming Pao, will have his 1957 martial arts classic, The Legend of the Condor Heroes added to the Chaoyang district library’s list of selected reading, the newspaper said.
    The announcement was made to coincide with the International Children’s Book Day on April 2.
    The wuxia novel will join a list of other foreign titles including JK Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise, Norwegian best-seller Sophie’s World and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, to the list of 900 selected titles, according to the report.
    Legend, the first instalment of the Condor Trilogy, is widely considered to be one the writer’s greatest masterpieces along with other titles such as The Book and the Sword (1955) and The Deer and the Cauldron (1969).
    Cha’s literary works, many of which contain themes of chivalry, martial arts and patriotism, are among the most widely read in the Chinese-speaking world and have been translated into many languages.
    Some of Cha’s works were banned on the mainland during the 1970s as they were thought to mock Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. Ironically, Taiwan once banned his novels as well, billing them pro-Communist literature. Most of the bans were gone by the 1980s.
    Gene Ching
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    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  11. #26
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    Jin Yong aka Louis Cha

    Tsui Hark Confirms “Return of the Condor Heroes” Film: Lin Gengxin as Yang Guo?
    By addy on September 6, 2017 in Movies, NEWS



    The Jin Yong (金庸) adaptations won’t be stopping anytime soon.

    Award-winning Hong Kong director Tsui Hark (徐克) has confirmed that he will be adapting The Return of the Condor Heroes <神鵰俠侶> into a film trilogy. The series will be Tsui Hark’s first Jin Yong adaptation since Swordsman II <笑傲江湖之東方不敗> 25 years earlier.

    The Return of the Condor Heroes is the second part of Jing Yong’s impactful Condor Trilogy book series, and follows the journey of the urchin boy Yang Guo and his romance with his sifu, Little Dragon Girl. The book has had 11 television adaptations and three film adaptations since 1960. Some of the book’s more famous adaptations include TVB’s 1983 version (starring Andy Lau 劉德華 and Idy Chan 陳玉蓮), TVB’s 1995 version (starring Louis Koo 古天樂 and Carman Lee 李若彤), and China’s 2006 version (starring Huang Xiaoming 黃曉明 and Crystal Liu Yifei 劉亦菲).

    Tsui Hark hasn’t announced his cast yet, but there is a good chance that Lin Gengxin (林更新) will be starring as the male lead, Yang Guo. Lin Gengxin is Tsui Hark’s frequent collaborator, having appeared in four of Tsui Hark’s films since 2013.

    There’s been no word as who Tsui Hark wants to play Little Dragon Girl, but netizens are actively pushing Zanilia Zhao Liying (趙麗穎) to play the iconic character. Lin Gengxin and Zanilia are most recently seen starring together in the Chinese drama Princess Agents <楚喬傳>, currently the most-watched Chinese of all-time with over 45 billion views on Chinese streaming sites.

    Source: HK01.com
    Here's an old Condor Heroes thread. It's not much and I merged to threads to get it to three posts. Surprised there's not more.

    I'm copying this new Tsui Hark project to our Jin Yong thread too.
    Gene Ching
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  12. #27
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    Fantastic news!

    Louis Cha's acclaimed trilogy to be translated into English
    By Xing Yi in Shanghai | China Daily | Updated: 2017-11-10 07:56



    The English translation of Louis Cha's martial arts trilogy will be published in February. [Photo provided to China Daily]

    Despite their popularity, only three of Jin Yong's martial arts novels have been translated into English. But fans will soon get more from the writer as his most popular trilogy, named after the first of the three books, Legends of the Condor Heroes, is scheduled to hit bookstores in February.

    Jin Yong is the pen name of Louis Cha. And the author, who lives in Hong Kong, is one of the best-selling Chinese authors alive with over 300 million copies of his works sold in the Chinese-speaking world.

    This latest translation project is the most ambitious with regard to Jin Yong's works.

    The trilogy, written by Jin Yong in the 1950s and '60s, covers the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and features hundreds of characters.

    The plot includes betrayal and allegiance among different martial arts schools, and the rise and fall of dynasties.

    According to the publishing house, Maclehose Press, the translated work will come in 12 volumes, including Legends of the Condor Heroes; Divine Condor, Errant Knight; and Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre.

    Anna Holmwood is the translator of volume one, A Hero Born.

    Speaking of the project which she took up in 2012, Holmwood, a self-employed translator focusing on Chinese-English literary translations, says in an email interview: "It had to be Jin Yong then. It was the obvious place to start, not only because of the quality of his writing, but also because of his standing and reputation in Asia."

    Holmwood, who was born to a British father and a Swedish mother, grew up in the United Kingdom and studied history at the University of Oxford.

    Her love affair with China began in 2005, when she spent two months traveling around the country on a scholarship.

    The trip aroused her curiosity about China, and she was determined to learn Chinese. "That was the only way to satisfy my curiosity about the country," she says.

    Holmwood then chose modern Chinese studies as her MPhil major at Oxford, and went to Taiwan Normal University for a year of language training in 2009.


    Anna Holmwood, translator [Photo provided to China Daily]

    In Taiwan, a friend took Holmwood to a bookshop, where she saw a whole shelf dedicated to Jin Yong. She bought a copy of Jin Yong's work-Lu Ding Ji (The Deer and the Cauldron), the longest of his novels.

    "It (reading the book) was a struggle at first," Holmwood says, adding that this was because Jin Yong's novels are all set in ancient China and the characters span multiple generations.

    But what is a bigger challenge for the translator, Holmwood says, is rendering the original pace and excitement into English.

    "It's all about whether the English reader will be lured by the emotions and characters.

    "It's vital for the English version to read like an enticing work."

    It took five years for Holmwood to finish the translation of the first volume.

    Paul Engles, editor of the book at MacLehose Press, recalls that when he received a sample from Holmwood at the end of 2012, he was instantly entranced by it and also amazed that the work had not been translated before.

    "Jin Yong is one of the world's best-selling authors, and, rather like Alexandre Dumas, he is a popular author who will in time (if not already) be recognized as a writer of stone-cold classics," he adds.

    "We feel that it is essential that these novels be translated into English," Engles says, adding that the plan is to publish one volume a year.

    The second volume is being translated by Gigi Chang, an art writer and translator from Hong Kong.

    Although Chang and Holmwood work separately, they discuss common issues and keep a shared database for terms appearing in the trilogy.

    As for why his works need to be translated, one must read Holmwood's introduction in volume one, which says: "Many have considered Jin Yong's world too foreign, too Chinese for an English-speaking readership. Impossible to translate.

    "And yet this story of love, loyalty, honor and the power of the individual against successive corrupt governments and invading forces is as universal as any story could hope to be.

    "The greatest loss that can occur in translation can only come from not translating it at all."

    Lu Lili contributed to this story.
    FYI - my birthday is in February (hint, hint)

    Condor Heroes & Jin Yong

    And worthy of note, Deer & Cauldron is already translated to English by John Minford. I think that's presented as a trilogy. Meir made me read some of it for his Stanford course. I never finished it.
    Gene Ching
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  13. #28
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    A Hero Born (Legends of the Condor Heroes I) by Jin Yong

    The dragons of salvation
    A martial-arts mega-hit finally arrives in English
    Jin Yong offers fantasy, fighting, philosophy and subtle reflections on China


    Feb 22nd 2018

    A Hero Born (Legends of the Condor Heroes I). By Jin Yong. Translated by Anna Holmwood. MacLehose Press; 416 pages; £14.99.

    AS HE built his e-commerce empire, Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba, proudly sported the nickname “Feng Qingyang”. The moniker was borrowed from a cunning swordsman in a novel by Jin Yong. In spite of official sales estimated at 300m copies, plus multiple spin-off films, television serials and games, the 14 martial-arts epics written by Jin Yong between 1955 and 1972 have remained unknown to most Western readers. Their author, though, is hardly a hermit scribe.

    His real name is Louis Cha. Now 93, Mr Cha founded and edited one of Hong Kong’s leading newspapers, Ming Pao. He has been honoured by Queen Elizabeth and awarded two doctorates (one honorary, one for research) by Cambridge University. The swashbuckling blend of medieval history and heroic fantasy that he honed as Jin Yong is now set to reach a wide English-language readership.

    “A Hero Born” is the first of the 12 volumes of “Legends of the Condor Heroes”, written in the late 1950s. Set in the years after 1205, it enjoyably wields the weapons of wuxia—traditional martial-arts fiction, with its spectacular combat and pauses for philosophy—to show Chinese identity under threat from foreign and domestic foes. “Three generations of useless emperors” have brought the Song dynasty to its knees. Quisling allies of the Jurchen Jin invaders, who rule the north, abet imperial decline.

    Enter the dragons of salvation: an “eccentric” kung fu clan known as the Seven Freaks of the South, and the militant Taoist monks of the Quanzhen sect. They are first rivals, then collaborators. Though strained, their joint mission embodies a pact between “physical force” and the “more enlightened path” of wisdom that may rescue China.

    Bereaved and exiled by traitors, the hero Guo Jing grows up on the Mongolian steppes. He joins the entourage of Temujin, a great warrior who will become Genghis Khan. Although manifestly a parable of Han Chinese resistance to foreign humiliation, the story does not demonise outsiders. The Mongols, ferocious but “refined people”, nurture the “not naturally gifted” youngster as a fighter and a patriot. In Anna Holmwood’s spirited translation, this action-packed and ideas-laden saga is as revealing of modern as of ancient China.

    This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "The dragons of salvation"
    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    FYI - my birthday is in February (hint, hint)

    Condor Heroes & Jin Yong
    FYI, my birthday is still in February.
    Gene Ching
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  14. #29
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    a review

    A Hero Born by Jin Yong review – the gripping world of kung fu chivalry
    The martial arts epic Legends of the Condor Heroes is the magnum opus of China’s most widely read living writer. The first book has finally been translated into English, and it’s a joy
    Marcel Theroux
    Fri 16 Mar 2018 03.30 EDT Last modified on Fri 16 Mar 2018 20.10 EDT


    A scene from Once Upon a Time in China … Jin Yong is the most famous literary exponent of wuxia, the world of kung fu chivalry familiar from martial arts movies. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features

    Jin Yong is an unfamiliar name in the English-speaking world but a superstar in the Chinese-speaking one. Since his first novels were published in serial form in Hong Kong during the 1950s, Jin Yong – the pen name of Louis Cha Leung-yung – has become the most widely read Chinese writer alive. His books have been adapted into TV series, films and video games, and his dense, immersive world inspires the kind of adoration bestowed on those created by writers like western worldbuilders such as JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling and George RR Martin.

    One peep into Jin’s fictional universe conjures a sense of deja vu. Now 94, he is the most famous literary exponent of the wuxia genre, the world of kung fu chivalry we know through Chinese martial arts movies, which has shaped so much of modern popular culture, from The Matrix to Netflix’s Marco Polo.

    A Hero Born is the first book of Jin’s magnum opus, the 12-volume epic Legends of the Condor Heroes. Set in 13th-century China, this novel follows the fortunes of its hero, Guo Jing, from birth to adolescence. It begins with Guo in utero, when his father is murdered by forces loyal to the occupying Jin army and his pregnant mother flees to Mongolia. Here, on the fringes of the Middle Kingdom, Guo grows up among Genghis Khan’s nomadic warriors, while the Seven Heroes of the South, who have sworn an oath to train him in martial arts, scour the country to find him.


    The hero Guo Jing in a 2017 TV adaptation of Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes epic. Photograph: DramaPanda

    A plot summary barely conveys the extraordinary energy of this book. It blends real and fictional characters, teems with incident – reversals, unexpected meetings, betrayals, cliffhangers – and, most of all, dwells for page after page on lovingly described combat. To paraphrase Miss Jean Brodie: for those of us who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing we like. As martial artists square off, evocatively named strikes are responded to with equally evocatively named parries: Search the Sea, Behead the Dragon; Seize the Basket by the Handle; and, only to be used in extremis, the desperation move: Sword of Mutual Demise. The novel gives us the history of strange martial techniques, assesses the merits of different schools of kung fu, and describes the mysterious internal alchemy that gives rise to the most devastating physical force.

    Guo is naive and not particularly gifted – a wink, perhaps, at the idea of the uncarved block in the Tao Te Ching: the natural object of unlimited potential. But his innocent goodheartedness – another Taoist ideal – makes him a captivating hero. He’s surrounded by a galaxy of colourful minor characters. These include Ke Zhen’e, a blind martial artist who shoots his signature weapon – iron devilnuts – by orienting himself according to directions from the I Ching; Lotus Huang, a brilliant young female fighter travelling the country in disguise, and a terrifying female villain called Twice Foul Dark Wind, who is the greatest exponent of Nine Yin Skeleton Claw kung fu, a martial discipline that is nastier than it sounds. Everybody is kung fu fighting, but the violence is cartoonish rather than graphic and there is a sense – as with Rowling and Tolkien – that despite the strangeness of the world, we are guided by a compassionate writer whose heart is in the right place. The book also reminds us of the true meaning of kung fu (the Pinyin transliteration is gongfu). Rather than being an esoteric gift, it applies to any skill acquired by hard graft. It seems you can have kung fu at making puff pastry or writing computer code. “Just as in the study of music or chess, demanding fast results can choke initial promise,” the author warns us. His explanation reminded me of the 10,000 hours of practice that, according to Malcolm Gladwell, are the basis for expertise at anything.

    Jin Yong is not the first wuxia writer: its roots go back centuries. Writing his books, he has drawn both on Chinese history and also on the examples of less celebrated writers, such as the novelist and martial artist Xiang Kairan, whose work inspired the lost 27-hour 1928 kung fu film, The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple. Fortified by this tradition and written with unselfconscious energy, A Hero Born channels mythic archetypes that resonate across cultures: the struggle between good and evil, a kingdom under threat from an encroaching tyranny, and the coming to consciousness of a young hero whose destiny is to try to make a better world.

    It seems incredible that this is the first book in the Legends of the Condor Heroes series to come out in English, but better late than never. As I read Anna Holmwood’s vibrant translation – gripped by the unashamed narrative zest and primary-coloured fairytale world – I felt a slight regret that I was coming to this novel in my fifth decade. It would be a wonderful initiation into a lifelong enthusiasm for China, its history and civilisation, its vast and chronically misunderstood presence in the world. The first book ends with Guo Jing embroiled in an incipient love triangle, and approaching the trial by combat that has been his destiny since birth, while the Song dynasty dangles by a thread. Other volumes can’t come soon enough. My one quibble is that as the heroes swept back and forth across China and the Mongolian steppe, this reader’s pleasure would have been greatly enhanced by a map.

    • Marcel Theroux’s latest novel is The Secret Books (Faber). A Hero Born: Legends of the Condor Heroes Volume 1 is published by MacLehose. To order a copy for £12.74 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
    These publishers need to do a sweepstakes promo with us, or at least send me a reader's copy.
    Gene Ching
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  15. #30
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    Great New Yorker article

    Page-Turner
    The Gripping Stories, and Political Allegories, of China’s Best-Selling Author
    By Nick Frisch 5:00 A.M.


    The novels of Louis Cha, also known as Jin Yong, have a rare emotional complexity.Photograph by Thomas Lee / Stylo Vision Group

    Louis Cha, who is ninety-four years old and lives in luxurious seclusion atop the jungled peak of Hong Kong Island, is one of the best-selling authors alive. Widely known by his pen name, Jin Yong, his work, in the Chinese-speaking world, has a cultural currency roughly equal to that of “Harry Potter” and “Star Wars” combined. Cha began publishing wuxia epics—swashbuckling kung-fu fantasias—as newspaper serials, in the nineteen-fifties. Ever since, his fiction has kept children, and their parents, up past their bedtimes, reading about knights who test their martial-arts mettle with sparring matches in roadside ale-houses and princesses with dark secrets who moonlight as assassins. These characters travel through the jianghu, which literally translates as “rivers and lakes,” but metaphorically refers to an alluvial underworld of hucksters and heroes beyond the reach of the imperial government. Cha weaves the jianghu into Chinese history—it’s as if J. R. R. Tolkien had unleashed his creations into Charlemagne’s Europe.

    Jin Yong novels are now largely known through their many TV, film, comic-book, and video-game adaptations. But the original books retain a powerful hold on China’s popular imagination. At one point, Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba, turned Jin Yong into a corporate ethos, asking each of his employees to choose one of Cha’s characters as an avatar reflecting his or her personality, and to follow the “Six Vein Spirit Sword,” a wuxia-styled company credo: put the customer first, rely on teamwork, embrace change, and so on. Cha has more female fans than any other wuxia writer, perhaps, in part, because the books have an emotional complexity that is rare in the genre. “There are some remarkable love stories in Jin Yong,” Regina Ip, a senior Hong Kong politician and Cha superfan, told me. With his combination of erudition, sentiment, propulsive plotting, and vivid prose, he is widely regarded as the genre’s finest writer. “Of course, there were other wuxia writers, and there was kung-fu fiction before Jin Yong,” the publisher and novelist Chan Koonchung said. “Just as there was folk music before Bob Dylan.”


    Cha's novel "The Eagle-Shooting Heroes" was serialized in the late fifties in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily.Photograph Courtesy Dr. Louis Cha / Hong Kong Commercial Daily

    But Cha’s books have resisted translation into Western languages. Chinese literature, which traditionally prizes poetry over fiction, derives much of its emotional force from oblique allusions, drawing on a deep well of shared cultural texts, and Cha’s work is no exception. In February, the first installment of Cha’s most revered trilogy, “Legends of the Condor Heroes,” was published in English translation by Anna Holmwood by the U.K. publishing house Quercus. (An American edition is currently under negotiation.) It is the first time a trade publisher has attempted a translation of the trilogy, which begins in the year 1205, just before the Mongol conquest of China, and ends more than a hundred and fifty years later, after approximately two million eight hundred and sixty thousand Chinese characters—the equivalent of one and a half million English words. (Over three times the length of Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” series.) Holmwood’s translation offers the best opportunity yet for English-language readers to encounter one of the world’s most beloved writers—one whose influence and intentions remain incompletely understood.

    Guo Jing, the hero of “Condors,” is a simpleton with a hero’s destiny, who perseveres through hard work and basic decency. As a child, he is protected by Genghis Khan, spending his boyhood honing martial-arts skills on the Mongolian grasslands, mentored by a tight circle of kung-fu adepts. A roving Taoist monk finds him practicing his moves on the steppe and offers him secret meditation lessons, atop a cliff, to improve his technique—on the condition that he not tell his other masters. This is a classic premise in Chinese literature: dueling loyalties, to one’s elders and one’s own ambitions, compounded by a clashing reverence for different teachers. Many of Cha’s plot points hinge on such conflicts, tucked between flashier punch-’em-up scenes. Later in “Condors,” when the adopted son of a nomadic-tribe aristocrat learns that he is ethnically Han Chinese, readers reared on stories of millennia-old conflicts between the Chinese and nomads from the north will register the tension between filial piety and patriotism. But the scenario may bewilder those approaching wuxia for the first time. (Readers wishing for a visual aid, and who have thirty-odd hours to spare, can consult an English-subtitled television adaptation of “Condors,” from 2003.)

    It’s a credit to Holmwood that, in her translation, the novel’s thicket of historical names, florid kung-fu moves, and branching narratives do not obscure Cha’s storytelling verve. The book began as a meandering newspaper serial, and its form is digressive, but, after a few dozen pages, the blizzard of names and ancient dates becomes less daunting, and the reader can begin rooting for individual characters, fretting over their choices and their trials. For traditionalists, who admire Cha’s slightly antique Chinese style—classically inflected, densely kinetic—it is hard to imagine a satisfactory English register that would preserve both its richness and its narrative speed. Proper names, which read smoothly in snappy Chinese syllables but become cumbersome in English, must sometimes be diluted, sacrificing strict fidelity to keep the text breathing. (Without these adjustments, a kung-fu maneuver like luo ying shen jian zhang, a fleeting five syllables in Chinese, becomes the clunkier “Wilting Blossom Sacred Sword Fist.”) But Holmwood’s deft maneuvering between translation and transliteration keeps Cha’s signature pacing mostly intact. And her version maintains enough allusive breadth to pique the interest of the sort of fan who might learn Elvish to dive deeper into Tolkien’s universe, without sacrificing the original’s page-turning appeal.


    Cha, second from left, in 1960, with the cast of the film "Return of the Condor Heroes."Photograph Courtesy Dr. Louis Cha / Hong Kong Heritage Museum / Ming Ho Ltd.

    For Cha, using the past as a mirror for the present was more than an academic exercise. He was born, in 1924, in a prosperous town along the Yangtze River delta, the second of seven siblings, to a family that had a history of service to the throne. In 1727, after one ancestor offended the Emperor with a poorly chosen poetic couplet, his severed head was displayed on a pike. Two centuries later, when Japan invaded China during the Second World War, Cha’s family was displaced, and his mother, ill with exhaustion, died while fleeing Japanese bombs. After the Communist Revolution, in 1949, Cha’s father was deemed a class enemy and executed, and the family estate was seized. By then, Cha was living in the safety of Hong Kong, a British crown colony. He hoped to be a diplomat, but, with no options in the new Communist government, he worked as a screenwriter, film critic, and journalist. He began writing wuxia serials in 1955, to immediate acclaim.

    The success of “Condors,” his third novel, allowed him to found his own newspaper, Ming Pao Daily News, in 1959. In the paper’s early years, Cha wrote many of its front-page stories and editorials himself, decrying Maoist excesses during the Great Leap Forward famine and the Cultural Revolution. At first, Ming Pao hovered near bankruptcy, but it was kept afloat by its must-read fiction supplement, which serialized other people’s novels as well as Cha’s own, in genres ranging from dime-store noir to Lovecraftian horror. Cha staffed the newsroom of Ming Pao with classically trained historians and poets, mostly refugees from mainland China, and this gave his newspaper, along with his novels, a classical texture that Communist cultural reforms starched out of much post-revolutionary literature (including most contemporary Chinese books translated into English today). Cha’s stridently anti-Maoist editorials earned him credible death threats from Hong Kong’s Communist underground, and, in 1967, he briefly left Hong Kong for the safety of Singapore. When he returned, his reputation as a political journalist who risked his life for the cause of his fatherland had grown.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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