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

361 Pages·2005·3.462 MB·English

by  John Christopher Hamm

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.Y8Z5352005
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 vii
A Note on Conventions xi
1 Introduction: The Literary and Historical Contexts of
New School Martial Arts Fiction 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 Heroesto
The Giant Eagle and Its Companion 79
5 The Empire of the Text: Jin Yong and Ming Pao 114
6 BeyondtheRivers andLakes: The Smiling,ProudWanderer 137
7 Revision and Canonization: From Ming Paoto
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 261
Select Glossary of Chinese Characters 301
Bibliography 311
Index 341
v

Preface and Acknowledgments
This 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 enthusi-
astic 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 dis-
sertation 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 assis-
tance 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
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 sugges-
tions, 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 “Interna-
tional Conference on Jin Yong’s Novels,” Taipei, 1998; the Center for Chi-
nese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1999; the “Beijing Inter-
national 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 confer-
ence organizers, panel chairs and commentators, colleagues, and audience
members who contributed queries and observations. Portions of chapter 2
were published in Twentieth-Century China27.1 (November 2001): 71–96,
under the title “Local Heroes: Guangdong School wuxiaFiction and Hong
Kong’s Imagining of China.” Portions of chapter 3 were published in Mod-
ern 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 Mar-
tial 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 phenom-
enon 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 preoccu-
pations. 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 obvi-
ously 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 liter-
ary (meaning here simply written, as distinct from, e.g., visual or perfor-
mative) texts. At several points I mention the many adaptations of Jin
Yong’s novels into other media but do so primarily to note the adapta-
tions’ 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, Indone-
sian, Korean, Japanese, German, English, and other languages, remains,
again, to be undertaken.
Preface and Acknowledgments ix