The Complete Works of Jin Yong - The Legend of the Condor Heroes (Volumes 1-4)

Author: Jin Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-09-01
Features: The Legend of the Condor Heroes was serialized in The Hong Kong Commercial Daily from 1957 to 1959. Looking back over a decade ago, I recall the sincere care and encouragement of Brother Li Savoy, the assistant editor of the newspaper's supplement, for this novel. He has passed away now, and I cannot personally deliver this revised edition to him. Thinking of his warm smile and slightly stammered speech, my heart aches deeply. The characters in The Legend of the Condor Heroes are simple in personality—Guo Jing is honest and sturdy, while Huang Rong is clever and mischievous—making them easily memorable to readers. This is a characteristic of traditional Chinese novels and theater, but it inevitably lacks the complexity of the inner world of characters. Perhaps due to their simple personalities and lively plots, The Condor Heroes gained more popularity. It has been adapted into Cantonese films, performed as a series of Teochew opera plays in Thailand, and currently, a TV series is being filmed in Hong Kong. It has also been translated into Siamese, Vietnamese, and Malay (Indonesian). Additionally, there are many novels written under my name by others, such as The Seven Heroes of Jiangnan and The Beggar with Nine Fingers, among others. However, I personally feel that some of my later novels have improved compared to The Legend of the Condor Heroes.
When writing The Legend of the Condor Heroes, I was working as a screenwriter and director at Great Wall Film Company. During this period, the books I read primarily involved Western theater and theatrical theory, so some plot arrangements in the novel became unintentionally theatrical in nature, especially the scene of healing in the secret room of Niujia Village, which is entirely a stage play scene with character movements. It was only after Brother Liu Shaoming pointed it out that I became aware of this fact. At the time of writing, I had no intention of doing so. I simply thought that this approach had not been used in novels before, without realizing that it had already been widely used in theater. Many changes were made during the revision. Some unnecessary plot elements were removed, such as the little red bird, the frog and toad battle, and the actions of the Iron Palm Gang. The character Qin Nanqin was also removed and merged with Mu Nianci. Several new plots were added, such as Zhang Shiwu telling stories at the beginning, Qu Lingfeng stealing paintings, Huang Rong forcing people to carry her sedan chair and encountering rain on Changling Mountain, and the process of Huang Shang writing the Nine Yin Manual.
Traditional Chinese novels originated from storytelling. Using storytelling as an introduction serves as a reminder of their roots. The deeds of Genghis Khan are primarily drawn from a very strange book. The book's title, Manghul Nüuchad Tuvchiyan, consists of nine Chinese characters. The entire book has twelve volumes, with ten in the main collection and two in the continuation. From beginning to end, the book is filled with these meaningless Chinese characters. You and I recognize every character, but none of them make sense—truly a "written heaven book." Scholars worldwide have devoted their lives to studying this book, publishing countless papers, books, and phonetic annotations, as well as dictionaries specifically compiled for it. Every strange character and word in the book can be traced back to its original meaning in the dictionary. Any scholar studying world history over the past eight hundred years must read this book.
It turns out that the book was written in Mongolian using Chinese characters and completed in July 1240.