-() -> The Legend of the Condor Heroes - (Complete 4 Volumes)

Author: Jin Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-09-01
Features: The vast waters of the Qiantang River flow endlessly by the village of Lin'an Niujia Village, eastward to the sea. Along the riverbank stands a row of dozens of Chinese scholar trees, their leaves as red as burning fire, marking the timing of August. The wild grasses in and around the village have just begun to turn yellow, and under the setting sun, they seem even more desolate. Under two large pine trees, a group of villagers—men, women, and over a dozen children—have gathered, listening intently to a gaunt old man. The speaker, in his fifties, wears a faded blue-gray cotton robe. Hearing him tap his two pearwood boards together, his right hand beats a rhythmic drum on a small small drum. He sings:
"The peach blossoms bloom alone,
The misty fields are filled with evening crows.
Around the ruined walls, the old wells stand,
Once homes, now all forlorn."
The Legend of the Condor Heroes was serialized in The Hong Kong Commercial Daily from 1957 to 1959. Thinking back over a decade ago, I recall the sincere care and encouragement of Brother Li Savoy, the assistant editor of the Commercial Daily's supplement, for this novella. He has passed away now, and I cannot personally deliver this revised edition to him. His kind smile and slightly stammered speech fill me with deep sorrow.
The characters in The Legend of the Condor Heroes are simple and straightforward—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 inner worlds. Perhaps because the characters are simple yet the plot is lively, The Condor Heroes gained popularity, having been adapted into Cantonese films, staged as a series of Teochew opera plays in Thailand, and currently being filmed as a TV series in Hong Kong. It has also been translated into Siamese, Vietnamese, and Malay (Indonesian). Moreover, my other novels written under assumed names, such as The Seven Heroes of Jiangnan and The Beggar with Nine Fingers, are quite numerous.
However, I personally feel that some of my later novels have improved upon The Legend of the Condor Heroes. When writing it, I was working as a screenwriter and director at Great Wall Film Company, and the books I read at the time were mostly Western plays and dramatic theory. Unconsciously, some scenes in the novel took on a theatrical quality, especially the section where Guo Jing recuperates in the secret room of Niujia Village—it is entirely like a stage play with its scene design and character movements. It was only after Liu Shaoming pointed it out that I realized this myself; I had no intention of writing it that way. At the time, I simply thought this approach had not been used in novels before, without realizing how often it had been employed in theater. During revision, I made many changes. I cut out unnecessary plotlines, such as the little red bird, the frog and toad battle, and the Iron Palm Gang's atrocities. I also merged the character Qin Nanqin with Mu Nianci. Additionally, I added new scenes, such as Zhang Shiwu telling stories at the beginning, Qu Lingfeng stealing a painting, 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, and using storytelling as an introduction serves as a reminder of their roots. The story of Genghis Khan is mainly based on a very strange book. The book's title, Manghul Nuuchad Tuvchiyan, consists of nine Chinese characters, and its original form is even stranger than the Nine Yin Manual. The book is entirely filled with meaningless characters, which both you and I recognize but cannot understand—truly an "unreadable written book." Scholars worldwide have devoted their lives to studying this book, publishing countless papers, books, and phonetic annotations, even creating a dictionary specifically for it. Every strange character and phrase in the book can be traced back to its original meaning. Any scholar studying world history over the past eight hundred years must read this book.
It turns out that the book was written in Chinese characters to record Mongolian language, completed in July 1240.