: The Legend of the Condor Heroes

Author: Jin Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-11-01
Features: The Legend of the Condor Heroes was serialized from 1957 to 1959 in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily. Reflecting on over a decade ago, the sincere care and encouragement shown by the late brother Li Shawei, the assistant editor of the Hong Kong Commercial Daily's supplement, for this novel, and the fact that he is no longer with us today, prevents me from personally delivering 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 the simplicity of the characters and the liveliness of the plot, The Condor Heroes gained more popularity. It has been adapted into Cantonese films, performed as a series of Teochew opera in Thailand, and currently, a TV series is being filmed in Hong Kong. It has also been translated into Siamese, Vietnamese, and Malay (Indonesian). There are also many novels written under his name, such as The Seven Heroes of Jiangnan and The Nine-Fingered Beggar, among others. However, personally, I 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 the Great Wall Film Company, and the books I read during that period were mainly Western plays and dramatic theory. As a result, some plot developments in the novel became unintentionally theatrical, especially the scene of healing in the secret room of Niujia Village, which is entirely a stage play scene with character movements. This fact was pointed out by brother Liu Shaoming, and only then did I realize it myself. 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. During the revision, I made many changes. I removed some plot elements that were not necessary for the story or characters, such as the little red bird, the frog and toad battle, and the actions of the Iron Palm Gang. I also removed the character of Qin Nanqin, merging her with Mu Nianci. Additionally, I added some new plot elements, such as Zhang Shiwu telling stories at the beginning, Qu Lingfeng stealing paintings, Huang Rong forcing people to carry her sedan chair, 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 deeds of Genghis Khan are primarily drawn from a very strange book. The book's title, Mangghalun Ujen Tuvchiyan, consists of nine Chinese characters. The entire book has twelve volumes, with ten in the main series and two in the continuation. Throughout the twelve volumes, it is filled with these meaningless Chinese characters. You and I recognize each character, but we cannot understand a single sentence—truly a "written heaven book." Scholars worldwide have devoted their lives to studying this book, publishing countless papers, specialized books, and phonetic annotations, and even creating a dictionary specifically for it. Every strange character and word in the dictionary can be traced back to its original meaning. Any scholar studying world history over the past eight hundred years must read this book. Originally, this book was written in Mongolian using Chinese characters and was completed in July 1240. The Legend of the Condor Heroes was serialized from 1957 to 1959 in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily. Reflecting on over a decade ago, the sincere care and encouragement shown by the late brother Li Shawei, the assistant editor of the Hong Kong Commercial Daily's supplement, for this novel, and the fact that he is no longer with us today, prevents me from personally delivering 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 the simplicity of the characters and the liveliness of the plot, The Condor Heroes gained more popularity. It has been adapted into Cantonese films, performed as a series of Teochew opera in Thailand, and currently, a TV series is being filmed in Hong Kong. It has also been translated into Siamese, Vietnamese, and Malay (Indonesian). There are also many novels written under his name, such as The Seven Heroes of Jiangnan and The Nine-Fingered Beggar, among others. However, personally, I 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 the Great Wall Film Company, and the books I read during that period were mainly Western plays and dramatic theory. As a result, some plot developments in the novel became unintentionally theatrical, especially the scene of healing in the secret room of Niujia Village, which is entirely a stage play scene with character movements. This fact was pointed out by brother Liu Shaoming, and only then did I realize it myself. 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. During the revision, I made many changes. I removed some plot elements that were not necessary for the story or characters, such as the little red bird, the frog and toad battle, and the actions of the Iron Palm Gang. I also removed the character of Qin Nanqin, merging her with Mu Nianci. Additionally, I added some new plot elements, such as Zhang Shiwu telling stories at the beginning, Qu Lingfeng stealing paintings, Huang Rong forcing people to carry her sedan chair, 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 deeds of Genghis Khan are primarily drawn from a very strange book. The book's title, Mangghalun Ujen Tuvchiyan, consists of nine Chinese characters. The entire book has twelve volumes, with ten in the main series and two in the continuation. Throughout the twelve volumes, it is filled with these meaningless Chinese characters. You and I recognize each character, but we cannot understand a single sentence—truly a "written heaven book." Scholars worldwide have devoted their lives to studying this book, publishing countless papers, specialized books, and phonetic annotations, and even creating a dictionary specifically for it. Every strange character and word in the dictionary can be traced back to its original meaning. Any scholar studying world history over the past eight hundred years must read this book. Originally, this book was written in Mongolian using Chinese characters and was completed in July 1240.