The great master, Jin Yong

If Gu Long is the knight wondering in Jiangwu who enjoys his own life, Jin Yong must be the master of Wu Lin who leads people fight against invaders and bad men. Chinese nationalism is always the main and strong theme of Jin Yong's works. Many stories of his are placed in th period of the time that Han Chinese were under the threat of nothern peoples such as Jurchens and Mongols.Unlike Gu Long's romantic theme involved in love and revenge, Jin Yong's works attract people with the hot-blooded patriotism. Though the main line of Jin Yong's work is usually the love between two main characters, the

The romantic knight, Gu Long

The Wuxia writer himself is chivalrous and lonely. Especially at the top of the Wuxia writing, the writer is sometimes like a wodering knight in the real world. They enjoy drinking white wine, celebrating with friends and always sentimental to women. They cannot have a family; their home is the outside world and their wife is all the woman they love. But they are not wastrel, they have their own opinions about life and love; they put those into their Wuxia novels and give the viability to the characters by their own life experience. Usually, a story is just a documentary of its author.
Gu Long is this kind of writer.This is his pen name. It means "ancient dragon" , which shows his inner quality of hero. He died at an early age, 47. He died because of his sorrow and loneless in his heart and the crazy for wines. However, he is one of the two most famous Wuxia writers in Chinese world.Short paragraphs and sentences are his writing feature, with some mild sorrow and blue.

"He was tired, perhaps because he has already killed too many people, some of whom should not have been killed at all.

He killed, only because he never had a choice.

He had a sword in his hand."

Just a few sentences, we can feel a kind of cold of a swordman. And the following more and more short paragraphs make there kind of sense stronger and more attractive. This is Gu Long style. Thousands of people are attracted into the atomosphere he made and can not help stop loving it.

Kill, death , sword is always the surface thing in Gu Long's novels. Love and friendship are the eternal theme of his novels. "Sentimental swordsman, ruthless sword" ,his most well-known novel, is talking about his own experience of love and friendship. The choice between love and friendship are always painful and Li Xunhuan(the main character in the novel) choose the friendship and suffers tens of years. The loyalty to friendship and the eternal love to only one girl are shown so well in the novel. Gu Long's sorrow is originated from it and cannot be involved into the real world. His death is romantic and holy because this faith he kept in his mind.

"The flying dagger Li has become a lost art

The human world has lost the sight of Chu Liuxiang"

That is the statement for Gu Long's death, describing him as the two famous characters in his novels, dagger Li and Chu Liuxiang.Two lonely wonderers are the best definition of this great writer's lifettime.

When you are in Jiang Hu, you cannot choose your life

The title is a classic sentence from Wu xia fictions. Jiang Wu, a romantic word, which means "rivers and lakes" literally, refers to the world of martial arts.

In Wuxia fictions, the real kong fu masters are usually not the shaolin temple master, nor the wondering swordman who never loses in a fight. They can be the begger, the healer, the menchants or thives. Only the one who has looked through the life, who can use one or two words to disarm an enemy, who can turn a bad man to a good man, is the real kong fu master. We can see that Wuxia is a real and vivid world. In the standard of Jianghu, if two or three people want to be brothers, they will promise to the god" we were not born at the same day of the same month of the same year, but we must die at the same day of the same month of the same year." So, lots stories are based on revenges. That really makes a world based on people's moral standard instead of the laws, which attracts modern people a lot because nowadays lifestyle and standard give lots of pressure and locks people's desire. People just find it pleasant to escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. Living in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery, anarchy and impending immolation are part of the daily lives, we all want a code to live by . It is just like the Americans want to go back to the old western time, to ride the horse as a cowboy across the desert, save the sheriff's daughter from the robbers or fight against the indians. There is always a will in people's heart, though grown in different cultures, force people to return to the wild . Ahough you cannot choose your life in Jiang Hu, you can obey your own standard and do what you think is right and die for what you think is right.

the real and mysterious kongfu skills in Wuxia fiction

I still can remember the first time I watched the Wuxia movie, I was surprised by the scene that people flying over the houses and walls. It is unlike those I had watched in cartoon. Though it sounds fake, there are lots of threoms in the backgound which force I to believe that people can fly if they become the kong fu masters. Now I know that this kind of terrific skill is called qing gong and it exists in the real life. Though it is exaggerated in the fictions and films, people still can walk swiftly and lightly over the water for a short distance or climb on 5or 6 meters high wall after learning the skill.

Another facinating skill is Dianxue(means clicking the acupressure point). It may be understood as the magic things which the western wizards can do. Instead of spelling spells, just clicking some parts of one's body can make someone unmovable for hours. Actually this kind of skill is based, in part, on the real-world techniques of Chin Na(Disarm another and make him unmovable only by hands). Characters use these techniques to kill, paralyze, immobilize or control opponents by attacking the enemies' acupressure points (Xue) with the bare hand or weapons. Such techniques may be used for healing purposes, when excessive bleeding may be halted when certain acupressure points are pressed. Real-life martial artists do use such techniques in martial arts to paralyze or stun their opponents. Their effectiveness is highly exaggerated in Wuxia stories. And this skill is commonly used nowadys for curing cervical spondylosis or just keep people healthy.

Wuxia, the unique literature type of Chinese culture

Many foreigners are interested in Kong Fu, but for Chinese people, few of them are interested in Brusie Li's kong fu films but most of them are interested in Wuxia novels and films. 'If I were born in China, I would go to Shaolin temple to learn Kong Fu.' my best Indian friend always says this to me and I usually tell him that only the children in poor family will be sent to learn Kong Fu because China nowadays is a modern country; everyone is seeking wealth and kong fu cannot make them any money. However, people still need the spirit life of the fantastic ancient culture and Wuxia is all they need.



What is Wuxia? Someone may ask. The word "Wuxia" is a compound word composed form the words Xia("honorable", "chivalrous"), which is the philosophy of the Chinese knight-errent, and Wu ( "martial", "military"), from the Chinese term Wushu, meaning "martial arts" or "kungfu".A martial artist (or pugilist) who follows the code of Xia is often referred to as a Xiake ( lit: "follower of Xia") or Yóuxiá ("wandering Xia"). In some translated works of Wuxia, the pugilist is sometimes termed as a "swordsman" although he may not necessarily wield a sword.



Song dynasty and Yuan dyansty are usually the background of Wuxian fiction. These two dynasties are from 960 to 1368. At the end of Song dynasty, mongolians invaded the center part of China but the Song government didnt fight against them but gave them some parts of China for temporary peace.The chaos background generated lots of heroes. Some of them fight against the Song goverment , kill the bad rich people and share their money to the poor. Some of them organize a big party to fight against the mongolians. These heroes may not have fantastic kong fu skill, but in Wuxia fictions, they are descibed as the godlike kongfu masters and made series of legends.



Although Wuxia fictions are confagulated, the authors made it like the real things. There are lots of detailed descriptions and origins of each type of kong fu. And each kong fu or each character have some relationship though they are not in the same book. For example, a legendary sword seeked by everyon in book A was made by the main characters in book B. It looks the Wuxia stories are not fictions but documentery literature.