Reposted from "Lone Wild Goose in the Clouds"'s collector's edition 4.0 of The Complete Works of Jin Yong
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Jin Yong in a Despicable Realm --- The Other Real Side of the “Hero”
Several years ago I read most of Jin Yong's novels (the most famous ones). They were certainly very gripping, with high entertainment value, and made one want to read them several more times, but there are too many vulgar ideas in them, enough to make one despise them. Not only that, I also discovered that Jin Yong had long since become a god, a great hero, receiving incomparable worship and admiration, and had even become a literary master of 20th-century China. This ranking was made by Teacher Wang Yichuan, who taught us aesthetics. He seemed to have come back from studying at Cambridge in England, bringing new literary theories into the classroom, and was extremely popular with the students. But even back then I didn't like attending his classes, because he had this recitation style of reading from memory, with new terms and frameworks coming at us head-on, all surface gloss and nothing more. He talked a lot about aesthetics and asked us to write a paper on “What is beauty.” I asked him what he thought of the little Nazi in Kafka's “In the Penal Colony” (who invented a machine that “aesthetically” tortured prisoners by carving patterns into their bodies so that they only died after 12 hours; later he himself became its first customer), and he was left speechless. The plotting in Jin Yong's novels is full of holes. As Siegfried said, he doesn't care about textual logic. When did he ever think about textual logic! He was just stringing words together to earn manuscript fees, and indulging in a little fantasy on the side. As for other kinds of logic, such as whether a person's character is reasonable, or the chronology of events, he couldn't be bothered with those either. Third, he always pretends to be a historian, peddling his views of history in martial-arts novels, and in the end even said The Deer and the Cauldron was a historical novel. I suspect he never read much actual history, and as for historiography or historical judgment, he has nothing at all. Regarding Yuan Chonghuan, please see the essay “When Merit Reaches Heroic Greatness It Becomes a Crime” by internet celebrity Fang Zhouzi; regarding the case of Dong Xiaowan and the Shunzhi Emperor, see the evidential research of the now deceased mainland historian Meng Sen, enough to clarify the historical facts. Jin Yong's “historical learning” is not even worth refuting. As for other things like Song-Liao history, there is far too much fantasy and distortion in it as well. If anyone thinks reading Jin Yong can help him understand Chinese history, that is truly pitiful. Fourth, and this is what I dislike most about Jin Yong, his mentality is extremely twisted and paranoid, and he looks at Chinese history and the mainland through perverted eyes; moreover, his “level of civilization” is extremely backward and ignorant—my standard for “civilization” here borrows Zhou Zuoren's standard: look at a person's attitude toward women and children. You all should know Jin Yong's contemptuous and trampling attitude toward women. Besides that, though he is a modern man, the emperor-consciousness in his mind is so thick it won't dissolve. Zhang Zhongxing once commented on certain famous people from the early Republic, saying that although they served as officials in the Republic of China, their habits of thought still remained in the era of the Zhao Song and Ming emperors; once they had money and power they still wanted to buy houses, acquire land, and take concubines. Deep down, Jin Yong also has the air of a hooligan bandit; his greatest longing is to ascend through power. His novels seem to oppose authority everywhere, but his real intention is that he himself wants to be emperor. Everybody calls Jin Yong a “great hero,” thinking he can shoulder the moral tradition of Chinese history, but in fact he is only a Hong Kong kuruma shrimp, rich but without benevolence. No wonder Li Ao cursed him for having hundreds of millions in wealth yet never being willing to toss out even a single coin for public welfare. In terms of breadth, he simply cannot be mentioned in the same breath as Hong Kong tycoons like Li Ka-shing or Pao Yue-kong. He built a library in his hometown of Hangzhou, which seems to be an exception, but even that does not rule out the possibility that he has a very strong attachment to his native place and wanted to earn himself a good name there; as for other places unrelated to him, he can't be bothered to care. Isn't Hong Kong his second hometown? Has he ever made even the tiniest contribution to local charity there? Dwelling off in one corner, taking benefits from others, and meanwhile presenting it beautifully in his novels, with one hero after another full of righteous loyalty, spending money generously, helping the endangered and rescuing the distressed, moving readers one after another until their hearts surge and they praise him unceasingly, so that unconsciously they come to think Jin Yong is just such a hero too. Jin Yong is extremely shrewd. He got both fame and profit for himself, kept his eyes only on his own interests, and had in his head only the “reasoning” favorable to himself. As for sacrificing his own interests, silently dedicating himself to others, or treating fame and profit lightly—such foolish things he would never do. He only propagates and teaches those “great” ideas in his novels, but in real life his true form is exposed at once. It really is somewhat hypocritical. In this respect he is absolutely inferior to Bo Yang. In his novels there appears a strong and stubborn orphan-feeling. Many protagonists are abandoned children who do not know their parents, or sinful disciples expelled from their schools, such as Xiao Feng, Linghu Chong, Yang Guo.... This is a metaphor for Hong Kong. Hong Kong was ceded to Britain by a foolish and weak mainland, leaving a permanent wound. Hong Kong resents the mainland's heartlessness and incompetence, while also harboring a faint hatred for Britain. Hong Kong won't buy anyone's account; it feels everyone owes it something, especially that the mainland, its mother body, owes it. Hong Kong looks down on the mainland's backwardness and poverty, just as Jin Yong's protagonists look down on the weak and conservative martial arts of their original sect or ethnicity. Orphans generally have no good feelings toward society, are narrow-minded, paranoid and perverse, and extremely self-centered. Jin Yong's protagonists are all like this too. From the very beginning they always put themselves in the position of victims: all under heaven have wronged them, so they may collect debts at will and ask outrageous prices. And as the author, Jin Yong is sure to give them a satisfying settlement, talking glibly of heavenly justice and retribution; yet no matter what crimes against gods and men they commit, they still put on a pure and innocent attitude, not feeling they have committed crimes, and the author is unwilling to punish them. Jin Yong's method is to write the protagonists as number one in martial arts under heaven, so nobody can take revenge! What determines retribution is not heavenly justice, but level of martial arts and the author's likes and dislikes. Take Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü in The Return of the Condor Heroes: they may arbitrarily destroy other people's peace and order, barging into a Taoist temple to get married, but others may not break into their ancient tomb to interfere with their master-disciple romance. Xiaolongnü comes down the mountain and casually eats other people's food; if Daoist Yin offends her, she absolutely won't let it go. At the slightest thing they want to return to the ancient tomb, but who asked them to come out in the first place? Yang Guo nurses hatred for years over his so-called father's grievance. What a huge price did Guo Jing and his wife pay before they received his “forgiveness”? In the end it still takes Miss Guo the elder daughter kneeling, and the second Miss Guo being trapped by love and ruining her whole life, before the resentment in Yang Guo's / the author's heart is finally dispelled. In Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, Xiao Feng's whole family, in order to clear their own grievance, slaughtered many people; but who can seek vengeance and clear injustice against them? Because they are number one in martial arts under heaven. Azi, this典型 of “evil by nature,” did no end of wicked things, but there were always people protecting her, and the author always defended her on the grounds that she was orphaned young and poorly taught. No one can redress the wrongs, and in the end she follows the man she loves in death. She lived as she pleased and died freely, without receiving any punishment from “heavenly justice.” Morality is not innate; it is the best set of rules established to preserve the survival of a certain group. The more its members obey public morality, the stronger, more prosperous, and more enduring that group becomes. Since Hong Kong has no true belonging, it also has no public morality. The mainland abandoned it, so it cannot observe traditional Chinese morality; Britain used it to make money, and is not worthy of respect either. As a free port, Hong Kong hopes everyone will not interfere with its making money. Jin Yong's protagonists acknowledge no public morality; they take only personal interest as their criterion. For example, in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, the Shaolin assembly of heroes reveals Xiao Feng's true identity and the mystery of Yanmen Pass. At a moment of national peril, it instead becomes a stage for the three sworn brothers to perform their friendship, and for Xiao Feng's family to seek revenge. In their minds there are only personal and family grudges and brotherly affection, while the great cause of the nation above the individual family is set aside. The same situation is everywhere in his other novels as well. Jin Yong often places his protagonists in difficult choices: everybody says he himself is moral and wants the protagonist to join his side, while these moral gentlemen all expose one another's shameful secrets. The person involved is shouted dizzy by several factions and only knows whether so-and-so treated me well or badly, so he throws himself to that side. This is the essential fallen nature of Hong Kong: they have no nation, state, or cultural tradition to which they can be loyal, on which they can rely, or which they can grasp; the only thing they can affirm is their own immediate interest. Many of Jin Yong's protagonists are stubbornly self-willed. On the surface they are wildly arrogant, but inwardly they are not without confusion and contradiction. Xiao Feng commits suicide because he cannot resolve this contradiction. This is authentic “Made in Hong Kong.” Presumably when Hong Kong was building and confirming its own economic, political, and cultural identity, its confusion was no less than the mainland's confusion of “crossing the river by feeling for stones.” Hong Kong's identity values the present, respects the individual, is practical, non-aligned, free, and fetishistic toward material things. Jin Yong's protagonists also value the present, respect the individual, are practical, non-aligned, free, and worship “martial arts.” Hong Kong neither wanted to “return to the motherland” nor liked constantly being bled by Britain; it hoped to remain free forever. The mainland supplied fresh water, raw materials, and a buyer's market; Britain provided liberal economic principles and the weight of “democratic piggery,” but neither China nor Britain was to interfere with Hong Kong. Quite a few of Jin Yong's protagonists like to retire into seclusion. After taking their revenge themselves, they do not want others to seek revenge on them, and want to slip away to the ancient tomb or the great desert to live an immortal's life. Hong Kong is precisely that free, isolated ancient tomb and desert. Jin Yong's Central Plains martial arts elders and orthodox famous schools are mostly pedantic and laughable. Their leaders are weak in martial arts and bad in character, capable only of putting on pompous airs. Jin Yong shows deep dislike toward Shaolin and Wudang, constantly making fun of them. Temples clearly do not allow female visitors inside, and ordinary households do not welcome uninvited guests, but there are countless people who barge into Shaolin and then sophistically attack the temple rules. What gives them / Jin Yong the right not to respect other people's negative freedom of shutting their doors? The old freak of Xingxiu Sea and the “Gentleman Sword” Yue Buqun clearly allude to deceased leaders of mainland China, depicting human stupidity, inflation, pettiness, and pitifulness to the utmost. When Jin Yong's writing turns vicious, it shows his highest level; if one were to judge literary masters, Jin Yong could actually rank among the masters of satirical literature. But figures like Tolui, Kublai, and the Liao emperor are all heroic and high-spirited, radiant with martial grandeur, obviously fresh blood able to found unprecedented enterprises. Jin Yong even added much inexplicable enlightenment and benevolence to these barbarians, things with no basis in history, just like Great Britain in its heyday: history destined that they would successfully commit crimes against China, and then use “democratic piggery” and freedom to adorn themselves. Hong Kong appears very avant-garde on the surface, but in ideas and values it is a model of backward decay. These two hooligan obsessions—open polygamy and the king of a patch of weeds—hang in the air and are reflected in their lives and films. Hong Kong produces more films praising hooligans than anywhere else in the world. Jin Yong's attitude toward women is one of extreme contempt. Among his female characters there are almost none worthy of respect; they are all “bitches.” Either they are rude and willful like Azi; or inhuman like Xiaolongnü; or born slaves who bow and scrape, like Shuang'er in The Deer and the Cauldron and Xiao Zhao in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber; there are also quite a few old women with eccentric and paranoid personalities; and even more are busty but brainless types of clingy infatuation (too many to count). Even a powerful character like Li Mochou still has to be wounded by love and die for love. Only in The Legend of the Condor Heroes, written when Jin Yong had just debuted, is the heroine Huang Rong still clever and lovable, and Guo Jing remains faithful from start to finish. In Jin Yong's novels, Huang Rong suffers no damage and reaches a perfectly complete ending, making it impossible not to respect her. But related women like Princess Huazheng and Mu Nianci are practically the very embodiment of tragedy. In Jin Yong's later works, a perfect woman like Huang Rong never appears again (and in The Return of the Condor Heroes, Huang Rong's character also declines); either their character and morals are disgusting and contemptible, or their fate is unfortunate. Take Xiaolongnü: at the start she has only herself in her heart, and later she adds only Yang Guo; she already belongs in the category of spiritual cripples, but since her conduct is after all beyond reproach, Jin Yong insists on having her violated by Daoist Yin, shattering this exquisite idol. A Ke in The Deer and the Cauldron, originally a being like a heavenly maiden, can only become the concubine of the hooligan Wei Xiaobao. If Jin Yong does not insult women on the social level, then he insults them sexually. The later the works, the more obvious this becomes; for someone like Huang Rong to emerge unscathed becomes impossible. It is as if the more society progresses, the more Jin Yong's view of women regresses, moving further and further toward the opposite of civilization. I once read a book that divided Chinese literature into certain categories, saying that Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio was emission-in-dream literature; Dream of the Red Chamber was impotence literature; Marriage as a Warning to the World was self-castration literature; and The Plum in the Golden Vase and the like were fantasy-lust literature or aphrodisiac literature (my memory may be wrong). Jin Yong's novels are fantasy-lust literature or Viagra literature: publishing books to get wives is even more satisfying than dreaming of getting wives, and there are manuscript fees too.
Although Jin Yong is the offspring of a colony, he nevertheless has an unbreakable connection to the mainland, the reason of course being the traditional education he received from childhood. Although he knows tradition is useless, he also finds it hard to cast it aside. Both his early and late works, The Legend of the Condor Heroes and The Deer and the Cauldron, show that he cannot break off this influence; after running wild in a big circle, in the end he still “returned.” But in his understanding, tradition had changed beyond all comparison. The hero of Condor is Guo Jing, a traditional figure like Yue Fei, praised by numerous Jin fans, and these fans sentimentally imagine that Jin is also a great hero, since “the greatest of heroes serves the country and the people.” In fact Jin Yong himself does not accept this at all! He personally said that Guo was his ideal, but such a person does not exist in life, and a heroine like Huang Rong could not possibly appear either. This idol Guo Jing was only something he created according to Chinese traditional ideas (mostly from things like The Complete Tale of Yue and The Generals of the Yang Family, plus the Four Books and Five Classics he had no choice but to memorize), and he himself doesn't believe in it. Wei Xiaobao is the common Chinese type. Jin's true hero is Wei Xiaobao, a genuine hooligan through and through, a barefaced rogue who sweeps across the world with utter shamelessness, possessing wealth, rank, long life, beauties, hounds, and horses all complete. This is Jin Yong's ideal. It is also a portrait of Hong Kong! In prosperity of sensual pleasures and in love for such phenomena, is there anywhere in the world that surpasses Hong Kong? Hong Kong TV dramas always depict protagonists being harmed and taking revenge, then later becoming rich and thus able to realize every dream. Someone once asked Hong Kong people: why do you always depict money as omnipotent? Hong Kong people answered in astonishment: isn't money omnipotent? Transposed into Jin Yong's novels, this becomes: isn't martial arts omnipotent? The traditional pursuits of Chinese hooligans are twofold: first power (especially becoming emperor), second women. Wei Xiaobao may be said to possess both, and live even more comfortably than the emperor. No wonder Jin Yong stopped writing, because Wei Xiaobao had already reached the ideal peak of the Chinese male; no matter what he wrote after that, it would be impossible to surpass it. I have always felt Jin Yong had a strong emperor-consciousness. Because his protagonists always begin by fiercely challenging all rules and all sects, acting in their own way, intentionally or not trampling on the dignity of others, even destroying the freedom of monks to shut their doors and chant sutras—simply because Shaolin is the leading authority of the martial world, it has original sin and deserves to be attacked. But their own dignity cannot be offended by anyone, and they themselves have a huge pile of rotten rules. After destroying others' dignity, and making a great name through martial arts, they then command the world and none dare disobey, with no rival anywhere. Xiao Feng and Yang Guo are both such embodiments of this ideal. When people talk about them, they prostrate themselves even more thoroughly than the insincere flatterers of the old freak of Xingxiu Sea, becoming slaves spiritually through and through. In other words, Jin Yong does not admire democratic piggery at all; he just doesn't want anyone else to be emperor! When I say this to others, they generally don't believe it, until in 1997 (perhaps my date is off), I read an essay by Ms. Lam Yanni of Hong Kong in Southern Weekend, writing about Hong Kong celebrities (including Jin Yong, Chow Yun-fat, Brigitte Lin, Stanley Ho, and others), describing Jin Yong's methods in managing Ming Pao, and directly praising him as a man like an emperor, high-pressure in his methods, no room for discussion, I am high-pressure in my methods, no room for discussion—only then did I finally find some corroborating evidence. Hong Kong is the place with the most advanced and most relaxed economic system in the world, yet part of its spiritual culture is astonishingly backward. It is also one of the few places that still preserves the dregs of old China. Hong Kong people's attitude toward money, power, and women remains in the Middle Ages; spiritually they preserve every specimen of queues, bound feet, eunuchs.... Jin Yong brought these specimens to life, changed their appearance, and marketed them all over the world in the form of martial-arts novels; the consequences were probably not something he expected at first. Everyone naïvely took Guo Jing as his ideal, took his novels as models for studying Chinese tradition, and eagerly asked him to express his views. I think Jin Yong must have felt very uneasy at first, but later he became calm and self-possessed about it. He traveled everywhere, gave speeches, and patched up his characters. But can patches really be applied like that? Jin Yong's ideal is the ideal of a traditional Chinese hooligan: all sanctity and loftiness are jokes, and one should tear off their painted skins. Chop down authority with a broadsword and take its place oneself—“A true man should be like this” (words of the hooligan emperor Liu Bang). A man's life in this world is nothing more than wine, sex, wealth, and temper; grab as much as you can and consume to your heart's content. If one lets rules and restrictions bind hands and feet, that is purely idiocy. To achieve one's aims, no means are too base; once one has money (martial arts), one can obtain everything. History is written by the victors. Ah, this is Hong Kong.
Jin Yong the great hero is nothing but a Hong Kong kuruma shrimp.
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Jin Yong in a Despicable Realm --- The Other Real Side of the “Hero”
Several years ago I read most of Jin Yong's novels (the most famous ones). They were certainly very gripping, with high entertainment value, and made one want to read them several more times, but there are too many vulgar ideas in them, enough to make one despise them. Not only that, I also discovered that Jin Yong had long since become a god, a great hero, receiving incomparable worship and admiration, and had even become a literary master of 20th-century China. This ranking was made by Teacher Wang Yichuan, who taught us aesthetics. He seemed to have come back from studying at Cambridge in England, bringing new literary theories into the classroom, and was extremely popular with the students. But even back then I didn't like attending his classes, because he had this recitation style of reading from memory, with new terms and frameworks coming at us head-on, all surface gloss and nothing more. He talked a lot about aesthetics and asked us to write a paper on “What is beauty.” I asked him what he thought of the little Nazi in Kafka's “In the Penal Colony” (who invented a machine that “aesthetically” tortured prisoners by carving patterns into their bodies so that they only died after 12 hours; later he himself became its first customer), and he was left speechless. The plotting in Jin Yong's novels is full of holes. As Siegfried said, he doesn't care about textual logic. When did he ever think about textual logic! He was just stringing words together to earn manuscript fees, and indulging in a little fantasy on the side. As for other kinds of logic, such as whether a person's character is reasonable, or the chronology of events, he couldn't be bothered with those either. Third, he always pretends to be a historian, peddling his views of history in martial-arts novels, and in the end even said The Deer and the Cauldron was a historical novel. I suspect he never read much actual history, and as for historiography or historical judgment, he has nothing at all. Regarding Yuan Chonghuan, please see the essay “When Merit Reaches Heroic Greatness It Becomes a Crime” by internet celebrity Fang Zhouzi; regarding the case of Dong Xiaowan and the Shunzhi Emperor, see the evidential research of the now deceased mainland historian Meng Sen, enough to clarify the historical facts. Jin Yong's “historical learning” is not even worth refuting. As for other things like Song-Liao history, there is far too much fantasy and distortion in it as well. If anyone thinks reading Jin Yong can help him understand Chinese history, that is truly pitiful. Fourth, and this is what I dislike most about Jin Yong, his mentality is extremely twisted and paranoid, and he looks at Chinese history and the mainland through perverted eyes; moreover, his “level of civilization” is extremely backward and ignorant—my standard for “civilization” here borrows Zhou Zuoren's standard: look at a person's attitude toward women and children. You all should know Jin Yong's contemptuous and trampling attitude toward women. Besides that, though he is a modern man, the emperor-consciousness in his mind is so thick it won't dissolve. Zhang Zhongxing once commented on certain famous people from the early Republic, saying that although they served as officials in the Republic of China, their habits of thought still remained in the era of the Zhao Song and Ming emperors; once they had money and power they still wanted to buy houses, acquire land, and take concubines. Deep down, Jin Yong also has the air of a hooligan bandit; his greatest longing is to ascend through power. His novels seem to oppose authority everywhere, but his real intention is that he himself wants to be emperor. Everybody calls Jin Yong a “great hero,” thinking he can shoulder the moral tradition of Chinese history, but in fact he is only a Hong Kong kuruma shrimp, rich but without benevolence. No wonder Li Ao cursed him for having hundreds of millions in wealth yet never being willing to toss out even a single coin for public welfare. In terms of breadth, he simply cannot be mentioned in the same breath as Hong Kong tycoons like Li Ka-shing or Pao Yue-kong. He built a library in his hometown of Hangzhou, which seems to be an exception, but even that does not rule out the possibility that he has a very strong attachment to his native place and wanted to earn himself a good name there; as for other places unrelated to him, he can't be bothered to care. Isn't Hong Kong his second hometown? Has he ever made even the tiniest contribution to local charity there? Dwelling off in one corner, taking benefits from others, and meanwhile presenting it beautifully in his novels, with one hero after another full of righteous loyalty, spending money generously, helping the endangered and rescuing the distressed, moving readers one after another until their hearts surge and they praise him unceasingly, so that unconsciously they come to think Jin Yong is just such a hero too. Jin Yong is extremely shrewd. He got both fame and profit for himself, kept his eyes only on his own interests, and had in his head only the “reasoning” favorable to himself. As for sacrificing his own interests, silently dedicating himself to others, or treating fame and profit lightly—such foolish things he would never do. He only propagates and teaches those “great” ideas in his novels, but in real life his true form is exposed at once. It really is somewhat hypocritical. In this respect he is absolutely inferior to Bo Yang. In his novels there appears a strong and stubborn orphan-feeling. Many protagonists are abandoned children who do not know their parents, or sinful disciples expelled from their schools, such as Xiao Feng, Linghu Chong, Yang Guo.... This is a metaphor for Hong Kong. Hong Kong was ceded to Britain by a foolish and weak mainland, leaving a permanent wound. Hong Kong resents the mainland's heartlessness and incompetence, while also harboring a faint hatred for Britain. Hong Kong won't buy anyone's account; it feels everyone owes it something, especially that the mainland, its mother body, owes it. Hong Kong looks down on the mainland's backwardness and poverty, just as Jin Yong's protagonists look down on the weak and conservative martial arts of their original sect or ethnicity. Orphans generally have no good feelings toward society, are narrow-minded, paranoid and perverse, and extremely self-centered. Jin Yong's protagonists are all like this too. From the very beginning they always put themselves in the position of victims: all under heaven have wronged them, so they may collect debts at will and ask outrageous prices. And as the author, Jin Yong is sure to give them a satisfying settlement, talking glibly of heavenly justice and retribution; yet no matter what crimes against gods and men they commit, they still put on a pure and innocent attitude, not feeling they have committed crimes, and the author is unwilling to punish them. Jin Yong's method is to write the protagonists as number one in martial arts under heaven, so nobody can take revenge! What determines retribution is not heavenly justice, but level of martial arts and the author's likes and dislikes. Take Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü in The Return of the Condor Heroes: they may arbitrarily destroy other people's peace and order, barging into a Taoist temple to get married, but others may not break into their ancient tomb to interfere with their master-disciple romance. Xiaolongnü comes down the mountain and casually eats other people's food; if Daoist Yin offends her, she absolutely won't let it go. At the slightest thing they want to return to the ancient tomb, but who asked them to come out in the first place? Yang Guo nurses hatred for years over his so-called father's grievance. What a huge price did Guo Jing and his wife pay before they received his “forgiveness”? In the end it still takes Miss Guo the elder daughter kneeling, and the second Miss Guo being trapped by love and ruining her whole life, before the resentment in Yang Guo's / the author's heart is finally dispelled. In Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, Xiao Feng's whole family, in order to clear their own grievance, slaughtered many people; but who can seek vengeance and clear injustice against them? Because they are number one in martial arts under heaven. Azi, this典型 of “evil by nature,” did no end of wicked things, but there were always people protecting her, and the author always defended her on the grounds that she was orphaned young and poorly taught. No one can redress the wrongs, and in the end she follows the man she loves in death. She lived as she pleased and died freely, without receiving any punishment from “heavenly justice.” Morality is not innate; it is the best set of rules established to preserve the survival of a certain group. The more its members obey public morality, the stronger, more prosperous, and more enduring that group becomes. Since Hong Kong has no true belonging, it also has no public morality. The mainland abandoned it, so it cannot observe traditional Chinese morality; Britain used it to make money, and is not worthy of respect either. As a free port, Hong Kong hopes everyone will not interfere with its making money. Jin Yong's protagonists acknowledge no public morality; they take only personal interest as their criterion. For example, in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, the Shaolin assembly of heroes reveals Xiao Feng's true identity and the mystery of Yanmen Pass. At a moment of national peril, it instead becomes a stage for the three sworn brothers to perform their friendship, and for Xiao Feng's family to seek revenge. In their minds there are only personal and family grudges and brotherly affection, while the great cause of the nation above the individual family is set aside. The same situation is everywhere in his other novels as well. Jin Yong often places his protagonists in difficult choices: everybody says he himself is moral and wants the protagonist to join his side, while these moral gentlemen all expose one another's shameful secrets. The person involved is shouted dizzy by several factions and only knows whether so-and-so treated me well or badly, so he throws himself to that side. This is the essential fallen nature of Hong Kong: they have no nation, state, or cultural tradition to which they can be loyal, on which they can rely, or which they can grasp; the only thing they can affirm is their own immediate interest. Many of Jin Yong's protagonists are stubbornly self-willed. On the surface they are wildly arrogant, but inwardly they are not without confusion and contradiction. Xiao Feng commits suicide because he cannot resolve this contradiction. This is authentic “Made in Hong Kong.” Presumably when Hong Kong was building and confirming its own economic, political, and cultural identity, its confusion was no less than the mainland's confusion of “crossing the river by feeling for stones.” Hong Kong's identity values the present, respects the individual, is practical, non-aligned, free, and fetishistic toward material things. Jin Yong's protagonists also value the present, respect the individual, are practical, non-aligned, free, and worship “martial arts.” Hong Kong neither wanted to “return to the motherland” nor liked constantly being bled by Britain; it hoped to remain free forever. The mainland supplied fresh water, raw materials, and a buyer's market; Britain provided liberal economic principles and the weight of “democratic piggery,” but neither China nor Britain was to interfere with Hong Kong. Quite a few of Jin Yong's protagonists like to retire into seclusion. After taking their revenge themselves, they do not want others to seek revenge on them, and want to slip away to the ancient tomb or the great desert to live an immortal's life. Hong Kong is precisely that free, isolated ancient tomb and desert. Jin Yong's Central Plains martial arts elders and orthodox famous schools are mostly pedantic and laughable. Their leaders are weak in martial arts and bad in character, capable only of putting on pompous airs. Jin Yong shows deep dislike toward Shaolin and Wudang, constantly making fun of them. Temples clearly do not allow female visitors inside, and ordinary households do not welcome uninvited guests, but there are countless people who barge into Shaolin and then sophistically attack the temple rules. What gives them / Jin Yong the right not to respect other people's negative freedom of shutting their doors? The old freak of Xingxiu Sea and the “Gentleman Sword” Yue Buqun clearly allude to deceased leaders of mainland China, depicting human stupidity, inflation, pettiness, and pitifulness to the utmost. When Jin Yong's writing turns vicious, it shows his highest level; if one were to judge literary masters, Jin Yong could actually rank among the masters of satirical literature. But figures like Tolui, Kublai, and the Liao emperor are all heroic and high-spirited, radiant with martial grandeur, obviously fresh blood able to found unprecedented enterprises. Jin Yong even added much inexplicable enlightenment and benevolence to these barbarians, things with no basis in history, just like Great Britain in its heyday: history destined that they would successfully commit crimes against China, and then use “democratic piggery” and freedom to adorn themselves. Hong Kong appears very avant-garde on the surface, but in ideas and values it is a model of backward decay. These two hooligan obsessions—open polygamy and the king of a patch of weeds—hang in the air and are reflected in their lives and films. Hong Kong produces more films praising hooligans than anywhere else in the world. Jin Yong's attitude toward women is one of extreme contempt. Among his female characters there are almost none worthy of respect; they are all “bitches.” Either they are rude and willful like Azi; or inhuman like Xiaolongnü; or born slaves who bow and scrape, like Shuang'er in The Deer and the Cauldron and Xiao Zhao in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber; there are also quite a few old women with eccentric and paranoid personalities; and even more are busty but brainless types of clingy infatuation (too many to count). Even a powerful character like Li Mochou still has to be wounded by love and die for love. Only in The Legend of the Condor Heroes, written when Jin Yong had just debuted, is the heroine Huang Rong still clever and lovable, and Guo Jing remains faithful from start to finish. In Jin Yong's novels, Huang Rong suffers no damage and reaches a perfectly complete ending, making it impossible not to respect her. But related women like Princess Huazheng and Mu Nianci are practically the very embodiment of tragedy. In Jin Yong's later works, a perfect woman like Huang Rong never appears again (and in The Return of the Condor Heroes, Huang Rong's character also declines); either their character and morals are disgusting and contemptible, or their fate is unfortunate. Take Xiaolongnü: at the start she has only herself in her heart, and later she adds only Yang Guo; she already belongs in the category of spiritual cripples, but since her conduct is after all beyond reproach, Jin Yong insists on having her violated by Daoist Yin, shattering this exquisite idol. A Ke in The Deer and the Cauldron, originally a being like a heavenly maiden, can only become the concubine of the hooligan Wei Xiaobao. If Jin Yong does not insult women on the social level, then he insults them sexually. The later the works, the more obvious this becomes; for someone like Huang Rong to emerge unscathed becomes impossible. It is as if the more society progresses, the more Jin Yong's view of women regresses, moving further and further toward the opposite of civilization. I once read a book that divided Chinese literature into certain categories, saying that Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio was emission-in-dream literature; Dream of the Red Chamber was impotence literature; Marriage as a Warning to the World was self-castration literature; and The Plum in the Golden Vase and the like were fantasy-lust literature or aphrodisiac literature (my memory may be wrong). Jin Yong's novels are fantasy-lust literature or Viagra literature: publishing books to get wives is even more satisfying than dreaming of getting wives, and there are manuscript fees too.
Although Jin Yong is the offspring of a colony, he nevertheless has an unbreakable connection to the mainland, the reason of course being the traditional education he received from childhood. Although he knows tradition is useless, he also finds it hard to cast it aside. Both his early and late works, The Legend of the Condor Heroes and The Deer and the Cauldron, show that he cannot break off this influence; after running wild in a big circle, in the end he still “returned.” But in his understanding, tradition had changed beyond all comparison. The hero of Condor is Guo Jing, a traditional figure like Yue Fei, praised by numerous Jin fans, and these fans sentimentally imagine that Jin is also a great hero, since “the greatest of heroes serves the country and the people.” In fact Jin Yong himself does not accept this at all! He personally said that Guo was his ideal, but such a person does not exist in life, and a heroine like Huang Rong could not possibly appear either. This idol Guo Jing was only something he created according to Chinese traditional ideas (mostly from things like The Complete Tale of Yue and The Generals of the Yang Family, plus the Four Books and Five Classics he had no choice but to memorize), and he himself doesn't believe in it. Wei Xiaobao is the common Chinese type. Jin's true hero is Wei Xiaobao, a genuine hooligan through and through, a barefaced rogue who sweeps across the world with utter shamelessness, possessing wealth, rank, long life, beauties, hounds, and horses all complete. This is Jin Yong's ideal. It is also a portrait of Hong Kong! In prosperity of sensual pleasures and in love for such phenomena, is there anywhere in the world that surpasses Hong Kong? Hong Kong TV dramas always depict protagonists being harmed and taking revenge, then later becoming rich and thus able to realize every dream. Someone once asked Hong Kong people: why do you always depict money as omnipotent? Hong Kong people answered in astonishment: isn't money omnipotent? Transposed into Jin Yong's novels, this becomes: isn't martial arts omnipotent? The traditional pursuits of Chinese hooligans are twofold: first power (especially becoming emperor), second women. Wei Xiaobao may be said to possess both, and live even more comfortably than the emperor. No wonder Jin Yong stopped writing, because Wei Xiaobao had already reached the ideal peak of the Chinese male; no matter what he wrote after that, it would be impossible to surpass it. I have always felt Jin Yong had a strong emperor-consciousness. Because his protagonists always begin by fiercely challenging all rules and all sects, acting in their own way, intentionally or not trampling on the dignity of others, even destroying the freedom of monks to shut their doors and chant sutras—simply because Shaolin is the leading authority of the martial world, it has original sin and deserves to be attacked. But their own dignity cannot be offended by anyone, and they themselves have a huge pile of rotten rules. After destroying others' dignity, and making a great name through martial arts, they then command the world and none dare disobey, with no rival anywhere. Xiao Feng and Yang Guo are both such embodiments of this ideal. When people talk about them, they prostrate themselves even more thoroughly than the insincere flatterers of the old freak of Xingxiu Sea, becoming slaves spiritually through and through. In other words, Jin Yong does not admire democratic piggery at all; he just doesn't want anyone else to be emperor! When I say this to others, they generally don't believe it, until in 1997 (perhaps my date is off), I read an essay by Ms. Lam Yanni of Hong Kong in Southern Weekend, writing about Hong Kong celebrities (including Jin Yong, Chow Yun-fat, Brigitte Lin, Stanley Ho, and others), describing Jin Yong's methods in managing Ming Pao, and directly praising him as a man like an emperor, high-pressure in his methods, no room for discussion, I am high-pressure in my methods, no room for discussion—only then did I finally find some corroborating evidence. Hong Kong is the place with the most advanced and most relaxed economic system in the world, yet part of its spiritual culture is astonishingly backward. It is also one of the few places that still preserves the dregs of old China. Hong Kong people's attitude toward money, power, and women remains in the Middle Ages; spiritually they preserve every specimen of queues, bound feet, eunuchs.... Jin Yong brought these specimens to life, changed their appearance, and marketed them all over the world in the form of martial-arts novels; the consequences were probably not something he expected at first. Everyone naïvely took Guo Jing as his ideal, took his novels as models for studying Chinese tradition, and eagerly asked him to express his views. I think Jin Yong must have felt very uneasy at first, but later he became calm and self-possessed about it. He traveled everywhere, gave speeches, and patched up his characters. But can patches really be applied like that? Jin Yong's ideal is the ideal of a traditional Chinese hooligan: all sanctity and loftiness are jokes, and one should tear off their painted skins. Chop down authority with a broadsword and take its place oneself—“A true man should be like this” (words of the hooligan emperor Liu Bang). A man's life in this world is nothing more than wine, sex, wealth, and temper; grab as much as you can and consume to your heart's content. If one lets rules and restrictions bind hands and feet, that is purely idiocy. To achieve one's aims, no means are too base; once one has money (martial arts), one can obtain everything. History is written by the victors. Ah, this is Hong Kong.
Jin Yong the great hero is nothing but a Hong Kong kuruma shrimp.