Baoshu (simplified: 宝树, traditional: 寶樹, pinyin: Bǎoshù, jyutping: bou2 syu6), addressed as Great Master Baoshu, is a monk in Jin Yong’s Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain. He was formerly Yan Ji (阎基), the bonesetter (跌打医生) of a small town near Cangzhou. He smeared the poison that killed Hu Yidao. In Side Story of the Flying Fox he appears as Yan Ji, a bandit chief.
Biography
Yan Ji the bonesetter
Twenty-seven years before the novel, Yan Ji was a country bonesetter who fawned on the local landowner Zhao. He was fetched to the Ping’an Inn to treat the men of Guild Chief Fan and Tian Guinong whom Hu Yidao had wounded, and stayed on at the inn, where Hu Yidao used him as a messenger. Hu Yidao sent him to tell Miao Renfeng three things: the true origin of the four families’ feud, how Miao’s and Tian’s fathers had died, and the secret of Li Zicheng’s dao. Miao was out, and Tian Guinong paid Yan Ji thirty taels to say the message had been delivered (ch. 5, 7).
Miao Renfeng caught Yan Ji eavesdropping and punched him in the face through the window. On the eve of the final bout Yan Ji smeared both men’s weapons with a poison ointment. Tao Baisui later testified that it was Tian Guinong’s Tianlong School poison, passed to Yan Ji through Tao himself. Ping Asi believed Yan Ji wanted both men dead, for revenge on Miao and for Hu Yidao’s iron box. After Hu Yidao and Madam Hu died, Yan Ji went through the box in her room and smothered the crying infant Hu Fei under a quilt. Ping Asi knocked him senseless with a door bar and fled with the child. The first two pages of the fist and blade manual tore off in Yan Ji’s grip (ch. 5, 7).
In Side Story of the Flying Fox
From those two pages Yan Ji learned a dozen or so strange moves of fist and foot. They lifted his ordinary dao work enough for him to become a bandit chief. At the Shang Family Fort, with Miao Renfeng present, Ping Asi whispered to him and made him hand the pages back. Old Madam Shang then defeated him in a duel to the death that she forced on him. She cut off his queue and ordered him to shave his head as a monk and leave the outlaw life (SIDE ch. 1–3).
On Jade Brush Peak
Invited by the lord of the manor on Jade Brush Peak to help against the Flying Fox, Baoshu came upon the Tianlong School men, the Taos and the Pingtong escorts fighting in the snow over the iron box holding Li Zicheng’s Treasured Dao. He stopped the fight, made Ruan Shizhong give Zheng Sanniang the antidote to a Poison Dragon Awl, dragged back the fleeing Liu Yuanhe, and herded the whole company up to the Du Family Manor (ch. 1–2).
In the manor he told his own account of the Cangzhou duel, in which Hu Yidao cut his own throat after losing. Ping Asi, disguised as a servant, contradicted him and named him as Yan Ji. Baoshu admitted the blow to the back of his head and said nothing of the rest. Miao Ruolan, retelling her father’s account, had already contradicted him, and Tao Baisui later confirmed that Baoshu had lied (ch. 4–5, 7).
When Liu Yuanhe opened the phoenix-head pearl hairpin and found the treasure map, Baoshu sealed Miao Ruolan’s acupoints and went with the others to the treasure cave behind the peak. There he watched them fight, meaning to finish off the survivors himself. When Hu Fei and Ruolan appeared, he loosed his iron prayer beads at them and hurled Cao Yunqi into the fire. Hu Fei flicked jewels at him until he could no longer stand, and spared him only at Ruolan’s plea. He then sealed Baoshu and the other treasure-seekers inside the cave. The novel says that no one inside could get out unless someone freed them from outside (ch. 8, 10).
Personality
Baoshu is greedy, cunning and coarse-mouthed, peppering his speech with oaths unbecoming a monk. Ping Asi wonders whether he became a monk out of remorse; the novel never says.
Martial arts
The fragment of the Hu family manual made Yan Ji a formidable fighter. Baoshu disarms Tao Baisui and overpowers Liu Yuanhe with ease and uses a seizing grip on Ping Asi. His emergency technique is a volley of iron prayer beads, thrown in a method derived from Full Sky Flower Rain, which he had practised for more than ten years without ever using it in a fight.
Relationships
- Hu Yidao (Victim): Yan Ji smeared the poison that killed him.
- Tian Guinong: paid Yan Ji to suppress Hu Yidao’s message; his poison reached Yan Ji through Tao Baisui.
- Ping Asi: saved Hu Fei from him, and exposes him on Jade Brush Peak.