Duan Zhixing

Duan Zhixing

Contents

Duan Zhixing (simplified: 段智兴, traditional: 段智興, pinyin: Duàn Zhìxīng, jyutping: Dyun6 Zi3 Hing1), better known by his Buddhist name as Great Master Yideng (一灯大师 — Yīdēng Dàshī), was a ruler of the Dali Kingdom1 and the Southern Emperor among the Five Greats. A master of the One Yang Finger, the Duan family’s hereditary art, he also learnt the Innate Skill from Wang Chongyang. After the death of his consort’s child he gave up his throne and became a monk.

Biography

Emperor of Dali

Duan Zhixing came of a house in which abdication for the cloister was almost a custom. Of the eighteen Duan emperors from the founder of Dali down to himself, seven left the throne to become monks, among them his father, the Jingzong Zhengkang Emperor. He was devoted to martial arts and spent so much time on them that he seldom saw his empress, let alone his other consorts.

At the first Huashan Sword Summit his One Yang Finger held its own against Hong Qigong’s Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, Ouyang Feng’s Toad Skill and Huang Yaoshi’s arts, and he became the Southern Emperor of the Five Greats. Wang Chongyang won the contest and with it the Nine Yin Manual.

Wang Chongyang’s visit

The year after the summit, Wang Chongyang came to Dali with his junior Zhou Botong and stayed in the palace for about half a month. Duan Zhixing told him the secrets of the One Yang Finger, and Wang Chongyang taught him the Innate Skill in return. Only at parting did Wang Chongyang reveal his purpose: his old illness had returned, and he wanted someone to survive him who could keep Ouyang Feng in check. Since offering to teach a fellow Great outright would have been a slight, he had asked for the One Yang Finger first and given the Innate Skill in exchange. He promised never to pass the One Yang Finger on.

Consort Liu and the child

While Wang Chongyang and Duan Zhixing talked martial arts, Zhou Botong roamed the palace. He came upon Consort Liu, later known as Yinggu, practising in the garden, sparred with her and began teaching her acupoint striking, and within some ten days they had become lovers. Wang Chongyang bound Zhou Botong and brought him before Duan Zhixing, who freed him and offered to give him the consort as his wife. Zhou Botong refused, knelt to beg forgiveness, handed back the embroidered handkerchief she had given him and left. Wang Chongyang apologised and departed, and soon afterwards died.

Duan Zhixing did not summon the consort again. Months later, going secretly to her quarters at night, he heard a baby crying, and fell into a long illness. More than two years on, she burst into his chamber with the child: a masked man had come through her window and struck the boy twice, breaking his ribs. Duan Zhixing saw that only a master of the first rank could have done it, and that healing the child would cost him so much strength that he could no longer hope to win the second Huashan Sword Summit and the Nine Yin Manual. He hesitated for the better part of an hour before agreeing, and then, as he opened the child’s clothes, found that the baby’s bib had been made from Zhou Botong’s handkerchief, embroidered with mandarin ducks and the song beginning “On the fourth loom”. Overcome with jealousy, he refused to save the child.

In those few hours white hairs appeared on the young consort’s head. Seeing that he would not help, she stabbed the dying child herself to end his suffering, vowed that she would one day stab Duan Zhixing too and return the jade bangle he had given her on the day she entered the palace, and fled the palace with the body. The masked attacker, as was later revealed, was Qiu Qianren, who had meant to make the Dali emperor exhaust his strength before the next summit.

Abdication

Duan Zhixing went without food or drink for three days and three nights, then passed the throne to his eldest son and became a monk. According to Hong Qigong, who was in Dali at the time, Duan Zhixing had first invited him south and tried to teach him the Innate Skill and the One Yang Finger, intending to kill himself once both had a successor. Hong Qigong saw through the plan and refused to learn, and Duan Zhixing took the tonsure instead, with Hong Qigong beside him.

His four closest ministers, the fisherman, woodcutter, farmer and scholar of his later household, would not leave him. They lived with him at the Tianlong Temple outside Dali, and for the first three years took turns at court helping his son govern. When the farmer went to gather herbs on the Great Snow Mountain, Ouyang Feng wounded him with the Toad Skill and sent him back to the temple, so that his master would spend his strength healing him; Ouyang Feng then tried to kill Yideng while he was weakened, but Yideng saw through the scheme and moved away that night. Later Zhu Ziliu found Yinggu living in the Black Marsh in western Hunan, and Yideng moved to a remote mountain monastery nearby, where he could watch over her and sent people to plant trees for her and bring her food. For more than ten years he sought to atone by saving as many lives as he could, while waiting for her to come with her dagger.

Healing Huang Rong

When Huang Rong was struck by Qiu Qianren’s Iron Palm, Yinggu directed Guo Jing to carry her to Yideng. His four disciples tried to turn the pair away, but Yideng received them. Healing wounds so grave needed both the One Yang Finger and the Innate Skill, and since Wang Chongyang’s death he alone had both. He struck point after point along all her extraordinary meridians with the One Yang Finger, and the effort cost him his martial power for five years. Yinggu had also arranged for poison to be mixed into the Nine Flower Jade Dew Pills he took afterwards, and only his junior, the Sindhu Monk, saved him.

Yinggu then sent up the jade bangle and came for her revenge. On Huang Rong’s plan Guo Jing took Yideng’s place in disguise and received her dagger. Yideng then appeared, bared his chest and invited her to strike. Remembering at last how well he had treated her, she dropped the dagger and fled.

Guo Jing turned out to know by heart the Sanskrit passage of the Nine Yin Manual that no one had understood. Yideng, who knew Sanskrit, translated the General Principles into Chinese for Guo Jing and Huang Rong, and found that by them he could recover in three months what would otherwise take five years.

The second Huashan Sword Summit

Yideng came to Mount Hua on the eve of the second summit, not to compete but to end a feud twenty years old. There Yinggu confronted Qiu Qianren as the man who had struck her son,. Rebuked by Hong Qigong for betraying his country, Qiu Qianren threw himself from the cliff in shame. Yideng, still sitting cross-legged, caught him by the legs and pulled him back, and Qiu Qianren knelt before him in tears. Declining to take part in the contest, Yideng led him away down the mountain.

Later life

In The Return of the Condor Heroes, Qiu Qianren became Yideng’s disciple under the Buddhist name Ci’en. Living in seclusion in Jinghu North Circuit, Yideng set out for Heartless Valley with Ci’en on receiving a letter from Zhu Ziliu, who was held there. On the way Elder Peng’s Mind-Capturing Technique drove Ci’en to kill a beggar hidden in the snow; Ci’en then killed Elder Peng, and in his frenzy struck Yideng again and again while Yideng refused to strike back, until Yang Guo subdued him. Yideng gave Xiaolongnü a pill that would keep her alive for seven days, and in Heartless Valley he identified the plant the dead Sindhu Monk was holding as the poisonous Duanchang grass. He later joined the defence of Xiangyang, and at the third gathering on Mount Hua, Huang Yaoshi named him the Southern Monk.

Personality & traits

Physical appearance

As Great Master Yideng he wore a monk’s robe of coarse cloth. Two long white eyebrows hung down from the corners of his eyes; his face was kindly, with a hidden sorrow between the brows, yet he had an air of grace and nobility that showed at a glance. He had a high-bridged nose, a square mouth and kindly eyes, and a white beard, which was shaved off to disguise Guo Jing as him. When he healed Huang Rong, Guo Jing thought he moved with the majesty of an emperor rather than a monk.

Character

Telling the story of the child years later, Yideng blamed himself rather than Yinggu or Zhou Botong. He judged that in the time he hesitated he had been lower than a beast, and that even his decision to help came only from her pleading. His guilt shaped the rest of his life: he would not let his disciples seek revenge on Ouyang Feng, saying that hatred should not be repaid with hatred, and he spent his strength on others at great cost to himself. Of his house he said that emperors lived on the people’s sweat and so, in old age, looked back on more harm than good.

Martial arts abilities

One Yang Finger

The One Yang Finger (一阳指 — Yīyáng Zhǐ) was the secret art of the Duan of Dali, never taught to outsiders. Healing Huang Rong, Yideng struck the thirty points of her Du meridian with thirty different techniques, the twenty-five of her Ren meridian at lightning speed, and the points of the Yang Wei meridian from more than ten feet away, darting in and out. Combined with the Innate Skill it was the nemesis of Ouyang Feng’s Toad Skill; Wang Chongyang used it in that way to break the Toad Skill from his coffin, and Ouyang Feng feared it ever after.

Innate Skill

Yideng learnt the Innate Skill (先天功 — Xiāntiān Gōng) from Wang Chongyang and practised it diligently. After Wang Chongyang’s death he was the only man who commanded both it and the One Yang Finger.

General Principles of the Nine Yin Manual

Yideng translated the Sanskrit General Principles of the Nine Yin Manual from Guo Jing’s recitation and used them to speed his recovery. He judged that, at the highest level, their teaching differed little from Buddhist practice.

Relationships

Yinggu

Yinggu, born Liu and named Ying, was Duan Zhixing’s consort. He had taught her martial arts, but by her own account he hardly noticed her in her two years at court. After the child’s death she lived for years in the Black Marsh plotting revenge, while he secretly provided for her. At their last meeting she saw how he had always treated her and gave up her revenge. He asked Guo Jing and Huang Rong to help her and, if they could, to bring about her marriage to Zhou Botong.

Zhou Botong

Duan Zhixing was ready to give his consort to Zhou Botong, but Zhou Botong refused her and left Dali. Zhou Botong did not learn until the eve of the second summit that he had fathered a son.

The four disciples

The fisherman, woodcutter, farmer and scholar had been his chancellor, grand general, admiral and commander of the Imperial Guard; the scholar, Zhu Ziliu, had been chancellor, and the farmer commander of the Imperial Guard. They learnt acupoint striking from him and guarded him jealously, testing visitors on the way up his mountain. In The Return of the Condor Heroes the farmer is named Wu Santong.

Qiu Qianren

Qiu Qianren wounded the child to wear Duan Zhixing down before the second summit. Yideng saved him from his leap at Mount Hua and took him away, and in The Return of the Condor Heroes he is Yideng’s disciple Ci’en.

Wang Chongyang and the Five Greats

Wang Chongyang admired his One Yang Finger and trusted him with the Innate Skill. Hong Qigong was a friend who came to Dali when called and refused to learn his arts so as to keep him alive. Ouyang Feng, knowing the Innate Skill to be the nemesis of his Toad Skill, tried to destroy him.

The Sindhu Monk

The Sindhu Monk, his junior, was a healer from India who knew no martial arts. He cured Yideng’s poisoning and treated the disciples wounded by Yinggu’s needles.

Behind the scenes

Historical basis

Duan Zhixing was a real emperor of Dali, temple name Xuanzong, who reigned from 1172 to 1200. He succeeded his father Duan Zhengxing and was succeeded by his son Duan Zhilian; his reign was marked by the power of the Gao family. In his postscript to the novel, Jin Yong identifies him with the Lizhen Emperor of a Buddhist scroll painted by the Dali court painter Zhang Shengwen, lists his six era names (Lizhen, Shengde, Jiahui, Yuanheng, Anding and Hengshi), and corrects the Ming scholar Song Lian, who had dated the painting to 1240: its date, the fifth year of Shengde, is 1180. Jin Yong also notes that Duan Xiangxing, on the throne in 1240, was Duan Zhixing’s grandson, and that Dali fell to the Mongols under Kublai in 1253. The abdication and monastic life of Great Master Yideng are the novel’s.

Portrayals

Duan Zhixing has been portrayed by numerous actors across various adaptations:

The Legend of the Condor Heroes

The Return of the Condor Heroes

See also

Follow the archive routes

Footnotes

  1. 大理国 — Dàlǐ Guó. Kingdom in southwest China, modern-day Yunnan, ruled by the Bai people of the Duan Clan from 937 to 1253 CE. See Wikipedia. ↩

Related articles