Postscript

The ending of *Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain* is a suspense: there is no definitive conclusion. Whether Hu Fei brings that blade down or not, I leave readers to imagine for themselves.

This novel was first published in 1959. Over the following decade and more, several friends and many readers I had never met expressed the hope that I would write a definite ending. After careful consideration, I have decided it is better to leave it as it is, giving readers more room for imagination. A lingering incompleteness, a suitable reserve, that too is a kind of pleasure. In my own mind, I have imagined seven or eight different endings. Sometimes I think about those various outcomes, and that in itself is an enjoyment. Whether Hu Fei brings that blade down or not is, for Hu Fei, a choice. And every reader, according to their own nature, according to each person’s view of human nature and of this world, may make a different choice.

After Li Zicheng’s defeat, he withdrew from Beijing and retreated west to Xi’an. His engagements against the Qing armies went badly, and the Shun army of several hundred thousand marched south. The final outcome, our country’s historians have had many theories. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of History established a special research project and held the “Li Zicheng Academic Symposium” in Beijing in May 1977. The result was a distillation into two differing opinions: first, that Li Zicheng died at Jiugong Mountain in Tongshan; second, that Li Zicheng retired to Jiashan in Shimen, Hunan, and became a monk. From the famous scholars Zhang Taiyan, Guo Moruo, Tong Shuye, and Li Wentian onward, the two theories have been debated without resolution. Originally the “Tongshan theory” had more support, since it had official documents and formal works as evidence. But later historians studied in detail and discovered that the documents and historical materials were vague and evasive, not definitive, insufficient as evidence. Whereas at Shimen’s Jiashan, a large quantity of excavated artefacts were discovered, proven to relate to Li Zicheng. One account is vague, the other is certain. Comparing the two, contemporary historians mostly lean towards the “Jiashan Chan hermitage theory.” Among historical scholars, Wang Rongsheng’s school advocates the “Tongshan theory,” Liu Chongbai’s school advocates the “Jiashan theory,” and the two factions have been locked in dispute.

In September 2000, at the invitation of Hunan’s Yuelu Academy, I went to give a lecture. I met with Shimen County’s historical experts and the director of the Cultural Relics Bureau, and had a long conversation with Director Wei Wenbin of the Hunan Provincial Broadcasting and Television Bureau. Director Wei had spent a long time in Shaanxi (perhaps he is from Shaanxi, I cannot remember). Wei and I conversed well together and became close friends. He said that as soon as he saw the cultural relics from Shimen, he knew they were Shaanxi rural objects, definitely not Hunan objects. Rural earthen goods from every place have their own characteristics and cannot be confused. I have not seen with my own eyes the Li Zicheng relics from Shimen, but I know that the excavated tombs, stele inscriptions, bronze vessels, bronze coins, horse bells, wood carvings and other objects were authenticated by both the central and local Cultural Relics Bureaus, confirmed as genuine, and certificates were issued.

When I was writing Sword Stained with Royal Blood and Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, I did not yet know that the historical community on the mainland had such a significant debate over “Li Zicheng’s final destination.” But drawing on a novelist’s inclinations, I adopted the “Jiashan Chan hermitage theory.” This runs contrary to the views of Guo Moruo and Yao Xueyin, but aligns with the plot of A Ying’s spoken drama Li the Storming King. This is not a matter of whether my historical instinct is correct or not, it is that novelists favour the legendary and the extraordinary. Later, in The Deer and the Cauldron, Li Zicheng appears again, naturally extending from the earlier conclusion. Now, re-examining the two factions’ opinions among historical scholars, from the academic viewpoint of history, I cast my vote in support of the “Jiashan Chan hermitage theory.”

To insert some historical background into a novel naturally does not require every detail to match historical fact exactly, it suffices that major events do not contradict it. As for historical events without definitive conclusions, a novelist may naturally choose one account and develop it. But the old novels The Romance of Wu Sangui and Iron Crown Tower recount the story of Li Zicheng in ways that stray too far from commonly accepted facts. In Iron Crown Tower, the great general of the Chuang army whom Fei Gong’e assassinates turns out to be Li Yan. In The Romance of Wu Sangui, Li Zicheng is poisoned to death by Niu Jinxing. These take liberties to an excessive degree.

After Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain was published in the newspaper in 1959, no standalone edition approved by the author was ever published. The standalone editions in circulation, as far as I have seen, total eight kinds, all unauthorised reprints by booksellers. The books contain many typographical errors, and the reprinters arbitrarily divided chapters and composed their own chapter titles, which may not reflect the author’s original intent. Some editions’ accompanying illustrations were also not to the author’s liking.

Now I have revised, abridged, and rewritten it again. It was first published in Ming Pao Evening News, and underwent several more revisions when issued as a book. By rough estimate, six or seven tenths of the original sentences have been rewritten. Omissions and careless passages in the original have been largely corrected. It is only that the characters in the book, Baoshu, Ping Asi, Tao Baisui, Liu Yuanhe, and the rest, are rough men. When telling their stories, their tone still tends too literary. To revise it to match each person’s station and character would fill the pages with “damn this” and “fuck that,” which would be rather indecorous, and cumbersome besides. Given my limited ability, there is nothing to be done about it.

Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain has an English translation, which was serialised in the bi-monthly Bridge published in New York. Later, the Chinese University of Hong Kong published Miss Olivia Mok’s translation, titled Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain.

Though Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain and Side Story of the Flying Fox are related, they are two independent novels, and so their contents need not be made entirely consistent. Reasonably speaking, when Hu Fei encountered Miao Ruolan, he would certainly have thought of Yuan Ziyi and Cheng Lingsu. But considering Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain as a novel in its own right, it seems unnecessary to have characters from the other novel appear, even if only in Hu Fei’s thoughts. In fact, Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain was written first. At that time, the author never had the characters Yuan Ziyi and Cheng Lingsu in mind.

This book was first revised in December 1974, revised a second time in August 1977, and revised a third time in 2003. Though nearly every page has been changed, the alterations are limited to individual words and sentences. There have been no major revisions to the plot.

Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain uses a story-telling method for recounting past events. Storytelling is, after all, the fundamental method by which every people’s literature began. Before humanity had invented writing, primitive humans gathered around bonfires and in caves, telling of how they killed an elephant while hunting during the day, how several of them surrounded and slew a great black bear. The teller was exhilarated, spittle flying. The listeners were never sated, always feeling it was not wonderful enough. And so the elephants killed grew ever more numerous, the black bears slain ever larger. These exaggerations departing from fact are the origin of literature, myth, and religion.

Storytelling is the ancestor of all literature, but later people gradually forgot this. The modern and contemporary literary world even feels that a novel with a story is not sophisticated enough, not intellectual enough, too vulgar. The less story there is, the more it leaves readers confused, the more qualified it is for discussion in university literature departments. I used the form of several people telling stories to write Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain. Before it had finished serialisation in the newspaper, many readers in Hong Kong wrote to ask me: am I imitating the film Rashomon? Among those who said this was even a very learned good friend of mine. I was somewhat angry and replied simply: please read China’s Three Words, Two Slaps, please read the foreign Arabian Nights, please read the Christian Bible’s Old Testament, First Kings 16–28, please read the Chinese translation of Japanese author Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s original short story Rashomon.

Since films became popular, many people only watch films and do not read novels. Now television is even more popular, and more people watch television and use computers than read books, read novels. The Japanese film Rashomon was shown in Hong Kong and was very well received. The general public, educated by this film, believes that if two people speak differently and one of them is lying, that is “Rashomon.”

In fact, the short story Rashomon written by Japanese author Akutagawa Ryūnosuke has an extremely simple plot, depicting only a desolate and eerie mood. Rashomon in Japan stands at the south end of Suzaku Bridge in Kyoto. It is a castle gate. In ancient times, the upper storey held many unclaimed corpses. Nearby there were only thieves, foxes, crows, and the like. A poor labourer came to the gate to shelter from the rain and saw an old woman pulling out the hair of a female corpse to sell to wig-makers. The labourer was very angry, grabbed the old woman, and stripped off her clothes to sell. The film director Kurosawa Akira used this desolate mood to narrate another of Akutagawa’s stories, In a Grove: a bandit overthrows a samurai and rapes his wife. The bandit, the samurai, and the woman, three people (and a ghost), tell the same story, but the contents differ greatly, revealing human nature’s impermanence and helplessness. Only because the director’s technique was superb, the story novel, and the lead actor Mifune Toshiro acted well, was the film a great success.

I often pose an amusing riddle for friends to guess: three worms walk in single file. The first worm says, “Behind me there are two worms.” The second says, “In front of me there is one worm, behind me there is one worm.” The third says, “In front of me there are no worms, behind me there are no worms!” Question: why does the third worm say this? (Incidental note: “Primary school students answered correctly in ten minutes. Secondary school students took two days to answer correctly. University students took a week to answer correctly. University professors could not answer correctly even after a year.” Why?) The answer is: “The third worm is lying.”

Small children often tell lies, and so they guess immediately that the third worm is lying. University professors must discuss N-dimensional space, the theory of relativity, permutations, coordinates, the biological definition of a worm, a worm’s field of vision, and other issues, and they can never answer correctly.

In every lawsuit, civil or criminal, someone must be lying, concealing facts, so that several people’s accounts of the same matter differ. One person or several distorts the truth. Finally the truth becomes clear. This is the fixed structure of all detective novels and crime stories. It cannot be otherwise, and there is nothing unusual about it. Since ancient times, all trials, legal cases, and case-solving stories have had the same basic structure: each person’s account differs, and a wise official (or Judge Bao, or Lord Peng, or Lord Shi, or Lord Di, or Lord Kuang, or King Solomon) or a detective (or Sherlock Holmes, or Poirot, or Vance) draws silk from a cocoon, peels away the layers, and discovers the truth. That too is a fixed structure.

In the Ming dynasty’s short stories, Feng Menglong compiled Jingshi Tongyan [Stories to Caution the World], which contains Governor Kuang Tries a Dead Child. Someone went to abandon a dead child, and Governor Kuang discovered it. The person said it was rotten beef. Investigating further, it turned out to be an illegitimate child, born to a widow. The person knew this and wanted to use it to coerce the widow into sex. Investigating further, it turned out the widow had borne the child with a hired labourer. Investigating further, it was the labourer who had seduced the widow and caused the pregnancy. In another story, Fifteen Strings of Cash Lead to a Cunning Disaster, a man surnamed Liu had a wife and a concubine. His father-in-law borrowed fifteen strings of cash for him to use in business. When he returned home, he joked with his concubine, saying he had pawned her to someone and received this money. The concubine was unwilling, killed the man surnamed Liu, and fled. On the road she met the young man Cui Ning. The two travelled together. Cui Ning happened to have sold silk and received fifteen strings of cash to take home. The pursuers caught the two, believing they had eloped and murdered the husband. Each person’s testimony differed. The county magistrate was muddle-headed. Seeing the fifteen strings of cash as evidence, he sentenced them both to death.

The story in the Bible tells of how in ancient Israel, two prostitutes each bore a son. One prostitute accidentally crushed her own child to death. At night she secretly swapped them. The other prostitute, seeing the dead child was not her own, brought the case to King Solomon. The two prostitutes each maintained their position. King Solomon ordered a sword brought, saying he would split the living child in two and give each half. The true mother, out of compassion for her son, preferred to give him up. The other woman was unmoved, feeling it might as well be divided between them. King Solomon judged the child belonged to its true mother and punished the other woman severely.

As for the stories in the Arabian Nights, they are even more complex. Several years ago, in a second-hand bookshop in Melbourne, Australia, I purchased Richard Burton’s complete translation, published in London in 1883, in eight thick volumes. In it, the Sultan’s consort Scheherazade, to prolong her life, tells the Sultan continuous stories every night. The stories are endlessly wonderful, extraordinarily vivid. She is the ancestor of those of us who write serialised fiction in newspapers. Carpenters take Master Lu Ban as their ancestor. Actors take Emperor Xuanzong of Tang as their ancestor. We serialised novelists’ ancestor was incomparably beautiful and clever. She told the Sultan continuous stories for one thousand and one nights, and the Sultan could not bear to kill her, so he had to marry her as his consort. Her stories are nested within stories. A barber in Baghdad has six brothers. He tells one story himself, and each of the six brothers tells one story. The stories are true and false. Of three sisters, two sisters are turned into black dogs. The three sisters each have their stories, and each black dog also has a marvellous story. When it comes to telling true and false tales, since the Arabian Nights appeared in the world, it has swept the globe. What is Rashomon by comparison?

I am by nature disinclined to speak, but since taking a post teaching at Zhejiang University’s School of Humanities, I have had to speak more before students. As a result, my newly acquainted friend Professor Kong Qingdong wrote in an article that I am somewhat “long-winded and nagging.” This is probably the bad habit of a teacher. Originally, readers offering criticism of my novels is kindly meant. Most of these opinions are very good. Recently, when revising my novels again, I have accepted even criticism of minor points and made changes. In my heart I am truly grateful to my critics. But I cannot help adding many “annotations” and explanations, responding to criticism I disagree with. This is still the nagging habit of a teacher. In truth, a novelist should not defend his own work too much. If others disagree, let them disagree. Just as the little nun Yilin in The Smiling Proud Wanderer tells the Hundred Parables Sutra joke: someone thought a bald man’s head was stone and struck it with a plough, drawing blood. The bald man could not endure it and taught the other, “This is my head, not stone!” Really, why not just let him strike it? Why teach him better?

June 2003