Guild Chief Fan (simplified: 范帮主, traditional: 范幫主, pinyin: Fàn Bāngzhǔ) is the head of the Xinghan Beggars’ Guild in Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain. The novel knows him only by his surname and office and never gives his personal name.
Background
He descends from the guard surnamed Fan, one of the four bodyguards (the Hu, Miao, Fan and Tian of the army’s saying) who served the Storming King Li Zicheng. In Miao Ruolan’s telling of their story, the Fan ancestor is the “beggar grand-uncle”. His descendants came to lead the Beggars’ Guild, which added Xinghan, “Revive the Han”, to its name as a mark of its opposition to the Qing court.
In the story
- The Cangzhou ambush. With Tian Guinong he leads the band that tries to stop Hu Yidao and his wife at Cangzhou, and is present through the five-day contest between Hu Yidao and Miao Renfeng. Dressed as a beggar and armed with an iron staff, he is struck by Hu Yidao’s coin darts in the first clash. He mistrusts Hu Yidao’s wife, and warns Miao Renfeng against the wine she pours.
- Friendship with Miao Renfeng. Miao Renfeng is close to him but has little regard for Tian Guinong, and prefers to act alone rather than hunt Hu Yidao in their company.
- Capture. Commander Sai and the eighteen elite of the Inner Palace take him at Kaifeng and hold him in the imperial prison. Miao Renfeng breaks into the prison to free him but fails. On Jade Brush Peak Fan later claims that Miao and his guild rescued him, which is untrue.
- Turned by flattery. Still a prisoner, he is won over by Commander Sai with praise and a bout that Sai deliberately throws. Sai then enlists him, because his Dragon Claw Grasping Hand, used as a surprise attack by an old friend, is the one way to seize Miao Renfeng. At Du Ximeng’s manor on Jade Brush Peak he locks Miao Renfeng in that grip so the imperial guards can close in. When Commander Sai then moves to cut Miao’s tendons, Fan catches his wrist, reminding him of his sworn promise not to harm Miao, and Sai throws him through the wall.
Martial arts
- Five Tiger Dao (五虎刀), a dao art of eighty-one moves (九九八十一路), with which he seems to outlast Commander Sai over three hundred moves; Sai let him win, and in earnest would have beaten him within a hundred.
- Dragon Claw Grasping Hand (龙爪擒拿手), the Fan family’s hereditary seizing art of twenty-three moves, with which he is said to have killed two tigers barehanded: once his fingers close on any part of an opponent, the opponent cannot break free.
Note on the name
Earlier versions of this page called him “Fan Tianfeng” (范天峰) and made him one of Li Zicheng’s four bodyguards and a sworn brother of Hu Yidao, Miao Renfeng and Tian Guinong. Neither the name nor those relationships appear in Jin Yong’s text: the four bodyguards are the ancestors, a century earlier, and the novel names him only as 范帮主.