Hu Family

The Hu Family (simplified: 胡家, traditional: 胡家, pinyin: Hú Jiā, jyutping: wu4 gaa1) was the line descended from the Flying Fox (飞天狐狸), the foremost of the four bodyguards of the Storming King, Li Zicheng. After the Flying Fox’s three sworn brothers killed him as a traitor, the Hus were at feud with the Miao, Fan and Tian families for more than a century, and every generation on each side came to a violent end (ch. 3). The family alone kept the secret that the Flying Fox had saved Li Zicheng’s life (ch. 5). It handed down the Hu Family Bladeworks and the Flying Divine Stride, and its last members were Hu Yidao and his son Hu Fei, the Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain.

Overview

Family traditions

The Hu family’s arts were set down in a single fist and blade manual (拳经刀谱), written in the hand of Hu Yidao’s great-great-grandfather. Madam Hu, seeing it, remarked that all the Flying Fox’s skill was written there (ch. 5). It ran to more than three hundred pages (SIDE ch. 1), and several of them held the principles of the family’s neigong (SIDE ch. 3). The family’s ancestral rule for the bladework was “pass it to sons, not daughters; to nephews, not wives” (传子不传女，传侄不传妻). Hu Yidao told his wife that this was what made it the Hu Family Bladeworks (ch. 5). Miao Renfeng likewise knew that the Hus never taught their bladework to outsiders (SIDE ch. 11).

The secret of the Flying Fox’s surrender was handed down in the Hu family from generation to generation, while the Miao, Fan and Tian families never learned it (ch. 5). The Hus were said to have been resourceful in every generation since the Flying Fox (SIDE ch. 3), and his descendants often grasped the lively, adaptable spirit of his martial arts (SIDE ch. 5).

Standing in the wulin

Because the Flying Fox was believed to have betrayed his master, the wulin shunned his descendants. In every great clash the Hus stood alone and nine times in ten came off worse. Yet their hereditary arts were formidable. Every thirty or forty years one or two outstanding Hu sons arose to avenge the previous generation, and whether they won or lost they left a trail of blood. The other three families were more numerous and had allies, but the Hus struck without warning (ch. 3). In Side Story of the Flying Fox, the jianghu remembered the Hu, Miao, Fan and Tian families as all renowned for their martial arts at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing (SIDE ch. 11, 18).

History

The Flying Fox

Li Zicheng’s four bodyguards were named Hu, Miao, Fan and Tian, and the army called them Hu-Miao-Fan-Tian. Of the four, the Hu bodyguard was the strongest fighter and the most capable man, and the army called him the Flying Fox (ch. 3). He devised a bare-handed method of snatching an opponent’s weapon, with which he took the weapons of many heroes while serving Li Zicheng; this, it was said, earned him half his epithet (SIDE ch. 12). He also created the family’s quick dao, the Hu Family Quick Dao (胡家快刀) (SIDE ch. 19).

Besieged on Jiugong Mountain, Li Zicheng sent the Miao, Fan and Tian bodyguards out by night to seek help and kept the Flying Fox at his side. When no relief came, Li Zicheng raised his dao to take his own life. The Flying Fox stopped him. He dressed a fallen soldier of Li Zicheng’s build in the Storming King’s robes, hung his gold seal round the corpse’s neck, hacked its face beyond recognition and carried it into the Qing camp, claiming to have killed Li Zicheng. The siege was lifted, and Li Zicheng escaped in disguise. He later became a monk in Shimen County, Hunan, and lived to the age of seventy (ch. 5). Li Zicheng entrusted the Flying Fox with the treasure map and the dao that was the key to it (ch. 5).

The Flying Fox took office under Wu Sangui and rose to provincial military commander (提督) (ch. 3). Over several years he worked to turn the Qing court and Wu Sangui against each other, so that Wu Sangui would be driven to rebel (ch. 5). When his three sworn brothers broke into Wu Sangui’s residence in Kunming to kill him, the Flying Fox stepped in and protected Wu Sangui. The Miao brother, who had been captured and had his legs broken, was later let out of prison by the Flying Fox (ch. 3).

On the fifteenth of the third month the Flying Fox invited his three sworn brothers to drink with him on a boat on Dian Lake. Before he could explain, two of them cut off his right arm and struck him in the back. He took his own life with his dao, which bore Li Zicheng’s army order. His last words were that the Great King’s dao mattered greatly and that the old lord was at Shimen Gorge (石门峡) (ch. 3). He had meant that day to tell them that Li Zicheng was alive and that Wu Sangui would soon rebel, and his dying words, “What a pity that my great work is left undone”, referred to this plan (ch. 5).

The Flying Fox’s son

The Flying Fox’s son, trained by his father, found his three sworn uncles in a temple in Kunming, beat all three, took Li Zicheng’s dao and told them he would call on them on the next anniversary of his father’s death (ch. 3). He came alone on the fifteenth of the third month, in mourning dress, to a banquet of more than a hundred jianghu heroes at the Tian bodyguard’s home. His speed was the family’s Flying Divine Stride, and his sworn uncles judged that he surpassed his father. He spoke with the three in a closed room, and when they came out all three cut their own throats before the guests (ch. 3). He had told them the truth, and they had agreed that it must not be revealed until the yichou year a hundred years on, when Li Zicheng would surely be dead (ch. 5). The three killed themselves without telling their families why, and the feud passed to their children (ch. 5). The son also took from them the map and the dao (ch. 5).

The son then disappeared. More than twenty years later the three families found him, seriously ill, and forced him to take his own life (ch. 3).

A century of feud

Early in the Yongzheng reign, while the Miao, Fan and Tian families were quarrelling over custody of Li Zicheng’s dao, a pair of Hu brothers of great martial skill wounded more than ten of their men in a single onslaught. The Tian family called in fighters from across the jianghu, and together they killed the Hu brothers. The heroes then swore at Luoyang that the Tianlong School of the Tian family would keep the dao and use it to summon the jianghu if the Hus caused trouble again (ch. 3). Over the following century the dao came to rest with the Tian family and the map with the Miao family, while the Hus kept the secret but held neither (ch. 5).

Hu Yidao

Hu Yidao lived beyond the Pass, in Liaodong (ch. 5); he was remembered as the great figure of Liaodong (ch. 8) and, on his tombstone, as the daxia of Liaodong (SIDE ch. 20). He said he took his name because he killed any evildoer he met with a single stroke of the dao (ch. 4). When the fathers of Miao Renfeng and Tian Guinong vanished beyond the Pass, the jianghu blamed him. He searched for them himself and found their bodies in the treasure cave near Jade Brush Peak, where he also met his wife, Madam Hu, cousin of Du Ximeng. He left the treasure where it lay and sealed an account of the choice inside the cave (ch. 5, 10).

The yichou year had passed by the time of his duel with Miao Renfeng at Cangzhou, so he sent the bonesetter Yan Ji to tell Miao the secret of the feud, how the two fathers had died, and the secret of the dao. Tian Guinong intercepted the message, and Hu Yidao died of a poisoned dao on the fifth day of the duel. Madam Hu took her own life beside him (ch. 5, 7). Before the duel he gave his wife the iron box, holding jewels and the family manual, to be passed to their son on his sixteenth birthday (ch. 4, 5).

After Hu Yidao’s death, Miao Renfeng sought out his friends in Liaodong. Du Ximeng took him to see Hu Yidao’s old home and found it abandoned, its gate and walls in ruins (ch. 9). Miao Renfeng mourned Hu Yidao and his wife every year before tablets naming them his sworn elder brother and sister-in-law (ch. 5). In Side Story of the Flying Fox, their grave lay near Cangzhou, inscribed “Tomb of Hu Yidao, Daxia of Liaodong”, and Miao Renfeng buried the Cold Moon Treasured Dao there (SIDE ch. 2, 20).

Hu Fei

The infant Hu Fei was carried off by the inn’s kitchen boy, Ping Asi, who lost an arm to Tian Guinong in saving him and raised him in hiding (ch. 5, 6). Ping Asi took the child to Du Ximeng, whose name appeared in Madam Hu’s letter, but fled the peak by night when Du began searching Madam Hu’s keepsakes for the family’s secrets (ch. 10). The manual went with them, all but its first two pages, which stayed in Yan Ji’s hand (ch. 5).

In Side Story of the Flying Fox, Hu Fei grew up teaching himself from the manual. At Shang Family Fort Ping Asi recovered the missing pages from Yan Ji by invoking Miao Renfeng, and Hu Fei’s progress became rapid (SIDE ch. 1, 3). He defeated Tian Guinong with the Hu Family Bladeworks and learned its finer principles from Miao Renfeng (SIDE ch. 11). At his father’s grave he fought off Tian Guinong’s men with the Cold Moon Treasured Dao, then returned it to the grave and buried Cheng Lingsu’s ashes there (SIDE ch. 20).

In Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, Hu Fei knew from his father’s writings where the treasure lay but would not dig it up, out of respect for his parents’ wishes. He came to Jade Brush Peak to call Du Ximeng to account, rescued Miao Renfeng from Commander Sai’s trap, and sealed the treasure hunters inside the cave (ch. 9, 10). The novel ends as he stands over Miao Renfeng on a crumbling ledge, undecided whether to strike (ch. 10).

Martial arts

Hu Family Bladeworks (胡家刀法): the family’s hereditary bladework. Hu Yidao’s version made attacking use of every part of the dao, back, edge and hilt alike, and every move carried a follow-up (ch. 4, 5). Its subtlety lay in mixing feints and real strokes, so that a feint could suddenly become a real cut (SIDE ch. 11).
Hu Family Quick Dao (胡家快刀): a set of rapid bladework created by the Flying Fox, to which Hu Yidao added many variations (SIDE ch. 19).
Hu family fist (胡家拳): the fist arts of the manual, begun with foundation exercises such as the Four Symbols Footwork (四象步) (SIDE ch. 3).
Flying Divine Stride (飞天神行): the family’s hereditary qinggong (ch. 3).
Weapon seizing: the Flying Fox’s method of snatching weapons bare-handed, which Hu Fei also used (SIDE ch. 12).

Notable members

The Flying Fox (飞天狐狸): Li Zicheng’s foremost bodyguard (ch. 3, 5).
The Flying Fox’s son: forced to take his own life more than twenty years after the three bodyguards’ deaths (ch. 3).
The Hu brothers: killed early in the Yongzheng reign (ch. 3).
Hu Yidao: killed after his duel with Miao Renfeng (ch. 4, 5).
Madam Hu: Hu Yidao’s wife, cousin of Du Ximeng, a native of Jiangnan (ch. 5, 10).
Hu Fei: Hu Yidao’s son, the Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain.

Relationships

Miao Family, the Fan family and the Tian family: hereditary enemies. Hu Yidao and Miao Renfeng nevertheless became each other’s closest friends in the course of their duel, and Miao Renfeng once said that if one of them had not been a Hu or the other a Miao, they would surely have been friends to the death (ch. 4).
Tianlong School: held the dao under the Luoyang covenant, to be raised against the Hus (ch. 3).
Du Ximeng: Madam Hu’s cousin, who raised her and later wronged her son (ch. 10).
Ping Asi: Hu Yidao’s beneficiary and Hu Fei’s rescuer and foster father (ch. 5, 6).
The Shang family: Hu Yidao killed Shang Jianming of the Eight Trigrams School, who had killed Miao Renfeng’s brothers and sister (ch. 4), and Shang’s widow raised her son to take revenge on the Hus (SIDE ch. 1, 3).

Behind the scenes

In his afterword to Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, Jin Yong wrote that historians disagree over whether Li Zicheng died at Jiugong Mountain in Tongshan or retired as a monk at Jiashan in Shimen, and that as a novelist he chose the second account, the one on which the Flying Fox’s secret rests. He also noted that the two Flying Fox novels are independent works and do not insist on consistency with each other. In his afterword to Side Story of the Flying Fox, he wrote that the real protagonist of Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain is Hu Yidao, and that Hu Fei’s character only took shape in the later book.