Ma Chunhua (simplified: 马春花, traditional: 馬春花, pinyin: Mǎ Chūnhuā, jyutping: maa5 ceon1 faa1) was the only daughter of Ma Xingkong, the “Hundred Victories Divine Fist” of the Feima Armed Escort. At Shang Family Fort she pleaded for the captive boy Hu Fei and fell in love with a visiting nobleman who proved to be Fuk’anggan. She bore him twin sons, married her shixiong Xu Zheng, and years later was taken to Fuk’anggan’s residence in Beijing, where his mother had her poisoned (SIDE ch. 1, 3, 4, 12, 15, 19).
Biography
Shang Family Fort
When the novel opens Ma Chunhua is about eighteen, with a snow-white oval face, jet-black eyes and flushed cheeks, full of lively youth (SIDE ch. 1). She rides with her father’s escort and fights with a willow-leaf dao. Sheltering from a storm at Shang Family Fort, she lends her own clothes to a drenched young wife travelling with Tian Guinong, who is in fact Nan Lan (SIDE ch. 1). When the bandit chief Yan Ji beats her father and Tian Guinong mocks her, she attacks Tian and is disarmed at once (SIDE ch. 1).
The injured Ma Xingkong stays at the fort for months as the guest of Old Madam Shang, and the young master Shang Baozhen falls for Ma Chunhua. Ma Xingkong overhears Old Madam Shang plan to take the girl as a daughter-in-law as a way of taking revenge on him, and at once betroths her to his disciple Xu Zheng (SIDE ch. 3).
When Old Madam Shang has the servant boy “Ping Fei”, in truth Hu Fei, chained up and flogged, Ma Chunhua cries out for the beating to stop, and that night she persuades Shang Baozhen to let the boy go, letting him hold her hand in return. Hu Fei, who had already slipped his chains, hears her plead for him from a treetop and never forgets it (SIDE ch. 3).
Fuk’anggan
The next morning a party of nine riders arrives, among them the Eight Trigrams School brothers Wang Jianying and Wang Jianjie and the young nobleman they serve, “Young Lord Fu”. That evening he draws Ma Chunhua into the garden with his flute, having sent his men to keep her father, her fiancé and the Shangs occupied, and the two become lovers (SIDE ch. 3). At the banquet that follows, while every eye is on a fight, he takes her hand in the crowded hall (SIDE ch. 3).
After the fire in the iron hall, in which her father dies, Xu Zheng finds the two of them together under a poplar and attacks Fuk’anggan with his dao. Ma Chunhua bars his way, offers him her neck and tells him she can never be his wife. Hu Fei disarms Xu Zheng and gives her the dao. Fuk’anggan, recognising Zhao Banshan of the Red Flower Society, flees north without her (SIDE ch. 4).
The twins
Ma Chunhua then married Xu Zheng, and the couple took over the Feima Armed Escort, which dwindled under his leadership (SIDE ch. 12). Hu Fei, meeting them years later at an inn in Guangshui, sees that she has twin sons of about four, fair and alike, who look nothing like Xu Zheng. A band of “robbers” of many regional styles waylays their small consignment, insulting Xu Zheng but treating Ma Chunhua with deference, and carries off the boys. Hu Fei and Cheng Lingsu hold a stone hut with her. When the robbers’ leader speaks with her she blushes, and she tells them the truth to keep her sons safe (SIDE ch. 12, 13).
Shang Baozhen, now serving in Fuk’anggan’s household, has come south with the band. He kills Xu Zheng in single combat. Ma Chunhua takes her husband’s dao, admires it as Shang’s family Eight Trigrams dao, and, as if handing it over hilt first, stabs him dead with it (SIDE ch. 12). Before he died Xu Zheng had said that the boys were not his (SIDE ch. 13). The band are Fuk’anggan’s officers, sent on a whim to see how she fared; Fuk’anggan had not known of the twins (SIDE ch. 13).
Beijing
She is brought to Beijing and lodged in Fuk’anggan’s residence, dressed in finery with a small white flower in her hair in mourning for Xu Zheng. She sends for Hu Fei to thank him, tells him that the boys were conceived before her marriage and that she did not conspire in her husband’s death, and asks him to teach her sons martial arts, because she knows the residence is full of danger. When Fuk’anggan arrives she introduces Hu Fei and asks him to reward him (SIDE ch. 15).
That night Fuk’anggan’s mother, unwilling to have a Han woman from an escort house, trained in arms, living under the same roof as two princesses, keeps the twins with her and sends Ma Chunhua a golden pot of ginseng broth. Fuk’anggan, who had thought only of sending her away to the frontier, turns pale but does not stop it. The broth is laced with Crane Crown Red and nux vomica. Hu Fei finds her collapsed and carries her off to Cheng Lingsu, who treats her with gold needles in thirteen acupoints (SIDE ch. 15). Pining for her sons, she begins to fail, and Hu Fei steals them back from the residence for her (SIDE ch. 16).
Death
The Huaquan elder Cai Wei later sends her and the boys back to Fuk’anggan. Yuanxing intercepts the party but can save only Ma Chunhua, and hides her in a ruined Medicine King temple outside the city. There she lies failing, calling for her sons and for “Young Lord Fu” (SIDE ch. 19). The Chang brothers of the Red Flower Society rescue the twins. Hu Fei brings them to her bedside; she has them kneel to him as his adopted sons, and asks to be buried beside Xu Zheng, who had loved her since childhood though she never loved him. Then she sighs that she will never see Young Lord Fu again. At Hu Fei’s request Chen Jialuo, who closely resembles Fuk’anggan, goes in to her, and she cries out with joy. She dies that night, smiling (SIDE ch. 19, 20).
Shi Wanchen dusts her body with poison to catch Hu Fei and Cheng Lingsu, who see through it. Hu Fei later cremates her and resolves to carry her ashes to Guangshui, Hubei, to lie beside Xu Zheng (SIDE ch. 20). Hu Fei entrusts the twins to the Chang brothers and the Ni brothers to take to Huijiang (SIDE ch. 19).
Personality
Ma Chunhua is warm-hearted and impulsive: she lends her clothes to a stranger and pleads for a flogged servant boy (SIDE ch. 1, 3). She insists to Hu Fei that she is no social climber and calls her love for Fuk’anggan an ill-fated bond from a former life (SIDE ch. 15). Hu Fei, who at first blames her, comes to believe that she is a good woman at heart (SIDE ch. 12).
Relationships
- Ma Xingkong (Father and teacher): He betrothed her to Xu Zheng to keep her from Old Madam Shang, and died in the iron hall fire (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Xu Zheng (Shixiong and husband): He knew the boys were not his and said nothing until he died; she asked to be buried beside him (SIDE ch. 13, 19).
- Fuk’anggan (Lover): Father of her twin sons, whose mother had her poisoned (SIDE ch. 3, 15).
- Shang Baozhen: He loved her at the fort; she killed him after he killed her husband (SIDE ch. 3, 12).
- Hu Fei: She pleaded for him as a boy; he repaid her in the stone hut and in Beijing, and adopted her sons (SIDE ch. 3, 12, 15, 19).
- Cheng Lingsu: Treated her poisoning (SIDE ch. 15).
Martial arts
Ma Chunhua learnt from her father. She practises the Tongbi Connected Fist and Chaquan with her shixiong, carries a willow-leaf dao and a sleeve arrow, and climbs a tall tree lightly enough to draw praise from Fuk’anggan’s party (SIDE ch. 1, 3).