Old Madam Shang (simplified and traditional: 商老太, pinyin: Shāng Lǎotài, jyutping: soeng1 lou5 taai3) is the widow of Shang Jianming, mother of Shang Baozhen and mistress of Shang Family Fort in Wuding County, Shandong, in Jin Yong’s Side Story of the Flying Fox. White at the temples, slightly stooped and hoarse-voiced, she plays the doddering old woman, but she is a hard, skilled fighter in her husband’s Eight Trigrams arts and lives for one thing: revenge on the men she holds responsible for his death (SIDE ch. 1, 3).
Biography
Background
As a girl she travelled the jianghu with her father and, after her marriage, with her husband, meeting countless fighters of the wulin (SIDE ch. 3). Shang Jianming, who built the fort, was killed by Hu Yidao; she keeps his spirit tablet in a bare back room with his Purple-Gold Eight Trigrams Dao hidden behind it, and she reveres him like a god (SIDE ch. 3). She blames Hu Yidao and Miao Renfeng, and also Ma Xingkong, whose old fight with her husband on the Ganliang road left him carrying an internal injury when Hu Yidao came (SIDE ch. 3). She did not follow her husband in death only because she meant to avenge him (SIDE ch. 3). She drills her son at throwing golden darts at the acupoints of two moving boards painted as Hu Yidao and Miao Renfeng, and calls out the targets herself (SIDE ch. 1).
Yan Ji and Ma Xingkong
When the bandit chief Yan Ji robs Ma Xingkong’s escort in her hall and mocks her, she invites him to the room with her husband’s tablet, bars the door and takes out the Purple-Gold Eight Trigrams Dao. Fighting with no thought for her own life, she cuts his thigh; when he grovels for his life she spares it but cuts off his queue, ordering him to become a monk and leave the black path, and to tell no one what happened. Yan Ji leaves the fort without the silver (SIDE ch. 3).
She keeps the injured Ma Xingkong at the fort, meaning to kill him, but seeing him abject and helpless she holds back, unwilling to strike a man who cannot fight back, and has him teach her son fist arts instead, though her pride will not let the boy become his disciple (SIDE ch. 3). At night she drills her son in Eight Trigrams bladework. Overheard by Ma, she tells her son she will ask for Ma’s daughter Ma Chunhua as his bride; Ma reads this as a plan to torment the girl and promptly betroths her to Xu Zheng (SIDE ch. 3).
Hu Fei
When the servant boy “Ping Fei”, in truth Hu Fei, defaces the target board, she takes his hands kindly, then seizes two acupoints on his wrists and has him chained up in the training hall, where her son flogs him (SIDE ch. 3). He escapes and returns at the banquet she is giving for Fuk’anggan and her husband’s shidi Wang Jianying and Wang Jianjie. Learning that Hu Yidao is already dead, she weeps aloud that he died too soon, then swings her dao at the boy’s neck. Hu Fei slaps her twice and takes the dao from her (SIDE ch. 3). She tries to kill him with the Eight Trigrams Palm move “Nail in the Back” and then with seven golden darts poisoned to kill at the first drop of blood, all of which Zhao Banshan catches (SIDE ch. 3). When the Wang brothers will not stand with her, she wails to her dead husband that the Eight Trigrams School has nothing left but cowards, throws down his dao and spits on it (SIDE ch. 3).
The iron hall
While the guests watch Zhao Banshan deal with Chen Yu, she and her son slip out, shut the iron doors of the hall, which Shang Jianming had built as a trap for Miao Renfeng, and set fires around it (SIDE ch. 4). Through the dog hole she taunts those inside and threatens Ma Xingkong’s daughter. When Hu Fei crawls out she fights him with her son and the fort’s retainers; disarmed, she throws herself on him, holding two of his acupoints and biting his clothes, and rolls with him into the fire, keeping her grip even when his dao-back breaks her shoulder. She is pulled out unconscious (SIDE ch. 4).
As the others escape she strikes Ma Xingkong from behind and kicks him into the burning hall, crying to her husband that she has avenged a little of his wrong. Then, the Purple-Gold Eight Trigrams Dao in her arms, she walks into the fire and sits down among the flames, smiling, as if thinking that though her revenge has failed she will soon be with Shang Jianming again (SIDE ch. 4). Zhao Banshan, watching, thinks her fiercer of spirit than most men (SIDE ch. 4).
Relationships
- Shang Jianming (Husband): She reveres him to the end and dies holding his dao (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Shang Baozhen (Son): Trained by her with great strictness to avenge his father; she presses on against Hu Fei even when her son is hurt (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Wang Jianying and Wang Jianjie (Her husband’s shidi): She calls them cowards for siding with outsiders and traps them in the iron hall with the rest (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Ma Xingkong (Enemy): Her guest, whom she finally kills (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Hu Fei (Enemy): The son of her husband’s killer (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Yan Ji (Opponent): The robber she defeats and humbles (SIDE ch. 3).
Martial arts
She fights with Eight Trigrams bladework, including the Wandering-Body Eight Trigrams bladework, and Eight Trigrams Palm, and throws golden darts, which she poisons for her revenge (SIDE ch. 3). Her skill is not flawless, but her readiness to trade her own life for an opponent’s makes her dangerous even to stronger fighters (SIDE ch. 3). At the dog hole Wang Jianying, listening to the sound of her dao, calls out that her lower guard is weak (SIDE ch. 4).
Behind the scenes
In his afterword Jin Yong explains what he meant by her. In wuxia fiction, he writes, a villain killed by one of the good characters is usually treated as having deserved it and then forgotten; with Old Madam Shang he tried to show that the dead man’s family do not think so, but go on revering and loving him to old age and to death, grieving him for ever and hating his killers for ever (SIDE afterword).