Qiu Chuji

Qiu Chuji

Contents

Qiu Chuji (simplified: 丘处机, traditional: 丘處機, pinyin: Qiū Chǔjī, jyutping: jau1 cyu5 gei1), known by his Daoist name Changchunzi (长春子 — Chángchūnzǐ), was the fourth of the Seven Zis of Quanzhen, the disciples of Wang Chongyang. He was the most famous of the seven and the strongest fighter among them. His meeting with Guo Xiaotian and Yang Tiexin at Niu Family Village, where he named their unborn sons Guo Jing and Yang Kang, set the story of their lives in motion.

Biography

Niu Family Village

Qiu Chuji pursued the traitor Wang Daoqian, a Song envoy who had conspired with the Jin1 while sent to congratulate the Jin emperor on his birthday, for more than ten days before killing him in Lin’an. He was then about thirty. Passing Niu Family Village in the snow with Wang Daoqian’s head in a leather bag, he was invited in by Guo Xiaotian and Yang Tiexin and at first took them for government spies. He disarmed Yang Tiexin bare-handed and caught his spearhead between his palms, then recognised the Yang family spearplay and learnt that Yang was a descendant of the general Yang Zaixing and Guo a descendant of the Liangshan hero Guo Sheng. When the men pursuing him arrived, he killed them all.

Taking Bao Xiruo’s pulse, he found that she was pregnant, as was Guo’s wife Li Ping. He named the children Guo Jing and Yang Kang, so that they would not forget the shame of the Jingkang era,2 and gave the two families a matching pair of short jian, engraving one with each name. He promised to return in ten years to teach the children.

The pursuit of Duan Tiande

After a few days at West Lake, Qiu Chuji learnt that soldiers had raided Niu Family Village and saw Guo Xiaotian’s head displayed in Lin’an. Blaming himself, he hunted the officer Duan Tiande, who escaped him by a ruse, broke into Yunqi Monastery where Duan was hiding with his uncle Great Master Kumu, and followed him to Jiaxing. There Duan, with Li Ping disguised as his attendant, had taken refuge at Fahua Monastery with Kumu’s shidi Jiaomu, who did not know that he was harbouring a woman.

Qiu Chuji saw Duan dragging Li Ping in the monastery garden, but could not find them when he searched, and accused Jiaomu of hiding the women. Jiaomu called on his friends the Seven Eccentrics of Jiangnan. At the Drunken Immortal Wineshop Qiu brought the monastery’s great bronze incense vat full of wine and challenged the Eccentrics to a drinking contest, which he conceded to Zhu Cong after Zhu, who had been pouring his wine into a hidden bucket, picked an unfinished poem from his robe. When Wanyan Honglie’s Jin guards arrived at the wineshop, Qiu took the Eccentrics for Jin collaborators.

At Fahua Monastery the fight resumed. Qiu Chuji held off the Eccentrics, wounding several and trapping Han Baoju under the monastery bell, but was hit by one of Ke Zhen’e’s poisoned caltrops. Fighting on with the Mutual Destruction Swordplay, he wounded Ke and stabbed Jiaomu before collapsing. When Duan Tiande came out to kill him, Qiu broke Duan’s arm with a palm blow. Li Ping’s cries revealed that Jiaomu had indeed been sheltering a woman, and Jiaomu died hurling himself at Duan, who fled with Li Ping.

The wager

Ke Zhen’e gave Qiu Chuji the antidote, and Qiu, who was skilled in medicine, treated the Eccentrics’ wounds. He apologised, but the Eccentrics would not let the matter rest. Qiu therefore proposed a wager: he would find Bao Xiruo and teach Yang Tiexin’s child, the Seven Eccentrics would find Li Ping and teach Guo Xiaotian’s, and eighteen years later, at noon on the twenty-fourth day of the third month, the two pupils would fight at the Drunken Immortal Wineshop before the heroes of the jianghu.

For years he found no trace of either family, until he saw guards from Prince Zhao’s Estate removing every object from the Yangs’ old house at Niu Family Village. He followed them to Zhongdu, found Bao Xiruo living as Wanyan Honglie’s consort in a small brick house, weeping over Yang Tiexin’s spear, and spared her. He taught the boy, Wanyan Kang, for nine years and six months, but sounded him out several times and, finding him attached to wealth, never told him the truth of his birth. He also sent his disciple Yin Zhiping to Mongolia with a letter for the Eccentrics and orders to observe Guo Jing. His senior Ma Yu, the head of the Order, repeatedly urged him to concede, and when he refused went secretly to Mongolia to teach Guo Jing neigong.

Zhongdu

Eighteen years after the wager, Qiu Chuji and Ma Yu came to Zhongdu to meet Wang Chuyi, and ran into Yang Tiexin fleeing with Bao Xiruo. Fighting Sha Tongtian, Peng Lianhu, Ouyang Ke and their allies, he called on Wanyan Kang to acknowledge his real father; the youth refused, and Qiu called him a beast. Yang Tiexin and Bao Xiruo killed themselves, and at Yang’s dying request Qiu undertook to marry Mu Nianci to Guo Jing. The Six Eccentrics then arrived and saved the three Quanzhen masters. Qiu bowed to them and conceded the wager, saying that in those who study martial arts character comes first, and that his own pupil was far inferior to theirs. He arranged the Mid-Autumn contest at the Misty Rain Pavilion with Peng Lianhu, and was furious when Guo Jing refused to marry Mu Nianci, until he heard the reason.

Niu Family Village and Jiaxing

When Huang Yaoshi knocked out half of Yin Zhiping’s teeth, the Seven Zis gathered at Niu Family Village. There Qiu Chuji found Yang Kang with Mu Nianci and, moved by the memory of his old friends, did not cripple him, but Mu Nianci made avenging Yang Tiexin a condition of marriage. Deceived by Qiu Qianzhang into believing that Huang Yaoshi had killed their shishu Zhou Botong, the seven fought Mei Chaofeng and then Huang Yaoshi with the Big Dipper Formation, in which Qiu held the Tianquan position. During the fight Ouyang Feng killed Tan Chuduan, and the Zis blamed Huang Yaoshi.

On the day before the Mid-Autumn contest Qiu Chuji reached the Drunken Immortal Wineshop early, told Guo Jing that he had spent little effort on Yang Kang while wandering the land killing traitors, and was devastated to learn that five of the Eccentrics were dead. The Zis fought Huang Yaoshi again at the Misty Rain Pavilion, and then Ouyang Feng and his allies. Afterwards, learning that Zhou Botong was alive and that Ouyang Feng had killed Tan Chuduan, Qiu and Ma Yu formally apologised to Huang Yaoshi. Qiu blamed himself for having taught Yang Kang martial arts without taking him out of the prince’s household.

The journey west

At Guo Jing’s suggestion Genghis Khan summoned Qiu Chuji to his camp in Central Asia. Hoping to turn the Khan from slaughter, Qiu travelled west with eighteen disciples, among them Li Zhichang and Yin Zhiping, and reached Samarkand after its fall. He recited poems lamenting the suffering of the war, completed the Mid-Autumn poem Zhu Cong had stolen from him, and when the Khan asked about longevity told him that there was no deathless life, only the prolonging of life through cultivation, and urged him again and again, citing the Daodejing, to use fewer troops and kill less. Returning east with the army, he went on pleading for the people, and many were spared at his word. He then went home to the south.

Mount Hua

Some time later Qiu Chuji came upon Guo Jing, despairing after his mother’s death, being beaten by a mob, and took him to Mount Hua for the second Huashan Sword Summit. On the mountain he fought off Sha Tongtian, Peng Lianhu, Venerable Lingzhi and Hou Tonghai until Zhou Botong subdued them, and Zhou ordered him to escort the four to Chongyang Palace to be confined for twenty years.

Later years

In The Return of the Condor Heroes, after Tan Chuduan’s early death, Ma Yu’s passing and Liu Chuxuan’s half-year as head, Qiu Chuji led the Quanzhen Order. Li Zhichang was his eldest disciple, and in his old age he appointed his disciple Zhen Zhibing acting head.

Personality & traits

Physical appearance

At Niu Family Village Qiu Chuji was about thirty, with slanting eyebrows, a ruddy complexion, a square face with large ears and bright, piercing eyes. Eighteen years later his deep neigong had kept his looks almost unchanged; by the time of the Mid-Autumn contest he had a long beard reaching his chest.

Character traits

Qiu Chuji was ardently patriotic and quick to kill: he said that a man of religion should not kill freely, but that he could show no mercy to traitors who harmed the people or to the enemy. He was also hot-headed. His rashness at Fahua Monastery cost Jiaomu his life, as he admitted afterwards, and Ma Yu warned him that he had never curbed the boldness of his youth. He was generous in defeat, conceding first the drinking contest and then the wager, and he took great pride in being right, refusing for years to yield to Ma Yu’s urging. He counted medicine, poetry and martial arts, in that order, as the three things he had learnt that were worth anything.

Martial arts abilities

Qiu Chuji trained both internal and external arts. At Niu Family Village he had not yet reached the very peak of martial attainment but was already at a very high level, and among the Seven Zis his martial skill was the highest. His neigong, learnt from Wang Chongyang, let him drink twenty-eight bowls of wine without effect, carry the bronze vat with one hand, and strike Zhu Cong a blow while almost unconscious from poison.

Mutual Destruction Swordplay

At Fahua Monastery he used the Mutual Destruction Swordplay (同归剑法), a style in which every move attacks a vital point with no thought of defence, devised by the Quanzhen Order to take down a great enemy at the cost of one’s own life.

Big Dipper Formation

In the Big Dipper Formation (天罡北斗阵) of the Seven Zis he held the Tianquan position, one of the four stars of the Dipper’s bowl.

Other skills

He disarmed Yang Tiexin with the bare-handed technique of seizing a blade, caught an arrow and threw it back by hand, and fought equally well with palm and jian.

Relationships

Yang Kang

Yang Kang was his disciple for nine and a half years. Qiu Chuji grew to despise him, called him a beast at Zhongdu and conceded that he was far inferior to Guo Jing, but spared him for his father’s sake.

Guo Jing

Qiu Chuji named Guo Jing, watched over him through Yin Zhiping, and became his friend and supporter. Guo Jing in turn brought him to Genghis Khan.

The Seven Eccentrics of Jiangnan

The Seven Eccentrics of Jiangnan began as his enemies at Fahua Monastery. Over the eighteen years of the wager he came to regard them as true friends, and he grieved deeply at their deaths.

Ma Yu

Ma Yu, his senior and the head of the Order, tried to restrain him and secretly helped the Eccentrics’ side in the wager.

Behind the scenes

Qiu Chuji was a historical figure (1148–1227). In the appendix on the Quanzhen Order, Jin Yong cites sources stating that he came from Qixia in Dengzhou, was orphaned young and had no schooling, and that Wang Chongyang put him in charge of his correspondence. According to the History of Yuan, he declined summonses from both the Jin and the Song, but in 1219 answered Genghis Khan’s, and travelled west with eighteen disciples. He told the Khan that whoever would unite the realm must not delight in killing, and that the root of government was reverence for heaven and love for the people. Back in Yanjing he had his disciples free some twenty to thirty thousand people enslaved in the wars. His disciple Li Zhichang recorded the journey in Travels to the West of Changchun the Perfected One, which supplied the poems quoted in the novel, and Jin Yong notes that the novel’s text of the Khan’s summons follows the historical record but omits their three earlier exchanges of letters. According to Chen Yuan’s list of Quanzhen heads, Qiu succeeded Ma Yu, Tan Chuduan and Liu Chuxuan, and was followed by Yin Zhiping.

Historically, Qiu Chuji met Genghis Khan in 1222 and on his return lived at the Taiji Palace in Yanjing, later renamed Changchun Palace and now the White Cloud Temple (Baiyun Guan) in Beijing, where he was buried. He is traditionally regarded as the founder of the Longmen branch of Quanzhen Daoism.

Portrayals

Qiu Chuji has been portrayed by numerous actors in television and film adaptations of Jin Yong’s novels:

The Legend of the Condor Heroes

The Return of the Condor Heroes

Liu Dan’s 1983 portrayal is widely considered definitive, capturing both Qiu’s martial prowess and his complex emotional journey as Yang Kang’s failed mentor.

See also

Follow the archive routes

Footnotes

  1. 金朝 — Jīn Cháo. Jurchen dynasty (1115-1234) ruled by the Wanyan clan that conquered northern China and posed constant threat to Southern Song. See Wikipedia. ↩

  2. 靖康之变 — Jìngkāng zhī biàn. The Jingkang Incident of 1127 CE when Jin forces captured the Song capital and emperors, ending the Northern Song dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

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