The Return of the Condor Heroes Afterword

When Jin Yong revised The Return of the Condor Heroes from the original newspaper serialisation for print, he wrote this afterword for the novel, also known as the Second Edition. He extended it when he revised the novel for the Third Edition. This page contains content from both editions.

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The first instalment of The Return of the Condor Heroes appeared in the inaugural issue of Ming Pao¹ on 20 May 1959. The novel ran for about three years, which is to say it took three years to write. Those three years were the hardest stretch of Ming Pao’s early days. As I revised it, almost every episode of the story brought back the toil I had shared with a few colleagues in those days.

Through the character of Yang Guo, The Return of the Condor Heroes sets out to portray the hold that the world’s rites and customs keep on the human heart and on human conduct. Rites and customs are all transient, yet while they last they carry enormous social force.

The notion that a teacher and a pupil may not marry has perhaps grown faint in the modern mind, yet in the days of Guo Jing and Yang Guo it was a law of heaven and earth. Then is it not quite possible that many of the rules and customs we hold today to be laws of heaven and earth will, some centuries hence, be thought to have no meaning at all?

Moral norms, codes of conduct, manners and customs, all the patterns of social behaviour, are forever changing with the times, but human character and human feeling change only very slowly. The joy, grief, longing, and sorrow in the Classic of Poetry² three thousand years ago are not greatly different from what people feel today.

I have always felt that in a novel, human character and feeling matter more than social consciousness, political norms, and the like. Guo Jing says, “To serve the country and the people: that is the greatest of the xia.”³ Those words still carry great positive meaning today. But I am convinced that national boundaries will one day disappear, and then ideas such as “patriotism” and “treason” will no longer mean very much.

Yet the love between parents, children, and siblings, pure friendship, romantic love, a sense of justice, kindness, readiness to help others, devotion to society: these feelings and virtues will, I believe, go on being praised for a long time to come, and it seems that no political theory, economic system, social reform, or religious faith can take their place.

The stories in martial arts novels cannot help running to excessive strangeness and coincidence. My constant hope has been that in what I write, the martial arts may be impossible in fact, but the characters’ natures must always be possible.

The parting and reunion of Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü is a very strange affair. It seems to be the work of heaven’s will and coincidence, but in truth it must be traced to the characters of the two themselves. Had their love not run so deep, they would never have leapt into the valley one after the other. Had Xiaolongnü not been tranquil by nature, and schooled in that tranquillity since childhood, she could never have lived alone so long at the bottom of the valley. Had Yang Guo not been born with the deepest constancy of feeling, he could never have kept faith for sixteen years as though they were a single day, unrepentant unto death.

Of course, had the bottom of the valley been rock rather than a pool of water, the two would have been dashed to pieces when they leapt, and buried in one grave all the same. The meetings and partings and shifting fortunes of the world, adversity and success, victory and defeat, do turn on opportunity and fortune, and some are lucky and some are not, but at root they are always decided by each person’s own character.

A strange bird like the Divine Eagle⁴ does not exist in the real world. On the African island of Madagascar there was an “elephant bird” (Aepyornis titan), more than ten feet tall and more than a thousand pounds⁵ in weight. It was the largest bird in the world, and died out around 1660. The elephant bird’s legs were enormously thick and its body too heavy for flight. Its egg was six times the size of an ostrich egg. I have seen a fossil elephant bird egg in a New York museum, and it was a little larger than the top of a small tea table. But I am sure this bird must have been of very low intelligence.

The changes in this Second Edition are not great. In the main they patch some holes in the original.

May 1976

After my third revision of The Return of the Condor Heroes, I wrote three appendices for it. The first discussed the Book of Changes⁶ and the yin-yang and Eight Trigrams theories of the Daoists, the Confucians, and the Yin-Yang School.

At this time I also read closely the fine work that Professor Shu Jingnan⁷ of Suzhou University (now of Zhejiang University) had presented to me, Chinese Taiji Diagram and Taiji Culture,⁸ and learnt a great deal from it. It discusses many questions of Daoist internal alchemy, and as I know nothing whatever about them, the appendix I wrote does not touch on them. I came away only with a deep sense that the profound and marvellous fields of learning under heaven are many… and that on any part one does not understand, unless one is resolved to study it with all one’s might, it is best to admit plainly that one does not understand and leave it alone.

The other two, one on the character and conduct of Kublai⁹ and the other recounting the attack on Xiangyang and its defence,¹⁰ could serve young readers as background to The Return of the Condor Heroes.

But as a sojourner in Hong Kong, I have few reference works on Yuan¹¹ history to hand and fewer primary sources still, and no teacher or friend to consult on the difficulties of the Mongolian texts. I lack confidence in my own historical conclusions, and so these two appendices have not been included in this book.

I have always held Mister Zhu Guangqian’s¹² “theory of distance” in aesthetics in high esteem. When I first read it in my youth I was convinced at once, and after reading more Chinese and foreign books on aesthetics and philosophy, I still find Mister Zhu’s account simple, clear, and very good at explaining the matter.

Mister Zhu’s main argument is that to appreciate a work of art with an aesthetic eye, one must set aside utilitarian and intellectual viewpoints and look at it with a purely aesthetic eye. Say one is admiring a painting of swimming fish: one should look at the beauty of the fishes’ poise and the beauty of their movement, the beauty of the composition, the colour, and the lines, giving one’s whole heart to it until one’s spirit is lifted and at ease.

The utilitarian viewpoint wonders where the fish was bought and what it cost, how many jin¹³ and liang¹⁴ it weighs and what it fetches a jin at market, how long it could be kept alive in water, and, if one invited one’s superior, parents, friends, or sweetheart to dinner and killed this fish to serve them, whether they would be delighted.

The intellectual viewpoint studies what class and what family the fish belongs to, what it is called and what its Latin name is, whether it is a freshwater or a saltwater fish, in what waters it is chiefly found, whether this one is female or male and, if female, in what season it spawns, what it feeds on, whether it can be farmed, and what its natural enemies are.

Even a fishmonger or a palaeontologist, looking at a painting of swimming fish, should use a purely aesthetic eye and not mix in their own professional point of view.

Zhuangzi¹⁵ and Huizi¹⁶ watched the fish from the bridge over the Hao¹⁷ and debated whether the fish were happy: you (I) are not a fish, so how can you know whether the fish are happy or not?

Yang Guo, Xiaolongnü, and Yinggu, watching fish, would probably wonder whether a fish’s twist and flick, so very quick, could be put to use in the footwork of the martial arts.

Bada Shanren¹⁸ and Qi Baishi,¹⁹ watching fish, would most likely be thinking what lines would convey the beauty of swimming fish, while the great French Impressionist Cézanne and his like would picture a fish slit open, hanging bloody beside the vegetables, and think what lines and colours to use. When Schubert watched trout, what rose in his mind must have been leaping notes and melodies.

Zhang Zhongjing²⁰ and Li Shizhen²¹ would naturally be thinking what ailments this fish could cure, whether it nourishes yin or yang, and what herbs should go with it.

Having lived in Hong Kong so long, I understand the “Hong Qigong viewpoint” very well. When the old gentleman sees a fish, he naturally wonders, How would this fish taste steamed? And braised in soy? Head, tail, belly, back, stewed, roasted, smoked, boiled, how would each of those be? How would it be if this old beggar cooked it himself? And if little Huang Rong made it?

The most reasonable way to enjoy a novel is to take the aesthetic attitude: to appreciate the characters’ natures, feelings, and experiences, to rejoice and rage with them, grieve and delight with them, to become one with them and yet keep a proper distance for looking on (the same goes for films and television series adapted from novels).

One may appreciate (or dislike) the beauty (or lack of it) of the writing, the strangeness (or absurdity) of what befalls the characters, the surprise (or sheer awfulness) of the story’s structure, the beauty (or ugliness) of the characters’ natures… This is the attitude I have always taken in reading novels and watching films and television.

For a time I wrote film criticism for a newspaper, a review a day (Hong Kong shows so many films that even one a day could never cover them all). Later I joined a film company to work as a professional screenwriter and director.

Watching films, I now attended to the length of shots and how they were joined (montage), the matching of colours, camera angles and the length of takes, light and shade, the actors’ expressions and dialogue, and so on, and the aesthetic pleasure of watching films shrank greatly.

My attitude became more rational and less emotional, and I grew rather cool. I was seldom moved, and at a great tragedy I would not even shed tears. Hearing a symphony or watching ballet in a film, I could no longer lose myself heart and soul and be carried out of myself. Artistic appreciation had lost much of its meaning.

Reading novels from the utilitarian viewpoint (Does this novel accord with the revolutionary thought of the proletarian struggle? Does it follow the theoretical guidance of revolutionary realism? What is its educational effect on the masses?) or from the intellectual viewpoint (Does what the novel describes agree with the historical record? Is it physically possible? Is this really what a certain authoritative work of philosophy maintains? Can this poison kill a man? Can it dissolve a corpse into yellow fluid? Can a man whose arm has been cut off ride away on horseback after so grave a wound and not die? With birds so low in intelligence, could one trade moves with a man and show martial skill? Could Lu Zhishen²² really pull a great poplar up by the roots? With no east wind, could one build an altar, work rites, and borrow an east wind?²³ If Dai Zong²⁴ could travel eight hundred li²⁵ a day with charmed paper horses tied to his legs, would he not be sure of the gold in the Olympic marathon? According to history, Guan Yu never let Cao Cao go out of loyalty on the Huarong Road,²⁶ so has Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by writing it so, not changed the whole history of the Three Kingdoms?), the pleasure of reading is much reduced.

Of course, one may read in this critical spirit too, but it is no longer the aesthetic attitude, and not a good way to enjoy art and appreciate literature.

So what Kublai’s true character was, and whether Yang Guo really killed the Great Khan Möngke of the Mongols with a flung stone below the walls of Xiangyang, I think it best not to discuss in the novel. I will discuss them in historical articles written separately.

Those are intellectual articles, and should be read with an intellectual attitude. (In my novel Sword Stained with Royal Blood, for instance, I wrote Yuan Chengzhi with great freedom: if he wanted to love Qingqing he loved Qingqing, and if he wanted to love Ajiu he loved Ajiu. But in my historical work A Critical Biography of Yuan Chonghuan,²⁷ any historical fact I got wrong must be put right.)

…Some readers, because their own natures are very different from, or even the opposite of, the characters in a novel, cannot understand why those characters act as they do. They find it quite unreasonable, against common sense, even utterly impossible (would You Sanjie²⁸ really cut her throat with a jian because Liu Xianglian²⁹ would not marry her?).

They feel the novel “makes no sense” written this way, that the characters’ conduct is “baffling”, and that the characters could perfectly well have found a wiser, more reasonable way to solve their problems.

Many people cannot understand Yang Guo’s impulsiveness, his “reckless deeds” done on the passion of the moment, intensely rational natural scientists above all.

They feel that Yang Guo, when he first appears, is like Wei Xiaobao, and later like Xiao Feng: his character changes a great deal in the course of the book. But a child of twelve or thirteen who grows into a man in his thirties is bound to change in character, and there is nothing strange in that.

The trouble is that rational people do not understand passionate people, and this is one of the causes of many of the world’s tragedies. Rational people do not understand Yang Guo, Xiao Feng, Duan Yu…

They feel Yang Guo should not have wanted to kill Guo Jing, Xiao Feng should not have killed himself, Duan Yu should not have pined so hopelessly for Wang Yuyan, Ye Erniang should not have given her heart so wholly to Abbot Xuanci, and why should Li Mochou, so beautiful and so clever, have been unable to forget Lu Zhanyuan? Huang Rong should not have suspected Yang Guo, and Yin Li “not knowing Zhang Wuji for her Zhang Wuji” is far too unscientific…

Some think that when Yang Guo suspected Guo Jing of killing his father, he should have looked into it coolly and rationally, not wanted to kill him for revenge on one impulse and then, on another, saved his life.

If Yang Guo were Sherlock Holmes, or Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple from the pen of the English detective novelist Agatha Christie, or if he were Judge Bao,³⁰ Kuang Zhong,³¹ Judge Peng,³² or Judge Dee,³³ he would of course have kept a cool head, gathered evidence, and questioned witnesses (Cheng Ying and Huang Yaoshi, for instance). But he is the impulsive Yang Guo.

An impulsive nature and supreme intelligence are in no way at odds. Only certain scientists who dislike art would think them so. Artists who are both are legion. A person who is neither clever nor passionate can never become an artist.

Qu Yuan,³⁴ Sima Qian,³⁵ Li Bai,³⁶ Li Shangyin,³⁷ Du Mu,³⁸ Li Houzhu,³⁹ Li Qingzhao,⁴⁰ Su Dongpo,⁴¹ Cao Xueqin,⁴² Gong Zizhen,⁴³ Ba Jin,⁴⁴ Xu Beihong…⁴⁵ weren’t all these great artists both intelligent and passionate?

Every academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences could probably find some unreasonable acts in their own life story (especially in their youth. Someone whose whole life was perfectly rational could probably never have become a great scientist).

From a purely rational point of view, all four of Shakespeare’s great tragedies fall apart. Hamlet should long ago have run his uncle the king through to avenge his father the king, not dithered and hesitated. Othello should have got to the bottom of Iago’s slander and proved his wife Desdemona’s innocence, not strangled her. Macbeth should not have been so ambitious as to murder the king and seize the throne. Had King Lear been only a little clearer-headed, he would have known his daughters were deceiving him.

Some “modernised”, “clever” readers think Yang Guo a fool. He should not have waited sixteen years for Xiaolongnü. He should first have married Gongsun Lü’e and got half a Passion-Cutting Pill from his mother-in-law to cure the Passion Flower poison in him, then married the two beauties Cheng Ying and Lu Wushuang, and finally plighted his troth to Guo Xiang. Then he could have gone to the Passionless Valley holding Guo Xiang’s little hand, and sat on a rock to see whether Xiaolongnü came or not. If she did not, he could marry Guo Xiang too with a clear conscience. (That way Yang Guo becomes the “clever” Wei Xiaobao!)

Huang Rong suspects that Yang Guo makes such a great show of celebrating little Guo Xiang’s birthday to win her heart and make her suffer all her life, as his revenge on the Guo family. It is not so. Huang Rong has misread Yang Guo once again. Guo Xiang is such a lovable little sister, graceful and bold, understanding, clever, and quick, that Yang Guo had long since come truly to like her. The three golden needles he gives her are his way of saying: “Whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do it! Even if you want me to die for you, I will!”

Throwing a great show for a little girl’s birthday is the wild extravagance of a passionate, impulsive young man. A mature, rational man of middle years would of course never do it. There was once a young man abroad who, to declare his feelings to his beloved, hired a plane to write “I love you” across the sky in great letters. Yang Guo’s wildness has something of the same.

He had waited sixteen years for Xiaolongnü, with no outlet for all that was pent up inside him, and celebrating Guo Xiang’s birthday was in a way a shout to Xiaolongnü: “Xiaolongnü, I’ve waited sixteen years for you and still you haven’t come, and here I am celebrating another lovely little girl’s birthday!”

Let others sneer. What does Yang Guo have to fear? How could he be afraid? He isn’t you!

A detective novel should be read rationally: inferring the criminal’s psychology, following the clues from the detective’s angle, imagining all the possible scenarios, then using the evidence to prove or overturn them.

A martial arts novel (The Deer and the Cauldron excepted) should be read with passion overflowing, following its passionate, upright, impulsive characters and understanding why they do passionate things, upright things, things that do not go against their own conscience.

They are not selfish or self-serving, not forever reckoning whether there is advantage or profit in a thing, but always asking whether it ought or ought not to be done.

9 January 2003

Footnotes

1. 明報 – Míng Bào. Hong Kong newspaper founded by Jin Yong in 1959. See Wikipedia. ↩

2. 诗经 – Shījīng. Oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BCE. See Wikipedia. ↩

3. 为国为民，侠之大者 – Wèiguó wèimín, xiá zhī dàzhě. Guo Jing’s words, the highest ideal of the xia: to serve the country and the people. ↩

4. 神雕 – Shén Diāo. Titular Divine Eagle, a fictional giant bird of extraordinary intelligence that becomes Yang Guo’s companion. ↩

5. 磅 – bàng. The imperial pound, about 454 grams. ↩

6. 易经 – Yìjīng. Ancient Chinese divination text used for philosophical guidance and fortune-telling, One of the Five Classics, also known as Yijing or I Ching. See Wikipedia. ↩

7. 束景南 – Shù Jǐngnán. Professor at Suzhou University and later Zhejiang University, specialising in Chinese philosophy. See Wikipedia (Chinese). ↩

8. 中华太极图与太极文化 – Zhōnghuá Tàijí Tú yǔ Tàijí Wénhuà. Comprehensive study of Chinese Taiji philosophy and culture by Professor Shu Jingnan. ↩

9. 忽必烈 – Hūbìliè. Founder and first emperor of the Yuan dynasty who ruled China from 1271-1294. ↩

10. 襄阳 – Xiāngyáng. Strategic city on the Han River in Hubei Province, a Southern Song military stronghold against the Mongol invasion. See Wikipedia. ↩

11. 元朝 – Yuán Cháo. Dynasty established by Kublai Khan and ruled by the Mongols from 1271 to 1368 CE. See Wikipedia. ↩

12. 朱光潜 – Zhū Guāngqiān. Prominent Chinese aesthetician and literary scholar (1897-1986), known for introducing Western aesthetic theories to China. See Wikipedia. ↩

13. 斤 – jīn. Chinese unit of weight; the market jin of Jin Yong’s Hong Kong was about 600 grams. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 两 – liǎng. Chinese unit of weight, one-sixteenth of a jin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 庄子 – Zhuāngzǐ. Honorific name of Zhuang Zhou, an influential philosopher during the Warring States period. See Wikipedia. ↩

16. 惠子 – Huìzǐ. Philosopher from the Warring States period. See Wikipedia. ↩

17. 濠梁之辩 – Háoliáng zhī biàn. Famous dialogue between Zhuangzi and Huizi about the nature of fish and happiness. ↩

18. 八大山人 – Bādà Shānrén. Famous Chinese painter known for his distinctive style in depicting nature. See Wikipedia. ↩

19. 齐白石 – Qí Báishí. Famous Chinese painter known for his distinctive style in depicting nature. See Wikipedia. ↩

20. 张仲景 – Zhāng Zhòngjǐng. Eastern Han physician, author of the Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders. See Wikipedia. ↩

21. 李时珍 – Lǐ Shízhēn. Ming dynasty physician and pharmacologist, author of the Compendium of Materia Medica. See Wikipedia. ↩

22. 鲁智深 – Lǔ Zhìshēn. Character from Water Margin known for his tremendous strength. ↩

23. 东风 – Dōngfēng. Famous scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms where Zhuge Liang built an altar and performed a ritual to summon an east wind. ↩

24. 戴宗 – Dài Zōng. Another character from Water Margin famous for his swift running abilities. ↩

25. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, approximately 500 metres or a third of a mile. ↩

26. 华容道 – Huáróng Dào. Famous episode from Romance of the Three Kingdoms where Guan Yu lets Cao Cao escape. ↩

27. 袁崇焕评传 – Yuán Chónghuàn Píngzhuàn. Jin Yong’s historical work about the Ming dynasty general Yuan Chonghuan. ↩

28. 尤三姐 – Yóu Sānjiě. Character from Dream of the Red Chamber who commits suicide over rejected love. ↩

29. 柳湘莲 – Liǔ Xiānglián. Character from Dream of the Red Chamber who breaks off his betrothal to You Sanjie. ↩

30. 包公 – Bāo Gōng. Renowned Song dynasty official known for his wisdom in solving cases. See Wikipedia. ↩

31. 况钟 – Kuàng Zhōng. Ming dynasty prefect of Suzhou, celebrated as an upright judge in the opera Fifteen Strings of Cash. See Wikipedia (Chinese). ↩

32. 彭公 – Péng Gōng. Lord Peng, the Qing official Peng Peng, hero of the crime novel Cases of Lord Peng. ↩

33. 狄公 – Dí Gōng. Judge Dee, a fictional character based on the historical figure Di Renjie. See Wikipedia. ↩

34. 屈原 – Qū Yuán. Famous poet from the Warring States period. See Wikipedia. ↩

35. 司马迁 – Sīmǎ Qiān. Famous historian from the Han dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

36. 李白 – Lǐ Bái. Famous poet from the Tang dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

37. 李商隐 – Lǐ Shāngyīn. (c. 813–858) Tang dynasty poet whose “Untitled” poems are among the most celebrated expressions of love in Chinese literature. ↩

38. 杜牧 – Dù Mù. Famous poet from the Tang dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

39. 李后主 – Lǐ Hòuzhǔ. Last emperor of the Southern Tang dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

40. 李清照 – Lǐ Qīngzhào. Famous female poet from the Song dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

41. 苏东坡 – Sū Dōngpō. Famous poet and statesman from the Song dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

42. 曹雪芹 – Cáo Xuěqín. Author of Dream of the Red Chamber. See Wikipedia. ↩

43. 龚自珍 – Gōng Zìzhēn. Famous poet from the Qing dynasty. See Wikipedia. ↩

44. 巴金 – Bā Jīn. Famous novelist from the 20th century. See Wikipedia. ↩

45. 徐悲鸿 – Xú Bēihóng. Famous painter from the 20th century. See Wikipedia. ↩