Tian Qingwen (simplified: 田青文, traditional: 田青文, pinyin: Tián Qīngwén, jyutping: tin4 cing1 man4), known in the Liaodong wulin as the “Brocade-Furred Marten” (锦毛貂), is the daughter of Tian Guinong, zhangmen of the Northern Branch of the Tianlong School, by his first wife, in Jin Yong’s Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain. She also appears as a girl in Side Story of the Flying Fox. Though young, she already has a name in the wulin beyond the pass. The marten runs swiftly over snow and is clever, and “brocade-furred” speaks to her beauty (ch. 1). Her father betrothed her to Tao Zian, son of Tao Baisui, while her shixiong Cao Yunqi loves her (ch. 1, 7).
Biography
The attack on Miao Renfeng
At fifteen or sixteen she is with the band her father leads against Miao Renfeng, whom he has blinded with poison. When Cheng Lingsu lights a candle whose fumes would have felled the whole band, the girl cuts it in two with an iron awl and orders her to stand still. After Hu Fei, using the Hu bladework Miao calls out to him, wounds her father and forces him to withdraw, she steps in to hold him up and asks, “Father, shall we go?” As the band leaves, Cheng Lingsu throws the awl back at her. She catches it behind her without turning round, but Cheng has dusted it with Red Scorpion Powder, and the pain stays with her for days (SIDE ch. 11).
The child and the buried dao
Before the story opens she has borne a child in secret. When Tao Zian arrives for her father’s retirement banquet, he finds her haggard, and she turns on him when he asks why. In the garden pavilion she tells him that if the fault were his, all would be well, but it lies with someone else, and she would be better off dead (ch. 7).
That night, Tao Zian’s account runs, he climbs into her room and finds in her bed a dead infant, smothered under a quilt. From beneath the bed he hears her weep over it: “My son, do not blame your mother for taking your little life with her own hands. If you had lived, your mother could not have.” She carries the body to a graveyard half a li away. There she sees Zhou Yunyang burying a long bundle. She buries her child, then starts to dig up his bundle, and Zhou, who had only pretended to leave, catches her. Each knows what the other has buried, and the two swear an oath of mutual silence (ch. 7).
Earlier that evening her father had found the school’s treasured dao missing from its iron box, and she had not known where it was. Liu Yuanhe, hidden under her father’s bed, hears the rest. She tells her father that Zhou stole the dao and buried it, and asks to hide behind the door while he questions Zhou, so that she can put a Poison Dragon Awl in Zhou’s back the moment he confesses. Her father would only break Zhou’s legs, but gives way when she refuses to fetch the dao otherwise. She returns trembling: the dao is gone, and, Liu gathers, so is her child’s body, and she falls at the door on her way out to search. Liu reads her aim as silencing a witness (ch. 7). Miao Renfeng, who had watched both burials, brings the dao and the dead infant to her father, and Tian Guinong kills himself that night (ch. 7).
That night she also puts off Yin Ji of the Southern Branch. She tells him that her father is unwell and the handing over of the school’s treasures must wait for the next day, and later, eyes red from weeping, turns him away from her father’s door (ch. 7).
Pursuit of the Taos
In mourning white she rides out beyond the pass with Cao Yunqi, Zhou Yunyang, their shishu Ruan Shizhong and Yin Ji, hunting the Taos, whom the school blames for her father’s death. A passing rider flicks a small golden pen at her. Cao takes it for a love token from Tao Zian, and she answers that Tao is her betrothed, so of course he is the one in her heart. When Cao turns his jian on himself she parries it. She will not run away with him, she tells him, because he now heads the Northern Branch and the school’s name would be ruined (ch. 1).
Ruan means to kill the Taos from ambush. She asks that they be taken alive, since she does not believe Tao Zian is guilty, but her hands shake when Ruan shows her that Tao’s arrows match the one that brought down the goose. When Cao aims his poisoned awls at Tao Zian she knocks into his shoulder and spoils his aim, and her cry of surprise alerts Liu Yuanhe. She fights Zheng Sanniang, jian against twin daos. Ruan passes her the iron box and she runs off with it, drawing Tao Zian after her. When he kneels in the snow and swears he did not harm her father, she smiles and takes his arm, until Cao comes upon them (ch. 1).
When Zheng Sanniang, wounded, leaps up to kill Tao Zian, Tian Qingwen’s awl strikes her right shoulder first and saves his life. Once Baoshu has ended the fight, Ruan gives her the antidote to dress Zheng’s wound, and she kneels to Baoshu and begs him to find her father’s true killer. On the march she tears up her spare shirt to bind Zhou Yunyang’s wounds first and then the Taos’, silencing Cao with a look (ch. 1).
On Jade Brush Peak
She makes Cao ride up in the basket with her, so that he cannot harm Tao Zian while she is out of sight (ch. 2). In the manor on Jade Brush Peak she gives fruit to Hu Fei’s twin page boys and cries out to stop Cao when he uses a killing move on them. Trying to relieve her shixiongs, she is drawn into the fight herself. The elder boy spares her jian when he cuts through the others’ weapons, repaying her kindness, and she twice warns Ruan of attacks from behind and of Liu and Xiong’s designs on the box (ch. 2).
She dresses Ruan’s wounds and gives Zhou the iron box, saying she knows he can open it (ch. 3). When Baoshu asks why Cao was never told the dao’s history, she answers that her father died too suddenly to tell him, and from Miao Ruolan’s age she works out that Baoshu’s story of twenty-seven years before must tie to Ruolan’s (ch. 3). She helps Ruolan haul up the silk line from below, and faints when Cao plunges over the cliff edge; Tao Zian catches her (ch. 6). Steward Yu warns Miao Ruolan that she and Zheng Sanniang are not good women (ch. 6).
Exposure
Yin Ji tells the company what he overheard at her father’s door: Ruan demanding the headship because Cao and Tian Qingwen had had a child together. She faints, and Tao Zian goes for Cao with his dao. When she comes round she withdraws to an inner room, and Tao Zian and Liu Yuanhe tell the rest. Tao produces Hu Fei’s visiting card from an embroidered brocade pouch that the company takes to be her work (ch. 7).
The treasure cave
She slips back into the hall once the talk has moved on. After Baoshu seals Miao Ruolan’s acupoints, Tian Qingwen carries her to the east wing, strips her to her underclothes and puts her to bed under the quilt, teasing her about her beauty, then tells the company that the girl cannot run away now, and the men laugh (ch. 8). It is the bed in which Hu Fei later hides (ch. 9).
At the cliff edge she sees that the ridges below match the double-dragon pattern on the sheath of Li Zicheng’s Treasured Dao, which leads the company to the round peak where the treasure lies. She falls into a hollow in the snow, and Cao and Tao Zian both leap in after her and land on top of her (ch. 8). In the tunnel she ends their brawl over the golden pen by threatening never to speak to either again. She shows that the pen they found matches hers, and Ruan identifies the pair as the hidden weapon of her grandfather, Tian Anbao (ch. 8). In the treasure chamber she is the first to see the two figures standing by the wall: her grandfather and Miao Renfeng’s father, frozen where they had killed each other (ch. 8).
There she tells Cao he has ruined her life, and calls Tao Zian her husband, whom she has wronged but without whom she can love no one. When Tao swears he will still marry her, she tells him never to see her again once they leave the cave. The others watch her bring both men to heel by giving ground (ch. 8). She then tells of the rider who flicked the pen at her that morning, knocking off her earring: she later knew Hu Fei’s voice and saw his face through a crack in the partition. Inside his pen she finds his note: “Gentlemen of the Tianlong School, you have come to Liaodong; you came on horseback, you will return riding the wind” (ch. 8). Hu Fei had taken the pen from the cave and sent it to her as a warning (ch. 10). She proposes gathering firewood to melt the ice from the treasure, and the Tianlong party is among those Hu Fei later seals inside the cave, leaving their fate open (ch. 8, 10).
Relationships
- Tian Guinong (Father): She hides her child from him, and sets him against Zhou Yunyang on the night of his death.
- Nan Lan (Stepmother): Tian Guinong’s second wife, who died before the story opens (ch. 7).
- Tao Zian (Betrothed): She meets him in secret, trades keepsakes with him and defends him against the school; he learns of her dead child and still says he will marry her.
- Cao Yunqi (Shixiong): He has looked after her since childhood and loves her. Ruan names him as the father of her child, and she tells him he has ruined her life (ch. 1, 7, 8).
- Zhou Yunyang (Shixiong): They share a sworn pact of silence over what each buried.
- Ruan Shizhong (Shishu).
- Zheng Sanniang (Enemy): She fights her, wounds her with an awl, then dresses the wound.
- Miao Ruolan: She strips her and leaves her in the bed where Hu Fei hides.
- Cheng Lingsu (Enemy): She foils Cheng’s poisoned candle and is stung by her Red Scorpion Powder (SIDE ch. 11).
Martial arts
Tian Qingwen fights with the jian and throws the Tianlong School’s Poison Dragon Awl. As a girl she uses an iron awl with speed and accuracy, and catches a thrown awl behind her back (SIDE ch. 11). Ruan Shizhong counts her and Zhou Yunyang the weaker two of the Tianlong party, and she falls behind the others on the climb; she runs with the iron box using qinggong (ch. 1).