Wang Jianjie (simplified: 王剑杰, traditional: 王劍傑, pinyin: Wáng Jiànjié, jyutping: wong4 gim3 git6) is the younger son of Wang Weiyang and brother of Wang Jianying, a master of the Eight Trigrams School in the service of Fuk’anggan, in Jin Yong’s Side Story of the Flying Fox. Tall and burly, with a dark red face and an imposing, arrogant manner, he is blunt of speech, and by the time of the story his Eight Trigrams skill is no less than Shang Jianming’s was (SIDE ch. 3). From boyhood, under his father’s eye, he ran the Eight Trigrams circles three times every morning and three times every night, more than three thousand turns a day for over twenty years, until the footwork became second nature (SIDE ch. 3).
Biography
At Shang Family Fort
Riding with Fuk’anggan’s party near Shang Family Fort, Wang Jianjie is attacked by Shang Baozhen, who is smarting from a beating. Using only the short forms of Inner Eight Trigrams he neutralises more than forty of the young man’s Wandering-Body Eight Trigrams Palm strikes without once being touched, until Shang realises he faces a senior of his own school and kowtows to him as his shishu (SIDE ch. 3).
At the banquet that night he steps in when the boy Hu Fei slaps Old Madam Shang; Hu Fei snatches her dao and attacks him first. Circling at speed with his Eight Trigrams bladework, he soon has the boy on the defensive, and Hu Fei’s arm grows numb from blocking. Hu Fei then stands on a bench, since Wang is so much taller, and makes him agree not to kick it. The boy tips the bench up so that it strikes Wang’s chin; Wang kicks it over despite his word, but when Hu Fei uses it as a shield his dao sticks fast in the hard wood and he has to let it go. Fighting on with his palms he knocks Hu Fei’s weapon away and is about to finish him when the boy distracts him with a laugh and the arrival of Zhao Banshan (SIDE ch. 3). When his brother is poisoned by a golden dart, Wang Jianjie runs to bind his wrist and is flung aside, and he obtains Zhao Banshan’s antidote for him (SIDE ch. 3).
The iron hall
Shut in the burning iron hall, he shouts for his shisao to open the doors until fear silences him (SIDE ch. 4). He follows his brother’s lead in trying to sacrifice Hu Fei, raising his dao against Zhao Banshan and calling on the others to attack together (SIDE ch. 4). Once Hu Fei is outside fighting bare-handed, Wang realises the boy needs a weapon, picks up his own red-hot dao, burning his hand, and throws it out through the dog hole (SIDE ch. 4). Pressing his nose to the dog hole for air, he is overcome by smoke and does not come out with the others; Hu Fei goes back in and drags him out, and Zhao Banshan catches the burning beam that falls on them (SIDE ch. 4).
In Beijing
Years later in Beijing, at the feast where Hu Fei is meant to be reconciled with Feng Tiannan, Wang Jianjie tells the company how the young Hu Fei saved them all from the iron hall (SIDE ch. 13). When Yuan Ziyi challenges his brother, he boasts that if she survives a hundred moves they will give up Eight Trigrams Palm; when she has both of Wang Jianying’s arms dislocated and his life in her hands, Wang Jianjie concedes the Eight Trigrams School’s leadership to her and carries his brother away (SIDE ch. 14). He is among the guards around Fuk’anggan at the Grand Assembly of Zhangmen under Heaven, escorting Ma Chunhua’s twin sons to safety with his brother (SIDE ch. 17, 18).
Relationships
- Wang Weiyang (Father and shifu): Drilled him daily in the Eight Trigrams circles (SIDE ch. 3).
- Wang Jianying (Elder brother): Wang Jianjie gives up his school’s leadership to save him (SIDE ch. 14).
- Shang Baozhen (Shizhi): Later trains under the brothers (SIDE ch. 3, 12).
- Old Madam Shang (Shisao): Traps him in the iron hall (SIDE ch. 4).
- Hu Fei (Opponent, rescuer): Outwits him at the fort, then saves his life (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Fuk’anggan (Master): He serves in his household and guards him (SIDE ch. 3, 18).
Martial arts
Wang Jianjie’s footwork, the Eight Trigrams wandering-body circling, is so ingrained that he need think only of his hands, but it is fixed to the size of circle he has run for twenty years and he cannot adapt it when Hu Fei stands on a bench (SIDE ch. 3). He is expert in Eight Trigrams bladework with its many variant frames, in Eight Trigrams Palm and the short forms of Inner Eight Trigrams (SIDE ch. 3).