Yuan Guannan

Yuan Guannan

Contents

Yuan Guannan (simplified: 袁冠南, traditional: 袁冠南, pinyin: Yuán Guànnán, jyutping: jyun4 gun3 naam4) is a young scholar who wanders the jianghu in search of his mother. He is the son of the hero Yuan, who died rather than surrender the Mandarin Duck Blades, and with Xiao Zhonghui he wields the blades in the Wedded Blades Style.

Biography

The wandering scholar

Yuan first appears, unnamed, singing as he strolls into the forest where the Four Xias of Taiyue wait to rob travellers. When they find only old books in his page boy’s baskets, he flatters them as great xia and asks them to lend him travelling money, and they hand over what silver they have. Out of the forest, he laughs and gives the silver to the page boy: the books are lined with thin leaves of gold.1

At the Fen’an Inn in Guanshui, he steps out to reason with Lin Yulong and Ren Feiyan as they fight, and retreats when a pellet knocks off his hat. He argues the case of an old blind man who is two coins short for a room, and gives his name when the man thanks him, though Xiao Zhonghui paid. He then asks her, unabashed, to lend him a few liang.2

Pursuit of the blades

Yuan walks into the grove where Zhuo Tianxiong, the blind man, has taken the blades, reciting verse with a writing brush and ink box in hand. Zhuo sees through the act and challenges him to take them.3 Fighting with brush and ink box, Yuan is outmatched, and Zhuo’s iron staff strikes his left leg. He bluffs that his ink is the Bone-Rotting Heart-Piercing Ointment and that the Five Poison Holy Maiden is his aunt, snatches the blades from Zhou Weixin, and smears Zhuo’s hand with ink, sending him running in terror. He frees the Lin couple with two flicked stones, but when he checks on Xiao Zhonghui after freeing her the same way, she snatches the short Yang blade and runs. Limping after her, he follows the trail to the Purple Bamboo Convent and hides behind a statue of Guanyin, where he finds her and the Lin couple already hiding.4

The Wedded Blades Style

Trapped in the convent, Yuan asks Xiao Zhonghui to learn the Wedded Blades Style with him, and the Lin couple teach them its first twelve moves. When Zhuo returns and defeats the Lins, Yuan urges her to flee while he holds Zhuo off. She stays, and as each moves to protect the other, they perform the first move perfectly. Running through the twelve moves twice, they wound Zhuo in the shoulder and drive him over the wall. Before she leaves, she asks him to find her at Xiao Banhe’s residence.5

The birthday

With the Lin couple, Yuan presents the long Yuan blade to Xiao Banhe on his fiftieth birthday, and the Lins teach him the remaining sixty moves. Xiao Banhe learns that Yuan was separated from his parents as a child, questions him about his training and character, and betroths his daughter to him. When Madam Yuan hands him a jade finger guard, Yuan sees a branched finger on each of her little fingers and shows her the jade lion he wears; she calls him Shiguan, and mother and son are reunited after eighteen years. Xiao Zhonghui, believing him her brother, flees the hall.6

When Zhuo returns with her as a hostage and imperial soldiers surround the mansion, Yuan flings his gold-lined books across the hall so that the escorts and soldiers grab for the gold, strikes Zhou Weixin in the face with one, and frees her. Fighting in the Wedded Blades Style, they rescue the two madams and drive out the guards, and Yuan’s long blade cuts Zhuo’s lower leg to the bone.7 At the Zhongtiao Mountains, Xiao Banhe reveals that Yuan’s father was the hero Yuan and that Xiao Zhonghui is the daughter of Yang Bochong, so the two are not siblings.8

Martial arts abilities

Yuan usually fights barehanded and carries the brush and ink box only to look unconcerned. His qinggong and accuracy with thrown stones are good enough to release sealed acupoints from several dozen feet away, but Zhuo Tianxiong finds his movements quick yet inexperienced.4 His real strength is the Wedded Blades Style, whose remaining moves he and Xiao Zhonghui learn in the better part of a day.6

Behind the scenes

Portrayals

  • 1961 film Twin Swords (Parts 1 and 2) — Chow Chung

  • 1982 film Lovers’ Blades — Meng Yuan-wen

See also

Footnotes

  1. See Part 3. ↩

  2. See Part 5. ↩

  3. See Part 7. ↩

  4. See Part 8. ↩ ↩2

  5. See Part 9. ↩

  6. See Part 10. ↩ ↩2

  7. See Part 11. ↩

  8. See Part 12. ↩

Related articles