Zhou Tiejiao (simplified: 周铁鹪, traditional: 周铁鷦, pinyin: Zhōu Tiějiāo, jyutping: zau1 tit3 ziu1) is the eldest disciple and zhangmen of the Eagle Claw Wild Goose School (鹰爪雁行门), a major school of the northern martial arts, in Jin Yong’s Side Story of the Flying Fox. He is a military officer in Beijing, long famous in the capital, and one of the guard chiefs closest to Fuk’anggan (SIDE ch. 12, 13, 19). His shidi include Zeng Tieou (曾铁鸥) and Wang Tiee; the school’s disciples of his generation all have 铁 as the second character of their names and a bird character as the third (SIDE ch. 12).
Biography
The house at Xuanwu Gate
Zhou first meets Hu Fei at a gambling table in Beijing, arriving with Zeng Tieou and Yin Zhongxiang of the Tianlong School. He loses heavily as banker, then stakes the deed to a house inside Xuanwu Gate (宣武门), bought that very day, against all Hu Fei’s winnings. Zhou drives his four tiles flush into the tabletop with two blows; Hu Fei throws his and they sink flush too, and his hand is the better. Zhou hands over the deed without a flicker and insists Hu Fei keep it (SIDE ch. 13). Hu Fei and Cheng Lingsu later work out that the loss was arranged (SIDE ch. 13).
At the housewarming feast a hulking man bursts in claiming Zhou underpaid him for the house. Zhou throws him out, then has Hu Fei agree to forgive the “brute” before bringing him back: it is Feng Tiannan, who had paid for the house and for the estate Hu Fei had been given at Yitang. Hu Fei refuses to be bought off. As he goes for Feng, Zhou tries to hold him with a grappling move, “Dragging Nine Oxen Back by the Tail” (倒曳九牛尾); Hu Fei’s wrist is hard as iron and Zhou is sent stumbling three steps. Grappling is the school’s own speciality, and Zhou its first master of it (SIDE ch. 13).
Yuan Ziyi’s challenge
When Yuan Ziyi appears and announces she will take the zhangmen seats of the Beijing schools, she demands the school’s Bronze Eagle Iron Goose Tablet (铜鹰铁雁牌), the token of its zhangmen. Zhou sets it on the table and says she must take his life first. They fight on the roof of a pavilion, where he means to use the school’s qinggong. She fights him with his own school’s arts, and when he launches “Four Geese Fly South” (四雁南飞), a chain of kicks, she dislocates both his legs and he falls from the roof. Yuan Ziyi takes the tablet; Hu Fei sets Zhou’s legs and hands it back to him. Zhou leaves with a look of hatred for her and of gratitude for Hu Fei (SIDE ch. 14).
Helping Hu Fei into the mansion
When Hu Fei, hunted in Beijing, asks Wang Tiee to smuggle him into Fuk’anggan’s mansion, Wang cannot decide and takes the matter to Zhou. Mindful of Hu Fei’s kindness, Zhou arranges it without risking his shidi: an unsigned dispatch marked urgent, bearing a picture of a hanged ghost luring a scapegoat, is routed through the left battalion so that a guard named Ren Tongwu leads Hu Fei in. Zhou then kills the guard Zhang Jiu, who knew of the plan, with a heavy blow to an acupoint (SIDE ch. 16).
Inside, when Hu Fei is cornered with Fuk’anggan’s mother and the twin boys, Zhou sets a fire and shouts that assassins are burning the princess, drawing off the guards. He makes a show of cutting at Hu Fei, takes the old lady from him, and orders everyone to hold their posts against a trick, which lets Hu Fei escape (SIDE ch. 16). Credited with rescuing the Chancellor’s wife, Zhou is promoted (SIDE ch. 17).
The Grand Assembly
Zhou stands among the sixteen guards around Fuk’anggan at the Grand Assembly of Zhangmen under Heaven (SIDE ch. 17). When the Ni brothers of the Shuangzi School snatch Ma Chunhua’s twin sons and are forced to put them down, he and Wang Jianying catch the boys up (SIDE ch. 17), and after the Red Flower Society’s raid he calls out that the marshal is unhurt (SIDE ch. 18). He examines a poisoned iron bodhi seed belonging to Ke Zirong of Lanzhou, and blanches when Shi Wanchen is introduced as the King of Venoms (SIDE ch. 18).
When Yuan Ziyi, now in a nun’s habit as Yuanxing, accuses Tang Pei, she calls on Zhou and Wang Jianying to vouch for her word. Afraid she will reveal that she once took their zhangmen seats, Zhou praises her for never exposing a man’s private shame, meaning himself. He helps seize Tang Pei and draws his dao to keep him from the evidence (SIDE ch. 19).
Afterwards
Sent south with Fuk’anggan’s men, Zhou meets Yuanxing on the road. She shows him where Tang Pei’s body is buried, a great service to him, and in return he tells her that Tian Guinong is lying in wait for Hu Fei at his family graves by Cangzhou (SIDE ch. 20).
Personality and appearance
Zhou is small and wiry, under five feet tall, in his fifties and white-haired (SIDE ch. 13). He is calm, far-sighted and ruthless; Hu Fei judges him an old fox of the capital’s officialdom (SIDE ch. 16, 17). He has fought one against one since he began to learn at eleven, and could not bear Yuan Ziyi’s contempt (SIDE ch. 14).
Relationships
- Zeng Tieou (Shidi): Second disciple of the school, always at his side.
- Wang Tiee (Shidi): Reveres him and follows his lead in everything (SIDE ch. 16).
- Hu Fei: First an object of bribery, then a man he repays in secret.
- Yuan Ziyi: Took his tablet and shamed him before his peers.
- Fuk’anggan (Master): Zhou is one of his most trusted guards.
Martial arts
Zhou is the school’s foremost master of its grappling (擒拿), with decades of practice in its hard eagle-claw strength (鹰爪力), and is also skilled in its goose-flight qinggong (SIDE ch. 13, 14). The school flourished in the late Ming, but by Zhou’s generation its disciples served Manchu grandees and fell far short of their predecessors; it recovered only in the Jiaqing reign (SIDE ch. 14).
Behind the scenes
In his afterword Jin Yong names Zhou Tiejiao in explaining the hardest of the demands he set Hu Fei, to be unmoved by face: Zhou and the others give Hu Fei every face and humble themselves to beg him to drop his feud with Feng Tiannan, and Hu Fei still refuses (后记).