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Jin Yong: A brief study of his novels

Every one, old or young, male or female, will never fail to recognise the name of the internationally well-known Wu Shei novelist,Jin Yong, if he or she likes reading such stories.

It is almost impossible to make an indepth literary comment or critizen of the writings of Jin Yong's novels as they are so rich and complicated in contents, successful depictations of his characters and so great a theme in each novel. Besides, unless you are very highly educated and has a high command of Chinese proficiency, it is unlikely you are able to make a critical literay commentary of this great novelist. Since I am neither highly educated nor have I possess a high Chinese proficiency, I can only make some brief discussions on Jin Yong's novels which are open to criticisms.

Among all Jin Yong's novels, I like She Diao Ying Xiong Chuan, Shen Diao Shei Nu, Yi Tian Tu Long Ji, Xiao Au Jiang Hu and Bi Xue Jian most. In discussing the writings of Jin Yong, I will also make a very brief touch on the other of his writings such as Tian Long Ba Bu and Lu Ding Ji.

What have made Jin Yong so famous in the world of Wu Shei and in the literary world are his covering of broad and in-depth themes, successful presentation of his characters and unveilings of the complicated contents of his stories.

She Diao Ying Xiong Chuan is the early stage novel written by Jin Yong in 1957-1959. Even though this novel is the early stage novel, the readers are given a theme of the discussion of the meaning of "real hero" which is a theme broadly discussed internationally by many famous novelists and palywrights. Dated back to the year of Shakespeare, the Shakespearean plays are filled with lots of discussions about the explorations of the meaning of real hero. His plays, such as Anthony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Hamlet and Julius Caesar, have aroused the interests of the readers to study and discuss such meaning for centuries.

In this novel, Guo Jing is the major main character. He is not much liked by most of the readers for his ignorance, his poorly lack of character, his unattractive physical outlook and introvert character. Yet he is loved so deeply by Huang Rong, the daughter of Huang Yao Shi who is described as a man of very high intelligence and has possessed queer characters to challenge the social and moral norm at that time. Huang Rong, who is most probably the most successful presentation of the all female characters in Jin Yong's novel and the most liked and loved by the readers, is very beautiful, young, as highly intelligent as his father, active and quick witted. All these are so different to the character of Guo Jing. Personally I think it is such great difference that makes the readers feel jealous of Guo Jing and feel sorry for such a lovely young girl to be married to such a stupid guy.

But the significance of Guo Jing lies in his symbolising the social and cultural norm at that particular story background. The story background is Song Chao during which people are supposed to behave morally right and follow very strictly the social and cultural norm set down to them. This is obviously highly influned by the educational coachings of the spirits of Kong Zi, our Chinese most wonderfull educationist. While Huang Yao Shi tries to revolt against such confinements, Guo Jing follows closely such strict social and moral norms. He is not bright in character, yet he shows his honest devotion to what he considers right.

He does have been troubled by the choice of love partner between Hua Zheng, the daughter of the Mongolian King, and Huang Rong, but once he has come to the decision of very serious big topics, he has showed his greatness which has outshined the others. It is true he is not smart and most of the time, every matter needs to be prepared and settled by Huang Rong, but he is decisive and brave enough to shoulder up every sort of difficult challenge. And it is such abnormal courage that makes him so different from the others.

In the Chinese culture, to be loyal to the country and ready to sacrifice one's life for the sake of the completeness of the country is considered to be a real hero. Guo Jing, a man who has been rejected by so many and looked down upon by so many, has showed his selflessness in sacrificing his life to protect the safety of Song Chao when it is under fierce terrible attacks of the powerful Mongolian army.

Such selflessness and readiness to love, to devote to save his country and sacrifice for the sake of the safety of his country is termed as Real Hero.

Shen Diao Shei Nu is a continuous novel of She Diao Ying Xiong Chuan. In this novel, we are given a character who symbolises a man who totally revolt against the traditional moral and social norm which has dominated the Chinese culture for centuries.

Yang Guo is this young man who deeply loves his female teacher who also loves him deeply as well. Both young girl and young man's love in such a manner is a terrible and absoultely unacceptable fact to the society at Song Chao. Perhaps in to-days world, we may accept such a marriage of teacher and student relationship, but at the time of Song Chao, it is absolutely out of one's imagination that this young couple dares to challenge such persisting social norm.

Xiao Long Nu, Yan Guo's teacher, has never be in touch with the outside world. What she has been educated is nothing but her devotion to her teacher and to stay for the rest of the life in the tomb. She is not supposed to explore the brave new world which is so full of temptations, love and hatred, killing and bloodshed, richness and poverty. In her world, the life is as simple and small and pure as the tomb where she has beening living there for more than 16 years.

But the intrusion of Yan Guo has completely changed her life. She starts to taste the smell of the outside world, bit by bit, step by step. Her simple and holy world is gradually broken and smelted in such a way that she finally gives up her life style and explores the outside world with Yang Guo, a revolutionalist against the social and moral norm.

Such an arrangement of combination of Yang Guo, who symboizes the complicated and treachurous outside world, and Xiao Long Nu, who symbolizes the world of purity and innocence, is termed to be a tragedy. Both are sharply condemned and rejected by almost the people living at that time, including our real hero, Guo Jing and his wife. At that time, a teacher is a teacher, a student is a student. How is it possible to have a teacher to be married to a student? It is absolutely unacceptable and such a thing has never happened before. There is only Huang Yao Shi who shares their love and supports them because he himself is such type of person who hates the confinement of the moral and social norm.

The other significant theme of this novel is the theme of "To be or Not to be". As Jin Yong has said, by the time he writes She Diao Ying Xiong Chuan, he is influed by some readings, novels and plays coming from Europe, a symble of Western civilization. In Shakespeare's famous tragedy, "Hamlet", the Dutch prince is torn between the rights and wrongs of killing his father, who is the King of Denmark. The inward feelings of battles roaring inside the world this young prince has caused a very strong dramatic effect to the readers. "To be"  means to kill his father whom he has considered to be evilish, "Not to"  means not to kill his father because the King is his father and he will be taken as the murderer.

Such a theme of being torn between two forces is also seen in Shen Diao Shei Nu. Whether Jin Yong has been influenced by this play "Hamlet" or not, we do not know, but from his confession that his writings have been influenced by parts of the Western writings, we cannot reject such possibility.

To Yang Guo, both Guo Jing and Huang Rong are murderers of killing his father, Yang Kang. He is full of hatred and has plotted to kill both of them. But like the Dutch prince, he is torn between the rights and wrongs inward conflicts when seeing both persons whom he wants to murduer are so kind to him, so love the family and his children and importantly so love their country which at that time is under the horror attacks
of the strong Mongolian army. Though he has made a secret agreement with the Mongolian chief commander to kill Guo Jing,he finally chooses the rights by giving up his strong desire of killing Guo Jing when he witnesses the heoric manners and behaviours of Guo Jing in saving their country.

Jin Yong has given us a very detailed description of the inward conflicts of this young man. All these have caused a very dramatic effect which has induced the readers to go into the world of Yang Guo to share the "To be or not to be" psychological issue.

This is one of the reasons why we take Jin Yong as a great novelist because he does not only give us very exciting stories, he also gives the complications in life - the revolution against the social norm and the theme of rights and wrongs.

(I will stop here for a while. I hope my writings will be accpeted by the admininstrators and the readers. If that so, I will continue to finish the rest of my comments on Jin Yong's novels.)

Thanks a lot for your comments and corrections.

Yes it should read "depictions"

中文都学不全了,English更看不懂了:funk: 只知道每一天,老或少.然后:funk: 没了

老外对金庸这么熟不容易呵，送颗小红心。话说我离开学校后就没看过这么长的外语，也表扬自己一下:teeth

This is a reply to Floor 6:

I am a Chinese living in a Western country. I do not know how to type Chinese words so I have to use English as a reply.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

:sweat 原来如此，非常期待您的后续文章！俺的英语要是有你的中文水准就好了！

[[i] 本帖最后由 aaasdfg 于 2009-3-31 14:02 编辑 [/i]]

hope you can understand my article. try to use more simple words.

I see,and I will try your recommendation.Thanks a lot.

真是不错，看了你的好几个评论，终于看到一个文章，英语文采真好，很期待你的续篇

*** 作者被禁止或删除 内容自动屏蔽 ***

I apologise for my silence as my compute is down. I have used my friend's computer to give this reply. Hope it will be OK soon and post Part 2 of my comments.

Jin Yong: A brief study of his novels - Part II

As I have mentioned previously, Jin Yong's novels give the readers a lot of entertainments but importantly, he conveys to the readers through his entertaining stories lots serious and big themes which are universally true and applicable to every walk of lives.

Just take the theme of "To be or Not to be". Such a theme of inward conflicts to decide whether to do it or not is true to our every day life, no matter it was the olden times or the present time.

I think the readers will have such experience as to make a choice before they make their final decision. Take for instance, the mature readers will have the chance of buying stock shares, properties, or other household articles like a computer or TV.

Before they make their final decisions, they will balance the rights and wrongs, the pros and cons, the benefits or loss of doing so. They just do not want to commit any mistake which will make them to repent for the rest of the lives.In our Chinese saying, we have a common idea: Think thrice before you take actions. In English, we also have a similar saying: Look before you leap. No matter it is Enlish or Chinese, both sayings just remind us the theme of "To be or Not to be".

Unfortunately, we human beings always make mistakes even we have made a beforehand analysis of the rights and wrongs. The recent world wide tumultuous financial earthquake has smashed countless banking systems world wide. The fire started from the USA, then Europe, Iceland, the Eastern Europe and then finally crumpled Japan, Korea, Taiwan,Hong Kong, Singapore,Vietnam,India,Russia, Brazil and finally China which is the most powerful economic country in the world. The damage is quick
and destrutive. Almost every one suffers no matter you are in the game or not because your investments in the superannuation fund or stock shares have lost over 40 to 60 per cent of your assets.

Every one is crying over the split milk when seeing their wealth has been cut off trmendously. At this time, most of the readers will blame themsleves why they did not think more carefully before they decided to buy the shares or bonds.

All these come back to the theme I have been talking most of the time: To be or Not to be. May be you will suffer less if you think more deeply or may be very safe for not involving in this financial turmoil. Jin Yong, like Shakespeare, has presented such a universal truth to the readers, which is timeless and placesless. Every one, young or old, male or female, will encourter such issues of to be or not to be throughout their life span of deciding a choices.

This is another evident why I insist that Jin Yong is not a story teller, he is a great novelist and in-depth philosopher as well.

When we come to Yi Tian Tu Long Ji, we are given a new phase of the the complicated characters of human beings and a complicated introduction to the power of struggle which is fully presented in another novel, Xiao Ao Jiang Hu.

Zhang Wu Ji is the main male character of this novel, which is my most favourate. He has a more complicated character which is quite different to the other main characters I have discussed, Guo Jing and Yang Guo.

Guo Jing is a very honest and straightforward man. He is obedient and seldom revolts against the moral ethical standards set down in the country. He never cheats and very kindhearted to care his wife and his family. He is a hero because despite his unattractive outlook, he is very brave enough to shoulder up the extremely heavy duty of defending his country, even this will cause his life. Such a character is eavy to understand and make friends with  because you will never worry to be cheated.

Yang Guo is absolutely different from Guo Jing in characters. Unlike Guo Jing, he is anti socialism. He revolts against every sort of moral and socal standard set upon him. He marries his teacher, Xiao Long Nu without considering the moral standards at that time that such an act will totally distort and damage all moral standard of the society. He has his own way of life style. He goes by his own way and will never give up his devoted love to this girl despite there  are many oppositions against such a marriage. His actions are all the time active and possitive.

Zhang Wu Ji gives us another type of character which is a bit more complicated. By chance, he is selected to be leader of a combination of different parties of Wu Lin heroes. But due to his character, he can never be taken as a good leader. This mainly due to his character which is not aggressive and he lacks political ambitions at all.

Guo Jin's love is Huang Ron only while Yan Guo loves and marries Xiao Long Nu only despite some other girls show their love towards him. But Zhang Wu Ji circles around four very beautiful young girls and fails to decide which one is the best to be his ideal wife. Zhao Min, the Mongolian princess, Zhou Zhi Ruo, Zhang Wu Ji's childhood friend, Yin Li, the daughter of his uncle, and Xiao Zhao, the princess of the Muslum all love him. Of course our main character has lots of high qualities as a man, otherwise he can not or will not be appreciated and loved so deeply by these four beautiful girls.

Once again, like most of the people, he encounters the same issue of to be or not to be - which girl is the best choice. All the girls have shared with him some dangerous incidents at different time and different places. And it is such experience that he has put in his heart some special feelings toward each girl who has spent that particular time with him during some very dangerous occasions. Perhaps he loves Zhao Min the most, but at the same time he dreams how wonderful and sweet it will be if he has married all these four girls. So throughout the whole novel, he just plays the music chair and will sit down when the music stops, simply not his own decison.

Such undecisive character is also seen in his refusal of accepting the invitation of being the leader of the Jiang Hu heroes. He himself is not eager to be actively involved in power struggle. What he longs for is to live  a quiet and peaceful life without being disturbed by the outside world which is full of cheatings, treacheries, bloodshed and murdering and worst still, the ugly political calculatings.

A character like him can never be a good polital leader who must be very calculating, clever and jerk out once the right time has come, ambitious to scramble the highest power at no matter what costs and importantly to kill and destoy all his enemies and any obstructions lie in front of him. But all these are not the tastes of our character. He prefers a world of peace in which he can lead a very common life as we do.

A character like Zhang Wu Ji is more life like. In real life, we seldom see patriotic hero like Guo Jin and crazily devoted to one single love like Yang Guo. They seem to be a bit out of touch of our real life experience. But it is such character as Zhang Wu Ji that makes him more familiar to us that we can easilly take him as our friends.

This novel not only talks about love stories of the young male characters and his four female characters, it talks as well the holy spirit of fatherwood and brotherhood. We are deeply touched when Xie Xun farewelled Zhang Wu Ji and his parents with a broken heart on a remote snowy iceland, when the young boy witnessed how his parents committed suicide in front of the countless  Wu Lin heroes, when Zhang San Feng witnesses painfully the committing suicide of his most beloved student and the anger and sorrow when his students discovers their comrades have been brutally tortured and crippled by hidden enemies.

It seems Jin Yong is not satisfied with his descriptions of the pain and sufferings of losing a son. As he has mentioned, it is until years afterwards that how paiful it is when he personally has lost one of his sons in a car accident in Cananda.

In almost Jin Yong's novels, we can discover that his novels carry the true historical background, such as the historical background of Guo Jing and Yang Guo take place at Song Chao while Zhang Wu Ji takes place at Min Chao. But in another great novel, Xiao Ao Jiang Hu, there is no polical background at all.

By the time Jin Yong was writing this novel, the Culteral Revolutions spreaded in Main Land China. Directly or indirectly, this novel unveil another broad and big theme in great novels - the cruel struggles of power and while power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In the 20th century, one very famous British author, George O'well writes one novel called "Animal Farm" in which all the characters are animals. We have the pigs, goats, ox and many other poutries. The animals are diminated a farmer who takes them as slaves while he enjoys a rich and luxurious material life. The animals can only keep on working and working with only some mean food to eat. Finally they decide to revolt against their owner and drive him away. The Pigs becomes the leaders, but unfortunately, the Pigs behave exactly in the same ways as their previous own - they can enjoy a good life because they are leaders while the other animals are slaves and do have adequate food to support their livings. Finally they revolt and drive away the pigs. The theme of this story has a very explicit picture to attack once those people that once you have acquired power, you will make the full force of the power to slave those underneath you or evern slaughter them at your own interest. You are given power by the citizens, but you have abused it and carries out absolute power. You wish to be live long in your position so you love the slogun: "Kong Live the King!"

In Xiao Ao Jiang Hu, the love story is not as attractive as the previous novels. I think perhaps Jin Yong has been much troubled by the daily fresh news how people in China were tortured during the Cultural Revolutions, thus he has given a very intensive presentation of his dislikes of such power struggling through his characters like.

Ling Whu Chong, the main male character, like Zhang Wu Ji, dislike the treacherous Jiang Hu's plotting, murdering, killing and bloodshed. He dispises those who are indulged in power scrambling. His lover shares his interests and is willing to live in a world that is cut off from the ugly world of political power scrambling.

In this novel we do not find strong sense of delicate presentations of romatic love except the darker world of power struggling as a reflection of the crude facts of the terrible bloodshed events in scrambling power in the histories, not only China, but also all over the world for centuries. It is a universal cruel phenomenon.

In Bi Xue Jian, we are told of the real meanings of patriotism. The main character of the story is Yuan Cheng Zhi. His father, Yuan Chong Huan, is a national hero of the late Ming Chao. Yet despite his devotions and patriotic loves of his country, he is put to jail and finally slaughtered for the sin of a treachery betrayal of his country. Of course all these are carried out by his enemies. It seems the death of this hero is caused by the cruety of the King, Chong Zhen, the real aim of the story just wishe to tell the readers, once we are under the power of corruptive dominations, we are powerless and helpless, no matter how heroic you are. This is the same situation what Xiao Feng has bitterly experienced in Tian Long Ba Bu when he is taken as a betrayter of China. We can never share the real painful feelings of these heros while they are so love their country are treated in such a shameful way.

Such an attack on the corruption of power can also be seen in Lu Ding Ji. While every reader admires the luxurious and fortuantate life of this uneducated boy,Jin Yong actually wants to prevail to the readers another picture of the extreme corruptions of the upper society - you can not only survive even you are poor and not well educated, you can also climb to the highest political position if you are cunning enough to flatter those who are in power.

All in all, Jin Yong is an excellent novelist who gives us not only very enteraining stories with concrete historical background, but also provides with us some themes which are internationally true, timeless and placeless.

回复 2楼 的帖子

既然你威胁并鼓励着楼主发表
那么 过来评分吧   嘿嘿:titter   
有人告状咯

回复 15楼 的帖子

怎么第五段突然谈到金融危机了
第六段谈股市
第七段莎士比亚:mine

reply to floor 16 and 17

I associate these two points to show the theme I have been talking about all the time: To be or Not to be. This theme is universally true and is timeless and placesless.What this well known writer has said can be applied to to-day's financial crisis. Actually I have explained this pont in my artical.

To quate the name of Shakespeare is aimed to express my respect to this writer to such an extent that he can enjoy more or less the same social standard as Shakespeare. (This is only my personal opinion)

Sorry for any confusions caused. I will try to learn better English next time.

晕倒,有老外吗?为什么都是洋文,我进错地方了吗?

能把评述文章用英语流畅表达出来，非常难得。楼主tornit曾在【文学作者区】与【原创人生区】对多篇文章进行过评述，非常精彩。
私下曾与他沟通，他的机器安装的系统支持BIG5中文，因此不妨碍他阅读中文。
至于回复，由于输入法与中文表述原因，确实不如英文便捷。
希望能借阅读赏文之机提高一下英文阅读理解及表达能力未尝不是好事情！
再则，本论坛面向世界也欢迎英文发帖与回复。

Many sincere thanks for your consistant supports and encouragements.

You and RachCool and many other administrators have injected courage to me to post English replies in the world's No.1 adult website.

Long live SIS

what a wonderful comment!
I wonder why you have the inspiration to write in English, which is really a challenge in terms of a literary review.

A reply to Floor 23

Rarely have I found a SIS member can write so nice English. Where do you come from and where do you learn your English? Your choice of diction is supposed to be used by those who have high English proficiency.

Anyway, many thanks for your compliment.