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.)
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