Chapter 54 1994 "Legend of the Condor Heroes"

Genre: Novel Author: Jin Yong First publication: Life·Reading·New Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore Published: May 1994 (written by Li Chen) In 1980, Guangzhou "Wulin" magazine serialized a novel by Hong Kong writer Jin Yong. This was the first time that Jin Yong's martial arts novels were published in mainland publications. The reason seems unbelievable today. It is said that "pirated books come from behind, and readers can read them all in one go" (Song Weijie, "From Entertainment Behavior to Utopian Impulse: Reinterpretation of Jin Yong's Novels", 1999).

The story tells that during the Southern Song Dynasty, Guo Xiaotian and Yang Tiexin, who lived in seclusion in Niujia Village outside of Lin’an, were killed by the Southern Song government in collusion with Wanyan Honglie, the prince of Jin. He tried his best to find the two pregnant widows Li Ping and Bao Xiruo, and made a bet with the Jiangnan Seven Monsters to raise the two heroes and meet them again in Jiaxing eighteen years later.Guo Xiaotian's wife, Li Ping, was kidnapped by Duan Tiande, an officer and soldier of the Southern Song Dynasty, and drifted to the Mongolian desert, where she gave birth to a child, Guo Jing.Although Guo Jing is not talented, he is honest and hard-working. He is supervised by the Six Monsters of the South of the Yangtze River under strict supervision.For the appointment in Jiaxing, Guo Jing went all the way south, and met Huang Rong, the daughter of Huang Yaoshi in Taohua Island, a "little beggar" disguised as a man. The two fell in love with each other at first sight. Wanyan Honglie coaxed him to the Kingdom of Jin, became a princess, and gave birth to Yang Kang. He didn't want Yang Kang to be greedy for wealth and honor, to admit that a thief was his father, and to plot repeatedly for the powerful.Guo Jing successively learned the stunts of the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms and "Fighting Left and Right, Distracting Together" from the beggar gang leader Hong Qigong and the old naughty boy Zhou Botong, and obtained the "Nine Yins" coveted by countless martial arts people by accident. Scriptures and the Suicide Notes of Wu Mu.During this time, "Western Poison" Ouyang Feng and Yang Kang rushed into Peach Blossom Island, killed Zhu Cong and other five people who were guests on the island, and took the opportunity to frame Huang Yaoshi in an attempt to set off a bloody storm in the martial arts world. The wind caused Guo Jing and Huang Rong to misunderstand and turn against each other. Afterwards, Huang Rong saw through the conspiracy, cleared up the grievances for herself and her father, and got rid of the evil Yang Kang, but she was held hostage by Ouyang Feng and had no news.Guo Jing searched around and went to the desert. At the time of Genghis Khan's expedition to the west, in order to capture and kill his father and enemy Wanyan Honglie, Guo Jing asked for orders to go on the expedition.Unwilling to be ordered to continue attacking the Song Dynasty southward, Guo Jing decided to flee Mongolia overnight with his mother, but was discovered by Genghis Khan, and Li Ping was forced to commit suicide.The date for the second Huashan Sword Discussion has arrived. Dongxie, Xidu, Nandi, and Beibei reunited again. In the end, the title of "No. Ouyang Feng won, and on the top of Mount Hua, Guo Jing and Huang Rong, who had run away due to a misunderstanding, met again, and they reconciled as before, and finally became a pair of martial arts heroes.

Jin Yong started to serialize his first martial arts novel in the "New Evening News" in 1955, and he wrote a total of 15 novels in the early 1970s, which can be described as enduring in the Chinese world. Hong Kong literary critic Lin Yiliang once said: "Wherever there are Chinese people and Chinatowns, there are Jin Yong's martial arts novels."It is the representative work of Jin Yong's martial arts novels in the middle period, and it can also be said that Jin Yong has the most readers. Hong Kong writer Ni Kuang commented on this work, "It has established Jin Yong's status as a 'master' of martial arts novels, and people no longer doubt whether Jin Yong can write. Come out with great works." The work was originally serialized in "Hong Kong Commercial Daily" from 1957 to 1959, and later included in "Jin Yong's Works Collection". ".The serialization of "Hong Kong Commercial Daily" once caused a sudden increase in the circulation of "Hong Kong Commercial Daily". Since this period, the so-called "Jin Yong fever" phenomenon has appeared in Hong Kong.

Jin Yong's novels were first serialized, written and published in Hong Kong. When they became popular, they were banned in the mainland and Taiwan due to political reasons. Later, they were renamed "The Legend of the Desert Heroes" and were published in Taiwan until the 1980s. It is considered to have officially entered the two places. In November 1984, the Guangzhou Branch of Popular Science Publishing House published Jin Yong's first book, which was the first to publish Jin Yong's novels in the Mainland. From 1984 to 1985, Jin Yong's martial arts novels reached a peak in the Mainland. In the prosperous 1980s, dozens of publishing houses in the mainland published various works of Jin Yong at the same time, which also led to the emergence of many different versions of the same work.Among all kinds of Jin Yong's martial arts novels, there are traditional versions and as many as seven or eight versions based on Hong Kong Minghe Society's photocopied version. Without the authorization of Jin Yong himself, piracy was rampant for a while, so that Jin Yong wrote in the "Preface" of the officially published triptych edition of "Jin Yong's Works Collection" in 1994, "The publishing process is very strange, no matter in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or overseas regions. , or mainland China, all kinds of reprinted and pirated copies are published first, and then the original version edited and authorized by me is published.” The dissemination of these reprinted or pirated martial arts novels reflects on the one hand the early stage of reform and opening up, and the long-term The general aesthetic taste of the society under the shackles of ideology, after completing the liberation of the mind, turned to focus on entertainment and entertainment through self-selection. On the other hand, it promoted the "popular literature" and The legitimation and legitimation process of "literature".Then, as the 83rd edition starring Hong Kong movie stars Weng Meiling and Huang Rihua, and other TV series starring Andy Lau and Chen Yulian became popular in the mainland, Jin Yong's works became popular in China in the early days of reform and opening up.

However, Jin Yong's martial arts novels were finally recognized, and it still went through a long and complicated process.In China, novels have long been regarded as "small ways" and "low streams" and cannot be considered elegant. The New Literary Revolution introduced Western literary and artistic thoughts into China and broke the world's prejudice against novels. The "official history" is only the new literary novels created by the pioneers of the "May Fourth Movement", while the "popular novels" of Chinese folk traditions still cannot enter the main hall of literature. Since 1949, according to the literary paradigm established by "left-wing literature", "popular literature" has been placed on the opposite side of "socialist literature", so that "popular fiction" has almost disappeared in mainland China, and replaced by "popular literature". Love to hear and see" "popular literature and art".During the Cultural Revolution, the highly centralized and mechanical dualistic logic of "progress and backwardness" even eradicated "popular literature", and the entertainment of "workers, peasants and soldiers" literature and art that "represented the masses" was completely wiped out and replaced by The function of ideological education.After the reform and opening up, the original rigid thinking mode and unbalanced judging standards were questioned and denied, and the "forbidden zone" of literature was constantly broken through. Jin Yong's martial arts novels took this opportunity to enter the mainland. In May 1994, Beijing Joint Publishing Co., Ltd. released a set of 36 "Jin Yong's Works". Once it went on the market, it quickly occupied the huge sales market in the mainland, and has maintained a stable sales volume every year since then.

In August 1994, the "20th Century Chinese Literary Master Library" edited by Wang Yichuan and other scholars was published. Wang Yichuan, the editor of the novel volume, ranked Jin Yong as the fourth novelist, second only to Lu Xun, Shen Congwen and Ba Jin, ranking Lao She, Yu Dafu, Wang Meng, Before Zhang Ailing and Jia Pingwa, Mao Dun, who was always respected by mainland academic circles in the past, was not selected. Once the news came out, the literary world was in an uproar. Faced with doubts, Wang Yichuan said, "For a long time, we have only used the standard of 'realism' to measure literature. This is biased. The characteristics of Jin Yong’s works are that they use popular techniques to express profound connotations. Although the plots and details are absurd, they express the charm of ancient Chinese culture.” , His works have enriched the types of Chinese novels, and have intrinsic value of admiration and affirmation. The set of books we compiled is also trying to bring a novel vision to the literary world through this novel arrangement."

On October 25 of the same year, Jin Yong was awarded an honorary professor by Peking University. At the appointment ceremony of Mr. Jin Yong, Professor Yan Jiayan from the Chinese Department of Peking University published the article "A Quiet Literary Revolution" as a congratulatory speech, saying that "the emergence of Jin Yong's novels , marking a great success in transforming popular literature with Chinese new literature and modern Western experience", and pointed out that "if the 'May 4th' Literary Revolution made novels go from despised 'idle books' to the top of literature Then, Jin Yong’s artistic practice made modern martial arts novels enter the palace of literature for the first time. This is another literary revolution, a revolution that is quietly going on. Jin Yong’s novels, as a 20th century Chinese culture Miracle, should become a glorious chapter in the history of literature."Afterwards, in 1995, Yan Jiayan offered a course of "Study on Jin Yong's Novels" in the Chinese Department of Peking University, formally introducing Jin Yong's martial arts novels into the palace of literary research in China's top universities. Some people even commented: Peking University has become "a center of Jin Yong's research".

This series of actions has aroused extensive discussion and controversy in the academic circles. Just when a group of scholars were pleasantly surprised to discover the "fresh blood" in the history of literature, they believed that Jin Yong's works provided a major impetus for "communicating elegance and vulgarity", and tried to introduce Jin Yong into orthodoxy. In the history of literature, critics also heard voices of opposition. On December 2, 1994, "Southern Weekend" published an article by Yan Lieshan titled "Rejecting Jin Yong". The wonderful pen makes a hero or sage who walks with his head come alive." Professor Lin Huanping of the Chinese Department of Guangxi Normal University also published an article "On the Rearrangement of the Literary World" in the March 1995 issue of "Literary Theory and Criticism" , the article first affirms several obvious characteristics of Jin Yong's novels: 1. Jin Yong has relatively rich historical knowledge and a deep understanding of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is an innovation; 2. Jin Yong's martial arts novels attach great importance to shaping characters, using characters to drive the development of the storyline, and writing lifelike and dazzling characters; 3. Most of Jin Yong's martial arts novels are long novels, with dramatic ups and downs, openings and closings , with huge structure and majestic momentum; 4. Both refined and popular tastes are the artistic charm of Jin Yong's novels.At the same time, the article also refuted various arguments in the phenomenon of "Jin Yong fever", arguing that Jin Yong's novels are new martial arts novels, but a type of modern novels, not the development direction of modern novels; "New literature, proletarian revolutionary literature, literature and art of workers, peasants and soldiers, and today's socialist literature are the targets of the revolution. They want to establish a new literary tradition, so they cannot be called a "literary revolution"; Severe rebuttal: "Seven or eight years ago, some people proposed that modernism was the direction of Chinese literature development, and they wanted to rewrite the history of modern literature, which was criticized by the literary and art circles. Today, some people also proposed that Jin Yong's novels are the direction of Chinese literature development. Arranging the seats in the literary world makes people feel that the idea of ​​rewriting the history of modern literature seven or eight years ago has been put into practice in a different way under new circumstances?"

In response to these objections, Yan Jiayan refuted the internal logic of the above-mentioned article with the article "Responding to "Rejection of Jin Yong"——Also on the Literary History Status of Jin Yong's Novels", and pointed out in many future articles that the reason why Jin Yong's novels were received by different ages , different standpoints, and readers with different cultural backgrounds are widely sought after, and the reasons are roughly as follows: 1. Jin Yong’s novels are thoughtful entertainment. As popular literature, martial arts novels are entertaining and pastime. However, almost every kind of Jin Yong’s novels has profound thoughts in different degrees. The heroic image of "for the people", and through a political discussion between Guo Jing and the elderly Genghis Khan near the end, it explores what kind of person is a real hero.Looking back on his life, Genghis Khan was full of ambition and felt that he conquered all over the world and built a country that was unparalleled, and no hero in ancient or modern times could match him.Guo Jing disagreed. He said: "A hero who is admired by the world and admired by future generations must be a person who benefits the people and loves the people." Killing many people does not necessarily count as a hero.This point of view is full of historical and realistic depth, and raises my thoughts one step higher;

2. Although Jin Yong's novels describe ancient themes, they are permeated with modern spirit.Traditional martial arts novels were born in the long feudal society of China. While carrying forward the spirit of chivalry, they also left special imprints such as envy and bloodthirsty, enthusiasm for official career, Han nationality standard, superstitious retribution, and even slavery consciousness. Jin Yong's works are A series of changes have been carried out on such ideas.Guo Jing in the movie, with family enmity and national hatred, took revenge on Wanyan Honglie, but later caused a ideological crisis: when he thought of the word "revenge", the tragedy of the Khwarazmo massacre immediately came to his mind.He thought to himself that although he had avenged his father, he killed so many innocent people, how could he feel at ease?It seems that this matter of revenge may not be right.

3. Jin Yong reformed the creation method of martial arts novels, from romanticism to symbolism. This innovation in the creation method not only greatly enriched the expressive means of martial arts novels, but also made the works show multi-layered ideological connotations outside the world of martial arts , thus greatly expanding the artistic capacity of such novels; 4. Jin Yong's novels also contain the rich heritage of traditional culture and the profound spirit of the Chinese nation, reflecting a very high cultural taste that has never been seen in martial arts novels in the past.Although Jin Yong's martial arts novels were produced in the commercialized environment of Hong Kong, they do not have the vulgar taste and vulgar atmosphere of old-style martial arts novels. The literature, history, science and technology classics of many nationalities and various categories of traditional literature and art have raised martial arts novels to a very high cultural level.Jin Yong's novels also extensively draw on the strengths of various literature, even dramas and movies, and pay attention to the internal logic of the plot of the novel and the shaping of the character of the characters.Jin Yong also often uses drama to organize and construct the content of novels, so that certain novel scenes have the effect of stage performances. The scenes of leaving and leaving, and Ke Zhen'e hiding behind the statue of the Iron Spear Temple and slowly learning the truth about Ouyang Feng's murder of the Jiangnan Five Monsters and then blaming Huang Yaoshi, all borrowed the means of stage scheduling from the drama to enrich the plot content of the work. The "Jin Yong Controversy" that occurred in the mid-1990s can actually be said to be a "controversy between elegance and vulgarity" in the literary world, or it can be said to be the practice of canonization of "popular literature". The deeper level of this debate is It reflects that in the mid-1990s, when the ideological emancipation had been initially completed, a large number of scholars were eager to realize the academic ideal of rewriting literary history by re-examining and defining previous concepts of literary history. After some debates, popular literature not only did not disappear from the history of literature again, but instead attracted the attention of the research community. The study of "elegant/vulgar" literature has also become a new topic for many researchers to study. Jin Yong's martial arts novels As a representative of contemporary popular literature, it has received widespread attention. In 1998, seminars on Jin Yong's novels were held in the United States, mainland China and Taiwan.As the "Jin Yong fever" heated up again, in the late 1990s, the "Jin Yong controversy" once again set off in mainland China, but the origin of this debate was Wang Shuo, a mainland writer who also created "popular literature". On November 1, 1999, "China Youth Daily" published an article titled "I see Jin Yong". From the language to the conception, it is basically the old vernacular novel's cliché", the theme is "killing people in the name of morality, prostitution and robbery under the guise of propagating Buddhism", and the characters are "narrow, rough, with serious impairments in audiovisual ability and expressive ability, Almost unreasonable, lawless, the spiritual world has almost no capacity, and can only recognize a little bit of people and things in front of us, and all actions are almost simple conditioned reflexes." Jin Yong's novels are listed together with the Four Heavenly Kings, Jackie Chan movies and Qiong Yao TV series It is called the "Four Customs", and lists new era literature, rock and roll, generations of teachers and students of Beijing Film Academy, and the decade of Beijing Television Art Center as the "Four Pillars".As soon as this article came out, it attracted widespread attention from the major media. Many media set up special topics for this, sparking debates. In contrast, the reaction of the literary research circles and critics was much calmer. Chen Mo, an expert on Jin Yong studies in the Mainland, pointed out that Wang Shuo's criticism raises objections, arguing that Jin Yong's novels are constantly moving from martial arts fantasies to life reality, from classical values ​​to modern life, not "fictitious images of a group of Chinese people." Subsequently, Yuan Liangjun published the article "Let's Talk about Elegance and Vulgarity——Taking Jin Yong as an Example" on "China Reading News" on November 10, 1999, affirming the emergence of Jin Yong's martial arts novels, "It is not only a rebirth of the old martial arts novels, but also opened up a new era of martial arts. A new era of novels", but thinks that he "still can't completely get rid of the chronic problems of old martial arts novels, and still can't leave behind many vulgar and inferior failures". , unconstrained, unconstrained, cloudy and foggy, swords and swords, fighting and killing, forming cliques, placing martial arts on the historical background, with side effects of confusing the real with fake ones, and finally attribute Jin Yong's novels to low-grade and low-grade bestsellers, and "You're welcome To put it bluntly, it is time for an outdated and outdated literary form like martial arts novels to withdraw from the new stage of literary history.”This kind of criticism and opposition is obviously based on the standpoint of the intellectual elite, out of a sense of social responsibility and mission to criticize the ills of martial arts novels, but because of their sense of crisis, they form too extreme views and words, which will inevitably be criticized. Afterwards, Yan Jiayan wrote several articles to discuss Jin Yong's novels with Yuan Liangjun. Although the "Jin Yong craze" continues to trigger people's various debates, in any case, Jin Yong is indeed a lucky writer. He has been writing martial arts novels for more than ten years, and it has been more than 30 years since he closed his pen. During these more than 30 years, He witnessed the process of gradually completing the "classicization" of his works in the dispute between "pursuing Jin Yong" and "rejecting Jin Yong". Jin Yong: Joint Bookstore, May 1994 Edition Jin Yong: Joint Bookstore, May 1994 Edition Yan Jiayan: "A Quiet Literary Revolution - A Congratulatory Message at the Ceremony of Cha Liangyong's Honorary Professorship at Peking University", Ming Pao Monthly, Hong Kong, December 1994 Yan Lieshan: "Reject Jin Yong", "Southern Weekend", December 2, 1994 Yuan Liangjun: "Let's Talk about Elegance and Vulgarity - Taking Jin Yong as an Example", "China Reading News", November 10, 1999 Edited by Wen Shuo and Li Ke: "I'm a Networm Whom I'm Afraid of: Netizens Confronting the "Golden King Controversy"", China Radio and Television Press, 1999 edition