Chapter 43 postscript

Written from 1957 to 1959, it was serialized in "Hong Kong Commercial Daily".Recalling the love and encouragement of brother Li Shawei, editor of the supplement of "Hong Kong Commercial Daily" to this novel more than ten years ago, but he is no longer alive today, so I can't let me personally give the first volume of this revised edition He, thinking of his kind smile and slightly stuttering conversation, felt very bitter. The characters in "Shooting the Condors" have simple personalities, Guo Jingcheng is simple and honest, Huang Rong is witty and cunning, readers are easily impressed.This is a characteristic of traditional Chinese novels and dramas, but it inevitably lacks the complexity of the inner world of the characters.Probably due to the simple characters and lively plot, "Shooting the Condor" is relatively popular. It has been filmed in Cantonese and staged a series of Chaozhou dramas in Thailand. It is currently filming a TV series in Hong Kong; it has been translated into Siamese and Vietnamese. Chinese and Malay (Indonesian); there are quite a few types of novels such as "Seven Heroes of the South of the Yangtze River" and "Nine-fingered Beggars" by others.But myself, I feel that some of my later novels seem to have made some progress compared with "Shooting the Condors".

When I wrote "Shooting the Condors", I was working as a screenwriter and director at the Great Wall Film Company. During this period, the books I read were mainly Western dramas and drama theories, so some plots in the novel were unknowingly dramatized. , especially the part of healing in the secret room in Niujia Village, is completely a scene and character arrangement of a stage play.Brother Liu Shaoming brought up this fact, and I realized it myself, but it was completely unintentional when I wrote it.At that time, I thought that no one seemed to have used this method in novels, but I didn't think how many people had used it in dramas.

Many changes have been made during the revision.Some plots that are not necessarily related to the story or the characters were deleted, such as the little red bird, the battle between frogs and clams, the iron palm gang's murder, etc., and the character Qin Nanqin was removed, and she and Mu Nianci were combined into one.Some new plots are also added, such as Zhang Shiwu's storytelling at the beginning, Qu Lingfeng stealing paintings, Huang Rong forcing people to carry sedan chairs and encountering rain on Changling, Huang Chang's writing of "Nine Yin Scriptures" and so on.Chinese traditional novels originated from storytelling, and storytelling is used as an introduction to show the meaning of not forgetting the origin.

The deeds of Genghis Khan are mainly based on a very strange book.The original appearance of this book is weird, far better than "Nine Yin Scriptures". The title of the book is "Many Huo Lun Niu Cha Tuo must be red", with a total of nine Chinese characters.The book consists of twelve volumes, ten volumes in the main collection and two volumes in the sequel.In the twelve volumes, from the beginning to the end, there are all these gibberish Chinese characters. You and I can understand every word, but can't read a single sentence. It really is "a book with words".Many scholars all over the world have spent their whole lives studying and studying this book, and have published countless papers, special books, phonetic interpretations, and a dictionary specially compiled for this book. Look up the original meaning in the dictionary.Any scholar who studies world history in the past eight hundred years must read this book.

It turns out that this book is written in Mongolian in Chinese characters and was written in July 1240. "Monghuolun" means "Mongolia", "Niucha" means "secret" in Mongolian, and "Tubi Chiyan" means "Zongji". The combination of nine Chinese characters is "Secret History of Mongolia".It is very likely that this book was originally written directly in Chinese phonetic notation, because the Mongols did not have writing at that time.This book is a secret book of the Mongolian royal family, and it will never be passed on to outsiders, and it is kept in the palace of the Yuan Dynasty.After the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, it was given to the emperor of the Ming Dynasty. It was translated into Chinese in the 15th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty. It may be two foreigners who served in the Hanlin Academy in the Ming Dynasty.Both the strange text (Chinese characters and Mongolian) and the readable version (Chinese translation) were included in the "Yongle Dadian" compiled by Ming Chengzu, and have been handed down from this.There were many editions in the Ming and Qing dynasties, most of which deleted the strange texts and did not publish the original ones.

The first line of "Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty" is still the strange text with the title of the original book "Many Huo Lun Niu Cha Tuo must be red-faced".At first, scholars who studied the history of the Yuan Dynasty, such as Li Wentian, did not know what the meaning of the nine-character strange text was, and they all thought it was the name of the original author.It's no wonder that Ouyang Feng didn't understand the strange texts in "Nine Yin Scriptures" such as "Ha Hu Wen Bo Ying, Hu Tu Ke Er". Later, the "strange text" published by Ye Dehui spread to foreign countries, and sinologists from all over the world studied it enthusiastically.

The "Secret History of Mongolia" that I refer to is that the Outer Mongolian scholar Tse Damdin Sulong first restored the strange text of Chinese characters to the ancient Mongolian language (the original book was in the Mongolian language in the 13th century, which is different from the modern Mongolian language), and then translated it into Modern Mongolian, Chinese Mongolian scholar Xie Zaishan translated it into modern Chinese. "Secret History" is the original material, and several revisions have been handed down to the West, and then developed into many works, the most important of which is "Golden History" written by Persian Rasht.Before Western scholars saw China's "Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty", their works on Mongolian history were all based on "Golden History".Many deeds have been deleted in the revised version, such as Yesugei who robbed someone's wife and became Genghis Khan, Yesugei was poisoned to death, Genghis Khan was captured by the enemy, Genghis Khan's wife Puertie was robbed by the enemy and gave birth to a son Chi and Genghis Khan shot his half-brother Begter to death, etc., all of which are disgraceful to Genghis Khan.

Readers will naturally know where the idea of ​​the strange text in "Nine Yin Scriptures" got its inspiration from. The Mongols ruled all of China for 89 years and northern China for more than 100 years. However, due to their low culture, they did not leave any significant impact on the lives of the Chinese people.Mongols rarely intermarried with Han people, so they were not assimilated by Han people.According to Li Sichun in "Yuan Shixue", the influence of Mongolian on Chinese can only be tested by the word "恶", which means bad. here.When writing a novel with historical background, it is impossible to research every word like this clearly. Guo Xiaotian, Yang Tiexin, etc. have never had contact with the Mongols. The word "evil" should not have appeared in the dialogue, but I did not deliberately avoid it.All I try to avoid are words that are too modern in general, such as "thinking," "motivation," "problem," "impact," "purpose," "extensive," and so on. "So" is replaced with "so" or "is", "ordinary" is replaced by "common", "speed" is replaced by "speed", and "now" is replaced by "now", "present", "under the eyes", "now" ", "at this moment", "now" instead and so on.

The illustrations of the fourth volume (not included in the mainland edition—edited notes) include a Buddha statue painted by Zhang Shengwen, a Dali traditional Chinese painter. This picture has an inscription and postscript by Song Lian, a scholar of the Imperial Academy of the Ming Dynasty, which says: "A volume of the right Vatican image, the appearance of Zhang Shengwen, a Dali traditional Chinese painter. The left inscription says "it is a letter painting of Emperor Lizhen (left white and right ticket)". Later, there is a record of Shi Miaoguang. One day, all the colors and gold applied are extremely exquisite, and the characters written are not bad. Dali is originally the land of Yuyu in the Han Dynasty and Nanzhao in the Tang Dynasty. Changed to the present name, it was Siping during the Shi Jin period. When the Song Dynasty was weak, Gao Xiang and Gao He brothers were in charge. The commander of Yuan Xianzong destroyed his country and counties and counties. The so-called Gengzi should be Song Lizong Jiaxi Years, and those who benefit Zhen are the grandsons of the Duan family."

The date of reference is wrong.Song Lian believed that the "Gengzi" in the painting was the fourth year of Song Lizong Jiaxi (1240). In fact, he calculated it 60 years later, and it should be the seventh year of Song Xiaozong Chunxi (1180).The reason is that Song Lian did not check the history of Dali in detail, and did not know that Gengzi, the fifth year of Dali's prosperity, was in 1180, not Gengzi 60 years later.Another piece of evidence is that the title on the painting is that of Emperor Lizhen. Emperor Lizhen is Master Yideng Duan Zhixing (the name and story of Master Yideng were fabricated by me), and he shared Lizhen, Shengde, and Jiahui during his reign. , Yuanheng, Anding, and Hengshi (according to Luo Zhenyu's "Re-edited Jiyuanbian". There is no "Hengshi" year number in "Nanzhao Unofficial History") six year names.The Year of Gengzi mentioned by Song Lian (the fourth year of Emperor Lizong Jiaxi in Song Dynasty) was the reign of Emperor Xiaoyi Duan Xiangxing (grandson of Duan Zhixing) in Dali Kingdom, which was the second year of Daolong.

This picture is now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The description in the publications of the museum is based on Song Lian's textual research, and it seems that it can be corrected in the future. Song Lian was a well-known scholar in the early Ming Dynasty, the teacher of Zhu Yuanzhang's crown prince, and was known as the head of civil servants who founded the Ming Dynasty.However, the scholars of the Ming Dynasty were careless. Song Lian was ordered by the emperor to preside over the compilation of "Yuan History", and it was compiled in six months. "Yuan Shi" is one of the worst in the official history of China.Compared with "History of the Ming Dynasty", which was compiled from the seventeenth year of Kangxi to the fourth year of Qianlong, it took 60 years to complete the book. The sloppy and rigorous are far from each other. It is no wonder that later generations have to write "Xinyuan History" instead.Just from the fact that Song Lian wrote a painting and there was a difference of sixty years with a wave of his hand, one can imagine that "Yuan History" is full of mistakes.But Song Lian was honest and upright, and he would never flatter Zhu Yuanzhang. He had a very high moral character. December 1975