Critic Explores the Depth of Louis Cha's Kungfu Novels

By Sun Kan

Critic Explores the Depth of Louis Cha's Kungfu Novels

By Sun Kan

Over the past 20 plus years， literary critic Long Bide has studied Louis Cha's Kungfu novels systematically. He considers them as literary masterpieces that embrace the essence of Chinese culture.

Louis Cha's penname is Jin Yong and not so many people in China know his real name. His kungfu novels， which were mostly written in the 1950 and the 1960s and published in Hong Kong， became blockbusters on the mainland in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The novels touched off a reading craze for years. Back then， Long worked for the Zhejiang Federation of Literary and Art Circles as director of art and literature studies. He was fascinated by the phenomenal novels and read them enthusiastically.

A Deadly Secret was the first Jin Yong novel he read. The story opens with a scene set in Yuanlin in China's central Hunan Province. Yuanlin is Long's birthplace and this brought him very close to the novel. He became curious， began wondering when Jin Yong visited Yuanlin， how he picked the place to start a legendary story， who the prototypes were and then he wondered what was in the novel for him， a literary critic. He got hooked. After going through the novel， he found he liked it and began to examine the author and the novel from a critic's perspective.

Back then， it was not so easy to buy the Kungfu novelist's blockbusters on the mainland. Long managed to get a full complete set through various channels. He read them all. Sometimes， he just forgot to eat and sleep. He had never encountered novels that would totally get him over the past decadesas a critic. For a while， he even dreaded reading Jin Yong for they derailed his work schedule.

收录有作者有关金庸论文的评论集。Long Bide's reviews of Louis Cha's novels appear in these essay collections.

From the very beginning， he designed an essential rule for his exploration of the novels by Jin Yong: appreciate the works from a perspective of a common reader and try to obtain a comprehensive evaluation.

Long considers some parts of the novels as essays， believing they are worth exploring aesthetically and literarily in terms of narration， imagination， characterization，description， language and aesthetics. In a few papers， he presents the analysis of the beauty of these essayistic parts. These papers showcase his obsession with Jin Yong's novels.

“Exploring the Chinese characteristics of Jin Yong's kungfu novels is my focus，”remarks Long. Jin emphasizes the Chinese tradition and cultural essence in his novels. The novelist writes about Confucius behavioral code in everyday life and characteristics such as love， brotherhood， kindness， pacifism， sacrifice， fortitude， pursuit of freedom. The choices he makes and the sublimation he achieves in the novels are all based on these characteristics. And the novels are styled in the tradition of Chinese novels， which presents each chapter with a couplet giving the gist of its content.

In Long Bide's evaluation， one feature stands out in Jin Yong's novels. The writer correctly handles the relations between tradition and modernity， ethnicity and humanity， reality and fction. The pacifsm and compassion in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils are rarely seen in other literary works—kungfu novels or otherwise. Both The Book and the Sword and The Deer and the Cauldron lampoon the stupidity of the rulers of the Qing Dynasty. In Ode to Gallantry and The Legend of the Condor Heroes， the author asks the quintessential philosophical question: Who am I？ The martial arts， the characters， the kungfu world， and the restructured history are all fction.

His ten papers are published in August 2015 in a new collection titled “The 20th-Century Miracle: Jin Yong's Novels”. This collection includes two of his new papers based on the two third-edition novels revised by Jin Yong.

Long Bide has established himself as a scholar of Jin Yong. He has attended key symposiums on Jin Yong and his novels in Hangzhou， Beijing， Hangzhou， Haining，and Peach Island of Zhoushan. He has kept a record of presenting a high-quality paper at every symposium. And his research is widely recognized for its academic broadness and depth by scholars at home and abroad.

Even Jin Yong has recognized Long Bide's studies. In the autumn of 2008， Jin Yong attended an international symposium on his kungfu novels in his hometown Haining in Zhejiang. Long met with Jin，presenting a list of his research papers on Jin's novels and how he had conducted his studies over decades. Jin expressed his appreciation of Long's study and said he knew the achievements Long had accomplished in his studies.