A Hero Borm

by Jin Yong

  That there is a deep relationship between Zen, Taoism and Chinese martial arts is undeniable, and the emphasis on discipline and lifelong study in the pursuit of enlightenment was incorporated into the latter. Cultivating oneself through the martial arts is less about prevailing against an enemy and more about finessing movements and turning attention to the workings of the body as well as the heart-mind. Fighting is an actualisation of these philosophies; the physical, a manifestation of the spiritual.

  The association between these ancient Chinese philosophies and the martial arts is all the more pronounced in fiction and film, where history and legend, fact and make-believe intertwine in a cocktail of breathtaking set pieces performed by strange and wonderful men and women in robes, fighting for righteousness and the moral code of the jianghu. This code reinforces the idea that fighting, in the futherance of good and noble ends, could coexist with the core Buddhist teaching of pacifism and Taoism’s “non-doing”, wu wei.

  Many fight scenes in the novel focus around characters trying to strike or press on their opponent’s “vital points”, also translated here as acupressure points or pressure points. This is built on the theory of the meridian system found in traditional Chinese and Indian medicines, which maps the flow of life-energy, qi in Chinese, around the body. Pressing or striking certain spots on the body is thought to create or relieve pain, and in the case of martial arts fiction, even kill. Scientific research into the theory has proved inconclusive, but certainly this kind of “Death Touch” fighting has become a significant feature of martial arts literature and film, especially in the twentieth century.

  Chinese martial arts literature has been around almost as long as the combat practices themselves. The earliest examples date from around 200 B.C., and by the Tang dynasty they had become increasingly popular, and they were developed into something approaching the contemporary novel form by the Ming (A.D. 1368–1644). Jin Yong’s stories first appeared in serial form in newspapers in late 1950s Hong Kong and were key to revitalising the genre in the second half of the twentieth century. To this day, Jin Yong remains the most widely read contemporary author writing in Chinese.

  Appendix II

  The “Condor Controversy”

  A WORD ON THE TITLE OF THE SERIES: Legends of the Condor Heroes. The character in the original Chinese title, “diao” , is usually translated as “eagle”. The word eagle does not refer to a natural group but to any bird of prey capable of hunting large vertebrates. However, the birds described in this volume are in fact much larger than the species of eagle found in Asia, and some are white in colour. As we will discover in future volumes in the series, these are fantastical creatures that practice martial arts and are even capable of teaching humans their skills. The Chinese character used, “diao”, provides no more specific information beyond the genus, Aquila, true eagles. Therefore, there is much to merit “eagle” as a translation.

  Since the novel’s first publication, however, the title has been translated into English many different ways. The one that has gained traction in various forums, on YouTube and online discussion sites: translates the bird as “condor”. The earliest concrete example I could find was the 1983 Hong Kong T.V.B. adaptation for television, and all the television adaptations since seem to have adopted this translation. Condors are native to the Americas, not to Asia. They are considerably larger than all the Asian species of eagle, but still appear to be smaller than the mythical birds in Legends of the Condor Heroes. I decided to continue with “condor” as a translation for the simple fact that many English-speaking fans already know the series by this name, and as the bird is fictional and clearly described in fantastical terms, there is no scientifically accurate translation to be found in any meaningful sense. This is fiction, after all. And Jin Yong’s work already belongs to a collective imagination, even in English. I want my translation to interact with these existing fans and the considerable time and passion that they have already invested in the series under this title, as well as to attract new readers.

  Appendix III

  Notes on the Text

  PAGE NUMBERS DENOTE THE FIRST TIME THESE CONCEPTS OR names are mentioned in the book.

  P. 2 WOLF-FANG CLUB

  A weapon that consists of a long wooden pole of varying lengths with one end covered in sharp spikes, reminiscent of the sixteenth-century English weapon known as the holy water sprinkler. The other end can be fitted with an additional point.

  P. 9 STEEL TAOIST EIGHT TRIGRAM DISK

  Qu San’s secret weapon, not otherwise in common use in martial arts fighting or in battle.

  P. 10 THE MARSHES OF MOUNT LIANG, ATTRIBUTED TO SHU NAI’AN.

  Also known in English as Water Margin and Outlaws of the Marsh among other titles, The Marshes of Mount Liang is considered one of the four great classical Chinese novels. Published in the sixteenth century during the Ming dynasty and written in the vernacular, the story is based on a real band of outlaws who fought against the Song until the gang’s surrender in A.D. 1121, when they started fighting with the Song against foreign invasion.

  P. 10 GENERAL YUE FEI

  General Yue Fei is one of China’s most beloved patriots and has appeared frequently in Chinese novels, poems and films throughout the centuries since his death in 1142. General Yue fought to regain the north after the Song capital in Kaifeng was sacked by the Jurchen Jin Empire and the Emperor Qinzong was captured, but he met a tragic end when he was imprisoned and later executed by the Song government itself when the new emperor realised General Yue’s success would likely dethrone him. Yue Fei’s name has become synonymous in China with righteous loyalty and he was quickly rehabilitated only some twenty years after his death.

  P. 18 QIU CHUJI

  A real historical figure and disciple of Wang Chogyang’s Taoist Quanzhen Sect. Jin Yong has taken creative licence to deviate somewhat from the historical record, including making him only around thirty years old at the start of this book, when in fact he would have been fifty-seven in the year 1205.

  P. 18 QUANZHEN SECT

  The Quanzhen School is a branch of Taoism that was founded by Wang Chogyang under the rule of the Jin. According to the school’s own legend, Wang met two immortals in the summer of A.D. 1159, who trained him in secret immortality rituals. Upon a second meeting, he was given a set of five instructions which led him to set up residence in a grave in the Zhongnan Mountains and dedicate himself to his training for three years. After seven years on the mountain, Wang met the first of his seven disciples. Each established their own branch, ensuring the school’s thinking would survive to this day.

  P. 23 JINGKANG INCIDENT

  In the year 1127, the Jurchen were on the march southwards and sacked the Song capital of Kaifeng. During the raid, they captured the Song emperor, Qinzong, along with his father, Emperor Huizong, and several of the imperial family, effectively bringing the period of the Northern Song to an end. Having lost large parts of the Chinese hinterland, what was left of the Chinese Empire fled south and settled in Lin’an, but the psychological damage caused by the incident was to send ripples throughout the centuries and still looms large in the Chinese cultural mind.

  It should be noted here that references to years in the western Dionysian system are merely for the convenience of the reader. In Chinese tradition, years were counted according to the lunar calendar from when an emperor declared a new “era name”. The name was designed to act like a motto or statement of intent for the emperor who chose it. Before the Ming and Qing dynasties, emperors often declared several different era names over the course of their time in power. The Jingkang incident is therefore named after the particular era name in which the event occurred, the meaning being “Serenity and Vitality”, reflecting a desire for peace and prosperity in such a tumultuous time politically.

  P. 42 THE NINE SPRINGS OF THE UNDERWORLD

  This is one of the many names given to the Chinese concept of the realm of the dead, or “hell”. It draws influence from the
Buddhist nakara, but also folk ideas about the afterlife, and it serves as a kind of purgatory before reincarnation. The significance of the number nine in Chinese is complex, and it is often associated with the emperor and imperial system of government. Hell was thought to be presided over by a system of courts, ten in number, as laid out by the Jade Emperor, the first god in Chinese culture. More importantly, the number nine also sounds like the character for “lasting” or “abiding” and therefore likely means “eternity”.

  P. 57 SYCEE INGOT

  The sycee was a shaped gold or silver ingot used as currency over the course of two millennia. Made by individual silversmiths, the designs and sizes varied and their value was determined by specialised money handlers.

  P. 78 GE HONG’S IMMORTALITY PILLS

  Ge Hong (A.D. 238–343) was a philosopher who dedicated his life to the search for immortality through alchemy.

  P. 81 IMMORTAL CLOUD SECT AND SOUTHERN SHAOLIN CONTROVERSY

  The Immortal Cloud Sect in Legends of the Condor Heroes is most definitely a Jin Yong invention, but it does appear to have at least a loose imaginative connection to the so-called southern Shaolin temple, built during the Tang dynasty in Fujian Province. The connection between the Shaolin temple in Henan and the southern Shaolin temple, long-since destroyed, is controversial. The current Abbot of Shaolin in Henan denies the legitimacy of the association and many believe it to be merely the stuff of folklore.

  P. 89 POINTS OF THE WHEEL FROM THE I’CHING

  The I’Ching, or Book of Changes as it is commonly translated, is one of the oldest Chinese classics and has its origins in the Western Zhou (1000–750 B.C.) as a divination text. Central to the text are the hexagrams, which are made up of two trigrams, that is, two sets of three lines, each either solid or broken. These are then arranged into the King Wen sequence and can also be laid out as a wheel. When done so, this wheel can operate a bit like a compass, the named points providing direction. In this sequence, Zhu Cong is calling out the names of hexagrams in order to give instruction to the blind Ke Zhen’e as to where he should throw his devilnuts. With sixty-four hexagrams in total, this system would provide very accurate guidance to within an angle of six degrees.

  P. 102 JING KE OR NIE ZHENG

  Jing Ke and Nie Zheng were ancient assassins who in the popular mind are known for their righteous self-sacrifice and loyalty because they carried out their work though it meant certain death for themselves. Nie Zheng was known for his filial piety, taking care of his mother until her death, before following through on his promise to assassinate the political enemy of his patron and kill himself in turn. Their stories were collected by the ancient historian Sima Qian in his Biographies of the Assassins.

  P. 107 GER

  Literally “home” in Mongolian, ger also refers to the characteristically round, portable tents covered in felts and animal skins that housed nomads across the steppes of Central Asia. More commonly known in English by the Turkic name “yurt”, a reference to the round imprint left in the grass when the tent is moved.

  P. 109 BANNER OF WHITE HORSEHAIR

  In this instance, “banner” does not refer to a flag made from cloth but rather a long pole with a crown of horse hair hanging from its top. The white banner was used to announce peace, the black in battle to declare war. Later, the banners were to become administrative and military divisions under the Manchu Qing dynasty.

  P. 112 TAYICHI’UD

  The Tayichi’ud were rivals of the Naiman and described as bitter enemies of Genghis Khan in The Secret History of the Mongols, a text written for the royal household. There are people who bear the clan name to this day in Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and the Republic of Kalmykia.

  P. 126 KOUMISS

  Koumiss is a mildly alcoholic fermented drink traditional to the Central Asian steppes, made from sheep’s milk.

  P. 128 WHISTLING ARROW

  Whistling arrows have a hollow bulbous head which creates a shrill sound when the arrow is fired. They were primarily used to relay messages and warnings in battle.

  P. 130 THE NAIMAN

  The Naiman were a tribe from western Mongolia. It is claimed that many Naiman were Nestorian Christians descended from the biblical Magi, but there is no archaeological evidence to support the idea that they were in fact Christian in this period. The Naiman later converted to Buddhism and Islam. Their khanate was destroyed by the Mongols and the people fled and spread across the Mongol Empire.

  P. 185 TOMB-SWEEPING DAY

  Tomb-Sweeping Day is an annual festival that falls on the fifteenth day of the spring equinox. Families take this day to remember their ancestors and recently deceased loved ones, whom they honour by cleaning their graves and praying to them.

  P. 211 ULAAN

  Mongolian for “red”.

  P. 255 LET ME DIE WITHOUT BLEEDING

  This story, and specifically Jamuka’s request, comes from The Secret History of the Mongols, the oldest known literary work in Mongolian, written after Genghis Khan’s death in 1227. The oldest surviving examples of the text are all transcribed into Chinese, however, and date from the fourteenth century as part of a history of the Mongol Yuan dynasty.

  P. 261 KINGDOM OF FERGANA

  Located in the Fergana Valley of modern-day eastern Uzbekistan, this ancient kingdom is thought to have had contact with the city of Alexandria Eschate, founded by Alexander the Great in 329 B.C. in the Jaxartes Valley. Greek statues have been found in the region. Chinese sources identify the kingdom as Indian or perhaps Greek in origin, and record that contact was made by a Chinese envoy in 128 B.C. This is the story given in this book.

  P. 275 MY GIVEN NAME IS LOTUS

  Lotus Huang is known to many fans by the pinyin transliteration of her name, Huang Rong. I wanted to translate her name as Lotus, however, as at this point in the story we the readers are let in on a secret that Guo Jing is not party to. As soon as we see her name written down, we know at once this “beggar boy” is, in fact, a girl – the character for “lotus”, “rong” is far too girly to be used for a boy’s name. But due to the fact that there are several Chinese characters that could be pronounced the same way or similar, Guo Jing doesn’t pick up on this. We know that Guo Jing is barely literate in Chinese, so he can be forgiven for his mistake. He is an honest young man, but clearly not the most perceptive, and this moment in the novel is an important way in which Jin Yong develops Guo Jing’s character, while letting Chinese readers in on the joke. If I had kept Lotus’ name in the pinyin, we English readers would be left feeling just as dim as poor Guo Jing.

  P. 280 ZHONGDU

  The Jin capital is referred to by two names in this book. Zhongdu was the new name given by the Jurchen when they seized the old Chinese city of Yanjing and made it the centre of their expanding Empire. The Chinese patriots in the book, such as Wang Chuyi, still call the city Yanjing, as an act of symbolic resistance or perhaps out of habit. The city first became an imperial capital in the State of Yan during the Zhou, established during the eleventh century B.C., and was later conquered by the first united Chinese Empire, the Qin, in 222 B.C. The name “China” comes from this first “united” Qin Empire. Yanjing and its environs was to continue to be an important sight of imperial power when the Mongols razed the city and built the capital of their Yuan Dynasty nearby. Yanjing was later to become Beijing, China’s current capital.

  P. 300 BEGGAR CLAN

  The Beggar Clan or Beggars’ Sect is an entirely fictional martial arts sect that appears in the fiction of several writers, Jin Yong among them, and in a number of films. This patriotic band of martial artists was established during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.– A.D. 220) and survived into the Mongol Yuan dynasty.

  P. 331 HIS EXCELLENCY MR XIN

  Xin Qiji led his first military campaign against the Jurchen at the age of twenty-two, and he later went on to capture notorious traitor Zhang Anguo. In addition to his military exploits, Xin Qiji was known as one of the period’s best poets. Great Chinese st
atesmen were often cultivated in other arts such as literature, music and calligraphy, as befitted their status as intellectuals.

  This song is called “Plum Blossom”, written to the tune of “Auspicious Immortal Crane”. This type of poetry was written to specific rules of prosody, and was always arranged as a tune. The music itself has long since been lost. Although such poetry was written over many centuries, the Song dynasty is synonymous with the genre, as poets found it particularly suited to expressing their sorrow over the crumbling of the Chinese Empire and the tragic and unsettling effects of war.

  P. 342 EMEI NEEDLES

  Emei Needles are a traditional weapon in the Chinese martial arts that originated on Mount Emei and consist of two metal rods with points, attached to a ring that is worn on the middle finger. They are designed to confuse an adversary so that the attacker can get close enough to punch.

  P. 347 VICTORY WITHOUT PARALLEL

  Wangyan Honglie is referring to the Jingkang incident of 1127. (See note to p. 23, above.)

  P. 349 THE TUNES

  These song titles are all examples of standard tunes to which poets wrote lyrics. As noted above in the entry for Xin Qiji on p. 331, the music has long since been lost, but the underlying rhyming scheme and rhythm can be recreated from reading examples of lyrics written to the same tune. Yue Fei’s most famous lyric poem, written to the tune of “River Runs Red”, was supposedly composed when his military campaigns against the Jurchen were halted by the Song government. Many modern literary historians dispute the fact that it actually came from Yue’s brush, however, believing instead that it was written some three hundred years later.