Hong Kong Identity in Jin Yong’s Works
Hong Kong culture shares roots with Lingnan culture prevailing in the Greater Bay Area.
Louis Cha, better known by his pen name Jin Yong, was one of the most well-known martial arts novelists in modern China. He enjoyed unshakable literary status after authoring 15 martial arts novels. Official English translations of Legends of the Condor Heroes, Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain and The Deer and the Cauldron are popular in the United States and the United Kingdom. And Jin’s international fans have already translated all his collections into various languages. Back on January 3, 1989, the New York Times wrote of Jin Yong: “To Chinese readers, he is virtually a one-man literary movement, more a genre than an author.” Jin’s martial arts novels are one of the peaks of Hong Kong culture. While telling the stories of knights and swordsmen, Jin’s works simultaneously
demonstrate Hong Kong people’s love for their homeland and their search for national identity.
The patriotism, chivalry and enterprising spirit embodied by the heroes and heroines in Jin Yong’s novels can be traced back to the profound cultural tradition of the Lingnan region.
Legends of the Condor
Heroes centers on Guo Jing, son of Guo Xiaotian (Skyfury Guo), a righteous swordsman in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Guo Jing grew up in Mongolia and became a knight. Yang Kang, the son of Yang Tiexin (Ironheart Yang), another noble man, joined the Southern Song Dynasty’s enemy, the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) of Mongolian people for fame and wealth. When Mongolia invades the Southern Song Dynasty, Guo Jing discards his love for Mongolia and turns to fight the
enemy with his wife Huang Rong. The main characters of the novel are Guo and Huang. They are typical Chinese heroes, standing up when the nation is in peril. They are hailed for their honesty, sense of responsibility, patriotism and readiness to sacrifice their life for justice, the country and its people.
The Song Dynasty hero Qiao Feng (called Xiao Feng in the Khitan tribe) of Demi-gods and Semi-devils is a relatively complicated figure. The character captures the identity anxiety and struggle among Hong Kong people at a deeper level. Jin Yong described Qiao Feng as a hero of the Central Plains of China during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). He appears in the story with flawless martial arts and high prestige. The hero becomes involuntarily involved in a whirlpool of national collisions because of his peculiar identity: He was born in Khitan and grew up in the Central Plains. This identity confusion plagues his entire life. When the Khitan people invade the Song Dynasty, Qiao Feng commits suicide in the battlefield to make the warring parties stop the war. In Demi-gods and Semi-devils,