Jin Yong – Sword of the Yue Maiden

Last episode, we talked about Jin Yong’s background. This episode, we dive into a relatively short text by Jin Yong, one of the last he wrote, “The Sword of the Yue Maiden.” This is the story of a King made a slave by a neighboring king, and his quest for vengeance. In it, he comes across a little girl with magical Kung Fu skills and a government official using his lover in a case of sexpionage. It is an action-packed episode!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Show

Check out the great talk on Jin Yong between Laszlo Montogmery and Alice Poon: China History Podcast – Conversation with Alice Poon on Jin Yong

Also, this is a great resource for anyone looking to get into Kung Fu fiction: Translation of Jin Yong’s Sword of the Yue Maiden

Script

 My name is Lee Moore, and this is the Chinese literature podcast. In the last episode, I introduced Jin Yong, the man who pretty much single handedly invented the modern form of Kung Fu literature. The best selling author in all of Chinese history. 300 million books that he’s written have been purchased, though if you combine that number with the number of books pirated, it’s probably gonna be more like Billion books.

Again, that’s just a rumor that I’ve read. That’s the best data that we have on it. After I aired that last episode, Laszlo Montgomery over at the Great China History Podcast told me he was airing an episode on Jin Yong, an interview he did with Alice Poon. She herself is a Hong Kong fantasy science fiction writer.

The two of them talk about Jin Yong. Check that out. I’m going to link to it on the podcast page. It’s a really good interview. Laslo and I did not coordinate this. It was just , as we say in Chinese. It was really faded in the last episode when I talked about Gin Yung, I didn’t do a particular text that he had written This week’s episode, I’m gonna dive into a particular text, the Sword of the UA Maiden Yen.

The Sword of the Yue Maiden is a text that I taught last quarter for my Chinese popular culture class. I’m teaching it in about two weeks in my Chinese narrative class. This is a short story. Actually, I don’t know if you can call it that. I, I’m putting the word short in scare quotes. It gets kind of long.

My students complained about it being too long, and it’s a little bit longer than what I normally assign. The story is about this sword. 14, 000 words long in English translation, that’s, doesn’t qualify as a book. It’s kind of getting up there into novella length though. It’s a fairly long short story. But the reason I assign it is because it’s Jin Yong’s shortest work.

So if I want to do something on Jin Yong, I have to assign it. His full length novels are stunningly long and even more convoluted than this short story. That’s actually the reason that it’s taken me so long to do a podcast on Jin Yong. He’s long, I’m not a big fan of his style, but again, I can’t underline this often enough.

Jin Yong is the best selling author in Chinese history, full stop. So whatever I think of Jin Yong, it doesn’t matter. Whenever you hear me whining about how long he is or how difficult it can be to follow his plot lines, I want you to hear a cash register sound. A cash register sound effect in the background, the man sold books, something that I am starting out as an author only realizing how much work it is to sell books.

Okay, that’s enough about context. If you want more, check out the previous episode that I did, or check out that episode with Alice Poon at the China History Podcast. Let’s get into the Sword of the Yue Maiden. So this story was serialized, like so many of his novels, I think all of them. The story is serialized from January, 1970 in the Ming Pao Evening Supplement.

Ming Pao was his paper. He was the owner. This short story. is the last work of Kung Fu fiction that he publishes, but it’s surprisingly also the story with the setting that is the earliest of all the settings that Jin Yong creates for his novels. The story is set during the spring and autumn period. The spring and autumn period lasts from 770 to 476 BC in Chinese history.

This story takes place sometime in the 470s BC. There is an ongoing conflict between two states, the state of Wu and the state of Yue. These states are both in southern China. Jinyong’s story is actually the melding of these two different folklores that are coming together. First, there is this. Folklore about these two states, the state of Wu and the state of Yue.

These two states are beefing. They’re fighting with each other. They’re having a series of wars. There’s a long litany of things that both the King of Wu and his name is King Fuchai and King Goujian, who is the King of Yue. There’s this long list of things that they have been fighting. The two countries have been fighting for a while.

Jin Yong’s story picks up right in the middle of this King Goujian. of Wu has been on the losing end of these fights. King Goujian was captured and forced to be the slave of King Fucai for three years. King Fucai of Wu, in the ultimate boneheaded, naive move in Chinese literature, releases King Goujian, telling him, okay, I’ve shown you how powerful I am.

Don’t mess with me again. And then he gives King Goujian his freedom. But what he doesn’t know is that King Goujian has sworn that he will do whatever it takes, spend all of the money he has, waste as many years of his life as he needs in order to get vengeance on King Fu Chai for enslaving him. All of that is background.

All of that happens before the story begins. All of that is a legend well known to all Chinese school children. There’s actually a famous Chengyu about it.

It literally means something like sleeping on wood and tasting gall. And that is what King Goujian had to do for years in order to remind himself that he is going to seek vengeance on King Fuchai. The story begins as King Goujian is trying to figure out a way to get that vengeance. He spent years sleeping on wood and tasting gall.

He is scheming for how to get his vengeance. And in the opening scene, you have a sword fight going on, but as the story begins, it’s not actually clear what’s going on. There are just two groups of men fighting. As you read, it becomes clear that. They’re just having a, not a play fight, that’s not the right word, maybe some sort of fight competition.

The competition is between these two groups of the brocade clad men and the black robed men. King Goujian is asking them to fight. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that King Goujian is having the fighters from Yue fight the best. Fighters from the kingdom of Wu in order to prepare them to attack the kingdom of Wu.

Of course the fighters from Wu never realized that this is King Guo Zhen’s plan. They think they’re just showing off. They’re just flexing on the people. of Yue. Part of the reason that they think this is because King Goujian is super submissive to King Fuchai and others from Wu. King Goujian goes out of his way to make it clear that he wants to be submissive.

But again, this is all just part of Goujian’s plan to trick King Fuchai and the rest of the people of, of the kingdom of Wu into thinking that he is not a danger. Another reason that These fighters don’t get what’s going on is because they’re just all super cocky these fighters from Wu Think they’re bad mamma jamas.

They’re drunk They start talking crap to the people of Yue. The people of Yue want to fight them But again because King Guo Jian wants to be submissive. He doesn’t want to show that he is actually seeking vengeance So he’s very strategic and he also Orders his people, the people of Yue, not to fight the Wu foreigners, no matter what.

You have to be submissive. You can’t show that you’re seeking vengeance. So these fighters from Wu, they’re out there, they’re drunk, they’re strutting their stuff, picking fights with the locals. They need someone to fight. The locals have been ordered not to fight them, not to show their strength, not to show their anger, but the people, but these fighters from Wu, they want to fight, they need someone to kill.

They run into a little girl who has a goat and they slice the girl’s goat in half just like the bullies that they are. But then something unexpected happens. The girl tells those goat murdering punks that they can’t go around bullying people and murdering other people’s goats. The little girl’s parents are there and they’re like No!

No! No! Leave these mean men alone! Get out of there! But the girl actually Takes a bamboo pole that she has been using for herding and she’s obviously not gonna need it anymore for herding And what does she do? She goes and whoops all of them drunken cocky wool warriors She blinds some of them with her pole and gets kind of nasty and then you know what she does She actually taunts these goat murdering wool folks.

She goes, all right now How much money are you gonna give me to pay me to compensate me for my goat killing? that y’all killed. The girl’s name is Ah Ching. She is a shepherd from a poor family. She hates having to sell her goats for people to eat, but she has no other way of making money to buy food for her family.

One of King Gojin’s bureaucrats, his name is Fan Li. Fan Li is the poet. political genius behind King Goujian’s plot to take revenge on King Fuchai. Fan Li sees this fight, Fan Li sees Ah Qing whoop these warriors, and Fan Li says, Ah Ching, I will feed your family. All I want you to do, little girl, is to train our soldiers to kick butt like that.

And then finally ask, Ah Ching, where did you learn to fight like that? Who is your master? Ah Ching replies, I ain’t got no master. I just learned my moves from play fighting with Grandpa Bai. Who is Grandpa Bai? Grandpa Bai lives up in the mountains. He’s actually not a human, but a white Jinyong says Grandpa Bai is a white ape.

Of course, we all know that humans are themselves apes, but Jinyong got his PhD in Chinese history, not anthropology. So we’re going to give him a pass. Anyways, Fan Li goes up and tries to see Grandpa Bai. Fan Li actually starts fighting Grandpa Bai. And Grandpa Bai tries to kill Fanli, but Ah Qing ends up breaking up their fight and, and actually breaking the arm of Grandpa Bai.

What happens next? Ah Qing goes to the palace. She shows off her Kung Fu skills for King Guo Jian. She whoops all of the Yue swordsmen, not the Wu swordsmen, the Yue swordsmen who are working for King Guo Jian. A Qing is amazing at fighting, and these Kung Fu masters employed by King Guo Jian just cannot keep up with her, but a couple of them are able to pick up some skills just by watching her.

Then, A Qing disappears, vanishes. We don’t know where she goes. King Guo Raises an army, invades Wu, his men using the skills A Qing taught them. They stomp Wu. King Fu Chai retreats into the mountains. Then, Fan Li, that political genius, reconnects with Xi Shi. Xi Shi is famous in Chinese. literature as a beautiful woman.

She’s also famous as someone who’s dangerous. In this case, Xi Shi has been deployed by Fan Li as an agent of Sexpionage. That is, a spy who uses sex as an entree to be an influence agent. Xizhe has been sleeping with King Fucai, but also she’s apparently whispering secrets to Fanli, though that part is never discussed in the story.

That is just known from the historical context that Jinyong’s imagined reader would be expected to know. Fan Li reconnects with Xi Shi. They’re lovers, apparently. Though obviously not exclusive lovers, since she has been sleeping with King Fu Chai. Fan Li and Xi Shi talk about how much they have missed each other.

They’re having this moment of reconnection. It’s very pretty. And who should show up? A Qing, of course. And what does A Qing do? She tries to kill Xi Shi. Fan Li realizes that the reason A Qing, this girl with the goat, helped the state of Yue, it has nothing to do with her being patriotic. It’s entirely because she has a little girl crush on Fan Li himself.

When A Qing sees Xi Shi and Fan Li reuniting, that Breaks Itching’s heart. I’m not gonna spoil the ending, but even if I did want to spoil the ending, I actually don’t know how I could, ’cause the end is pretty ambiguous. I’m not sure what happens. It’s kind of weird. We were talking about it in class No one actually agreed on what happened at the end of the story.

I’m not gonna give y’all any more clues What I can say is that this story is a good entree for someone wanting to get into Jin Yong But doesn’t know where to start. This story is great for the following reasons Like I said at the beginning this story is relatively short compared with Jin Yong’s Other work.

It’ll take you probably two hours to read. It’s not super short, but it is the shortest that Jinyoung does. Second, the story is pretty exciting. I hope that came across in the retelling. I have, in my retelling, eliminated some of the more boring parts. Jinyoung has this tendency to tendency to be very discursive.

I didn’t talk about the history of the sword or the sword maker because I didn’t think that really added much to the story, but there are whole chapters dedicated to that. I’m not supposed to say this as a person with a PhD in literature who teaches Literature. You should feel free to skip those parts of the story.

The writer has an obligation to you, the reader. You, as the reader, do not have that much of an obligation to the writer. Maybe you have some obligation, but it’s very limited. I give you permission. Do it. Okay, third, the reason this is a good story to start with. is that this story shows how Jinyong incorporates earlier Chinese mythologies into his own modern fairy tales.

So we have the story of Goujian, the story of Xishi, and the story of Aqing, the Yue Maid. All three of these stories come together in a, in a story. Repackaging of earlier Chinese mythologies. And the fourth reason that this story is a good story to start out on is Jinyong’s story here has actually been translated and placed online on a website that I actually think is a fantastic resource.

I’m going to link to it in the description. the podcast site but that website is called wuxiasociety. com so that’s w u x i a society. com wuxiasociety. com has tons of translations of kung fu fiction that is wuxia fiction and they just happen to have translated the entire Sword of the Yue Maiden, into English.

I’m going to post that link in the podcast website, ChineseLiteraturePodcast. com, check the part under this particular episode, and I will put it into the show notes. I don’t always do this, but I’m trying to put a transcript of the show notes in, into those episodes as well, if you want to read through that.

While you’re on the The website, Chinese literature, podcast. com. If you wouldn’t mind, please pre pre order my book, China’s backstory, the literature and history behind today’s front page, China news. You don’t have to give a credit card, just give your email address. My publisher will give you occasional updates on the book and its publication.

Today’s Chengyu, no extra points for guessing. It is. Like I said, Before, it literally means something like sleeping on wood and tasting gall. But today the phrase is used to mean something like someone who’s willing to do whatever has to be done, enduring whatever hardships it takes to achieve that person’s goals.

This is actually a pretty good little chungyu to have. I’ve heard it used many a times. All right, that’s it for me. I’m Lee Moore, and this is the Chinese Literature Podcast.