Short Non-Fiction - Jin Yong and Literary Kung-fu/Gongfu

I recently finished reading A Hero Born, the first volume in Jin Yong's epic kung-fu saga, Legend of the Condor Heroes. Jin Yong, the pen name of Louis Cha, published Condor Heroes in serialized format from 1957-1959, in the pages of the Hong Kong Commercial Daily. You can find Anna Holmwood's excellent translation at Maclehose Press (www.maclehosepress.com), but the simplest method of purchasing a copy may be through Kindle (where you can find all four volumes of Legend).

Legend of the Condor Heroes is easily one of the most popular works of fiction in the 20th century, having sold over 300 million copies and been adapted into numerous film and television productions. However, the work was only recently translated into English, leaving much of the non-Chinese world oblivious to a body of work that shaped the collective imagination of hundreds of millions of people. Jin's writings, and the success of his novels and their various adaptations, built the foundations of the modern kung-fu industrial complex.

Paul Foster's article, “Jin Yong and the Kung-Fu Industrial Complex,” provides a brief but insightful exploration of the idea of the kung-fu industrial complex and the central role that Jin’s work plays in both historic developments of the complex and contemporary activity. Foster also identifies several forms of rhetorical kung-fu in Jin’s work, demonstrating how the idea of kung-fu extends beyond physical conflict and also includes mastery of nuanced verbal discourse. You can find Foster’s article in Chinese Literature Today (Volume 8, 2019 Issue 2). If you have access to Proquest, you should have access to the volume of the journal and the article. In this short essay I present Foster’s idea of the kung-fu industrial complex, the forms of rhetorical kung-fu, and a discussion of the idea of "literary kung-fu."

First, Foster's term “kung-fu industrial complex” provides a concise way to refer to vast, sprawling network of interconnected industries in southern China that produce kung-fu as a cultural phenomenon. Far from being a monolithic machine working in a singular concerted effort, this complex results from multiple entities and their individual interactions to produce a mass of creative and economic activty. This includes individual writers who produce novels, short stories, screen plays, and additional material; production studies that develop everything from film and television to cartoons and commericals; construction teams that build towns, villiages, palaces, pavillions, and all the other locations in kung-fu cinema; actors, directors, choreographers, stunt teams, and extras; agents, producers, and marketers; and all the various forms of distribution.

Foster also examines the crucial role Jin’s work played (and continues to play) in the development of the kung-fu industrial complex. Jin's copious writings form a body of creative material that not only revitalized interest in kung-fu as a popular literary genre, but also provided rich material for adaptation into film and television. The legendary Shaw Brothers adapted multiple versions of Jin’s novels for film, and through the Shaw Brothers (and other studios), entire constellations of stars rose in the Hong Kong and Chinese sky. iHidHiHiHiWhile kung-fu literature existed before and after Jin, his work deep impacted popular consciousness and the entertainment industries of Hong Kong and mainland China.

The second point addresses Jin's writing in particular. Foster provides the term “rhetorical kung fu,” which he uses to describe the verbal techniques employed by various heroes. For anyone who has seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, then the idea of rhetorical kung-fu should be immediately obvious: deploying and countering a variety of linguistic techniques to force reactions, influence situations, or render judgment in a social context. Foster pays particular attention to the linguistic techniques Wei Xiaobao, Jin Yong's notable sole anti-hero. In Jin’s final novel, Wei Xiaobao deploys a variety of linguistic techniques in his interactions with other characters and in his own personal asides: sarcasm, cursing, flattery, and manipulation of the etiquette associated with social hierarchy.

The word kung-fu derives from the Chinese term gongfu, which means “skill” or “art,” and can refer to the cultivation of talent in any realm or discipline. This need not be a martial skill or even a physical talent. Gongfu can be a skill of any kind. In many wuxia stories, the link between everyday skill and martial skill is a difference of application as opposed to a difference of kind. Numerous heroes gain martial skills through repeating non-martial behavior, then later discovering the martial application. This occurs in Jin’s novels, numerous Shaw Brothers films, and in assorted writings on kung-fu. Teaching an “everyday skill as gongfu” becomes a pedagogical trope, particularly in Jackie Chan’s 1978 Drunken Master (directed by master choreographer, Yuen Wo-ping). Chan deploys this in Forbidden Kingdom and again (quite memorably) with Jaden Smith in 2010’s The Karate Kid/The Kung Fu Dream (allegedly the film was supposed to be released in English as The Kung-fu Kid but was named The Karate Kid due to intervention by Jerry Wintraub, producer on the 2010 version as well as the 1984 original).

In an abstract sense, we could say that any form of gongfu combines practicing techniques, integrating techniques into systems of skill, and successfully applying these skills in situations or moments to complete an action or change an outcome. This includes martial skills, domestic skills, trade skills, artistic skills, academic skills, and any other activity one can develop as a skill. In looking at these as forms of gongfu they all share the agent’s capacity for responding to situational conditions with the proper techniques for transforming the situation into a successful result. This could include “everyday” kung-fu, rhetorical kung-fu, or literary kung-fu. I am curious about what forms of trade practice or artistic expression might have been referred to as gongfu in Chinese history. I am especially curious of any literary form, and poetry in particular, may have been referred to as a gongfu. Contemporary mandarin preserves something of the everyday nature of gongfu in the idea of the shifu, or “master.” Western audiences may experience the term in reference to masters of martial arts, but students of Chinese language will know shifu actually applies to any master worker or veteran worker (as opposed to an apprentice). The term shifu may also be used as a polite form of address to a stranger, and in all these cases it conveys respect.

In this light – in looking at gongfu as a kind of skillful application of techniques to effect change – I think we can talk about Jin Yong’s writing as a kind of literary gongfu. First of all, reading through A Hero Born was an incredible experience. Yong's writing combines vibrant description with fluid motion and constant surprise. I think at least every other page presented something so surprising that I exclaimed out loud in disbelief. While reading through the whirlwind narration in A Hero Born I frequently thought about Foster’s point regarding rhetorical kung-fu, and whether this idea of gongfu as skill could be applied to Jin’s writing style in general. More than just the physical and verbal interactions, which are themselves continuously entertaining, the writing style itself seems to understand how to simultaneously capture reader attention while subverting reader expectation. A Hero Born uses constantly moving action that is richly described but simultaneously precise and efficient.

At the same time, A Hero Born also continuously overturns reader expectations. Because the stories occur in a grand historic backdrop that would be at least partially known by the casual reader (or by students of Chinese culture), the novel actually requires very space for establishing tensions. This allows Jin to quickly place the characters into multiple layers of conflict, including physical combat, verbal conflict, tensions regarding relationships, questions of honor, questions of patriotism, international military conflict, and even spiritual reflection. Jin then quickly complicates these tensions by frequently using physical conflict to characters or situations. The characters are not overly complex but trying to guess what will happen in the story is practically impossible.

I think an argument could be made that Yong's writing is incredibly skilled in the sense of creating a dynamic sense of motion, utilizing precise but rich description, and creating constant suspense. In addition, I think one could draw parallels to Chinese martial arts/wushu to examine the use of controlled of motion, precision, and surprise. This could lead to an idea of wushu as inspiration for a kind of literary gongfu. Even if one is simply performing forms (instead of fighting), the demonstration requires skill and control. Returning back to “kung-fu” as a literary gongfu, we could argue that there are many reasons for writing. Jin Yong's writing, like a forms demonstration, could be to entertain and delight, but also demonstrates incredible skill with technique.