Wang Dulu

Wang Dulu was a author whose novel '''' was made into a successful film by director Ang Lee .

Wang Dulu was born into a poor Manchu Banner family in Beijing as Wang Baoxiang , his style Xiaoyu . He tried several jobs: editor for a small newspaper, clerk for a merchant association, and writer. He lived through the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Cultural Revolution, and began writing novels during the 1930s. His early work was mostly detective novels. He switched to writing Wuxia novels after he moved to . In the eleven years from 1938 until 1949 he wrote 16 martial arts novels. In 1949, when the People's Liberation Army won the Chinese Civil War he stopped writing and became a school teacher. During the Cultural Revolution, like many other Chinese intellectuals, he was forced from his job and sentenced to farm labor. In 1975, towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was able to live with his son but died from an illness just two years later. He had written a total of 30 novels. He was married and had at least three children. His widow, Li Danquan, was still alive and able to meet with Ang Lee during the filming of the ''Crouching Tiger'' movie in 1999.

Wang Dulu is most famous for his wuxia-romance tragic novels and social romance novels . He is considered by many to be one of founders of the modern genre of wuxia, and within that genre he has secured a place as one of the "Ten Great Authors" and one of the "Four Great Authors of the Northern School" along with Li Shoumin, Gong Baiyu, and Zheng Zhengyin. Zhang Gansheng, a Mainland scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese popular literature, has characterized him as perfecting the wuxia form, and opening the way for a generation of great masters; but according to Xu Sinian, another scholar of Chinese popular novels, there has not been any detailed critique of Wang's works, aside from that of the Taiwanese scholar Ye Hongsheng.

The Crane-Iron Series

Wang is remembered today mostly for his five-part epic wuxia-romance series, often called collectively the "Crane-Iron Series" , named so for the first characters in the titles of the first and last entries in the series. These books chronicle the struggles of four generations of xia men and women. These are the titles under which they are now published, in order of their internal chronology :

# ''Crane Frightens Kunlun''
# ''Precious Sword, Golden Hairpin''
# ''Sword's Force, Pearl's Shine''
# ''''
# ''Iron Knight, Silver Vase''

The first book of the series, ''Crane Startles Kunlun'', was written third, after ''Sword Spirit, Pearl Light'', and serialized under the name ''Dancing Crane, Singing Luan'' .

Ang Lee's version of the movie actually includes episodes and information from some of the other books in the series aside from ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon''.

As of 2007, no official English language translations of his novels exist. However, there is a manhua series created by Andy Seto. They depart substantially from the written text.

Other sources

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Wen Ruian

Wen Ruian is a writer of wuxia novels. He was born in a family in Malaysia in 1954 and once studied in National Taiwan University.

Ever since he wrote the famous “The Four Detective Guards” at the age of nineteen, Wen Ruian has been wandering around society and even went to jail. As a result of his strong work ethic, he has about four hundred books, totaling 40 million characters.

Wen Ruian’s later works were extremely violent. However, his early works such as the “Divine Astonishing Hero” series gave readers a patriotic and uplifting enthusiasm.

Wolong Sheng

Wolong Sheng was a wuxia writer. His real name was Niu Heting , and he was born in Zhenting County in Henan Province, China.

In a span of over two decades, he published nearly 30 novels. His works dominated the wuxia genre until Gu Long came into the scene.

Gu Long

Xiong Yaohua , who wrote under the pen name Gu Long , was a Taiwanese writer of wuxia novels. He was born in Hong Kong and moved to Taiwan in 1950. Several of his novels were adapted to film or television, most notably ''The Eleventh Son'' which was adapted several times, including a 1978 film adaptation as the ''Swordsman and Enchantress''. He began his own movie studio, Bao Sian, to further the adaptation of his novels.

Life

It is not known when and where Xiong Yaohua was exactly born. Some say he was born in 1936 in Hong Kong, while other claimed that he was born in 1937 in Jiangxi, China. In 1952, he moved to Taiwan with his parents who later divorced in 1956. After that, his life lost stability. With much help from his friends and also money earned from part-time work, he graduated from the Foreign Language Department of Tamkang University in Taiwan. He later found a job in the United States Army Advisory in Taipei.

It was a well-known fact that he was an alcoholic. In the early days of his career, he would buy several bottles of good alcohol and a big stack of new books whenever he received payment for a manuscript.

In 1960, he published his first wuxia novel, ''The Vault of Heaven and the Sword of Divinity'' under the pen-name of Gu Long. From 1960 to 1961, he published a flurry of eight novels, but it did not achieve the result that he desired. He then retreated in solitude to the town of Ruifang for three years, after which he changed his perspective in writing and that gained him prominence and reputation. Between 1967 and the end of the 1970s, his novels finally secured him a place in the annals of modern wuxia fiction. As the sole representative of excellence in the genre from Taiwan for an entire decade, he was named along with Jinyong and Liang Yusheng as the ''three legs of the tripod of wuxia''.

During his university days, he lived together with a dance hostess named Zheng Lili , and they even had a son, Zheng Xiaolong . Then, Gu Long had another relationship with a second dance hostess, Ye Xue , who also bore him a son. Shortly after that, he met an elegant and simple senior middle-school graduate named Mei Baozhu , whom he married as his first legal wife. Together, they had Gu Long's third son, Xiong Zhengda. Later, his extramarital affairs involving Jhao Zihcing and Jhang Siaolan caused him to break up with his second wife, Mei Baozhu.

Towards the end of his life, he suffered depression and felt dejected. His quality of works also declined rapidly. On 21 September, 1985, Gu Long died of illness wrought by alcoholism, namely cirrhosis and esophageal hemorrhage at around 6 PM . During the funeral, his friends brought him 48 bottles of his beloved XO , one for each year of his life. After his death, fellow author Ni Kuang was moved to remarked, "''There is no Gu Long in the human world, but Gu Long lives on in our hearts!''"

Style of writing

It was said that Gu Long was not only influenced by Chinese wuxia fiction, but also by Western works such as those by Ernest Hemmingway, Jack London and John Steinbeck, as well as philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche.

Well known modern wuxia writers like Jinyong and Liang Yusheng took the "orthodox route" to writing wuxia fiction, using history, culture and philosophy to create winning works. Initially, Gu Long wanted to go down the same path, but his directions changed after being exposed to Western works like the ''James Bond'' series and '''' novels. The influence of these works, which relied on the idiosyncrasies of human life, razor-sharp wit, poetic philosophies, mysterious plots and spine-tingling thrills to achieve success, enabled Gu Long to come up with a unique way of writing.

List of works

Gu Long wrote a total of sixty-nine novels. Many of the later ones were co-written with others.
*大人物 Da Ren Wu '''' - 32 chapters
*碧血洗银枪 Bi Xue Xi Yin Qiang '''' - 1977; 39 chapters
*白玉老虎 Bai Yu Lao Hu '''' - 9 chapters
*苍穹神剑 Cang Qiong Shen Jian - 10 chapters
*彩环曲 Cai Huan Qu - 12 chapters
*游侠录 You Xia Lu '''' - 8 chapters
*楚留香系列 Chu Liu Xiang Xi Lie '''' - written between 1968 and 1979
** 蝙蝠传奇 Bian Fu Chuan Ji '''' - 23 chapters
** 大沙漠 Da Sha Mo '''' - 36 chapters
** 血海飘香 Xie Hai Piao Xiang '''' - 27 chapters
** 鬼恋传奇 Gui Lian Chuan Ji '''' - 1970; 12 chapters
** 午夜兰花 Wu Ye Lan Hua '''' - 14 chapters
** 新月传奇 Xin Yue Chuan Ji '''' - 12 chapters
** 桃花传奇 Tao Hua Chuan Ji '''' - 15 chapters
** 画眉鸟 Hua Mei Niao '''' - 36 chapters
*大旗英雄传 Da Qi Ying Xiong Chuan '''' - 44 chapters
*多情剑客无情剑 Duo Qing Jian Ke Wu Qing Jian '''' - 1970; 89 chapters
*赌局系列 Du Ju Xi Lie '''' - 34 chapters
*流星.蝴蝶.剑 Liu Xing. Hu Die. Jian '''' - 29 chapters
*名剑风流 Ming Jian Feng Liu '''' - 40 chapters
*飞刀，又见飞刀 Fei Dao, You Jian Fei Dao '''' - 12 chapters
*那一剑的风情 Na Yi Jian De Feng Qing '''' - 31 chapters
*风铃中的刀声 Feng Ling Zhong De Dao Sheng '''' - 25 chapters
*大地飞鹰 Da Di Fei Ying ''''
*孤星传 Gu Xing Chuan ''''
*英雄无泪 Ying Xiong Wu Lei ''''
*浣花洗剑录 Huan Hua Xi Jian Lu ''''
*护花铃 Hu Hua Ling ''''
*绝代双娇 Jue Dai Shuang Jiao ''''
*剑客行 Jian Ke Hang ''''
*剑玄录 Jian Xuan Lu ''''
*绝不低头 Jue Bu Di Tou ''''
*陆小凤系列 Lu Xiao Feng Xi Lie '''' - written between 1976 to 1981
** 陆小凤传奇 Lu Xiao Feng Chuan Ji '''' - 1976
** 绣花大盗 Xiu Hua Da Dao '''' - 1976
** 决战前后 Jue Zhan Qian Hou '''' - 1976
** 银钩赌坊 Yin Gou Du Fang '''' - 1977
** 幽灵山庄 You Ling Shan Zhuang '''' - 1977
** 凤舞九天 Feng Wu Jiu Tian '''' - 1978
** 剑神一笑 Jian Shen Yi Xiao '''' - 1981
*飘香剑雨 Piao Xiang Jian Yu ''''
*飘香剑雨续 Piao Xiang Jian Yu Xu ''''
*情人箭 Qing Ren Jian ''''
*九月鹰飞 Jiu Yue Ying Fei ''''
*七种武器之 Qi Zhong Wu Qi Zhi ''''
** 长生剑 Chang Sheng Jian ''''
** 孔雀翎 Kong Que Ling ''''
** 碧玉刀 Bi Yu Dao ''''
** 多情环 Duo Qing Huan
** 离别钩 Li Bie Gou ''''
** 霸王枪 Ba Wang Qiang ''''
** 拳头 Quan Tou '' Note: Gu Long has never written a seventh story for his Seven Weapons Series, therefore Fist is often incorrectly labeled as so.''
*七杀手 Qi Sha Shou ''''
*七星龙王 Qi Xing Long Wang ''''
*失魂引 Shi Hun Yin ''''
*边城浪子 Bian Cheng Lang Zi ''''
*三少爷的剑 San Shao Ye De Jian ''''
*天涯明月刀 Tian Ya Ming Yue Dao ''''
*武林外史 Wu Lin Wai Shi '''' - 44 chapters
*湘妃剑 Xiang Fei Jian ''Concubine Xiang's Sword''
*萧十一郎 Xiao Shi Yi Lang ''''
*血鹦鹉 Xie Ying Wu ''''
*月异星邪 Yue Yi Xing Xie ''''

Translations of Works

Translations of his work have been published in languages such as and :
*''The Eleventh Son'', English translation of ''Xiao Shiyi Lang,'' ISBN 1-931907-16-1.
*''Les quatre brigands du Huabei'', French translation of ''Huanle Yingxiong,'' ISBN 2-87730-371-3