Better than a Chinese Lord of the Rings

Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes (1957-59) has been called "the Chinese Lord of the Rings," but it features no Elves or Hobbits or Orcs or Dark Lords--just human beings. It’s a Historical Epic Fantasy Romance Adventure Kung Fu Bildungsroman featuring male and female martial arts experts (wuxia) of different traditions, abilities, and personalities in the early 13th-century historical context of the rising Jin Empire trying to complete its takeover of the declining Song Empire while both empires are trying to enlist the aid of the Mongols being unified by Genghis Kahn. One of the most popular books in the world, with 100s of millions of Chinese-speaking readers, Yong’s four-volume magnum opus is finally being translated into English. A Hero Born (2018), translated by Anna Holmwood, is the first of the four volumes to be translated. Not being able to read Chinese, I have no idea how accurate the translation is. All I can say is that listening to the audiobook was one of the most unstoppably entertaining reading experiences in my life.

The sprawling story centers on Guo Jing, a good-natured, naïve, slow, and persistent peasant youth, and his relationship with the love of his life, Lotus Huang, a clever, quick, bold, and independent rich girl. Though Guo Jing grows up among the Mongols as martial brother to Temujin’s youngest son, he and Lotus Huang are patriotic children of the Song who hate the Jin. The story relates the fate of Guo Jing’s parents and their friends, the Mongolian childhood of Guo Jing, his training in kung fu by the Seven Freaks of the South, his encounter with formidable foes like the renegade kung fu husband and wife duo Copper Corpse and Iron Corpse (aka Twice Foul Dark Wind), his departure on a mission to try to kill the scheming Jin prince Wanyan Honglie, his falling in love with Lotus, and his further educational adventures in kung fu and life.

If you like heroic fantasy and are interested in Chinese history and culture or liked the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), you would like A Hero Born. It’s a cinematic page turner by turns humorous, scary, thrilling, or moving because Jin Yong is so good at creating colorful characters and then putting them in unexpected situations in a rich world with a history that matters. His heroes and villains are flawed, distinctive, vivid, and human. The novel is full of humor (e.g., “He wasn’t known as the Butcher of a Thousand Hands for nothing”), pathos (e.g., “For eighteen years she had thought he was dead, and here he was, her husband, standing before her, like a spirit reincarnated”), and terror (e.g., “Some time passed and then a cracking sound started echoing all around them, first slow, then faster, like beans popping in hot oil. The noise was coming from her joints, but she was sitting perfectly still”). There are moments of devastating psychological truth, as when a needy princeling orders his servants to catch a rabbit so he can break its legs and then bring it to his tender-hearted mother and say, "I found a wounded rabbit for you to tend," so she can say, "Oh, you are a good boy," never realizing his cruelty or duplicity. Indeed, Jin Yong has a rich sense of irony: an act of mercy sets in motion a chain of tragic events; the reader knows someone’s identity the characters are clueless about; the best laid plans involving painstaking years of preparation often go awry. The irony leads to pithy and wise remarks on life like, “But it as they say: the swimmer is the one to drown, the cart always breaks on flat ground.”

Jin Yong writes imaginative, exciting, and unpredictable action scenes ranging from personal duels to big battles. In addition to different kung fu disciplines and techniques (e.g., Nine Yin Skeleton Claw, Neigong Inner Strength, Water Kung Fu, etc.), he assigns countless fanciful or descriptive names for the kung fu moves “performed” by his characters: Mandarin Duck Kick, Enter the Tiger’s Lair, Branch Beats the White Chimpanzee, Black Dragon Gathers Water, Cat Chases Mouse, Pick the Fruit, Open the Window to Gaze at the Moon, Embracing the Gentleman’s Cape, Jumping Carp, Eight Steps to Catch the Toad, Falling Star, Laugh the Jaw Out of Joint, and many more. (I loved reading action like, “He reached for the spear and traced a Rising Phoenix Soaring Dragon through the air, the red tassel dancing behind him, until the point thrust forward straight at the cupboard.”) At times the kung fu verges on the superhuman, but it obeys a set of rules that are gradually revealed, confirmed, and played with: all kung fu masters have a single weak spot on their bodies, are limited by their ability to control their chi (inner life force), are supposed to be honorable (poison is permissible if you keep the antidote handy), and are never always the best: “Every peak sits under the shadow of another.”

There are more appealing things in the work. It contains many savory Chinese cultural references, from quoted poems, Taoist monks, and exotic dishes, to the ubiquitous kowtow, elaborate names like The Garden of the Eight Drunken Immortals, and similes comparing things like black hair to the clouds in an ink painting, rain drops to soy beans, and a waist-sash to “the color of spring onions.” And its treatment of gender is impressive, as characters like Lotus Huang and Iron Corpse are believable, sympathetic, strong, and at least as formidable martially and intellectually as the men.

Daniel York Loh reads the audiobook with great empathy, understanding, and restraint. He does a splendid malevolent and damaged Iron Corpse voice, a perfect civilized spoiled princeling voice, and nice Guo Jing and Lily Huang voices.

I had a wonderful time with A Hero Born, often on the edge of my seat or chuckling with pleasure, often surprised, never bored. As it ends with simultaneous cliffhangers, the moment I finished it, I had to start the second volume, and I’m sure you will, too.

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