Fifteen wuxia novels made Jin Yong a hundred-million seller
Louis Cha Leung-yung (1924–2018), writing as Jin Yong, co-founded Hong Kong's Ming Pao and issued fifteen martial-arts novels between 1955 and 1972. Global sales topped one hundred million copies before counting piracy, and characters became everyday shorthand across Chinese-speaking regions.
Born Zha Liangyong into Haining's scholarly Zha clan, he heard father Zha Shuqing read Gu Mingdao's Huangjiang Nüxia daily, then sought Water Margin and The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants on his own. War forced Jiaxing Middle School south to Lishui in 1938; students hiked sixty to seventy miles a day. Expelled in 1941 for a satire titled Alice's Adventures, he finished school at Quzhou with principal Zhang Yintong's help, then bounced through universities before journalism.
Shanghai's Ta Kung Pao hired him in 1947; Hong Kong followed in 1948. Friend Chen Wentong, writing as Liang Yusheng, spurred Cha's first serial The Book and the Sword in 1955. Ming Pao launched in 1959 with classmate Shen Baoxin; Cha poured some ten thousand Chinese characters a day into novels and editorials. He quit novels in 1972 to revise, issued a definitive edition in 1979, sold his Ming Pao shares in 1993, and later earned a Cambridge PhD in 2010 on early Tang succession after an honorary doctorate in 2004.
Nearly all titles interconnect: the Condor Trilogy links Legend, Return, and Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber; Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils prequels beggar-gang lore; Dugu Qiubai's sword craft echoes into Smiling Proud Wanderer and Deer and the Cauldron. Four published stages run from newspaper serials through Century edition revisions of 1999–2006. France and Britain decorated him; asteroid 10930 Jinyong bears his name. He died 30 October 2018 in Happy Valley, aged ninety-four, and was cremated at Po Lin Monastery.
Source: Jin Yong
