The time was Christmas Eve in 1956. In the flickering candlelight, listening to church bells and organs from afar from the direction of Government Hill, Zha Liangyong, 32, the literary and art supplement editor of the New Evening News, was rushing to write a column to be published in the Ta Kung Pao the next day under the pseudonym "Jin Yong".
Text | Rui
Contrary to the usual norm of talking about Go, movies, music and history, in this "Christmas Miscellaneous Feelings", he mentions his family and a small book with a lot of warmth and affection.
"I'm not a Christian, but I've had a crush on this holiday since I was a kid, and it's always a good thing to have candy and cake to eat and get gifts. When I was in middle school, my father gave me a copy of Dickens's A Christmas Carol at Christmas. It's a very ordinary little book that can be bought in any bookstore, but until now, whenever Christmas comes, I always go and read a few paragraphs. I learn more and more year by year, and this is a great book written by a great and gentle heart. ”
Illustration of Charles Dickens's novel A Christmas Carol
But in fact, intentionally or unintentionally, Jin Yong told a little lie here:
Whether it is for himself who lived in Hong Kong in 1956, for Dickens, who lived in London in 1843, and for the literary history of this period and beyond, "this thin novel" is a very unusual little book.
1956 Hong Kong, Jin Yong
At this time, more than 8 years have passed since Jin Yong went south to the Hong Kong branch from the headquarters of the Shanghai Ta Kung Pao. At the beginning, the plan to return for half a year was disrupted by one change after another.
Hu Lin (Zi Zhengzhi), an old newspaperman who had the grace to teach him in the early days of his arrival in Hong Kong and was regarded as an example by him, died of illness not long after. As the first reporter in China to cover the Paris Peace Conference, he has presided over the Ta Kung Pao for 27 years, but the final result is a lingering illness and a depression behind him.
Hu Lin, president of the Ta Kung Pao, a press representative attending the National Convention in Nanjing in 1946 (photo courtesy of FOTOE)
Concerned about the diplomatic situation, he once resigned and went north, hoping to enter the foreign ministry of new China, but was politely rejected because of the "historical stain" of being born into a landlord family and studying at the Kuomintang Central Political School. Then, in April 1951, his father, Zha Shuqing, was executed by firing squad for "illegal landlord" in his hometown of Haining. Hearing the news, he cried for three days and was sad for half a year, in addition to the pain of loss, would it also be because of his father's death that he almost fundamentally cut off the possibility of the wanderer returning to his hometown and repaying Sangzi that he may have had?
Almost at the same time, like many private news organizations, the Ta Kung Pao began to adjust its structure and content. In accordance with the central policy, the mainland edition has been changed to a financial newspaper, no longer publishing international news and commentary, and the source of information can only be used by Xinhua News Agency press releases. Although the Hong Kong version is in a special situation, it is also effective. Cha Liangyong, who was stationed in Hong Kong as an international telecommunications translator and editor, naturally faced the problem of leaving. Fortunately, the instructions from above were generous enough, and his superiors and colleagues were also kind enough to take care of him, so, as a compromise solution, he was transferred to the "New Evening News", a sub-newspaper of the Ta Kung Pao, and the topic of daily concern changed from international affairs and world events to piano, chess, calligraphy, painting, and music movies.
In the New Evening News, in order to attract readers to expand circulation, in order to generate revenue, and perhaps really idle, he serialized martial arts novels with his colleagues Chen Wentong (Liang Yusheng) and Chen Fan (the master of the Hundred Swords Hall) in his spare time at work. The newly opened trail looked promising, and the old owner, the Ta Kung Pao, turned his head and asked the three of them for a manuscript, so there was the "Essay on the Three Swords Building" in the supplement of "The Great Park", which began in October 1956. But this column, it seems, is not as hot as expected, and it will end in no time just a month after this Christmas Eve. Looking at the vague memories of several parties who want to say afterwards, Chen Fan's "Biography of the Wind, Tiger, Cloud and Dragon" serialized after the receipt of the book "Book of Swords and Vengeance" failed to get the expected response, and the plot of Jin Yong's second novel "Green Blood Sword" collapsed more and more, and was regarded by critics as Jiang Lang's talented and lackluster inferior product, and finally ended hastily at the end of 1956, which should be the key factor.
Illustration of "Book of Swords and Enmity" drawn by Wang Sima in the 1970s (courtesy of Zha Liangyong (Jin Yong))
During these 8 years, he also experienced the breakdown of his first marriage. Du Yefen, a miss of Hangzhou who was in love with him, followed him to Hong Kong, but finally could not withstand the loneliness of people in a foreign land and the wear and tear of the poor couple, and divorced and returned to the mainland. In May of that year, he and Zhu Mei, a beautiful and capable newspaper colleague who was 11 years younger than him, were married at the Miramar Hotel. But a new problem arises: On this Christmas Eve, Jin Yong may have become or is about to become a father.
The eldest son, Zha Chuanxia, hanged himself in the United States in October 1976, which is the most painful scar in Jin Yong's heart. Online information, all of which write his birth time as 1959, when Ming Pao was first created, you can do a subtraction, you will find that this is not in line with the statement that Cha Chuanxia committed suicide when he was "only 19 years old". But the most convincing circumstantial evidence is the information jin yong himself revealed in an interview. In 1991, he sold Ming Pao to Yu Pinhai, who was not the highest bidder, young and previously unknown, and it was rumored that Yu Pinhai looked like Cha Chuanxia. When pressed by reporters, Jin Yong replied: "He (Yu Pinhai) is the same age as my eldest son, both belong to the monkey, and their appearance is indeed a bit similar, and subconsciously they unconsciously have a sense of closeness." ”
A father with many children and a busy job may not be able to remember the birthday of each child, but the genus of the first child should be difficult to make mistakes.
From February 5, 1956 to February 4, 1957, it was the Year of the Monkey in the lunar calendar.
Until he resigned a year later and left the Ta Kung Pao, he was still paid a salary of "fourth thirteenth (or fourth fourteenth)", not a senior clerk. Although the two martial arts novels made Jin Yong somewhat famous, they were not the same as Liang Yusheng, who was famous for "Seven Swords Under the Heavenly Mountain" at that time and reused by the "Ta Kung Pao". Because of the rampant piracy, he didn't get much money. Writing scripts for the Great Wall Film Company in his spare time looks like a road that may be fame and fortune, but it is also not a stable source of income. If the script can't be filmed, all the hard work will become a bamboo basket to hit the water.
Jin Yong (Photo by Lin Jinlu)
And is this projectile place where he lives in a place suitable for settling down and thriving? The Kowloon and Tsuen Wan riots, which killed some 60 people and injured more than 300 people, lasted nearly half a month, occurred less than two months ago. The influx of millions of immigrants in the previous few years has accumulated human resources for the future take-off of Hong Kong's industrial, trade and financial industries, but it has quickly become the most densely populated city in the world, accompanied by frequent fires, chaos, lack of resources, and environmental degradation. The British Parliament has even begun to seriously discuss whether to abandon this rotten apple that has caused much controversy since the Victorian era.
Although the subtropical Hong Kong winter is still as warm as the early spring in the north, in the heart of this young man who has just become a father, has there ever been a poem from the hand of his ancestor Zha Shenxing, who was later regarded by him as the first return of "Deer Ding": So frost and such a road?
There are too many changes in the future world, can he carry the burden of life? How to raise a child?
What about himself, who has only been standing for a few years, who seems to have not yet stood up, but has lost what he can rely on?
He opened a book. It's not someone else's book, it's Dickens—" Tolstoy said, there was no way out of the way, it was raining outside the window, sitting on the couch, eating chocolate, reading Dickens, the mood would get better again, and compromise with the world. This is the description of Mu Xin many years later. And Jin Yong's own text, it is like this:
"Every short description of Dickens is so intensely exhilarating that you can't help but fill your eyes with tears..."
Want to put Jin Yong than Dickens
In fact, one thing I have always wondered is that looking at Jin Yong and other writers from the perspective of comparative literature, in fact, there is already a long history, but comparing Dickens and Jin Yong, two popular literature articles with many light and dark coincidences, except for a few hundred words by Hong Kong scholar Huang Weiliang, an online article that only puts forward hypotheses and is not explained, and an old post in Baidu Jin Yong Bar in 2007, ""The Divine Eagle Man" copied Dickens's "Great Prospects"", and I never saw the rest. Of course, maybe it's just that I can't find home after searching for kung fu.
The most intuitive and common comparison of Jin Yong over Dickens is, of course, the coincidences in the life experiences of the two men: both were journalists, both were storytellers and prolific masters, both started from scratch with shrewd business acumen, both founded their own newspapers and magazines, both had a pen fame and fortune, and both had divorced their wives who had children in middle age because they fell in love with women who were much younger than themselves.
British writer Charles Dickens
However, this similarity is not convincing enough. In the light of hindsight, successful writers are similar, the importance of certain events will be magnified, and the correlation will be interpreted as causality. Just a few examples illustrate its absurdity: Dickens was a well-known orator, keen to hold touring recitals, and the main part of the later income came from the tickets for the recitation, but Jin Yong was "always wooden, did not like to say much, and the words in his heart were almost completely vented in his novels" (Shen Xicheng: "Jin Yong this person!). Although Dickens is "not strictly speaking handsome", he pays attention to eating and wearing, pursues fashion, often appreciates himself in the mirror, and performs the manners between his hands and feet, Jin Yong is quite untrimmed, "don't say that he can't catch up with the flowing, flowing and elegant, even the literary and polite seems to be unable to talk about it.". If they were born in the same city at the same time, they may not even be able to become friends.
A slightly deeper and more reliable comparison lies in the text and narrative style of the two men: on the whole, the text is plain and plain, does not show off the gorgeous words and advanced concepts, is fluent and easy to read, reads aloud, and is always mixed with strange and witty strokes; the characters are distinct, the storyline is compact, and there is a small twist and a small climax within a few pages, but it is also reasonable, and it does not resort to strange forces and chaos. As for the typical characters, storylines and even scenery descriptions, in several novels from the early to the middle of Jin Yong, drawing on the traces of Dickens, it is actually very obvious under careful examination. For example, the beginning of "The Legend of the Archery Hero", which was praised by Yan Jiayan as "seemingly bland, but in fact very resistant to chewing and tasting" and fully embodied the "charm of the new literary language", if the directing students were filming their studies and the budget was tight, they could directly edit the material from the classic old film of "Great Prospects". Baidu network post said that in "Divine Eagle Hero", Yang Guo is Pip, Xiaolongnü is Astra, Guo Jing is Pip's brother-in-law, and Huang Rong is Pip's sister, which cannot be completely said to be far-fetched.
Stills from the movie "Great Future" (1947)
This borrowing becomes particularly clear when reading Dickens's novels directly in English. In fact, as far as my personal reading experience is concerned, watching "The Legend of the Eagle Shooter", which began to be serialized in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily on January 1, 1957, and the subsequent "Eagle Hero", "Mandarin Duck Knife" and "Snow Mountain Flying Fox", sometimes even more than reading some bad Dickens novels Chinese translations are more like reading Dickens. This is like Zhang Wuji's Taiji Sword, the moves are all forgotten, but it is just the right sword meaning.
Stills from the TV series "Condor Heroes" (1995)
Considering Jin Yong's rather excellent English ability – an interesting testimony to the fact that when he studied Buddhist scriptures, he started with the Chinese Buddhist scriptures and was "more confused the more he reads them", it should not be surprising that he ordered a full english translation of the Original Buddhist Sutras from the Pali Literary Society in London, which felt "relatively easy to understand" – and the inextricable relationship between Hong Kong culture and British culture.
Looking at modern and contemporary Chinese literature, a paradox is that many writers whose original works have the least translated and shaped the Chinese style we use today, such as "Lu Guomao and Ba Lao Cao" (Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Ba Jin, Lao She, Cao Yu), who are worshiped by almost every Chinese student, but a group of people with extremely high foreign language ability, who not only translate a large number of foreign works but also can directly read the original works for entertainment purposes. If we look at this phenomenon from the perspective of Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis, skipping the translator's own life form and language bias on the translation, and minimizing the layers of pollution of the common language to the individual language, it may be the key to their own family. For the Victorian novel writers represented by Dickens, who are oriented to the public, not only rely on characters and plots to promote, but also rely on lively and vivid rhythmic words to continuously strengthen the pleasure of reading, to get its essence, just like to understand the internal strength of the Quanzhen Sect, Yang Guo, who directly learned from the "Jade Girl Heart Sutra" and the "Chongyang Testament", is more reliable than the Cow Nose Daoists who have been passed down from generation to generation, but are not as good as a generation.
However, the comparison at this level also has its problems. As Joseph Campbell points out in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, all hero stories of different eras and different peoples essentially follow a core pattern, and the hero's journey is basically no different. In 2007, Jin Yong defended Zhang Jizhong in a speech at Peking University, saying: "Some foreign commentators have pointed out that there are only 36 kinds of people's sorrows and joys, but it is only to see how to match." "It is evident that in the course of his creation, he was influenced by the classic work of the French writer Georges Polli, who died in 1946, "Thirty-Six Modes of Drama." According to the book's point of view, the 36 plot modes such as disaster, rebellion, doom, and negligence are enough to cover the changes in all the stories throughout the ages, just as in the eyes of Ling Hu Chong, who has learned the lonely nine swords but has not read much, the bald pen man who writes flowers is just a warrior's way. There are many flaws in the sword moves, but whether they will be easily broken by others, and whether they can walk the rivers and lakes with pride, depends on each person's talent and cultivation. If it must be said that Jin Yong emulated Dickens, then why didn't Dickens emulate his predecessors and contemporaries? Judging from their memories, at least the Greek drama, Shakespeare, Scott and One Thousand and One Nights were their common source of inspiration.
The most important and essential similarity between Jin Yong and Dickens is that, in my opinion, they, as the creators of the heroes, also like their own heroes, at a critical moment of life and death, stepped into the cave of common fear in the hearts of the two people - as a person who fully understood and believed in his own talents, born in a glitzy age of opportunities and a noisy city, but always felt like a helpless, undeserved orphan - and finally found the treasure he was looking for.
This fateful node is likely to be on this Christmas day of 1956, by the small book "Christmas Carols", to complete the connection between the past, the present and the future.
1843 London Dickens
"The protagonist of the story is a London scrooge Scrooge, who has no affection for anyone and is unusually mean to the employees he employs. One Christmas night, the ghost of a dead partner came to visit him and said that three Christmas elves would come and take him out on a journey..."
On Christmas Day 1843, when The Christmas Carol was first published, Charles Dickens was 31 years old, one year younger than Jin Yong, who reread the book 113 years later.
But as a writer, he is much more successful.
If in the Northern Song Dynasty, wherever there was well water, there was a song of Willow Yongzi, and in the 1970s and 1980s, there were Jin Yong novels circulating in the Chinese, then in 1843, where the economic, political and military forces of the "Sun Never Sets" Empire, wherever English-speaking people lived, whenever night came, under the candlelight, by the fireplace, and the family sat around, someone might take turns to recite Dickens's novels - "Pickwick", "Nicholas Nickbe", "Orphans of the Mist", or "The Old Antique Shop"—— Among these loyal readers was the young Queen Victoria. In her letters, she shared her feelings with friends and family at length, and once talked to her husband, Prince Albert, about Dickens novels until midnight.
Stills from the film Orphans of the Mist, based on Dickens's novel
One best-selling work after another brought Dickens a rich and relatively stable income, and he and his wife and children lived in a comfortable house in London's middle-class neighborhoods, with exquisite food and clothing, rich cultural entertainment. Shortly before that, he had just completed his first trip to the United States under the auspices of a publisher, which was extremely warmly welcomed.
In the circle of friends of relatives, he is the classic textbook of counterattack: look, it is this boy who has done child labor in the shoe polish factory, his father was thrown into prison for debt, and he has not attended school for a few days, since I was a child, I have been optimistic about him, there is talent, there is a future, and now it is indeed fame and fortune, and it is still so good, pity the old and poor, always go to the charity to speak, there is a turnover is not working with him, there is no help!
However, his situation is not as beautiful as it seems on the surface.
Martin Chuzzlewit, which is currently being serialized, has been selling poorly, although Dickens considers itself superior to all previous works. He sent one of the protagonists to the United States in order to attract readers, and it did not help much. In the previous "American Notes", Dickens criticized slavery in the United States, mocking Americans for bad habits such as spitting without hygiene, and as a result, he made many enemies for himself. The previous historical novel, Barnaby Rudge, did not provoke much repercussions. Dissatisfied, his publisher threatened to slash the fixed allowance he paid to Dickens each month and began collecting large advances from him.
In an era when copyright protection was not yet perfect, even in Britain, pirated and abbreviated copies of Dickens's novels were flying all over the place. In the United States, as a foreigner, his copyright is not protected by U.S. copyright law. No matter how well pirated books sell, they have nothing to do with him. Of course, the money that can be obtained is not small, but the cost is also continuous. His wife, Catherine, is pregnant again, and this will be Dickens's fifth child—one more mouth at the dinner table for porridge, and one more pair of crackling little feet running around in new shoes at home.
For his publishers and a few of his closest friends, Dickens was short of money and in debt, though until this time, with the credit and good connections he had accumulated with one of his pens, the days of tearing down the east wall and making up for the west wall and the bright surface could be maintained. But this situation reminds him of his predecessor Walter Scott, who died of poverty in 1832. He wrote so many far-reaching best-selling historical novels, but in the financial crisis that swept across England in 1825, scott's investment printing house collapsed, and suddenly became a poor egg with a huge debt of more than 100,000 pounds, and even the house where his family lived was mortgaged.
Even Dickens didn't need to look at Scott's example—his father, John Dickens, was not a lesson from the past. The man who, as a teenager, was imprisoned for not paying less than £40, and the family had no way to plead until Dickens's grandmother died and inherited the inheritance, at which time, consciously or unconsciously, frequently asked Dickens and those with whom he interacted for money. Could it be that he feels that "the coming day is a big difficulty, dry mouth and dry lips", so he wants to "have fun today, we should like it"? According to the recollection of a close friend of Dickens, he once complained that he had such parents, preferring to be an orphan like Oliver Swift.
Orphans and chivalrous people of the era
"How much contradiction and drama, how much laughter and tears there is in this thin novel! The love of brothers and sisters, the love of men and women, the love of fathers and sons, and the love of friends are particularly deeply expressed in this festival. ”
Looking at the novels of Dickens and Jin Yong, one of the biggest commonalities is that the protagonists are mostly only children, most of their parents have died, or at least one of them is absent in the process of growing up. So they longed all the way, all the way to find.
The sentence in the Book of Poetry, "No father, no mother, no mother." Both are dependent and dependent.
If Jin Yong, who lost his mother at the age of 13 and lost his father at the age of 27, arranged the character setting of his hero in this way, it is the "looking for father" complex that is at work, then why is Dickens, who is still alive in his parents until middle age, from Oliver Retreat to Nicholas NickBey, from Neer to David Copperfield, all orphans? What is even more intriguing is that under the pen of these two writers, the image of the biological father even appears, but is usually less decent: Mr. Dong Bei to his son Paul ("Dong Bei Father and Son"), William Du Li to Xiao Du Li ("Little Du Li"), Yue Buqun to Yue Lingshan, duan Zhengchun to a cadre of illegitimate daughters. Those who are admired and relied on by the protagonist as a father often end up in the twilight of the idol.
In addition, whether it is Dickens or Jin Yong, there are many brothers and sisters in reality, but why is the warm brotherhood more of a beautiful yearning and imagination for their characters?
This mystery seems to be explained in an ancient text that I inadvertently saw while looking up information. It is from Bai Juyi's "Sacrifice of the Fifteen Brothers of Wujiang":
But the birth of a brother, born without a birthday, the child loses his life, the young are lost, there are no brothers next to him, he is defiant, he is self-reliant, and he becomes an adult.
The reason why Dickens and Jin Yong's novels can impress so many people is that they honestly project their own deep sense of orphanage on the protagonist, and this honesty is the most resonant with people living in the prosperous and dangerous city of wealth that produces tower-like accumulation on the one hand, and may disappear like a bubble, and Hong Kong in the mid-50s and 70s, which is very similar to Victorian London. Who hasn't been excited about the opportunities that bubble up every second? Who doesn't fear an unpredictable future that exudes the air of death and corruption? But who has the confidence to win, and after self-reliance, they will certainly be able to "become adults" - to become the people they yearn for?
As Christmas 1843 approached, Dickens knew all too well what this unbridled excitement and fear meant to adults and children in society if no one stepped forward—extreme utilitarianism, indifference in the name of reason, forward, upward, not to let oneself fall, not to stop, not to look back.
In fact, the pamphlet "Ode to Christmas" was born out of investigative materials provided by a friend to Dickens's British child laborers who were brutally exploited in factories and coal mines. The friend, who had been working to reduce factory hours, provide relief for poor children, and provide free basic education, hoped that Dickens would use his fame to publish a commentary in the newspaper, calling on the capable rich and middle class to contribute money, expand the compassion of the whole society, and reduce unnecessary cruelty and suffering.
But isn't that something he already knew and experienced firsthand?
A fact that many overlook is that Dickens's family, in fact, was not poor for the vast majority of the time, but a middle class that lived in a noble community, decent work and income. Fathers are heavily indebted not to meet the basic needs of life, but to spend on gold watches, pianos, good clothes, large houses and private schools for their children, which are considered to help realize their dreams of "class mobility". A family decision that could have applauded modern radical feminists was to continue to let the more talented eldest daughter, Fanny, learn piano and attend the Royal College of Music in London, in the face of a sudden decline in income turnover, and to suspend his 12-year-old eldest son, Charles Dickens, to take away his favorite books, arrange for him to go to a shoe polish factory, and work as a child laborer who works 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and pays only 7 shillings a week.
If you feel that this is unfair, shameful, terrible, ugly, then you should do everything you can to get yourself out of this situation - this is the logic of Dickens's parents, and it is the logic of many progressives throughout the Victorian era.
But in the winter of 1843, Dickens, who could have been the best spokesman for this logic, decided to challenge it. Instead of using a friend's proposed commentary—another difference between him and Jin Yong, Dickens was better at storytelling but didn't seem to have much of a talent for writing reviews—but with a ghost story.
This ghost story, he thought, should have the most exquisite color illustrations, red cloth hardcover gilding, small can be put in the pocket, as a suitable Christmas gift for children.
His publisher felt that Dickens was crazy, simply accelerating the pace of self-destruction, refusing to bear the cost of publishing, and everything was paid for by Dickens, who was already in debt.
So, on Christmas day of the year, almost all British families were reciting this opening:
The first thing to say is that Marais died... Die like a nailed doorstick.
We live in a society where money and material things are high, where friendship and goodwill are often undermined by stakes and the number of banknotes... Of course, getting rich is not bad, money and materials must not be taken lightly, but there must be a day, let everyone think more about friendship and friendship, less stakes and money!
On Christmas Day 1956, Jin Yong, who wrote this passage, should know many things that Dickens did not know in 1843:
"Ode to Christmas" became Dickens's most popular book in the world, and although it did not solve his debt crisis immediately when it was first published, it brought Dickens's fame to a new peak and gave him greater creative freedom in the coming decades;
The pamphlet was evaluated as "a book that reinvented Christmas", and to this day, it is still being reprinted as a Christmas gift from elders to children, and many of the ceremonies celebrating Christmas in English-speaking countries also originated from this book;
Stills from Disney's film "Ode to Christmas" based on Dickens's novel
Since then, the situation of manual workers, women and children has improved dramatically since then, and many, like the old Scrooge, have begun to realize that progress is not everything, and that everyone has the ability to bring happiness or unhappiness to others, and that these happiness may exist in very small and insignificant things.
Shortly after writing this text, Jin Yong began serializing "The Legend of the Eagle Shooter". Unlike the protagonists of the first two novels, Chen Jialuo and Yuan Chengzhi, who have been attached a lot of aura but are still weak and even slightly obscene, Guo Jing is not a famous person, there is no talent, and the seven monsters of Jiangnan who can be described as "low-handed" and "dark master" can be described as "low-handed" and "dark master". But the fool has the steadfastness of the fool. In the next ten years or so, behind this fool, stood up one after another heroes with different personalities but different choices and more and more unique Jin Yong style marks: in the face of the iron horse of the Mongol army, they did not choose the little red horse that traveled thousands of miles a day, nor did they choose peach blossom island that had been quiet for many years, but at that most critical moment, they stood with Xiangyang, who needed their protection.
Then, in 1959, amid the question of where Hong Kong was going, Jin Yong did a "stupid thing" very similar to Dickens in 1843. He invested HK$30,000 for the first time, and a few months later injected another 50,000 to co-found Ming Pao with Shen Baoxin. Prior to that, Jin Yong worked as a screenwriter at the Great Wall Film Company, with a monthly salary of 280 Hong Kong dollars and a script writing fee of 3,000 Hong Kong dollars. Even if the sensation of "Legend of the Eagle Hero" at this time brought him a good income, this money can be regarded as his entire possession. Many colleagues and old friends are not optimistic about his crazy moves, believing that Xiao Cha must go bankrupt this time.
Luckily or coincidentally, this future did not become the reality it is today.
Decades later, if you have the patience to go after and read hundreds of articles by writers who have been given a free voice for Ming Pao's publications to recall Jin Yong,perhaps you will feel that moving the end of "Christmas Carol" directly over means the same thing:
He became a good friend, a good owner, a good man, so good that there was never a good and old city, or in this good and old world, no other good and old city, a township or an autonomous city. Some people saw his transformation and found it amusing, but he made them laugh and ignored them; for he was wise enough to know that on this earth it would always be like this, and that nothing would ever come to life without being laughed at by some at the beginning of its appearance; he also knew that these people were always blind, and he thought that they were grinning and squinting their eyes, and compared with the strange diseases they had more unpleasant appearances, it was only half a pound. He smiled in his heart: For him, that was enough.
(This article was published in Sanlian Life Weekly, No. 29, 2017)
⊙ article copyright belongs to "Sanlian Life Weekly", please contact the background for reprinting.
Click on the cover image and place an order with one click
"Do you still speak in tongues?"