Louis Cha, GBM, OBE (born 6 February 1924), better known by his pen name Jin Yong (金庸, sometimes read and/or written as "Chin Yung"), is a modern Chinese-language novelist. Having co-founded the Hong Kong daily Ming Pao in 1959, he was the paper's first editor-in-chief.
Cha's fiction, which is of the wuxia ("martial arts and chivalry") genre, has a widespread following in Chinese-speaking areas, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the United States. His 15 works written between 1955 and 1972 earned him a reputation as one of the finest wuxia writers ever. He is currently the best-selling Chinese author alive; over 100 million copies of his works have been sold worldwide (not including unknown number of bootleg copies).
Cha's works have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay and Indonesian. He has many fans abroad as well, owing to the numerous adaptations of his works into films, television series, comics and video games.
金庸,大紫荊勳賢,OBE(英語:Louis Cha Leung-yung,1924年3月10日-2018年10月30日),本名查良鏞,浙江海寧人,祖籍江西婺源,1948年移居香港。自1950年代起,以筆名「金庸」創作多部膾炙人口的武俠小說,包括《射鵰英雄傳》、《神鵰俠侶》、《鹿鼎記》等,歷年來金庸筆下的著作屢次改編為電視劇、電影等,對華人影視文化可謂貢獻重大,亦奠定其成為華人知名作家的基礎。金庸早年於香港創辦《明報》系列報刊,他亦被稱為「香港四大才子」之一。
It feels unfair to compare other writers to Jin Yong. His books fueled my reading catalog for my teenage years and I have yet to find such consistent amazing work of art across 30 different books. Perhaps he is the reason I'm so picky about language and structure in writing. The unmatched elegance and delicate details in scene setting and dialogs to the breadth and grandness of the world building, Yong does not ever disappoint. It is so fun to learn the intricacy of every character and care about how each single one develops over whole series or even across different series. Mind you, some series can have hundreds of characters traveling across all of China.
I started reading Jin Yong from Grade 6, and finished all 14 books in Grade 8. I believe all children's memories were filled with TV shows adapted from Jin Yong's novels back in the late 90's. But it was a totally different experience to read the plots and fighting scenes and romance poetries from books.
Jin Yong tried to convey his perspectives of traditional Chinese chivalric spirits through his writing. For example, 天龙八部 was the first novel I read, and my favorite character was 段誉,a naive debonair prince with extremely good luck, and I couldn't understand why 萧峰 was considered as the leading role, a man who was bearing a lot of burdens and suffering from rebukes because of his nomadic origin. When I grew older, I realized that a true man should be able to prioritize what is important for him and dare to fight for his belief, rather than indulging in hedonism like 段誉.
I tried to read the novels again recently, but they are not attractive to me anymore. However, Jin Yong accompanied me throughout my teenage life, when my vision for the world was rapidly changing and built.