Wuxia

Chen Qi rubbed his nose. He wanted to laugh, but that would have been impolite.

Brother, you're really taking this seriously? I was only pretending, and you've empathized a little too well.

"Sorry you had to see that!"

Only after a long while did He Chengwei wipe his eyes and sigh. "The second half was even better. I thought it would be fighting from start to finish, but I never expected the romance to be so moving too. Especially the ending-it was wonderful.

"If they had ended up together, that would certainly have been heartening, but some things in life are beyond our control. It's this flawed beauty that leaves one savoring it endlessly."

Literary hipster!

Chen Qi slapped that label on him. No one but a literary hipster talked like that.

"Everyone pursues serious literature these days. Hardly anyone writes popular fiction, and those who write it well are rarer still. It's truly no small thing that you were willing to write a popular story. Our magazine is grateful, and we hope you'll continue submitting to us."

"You're too kind. I'd be happy to submit to you, but I'm not sure where the limits are. Do you accept stories with a little feudal superstition?"

"For example?"

"Shen Wansan and the Treasure Bowl, for example."

Chen Qi gave him a complete summary of the story he hadn't finished telling that afternoon.

"The Treasure Bowl? That's more than feudal superstition-it promotes the corrupt bourgeois idea of getting something for nothing. I suggest you play it a little safer." He Chengwei was startled.

"What about horror and thrillers?"

"Are there ghosts or gods?"

"No. It's all people pretending to be ghosts and gods, or the delusions of someone mentally ill."

He knew this routine well. He had invested in several domestic horror films, all full of girls with long, wavy hair who took their clothes off at the slightest opportunity. Who watched domestic horror films for the scares? They all watched for the risqué content.

But He Chengwei didn't quite understand. "Could you give me an example?" he asked.

Chen Qi casually told a story, leaving his listener stunned and even a little chilled. He Chengwei shook his head like a pellet drum. "Safer, please, safer! We may publish popular fiction, but we can't just disregard the boundaries like that."

"Then your scope is too narrow. There aren't many genres left to write."

"Just write something like Kapok Kasaya. Put in more fighting, and even if there are problems, they can be glossed over. As for other genres, all we can do is hope minds open up a little faster!"

He Chengwei and Chen Qi got along splendidly and talked late into the night.

He was surprised to find that Chen Qi was more impressive than any of the "story kings" he had visited. The one on Chongming Island had told more than a dozen stories in one sitting, and He Chengwei had already been amazed, as though he had met a heavenly being.

Chen Qi hadn't told more than a dozen, but his understanding of story types, his grasp of pacing, and his immensely rich storehouse of material all far surpassed anyone else's. Like Shen Wansan's Treasure Bowl, it could never be emptied or exhausted.

Even a few words he tossed out casually were enough to set the imagination racing: this had to be a good story.

Before he left, the chief editor had told him to pay a thousand gold pieces for a dead horse's bones. He Chengwei felt the time was about right and said, "We'd be very happy to pay you seven yuan per thousand characters. You're a screenwriter, so I'm sure you know the rates in the industry."

"I'm a mere newcomer, and I'm sincerely grateful that you think so highly of me!"

Chen Qi was well known at Beijing Film Studio, but he was a nobody at Story Club, so naturally he had to express his thanks.

Inwardly, he was delighted too. OK, I've got myself a long-term meal ticket!

Writing around four thousand characters of Kapok Kasaya a day, he would need more than ten days to reach fifty thousand characters and earn 350 yuan. At that rate, ten stories would only bring in 3,500. It didn't seem particularly worthwhile, but he found it easy and enjoyable.

That was because he planned to write movie plots, changing them a little and submitting them as fiction. It wouldn't take any brainwork, just work for his hands.

They wanted fighting, so he would write fighting. As it happened, he was quite interested in it himself.

He Chengwei returned home the next day.

Story Club was a bimonthly magazine, counting from January, and its next issue would come out in September. Chen Qi had submitted his story at just the right time.

In 1981, South Wind magazine serialized Liang Yusheng's The Bride with White Hair, the first time a Hong Kong or Taiwan wuxia novel had appeared publicly on the mainland. That same year, Wulin magazine briefly serialized Jin Yong's The Legend of the Condor Heroes, but it was shut down.

Jin Yong's novels were pirated literature throughout the eighties; no publisher handled them.

It was only in the early nineties, when Jin Yong granted the rights to Joint Publishing, that an authorized complete collection of his novels came out.

The ban was lifted in the early nineties because he had resigned as president of Ming Pao.

So why was Liang Yusheng allowed?

Liang Yusheng was a leftist and had always had good relations with the mainland... Liang Yusheng and Jin Yong had both worked at Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong early on, sharing an office desk.

Now, the honor of being the first wuxia novel to appear publicly after reform and opening-up was about to change hands!

Romance on Mount Lu had been filming for a month, and in the blink of an eye it was early September.

In the early hours of that day, the printing plant was brightly lit. Freshly printed bundles of Story Club were loaded onto trucks and sent to newspaper and magazine stands and post and telecommunications offices. For now, Story Club was distributed mainly in four nearby areas: Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui.

Shanghai, the railway station.

National Day was still some time away, but the railway station was already preparing. This year marked the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the nation, and a round-numbered anniversary had to be treated with importance.

Red flags had been put up, and portraits of the current leaders still hung on the walls, solemn and dignified, just as before.

But a closer look at the people coming and going-the subtle decorations on their clothes, the literary magazines and newspapers they never let out of their hands, the occasional bold joke... all conveyed the stirring of desires being released between closure and openness.

"Do you have Flower City?"

"No!"

"What about Harvest?"

"Sold out!"

"Then what do you have?"

Liu Wanbao wore a gray short-sleeved shirt and carried a leather bag. He was plainly a business traveler, and he asked in a thick Sichuan accent.

"We have Story Club!"

"Never heard of it. How much is a copy?"

"Twenty-four fen!"

Liu Wanbao hesitated as he looked at the unremarkable little magazine, then thought better of it. He would buy it, or the train ride would be too boring. He was heading back to the southwest and would be on the train for more than forty hours.

He bought a copy of Story Club and found a seat in the waiting room.

He looked at the contents page and saw a title in enormous type: Kapok Kasaya!

"What's this, then?"

He crossed one leg over the other and began reading casually. Within seconds, he found himself muttering a curse. "Damn, this looks awesome. It's got martial arts!"

His eyes lit up at once.

After a while longer, he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, holding the magazine in both hands as he read on.

To make the prose more engaging in this version of Kapok Kasaya, Chen Qi had deliberately added some fight scenes, describing them move by move. He had even come up with such unbearably tacky names as Arhat Fist, Shattering Kick, Thirty-Six Forms of Greater and Lesser Qinna, and Life-Taking Overlord Spear.

He thought them unbearably tacky, but people of this time were entering a new world, devouring it as if starving and thirsting.

"..."

Liu Wanbao stayed in the same position without moving, going over certain passages again and again.

For instance, when Ding Mo and Lin Ying first met, Lin Ying secretly gave her heart to him, thinking, What a handsome young man! He's good at fighting, too, and he looks honest. If we loved each other and roamed the jianghu together, wouldn't that be wonderful? Oh my, I'm shameless! How could I think of such things...

In these times, a woman like that was no less shocking than Pan Jinlian, enough to make men and women alike blush and feel their hearts race.

He didn't know how much time had passed before he suddenly slapped his thigh and cursed, "You idiot! You cut it off right here! Did he die when he fell off the cliff or not? How am I supposed to sleep?!"

Rage rose in his heart, and he jumped to his feet, seemingly ready to unleash a raging torrent of curses. Then he suddenly slapped his forehead.

"I'm done for!"

"My bloody train!!!"