Reading 古龙's 金鹏王朝 （陆小凤传奇）

[laurenth]

At first, I intended to start a thread about this book when I began reading it, but I waited for too long and thought it was too late. But now I'm into a part that is significantly harder to read, I can feel my resolve is faltering, so I'd like to ask a few questions. 

 

But my first post will be used to provide a bit of context :

 

金鹏王朝 is the first episode in Gu Long's 陆小凤传奇系列 (Wikipedia).

 

As explained in the What are you reading thread, I'd started reading that book in November last year, on my Kindle, then lost steam and dropped it. Afterwards I restarted reading the novel on paper.

 

I am not only a slow reader but also a numb reader: I tend to forget who's who and who's trying to kill whom, so I scribble notes in the margins of almost every page in a futile attempt to keep track of names such as 阎铁珊珠光宝气阁的总管霍天青. Oh, and this being Chinese, many characters go by several different names and nicknames, too.

 

The first 50-60 pages of the book are truly brilliant : we are introduced to a series of colourful (and dangerous) characters, some of whom are looking for the legendary 陆小凤. He himself does not appear before p. 45. He is lying on a bed. A glass of wine sits on his chest:

 

  陆小凤躺在床上，胸口上放着满满的一大杯酒。

 

From time to time, he breathes in a manner that makes the glass tip:

 

  陆小凤还是没有动，忽然深深的吸了一口气，胸膛上的酒杯立刻被他吸了过去，杯子里满满的一杯酒立刻被吸进了嘴，“咕嘟”一声，就到了肚子里。

 

The beautiful 老板娘, who's with him in the room, then proceeds to refill the glass. I suggest you try that with water before you open a dusty bottle of Margaux.

 

陆小凤 can be recognized by the fact that he has a tiny mustache that looks like eyebrows, hence his nickname 四条眉毛的陆小凤.

 

There are plenty of possibilities to read the novel:

 

• Electronic version (traditional) on haodoo.net
• Electronic version (simplified) on kanunu8.com
• Audio version on Ximalaya
• For the record, there's a fan translation here, but I have avoided using it up to now

[rainyu]

I don't know what's your Chinese level but 古龙's style might be difficult for non native speaker. 金庸's writing is more close to the Chinese daily used.

[laurenth]

@rainyu It's the first time I'm told that 金庸 is easier than 古龙. In fact, many people, including Chinese people, told me the contrary, so I've never dared to open a book by Jin Yong. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, because the consensus seems to be that Jin Yong is a better writer than Gu Long.

 

My Chinese level is very so-so, but I've read one of Gu Long's book before (see Reading Gu Long's "流星•蝴蝶•剑"), so I want to believe it's feasible. Hard but feasible. Maybe even enjoyable.

[imron]

I haven't read any 古龙 but I've read a fair amount of 金庸 and it's significantly more difficult for a learner of Chinese than many other modern fiction stories I've read.  Analysis from CTA also backs this up.  I haven't looked at 古龙 in CTA yet.

[laurenth]

1 hour ago, imron said:

I haven't looked at 古龙 in CTA yet.

 

CTA will analyse the vocabulary but, in my experience, there are also stylitic aspects that make Gu Long's prose relatively simple: short sentences, quite a lot of repetitions/parallelisms and many dialogues.

 

That said, I'm in the middle of a chapter where, contrary to what I just said, both the vocab and the style are significantly harder.

 

For example, I have stared for a long time at these two sentences and I don't understand them (we're in the middle of a fight):

 

     突听风声急响，雁翎刀已卷起一片刀花。向西门吹雪连，劈七刀。

 

Although I know all the characters, there are several problems:

• I'm not used to see on 突 its own but I suppose it means 突然. I know it could also mean "to charge/to advance", but I suppose that would not make sense here. 
• I had seen the word 雁翎刀 before in the book and I had to check Google Image to see which type of 刀 that could be.
• The image 卷起一片刀花 is quite mysterious. Maybe there's a meaning of  花 I'm not aware of. Or maybe it's just a "pattern" and Gu Long wants the reader to visualise some sort of "knife whirlwind"?  And by the way, why 一片?
• So I assume the first sentence means something like: "Suddenly, a roaring wind was heard and the goose-feather knives rolled up in a knife pattern" (whoa I'm making a fool of myself here )
• And finally I don't get the structure of the second part of the sentence: "In the direction of Ximen Chuixue, in succession (?),  split seven knives"

Any help appreciated 

 

 

 

[rainyu]

5 hours ago, laurenth said:

@rainyu It's the first time I'm told that 金庸 is easier than 古龙. In fact, many people, including Chinese people, told me the contrary, so I've never dared to open a book by Jin Yong. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, because the consensus seems to be that Jin Yong is a better writer than Gu Long.

 

My Chinese level is very so-so, but I've read one of Gu Long's book before (see Reading Gu Long's "流星•蝴蝶•剑"), so I want to believe it's feasible. Hard but feasible. Maybe even enjoyable.

 

Maybe I'm biased by my own taste...

[rainyu]

35 minutes ago, laurenth said:

 

CTA will analyse the vocabulary but, in my experience, there are also stylitic aspects that make Gu Long's prose relatively simple: short sentences, quite a lot of repetitions/parallelisms and many dialogues.

 

That said, I'm in the middle of a chapter where, contrary to what I just said, both the vocab and the style are significantly harder.

 

For example, I have stared for a long time at these two sentences and I don't understand them (we're in the middle of a fight):

 

     突听风声急响，雁翎刀已卷起一片刀花。向西门吹雪连，劈七刀。

 

Although I know all the characters, there are several problems:

• I'm not used to see on 突 its own but I suppose it means 突然. I know it could also mean "to charge/to advance", but I suppose that would not make sense here. 
• I had seen the word 雁翎刀 before in the book and I had to check Google Image to see which type of 刀 that could be.
• The image 卷起一片刀花 is quite mysterious. Maybe there's a meaning of  花 I'm not aware of. Or maybe it's just a "pattern" and Gu Long wants the reader to visualise some sort of "knife whirlwind"?  And by the way, why 一片?
• So I assume the first sentence means something like: "Suddenly, a roaring wind was heard and the goose-feather knives rolled up in a knife pattern" (whoa I'm making a fool of myself here )
• And finally I don't get the structure of the second part of the sentence: "In the direction of Ximen Chuixue, in succession (?),  split seven knives"

Any help appreciated 

 

 

 

 

1. you are right. 突 means 突然 here

2. there are many types of weapons in wuxia novel

3. I would say “花” means a pattern here and the “片” makes the visualization more vivid.

4. yes, exactly

5. The last sentence is wrong definitely. The right sentence should be "向 西门吹雪 连劈 七刀"

[Publius]

10 hours ago, laurenth said:

short sentences, quite a lot of repetitions/parallelisms and many dialogues.

You're right. Gu Long's sentences are usually shorter, like 刀。什麼刀。殺人的刀。

 

In the two sentences you're having a hard time with, I think the punctuation is problematic:

Should be read as 突听风声急响，雁翎刀已卷起一片刀花，向西门吹雪连劈七刀。

The mysterious 刀花 is actually quite common a description in Wuxia literature. It is a kind of pattern but a bit more than that. The idea is that the weapon moves so fast it leaves a series of residual images behind, and you don't know which is real and which is just a phantom. 一片刀花 is just, er..., a fancy way to describe this large swath of petal-like images. I hope I helped. The other bits you got them quite right.

[Luxi]

The audio by someone called Ai Baoliang in Ximalaya is nice, clear and slow . Good find Laurenth!

 

[dwq]

3 hours ago, laurenth said:

突听风声急响，雁翎刀已卷起一片刀花。向西门吹雪连，劈七刀。

 

Both the 句號 instead of 逗號 and the extra 逗號 are most probably OCR errors (if done by a machine) or transcription errors / input errors (if done by a human).  As most of these books do not have official ebook versions you have to depend on whoever pirated the text, which unfortunately is not perfect most of the time. (And doing a perfect job OCRing / transcribing is hardimpossible.)

 

[Guest realmayo]

Yeah OCR errors can be real killers for us non-native speakers. I read one Gu Long book a few years ago and was really pleased with how easy, relatively speaking, I found it. Then more recently I tried another and found it really hard. There were definitely several errors that I could pick out in the text of that second novel, and I'd like to think that there were lots more which I didn't pick out as errors, which were making it really difficult.

 

So I went onto amazon.cn and bought what I think is all of 古龙's books, 72 volumes anyway.... I bought it in kindle format, only cost 6.99 RMB! Haven't got round to reading any yet, but I'm hopeful it's clean*. I used some software to convert it into a text file and, comparing it with the text I was struggling with previously, there are hundreds of examples where it's clear my first text has a typo while the amazon text is correct. The amazon one also gives the same punctuation for the 突听风声急响... sentence as Publius provided.

 

*at least one e-book I bought on amazon had typos and there's no guarantee that they don't sometimes sell paid copies of pirated texts that are freely available online.

[laurenth]

12 hours ago, realmayo said:

OCR errors can be real killers for us non-native speakers

 

I first bought a paper version of vol. 3 of the  陆小凤 series (it's called  決戰前後) and I spent some time comparing samples of the paper version with online versions. Almost all of the online versions contained an annoying number of OCR errors, except the traditional character version of haodoo.net (in my samples at least). For now I'm reading vol. 1  金鹏王朝  on paper (traditional characters) so there should be no OCR error :-)

 

14 hours ago, dwq said:

Both the 句號 instead of 逗號 and the extra 逗號 are most probably OCR errors (if done by a machine)

 

The sentence I reproduced above was a copy/paste from a random online version. My paper version says:

 

  突聽風聲急響，雁翎刀已捲起一片刀花，向西門吹雪連劈七刀。

 

So yes, dwq, you're absolutely right!

[laurenth]

金鹏王朝  - 楔子

 

Before 陸小鳳 makes his first appearance, Gu Long first introduces several characters who will play a role later in the book.

 

1. 熊姥姥 - Grandma Xiong

 

Zhang Fang and his merry fellows have been drinking a bit too much. While having a walk under the full moon to sober up, they meet  Grandma Xiong, a nice old lady bearing a basket.

「籃子裡裝的是什麼？」有人在問。

  現在他們的興致都很高，無論對什麼事都很有興趣。

 「糖炒栗子。」熊姥姥滿是皺紋的臉上已露出笑容：「又香又熱的糖炒栗子，才十文錢一斤。」

 

Sugar-coated roast chestnut! How delicious! Wouldn't it be a good idea to buy some? Right?

 

Wrong.

 

Zhang Fang soon realises that:

  糖炒栗子有毒！[…] 他的夥伴們突然全都倒了下去，一倒下去，身子立刻抽緊，嘴角就像馬一樣噴出了白沫。

 

While Zhang Fang is dying at her feet, Xiong Laolao jokes:

  原來這小伙子不老實，什麼都不看，偏偏喜歡偷看女人的腳。

 

And when Zhang Fang asks why Xiong Laolao would harm them, she simply states that:

  也不為什麼，只不過為了我想殺人。 …每到月圓的時候，我就想殺人！

 "No reason whatsoever. I just like to kill… Each time the moon is full, I like to kill people!"

 

Yikes!

 

2. 老實和尚 - The Honest Monk

 

The Honest Monk is not only honest, he's also dirt poor, lousy and shy. He's sitting on a ship but other people tend to steer from him:

別的人都坐得離他很遠，好像生怕他身上的虱子會爬到自己身上來。

 

Suddenly, the ship is raided by pirates who want to steal all passengers' valuables. Of course the Honest Monk cannot give them anything:

「可是我身上什麼都沒有。」老實和尚的頭垂得更低了。

 

After the pirates have left the ship, to everybody's surprise, the monk suddenly picks a piece of wood, snaps it into pieces and throws the pieces on the water to use as a kind of makeshift moving sidewalk:

老實和尚抓起了這塊木板，輕輕一拍，二寸厚的木板就碎成了五六塊。船上的人此刻全都怔住。老實和尚將第一塊木板拋出去，木板剛落在水面上，他的人已飛起，腳尖在這塊木板上輕輕一點，第二塊木板已跟著拋了出去。

 

He catches up with the pirates and confesses a sin:

「我身上還有四兩銀子，本來是準備買件新衣服，買雙新草鞋的，這已經犯了貪念。」

 

Not only does he want to give them the money, but he also wants something else from them:

何況出家人本不該打誑語，我剛才卻在大爺們面前說了謊，現在只求大爺們原諒，我回去後也一定會面壁思過，在我佛面前懺悔三個月。…大爺們若是不肯原諒，我也只好在這裡跪著不走了。

 

Of course the pirates are baffled and would not enjoy the company of someone who is so embarrassingly honest. So they feel forced to:

好，我──我們就──就原諒了你。

 

Now, they're all good boys after all, aren't they? They do deserve some kind of merciful reward. They will have it:

第二天早上，有人發現水蛇幫上上下下十八條好漢忽然全都死在他們的窩裡。每個人好像都死得很平靜，既沒有受傷，也沒有中毒，誰也看不出他們是怎麼死的。

 

... under the form of a peaceful death.

 

-- 

 

In the next episode (if it ever comes) I'll talk about two other, more important, characters: the cold-blooded 西門吹雪 and a strange guy called 花滿樓.

[Guest realmayo]

Grr, I had the final book of the 圈子圈套 trilogy all keyed up to read next, have prepared the vocab and everything. But now I'm tempted to give 金鹏王朝 a go first....

[laurenth]

45 minutes ago, realmayo said:

But now I'm tempted to give 金鹏王朝 a go first....

 

I have tried unsuccessfully to read the 2nd part of  圈子圈套 more than once. I could use some inspiration coming from you   

 

金鹏王朝 won't disappear, you can come back to it later.

[laurenth]

In my previous posts, all quotations of 金鹏王朝  were coming from a traditional character version found on haodoo.net. Now I'll be using a simplified character version I found on reader365. Let's see if there are many OCR problems.

 

The story has not started just yet. Two other characters have to be introduced first.

 

（三）西门吹雪

 

Yet another interesting guy with a funny name. He's wearing clean white clothes, he's been fasting for three days. Why is that?

　　因为他正准备去做一件他自己认为是世上最神圣的事。

 

And what's that sacrosanct thing?

　　他要去杀一个人！

 

The poor guy is called Hong Tao. Ximen Chuixue does not know him and never saw him, but Hong Tao committed the mistake of slaying one Zhao Gang. Ximen Chuixue did not know that Zhao Gang either, but everybody knew he was a good guy. So , there: now you know why Ximen Chuixue is wearing white clothes and has been fasting for three days. And will ride 1000 li to meet Hong Tao.

　　他不远千里，在烈日下骑着马奔驰了三天，赶到这陌生的城市来，熏香沐浴，斋戒了三天，只不过是为了一个从来也没有见过面的陌生人复仇，去杀死另外一个从未见过面的陌生人。

 

There are two more things you ought to know about him.

 

Ximen Chuixue does not speak much. During his fateful meeting with Hong Tao, he will pronounce exactly four words:

　　洪涛问他的来意时，他只说了两个字：“杀你！”

That's two.

 

　　洪涛再问他“为什么”的时候，他又说了两个字：“赵刚！”

And that's four.

 

　　洪涛问他：“阁下是赵刚的朋友？”他只摇了摇头。

　　洪涛又问：“阁下为了个不认得的人就不远千里赶来杀我？”

　　他只点了点头。　　

他是来杀人的，不是来说话的。

 

In other words: "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." (YouTube).

 

And now it's time to know *why* Ximen Chuixue is called like that. 吹? Maybe it's  雪 because he wears white clothes? Nope. There's another kind of "xue".

　

　　所以西门吹雪刺出了一剑，一剑就已刺穿了洪涛的咽喉。

　　剑拔出来的时候，剑上还带着血。

　　西门吹雪轻轻的吹了吹，鲜血就一连串从剑尖上滴落，恰巧正落在一片黄叶上。

　　黄叶直被西风舞起时，西门吹雪的人已消失在残霞外，消失在西风里。

Ximen Chuixue drew his sword and, dealing a single blow, stabbed Hong Tao in the throat.

When he drew back his sword, there was blood on the blade.

Ximen Chuixue gently blew and the fresh blood dripped from the tip of the sword.  By chance it fell on a yellow leave. And when that yellow leave was blown away by the western wind, Ximen Chuixue himself had already disappeared in the setting sun, in the western wind.

 

（四）花满楼

 

Compared with the guys we've just talked about, Hua Manlou is a welcome change. He is a mild-mannered dreamer. His favourite pastime is *not* to stab or poison his contemporaries, but just this:

　　黄昏时，他总是喜欢坐在窗前的夕阳下，轻抚着情人嘴唇般柔软的花瓣，领略着情人呼吸般美妙的花香。

 

How sweet.

 

But… suddenly a young girl rushes into his house. Panting, she explains:

 “后面有人在追我，我能不能在你这里躲一躲？”(…)

“追我的那个人不但凶得很，而且还带着刀，随时都可能杀人的！”

 

But the young man reassures her that he will protect her and she has nothing to fear.

 

When the man rushes into the house, Hua Manlou asks:

      “你是谁？”

　　大汉挺起了胸，道：“老子就是‘花刀太岁’崔一洞，老子给你一刀，你身上就多了一个洞！”

 

The big guy straightened up and said: "I am Cui Yidong, the king of the flowery daggers. If I stab you, there will be one more hole in your body."

 

After that customary exchange of courtesies, Cui Yidong proceeds to stab Hua Manlou - but:

　　花满楼身子连动都没有动，只动了两根手指。

　　他突然伸出手，用两根手指一夹，就夹住了崔一洞的刀。

　　这柄刀好像立刻就在他手指间生了根。

　　崔一洞用尽了全力，竟还是没法子把这柄刀拔出来。他的冷汗都已流了出来。

 

Hua Manlou's body did not even move. He only moved two fingers. He suddenly stretched out a hand and, using his two fingers as pliers, he blocked the dagger of Cui Yidong. It was as if that dagger had suddenly taken root between the fingers. Try as he might with all his strength, Cui Yidong could not take back the dagger. He was bathed in cold sweat.

 

Quite a feat. But Hua Manlou is not only a mild-mannered dreamer with an impressive gongfu, he's also modest:

  “不是我有本事，是他没本事！”

 

Once the baddie is gone, the girl (by the way, she's called 上官飞燕 Shangguan Feiyan) and Hua Manlou keep on discussing. Darkness comes. The girl notices that Hua Manlou does not care to light a candle.

　　上官飞燕轻轻叹了口气，道：“一天天过得真快，现在天又黑了。”

　　花满楼道：“嗯。”

　　上官飞燕道：“你为什么还不点灯？”

 

He hints that:

 “我用不着点灯。”

 

Hua Manlou is not only a mild-mannered and modest dreamer with an impressive gongfu, he does not need light…

 

Spoiler

 “因为我是个瞎子。”

 

[laurenth]

I've read quite a lot of translations of ancient Chinese works. They are of course very different from modern literature, but one particular difference struck me more than once: the attitude towards the body and, specifically, towards sex.

 

金瓶梅 , e.g., is a very naughty book. But there are plenty of other old books containing explicit or implicit sex scene.

 

I would not want to sound as if I've read many modern or ancient Chinese books or I'm a specialist, but I've sometimes wondered why modern Chinese literature seemed to be so shy compared with ancient literature -王小波's 黄金时代 is a notable exception among the books I've read.

 

My point is this: if you crave some naughtiness 古龙's 金鹏王朝 may be for you. No porn, mind you, but several scenes where Gu Long creates opportunities for the elegant 陆小凤and the beautiful princess 丹凤 to have some intimacy. Then humour and frustration ensue, as the lovebirds are derailed by jealous female cousins or rabid assassins. There are also a number of scenes with sexual overtones, like the very good scene I talked about above, with 陆小凤 lying on a bed with the beautiful 老板娘 and sipping wine from a glass standing on his chest; or the one I've just read where 陆小凤 lies naked in a tub(*) and is visited by four cute female assassins who want to extract some information from him by boiling him alive "like pig meat", while giving him an invitation to dinner and exchanging some raunchy double entendre.

 

If my impression is true (the shyness of modern literature), I don't know why Gu Long is an exception. Maybe because he was Taiwanese? Or more probably because naughtiness could no longer feature in "real" literature and had to retreat to a popular subgenre like wuxia?

 

(*) BTW, again, this makes me think of the famous tub scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to which I alluded to above. Gu Long must have seen the film.

 

 

[艾墨本]

@realmayo any updates on the 72 book set? Just bumped into it on Amazon. I appear to have the same poorly done OCR version that you have and am willing to buy a copy to get away from it. I would really like to be able to read on kindle so I can use the backlight just before bed.

 

@laurenth Did you find a well cone digital copy?

 

My other issue is my kindle is linked to my US Amazon account and it appears I can't access many of the Chinese books unless I access Amazon.cn, which is very frustrating. I want to buy a book and due to this it seems a pirated version is my only option.

[laurenth]

@艾墨本

 

I explained how I compared, chose and "Kindled" my electronic version of 金鹏王朝 in the What are you reading thread.

 

I'm currently reading another novel by Gu Long (繡花大盜) in traditional characters. I found it on bookscool.com. AFAICT it's reliable. I converted it to Kindle format in the same way.

[Luxi]

On 21/02/2018 at 12:20 AM, 艾墨本 said:

My other issue is my kindle is linked to my US Amazon account

 

I think you can register your Kindle in Amazon.cn while you are in China and then register it back with Amazon US when you get back. It is quite easy to do, at least it is easy outside China. Ask Amazon cn Customers' Services to be doubly sure. It would be a nice chance to fill your Kindle library with Chinese books you won't find in Amazon US.