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"The Tolkien of Chinese literature" is a marketing phrase produced by the English publisher, and while I totally understand the impetus, I don't think it's quit
by girzel 8y ago
"The Tolkien of Chinese literature" is a marketing phrase produced by the English publisher, and while I totally understand the impetus, I don't think it's quite accurate. Tolkien melded multiple cultural traditions (the Icelandic Eddas, Anglo-Saxon literature, and rural English life) to create an original world that was at once strange and familiar to his readers. Jin Yong wrote stories based in Chinese history, with an extra layer of magic, spirituality, and kick-ass martial arts.
By analogy, it would be like he'd produced a really, really good retelling of the Arthurian legends. It's an impressive achievement, but not quite on the same creative level as Tolkien.
Full disclosure: I agented the English translation to a US publisher (from the UK publisher).
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoAnd once again, no matter the subject, HN has a genuine expert with insight just waiting round the corner :-) Thank you (volume 1 is still on my xmas list) Our thoughts go to his family.
- Blackthorn 8y agoThis actually makes me want to read them more. Didn't know about him before, but on my list now.
- zawerf 8y ago> not quite on the same creative level as Tolkien. There's no reason to throw shade at a dead guy. According to this list, Tolkien sold 250 million and Jin Yong sold 300 million: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_a... They are definitely in the same league. If you're chinese, Jin Yong's influence on culture and storytelling is way larger than Tolkien ever will be. (But if you're not chinese, then you're forgiven because there's no way to translate stuff like 降龍十八掌 without it sounding super corny)
- girzel 8y agoAw, it wasn't meant to be shade! Just the best assessment I could make. They are definitely comparable in the sense that they are both creators of categories. Edit: Tolkien is also dead.
- xarope 8y agoI think nowadays kung fu/shaolin have gained more widespread social awareness, as well as (lord help me) Dragonball Z, so saying "The 18 palms Dragon form", or "18 fists of the Golden Dragon" won't get the same kind of cringe factor compared to maybe 20-30 years ago. Now ninjas, on the other hand... how can japanese audiences watch anything to do with ninjas in hollywood, and not throw up straightaway?
- PurpleRamen 8y agoAre hollywood-ninjas worst than anime-ninjas?
- hdt91 8y agoJust my opinion, but I think the elements of culture and language play no small roles in such kind of translation. My country (Vietnam) is heavily influenced by Chinese, and even that if you use normal vocabularies for literal translation like "18 palms of the Golden Dragon", it still sounds super corny, yet switching to Sino-Vietnamese style automatically makes it 10 times more awesome and elegant. And this expands to other subjective points such as characters, thematic plots, etc...; thus I feel it probably is way harder for Western audience to agree with the comparison with Tolkien.
- sarabande 8y agoIn general, I don't think creativity equates to book sales, so an argument about creative level can't be countered with "X sold more copies than Y."
- oh-kumudo 8y agoProblem is, there is no way to compare creativity between the founders of 2 different genres. Is Tolkien more creative than Allan Poe? That would be a very pretentious question. I am not sure why the grand OP claim that Jin Yong's work are retelling of history. It uses history as its background, but one of his most important contributions is to create Jiang Hu(江湖), a society that is beyond the realm of moral governmental, that is Chao Ting(朝廷), which usually represents the account of history.
- budadre75 8y agoHow have the English speaking countries reacted to the Wuxia literature and JinYong's works so far? Just curious.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- victoriasun 8y agoAs a Chinese person who grew up with the works of Jin Yong and Tolkien, I bristle a little bit at this comment. For one, I think the marketing term is really used to explain Jin Yong's scope and impact, rather than a flat comparison of genre. In this sense, Jin Yong is, to Chinese literature, as impactful Tolkein is to Western literature. It is a tradition within Chinese literature to prefer setting your work within our history. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is perhaps the most well-known in this vein. So to be critical of "creativity" here, is, I think a little bit short-sighted. It's like saying a Ken Burns documentary lacks the creativity of The Avengers, because magic powers and superheroes don't exist in the prior. Or trying to compare a book about the personal relationships of a cancer patient (I'm thinking "The Fault In Our Stars" specifically here) to the Harry Potter series. They are just fundamentally different things where creativity is executed in different ways. Who is to say that it is not equally powerful or creative to create characters that are deeply relatable, like Jin Yong's? In my opinion, his characters tended to ask morally difficult questions more often than Tolkein's. Jin Yong wrote stories that were rooted in Chinese tradition, but his impact among young Chinese minds is greater than what even I can describe in a Hacker News comment. He wrote books that were about strength of self, moral character, freedom, and defiance in a time when the Chinese government strictly punished all of these things. I confess that I know nothing about Tolkein's backstory or history, but I can plainly see his impact. I think it is reasonable to say that Jin Yong's impact is as important and wide spread as Tolkein's.
- wirrbel 8y agoI don't know jin Yong (what would I read from him first as european? Any recommendations?) But I tend to dislike the overarching glorification of Tolkien. Surely an impressive writer and world-builder but surely not the only one and not necessarily the best.
- twright0 8y agoOut of curiosity, which writers would you put above Tolkien for world-building (in the Western canon)?
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- kirvyteo 8y agoI am pretty sure Tolkien books were way less popular before the movies were made. I often see them gathering dust in the library. I will be honest. For someone used to reading fantasy novels from Robert Jordan, Raymond Feist, Anne McCaffrey etc, I find the pace of the books excruciatingly slow. The details are great and the imagination is impressive but it is painful to read... (apologies to LOTR fans)
- johnchristopher 8y agoBefore the movies I had a hard time convincing people to get past the first 150 pages. And then you have the whole thing about the LOTR taking a different turn when Tolkien made it a larger story and not just a hobbit adventure. I like LOTR because I like backstories and the whole book is about hearing what's happening behind the mountains. I could never get into Game of Thrones and my girlfriend never made it through LOTR. To each its own.
- chasontherobot 8y agowait, you think LOTR is too slow but you like Robert Jordan? I'm pretty sure there are entire books in the Wheel of Time where nothing substansive even happens.
- trey-jones 8y agoThis has been blown out of proportion pretty badly. I would agree that Tolkien (even LOTR, and especially some of his other works) is slower reading than The Wheel of Time (I've not read other Jordan). I would attribute this almost entirely to broader differences in literature between their time periods. Writing in the '30s and '40s was just different than it was in the '80s and on.
- kirvyteo 8y agoI get what you mean. Wheel of Time has its slow moments. But then the whole series had a really odd pace. The last 3 books after RJ passed away was too fast and too sudden.
- akvadrako 8y ago
- throw1PM 8y ago> not quite on the same creative level as Tolkien. I haven't read either of these author's works, but I have to disagree with this assessment if that's all you are basing it on. In my opinion, it's much harder to create a story within the confines of real history, as you are limited to real constraints. Thus the world-building needs to be much more intricate and problems can't be solved by a some "deus ex machina" plot device. In fact, using history as a backdrop would put Yong in a similar category as Shakespeare, and surely you wouldn't say Shakespeare is "less creative" than Tolkien.
- imron 8y agoJin Yong used plenty of 'deus ex machina' in his stories, and some of them are notably worse for it.
- forkLding 8y agoJin Yong didn't retell any stories, those stories were his own. Unless you see Tolkien as retelling stories of Elves, Dwarves etc. then sure Jin Yong is retelling stories. "Tolkien melded multiple cultural traditions (the Icelandic Eddas, Anglo-Saxon literature, and rural English life) to create an original world that was at once strange and familiar to his readers" "Jin Yong wrote stories based in Chinese history, with an extra layer of magic, spirituality, and kick-ass martial arts [to create an original world that was at once strange and familiar to his readers]"
- victoriasun 8y agoYes, JY stories are his own. One could read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and have a reasonably textual understanding of that time period. One could not say the same of JY; he simply borrowed setting and context and time.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoThey are comparable in a sense that they both went beyond literature, it becomes part of the culture, even the language itself. Jin Yong's novels are so influential and intervened with contemporary Chinese culture, where his characters have become the go-to reference for certain archetype personality. Like you can refer to something that is short as Hobbits, if you are calling someone 岳不群(pronounced as Yue BuQun, a villain who appeared as leader of the good guys at first) in Chinese, it is even more insulting than calling that someone hypocrite. In fact, considering that Jin Yong had not only several, but 14 installments to create his imaginative JiangHu universe, most of which are vastly popular and recognized and all of them are adapted into movies/tv series, even nowadays, I would say his influence within Sino cultural sphere is probably wider and more profound than that of Tolkien as with English/Western culture.
- tephra 8y agoOf course Tolkien did produce a poem about King Arthur in "The Fall Of Arthur" well worth the read if you are into his works :)