Jin Yong
1 min readLouis Cha(born on February 6,1924),better known for his pen name,Jin Yong,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.
As a native of Haining,Zhejiang,China,with ancestry from Wuyuan,a county of Shangrao,Jiangxi,Cha is the second of the seven children from a well-known family of scholars.His grandfather obtained a Jinshi degree in the imperial examination.Cha was an eager reader of literature from an early age,especially novels of martial arts and classical fiction.
In 1947,Cha joined Shanghai’s newspaper agency Ta Kung Pao asa journalist.One year later,he was posted to the Hong Kong division as a copyeditor and has lived in Hong Kong ever since.When Cha was transferred to Hsin Wan Pao as Deputy Editor,he met Chen Wentong who wrote his first novel of martial arts in 1952 under the pseudonym“Liang Yusheng.”Cha’s fiction of martial arts has a widespread following in Chinese-speaking areas,including China,countries and areas in south-east Asia,and even the United States.His 15 works which were written between 1955 and 1972 earned him a reputation as one of the finest writers of martial arts.
Cha’s works have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay, and Indonesian. He owns lots of fans at home and abroad.