Wang Dulu

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Wang Dulu (王度盧 1909–1977) was a Chinese author whose novel Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was made into a successful film by director Ang Lee (see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

Wang Dulu was born into a poor Manchu Banner family in Beijing as Wang Baoxiang (王葆祥), his style Xiaoyu (霄羽). He tried several jobs: editor for a small newspaper, clerk for a merchant association, and writer. He lived through the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Cultural Revolution, and began writing novels during the 1930s. His early work was mostly detective novels. He switched to writing Wuxia novels after he moved to Qingdao (Tsingtao). In the eleven years from 1938 until 1949 he wrote 16 martial arts novels. In 1949, when the People's Liberation Army (the Chinese Communist Party's military) won the Chinese Civil War he stopped writing and became a school teacher. During the Cultural Revolution, like many other Chinese intellectuals, he was forced from his job and sentenced to farm labor. In 1975, towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was able to live with his son but died from an illness just two years later. He had written a total of 30 novels. He was married and had at least three children. His widow, Li Danquan, was still alive and able to meet with Ang Lee during the filming of the Crouching Tiger movie in 1999.

Wang Dulu is most famous for his wuxia-romance tragic novels (武俠言情悲劇小說) and social romance novels (社會言情小說). He is considered by many to be one of founders of the modern genre of wuxia, and within that genre he has secured a place as one of the "Ten Great Authors" (十大家) and one of the "Four Great Authors of the Northern School" (北派四大家) along with Li Shoumin, Gong Baiyu, and Zheng Zhengyin. Zhang Gansheng, a Mainland scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese popular literature, has characterized him as perfecting the wuxia form, and opening the way for a generation of great masters; but according to Xu Sinian, another scholar of Chinese popular novels, there has not been any detailed critique of Wang's works, aside from that of the Taiwanese scholar Ye Hongsheng.

[edit] The Crane-Iron Series

Wang is remembered today mostly for his five-part epic wuxia-romance series, often called collectively the "Crane-Iron Series" ("He Tie Xilie" 鶴鐵系列), named so for the first characters in the titles of the first and last entries in the series. These books chronicle the struggles of four generations of xia men and women. These are the titles under which they are now published, in order of their internal chronology (that is, not in the order they were originally composed or published):

  1. Crane Startles Kunlun (He Jing Kunlun 鶴驚崑崙)
  2. Treasured Sword, Golden Hairpin (Baojian Jinchai 寶劍金釵)
  3. Sword Spirit, Pearl Light (Jianqi Zhuguang 劍氣珠光)
  4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu Canglong 臥虎藏龍)
  5. Iron Steed, Silver Vase (Tieji Yinping 鐵騎銀瓶)

The first book of the series, Crane Startles Kunlun, was written third, after Sword Spirit, Pearl Light, and serialized under the name Dancing Crane, Singing Luan (Wuhe Mingluan Ji 舞鶴鳴鸞記).

Ang Lee's version of the movie actually includes episodes and information from some of the other books in the series aside from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

As of 2007, no official English language translations of his novels exist. However, there is a graphic novel series (now in its second, revised edition) created by Andy Seto. The graphic novels depart substantially from the written text. {ISBN|9889797275}

[edit] Other sources


Persondata
NAME Wang Dulu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 王度盧
SHORT DESCRIPTION Chinese author
DATE OF BIRTH 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Beijing
DATE OF DEATH 1977
PLACE OF DEATH