Hong Kong's Wuxia Novelists: Jin Yong, Gu Long and 48 Bottles of Hennessy XO

Long before wuxia stories filled film and television schedules, the genre was built on the page by writers whose personal lives carried a similar intensity. Two of the most distinctive figures were Jin Yong and Gu Long, whose approaches to storytelling diverged sharply.

Jin Yong tended to set his protagonists inside sweeping historical narratives, asking what it means to serve a cause larger than oneself. Gu Long's fiction turned inward: his leading characters are frequently solitary wanderers confronting romance, loneliness, desire, betrayal and fate.

Gu Long and fellow writer Ni Kuang shared a close friendship, bound by a mutual love of drinking and an unconventional outlook on life. That bond carried through to the end of Gu Long's life.

Gu Long died in Taiwan in 1985 at the age of 47 — 48 by traditional Chinese reckoning. At the funeral, Ni Kuang arranged for 48 bottles of Hennessy XO to be placed with his friend, one for each year as counted in the Chinese tradition. As Ni later recounted, friends began opening the bottles and drinking beside the coffin.

The connection between these writers goes beyond their influence on Chinese popular entertainment. Their novels continue to draw readers because they describe a world ordered by ideals that everyday life often struggles to sustain: courage, generosity and responsibility beyond personal gain.

For readers weighed down by the practical demands of contemporary life, a wuxia novel from Hong Kong's golden era offers a different kind of escape — one where the heroes' struggles with honour, love and duty remain close to our own.