Hong Kong is mourning the loss of one of China’s most prominent writers, Louis Cha Leung-yung, who died, aged 94, yesterday, according to reports.
Cha, cofounder of the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao, was widely regarded as one of the most popular modern Chinese novelists, authoring martial arts epics under the pen name Jin Yong.
Known as the wuxia genre, his tales of kung fu masters in ancient China sold well over a 100 million copies, according to the SCMP, which wrote his work “transcended political, geographical and ideological barriers”.
His stories were adapted into TV dramas and video games with some of his most famous works including The Legend of the Condor Heroes, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils and The Deer and the Cauldron.
Here is a trailer for a film adaptation of The Brave Archer 3, from the The Legend of the Condor Heroes series by the now-defunct Shaw Brothers Film Studios in Hong Kong:
And here is the opening theme tune for a 2003 TV adaptation of The Legend of the Condor Heroes.
According to Ming Pao, the publication Cha co-founded, he passed away at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital on Tuesday and had suffered from ill health for quite some time.
According to HK01, users of online messageboard HKGolden have been penning tributes to the novelist by writing cross-over fan fiction, in this case combining Louis Cha’s world of martial arts with the magical world of Harry Potter.
The cross-over fan fiction first appeared online in April, but users have been revisiting the works since the author’s death, reading and penning tales of how the Shaolin sect from Cha’s universe need to defend themselves against the dark arts, and enlist the help of Harry Potter.
