Prologue

Legend of Condor Heroes by Jin Yong

Prologue

The year is 1205. For decades the Song Empire had been fighting an invasion from the north by the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria.

Skilled horsemen and keen archers, the diverse Jurchen tribes were first united under the charismatic chieftain Wanyan Aguda in 1115, after which they set their sights on the riches of their Han Chinese neighbours. Within ten years of unification, the newly established Jin Empire had captured the southern capital of the Liao Empire, a city that would be captured and retaken under subsequent dynasties and eventually become known as Zhongdu. A brief alliance between the Song Empire and the Jin Empire against the Liao Empire brought peace to the plains of Manchuria. However, after the Jin Empire attacked and captured the Song capital at Bianliang less than two years later, the Song had been at war with the Jin ever since. A series of defeats had pushed the Song further south, beyond the Yangtze River and the Huai River, much to the anxiety of the Chinese who had fled with their Empire to safety.

The Huai River had long marked the psychological boundary between northern and southern China. The south was more fertile than the northern grasslands and central plains, its landscape criss-crossed with rivers and spotted with lakes.

The climate became hotter and more humid, wheat fields gave way to rice paddies, and karst peaks rose high into the clouds. Having always been far from the capital in the north, this was a landscape that had long resisted the taming forces of the Empire, where the man-made waterways of the Grand Canal flow into the wild rapids of the southern rivers.

But for all their apparent lawlessness, the soils of the south had proved fertile ground for the fleeing Song Empire. There they had established one of the world’s largest cities, Lin’an, a bustling commercial centre of towering, overcrowded wooden buildings, grand stone courtyard houses, stalls selling pork buns and steaming bowls of noodles, as well as elegantly decorated tea houses serving the finest imperial dishes such as crispy duck, steamed crab, and badger and goose meat.

But despite its splendor, the city was troubled. The local Chinese population could not be sure whether their officials work for them, or for the Jin. In the surrounding villages, food was scarce as the Empire diverted resources from hard-working farmers to the armies fighting the Jin, lining their pockets as they did so. Taxes were crippling and the officials who were supposed to protect them seemed to care little for their plight. Far from being a civilising force, the Empire appeared to be little concerned for its citizens, and was rather more interested in making its officials rich.

For while the Empire regarded the south as unruly, law and order in this part of China was in reality maintained by a proud community of men and women who had trained for years in the martial arts. They name themselves for the symbolic landscape of rivers and lakes that was their home, the martial world, or even the martial forest, the martial arts world, both metaphors for their community.

Organized into sects, schools, clans, and sworn brother groups, or even traveling as lone wanderers in the martial world, they lived by a moral code they called xia. Competition between sects and martial arts masters was fierce, moves were closely guarded, and disputes were settled by hand-to-hand combat. But on one thing they were united, the incompetence of Song Empire must not be allowed to destroy their country.

Driven by patriotic fervor and anger at the corruption that had eaten away at the Empire, a rebellion began to take hold of the countryside. It was up to these southern martial arts masters to save their country from complete destruction at the hands of the northern tribes.

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