Growing up near the corridors of power didn't spark an interest in politics and she left home early to carve out a career in finance. But after work she gave her imagination free rein, conjuring a world of derring-do filled with heroic swordsmen, villainous assassins and brutal bandits.

'A xia [knight] will take action without considering their own interests when they believe it's the right thing to do. When they see people in trouble, they won't hesitate to draw their swords and come to people's aid,' Chen says.

In traditional Chinese martial arts novels, the chivalrous heroes, or daxia, typically meet sources in crowded urban drinking holes and restaurants whenever there's something important to be discussed. Chen is sitting in a downtown watering hole, too, although it's a rather posh bistro, and there's little about her appearance to indicate where her passion lies.

'Who says martial arts novelists have to know kung fu? I never practised any,' Chen says as she stabs nonchalantly at a steak. 'I'm an ordinary, private person who trades money as my profession.'

She came to prominence in February when she won first prize in a nationwide competition for online novels. Organised by a Beijing-based website, the 2006 New Wuxia Contest awarded Chen the top honour for her 800,000-word novel, Tale of the Wanderer and the Hero.

The story was first conceived when the newly married Chen spent a year in London with her husband before settling in Hong Kong in 1999. The work was almost 10 years in the writing and its first section has now been published.

After it won the contest, fans thought Chen might herald a revival of the genre which thrived in the 1950s when Ming Pao founder Louis Cha Leung-yung, writing under the pen name Jin Yong, released the Romance of the Book and Sword. The first of Cha's 15 martial arts novels that have since been translated into scores of foreign languages and inspired countless films and TV series, Romance ushered in a golden era for the genre that lasted more than 20 years.

Since then, its popularity has steadily waned and only a few of the most popular writers, such as Cha, Chen Wentong (better known by his pen name Liang Yusheng) and Xiong Yaohua (alias Gu Long), are still widely read today.

Chen mourns this decline and has made it her mission to keep the tradition going. 'I am a big Jin Yong fan and when I was young I read and reread his works. One major reason I started to write was I thought it would be sad to see the tradition disappear after he stopped writing years ago.'

Describing the chivalrous exploits of the wuxia characters provided her with an escape from everyday reality. 'One good thing about wuxia characters is that they don't generally follow the laws of the land and they are free to do whatever they want, a freedom people in the real world don't have. That's what makes them interesting reading,' Chen says. Registering 2.9 million hits, Chen's novel drew by far the most interest among the entries in the 12-month long contest, and attracted more than 1,800 comments from readers. But sceptics say decline of martial arts novels will be hard to reverse.

Civic Party legislator Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee used to be an avid reader and has written a series of commentaries on Cha's works. But she has long stopped reading such novels because new works haven't drawn her interest, she says. 'There can't be any immediate revival of martial arts novels because this isn't an era of chivalry.'

The decades between the Japanese invasion of China and the end of the Cultural Revolution provided fertile conditions for the growth of martial arts novels, she says. 'In those days Hong Kong people had hopes and aspirations for the motherland, when it was still in turmoil. They turned to the martial arts novels which are based on Chinese history.'

Patriotism and chivalry are recurring themes in Cha novels such as The Return of the Condor Heroes, in which the author says a knight will achieve greatness 'only when he serves the country and the people'. At the time, readers looked up to the knightly xia as 'someone who would not hesitate to challenge villains no matter how powerful and wealthy they were', Ng says.

'But most of those whom Hong Kong people idolise now are those with power and money. People will just say it is stupid to be chivalrous.'

Yu Wenyan, publishing controller of Hong Kong's only martial arts magazine, Knightly World, offers another reason for diminishing interest in the genre.

'In the 50s and 60s, when society was less affluent, there were fewer channels of entertainment. People turned to martial arts novels as a way to relieve the pressure of trying to make a living,' he says.

'When you're poor, unhappy with your job and know you are powerless against the establishment in an unjust society, it's natural to project your hopes and fantasies onto heroes and their heroic deeds.'

The decline of martial arts novels is reflected in the readership profile of Knightly World, which has been in circulation for 49 years. Yu says the 'few thousands copies' of his weekly are largely bought by middle-aged or elderly readers rather than the young fans of the past. With Hong Kong riding on unprecedented growth on the mainland, the yearning for heroes is unlikely to return anytime soon.

Although Chen found success on the web, the trend towards internet publishing has also contributed to the decline of martial arts novels published as books and serialised in newspapers. And parents object to children reading them because of concerns over violence.

Chen, who has a daughter and three sons, has some reservations too. 'I'm not so sure I would want my children to learn from the daxia characters,' she says. 'While it sounds great for people to go to other's aid with swords drawn when they see injustice, it's not realistic in the modern world.

'As a mother, my only wish is for my children to live happy, healthy lives. The last thing I want is for them is to have to make the sacrifices like characters in wuxia novels,' she says.

'Only in years of turmoil would the need arise for people to make such tough choices. I hope they never live to see those days.'