The swordsmen of China's beloved storyteller live on in the gaming world

How Jin Yong helped turn wuxia into the biggest fantasy genre in Chinese games

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Heroes of Jin Yong features a wuxia fanboy waking up to find himself in Jin Yong’s universe. His quest was to find all the characters in the game. (Picture: Bilibili)

Published: 8:30pm, 31 Oct 2018Updated: 8:44am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Call him China’s J.R.R Tolkien, or George R.R. Martin. Maybe even call him China’s Stan Lee.

Best-selling author Louis Cha, better known by his pseudonym Jin Yong, passed away at age 94 this week. Little known in the West, he was widely regarded in the Chinese-speaking world as the most important writer of the wuxia genre, fantasias of kung fu masters in ancient China. Since his first novels came out in the 1950s, they have been adapted into countless TV dramas, movies, comics, and games.

Jin Yong was also the co-founder of one of Hong Kong's most popular Chinese newspapers.

The wuxia genre features warring sects of martial arts such as Shaolin and Wudang. It’s like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but instead of elves, orcs and dwarves, you get sword-wielding nuns and kung fu fighters set in historic China.

And more than just fights between different clans, Jin Yong’s works are also stories of chivalry, star-crossed lovers, and the rise and fall of empires. In more than a dozen serialized novels, he created a cast of colorful heroes and villains who walk on walls, dance on water, ride huge birds and leap from tree to tree in a bamboo forest -- complete with unforgettable nicknames like Skyfury Guo and Ironheart Yang.

These characters provide the perfect fodder for game developers to create blockbuster titles. Many companies have reportedly paid tens of millions of US dollars for the right to use his characters and plots.

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The swordsmen of China's beloved storyteller live on in the gaming world

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}How Jin Yong helped turn wuxia into the biggest fantasy genre in Chinese games

How Jin Yong helped turn wuxia into the biggest fantasy genre in Chinese games