The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants

Shi Yukun's Storytelling and Transcripts

Shi Yukun was a storyteller who performed in Beijing, the Qing dynasty capital, between 1810 and 1871. He gained particular fame telling the legends of Song dynasty official Bao Zheng (999–1062), also known as Bao Longtu (包龍圖; "Dragon-Pattern Bao"). Shi's performances, accompanied by sanxian (lute) playing, would attract audience of thousands. This story proved so popular that publishing houses and sellers began acquiring hand-written manuscripts to be circulated and sold. One such copy, apparently a transcript of another storyteller's oral narratives, contained this reference of Shi (translated by Susan Blader):

Let's just take Third Master Shi Yukun as an example. No matter what, I cannot outdo him in storytelling. At present, he no longer makes appearances. But, when he would go to that storytelling hall, he would tell three chapters of a story in one day and collect many tens of strings of cash. Now today his name resounds in the nine cities and there is no one who has not heard of him. I, myself, collect only one or two strings of cash a day for my storytelling, and what can they buy these days?

These early handwritten copies were known as Bao Gong An (包公案; The Cases of Lord Bao) or Longtu Gong'an (龍圖公案; The Cases of Longtu or The Cases of the Lord of the Dragon Pattern), sharing titles with 16th-century Ming dynasty collections. A later version known as Longtu Erlu (龍圖耳錄; Aural Record of Longtu), dating as early as 1867 and without singsong verses and nonsense remarks, was clearly written down from memory by someone who heard Shi's live performances. Another source mentions a Xiang Leting (祥樂亭) and a Wen Liang (文良) who "would every day go and listen to the telling of the story and after returning home together write it down comparing notes." Wen Liang was one of the biggest book collectors in 19th-century Beijing and clearly an elite member of the society.

The Tale of Loyal Heroes and Righteous Gallants (1879)

Based on Longtu Erlu, the 120-chapter The Tale of Loyal Heroes and Righteous Gallants was printed by a movable type at the Juzhen tang (聚珍堂) in 1879, which caused a sensation in Beijing. Unprecedentedly for a print Chinese novel, the oral storyteller's name Shi Yukun appeared on the title page. The book also included 3 prefaces, written respectively by:

In a 1883 reprint by Wenya zhai (文雅齋), the novel was renamed to The Three Heroes and Five Gallants, with the "three heroes" being actually four people, namely Zhan Zhao the "Southern Hero", Ouyang Chun the "Northern Hero", and the Ding twins or "Twin Heroes".

The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants (1889)

Years later, Suzhou-based scholar Yu Yue (1821–1907) received the book from his friend Pan Zuyin (1830–1890), president of Qing's Board of Works, who recommended it as "quite worth reading". Initially skeptical, Yu Yue was eventually so fascinated by the novel that he set out to revise it.

A meticulous philologist, Yu ensured that the writing conformed to the highest standards of scholarship. Most of his changes were textual and superficial, including:

The only major change from Yu Yue was that he completely rewrote Chapter 1, which was previously titled "The Crown Prince is Substituted at Birth by a Scheme; the Imperial Concubine is Rescued by a Heroic and Gallant Martyr" (設陰謀臨產換太子 奮俠義替死救皇娘) and tells of a fictional story that does not follow history. Yu found the story absurd and rewrote the chapter according to the standard history book History of Song, also changing its title to "Basing Official History to Revise Longtu's Crime Cases; Employing Lord Bao to Begin the Whole Book of Heroes and Gallants" (據正史翻龍圖公案 借包公領俠義全書). However, he did not change later chapters which follow up on that substory, resulting in slight inconsistencies.

Despite his pedantry, his revised version, which was published by Shanghai's Guangbaisong zhai (廣百宋齋), became the predominant version throughout China, particularly in South China.

Later Reprints

By the end of the 19th century, the novel was republished at least 13 times.

In the 1920s, Lu Xun (1881–1936) considered it necessary to reprint this novel. In a letter to Hu Shih (1891–1962) dated December 28, 1923, Lu suggested using the version before Yu Yue's editorship while including Yu's Chapter 1 as an appendix. The reprinting project was undertaken by Yu Yue's great-grandson Yu Pingbo (1900–1990), who nevertheless consulted his great-grandfather's version during his editorship. When East Asia Library (亞東圖書館) published the reprint in 1925, Hu wrote the preface and greatly praised the original. This reprint significantly revived the The Three Heroes and Five Gallants version.

Main Characters

The Seven Heroes

The Five Gallants / Five Rats

1. Lu Fang, nicknamed "Sky-Penetrating Rat"
2. Han Zhang, nicknamed "Earth-Piercing Rat"
3. Xu Qing, nicknamed "Mountain-Boring Rat"
4. Jiang Ping, nicknamed "River-Overturning Rat"
5. Bai Yutang, nicknamed "Brocade-Coated Rat"

Structure

Discussing the plot, researcher Paize Keulemans concluded, "there is no main plot. Rather, the novel's structure consists of a bewildering number of events that defy easy and succinct summary". Still, the novel can be roughly divided into 2 parts, with the first 27 chapters focusing on Bao Zheng and his legal cases (gong'an genre) and the remaining 93 chapters focusing on the heroes and gallants (wuxia genre). Stories from the first part were largely taken from literary and oral traditions and as such contain supernatural materials (what "Bamboo-Inquiring Master", possibly Shi Yukun himself, described as "the occasional strange and bizarre event"). In comparison, the second part exclusively represents Shi's creative genius and is devoid of superstition.

The Five Younger Gallants and The Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants

The 1879 novel does not complete by the 120th and final chapter, instead, in the final page the readers are referred to a sequel book titled The Five Younger Gallants (小五義), which was said to be "close to a hundred chapters". In 1890, a novel with that title was published by another Beijing publisher, Wenguang lou (文光樓). It was edited by Shi Duo (石鐸) and a "Wind-Captivated Daoist" (風迷道人)—calling to mind "Captivated Daoist", the editor of the original novel. Interestingly, none of the "previewed" plotlines at the end of the original was actually found in the sequel. The editors did not deny that the two novels had different origins: Shi Duo claimed that their novel was published after acquiring the complete three-hundred-some-chapter "authentic" draft by Shi Yukun, "without begrudging the great cost". According to their draft, which contained 3 parts, "Wind-Captivated Daoist" believed the 1879 original must have been a fake.

Despite having 124 chapters, the "Copper Net Trap" that the heroes and gallants set out to destroy in the 1879 original was still not destroyed by the end of the book. Instead, the novel ends on a cliff-hanger to entice its readers to purchase the next installment, which was published in 1891 as The Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants (續小五義). Both sequels enjoyed huge readership and were reprinted many times. Lu Xun believed "these works were written by many hands... resulting in numerous inconsistencies."

Other Sequels and Imitators

Two alternative sequels to the original novel are:

Shi Duo in his preface to The Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants denounced competitors who claimed that they possessed Shi Yukun's story as "shameless crooks". Although The Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants completed the tale, it could not stop enthusiasts and profiteers from writing and publishing more sequels, such as Another Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants (再續小五義), The Third Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants (三續小五義) and many others, with Lu Xun in 1924 counting 24 sequels. An explosion of copycat novels also flooded the market in the last years of the 19th century, assuming similar titles such as

In a 1909 essay, writer Shi An (石菴) lamented the cheapness of such works (as translated by Paize Keulemans):

From the time The Seven Knights and the Five Gallants appeared, not less than one hundred imitators have followed... At first I could not understand how so much writing of this kind could suddenly appear, but later a friend told me that novels such as these are produced by Shanghai publishers who, seeking petty profits, specially hire half-educated literati to put together such books, all so as to sell them widely. Now such books as these are most suited to find favor with the lower echelons of society, so [the publishers] just change the title a bit and thus produce yet another novel, and as a result a thousand—no, ten thousand—volumes appear. These novels are like the feet of peasant women: they're both long and smelly, filling the streets and avenues, they appear everywhere.

Translations

Two English translations are available:

Song's book is an abridged translation of all 120 chapters. Blader translated roughly a third of the chapters, relatively more faithfully. As Blader used the version before Yu Yue's editorship, Chapter 1 is noticeably different from Song's book.

In addition, two other books contain (largely rewritten) stories from the novel's first 19 chapters:

The novel has been translated into other languages, such as Japanese (by Torii Hisayasu), Vietnamese (by Phạm Văn Điều), Malay (by Oey Kim Tiang), French (by Rébecca Peyrelon), and Russian (by Vladimir A. Panasyuk).

Themes

The novel places great emphasis on Confucian values, such as yi (righteousness) and ren (altruism), which characterize all heroes and gallants. In Chapter 13, the storyteller added a short commentary on the definition of "hero" (translated by Susan Blader):

Zhan Zhao is truly a practitioner of good deeds and righteous acts. He feels at ease everywhere. It isn't really that he must eradicate all evils, but once he sees an injustice he cannot leave it alone. It is as though it becomes his own personal affair and that, precisely, is why he is worthy of the name "Hero".

In addition, the novel also champions personal freedom. In Chapter 29, for example, Zhan Zhao confessed (as translated by Song Shouquan): "As to my promotion to the imperial guard, I find it prevents me from doing what I like best and that is travel around enjoying the beauties of nature. Now I'm tied down by officialdom. If it wasn't for the high regard I have for Prime Minister Bao I would have resigned long ago." His "northern" counterpart Ouyang Chun even shunned Bao and other officials altogether, preferring to help the government on his own, even anonymously. In imperial China, when officialdom was particularly prized and coveted, such statements and actions speak volumes of the author's beliefs.

The last 42 chapters focus on the suppression of a fictitious rebellion. The inclusion of this segment conveyed the author's desire for peace and tranquility, as mid-19th century Qing dynasty was ravaged by numerous bloody rebellions, including the Taiping Rebellion, the Nien Rebellion, and the Panthay Rebellion, which together took tens of millions of lives.

Reception

Many 20th-century literary critics also held the novel in high regard. Lu Xun considered the book "outstanding" among "storytelling tales", praising the novel: "Though some of the incidents are rather naive, the gallant outlaws are vividly presented and the descriptions of town life and jests with which the book is interspersed add to the interest." Hu Shih, who favorably compared the characterizations of Jiang Ping and Zhi Hua to those of Aramis and d'Artagnan in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, even included this novel among his "National Book List of the Lowest Level" (最低限度的國學書目; i.e. must-read list) for Tsinghua University students. C. T. Hsia commended the language as "a vivid colloquial style that deserves the appellation of 'real pai-hua'..."

Storytelling

Chinese masters including Wang Shaotang (1889–1968) and Shan Tianfang (born 1935) have performed stories from the novel.

Films

Note: Most of the early films were opera films.

Television series

In addition, two TV series set in the Qing dynasty imagined how the novel was created: