Chinese Famous Kungfu Novelist: Liang Yusheng
By admin on 2014-12-22

Liang Yusheng (Chinese: 梁羽生; pinyin: Liáng YǔShēng; 5 April 1926 – 22 January 2009) was the penname of Chen Wentong (陈文统), a famous Chinese Kungfu novelist.

Liang was born in Mengshan, Guangxi, China in 1926.

Liang came from a family of scholars and was well versed in ancient Chinese classics and was good in Duilian. He could recite the Three Hundred Tang Poems by the age of 7. While studying in Gui Lin High School in Guangxi, he started writing poems. During the Japanese invasion, he went to Mengshan. He was tutored by Jian Youwen, who was well versed in the history of the Taiping Rebellion, and Rao Zongyi, who was good in poetry, humanities, art and the history of Dunhuang. Liang learnt history and literature from both of them and entered Lingnan University in Guangzhou later. In 1949, he settled down in Hong Kong and through the principal's recommendation, he became an editor for the newspaper Ta Kung Pao and became a member of the executive committee. The next year, he was sent to work in the Sin Wun Pao newspaper as a copy editor, which was also linked to Ta Kung Pao.

In 1954, Liang's major breakthrough in his career when he wrote his first Wuxia novel Long Hu Dou Jing Hua to entertain readers due to the ongoing contest between two schools of martial arts, which was the talk of the town that year. This marked the start of the new generation of Wuxia novels, with Liang as its pioneer and the emergence of other Wuxia writers such as Louis Cha. Over his writing career, Liang wrote a total of 33 Wuxia novels, of which Romance of the White Haired Maiden ( 白发魔女传;) and Lofty Waters Verdant Bow (云海玉弓缘) are the most famous. Many of his novels have been adapted into TV series and films. As a multitalented writer interested in history and literature, he wrote columns, critiques and essays under different names including Liang Hueru and Fong Yuning.

In the 1980s he retired to Sydney, Australia with his family.

In August 2004, he was granted an Honorary Doctorate by Hong Kong's Lingnan University, from where he originally graduated in 1948 in Economics. A 2005 Hong Kong film, Seven Swords (simplified Chinese: 七剑), was an adaptation based on one of his works.

After suffering a stroke during a visit to Hong Kong in 2007, he died in Sydney on January 22, 2009 of natural causes.