Shiao Yi (; 4 June 1935 – 19 November 2018) was a Chinese-American wuxia ("martial hero") novelist. and screenwriter who is considered one of the greatest of the genre in the modern era. Shiao Yi was also the founder and first chairman of the Chinese Writers' Association of North America.
Shiao Yi's Wuxia novels are known for their emphasis on traditional Chinese culture and ethics, the archetype of the Xia (hero), understanding of Taoist philosophy, exquisite sensitivity of romance and human emotions as well as a wide variety of writing styles. Haven written 55 novels and novellas as well as nearly 1,000 essays in the course of his life. He is considered a new school Wuxia novelist and is also considered one of the pioneers of the modern xianxia ("immortal heroes") sub-genre.
Twenty of his works have been adapted for film and hundreds of hours of television, influencing the East Asian cultural spheres and the Chinese diaspora.
Shiao Yi is often mentioned alongside Jin Yong in the phrase "Nan Jin Bei Shiao" (), and as one of the Five Tigers of the Taiwanese Wuxia Scene () together with Gu Long, Wolong Sheng, Sima Ling, and Zhuge Qingyun.
Early life Shiao was born Shiao Ching-Jen () in Beijing, on June 4, 1935, to Shiao Chichu, a general of the 26th National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (ROC) who was a pivotal figure in successful campaigns against the Japanese. His ancestral home is in Heze, Shandong, also the home to the heroes of classic Chinese novel, The Water Margin.
Shiao had a misfortunate childhood and said in an interview that it was a miracle that he made it to adulthood alive. Born two months premature, he then spent two months in an infant incubator thanks to the modern German medical facilities at the Beijing Friendship Hospital. He spent his childhood in Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. At age five, he fell off a three-story building when his elder sister challenged him to run on the rooftop with his eyes closed. He then spent six months in the hospital. Shiao moved to Nanjing when he was nine years old. In fourth grade, he spent a summer selling ice-cream with his friend Erhuai () and ended up getting typhoid fever and was absent from school for half a year. While he was resting at home, he spent a lot of time reading, especially martial arts novels written by Huanzhulouzhu, Zheng Zhengyin, Zhu Zhenmu and Wang Dulu.
After the defeat of the Nationalists by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, his family moved to Taiwan, leaving behind their properties in Nanjing, Hankou and Fuzhou. Shiao attended Jianguo Middle School () in Taipei. He was then accepted to the Republic of China Naval Academy. Two years later, he left school and went home to support his family.
Education At a very young age, Shiao was exposed to Peking Opera as well as artists including Ma Lianliang and Shang Xiaoyun. There were also many private performances at home () when he was growing up, from which he later drew inspiration for his writing. One of his father's soldiers, Liang Yanquan (梁燕全), used to be a Shandong clapper ballad performer and told stories such as The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants to Shiao and his friends, and these became Shiao's introduction to Wuxia.
As a military general, Shiao's father was very loyal to the Kuomintang government and did not allow anyone in the family to criticize the government. He also enforced strict rules at home for his children, such as getting up by 6AM, going to bed by 11PM, no smoking or drinking alcohol, and no talking while eating. Thanks to his family education, Shiao was not only very disciplined, but was also instilled with traditional values such as service to one's country, which led him to identify with the ideals of chivalry often found in Wuxia novels. Shiao and his siblings were all very afraid of their father when they were young, but since he often fought on the frontlines and was away from home, Shiao had a lot of freedom to pursue his own interests.
By his fifth and sixth years of elementary school, Shiao has already developed a strong interest in literature and read world classics such as Jean-Christophe and Camille.
After moving to Taiwan in 1949, Shiao went to Jianguo Middle School and became classmates with writer Pai Hsien-yung, who was also the son of a military general, Bai Chongxi. At school, Shiao read almost all of Jin Yong and other Wuxia novelists’ works. In his second year of middle school, Shiao wrote a short story Yellow Cattle, which was published in influential literary magazines in Taiwan, including Ye Feng () and Ban Yue Wen Yi ().
After high school, Shiao went to the Republic of China Naval Academy for school to fulfill his father's wish that he become a scientist. At the time, his father had already been sick for almost nine years, and spent all of his savings paying hospital and medical bills. During Shiao's sophomore year in college, his father died, and he decided to quit school and go home.
After returning home, Shiao planned to apply to a literature program, but later got into the chemical engineering program at the Chung Yuan Christian College of Science and Engineering. Luckily, Shiao soon started a career in writing wuxia novels, and supported his six younger siblings financially for seven years with the royalties until they finished school and started working.
Career When Shiao was attending the Naval Academy, a high school friend Zhong (钟) suggested that he should write a Wuxia novel, since he loved reading them so much. The friend also told him that he could make 300 to 400 new Taiwan dollars per novel. At the time, Wuxia novels were very popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and there had been an abundance of Wuxia publications in the market. Shiao took the advice and wrote his first novel, Iron Geese, Wings of Frost () when he was 23.
With his friend's introduction, editors of the Xiangji Publishing House (祥記出版社) received the manuscript written in ink and gave it a very positive response. They published the novel in 1960 and it became an instant hit. The Shaw Brothers Studio bought the film rights of the novel and made a two part movie franchise based on it, starring Yu So-chow, Hong Kong's most successful female action star at the time.
The overnight success of Shiao's first book immediately brought him a lot of attention from other publishers, and his second novel The Seven Fists of Ching () was also very well received in the market. In 1961, Shiao had already returned to college and had been writing in his spare time, but he decided to quit school again to pursue writing Wuxia novels as a professional writer. For the rest of Shiao's career, he was a professional writer, making him the one and only Wuxia novelist in Hong Kong and Taiwan who never had a second career or worked a single day doing any job other than writing.
Shiao soon became one of the five highest paid writers in Taiwan along with Gu Long, Wolong Sheng, Sima Ling and Zhuge Qingyun, making 2,000 New Taiwan dollars per book (around 20,000 words), while the average Wuxia novelist was making 800 New Taiwan dollars. They were also called the Five Tigers of the Taiwanese Wuxia Scene.
In the early 70's, Shiao was already a screenwriter for three major Taiwanese TV networks, including the China Television Company (). He also started writing serials for newspapers and at one point Shiao was writing simultaneously for more than 20 newspaper at the same time, including Hong Kong Times (), Sin Chew Daily, The Star and Taiwan Daily. It was Shiao's discipline and persistence instead of inspiration that kept him writing non-stop. In a meeting with Stan Lee at the Crustacean Restaurant in Beverly Hills, California, they both agreed that the secret to being prolific was getting up early and writing regardless of inspiration.
After departing Taiwan for America, Shiao's career grew on two unlikely fronts, first, being welcomed into mainland China, the land of his birth, as one of the first wave of non-mainland writers into China and had the opportunity to define the Wuxia genre to post cultural revolution Chinese generation. Beginning in the 1980s, he quickly became one of the top Wuxia novelists in China, reaching a national audience through multiple full library publications, television adaptations, and even serialized radio shows. His works have remained in publication in China since its start in the 1980s.
In 2009, Shiao's manuscripts, photos and letters formally joined the permanent collection of the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature (), exhibited alongside many of China literary greats of all time.
Writing from his home in Los Angeles, California, Shiao unexpectedly became known as the "American Puma" by literary critics, becoming the first and only Chinese American Wuxia writer of acclaim.
Throughout his career, Shiao wrote 55 novels and novellas as well as nearly 1,000 essays, making him one of the most prolific Wuxia writers in the history. His works were first published in mainland China in 1986. His novel, Sister Gan Nineteen (甘十九妹), was adapted into a TV series by Shandong Television in 1996. The series was considered one of the two groundbreaking milestone pieces of Wuxia TV production in mainland China along with Bai Mei Da Xia (), earning Shiao nationwide popularity. The TV series still remains a part of the collective memory of the post-70's and post-80's generations. Sister Gan Nineteen was remade for television again in 2015, and after a run on the Movie Channel of Hubei Television, was placed on iQiyi, which as of 2020 has received 300 million views.
Immigration In 1977, Shiao and his family emigrated to Los Angeles, California, United States. Prior leaving Taiwan, Shiao's older sister married an Australian diplomat and moved to Australia; while his mother and siblings all immigrated to America. One sister married a Chinese man in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his six other brothers and sisters all emigrated to the United States. Shiao was the only person in his family that was left in Taiwan. Since he could work remotely as a writer, Shiao ended up emigrating to the United States via an EB-1 visa, granted to immigrants of extraordinary ability.
After arriving in Los Angeles, Shiao had a hard time adapting to the new environment during the first three years. The difficulty of maintaining relationships with editors led to him losing most of his writing jobs. It was a time before the internet and email, and newspaper editors did not enjoy dealing with long-distance calls and fax machines. However, thanks to an old colleague at Sin Chew Daily in Hong Kong, Shiao got a job writing news articles about American society. The newspaper created two new columns for Shiao, who used two different pen names, Xueni () and Hongzao ().
As Shiao was about to change his profession, he got the opportunity to write a column for the United Daily News replacing Gu Long, who had often failed to deliver manuscripts on time. He then got another job writing a serialized Wuxia novel at China Times to replace Jin Yong's serial publication of The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber. Being the breadwinner of the family, Shiao continued to write novels for these two newspapers for the next seven to eight years, until his three children grew up.