Something that made SPW different from all the rest of the Jin Yong canon.

[Trien Chieu]

It must be the Ming Dynasty, however, because the Mo Dong Sect and Ngor Mei Sect are present (therefore, post-Sung), but there is no sign of Mongol or Manchurian rule. The only period that meets all those criteria is the Ming Dynasty.

Agree but I think it's toward the end of the Ming Dynasty. My guess is during the later years of Wanli Emperor, about 40 years before the beginning of SSWRB which is about the year 1600. There are no 9 Yum, 9 Yeung and many other greats martial arts that should be there if the SPW takes place shortly after HSDS. There is no mention of KF, Greats, GJ, YG and CMG whatsoever. There were no war during LYT time so he lived during the peaceful time of Ming Dynasty and he was a great or great great grandpa of LPZ.

[juvetb]

I wonder if JY's view of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution coloured his views on orthodox sects and what is apparently defined as good and proper.

Several of his books, but particularly SPW, explored how the orthodox could in fact be no better than the unorthodox, even if by reputation they were far apart. In fact, this is worsened by the insistence of the orthodox sects, where orthodoxy is used in and by itself as legitimacy for one's action.

[CC]

Anyone who knows the story of SMILING PROUD WANDERER knows that it has a very different character from the rest of Jin Yong's major novels. SPW doesn't seem to fit well in a single continuity with the CONDOR HEROES TRILOGY, DGSD (its closest kissing cousin, but still quite different from it), let alone the Qing Dynasty-era stories.

I attribute this to the fact that among Jin Yong's long stories, SPW was the only *purely* wulin story. Most of the other Jin Yong stories also played at being historical fiction: they were set against foreign invasion/occupation, and resisting the foreigners was a major motif of the other works. SPW, being completely free of even the slightest hint of foreign invasion/occupation, focuses much more on wulin (without any ties to national/international politics or war), including the more mystical aspects of it.

In this sense, SPW is the antithesis of the Qing Dynasty stories, which are deeply set in history/politics and grounded in a grittier realism (which I'll get to in the next thread).

JY only wrote from the Song onwards.

Since DGSD, LOCH, HSDS and the SSWRB already covered the Song to Yuan to Ming to Qing turmoils respectively, there were no more historical dynasty changes to use or major foreign threats to use. Unless he made one up. Or he did a Wong Fei Hong era novel about the Qing to Republic turmoil.