Chinese martial arts novelist Louis Cha dies at the age of 94

阿邱

One of the world's most influential Chinese novelists Louis Cha Leung-yung, better known by his pen name Jin Yong, died on Tuesday in Hong Kong's Sanatorium and Hospital at the age of 94, according to local media.

Cha was most famous for his Chinese wuxia (martial arts and chivalry) novels.

In 1955, Cha published his first wuxia novel The Book and the Sword in the then-New Evening Post under his pen name Jin Yong.

Throughout his career he wrote a total of 15 popular wuxia novels. He stopped writing in 1972 with The Deer and the Cauldron.

He was also the founder of Hong Kong's famous Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao.

Born in Hangzhou, Cha graduated from the Law School of Suzhou in 1948. To help support himself during his studies, he began working as a journalist and translator in 1947 for the newspaper Ta Kung Pao in Shanghai. In 1948, he came to Hong Kong to work for the same paper's Hong Kong office.