Shiao Yi

UCLA's Research Library in 2020, has begun efforts to house Shiao's entire literary collection and personal effects, making him the first writer of Asian ancestry to join the UCLA literary collection.

On November 19, 2018, Shiao died of lung cancer at age 83 in a hospital in Los Angeles, only 20 days after the Chinese literary world lost another Wuxia novelist, Jin Yong, and 7 days after Stan Lee, the American comic book writer and publisher whom he had met with in Los Angeles.

The father-son collaboration was first announced in 2013, and was widely covered by mainstream media in both China and the United States, including Variety, The Hollywood Reporters, People’s Daily, and Sina. Shiao Yi said it was very heartening to be working with his son.

In 2009, Shiao's manuscripts, photos and letters formally joined the permanent collection of the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature (中国现代文学馆), exhibited alongside many of China literary greats of all time.

As the only Chinese American Wuxia novelist of his time, Shiao influenced tens of millions of readers with his writing. However, being far away from his homeland, Shiao was not able to promote or market his works in person and relied primarily on his books and readers to do his bidding. Feeling lonely in a foreign country, Shiao would often meet with Chinese friends from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan who loved literature. He later started the North America Chinese Writers’ Association in 1993 and served as the organization's chairman. At the invitation of the Chinese Writers’ Association, Shiao assembled a delegation of 11 writers, and they made their first group visit to mainland China in 1994. Following the initial visit, Shiao made several more visits to mainland China, and continued to foster mutual understanding and exchange between writers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora. The North America Chinese Writers’ Association, Los Angeles started a Chinese writing class in 1993, and Shiao served as a teacher. The association also launched its own publication, Los Angeles Writers (洛城作家) in 1994.

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 (白眉大侠), 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.

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 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.

The second stage was in the 1970s. Shiao published works such as The Seven Sons of Kunlun (崑崙七子), Demons Beyond the Fortress (塞外伏魔), collectively known as “Chronicles of the Immortal Swordsmen” and Mr. Hibernation (冬眠先生) prior to turning 40. These works treated the Wuxia world as historical background while exploring new modes of creative expression. However, these works were still heavily influenced by the writers from the 1920s and 1930s, such as Huanzhulouzhu (還珠樓主). These works had more fantasy elements that are known to be characteristic of Xianxia novels and focused on the immortal swordsman's self-cultivation, resembling Huanzhulouzhu's Legend of the Swordsmen of the Mountains of Shu (蜀山劍俠傳).

The third stage was in the late 1970s, when Shiao gradually came up with a writing method of his own, surpassing the previous “sentimental melancholy" and "fantasy immortal swordsman" stages. He followed a new path, focusing on creating atmosphere and human conflicts. When it came to depicting martial arts, he adopted uses of modern optics and other principles in physics. He was critical of the "breakthrough" of the "new school" Wuxia novelists who focused disproportionately on the wu instead of xia in their works; and he was also one of the very few who were unaffected by Gu Long's stylistic influence.

Shiao married Liu Meiqing (刘美清; 劉美清) in 1964, and they had three sons: William Shiao (also known as Shiao Peiyu; 萧培宇; 蕭培宇), Peter Shiao, and Anthony Shiao (also known as Shiao Peilun; 萧培伦; 蕭培倫). Liu was the classmate of Shiao's younger sister and a fan of Shiao's works. The two met at a bookstore in Taiwan.

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 (七禽掌) 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.

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 first phase was in the 1960s. Shiao had written 11 novels including Iron Geese, Wings of Frost and The Seven Fists of Ching before he turned 30. These novels were heavily influenced by the works of 1920's Wuxia novelist Wang Dulu such as Crane Startles Kunlun (鶴驚崑崙) and Precious Sword, Golden Hairpin (寶劍金釵). The style of writing was very sentimental and melancholy.

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 (建國中學) 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.

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 (野風) and Ban Yue Wen Yi (半月文藝).

Shiao Yi (simplified Chinese: 萧逸; traditional Chinese: 蕭逸; pinyin: Xiāo Yì; 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 was born Shiao Ching-Jen (萧敬人; 蕭敬人; Xiāo Jìngrēn) 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.