Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain

Cover of the 1977 edition of the novel
Author	Jin Yong
Original title	雪山飛狐
Translator	Olivia Mok
Country	Hong Kong
Language	Chinese
Genre	Wuxia
Publisher	Ming Pao, Chinese University Press
Publication date	1959
Published in English	1996
Media type	Print
Preceded by	The Young Flying Fox

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, also known as Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain, is a wuxia novel by Jin Yong (Louis Cha). It was first serialised in Hong Kong between 9 February and 18 June 1959 in the newspaper Ming Pao.

The novel has a prequel, The Young Flying Fox, which was released in 1960. Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain is one of Jin Yong's shortest novels, with only 10 chapters. The chapters are labelled in numerical order, instead of Jin Yong's typical style of using a short phrase or duilian as a chapter's heading.

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain is unique in structure among Jin Yong's novels because it employs a frame narrative as well as the literary devices of unreliable narrators and storytelling flashbacks. The actual time frame of the novel lasts only a day, but the stories encapsulated in it stretch back months, years and even decades before.

In the revised afterword to the novel, Jin Yong states that his inspiration did not derive from Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon as many people had falsely assumed. The literary devices used in the novel have been used very often in literature, such as in One Thousand and One Nights and Illustrious Words to Instruct the World.

The story begins in the Changbai mountains in northeastern China during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor in the Qing dynasty. It follows the classical unity of time, taking place on a single day, which is the 15th day of the third month in the Chinese calendar, in the 45th year in the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (i.e. 19 April 1780 in the Gregorian calendar).

A group of martial artists unearth a treasure chest and begin fighting for it. The reason for them doing so is deliberately kept from the reader at this point of time. Midway during their tussle, they are overpowered and coerced by a highly skilled monk, Baoshu, to travel to a manor at the top of Jade Brush Peak (玉筆峰) to help the manor's owner drive away an enemy, Hu Fei, who is nicknamed "Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain". They start telling stories concerning the origin of a precious saber in the chest and their mysterious foe (Hu Fei). In doing so, they gradually reveal each other's personal secrets.