Mu Nianci
| Mu Nianci | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Jin Yong |
| Appearances | The Legend of the Condor Heroes |
| Personal information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Family | Mu Yi (foster father) |
| Romantic interest(s) | Yang Kang |
| Children | Yang Guo |
| Affiliations | |
| Teachers | Hong Qigong (unofficial teacher) |
| Skills and abilities | |
| Unarmed combat skills | Carefree Fist |
| Mu Nianci | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 穆念慈 | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 穆念慈 | ||||||||||
|
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Mù Niàncí |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | Muk6 Nim6-ci4 |
Mu Nianci is a character in the wuxia novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong (Louis Cha). She is the romantic interest of the antagonist, Yang Kang, and the mother of Yang Guo, the protagonist in the sequel novel, The Return of the Condor Heroes. Jin Yong describes her appearance as "firm like a piece of jade, despite appearing weather-beaten, she is beautiful, with bright eyes and sparkling white teeth."
The Mu Nianci in the latest revision of The Legend of the Condor Heroes is actually an amalgam of the original character of Mu Nianci and another character, Qin Nanqin (秦南琴). In the first edition, Mu Nianci is Yang Kang's love interest but not Yang Guo's mother. Qin Nanqin lives with her grandfather and they catch snakes for a living. She develops a crush on Guo Jing after he saves her. However, she is raped by Yang Kang and Mu Nianci arrives too late to stop him. Qin Nanqin becomes pregnant and gives birth to Yang Guo and thereafter becomes a nun and travels with Mu Nianci before settling down to raise her child. After Yang Kang was poisoned, Mu Nianci performs a coup de grâce on him and commits suicide to join him in death. Qin Nanqin also dies later after being bitten by a snake but she entrusts her son to Guo Jing before dying. Jin Yong felt that Qin Nanqin's role was unnecessary so he merged the characters of Mu Nianci and Qin Nanqin into a single character when he revised the novel.
Mu Nianci was from Hetang Village (荷塘村) in Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou). She became an orphan shortly after birth when an epidemic killed her family. Months before, her family offered shelter to an injured Mu Yi, who was escaping from Duan Tiande. When Mu Yi returned to her home to offer help, he saw that she was the only survivor in her family of seven (her parents and four brothers died) and decided to adopt the girl to repay her family's kindness. When Mu Nianci became older, Mu Yi decided that it is time for him to find a suitable spouse for her. They travel around the land and stage martial arts contests for interested men to participate. The contestant must defeat Mu Nianci to win her hand-in-marriage but none has managed to overcome her yet. She learnt some martial arts from Hong Qigong after a brief encounter with him earlier, in addition to those already taught to her by Mu Yi.
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