Wuxia: The Symphonic Suite Inspired by Louis Cha’s Books

Louis Cha — also known by his pen name Jin Yong — is an unusually unifying force across the Chinese-speaking world. His intricately intertwined martial arts stories form a fantastical cultural touchstone shared throughout the worldwide diaspora. 

In the late 1980s, Cha’s 15 novels were the first to be fully published and read in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan simultaneously. A few years earlier, Cha was famously summoned to Beijing as the first non-Communist Hong Konger to meet with Deng Xiaoping, the People’s Republic of China’s second leader, renowned for modernising the country after the rule of Mao Zedong. This marked the wuxia writer’s first return to his homeland in more than three decades. Born as Cha Leung-yung in 1924, to a noble family in Haining, Zhejiang, he decamped to Hong Kong 24 years later. 

With all of this in mind, composer Elliot Leung’s memories of discovering Cha’s work are nothing out of the ordinary. “Primary school, grade one – we were instructed to read him,” he notes. Leung considers himself a fan of Cha, his enthusiasm evolving from childhood fascination to a more mature respect, but this is no different to the generations of Hongkongers who came of age in the decades since the writer’s riveting stories were serialised in local newspapers in the 1950s.

Leung was in his late 20s when his fandom began to depart from that of the average Hongkonger. When famed conductor Yu Long asked him to write an orchestral piece to mark Cha’s centenary, Leung’s relationship with Cha’s work turned from ordinary to extraordinary.

The result has had a remarkable effect on Leung’s career. Co-commissioned by three mainland orchestras, the half-hour symphonic suite he produced for Yu has already played to thousands of listeners, over around 10 performances in China. Wuxia – Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Jin Yong will finally receive its hometown premiere at the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s (HK Phil) early National Day concert on September 26, paired with celebrated Chinese composer Tan Dun’s own martial arts-inspired violin Concerto, Hero. It’s a big day for Leung: the same night will see the world premiere of its follow-up, Storm and Steel: A Marine’s Odyssey Symphonic Suite, by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra (GSO). But he’ll be in Hong Kong.

Soon after, in November a recording of Wuxia by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (SSO) will be released on vinyl, ensuring its legacy for years to come. 

The cult of Jin Yong

Even before reaching school, Leung was aware of Cha’s work through his father, who would spontaneously recite snippets to him and his younger brother. So when the same familiar titles kept cropping up on the school curriculum, Leung needed little encouragement to devour all 15 novels in his early life. “Because you kind of get sucked into it. It’s like Harry Potter, right?” he says. “You read the first book, [then] you want to know what happens afterwards.”

He wasn’t the only one, and countless playground reenactments of fight scenes with his peers would follow. The collective adolescent fascination was fueled by dozens of screen adaptations, from TVB’s famed serialisations to even Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Times (1994) – a tradition that continues to this day, with legendary director Hark Tsui directing this year’s hit Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants. “A lot of these stories resonate with a lot of “people, not just because it’s set in China or because it has martial arts in it, but there are a lot of subtle themes, character studies,” adds Leung. “It’s, kind of like a Game of Thrones thing – the flying dragons might be the part that sucks you in in the first place, but as you grow older you discover there are many other layers.”

Composing a life

The same year that Leung was ordered to read Cha’s works in class, he was given another homework assignment: to describe what he wanted to do when he grew up. “I wrote I wanted to be a conductor!” laughs the composer today. “So I knew I wanted to do music very early on – but I certainly did not know that I would one day write a piece about all these books that I grew up on. I would like to tell my six-year-old self: one day when you grow up, these two worlds will collide.”

The collision occurred in 2023, when Leung received a sudden invite to join Yu at his hotel in Hong Kong. As well as being principal guest conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Yu is currently artistic director and chief conductor of both Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and Beijing’s China Philharmonic, and music director of the GSO – so naturally Leung didn’t dither. “Conductors have things they like, things that they look for, be it in Beethoven, Brahms, whatever,” says Leung. “Around that time, Yu Long really started taking an interest in my work – the character, the energy in the music, which I guess comes from my film background.”

By this time, Leung had already gained notoriety as a film composer, following his breakthrough scoring Operation Red Sea, a 2018 hit which served as Hong Kong’s entry to the Oscars. It marked the first in a string of seven movies Leung has scored for director Dante Lam, which includes 2021’s The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021) – the second-highest-grossing movie ever not primarily in English. “The first question he asked me, have you read Jing Yong’s novels?” remembers Leung. “My eyes lit up at that point, like floodgates of ideas just kind of swarmed my mind right away, right? Because a lot of these stories are so vivid in my mind.”

This fast-moving cinematic approach was exactly what Yu wanted for his new project: a tribute to Cha, co-commissioned by SSO, Chengdu Symphony Orchestra and Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra; Hangzhou because Yong had a home there, and Chengdu because the neighbouring Qingcheng Shan mountain is immortalised in his books.

One of the first ideas that struck Leung, right there in the hotel suite, was how to audibly render the “18 Dragon Subduing Palms” signature move with an equally dramatic 18-note drum solo. “Being in film has helped me a lot with my orchestral work,” says Leung. “Film taught me how to pace, how long I should stay on one thing and how fast I should tell you something, how quickly I can get someone’s attention and how quickly someone’s attention fades.”

Making stories sing

Leung’s early experience in the foley department on martial arts movies also came in handy. In a turn that went viral on Chinese social media, Leung’s score asks the orchestra’s percussionists to swipe a raincoat through the air to simulate the whoosh of rapidly slashing limbs – an effect discovered after methodically experimenting with the contents of his own wardrobe. “I just kept pulling different kinds of clothes out,” he says. “We’ve got suits, we’ve got T-shirts, we’ve got bedsheets, pillowcases. You name it, right? I was just whipping all of them. Until I found a raincoat. A very heavy raincoat. And that got what I needed.”

But waving fabrics and striking a steel thunder sheet to simulate the visceral slap of combat only went so far. Where writing for movies means accompanying a story, for Wuxia, Leung wanted to tell the stories out right. “First of all, it’s impossible to do 15 books in 30 minutes, right?” he muses. “So, the best I can do is pick and choose – immediately, I knew that there are some things I cannot miss.”

So he worked backwards. For Leung the cinephile, there could only be one climax: a tribute to The Smiling, Proud Wanderer’s likable hero Linghu Chong, brought to life with a rousing, folk-inspired theme, titled “The Buoyant Swordsman (笑傲江湖)”. Astute ears will notice a subtle nod to the melody of Sam Hui’s song “Laughter in the Vast Sea (滄河一聲嘯)” from Joseph Koo’s earlier film adaption of the same book.

At the other end, Leung invoked the character Guo Jing from Legend of the Condor Heroes in the bombastic fanfare of opening movement “Pledge (忠肝义胆)”. At the work’s centrepiece sits third movement “Forbidden Love (侠骨柔情)”, a meditation on the taboo romance of young Yang Guo and his teacher Xiao Longnü in The Return of the Condor Heroes – a story adapted numerous times, but most enduringly remembered TVB’s 1983 series starring Andy Lau. 

“It was always my hope to one day have this piece performed in Hong Kong, because Jin Yong’s from Hong Kong, I’m from Hong Kong,” says Leung. “I wanted to do something for Hong Kong as well. It’s also my personal favourite, but I know it’s a lot of people from Hong Kong’s favourite. I wanted to speak to the city.”

Appetite for consumption 

The most frequent question Leung gets asked is why his score didn’t reference Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils – a complicated universe-in-a-book Leung compares to a Christian Nolan thriller. “Out of all the books, it’s the most difficult to understand because it’s not written linearly,” explains Leung. “So I told the commissioning orchestras, if you commission me to write Wuxia 2, I’ll spend the whole thing on just this book.”

While he may already be teasing a sequel, the next six months of Leung’s life are already accounted for, primarily on tour with the SSO, which is presenting a newer work to audiences across Australasia, the Caribbean and US – Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavors, a light programmatic suite which he compares to Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. Each of the 10 movements is designed to conjure the sense of a different favourite dish, an accessible concept composed deliberately to satisfy listeners and diners alike. “It’s a very nice pairing because a lot of orchestras now have gala dinners, so they just serve the food afterward – you know, the exact same dishes,” says the enterprising composer.

Already a domestic hit following its Shanghai premiere, SSO’s interpretation of Chinese Kitchen will be released alongside Wuxia – taking the other side of the vinyl release – and international orchestras are already programming the piece into their repertoire. 

“It’s a big honour, but I think it starts from the foundation of how and why I write music the way I do,” says Leung. “I always like to write music that’s challenging but rewarding – not challenging for no reason. I like to find things that audiences can relate to, so people can feel much closer to the music. So rather than writing something that’s super abstract, I think there’s a responsibility for me to write something that people can enjoy, relate to, or feel something. Because at the end of the day, it’s an experience.”

Wuxia – Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Jin Yong will be performed by HK Phil at Hong Kong Culture Centre on September 26, 2025. For more infirmation visit here.