Ni Kuang was born in Shanghai on 30 May 1935 as Ni Cong, styled Yiming, with ancestral roots in Ningbo, Zhejiang. He entered the East China People's Revolutionary University in 1951 and then joined the army, serving in northern Jiangsu and Inner Mongolia before fleeing from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 1957, where he worked as a labourer, proofreader and editor and turned to writing for a living. In 1963 he began his science-fiction series featuring the adventurer Wisely, starting with Diamond Flower; the series eventually ran to more than 140 novels blending science fiction, detective and adventure elements, and won readers across the Chinese-speaking world. He wrote more than 300 novels and 400 film scripts, including screenplays for Shaw Brothers such as The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) with Chang Cheh, and in 1972 he wrote Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury, in which he created the character Chen Zhen. Writing wuxia under the pen name Yue Chuan, he produced The Six-Fingered Demon Lute, completed the Yuan Zhen-xia series between 1981 and 1991, and ghost-wrote sections of Jin Yong's Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils while Jin Yong travelled abroad. In 1987 he helped found the Hong Kong Writers' Association and served as its chairman, and he was one of the 'Four Great Talents of Hong Kong' alongside Jin Yong, James Wong and Chua Lam. He lived for a time in San Francisco in the early 1990s before settling back in Hong Kong. In 2012 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards, and he died in Hong Kong on 3 July 2022, aged 87. Apart from Wisely he wrote the Yuan Zhen-xia, Asian Eagle Luo Kai, Prodigal Gao Da and Young Man and Princess series, and published under other pen names such as Wei Li. Most of his screenplays were wuxia and action films, including The Boxer from Shantung and Killer Clans, and he also made cameo appearances in films and hosted radio programmes. He supported his family by his writing and was largely self-taught, and his Wisely stories were adapted into television series and radio dramas bearing the same name. A very fast writer, at his peak he ran serialised novels and columns in several papers at once, and his friendship with Jin Yong is well known.
Ni Kuang brought science fiction into Chinese popular fiction through the Wisely series, and characters such as Wisely and Yuan Zhen-xia became shared memories for several generations of readers. He wrote screenplays for films including Fist of Fury and The One-Armed Swordsman, helping shape early Hong Kong genre cinema. His sheer output and imagination are rare in Chinese popular culture. His novels have been adapted again and again for film, television and radio, keeping his influence alive.
Achievements
- 1963 · Began his 'Wisely' science-fiction series, starting with 'Diamond Flower'
- 1972 · Wrote the screenplay for Bruce Lee's 'Fist of Fury', creating the character Chen Zhen
- 2012 · Received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards