As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.
Historical person
c. 1610–1669
Oboi was a Manchu military commander and one of the four regents appointed for the young Kangxi Emperor. He accumulated dominant influence at court until Kangxi had him arrested in 1669. The Deer and the Cauldron turns the emperor’s move against Oboi into one of Trinket’s first great political adventures.
Jin Yong’s fiction uses this historical figure within a narrative that blends documented events, popular legend and wuxia invention.
Series
Set during the early reign of the Kangxi Emperor, The Deer and the Cauldron follows Wei Xiaobao—called Trinket in John Minford’s English translation—from a Yangzhou brothel into the Forbidden City. Illiterate, irreverent and almost entirely without conventional martial virtue, he survives through mimicry, bribery, luck and an instinct…
All books in this series
