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Historical person
1621–1696
Shi Lang was a naval commander who transferred from the Zheng regime to Qing service. He led the 1683 campaign that defeated the Kingdom of Tungning and brought Taiwan under Qing control. The Deer and the Cauldron makes Trinket an improbable patron of his advancement.
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
