Duck of Mount Deer - Wuxia Audiobook in Chinese

The Duke of Mount Deer (鹿鼎记), by Jin Yong (Louis Cha, 金庸).
Audiobook in Chinese read by Lian Liru.
No ADS, No IAP, No internet connection request.

The Duke of Mount Deer, also known as The Deer and the Cauldron, is a novel by Jin Yong (Louis Cha) and the last and longest of his novels. The novel was initially published in Hong Kong as a serial, and ran from 24 October 1969 to 23 September 1972 in the newspaper Ming Pao.

Although the book is often referred to as a wuxia novel, it is not archetypal of the genre, since the protagonist, Wei Xiaobao, is not an adept martial artist, but rather, an antihero who relies on wit and cunning to get out of trouble. Another alternative title of the novel is On Ruding Mountains.

The choice of the novel's title is alluded to in a section in the first chapter, in which a scholar has a conversation with his son. The scholar recounts that both the deer and the cauldron serve as metaphors for the Central Plains and the Chinese empire.

The historical text Records of the Grand Historian contains the following line, "The deer lost by Qin was hunted by all under Heaven", a figurative description of the rise of numerous rivaling warlords contesting for supremacy to capture a prize – the Chinese empire lost by the Qin dynasty.

During the Zhou dynasty, there were the Nine Tripod Cauldrons, which were symbolic of the Divine Mandate of rulership. The historical text Zuo Zhuan recorded an account in which the ruler of Chu, a vassal state under the Zhou dynasty, asked a minister in the Zhou royal court about the weight of one of those cauldrons. This sent a clear signal that he was coveting the throne, which was nominally occupied by the King of Zhou.

The novel's title also refers to its historical setting, the Qing dynasty, when the Han Chinese subjects of the fallen Ming dynasty struggle to restore their former empire by opposing the Manchu rulers of Qing.