It’s all about me
Giddens Ko’s pen name, Jiu Ba Dao, which means “Nine Knives,” comes from a song that he wrote in high school: “Nine knives! / Polish them up and they will glitter and shine / Glitter and shine!” Now 33, he comes from Changhua, where his parents own a pharmacy; he is the second of three brothers. He began writing fiction in 1999, producing 300,000 characters in a year, which he posted on the Internet. The response was chilly, but he was having a good time anyway, and he decided then and there that he wanted to keep on writing.
He once boasted that within 20 years he would be the king of storytellers, right up there in the same league as the legendary martial arts novelist Louis Cha. “But Louis Cha only has written martial arts novels and historical novels,” Ko adds, “and writers like Gu Long and Ni Kuang don’t write in as many genres as I do. I am the best-selling writer in Hong Kong and Taiwan, not one of the best.” He doesn’t come out with the whole self-effacing song and dance of leaving the honors to others, and doesn’t hesitate in the least to blow his own horn, making him very different from the typical writer or director.
Though he thinks quite highly of himself, he also is able to laugh at himself, for example about his height: “All those years ago I didn’t dare to tell Shen Jiayi that I was in love with her, and my biggest hang-up was that I was three centimeters shorter than her.” (Shen Jiayi is the real-life girl who provided the model for the female lead in Apple.) Showing us a picture of himself with his jaw stuck out looking very full of himself indeed, with more than 50 books stacked up next to him, reaching more than halfway to his head, he says as he looks at it: “What a conceited little $&%#&!” He willingly plays the fool to get laughs, not worried in the least about being embarrassed, and he unreservedly bares his shortcomings, so that overall he comes across as frank and engaging.
After the Golden Horse Awards, Giddens and Ko Chen-tung, the young newcomer who played the male lead in Apple, ran into Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau in the men’s room, and Giddens wrote on his blog: “I was really nagging at Ko Chen-tung, telling him to hurry up and finish pissing—he was taking so long!—when Lau walked in. He patted me on the shoulder, smiled, and said [referring to Ko’s failure to win best director] ‘It doesn’t matter, stick with it! I also waited a lot of years!’ I was freaking out, and I looked over at Ko Chen-tung, who was still peeing, and yelled out: ‘Andy Lau just told me to hang in there! He just up and spoke to me on his own! Ko Chen-tung, you saw it! You’re a witness!’”
Even when giving lectures or speeches, he just puts his thoughts right out there, peppering his remarks with four-letter words and vulgar expressions.