Chinese kung fu novelist given French arts honour
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-14 14:15

France Wednesday honoured Hong Kong-based kung fu writer Louis Cha with the nation's highest award for the arts, the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters).  

Cha, who was born in Zhejiang, China, where he is known as Jin Yong, is the biggest selling author of martial arts novels and has sold almost 300 million copies of his works.  

The honour, awarded by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, coincides with the first translation into French of one of 80-year-old Cha's books, "The Legend of the Eagle-Shooting Hero".  

It also comes a day after French president Jacques Chirac visited Hong Kong on a whistle-stop tour to round off a four-day trade mission to China.  

Chirac was in the city to support a bid by Paris's Pompidou Centre to open a modern art centre in the city and to launch the Hong Kong leg of a year-long cultural exchange festival called the "Year of France in China".