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CRIME STORY: why mystery fiction set in China
has captured the public’s imagination
(cover story)
From Judge Dee to Inspector Chen, a different look at the recent
crop of China's detective fiction hitting the bookstores
From THAT'S SHANGHAI January 2008 Print & Web Edition
www.urbanatomy.com
By Mina Choi
A tough new school of detective fiction has muscled aside works by
self-help gurus, China experts and the like. This new wave of crime
novelists, including Qiu Xiaolong, Diane Wei Liang, He Jiahong, Lisa
See and Catherine Sampson, has won a fast-growing fan base with provocative
titles -- Red Mandarin Dress, Eye of the Jade and The Pool of Unease
– and twisted tales of mystery.
In part, readers are attracted by just that, the mystery. But to solve
the puzzle of this growing interest in detective fiction with China
themes, we must first go back to origins of the detective genre.
Many fans of the genre claim that detective/mystery fiction began in
the 1840’s with Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Murders
in the Rue Morgue. Others claim that it started earlier, in France,
with writers such as Francois Vidocq. But for the general public, it
was Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study
in Scarlet published in 1887, that really established the genre. Indeed,
Arthur Conan Doyle, along with Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers,
still rank as the top names in mystery fiction. Later, in the 1930s,
hard-boiled American writers such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett
and James M. Cain added additional spice to the genre.
However, China has its own claim as the founder of detective fiction,
one dating all the way back to the Tang Dynasty: the story of Judge
Dee (Dee Goong An), an important official in the Tang Court who worked
as a District Magistrate, as recorded in the Old History of the Tang
Dynasty (circa 945 AD). That, in turn, inspired Robert van Gulik’s
popular series of Judge Dee novels beginning in 1949. A Dutch scholar
and diplomat who wrote in six languages, van Gulik first discovered
Judge Dee while doing research on China’s legal documents. After
rifling through obscure documents such as Parallel Cases from under
the Pear-tree: A 13th Century Manual of Jurisprudence and Detection,
a compilation of 144 legal cases which van Gulik painstakingly translated,
van Gulik spotted an 18th-century account of Judge Dee titled Four great
strange cases during Empress Wu Zetian’s reign (690-705 AD). After
translating this work, he then started to write his unique version of
the detective hero Judge Dee.
The Judge Dee series boasts 15 books and eight short stories. All the
books are still in print and fans swear by them. Titles such as Murder
in Canton and The Chinese Gold Murders paint a quaint picture of “ancient”
China. What some readers don’t realize is that the portrait of
Tang Dynasty China, as imagined by van Gulik, is anachronistic: Judge
Dee is really operating in a Ming Dynasty environment, the era that
the scholar van Gulik was most knowledgeable about.
It is from this 1000-year old tradition of “Justice Fiction”,
as some have named the genre, from which the current darling of detective
fiction, Qiu Xiaolong, hails. “Many people have told me that they
can guess who the murderer is half way through my novel,” says
Qiu, ”but my stories pay homage to the justice tradition of China.
Writers like van Gulik also wrote in this tradition. My stories are
not just whodunits. They’re also about how to bring these people
to justice -- how to punish him.”
Born in Shanghai and raised in Huangpu District, Qiu left China in
1988 to study abroad and has since remained in America. His detective
hero, Chief Inspector Chen Cao, of the Shanghai Police Department, embodies
many of the characteristics of that Qiu espouses himself; a poet and
a scholar specializing in Chinese classics, Inspector Chen is a police
officer in name only. When he is not trying to solve a murder, he’s
writing poems and researching papers on Tang Dynasty poems. Qiu says
that the character of Chen was modeled on a classmate who studied English
literature, but found himself working in the Police Department due to
lack of other opportunities.
Qiu Xialong’s Inspector Chen mysteries (with five titles already
in print) are some of the most rewarding detective stories set in China
because Qiu writes deftly in English yet displays a deep, cultural knowledge
of Shanghai. Readers can almost smell the leaky gas stove burner in
his latest novel Red Mandarin Dress, while the passages in When Red
is Black gives insight on the deep inner workings of the guanxi system
and ‘giving face’ in China.
Writing in English (Qiu also writes in Chinese), says the author, gives
new vigor to his writing. “Certain ideas or idioms are clichés
in Chinese, but expressed in English, they become unusual and fresh.”
It’s not just the language that is fresh; the character also becomes
fresh. Says Qiu, “One fan pointed out how he has never seen a
detective who thinks so often about his mother and calls her regularly.
But that is how a Shanghai guy would behave, so that’s how Inspector
Chen behaves.”
Qiu’s research methods for his novels are simple: he just takes
long, slow walks through Shanghai to “feel” the city. He
chats up people and visits local restaurants. When asked about his research
methods for police procedures, Qiu admits that some aspects were cribbed
from Chinese television series. In any case, when he began his writing
career, he didn’t intend to write a mystery. “Originally,
I wanted to write about the sociological changes taking place in China.”
But since he had never written prose before, Qiu needed a structure,
and the mystery genre seemed right—it begins with a murder, and
ends with a solution. Moreover, writing is Qiu’s way of paying
homage to the city he loves. “Some people say that I have a Shanghai
complex,” he says. “Shanghai will always be my spiritual
home no matter where I live.”
Diane Wei Liang, the author of The Eye of Jade, a mystery set in Beijing
that uncovers the antique smuggling trade, also draws upon personal
experience. Though she lives in London, Liang says that she visits Beijing
often to see her family. What is unusual about Liang’s mystery
is that it features a female detective, Mei, a woman who has set up
shop after being fired from the Ministry of Public Security. For Liang,
this first novel emerged after a talk with her agent who thought there
must be an entertaining way of introducing readers to issues of contemporary
China.
The goriest of the current crop of mysteries is Catherine Sampson’s
The Pool of Unease, which begins with a beheaded body dumped in an icy
lake. For Sampson, a British journalist-turned-novelist who has been
living in China for more than 16 years, this novel is the third appearance
of her protagonist Robyn Ballantyne, who has hitherto never set foot
in the Middle Kingdom. When asked about her inspiration for her novel,
Sampson says, “China to me is endlessly intriguing and fascinating,
but it is a very real place, and I want to give my readers a taste of
that reality, which is sometimes very gritty.”
One theme that is common to all these mystery novels is the Cultural
Revolution. Whether it directly influences the murder mystery or serves
as a backdrop, the era is pervasive. “History does matter, even
if people don’t talk about it,” says Liang.
That said, He Jiahong, 54, draws on reality and his first-hand knowledge
of evidence and criminal justice procedures. From 1969-1977, He spent
eight years working on a farm in Heilongjiang Province. He later studied
law at Renmin University and took a doctoral degree at Northwestern
Law School in Illinois. The hero of his four novels, the lawyer Hong
Jun is much like the author, a man who pursues justice at whatever cost.
In The Madwoman, for example, the first of He’s works to be translated
in English (all four, The Evils in the Stock Market, The Enigma of the
Dragon Eye Stone and The Mysterious Ancient Painting, have been translated
in French) He’s protagonist investigates the case of an innocent
man who’s been put in jail, but the author skillfully relates
the issue to wider problems in Chinese society.
Since he began writing in 1994, He says that “generally speaking,
most of my books are shaped according to my personal experience, as
well as actual legal cases. Because I majored in criminal investigation
and evidence, I usually rely on my professional research and case study.”
Which is not to suggest that his writing is at all dry. Indeed, His
prose makes liberal use of colourful Beijing colloquialisms and each
of the main characters has a unique and strong personality. The appeal
of his work, according to the author, “is its larger-than-life
characters, the element of suspense and, of course, the plot. Other
than that, the aim is to present the reader with an anatomy of life.”
For Lisa See, a US author of five novels set in China, three of them
mystery titles including Dragon Bones, The Interior and The Flower Net,
writing serves as a way for her to explore her heritage. Although she
doesn’t look Chinese (she is one eighth Chinese), See feels drawn
to China because of her extended Chinese family in California. The catalyst
for the first of See’s China-based mysteries came when her husband
took on a case on which the Ministry of Public Security and the FBI
were cooperating. She got to accompany her husband and observe the interactions.
“My favorite night was in Beijing, when we all ended up in a karaoke
bar and suddenly there were all these Beijing men singing in their best
tenor voices. I thought: I really have to put this in a novel.”
But See’s latest two novels have not been mysteries. Snow Flower
and Secret Fan is about nu shi, a secret woman’s writing, set
in 19th-century Southwestern Hunan and Peony in Love tells the tale
of a love-stricken young girl against the backdrop of Tang Xianzu's
opera The Peony Pavilion in 17th-century China.
Still, there’s no denying crime fiction set in China is growing
in popularity. One might wonder why a poet and a Ph.D. scholar such
as Qiu is writing Inspector Chen mysteries? Or why a journalist is writing
a grisly murder mysteries? Perhaps See puts it the best, “If I
can get the page-turning aspect into the novel, then along the way,
I can explore so many places, people, politics and environments that
the readers would otherwise never have taken an interest in.”
In short, detective/mystery novels allow highbrows a vehicle to express
their views in a lowbrow genre. Writers can sneak in the poetry, the
classical allusions, the history and the sociological observations,
but the lowbrows won’t notice. And that, indeed, may be the ultimate
red herring.
For a complete list of Articles on Books by Mina Choi click HERE