Detecting Chinese Modernities: Rupture and Continuity in Modern Chinese Detective Fiction (1896-1949) 9004431276, 9789004431270

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Detecting Chinese Modernities

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Sinica Leidensia Edited by Barend J. ter Haar Maghiel van Crevel In co-operation with P. K. Bol, D. R. Knechtges, E. S. Rawski, W. L. Idema, and H. T. Zurndorfer

volume 150

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sinl

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Detecting Chinese Modernities Rupture and Continuity in Modern Chinese Detective Fiction (1896–1949)

By

Yan Wei

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wei, Yan, (Professor of literature), author. Title: Detecting Chinese modernities : rupture and continuity in modern  Chinese detective fiction (1896–1949) / Yan Wei. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Sinica Leidensia,  0169–9563 ; volume 150 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020013322 (print) | LCCN 2020013323 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004431270 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004431287 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories, Chinese—History and  criticism. | Chinese fiction—20th century—History and criticism. |  Chinese fiction—19th century—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PL2419.D48 W44 2020 (print) | LCC PL2419.D48 (ebook)  | DDC 895.13/087209—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013322 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013323

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0169-9563 ISBN 978-90-04-43127-0 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-43128-7 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 A Brief History of Modern Detective Fiction in China 2 2 Global Form and Local Expressions: Alternative Modernities in Modern Chinese Detective Fiction 6 3 Overview 26

PART 1 The Formative Stage: Chinese Detective Fiction during the Late Qing Period 1 Meeting Detective Fiction: Western Detective Fiction in Chinese Translation 35 1 The Spirit of Chivalric Vengeance: Lin Shu’s Translation of A Study in Scarlet 38 2 New Civilizations and Old Morals: Zhou Guisheng, Wu Jianren, and The Serpents’ Coils 46 3 Quwei: Zhou Zuoren and “The Gold-Bug” 56 2 The Detective Story in Traditional Clothes: the Embryonic Form of Native Chinese Detective Fiction 71 1 Sherlock Holmes and the “Quickening Incense”: the Poisoning Case in The Travels of Lao Can 72 2 To Be a Detective or a Cruel Judge: Judge Lu’s Dilemma in The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases 80 3 An Alternative View of Chinese Detective Fiction: the zhiguai Tale “The Shouzhen” in Chinese Detective Cases 90 4 The New Woman and the New Fiction: Lü Simian’s Chinese Female Detectives 100

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PART 2 The Golden Age: Chinese Detective Fiction in the Republican Period 3 “Disguised Textbooks for Science”: Detective Fiction as a Pedagogical Tool 115 1 Chinese Detective Writers and the Community of Scientific Discourse 117 2 Three Aspects of Scientific Discourse in Republican Detective Fiction 125 4 Justice and the Chivalric Detective 150 1 Private Detective Huo Sang and Mozi’s Ideas of jian’ai and youxia 152 2 Burglar-Detective Lu Ping and the Philosophy of Thieves in Zhuangzi 159 5 Shanghai Modern: the Metropolitan Landscape in Chinese Detective Fiction 172 1 Shanghai Cosmopolitanism and Republican Detective Fiction Writers 173 2 Redrawing the Spectacle of Shanghai Modernity 176 3 The Transnational Imagination of Republican Detective Fiction 195 6 Domestic Crimes in Everyday Life 207 1 Local Clues from Daily Life 208 2 Family Crimes during the Transitional Period 216 3 Shanghai Alleyways in Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang Detective Stories 225 Conclusion: the Legacies of the Late Qing Mode and the Republican Mode: Echoes and Variations after 1949 233 1 The Republican Mode and the Detective Fiction of Postwar Hong Kong 235 2 The Late Qing Mode and Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee Series 239 Character List 245 Works Cited 251 Index 273

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Acknowledgments This book is a thoroughly revised and expanded version of my doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. My greatest intellectual debt is owed to David Der-wei Wang, my Ph.D. advisor and lifetime mentor. Since the inception of this project, Professor Wang has guided me with his insightful theoretical vision and sincere passion for modern Chinese literature. I am also thankful for my dissertation supervising committee members, Wilt L. Idema and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow. Their valuable advice helped me shape the original idea and structure of this project. In the end, this book would not have been completed without the consistent encouragement of William Tay. I met Professor Tay after I moved to Hong Kong in 2011, and I have benefited greatly from his wisdom and erudition. I thank Tam King-Fai and Ellen McGill for their dedicated editing of the first draft of the book. I am most indebted to the professional editorial assistance of Gene McGarry, who not only read different versions of my manuscript with extreme carefulness but also offered insightful suggestions regarding the coherence of this book. I also wish to thank Brill’s editors and anonymous readers for their constructive comments, which have greatly helped to enhance the overall argument of this work. The completion of this book was made possible by the generous support of several institutions, including Harvard-Yenching Library, Nanjing University Library, and Lingnan University Library. I am grateful for the assistance I received during the revision stage in the form of a Faculty Research Grant from Lingnan University and a grant from the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of HKSAR Government. Needless to say, I thank all my wonderful colleagues at Lingnan University, whose encouragement and thoughtfulness have been the most valuable asset during my research. Finally, my deepest gratitude is to my family. I dedicate this book to my parents, my husband Zhu Wei, and my son Bruce, whose love and care have accompanied me throughout this writing journey.

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Introduction Reading detective fiction is a global pastime, and local expressions of the genre continue to breathe new life into a nineteenth-century Western literary invention. In China, translations of Western and Japanese detective novels as well as Chinese-language detective fiction fill bookstore shelves and rise to the top of online best-seller lists. Works by Chinese writers such as Mai Jia (1964–) and Song Ying (1944–) have been translated into multiple languages and have won international acclaim. The English-language Inspector Chen Cao novels of US-based writer Qiu Xiaolong (1953–), set in contemporary Shanghai, are used by Western tourists as travel guides when they visit the city. To better understand the current popularity of detective fiction in China, this book turns to the past to trace how the genre took root in the nation from the late Qing period to the Republican era (1896–1949). It historicizes the two stages in the development of Chinese detective fiction and discusses the rupture and continuity in the cultural transactions, mediations, and appropriations that occurred when the genre of detective fiction traveled to China during the first half of the twentieth century. This book also identifies two distinct strategies for appropriating Western detective fiction: the first is characteristic of the late Qing period while the second emerged in the Republican period. Late Qing translators and writers tried to assimilate the foreign genre into their own literary tradition, while Republican writers accepted the new genre on its own terms and chose to use Western-style detective narratives as an educational tool to popularize science or to reveal the hazards in everyday life in modern China. Yet after identifying two divergent, or even opposite modes of domestification, this book further argues that there is also a continuity between the detective fiction of the late Qing and Republican periods, which taken as a whole attests the affective experience shared among Chinese people who witnessed the dialogue between the traditional and the modern during these decades of change. Chinese detective fiction of the earlier twentieth century did not accept Western detective fiction and its value system uncritically. It was alert to the danger of materialism and considered traditional morality as an effective antidote. Facing a chaotic time of corruption and bureaucratic malpractice, Chinese detective writers tended to be skeptical of the courts and frequently meted out poetic justice to their characters as a corrective to the flawed judicial system. By treating detective fiction itself as an embodiment of modernity, my close examination of the reception of this genre during the late Qing and the Republican era not only illustrates the varying attitudes, struggles, and negotiations that characterized Chinese engagement with

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_002

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Western modernity during these two periods, but also reflects an ontological issue in the evolution of detective fiction: Detective fiction is a modern genre that issued from the West, yet as it has gradually become a global presence, its global diversities in turn expanded our understanding of the original connotations and possibilities of this genre. 1

A Brief History of Modern Detective Fiction in China

In the West, detective fiction emerged as a genre in the mid-nineteenth century, “coincident with the development of the modern police force and the creation of the modern bureaucratic state.”1 The history of this genre in China dates back to the 1890s, during the late Qing period. When Sherlock Holmes stories were first introduced into China through the Shanghai newspaper Shiwubao (The Chinese progress) in September 1896, they achieved immediate popularity. It is estimated that of the approximately one thousand translations of Western fiction published in China between 1840 and 1911, at least half were translations of detective stories.2 Western detective fiction made inroads into Japan before it reached China.3 The Chinese term used to describe Western-style detective fiction, zhentan

1  Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 4. Ernst Bloch argues that the invention of detective fiction was a result of juridical developments in Enlightenment societies. According to Bloch, before the introduction of evidentiary trials in mid-eighteenth century, the testimony of a few eyewitnesses and the confession of the suspect (the regina probationis or “queen of proofs”) could sustain a conviction. In cases where there were not enough eyewitnesses, torture was used to obtain a confession and “the effect was unthinkable atrocity, the worthless extortion of guilt, against which the Enlightenment rebelled for both humane and logical reasons. Since then, evidence is necessary and must be produced; it is the basis for proof before judge and jury in most cases.” Bloch, Utopian Function of Art and Literature, 246. 2  A Ying, Wan Qing xiaoshuo shi, 186. 3  According to Tsutsumibayashi Megumi, Japanese started to translate Western nonfiction detective stories as early as 1863, with the purpose of teaching the public about the virtues of the police system in the West. Kuroiwa Ruikō , the most famous translator of Western detective fiction, published his first translated detective fiction in a small newspaper in 1889. Most of Kuroiwa Ruikō’s translations were based on works by French authors such as Fortuné du Boisgobey and Émile Goboriau. Serialized in newspapers, these stories were very popular. The first translated Sherlock Holmes novel, entitled Indulgence of Begging (Kojikidoraku, a faithful translation of “The Man with the Twisted Lip”) appeared in 1894. Tsutsumibayashi, “There’s a West Wind Coming,” 83–109.

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xiaoshuo 偵探小說, derives from the Japanese term tantei shōsetsu 探偵小說.4 According to Kyoko Omori, the Japanese word tantei can be either a verb or a noun. As a verb, tantei refers to the probing, investigating, and exploring of the unknown by individuals who may represent the authorities, such as policemen or government officials, or marginalized figures, such as spies and anti-establishment activists.5 As a noun, it refers to a spy, secret agent, inquirer, or police detective.6 In Chinese, however, zhentan is only a noun and refers to both private and police detectives, and occasionally “spies.”7 Besides zhentan, other Chinese terms for “detective” are baotan and bao da’ting, which both mean “hired snoop.”8 Because these two terms were used by the late Qing government to refer to police detectives who worked with xunbu (regular police patrolmen), detective fiction was also referred to as baotan’an at that time.9 Translations of Western detective fiction not only asserted a significant influence on narrative modes in late Qing novels, but also served as an educational tool that introduced the masses to the law, history, science, and culture of Western societies.10 Western detective fiction further led Chinese intellectuals and reformists to reflect on the fundamental flaws in traditional Chinese judicial procedure. In Liu E’s book Lao Can youji (The travels of Lao Can, 1903), one of the most popular and influential novels of late Qing China, the protagonist Lao Can, a doctor by profession, assumes the role of a private investigator to solve a poisoning case because he is unable to tolerate the stubbornness of local magistrates. Lao Can carefully collects evidence, conducts detailed interviews with witnesses, and sets a trap to catch the culprit and his accomplice. In recognition of his excellent work, Lao Can is lauded by a local prefect 4 

5  6  7 

8  9  10  

In 1946, in order to expand the scope of this genre, the Japanese novelist Kigi Takatarou suggested replacing the term tantei shōsetsu with suiri shōsetsu. In contemporary China, the term tuili xiaoshuo (a Sinicized form of suiri shōsetsu) has become more popular than zhentan xiaoshuo. Omori, “‘Shiseinen’ Magazine,” 10. Omori, “‘Shiseinen’ Magazine,” 70–71. It should be noted that during the late Qing period the Chinese genre zhentan xiaoshuo encompassed a wider range of literary works, such as the adventure novel The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) by Baroness Emuska Orczy (1865–1947), espionage stories by E. Philips Oppenheim (1866–1956), and the court story “A Stolen King” by Allen Upward, among other types of stories. Bao means “be responsible for” and tan or da’ting means “to investigate” or “to find out.” For example, in 1906 the Shanghai Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan) published a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories in Chinese called Huasheng baotan’an (Detective cases recorded by Watson). For a general introduction to translated Western detective fiction and its popularity in late Qing period, see Hung, “Giving Texts a Context,” 151–176.

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as a Chinese Sherlock Holmes.11 This is probably the first time that the name of the archetypal private detective appeared in a Chinese novel. Lao Can is honored with this title because of his acute skills in observation and logical deduction, which are in sharp contrast to the obstinacy and hotheadedness of the local judge, who often relies upon torture to obtain confessions. Before the introduction of detective fiction, China had a long-established tradition of crime literature known as gong’an (court case) literature, which included legal casebooks compiled during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127), short huaben (vernacular stories) composed in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), and full-length novels written in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911).12 Gong’an stories usually center on an incorruptible judge who succeeds in solving crimes and restoring justice to those who have been wronged. Judge Bao, known for his stern demeanor and intolerance of injustice and corruption, was the most influential protagonist in this body of literature. As The Travels of Lao Can shows, the equation of Lao Can with Sherlock Holmes during the late Qing period, just as China began to enter the modern era, signified an ideological shift from reverence for incorruptible judges to a belief in a new Westernized hero of rational enquiry. Although the late Qing period was the formative stage of native Chinese detective fiction, the overall production of such tales in those years was sporadic. Most stories were written in classical Chinese and were relatively short. The popularity of native Chinese detective fiction crested during the Republican period, in the 1920s to 1940s—the “golden age” of the genre. Several magazines specifically devoted to detective fiction were launched in Shanghai and many Western detective stories were translated into the modern vernacular, making them accessible to more readers. A group of native Chinese detective writers emerged, the most famous of whom were Cheng Xiaoqing (1893–1976), Sun Liaohong (1897–1958), Lu Dan’an (1894–1980), Zhang Biwu (1891–?), Zhao Tiaokuang (1893–1955), and Yu Tianfen (1881–1937). Imitating or borrowing literary prototypes from Western detective stories, these Chinese detective writers created many well-known literary detectives, including Huo Sang (the so-called Chinese Sherlock Holmes), Lu Ping (the so-called Chinese 11 

12 

At the end of chapter 18, when Prefect Bai invites Lao Can to solve the poisoning case, he says: “Just think! Can an ordinary yamen runner handle this sort of extraordinary case? There is no alternative but to ask the help of a Sherlock Holmes like you!” (emphasis mine). Liu E, Travels of Lao Ts’an, 206. Gong’an was first used as a legal term for lawsuits during the Song dynasty. As a result, early gong’an stories were narratives related to legal cases. Gradually gong’an developed into a literary genre featuring a wise judge who played the key role in solving the case. For a detailed study on the history of gong’an fiction, see Ma, “Kung-an Fiction,” 200–259.

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Arsène Lupin), Hu Xian (the so-called Sherlock Holmes in the Corner [Menjiao li de Fu’er mosi]),13 the domestic detective Song Wuqi (Song Wuqi jiating zhentan), the female burglar detective Huang Ying (Nü feizei Huang Ying), and the detective couple Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang (Ye Huang fufu tan’an).14 Most Chinese detective writers grew up in Shanghai or its neighboring provinces. Their detective stories usually take place there too. During the Republican era, when the Chinese economy was heavily damaged by continuous war, a new kind of metropolitan culture was developing in Shanghai due to its geographical position as an international port. The decades-long civil war and the coexistence of foreign concessions and Chinese municipalities undermined security in Shanghai, leading it to become a turbulent, unruly, and crime-ridden city. At the same time, Shanghai’s “semi-colonial” condition also contributed to its cosmopolitan culture. Westernized entertainment spaces such as cafés, cinemas, and department stores, as well as the development of modern print culture, marked Shanghai as the most representative cosmopolitan city in East Asia and the center of Chinese popular literature. Viewed from a broader perspective, Chinese detective fiction belongs to the popular literature known as Mandarin and Butterfly fiction.15 The label “Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School” (yuanyang hudie pai) was first used in the late 1910s to “refer disparagingly to the classical-style love stories of a small, but very widely read, group of authors who made liberal use of these traditional symbols for pairs of lovers.”16 Beginning in the early 1920s, this label was applied by the May Fourth intellectuals in a pejorative way to attack all 13 

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The phrase “in the corner” here is not an allusion to the detective featured in Baroness Orczy’s The Old Man in the Corner (1908). Rather, it refers to the “marginal” nature of the cases that Hu Xian solves: they are ordinary, domestic mysteries unlike the more dramatic and sensational crimes investigated by Holmes. The stories of the female burglar Huang Ying were serialized in the detective magazine Lanpishu (The blue book) in nos. 17–28 (1948–1949). The series featuring the detective couple Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang was published in the detective magazine Da zhentan (Great detective), nos. 28–31 (1948). Very few of the May Fourth writers dabbled in detective fiction. Zhang Tianyi (1906–1985), using the pen name Zhang Wuzheng, wrote a series called Xu Changyun tan’an (Detective cases of Xu Changyun). The modernist writer Shi Zhecun (1905–2003) also wrote a short story called “Xiongzhai” (The haunted house, 1933). Western detective writers too usually held conservative political views. Julian Symons argues that almost all the British writers in the twenties and thirties, and most of the Americans, were right-wing: “This is not to say that they were openly anti-Semitic or anti-Radical, but that they were overwhelmingly conservative in feeling. It would have been unthinkable of them to create a Jewish detective, or a working-class one aggressively conscious of his origins, for such figures would have seemed to them quite incongruous.” Symons, Bloody Murder, 96. Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies, 7.

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kinds of popular fiction that adopted traditional linguistic style or rhetoric uses. As a result, Butterfly literature includes not only love stories but also “‘social’ novels, ‘knight-errant’ novels, ‘scandal’ novels, ‘detective’ novels, ‘imagination’ novels, ‘comic’ novels and many other kinds.”17 Comparing to the other genres in Butterfly literature, which were often regarded as “emotional,” “sentimental,” “depraved” or “outdated,” Chinese detective fiction tried to distinguish itself as scientific, rational, and modern. Positioning detective fiction as “disguised textbooks of science,” Chinese detective writers advertised its educational function and expressed their ambition to elevate its status to match that of the serious literature of the May Fourth movement, which embraced Western science and democracy. Therefore, the late Qing practice of borrowing elements from Western detective fiction and placing them in the setting of the traditional Chinese judicial system was discarded. Instead, Republican writers preferred to imitate Western detective stories directly, especially the tales of Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin, without incorporating the torso of gong’an literature. Jeffery Kinkley characterizes these Westernized Chinese detective stories as “shadows” of their Western models because of their lack of national originality.18 But after a close examination of Republican detective stories from the perspective of the four discourses of science, justice, urban modernity, and practices of everyday life, this book argues that these stories deserve to be viewed as an alternative mode of the Chinese domestication of Western detective fiction on the grounds of their keen attention to local circumstance and their attunement to affective experience: on the one hand, they use details from the everyday life of Chinese to address changes in Chinese society at a transitional moment from the traditional to the modern, while on the other hand the anxieties and resolutions in these Chinese detective stories demonstrate an emotional experience unique to modern Chinese. 2

Global Form and Local Expressions: Alternative Modernities in Modern Chinese Detective Fiction

Detective fiction, one of the most popular genres of the twentieth century, emerged as a subject of scholarly inquiry in the 1920s in the West,19 and the 17  18  19 

Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies, 7. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, 170–240. In “Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery Story,” chapter 5 of his book Theory of Prose (1925), the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky outlines the general schema of Conan Doyle’s stories and analyzes the narrative devices that have been repeatly employed by Doyle to create mystery, including the role of Dr. Watson, the deliberate delay in action of Sherlock

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study of this genre continues to increase in popularity today. Earlier research often focused on narrative theory,20 or the ideological implications of popular culture,21 or Foucauldian discussions of the culture of knowledge production.22 The proliferation of studies of detective fiction in the West is in conspicuous contrast to the lukewarm reception given to the genre by scholars of modern Chinese studies. Few book-length studies of modern Chinese detective literature have been produced by either Chinese or Western academics, whereas there are three English volumes on Japanese detective fiction: Amanda Seaman’s Bodies of Evidence: Women, Society, and Detective Fiction in 1990s Japan, Mark Hastings Silver’s Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature, 1868–1937, and Sari Kawana’s Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture.23 To date, the only critical book written in English

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Holmes during his investigation, and the use of homonyms to create ambiguous clues. Shklovsky, Theory of Prose, 101–116. Such as Tzvetan Todorov’s classic article “The Typology of Detective Fiction” (1966), in Todorov, Poetics of Prose, 42–52; Jacques Lacan’s seminar on “The Purloined Letter” (1972), in which he offers a semiotic reading of Poe’s short story (Lacan, “Seminar on The Purloined Letter,” 39–42); John Cawelti’s Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, and Peter Brooks’s Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. E.g., Stephen Knight argues that crime fiction addresses the psychic needs of a middleclass audience. Knight, Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction, 5. E.g., in From Bow Street to Baker Street: Mystery, Detection, and Narrative, Martin Kayman refers to Foucault’s writings on discipline and surveillance. Focusing upon the scientific aspects of criminal investigation in detective fiction, Ronald Thomas, in Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, studies how breakthroughs in nineteenth-century forensic science, such as fingerprint technology, forensic profiling, and crime photography, turned the human body into a text that could be read. In Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature, 1868–1941, Silver studies the issue of imitation and originality in Japanese detective fiction. He addresses the immense Western influence on native Japanese detective literature and the resultant anxiety of Japanese writers toward such cultural borrowing and blurring of national identity. In contrast, Sari Kawana emphasizes the “indebtedness” of Japanese detective fiction to its Western counterpart in her book Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture. By demonstrating that Japanese writers actively participated in the international genre of detective fiction, Kawana argues that Japanese writers of the 1920s conceived of the genre as transcultural and transnational by nature. In Bodies of Evidence: Women, Society, and Detective Fiction in 1990s Japan, Seaman focuses on the social school of Japanese detective fiction, created by Matsumoto Seicho in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Matsumoto’s works described the darker side of Japan’s much-lauded economic growth and its flawed or inequitable social structures. Seaman discusses how Japanese women writers of the 1990s leverage the sociocritical potential of detective fiction for sociopolitical engagement, and how gendered agency affects the structure and nature of knowledge presented in these Japanese-style hard-boiled detective novels.

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on Chinese detective fiction is Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China (1993), by Jeffery C. Kinkley. Kinkley’s main focus is the Chinese fazhi wenxue (legal system literature) of the post-Mao period, but in chapter 3 he discusses detective stories by Cheng Xiaoqing and Sun Liaohong, whom he classifies as May Fourth writers.24 On the ground that Chinese crime fiction during the Republican period was Westernized yet nationalistic, Kinkley argues that it resembles the more serious May Fourth works. Four English-language articles focus on detective fiction in early twentiethcentury China. The earliest of them, King-fai Tam’s “The Detective Fiction of Ch’eng Hsiao-ch’ing” (1992), addresses Chinese detective fiction during the Republican period. Tam discusses the various narrative devices that Cheng Xiaoqing used in his Huo Sang stories to create an ambiguous relationship between fact and fiction, including the assignation of a “double voice” to Huo Sang, who speaks as a character in the story but also as “a proselytizer of a new way of life and thinking” who seems to address the reader directly; the construction of a fictional biography for his detective; and the adoption of a reportorial style.25 Through blurring the boundary between imagination and reality, the factuality of the Huo Sang cases is reinforced and the educational, moral, and social functions of Cheng’s detective fiction are enhanced. In a second article on Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective works, “The Traditional Hero as Modern Detective: Huo Sang in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai,” Tam discusses the characterization of Huo Sang, the so-called Chinese Sherlock Holmes. Tam stresses the traditional elements in Huo Sang’s personality and argues that his ambiguous cultural identity is part of a larger statement made by Cheng Xiaoqing about Chinese society. Eva Hung’s and Zhang Ping’s essays pay attention to translations of Western detective fiction during the late Qing period. In “Giving Texts a Context: Chinese Translations of Classical English Detective Stories, 1896–1916,” Hung analyzes the reasons for the popularity of Western detective fiction at that time. Hung gives examples of translation errors in late Qing detective fiction and discusses the significance of these distorted translations in the social and cultural context of late Qing society.26 Zhang Ping’s article “Sherlock Holmes in China” compares traditional gong’an 24 

25  26 

In Chinese scholarship there are several books devoted to the history of Chinese detective fiction or to individual writers, e.g., Ren Xiang, Lingyidao fengjing. In Taiwan, scholars such as Huang Mei-E, Lu Chun-yu, Hong Wan-yu, and Chen Kuo-wei have published books or dissertations in Chinese on detective fiction in colonial or contemporary Taiwan. See Huang Mei-E, Chongceng xiandaixing jingxiang; Lu Chun-yu, “Rizhi shiqi Taiwan zhentan xushi de fasheng yu xingcheng”; and Chen Kuo-wei, Yuejing yu yijing. King-fai Tam, “The Detective Fiction of Ch’eng Hsiao-ch’ing,” 120. Hung, “Giving Texts a Context,” in Pollard, Translation and Creation, 151–176.

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literature and Western detective stories. She then delivers a succinct discussion of how translated Western detective fiction has affected aspects of modern Chinese narratives, including narrative structure, point of view, and psychological analyses. In the second part of her essay, Zhang analyzes the cultural negotiations in Cheng Xiaoqing’s creation of detective Huo Sang. Unlike Tam, who questions the ambiguous cultural identity in Huo Sang’s characterization, Zhang views the sleuth as a successful example of a mediator between Western and Chinese cultures.27 In the wake of Kinkley and Tam’s pioneering research, several Englishlanguage dissertations have been produced on Republican Chinese detective fiction. For example, Annabella Weisl’s M.A. thesis “Cheng Xiaoqing (1893– 1976) and His Detective Stories in Modern Shanghai” (1998) claims to be “the first study in Europe about Cheng Xiaoqing and the Chinese detective story.”28 Weisl first introduces the historical circumstances of the production of popular fiction in Republican Shanghai. She then focuses on ten of Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang detective stories and compares them with the Sherlock Holmes stories. Finally, Weisl argues that Cheng Xiaoqing’s work also combines elements of poetic justice from the traditional Chinese genres of court-case and chivalric literature. Ruijuan Hao’s doctoral thesis, “Transnational Negotiations and the Interplay between Chinese and Western Detective Fiction at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” elaborates Weisl’s comparison between Sherlock Holmes and Huo Sang stories. His thesis covers many topics, including the Orientalism in Conan Doyle’s stories and the conscious ignoring of this dimension of the texts by Chinese translators, as well as the criticism of Western modernity—especially its blind worship of technology and materialism—in Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang stories.29 27  28  29 

Zhang Ping, “Sherlock Holmes in China,” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 13, no. 2 (2005): 106–114. Weisl, “Cheng Xiaoqing (1893–1976) and His Detective Stories in Modern Shanghai,” 3. There are three more English-language dissertations and theses about modern Chinese detective fiction: Clement Ho, “Journey to Modernity: the Ideology of Chinese Detective Fiction” (M.A. thesis, University of Alberta, 1996); Wei Yan, “The Rise and Development of Chinese Detective Fiction: 1900–1949” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2009), on which the present book is based; and Jordan Cormier, “A Study in Didactics” (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2014). Ho’s thesis notes the similarities between late Victorian and early Republican Chinese society and identifies them as the reason for the popularity of both the Sherlock Holmes stories and Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang stories in China. He regards Cheng’s Huo Sang stories as representative of Butterfly fiction. By comparing the Huo Sang stories with the radical attitudes of social reform in the May Fourth literature, Ho concludes that they question the traditional social institutions of Confucian China, but Cheng Xiaoqing also expresses

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Despite these pioneering and insightful observations and arguments, previous scholarship on Chinese detective fiction has many limitations. Studies tend to focus on only one or two Chinese detective writers. The texts chosen for discussion are often few in number and overlap with those treated in other studies. Many scholars acknowledge that Chinese gong’an literature exerts a great influence on both translated Western detective fiction and Chinese narratives. But they fail to consider the differences in the translation and production of detective fiction between the late Qing period and the Republican era. They cite translated texts from the late Qing as examples of gong’an influence on Chinese detective fiction as a whole, but my analysis in this book shows that the influence of gong’an literature significantly weakened during the Republican period. The present book aims to remedy the relatively brief and selective study of Chinese detective fiction of the earlier twentieth century by conducting a broad and comprehensive survey of the genre. It considers more than one hundred and fifty novels or short stories written by over twenty-five writers. Most works discussed in this project have rarely or never been studied in either English or Chinese scholarship. Unlike previous studies, which have often focused on individual writers, this book is structured thematically and pays equal attention to both translated works and native writing.30 Many other pertinent issues, such as the gender of detectives, agencies of justice, moral scientism, cosmopolitanism, and intertextual transculturation in Chinese detective fiction are discussed here for the first time. More importantly, this book views Chinese detective fiction as one of the important participants in the global spread of detective literature from region to region. By identifying its localization strategies and unique characteristics in terms of formulaic transformation, epistemological negotiation, and affective experience, the present book aims to assess the contributions of Chinese detective fiction in a transnational context, and to use Chinese detective fiction as an opportunity to further examine the complexities in the formation of Chinese modernities. Since 2000, scholarly interests in the detective novel have shifted considerably from a narratological approach to postcolonial and transnational studies. The genre has been considered as a “preeminently ‘glocal’ mode of literary

30  

his distrust of the West and sometimes defends traditional morality. Cormier’s thesis argues that the Huo Sang stories were well received by Shanghai urbanites because they successfully balanced traditional Chinese values and Western modernization. For some representative studies of individual authors of detective fiction, see Jiang Weifeng, Jinxiandai zhentan xiaoshuo jia Cheng Xiaoqing yanjiu; Lu Runxiang, Shenmi de zhentan shijie; and Fan Boqun, ed., Zhongguo jinxiandai tongsu wenxue shi.

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creation and circulation.”31 Studies have particularly focused on the “epistemological formations produced in encounters between races and cultures, between nations, and especially between imperial powers and their colonial territories.”32 These new approaches are illustrated in four collections of articles: The Post-Colonial Detective (2001), Postcolonial Postmortems: Crime Fiction from a Transcultural Perspective (2006), Detective Fiction in a Postcolonial and Transnational World (2009), and Crime Fiction as World Literature (2017). Drawing on this critical trend of interpreting detective fiction in the context of world literature, the latter book takes note of the hybrid nature of Chinese detective fiction, which either fuses traditional gong’an genre with a Western way of rational investigation, or merges highly stylized Western genre characteristics with intensely localized settings and plots and reveals the multiple voices of Chinese modernity that emerge from and are negotiated in Chinese detective fiction. The notion of the plurality of Chinese modernity has been a theme in English-language scholarship since the mid 1990s. Representative works, to name a few, include David Wang’s Fin-de-Siècle Splendor (1997), Leo Lee’s Shanghai Modern (1999), and Hanchao Lu’s Beyond the Neon Lights (1999). Inspired by postcolonial studies of “alternative modernities,” these studies challenge the long-established views that designated the May Fourth movement as the start of Chinese modernity and reduced modernization to the 31 

32 

Nilsson, Damrosch, and D’haen, “Introduction: Crime Fiction as World Literature,” in Nilsson, Damrosch, and D’haen, eds., Crime Fiction as World Literature, 4. “Glocalism” or “glocalization” is used by some social scientists and critics to refer to the adaptation of global trends to local culture and taste, and local culture’s reciprocal tendency to go global. For example, in his book How to Read World Literature (2009), Damrosch uses “glocalism” to describe the transnational flow of world literature. Pearson and Singer, “Introduction: Open Cases: Detection, (Post) Modernity, and the State,” in Pearson and Singer, eds., Detective Fiction in a Postcolonial and Transnational World, 3. For example, Deborah Bosi, who studies William Marshall’s Hong Kong-based Yellowthread Street detective series, argues that Marshall’s novels explore conflicting philosophical approaches and identity crises through his cast of detectives, especially Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer, a Hong Kong native of European descent who feels alienated from the Asian community in which he lives. Bosi, “Crane among Chickens,” 73–83. In her analysis of The Interpreter, by the Korean American writer Suki Kim, Soo Yeon Kim argues that by featuring an interpreter as a metaphysical detective, this novel radically undermines the epistemology of the “truth quest” of the detective story and poses a compelling question about immigrants’ struggle to communicate between languages, races, and cultures in contemporary America. Soo, “Lost in Translation,” 195–207. Both approaches attempt to position the detectives in a setting that includes multiple cultures/races. Specific concerns about ethics, identity, egalitarian statehood, and marginalized communities can thus emerge at the intersection of postcolonial and transnational studies.

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single dimension of rationalization. Wang, for example, questions the validity of the term “belated modernity” because it still follows the logic of what Charles Taylor has called “the acultural theory of modernity”33 and implies a Eurocentric perspective. Wang argues that Chinese modernities began to take shape during the late Qing period when the confrontation of European civilization with a rich native Chinese culture heritage led local intellectuals to rework Chinese traditions and produce native Chinese expressions of modernity.34 These late Qing modernities were attacked and repressed during the May Fourth era. Lee’s and Lu’s books explore the idea of Shanghai modernity from opposite angles. Lee’s Shanghai Modern reconstructs the geocultural context of Shanghai in the earlier twentieth century by focusing on the cultural significance of public forums and spaces such as print culture, department stores, cinema, coffeehouses, and so on. Lu’s Beyond the Neon Lights complements Lee’s description of the Westernized spectacular of Shanghai. The urban geography in Lu’s picture surrounds the quotidian daily life of commoners, such as the “alleyway” (linong) neighborhoods, teahouses, tailor shops, bathhouses, and so on. Lu suggests that “indigenous modernity” in Republican Shanghai is demonstrated through its intense commercialization of everyday life. My reflections on the plurality of Chinese modernity from the perspective of the development of Chinese detective fiction both confirm and challenge previous arguments on this topic. I agree that the mode of Chinese modernity during the late Qing period was interrupted by the May Fourth Enlightenment Movement and that different discourses of Chinese modernity coexisted, including Lee’s cosmopolitan modernity and Lu’s modernity of everyday practice.35 At the same time, I also argue that despite these discontinuities 33 

34  35 

Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” The Hastings Center Report 25, no. 2 (1995): 24–33. In this article, Taylor distinguishes two ways of understanding the rise of modernity. One is the acultural theory of modernity, which conceives modernity as a universal “growth of reason.” The West may have entered this rational stage earlier, but eventually every culture goes through it as well. Taylor considers this acultural approach as problematic because such a uniform pattern ignores “the original vision of the good implicit in Western modernity” and “underestimate[s] the nature of the transformation that brought this modernity about.” The second theory, which Taylor supports, is the cultural theory. This theory, instead of reducing Western modernity to the single dimension of rationalization, recognizes that Western modernity also has its “own original spiritual vision.” Moreover, the cultural theory admits the complicated conflicts and negotiations that ensue when Western modernity encounters other cultures and recognizes that there are “alternative modernities in the making in different parts of the world.” Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 6–8. In this book, I refer to both Lee’s view of cosmopolitan modernity and Lu’s modernity of everyday practice in my analysis of the content of Chinese detective fiction during the Republican period. However, I treat them as different discourses of Shanghai modernity

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and multiple voices in Chinese modernity, the late Qing and Republican types of Chinese modernity shared the same emotional attachments toward traditional morality and the sense of poetic justice. Their attitudes toward the traditional and the modern are often ambiguous, or even contradictory. The continuity in the level of affective experience underlined here functions as a string that binds the multiplicities of Chinese modernity together. Detective fiction has often been considered as a projection of modern experience and a clue to the complex nature of modernity. Based on Marshall Berman’s characterization of modernity as “a paradoxical unity,” Jon Thompson argues that, “crime fiction’s intrinsic interest in society—in the law and in the violation of the law—inevitably involves an exploration of the experience of modernity.”36 Chinese detective fiction, which, like Chinese modernity, emerged during the late Qing period, is a result of the confrontation between translated Western detective fiction and China’s own tradition of crime literature. And like the multiplicity in Chinese modernity, the development of Chinese detective fiction of the earlier twentieth century was not a smooth evolutionary progression but a process marked by rupture and change. It underwent continuous negotiations in terms of its narrative formula, epistemological structure, and representation of the affective experience of the transition from the traditional to the modern. First, the formulaic change of Chinese detective fiction from the late Qing to the Republican period shows that it originally attempted to rework Chinese gong’an literature tradition through borrowing narrative elements from Western detective fiction, but after the Qing imperial government was overthrown in 1911, this experimentation with a hybrid narrative form was terminated. Chinese detective fiction of the Republican period began to faithfully reproduce the formula of Western classical detective fiction. Second, regarding epistemological negotiations, the debate over the relative superiority of Western science and Chinese traditional epistemology was a repeated theme in late Qing detective fiction. Since the May Fourth movement, when science became a nationwide cult, Chinese detective fiction writers used their genre as a tool to disseminate scientific knowledge and the rational spirit. Their strategy to domesticate this genre was to use the

36 

rather than differentiate them as separate types of modernity. I adopt the cultural theory of modernity that Charles Taylor has proposed, and thus throughout this book I consider how each mode of modernity is related to its distinctive historical and cultural period. The specific characteristics of a given mode of modernity can be examined through various discourses in that mode. Following this logic, in this book I historicize two stages in the development of Chinese detective fiction and associate them with two kinds of Chinese modernity, namely, late Qing modernity and Republican modernity. Thompson, Fiction, Crime, and Empire, 8.

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everyday practices of local life to add local themes and to depict the culture of China in transition from its feudal past to a modern society. Third, the affective experience in Chinese detective fiction shows that ambivalent feelings toward traditionalism and anti-traditionalism surfaced in both the late Qing and the Republican periods, to varying degrees. Chinese detective writers tended to add a moral aura to this genre and regard it as an Enlightenment package that could offer a solution for the revival of Chinese civilization and the success of Chinese modernization. The three aspects described above are elaborated in the following pages. Each of these aspects is first examined as it relates to the genre of detective fiction, and then illustrated through a comparison of the Chinese detective fiction of the late Qing and the Republican periods. 2.1 Formulaic Transformation Classical detective fiction usually adheres to a conventional formula. It begins with an unsolved crime that often takes place in an isolated place such as an apartment, island, and so on. The detective is informed of the case by his or her client or by reading about it in a newspaper, or travels by chance to the scene of the crime. The story then follows the detective’s collection of evidence from the crime scene and the investigation. Frequently the detective has a friend who functions as an assistant. Early stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Conan Doyle often make the narrator a friend of the detective so that the reader can identify with this friend and thereby feel connected with the detective, who usually has an eccentric personality. This friend is intellectually inferior to the detective and may make observations or draw conclusions that misguide the reader. The climactic moment of the story takes place when the detective explains the solution to the mystery, and readers are surprised to find out, if they have not already guessed, that the “least likely person” in the story proves to be the guilty one. The criminal is captured and confesses, proving the detective’s reasoning. This narrative formula represents a conservative ideology. Classical detective fiction usually considers crime as a series of individual cases and affirms that society as a whole will return to normal once the criminal is captured. In the whodunit, the emphasis on the creation of a baffling puzzle by the individual criminal enhances the intellectual attraction and entertainment value of the genre. On the other hand, the critique of societal ills is also weakened. As Franco Moretti accurately points out, detective fiction’s ideology of crime as the work of individuals “removes the public anxiety that the guilt could be collective and social.”37 37 

Moretti, “Clues,” 136.

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The classical formula of detective fiction was adopted faithfully in many Chinese detective tales of the Republican period. Take Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang detective series, for example. Cheng imitates many narrative patterns from Sherlock Holmes stories. The private detective Huo Sang has a friend called Bao Lang, who is a writer. They were roommates before Bao married. The majority of stories are narrated from Bao’s point of view. Like Conan Doyle’s stories, Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective stories usually begin with a client’s visit to Huo Sang’s house. In many cases, the formal investigation is preceded by a small analytical exercise in which Huo Sang deduces the visitor’s identity or purpose through sartorial details or manner of speaking. The investigation process itself and the denouement also resemble the Western model. The main differences are Huo Sang’s personality, his sympathy toward the outlaws, and the didactic tone of the narration. I consider these deviations as features of affective experience and discuss them in the third part of this section. The full adoption of the formula of Western classical detective fiction is a result of the radical political reform that turned modern China from an imperial dynasty into a republic. Scientism became a nationwide creed during the May Fourth movement and has remained an influential ideology until today.38 Traditional Chinese gong’an literature thus appeared to be outdated, irrational, and something to be discarded. In Cheng Xiaoqing’s essay “On Detective Fiction,” he considers that traditional Chinese chivalric court-case novels, despite their resemblance in certain respects to Western detective fiction, cannot be regarded as pure detective fiction because their approaches are not scientific and their plots are often interspersed with displays of martial arts and supernatural manifestations. Instead, Cheng praises Western detective fiction because its narrative suspense plays a positive role in stimulating people’s curiosity. The views of Cheng, the “Grand Master of Chinese Detective Fiction,” on Western detective fiction are representative of his time. They demonstrate that during the Republican period, the narrative order of Western detective fiction itself became an embodiment of the modern process of exploring the truth. Cheng’s preference for Western detective fiction over traditional chivalric court-case novels indicates that Chinese detective writers at that time identified with the Western way of reasoning and conceived it as the universal criterion that detective fiction of different nationalities should obey. Their practice of conforming the operating principles of detective fiction to the Western formula, on the other hand, reveals by way of contrast the cultural significance 38 

For studies of scientism in the May Fourth Movement, see Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900–1950.

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of another approach to detective fiction, namely the native Chinese gong’an tales of the late Qing period. Chinese gong’an literature, whose place in the history of Chinese detective fiction was sketched above, does not offer the mental stimulation that is an essential component in Western detective fiction. Rather, traditional gong’an stories satisfy the audience’s desire to “bring down the powerful and help out the poor and weak.”39 Their narrative form reflects this purpose. The identity of the criminal, who is often a stereotypical evil man, lustful woman, or powerful official, is usually revealed at the very beginning. Readers are aware of his or her criminal plot too. In many cases, a foolish, cruel, and sometimes corrupt judge catches a suspect who is eventually proved to be innocent. The detective hero is often portrayed as an ideal judge who is incorruptible, righteous, loyal, and good at deciphering omens. He learns of the case when the victim appears in the form of a ghost or by some other supernatural channel. The good judge often solves the case by deciphering the riddles that he receives in a temple or in a dream. Chinese gong’an stories always end by showing how the criminal is sentenced and executed. During the late Qing period traditional Chinese gong’an tales gained new vitality in two ways. First, gong’an literature converged with chivalric fiction, another popular traditional genre that features chivalric swordsmen or women who enforce a sense of poetic justice on their own. Called xiayi gong’an xiaoshuo (chivalric and court-case novels), this new hybrid genre celebrating remarkable judges and the chivalric deeds of their assistants possesses a schizophrenic nature, such that “the lawbreaker is united with the law enforcer.”40 Full-length chivalric and court-case novels such as Shigong’an (Cases of Judge Shi, 1824), Sanxia wuyi (Three knights-errant and five sworn brothers, 1879), and Penggong’an (Cases of Judge Peng, 1892) competed with translated Western detective stories at the turn of the twentieth century. The second way in which gong’an literature was revitalized, as noted above, was by borrowing narrative elements and investigative methods from Western detective fiction and explaining supernatural appearances in terms of psychological phenomena. The result was an embryonic form of native Chinese detective fiction. The Travels of Lao Can exemplifies this emerging hybrid. When Lao Can, who assumes the role of a private detective, solves a poisoning case, readers are not informed of the criminals’ identities beforehand. In his investigation, Lao Can adopts the Western investigative procedures of Sherlock Holmes stories, 39  40  

Idema, “The Mystery of the Halved Judge Dee Novel,” 155–156. Wang, 118.

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including interviewing witnesses, looking for evidence, and proving the suspect guilty. During this process, what Lao Can reveals is not only the solution to the murder case, but also a fundamental defect in the conventional imperial judiciary system: the use of torture to extract a confession can transform an incorruptible judge into an ultimate source of violence and injustice. The enlightened practices of Western detective fiction serve as a mirror that invites readers to reflect on the inhuman cruelty in traditional Chinese gong’an stories that had long been taken for granted. Other works of late Qing detective fiction demonstrate the radical conflict between the Western way of investigation and the traditional Chinese judiciary system. In the late Qing gong’an novel Yuanhai lingguang (The shining light in the sea of aggrieved cases, 1915), by Lin Shu, Judge Lu is at first determined to investigate the crime in a rational way, as many Western detectives do, but his attempts fail because of resistance from local authorities. Moreover, the suspected murderer cannot be sentenced because traditional law requires that she confess before she can be convicted. In the end, Judge Lu has to resort to methods found in many traditional gong’an novels. They include praying at the local temple for a message from the god concerning the criminal’s identity and using torture to obtain confession. The failure of Judge Lu to solve the case rationally suggests that the scientific discourse in Western detective fiction might be incompatible with Chinese society at that moment. The cultural significance of the hybridity in The Travels of Lao Can and The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases will be elaborated in Chapter 2. The contrasting narrative forms in Chinese detective fiction of the late Qing and the Republican periods are indicators of two different types of Chinese modernity that Chinese intellectuals chose. 2.2 Epistemological Negotiations In the West, rationalism and technological advances were catalysts for the appearance of detective fiction. When this genre was introduced into China in the late Qing period, its intrinsic logical and rational nature was welcomed by the reformists. They considered it as a type of xin xiaoshuo (new fiction) that could exert a positive influence on society and politics.41 The educated 41 

Liang Qichao, the paradigmatic “reformer,” promoted the Western detective story as one example of the “new fiction” that could enlighten society. Nevertheless, the evaluation of detective fiction in China has always been controversial. Detective writers of the Republican period tried to set it on a par with May Fourth literature by emphasizing its educational utility to popularize science. But most elite intellectuals of the time still looked down on all detective fiction, including the modern Western examples, as lowbrow literature and contemned the low moral and literary quality of many works. Zheng

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classes were attracted by its novelty in both form and content. Through translated Western detective fiction, late Qing readers learned about modern science and technology. Soon new Western inventions, such as the alarm clock, microscope, locomotive train, steamship, and airplane; new ideas, such as patents and time measurement; and new forensic techniques, such as fingerprinting and hypnosis, were being adopted in native Chinese detective stories. At the same time, when late Qing writers started to create their own detective stories, they also incorporated materials from traditional Chinese gong’an and zhiguai stories. The epistemological system in their detective works, therefore, is informed by the epistemology embedded in Chinese traditional narrative genres. For example, in The Travels of Lao Can, the story does not end with the capture of the criminal, as one might expect in a Western detective novel. Rather, it proceeds to narrate how Lao Can sets out to awaken the victims who have been put to sleep by drugs. Lao Can fails to obtain the antidote from a learned Italian Catholic priest but finally receives it at a Daoist’s cave, mirroring a late Qing intellectual’s endeavor to ensoul the nation with traditional philosophy. “The Shouzhen” is one of the Chinese proto-detective stories that the late Qing intellectual and novelist Wu Jianren (1866–1910) included in Zhongguo zhentan’an (Chinese detective cases, 1902), an anthology that responded to the influx of Western translated detective fiction at that time. The plot of “The Shouzhen” originally appeared in Li Sheng (1847), a Chinese zhiguai collection of the late Qing period. Zhiguai (records of anomalies) is a distinctive form of traditional Chinese epistemological discourse. Written in classical language, it represents an understanding of reality different from Western modes of thought. Before the introduction of Western novels, zhiguai tales were read widely by traditional Chinese intellectuals to satisfy their curiosity about the natural world. In Western detective fiction, the supernatural element is usually ruled out as irrational. But in traditional zhiguai stories, the strange is regarded Zhenduo, for example, rejected Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories as mediocre and criticized Lin Shu for wasting his precious time in translating it. Lu Xun also belittled detective fiction. “Stories of detectives, adventures, English girls, Savages in Africa,” he writes, “could only scratch the itches in one’s places [[in one’s fat places?]] after one is full or drunk.” Lu Xun, “Zhu Zhong E wenzi zhi jiao” (Congratulations on the friendship of Chinese and Russian Literature), Nanqiang beidiao ji. Zheng Zhenduo’s and Lu Xun’s negative attitudes toward detective fiction were first discussed in Guan Xin’s short essay, “Fu’ermosi zai zhongguo de kanke mingyun” (The tough fate of Holmes in China), in Yangzi wanbao (Yangtze evening paper), July 18, 2008. Ruijuan Hao quoted Guan’s essay in his Ph.D dissertation, “Transnational Negotiations,” 9.

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as an accurate transcription of reality instead of a pure fictional creation. As Kao Hsin Yang points out, zhiguai tales are “considered as the ‘records’ of facts and observable natural phenomena (or hearsay),” and “underlying the recording of the supernatural stories is a belief in supernaturalism and magic, as well as an acceptance of the unnatural and the supranormal at their face value as factual.”42 In the story “The Shouzhen,” the killer is an animal that hides inside female bodies. It is unknown to modern medical science and thus can only be found by Mr. Shang, a seventy-year-old Chinese man who has a profound knowledge of guai (anomalies). At the end of this story Wu writes proudly, “I wonder, if an expert detective from a country where science is well developed met such a strange case, could his methods of detection ever match the efficacy of Mr. Shang’s methods?”43 By incorporating this zhiguai story into a detective fiction collection, Wu explores the possibility of writing Chinese detective fiction based on the kind of traditional knowledge known exclusively to welleducated Chinese, which Wu believes to be superior to modern scientific knowledge. Both the allegorical nature of the gong’an novel The Travels of Lao Can and the element of zhiguai in the story “The Shouzhen” will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2. In my earlier analysis of “Formulaic Transformation,” I compared narrative forms of Chinese detective fiction from the late Qing and Republican periods and argued that they represent two ways of understanding Chinese modernity. The different epistemological systems that underlie Chinese detective fiction reinforce this contrast. Unlike late Qing writers who drew on Chinese indigenous knowledge in their zhiguai tradition, Republican writers relied on Western science and practices in local daily life to create their detective stories. Let us look first at the scientific side of detective fiction. On the one hand, many Chinese detective writers regarded this genre as a powerful tool to educate the masses in scientific knowledge and rational thinking. “If people start to read more detective fiction,” Cheng claims, “they will unconsciously develop a scientific mind to solve problems in a rational way.”44 In Chapter 3, I argue that Chinese detective writers, thanks to their unique role in popularizing Western science, should be considered as indispensable members of what Wang Hui calls a kexue huayu gongtongti (community of scientific discourse).

42  43  44 

Kao, “Introduction,” in Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic, 2–3. Wu Jianren, “The Shouzhen,” 7:124. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Zhentan xiaoshuo he kexue.”

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On the other hand, in Chinese detective fiction, the Western scientific discourse is also influenced by the moral epistemology of traditional Daoxue (Neo-Confucianism). Zhu Xi (1130–1200), the most famous neo-Confucian of the Southern Song (1127–1280), borrowed the term gezhi (inquiring into and extending knowledge) from the Confucian classic Liji (Record of rites) to discuss the process of acquiring knowledge about the physical world. Thus gezhi became “the most common epistemological frame for the accumulation of knowledge” for Chinese intellectuals.45 In the late Ming period, the philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529) promoted an internal process of knowledge inquiry. For Wang, individual moral cultivation is the necessary premise of gezhi. During the late Qing period, when the phrase gezhixue (studies of gezhi) was used to designate modern Western science, many Chinese intellectuals and reformists, such as Kang Youwei (1858–1927), Tan Sitong (1865–1898), and Wu Jianren, insisted that science and traditional moral epistemology should supplement each other, a position that David Wang calls “moral scientism.”46 Chinese detective writers maintained that science is the key driver of social development, but unlike the May Fourth reformists, who often took a hostile attitude toward traditional Confucianism, they still relied on the late Qing understanding of moral scientism when creating characters for their detective stories. For example, Cheng Xiaoqing’s character Huo Sang, who represents an ideal modern Chinese detective, abandons the traditional practice of textual analysis known as xungu (explanations of the words in ancient books), but still appreciates traditional modes of learning such as yili (reasoning) and gezhi.47 The second kind of knowledge featured in Chinese detective fiction of the Republican period consists of the practices of everyday life and local color that defined the specific culture of Chinese society during the transitional decades from the traditional to the modern. Cheng Xiaoqing once reminded writers to be aware of the differences in the daily lives of Chinese and Westerners when writing stories with a local setting. Cheng used locks, clothes, and shoes as examples to illustrate that the Western way of retrieving evidence may not be suited to Republican society because the mechanisms of these everyday objects and the ways of marking their owners are different in China (more will be said about this in Chapter 5). In this great transitional period, the pace of modernization in China varied from place to place. While Shanghai was regarded as the 45  46  47 

Benjamin, “From Pre-modern Chinese Natural Studies to Modern Science in China,” 32. For discussions of moral scientism in late Qing novels, see D. Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 275–279. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiangnanyan,” 2:1–2.

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most bustling cosmopolitan city in East Asia, traditional practices continued to hold sway in inland towns and the countryside. For example, foot binding, a common practice since the Ming dynasty, was still widely practiced in northern China in the Republican period, and in Zhang Biwu’s story “Lianban zhi hen” (Traces of bound feet), the female criminal is identified by the prints of her bound feet.48 Furthermore, a majority of the crimes depicted in detective fiction of the Republican period occur in large Chinese families, reflecting in part the complex relationships that arose from the polygamous marriages still practiced in those days. Investigating such domestic crimes therefore requires the detective to have a wealth of knowledge of local everyday life. Consequently, for readers nowadays, Chinese detective fiction provides a rich field for exploring the sociocultural conditions of early twentieth-century China. 2.3 The Affective Experience of the Traditional and the Modern As a product of the new social surveillance system of the nineteenth century, detective fiction provides a trove of evidence concerning the affective experience of modern society. Its attitude toward emergent modernity is ambivalent and paradoxical. On the one hand, the detective is a symbol of law and order and the denouements of the stories imply the successful removal of rebellious elements from society. P. D. James argues that both the formulaic form and content of detective fiction, which concludes with the eventual removal of the individual criminal, point to “a return to customary calm and order.”49 On the other hand, the dual nature of this genre dictates that criminals represent fantasies of revolt; in Tom Gunning’s words, this dualism “celebrat[es] the criminal’s evasion of capture, blurring of identity, and the ambiguity of vision in the detective genre as signs of a radical resistance to regimes of control.”50 Such an intrinsic paradox—namely that detective fiction both reinforces and resists the disciplinary regime—means that it exposes and flaunts the dark side of humanity and society and speaks to the unspeakable elements of social and political unconsciousness. It is also an unlikely therapy for the reading public, proffering a catharsis by describing the underworld and conspiracy

48  49 

50  

Zhang Biwu, “Lianban zhi hen.” P. D. James thinks that the solutions in Agatha Christie’s novels, in which the murderer is “arrested or dead, and the village [is] returned to its customary calm and order,” could not be achieved in real life. James argues that murder is a contaminating crime and that no life that comes into close contact with it remains unaltered. James, Talking about Detective Fiction, 165. Gunning, “Lynx-Eyed Detectives and Shadow Bandits,” 86–87.

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and violence. In this sense, Jon Thompson argues that detective fiction “dramatizes the contradictory experience of modernity.”51 The previous discussions on the formulaic and epistemological aspects in Chinese detective fiction demonstrated the opposite ways in which Western detective fiction was transformed into a Chinese national genre during the late Qing and the Republican periods. With regard to affective experience, however, these two periods in the localization of detective fiction are bridged by shared emotions. Although late Qing works express fondness for tradition and Republican stories seek identification with Western detective models, both of them hold an ambivalent, and sometimes an antagonistic attitude toward tradition and Western modernity. During the late Qing period, the ambivalence toward Western detective fiction can be traced in translations of Western texts. Dushe quan (The serpents’ coils) is a clear example of this phenomenon. It is based on an English translation of the French detective tale, Margot la balafrée by Fortuné du Boisgobey. The translator Zhou Guisheng invited Wu Jianren to serve as a commentator in keeping with the Chinese practice of pingdian, or commentary within the text—the main traditional form of criticism of Chinese novels and drama. These commentaries were published within the novel, so that readers could see both the author’s and the commentator’s views. This dialogical style of translation is worth attention because the translator Zhou Guisheng and commentator Wu Jianren often held contradictory views regarding the Western modernity depicted in this novel. Zhou Guisheng expressed his preference for Western social etiquette over Chinese social conventions by inserting his comparison of the two cultures in his translation. Wu Jianren, however, in his comments on this Western detective novel, found its theme of the importance of benevolent family relationships to be identical to Confucian family values. (The Chinese translation of Dushe quan will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 1.) Such ambivalence toward tradition and modernity is also woven throughout native Chinese detective fiction of the late Qing era. As I will discuss in detail later in this book, in the detective story “The Shouzhen,” the Shouzhen animal, which is a symbol of Confucian morality, could be both a monster and a guardian of the female body (its name literally means “preserver of chastity”). Through this allegory, Wu Jianren reveals the paradox in traditional morality: it both upholds and disturbs the Confucian order. In his novel Zhongguo nüzhentan (Chinese female detectives, 1907), Lü Simian (1884–1957) is appreciative of the filial piety of the traditional women who commit suicide 51 

Thompson, Fiction, Crime and Empire, 8.

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for their mother. At the same time, the Chinese female detectives, as the protagonists of this novel are called, are eulogized as new women possessing both mobility and critical thinking skills. Ironically, the criminals in this novel are also intelligent women, which seems to make them a threat to the patriarchal order of society. During the Republican period, Chinese detective fiction tried to elevate its literary status by claiming to be a powerful tool for promoting science, but unlike May Fourth writers, Chinese detective writers still regarded traditional morality as an indispensable quality for defining individual success. Such moral scientism, for example, is illustrated in Chinese intellectuals’ understanding of Sherlock Holmes in the 1910s as a man of virtue. In the preface to a 1916 Chinese translation of a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, Liu Bannong (1891–1934) wrote: If someone asks how Holmes could serve as a moral model for society, I think that it is because he possesses high morality. If he were immoral, then Baker Street would have turned into a den of bandits and thieves; if he loved money and fame, he would be influenced by those concerns when he carries out his investigation. In that case, how could he find the time to serve society, and how could he win the trust of the people? Being a man of high morals, if he serves as a detective, he will be a famous one; if he serves as an officer, he will be a good one; and if he serves as a high official, he will be a righteous one.52 While we must acknowledge that Holmes is indeed a respected Victorian gentleman, is it true that, as Liu Bannong observes, Holmes is “a moral model for society”? If we examine Holmes’s character more closely, we see that he maintains an air of superiority. Serving no higher authority, he follows his own code of conduct rather than submitting to conventional moral or legal limits. For example, he is willing to administer poison to a person simply to observe the result, or to beat a cadaver to determine how long bruises can form after death. Holmes never marries, has no true friends besides Watson, and seldom sees his brother. Viewing criminality as an art that he sometimes admires, he often complains to Watson about the lack of master criminals with whom he can match wits. Between cases, Holmes injects cocaine, falls into long spells of total listlessness and depression, and displays contempt for any kind of knowledge unnecessary to his detective work.53 The decadent side of Holmes’s 52  53 

Liu Bannong, “Ba,” 36. Doyle, “Scandal in Bohemia,” in The Complete Sherlock Holmes, 1:161.

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personality may correspond to what Matei Calinescu describes “one of the five faces of modernity.”54 Sherlock Holmes is driven to solve cases not only because he wishes to see justice done, but also because it is his hobby. Such dilettantism, as Franco Moretti points out, “is not superficiality, but work done for the pleasure of work.”55 The misreading of Sherlock Holmes’s personality by Chinese intellectuals shows their tendency to interpret science in terms of its ethical relevance. Science has been endowed with a moral aura that equates scientific knowledge with moral superiority. The second characteristic of a shared affective experience common throughout Chinese detective fiction is that writers often adopt poetic justice as a solution. The phrase “poetic justice” was first introduced in Thomas Rymer’s The Tragedies of the Last Age (1678) to “explain why poetry must offer something ‘better than the truth’ if it is to improve on ‘historical justice,’ which is notoriously unreliable.”56 In his studies of justice in the chivalric and courtcase novels of the late Qing period, David Wang defines poetic justice as “an imaginary deployment in a narrative sequence that vindicates authorial wish fulfillment as it coalesces with a consensual notion of ‘justice.’”57 Chinese detective writers’ preference for delivering poetic justice in their stories can be attributed to both cultural and social reasons. First, regarding cultural background, xiayi xiaoshuo or chivalric fiction, the forerunner of the later wuxia xiaoshuo (novels of knights-errant), has long been a popular genre in Chinese narrative tradition. It celebrates a xiake (knight-errant) “who dares to enforce a personal sense of honor and justice, often at the expense of private gain and public authority.”58 During the late Qing period, chivalric novels and gong’an novels started to merge together to form a hybrid genre of chivalric and court-case fiction. Poetic justice, therefore, was united with legal justice in this hybrid form. In novels like Three Knights-errant and Five Sworn Brothers, these two forces of realizing justice complement each other. The coexistence of these two kinds of justice reveals the author’s inner conflict and anxiety: he felt it necessary to constrain the power of poetic justice in order to enforce imperial order, and at the same time he shared feelings of nostalgia or sympathy toward that power with the folk. In Western detective fiction, the roles of detective and criminal are not always opposed. Sometimes the detective may find the criminal to be sympathetic once his or her criminal motivation is revealed. For example, in the 54  55  56  57  58 

Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity. Moretti, “Clues,” in Signs Taken for Wonders, 142–143. Jonathan Kertzer, Poetic Justice and Legal Fictions, 11. D. Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 121. D. Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 117. 78B

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earliest Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes discovers that Jefferson Hope is the murderer. But he also finds that the victims deserved to die because of their cruelty to Hope’s fiancée. In the end, Hope is captured. But Doyle arranges that he dies of a burst aneurism before his legal trial is set to begin. Such a solution can be regarded as a gesture of poetic justice. During the late Qing period, A Study in Scarlet was translated into Chinese. Chinese readers felt a kinship with the chivalric actions of Jefferson Hope. They compared Hope with Chinese historical heroes and considered the fighting spirit in his deeds of revenge as a model for Chinese to follow in order to revive their civilization. Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, occupies a secondary place in the novel, serving mainly to expose and record Hope’s heroic deeds. Readers’ identification with a traditional chivalric hero, rather than their embrace of a new image of detective, as I will discuss in detail in Chapter 1, demonstrates a particular understanding of justice in late Qing society during a historical moment of unprecedented political upheaval and foreign invasions. In addition to cultural reasons, the social reasons for the prevalence of poetic justice in Chinese detective fiction include widespread bureaucratic corruption and people’s distrust of the police. Both the Qing regime and the succeeding Republican government were weak and their police force was highly corrupt. Society remained unstable while economic development was constantly interrupted by wars. Malefactors and their activities went unchecked by authorities, and there were indications of collaboration between criminals and the government. Such a lawless social reality led Chinese detective writers to opt for the poetic justice found in many traditional martial arts novels, effecting a compromise between the institutional justice of Western detective literature and chaotic local reality. In Chinese detective fiction, the detective often voluntarily fails in his task when he discovers that criminals have acted for the sake of social justice and that the victims are in fact treacherous capitalists. In such instances, the detectives usually take the law into their own hands and let the criminal go free out of sympathy. The burglar hero, who operates beyond the constraints of the law that limit the detective, may even follow the example of Robin Hood in robbing the rich to help the poor. In response to the ironic sentiment that “petty thieves are hanged while usurpers are made princes,” expressed in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, the Chinese burglar figure often doubles as a chivalric hero. This doubling enacts an ambivalence about justice: justice can be done only when it is undone. More detailed discussions on the Chinese understanding of justice and individual agency will be conducted in Chapters 1, 2, and 4.

…

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At the end of his article “Clues,” Moretti observes: Clues, whether defined as such or as “symptoms” or “traces,” are not facts, but verbal procedures—more exactly, rhetorical figures. Thus, the famous “band” in a Holmes story, an excellent metaphor, is gradually deciphered as “band,” “scarf” and finally “snake.” As is to be expected, clues are more often metonymies: associations by contiguity (related to the past), for which the detective must furnish the missing term. The clue is, therefore, that particular element of the story in which the link between signifier and signified is altered. It is a signifier that always has several signifieds and thus produces numerous suspicions.59 Similarly, the term “detective fiction” can be viewed as a signifier, and its various representations in different national literatures during different periods are the signifieds. The three categories that I have discussed in this introduction, namely formulaic transformation, epistemological changes, and affective experience, are not unique to Chinese detective fiction, and they may also be applied to reflect on the development of detective fiction as a worldwide literary genre. This book, therefore, beyond its primary goal to examine the complexities in Chinese modernity of the earlier twentieth century through the development of Chinese detective fiction, also represents a preliminary effort to rethink the ontology and dynamics of detective fiction itself, a literary genre that originates in the West but gradually extends around the globe and is expressed through multiple local voices. 3

Overview

The body of this book contains six chapters that are divided into two parts arranged in chronological order. Part 1, “The Formative Stage: Chinese Detective Fiction during the Late Qing Period,” demonstrates that Chinese detective fiction in this period was a combination of traditional Chinese gong’an narrative conventions, traditional knowledge as found in zhiguai literature, and key elements from Western detective fiction including suspense techniques, psychological analysis, and the Western way of investigation. This part includes two chapters. Chapter 1, “Meeting Detective Fiction: Western Detective Fiction in Chinese Translation,” studies early perceptions of Western detective fiction during the late Qing period. It presents case studies of three works of Western 59 

Moretti, “Clues,” 145–146.

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detective fiction (A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, Margot la balafrée by Fortuné du Boisgobey, and “The Gold-Bug” by Edgar Allan Poe) translated by Lin Shu, Zhou Guisheng, and Zhou Zuoren respectively. By examining the prefaces to these books, comparing the discrepancies between the Chinese translations and the original texts, and evaluating translators’ linguistic choices and styles of translation, this chapter shows the conflicting ways in which late Qing readers understood (and sometimes misread) this new Western genre: some used it for social reform while others found that Western detective novels also contained old morals. Some late Qing intellectuals sympathized with the chivalric criminals portrayed in the translations while others were attracted by the individualism and encyclopedic knowledge these novels demonstrate. Chapter 2, “The Detective Story in Traditional Clothes: the Embryonic Form of Native Chinese Detective Fiction,” focuses on native Chinese detective works. Because production was still sporadic during the late Qing period, I choose four representative works of native Chinese writing for signs of the integration of traditional Chinese gong’an literature and zhiguai tales with Western detective fiction and gendered writing. First, Liu E’s gong’an novel Lao Can youji (The travels of Lao Can, 1903) is a work informed by the modern technological culture that is embodied in Western detective fiction. Second, the gong’an novel Yuanhai lingguang (The shining light in the sea of aggrieved cases, 1915) by Lin Shu portrays an ideal, fair-minded official capable of rational judgement, but his reliance on supernatural revelation and his use of torture to obtain confessions also underscores the dilemma that arose as Western judicial ideas started to be integrated into Chinese society in the late Qing period. Third, the relationship between the traditional Chinese genre of zhiguai (records of anomalies) and Western detective fiction is brought to light through a discussion of the short story “The Shouzhen”, adapted by Wu Jianren and collected in his book Zhongguo zhentan’an (Chinese detective cases, 1902). Comparing “The Shouzhen” with the Western detective story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” illustrates differences in epistemology between these two genres. Last, the earliest Chinese novel to feature female detectives, Lü Simian’s Zhongguo nüzhentan (Chinese female detectives, 1907), provides an opportunity to explore the formation of the New Woman during the late Qing period. Part 2, “The Golden Age: Chinese Detective Fiction in the Republican Period,” shows how Chinese detective fiction in its second phase infused the Western detective narrative formula with local themes and preoccupations as well as local material culture. It analyzes detective stories published in various detective fiction journals of the Republican period with respect to four types of discourse. Chapter 3, “‘Disguised Textbooks for Science’: Detective

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Fiction as a Pedagogical Tool” shows how Chinese writers promoted science through their native works. It applies Wang Hui’s term kexue huayu gongtongti (community of scientific discourse) to a group of Chinese detective fiction writers and discusses the different kinds of Western knowledge promoted in Chinese detective fiction and the belief in moral scientism held by Chinese popular writers. Chapter 4, “Justice and the Chivalric Detective,” chooses two investigators, Huo Sang, the so-called Oriental Sherlock Holmes, and Lu Ping, the so-called Oriental Arsène Lupin, created by Cheng Xiaoqing and Sun Liaohong respectively, as representatives of two types of agents of justice in Republican-era Chinese detective fiction: the private detective and the burglar-detective. It studies philosophical and literary sources that influenced the creation of these two types of detective. This chapter also discusses how Chinese writers often adopt poetic justice as the solution of their detective stories and argues that both a cultural preference for chivalric heroes and the lawless social reality of Republican China contribute to this phenomenon. Chapter 5, “Shanghai Modern: the Metropolitan Landscape in Chinese Detective Fiction,” treats detective fiction as a guide to modern urban life. Building on Leo Lee’s concept of “Shanghai cosmopolitanism,” this chapter examines Republican detective fiction from the perspective of the new urban culture of Shanghai from the 1920s to the 1940s. It focuses on three types of urban spaces: public facilities and institutions such as modern roads, dance halls, coffeehouses, and swimming pools; print culture as represented by newspaper reports; and cinema as a new media. To demonstrate the transnational dialogue between Chinese detective writers and the Western canon, this chapter also discusses Cheng Xiaoqing’s Sherlock Holmes fan fiction “Qianting tu” (A submarine design) and the short thriller “Xiongzhai” (The haunted house) by the modernist writer Shi Zhecun, both of which feature international crimes. Chapter 6, “Domestic Crimes in Everyday Life,” argues that Republican-era Chinese detective stories document the social transition from traditional practices to the innovations of the modern period through localized clues, with reference to various aspects of everyday life, such as furniture, clothing, local beliefs and living habits, polygamous marriages in large Chinese families, and local architecture. These texts provide valuable resources for learning about the ordinary life of Shanghai residents in the early twentieth century. The conclusion of the book, “The Legacies of the Late Qing Mode and the Republican Mode: Echoes and Variations after 1949,” argues that these two modes of domesticating Western detective fiction not only illustrate the

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two distinctive historical stages in the development of Chinese detective fiction during the early twentieth-century China, but also enrich our understanding of detective fiction as a global phenomenon by demonstrating the alterations and innovations of the genre that occur when Western detective fiction is appropriated into other local cultures. Finally, this chapter looks ahead to developments during the 1950s and 1960s, namely, the female burglar-detective Huang Ying stories produced in Hong Kong and Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee detective series, to show that the values and concerns of both the late Qing mode and the Republican mode continued to resonate within postwar detective fiction produced outside of mainland China. These two cases demonstrate that the two modes of native Chinese detective fiction detailed in this book provide reference points for understanding the dynamics of the opposing forces of localization and transnationalization that continued to shape Chinese or Chinese-inspired detective fiction across the whole twentieth century.

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PART 1 The Formative Stage: Chinese Detective Fiction during the Late Qing Period

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The late Qing period was the formative stage in Chinese detective fiction. On the one hand, beginning in August 1896 numerous Western detective stories were translated into Chinese, and detective fiction immediately became the most novel and popular Western literary genre among Chinese readers. On the other hand, inspired by modern ideas of rationality as well as the evidentiary procedures and encyclopedic knowledge on display in Western detective works, late Qing writers started to reflect on the legitimacy and rationality of their traditional judicial process and created a hybrid type of Chinese detective fiction through combining elements from Western detective fiction with traditional Chinese narrative genres. Part 1 of this book thus examines the translation of Western detective fiction into Chinese and its reception by late Qing readers, and the influence of Western detective fiction on traditional Chinese gong’an writings and the hybridity in the earliest native Chinese detective stories. As we will see, the process of domesticating Western detective fiction in the context of the late Qing period involved reinterpretations of the Western tradition and innovations in the Chinese tradition. The discourse of the modern in late Qing detective fiction is thus filled with constant confrontations and negotiations between a rich Chinese crime literature tradition and Western ways of rationalization.

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Chapter 1

Meeting Detective Fiction: Western Detective Fiction in Chinese Translation In August 1896, the Chinese Progress, an influential newspaper in late Qing Shanghai, published “Yingguo baotan fang kedie yisheng qi’an” (A strange case of a British detective visiting Dr. Kerdie), which is the earliest extant Western detective story in Chinese translation. It centers on a doctor from London who poisons people and makes off with their property. The newspaper identified the story as a translation, but neither the original author nor the source story are known. From September 1896 to May 1897, the Chinese Progress serialized four Sherlock Holmes stories translated by Zhang Dekun, including “The Naval Treaty,” “The Crooked Man,” “A Case of Identity,” and “The Final Problem.” Later they were collected in a book entitled Xinyi baotan’an (New translations of Sherlock Holmes stories, 1899), which became one of the two most popular translated Western works in China at that time.1 The motive for publishing the earliest translated Sherlock Holmes stories was probably to educate Chinese readers about Western legal practices. Indeed, after serializing “The Naval Treaty,” the Chinese Progress started to serialize “Huishen xinlong zuchuan quan’an” (A complete case about the investigation of a ship rental at the Xinlong company). The translation was based on a story published in the English-language newspaper The Shanghai Mercury. Editor-in-chief Liang Qichao (1873–1929) explained that the purpose of serializing this tale, which concerns legal negotiations and debates between the Chinese and British governments, was to “alert those who are engaged in negotiations to be careful and not be fooled.”2 The serialization of the Sherlock Holmes stories in the Chinese Progress ended ten months later, for reasons that remain unclear. According to Nakamura Tadayuki, it may have been the result of a clash of editorial opinion, as some editors believed that fiction promoted literacy among the masses whereas others claimed that it encouraged thievery and lust.3 However, 1  The other popular Western novel was Lin Shu’s translation of Bali chahuanü yishi (1897), based on La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils. Nakamura, “Shimatsu tantei shôsetsu shikō,” 2:10; Guo Yanli, Zhongguo jindai fanyi wenxue gailun, 142. 2  Pan Guang-che, “Shiwubao he tade duzhe,” 73. 3  Nakamura, “Shimatsu tantei shôsetsu shikō,” 2:10; Guo Yanli, Zhongguo jindai fanyi wenxue gailun, 127.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_003

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because of the popularity of detective fiction among late Qing readers, the publication of translated Western detective fiction was taken up by other publishers and reached its heyday between 1903 and 1909, when Sherlock Holmes stories were bestsellers in China. In addition, the British detective Martin Hewitt, created by Arthur Morrison (1863–1945); the British detective Dick Donovan, created by James Edward Preston Muddock (1848–1934); the American detective Nick Carter, created by “Chickering Carter,” the pseudonym of Frederic van Renssellaer Dey (1861–1922); the French gentleman-burglar Arsène Lupin, created by Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941); and other fictional detectives were well known to Chinese readers during the late Qing period. Chinese translations of Western detective stories came from two sources. Whereas most British and American detective novels were translated directly from English, translations of European stories (other than British stories) were often based on Japanese versions, by translators such as Kuroiwa Ruikō (1862– 1920) and Tokuromo Roka (1868–1927).4 At first, late Qing translators adapted Western detective stories to conform them to traditional Chinese narrative norms. Following the convention of traditional gong’an tales, the identity of the culprit was often revealed in the title of the translated work. For example, the Sherlock Holmes story titled “A Case of Identity” became “Jifu kuangnü qi’an” (The case of the stepfather swindling his daughter). In the first Chinese translation of “The Naval Treaty,” Watson’s first-person narration was replaced by an omniscient voice to avoid confusing the reader; the introductory paragraph was deleted and the flashbacks contained in the first three pages of dialogue in the original text were rearranged to form a chronological account. However, late Qing translators soon made rapid progress in adopting various narrative techniques used in Western novels. Eva Hung points out that the use of the first-person narrator was readily accepted in China within six months: in the Chinese version of “The Crooked Man,” the second Sherlock Holmes story to be translated, the tale is narrated by Dr. Watson in the first person, after a prefatory remark explaining that “Watson again records the deeds of Holmes as follows.”5 In the following pages, I will examine the Chinese versions of three works of Western detective fiction—A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, Margot la balafrée by Fortuné du Boisgobey, and “The Gold-Bug” by Edgar Allan Poe— translated by Lin Shu (1852–1924), Zhou Guisheng (1863–1926), and Zhou 4  In addition to translating Western novels, Kuroiwa Ruikō also wrote his own detective fiction. Some of Kuroiwa’s detective stories were also introduced into China; for example, Lihun bing (The illness of a lost soul, 1902) was based on his Tantei. 5  Hung, “Giving Texts a Context,” 162–163.

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Zuoren (1885–1967) respectively. Although he did not know English himself and relied on many collaborators, Lin Shu was generally recognized as the best late Qing translator of Western novels due to his elegant style, reminiscent of classical Chinese (guwen). The quality of his translations declined after 1913, but overall he rendered Western novels faithfully. Zhou Guisheng was among the earliest vernacular translators and specialized in translating detective and science fiction. He was also a good friend of the novelist and editor Wu Jianren. Together they adopted the traditional Chinese practice of pingdian, or commentary within the text, in Zhou’s translation of the French detective novel Margot la balafrée (Margot the scarred), published under the Chinese title Dushe quan. Last, as a pioneering writer in the New Culture Movement, Zhou Zuoren was also an accomplished translator of Western poetry, short stories, and literary criticism. Zhou was among the first to introduce the works of Edgar Allan Poe into China. His translation of “The Gold-Bug”—the only detective story translated by Zhou in his early years—has rarely been discussed before. A primary reason for choosing these three works translated by Lin Shu, Zhou Guisheng (with commentary by Wu Jianren), and Zhou Zuoren is that they shed light on the pattern of readers’ reception of Western detective fiction in the late Qing. These three figures seldom made literal translation errors, but judging from the prefaces written by themselves or their friends, the commentaries and insertions they included in their translations, and the prefaces that they wrote for their other translations of Western novels, they often misread the intentions of the original texts and “used translations to serve emotive and ideological goals inconceivable to the original authors.”6 The three case studies discussed in this chapter therefore provide rich material for exploring translation as an act of cultural negotiation. As I will show later, Zhou Guisheng used detective fiction to mock Chinese social etiquette while Wu Jianren thought that the Western detective story made the need to preserve traditional moral values all the more clear. For his part, Lin Shu was impressed with the spirit of chivalric vengeance often attributed to criminals in Western detective fiction and considered such a spirit crucial for national revival, while Zhou Zuoren appreciated the individualism and encyclopedic knowledge demonstrated in “The Gold-Bug,” and his translation of Poe’s story is colored by his unique aesthetic of quwei (delight).

6  D. Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 3.

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Chapter 1

The Spirit of Chivalric Vengeance: Lin Shu’s Translation of A Study in Scarlet

After completing his first Chinese translation—of La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils—in 1897, Lin Shu and his various assistants translated about 181 works of fiction of varied length and quality,7 among which were three detective novels: Shenshu guicang lu (Record of marvelous detective cases [in collaboration with Wei Yi, 1907]), based on the first six cases of The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (1895) by Arthur Morrison; Xieluoke qi’an kaichang (The first strange case of Sherlock Holmes [in collaboration with Wei Yi, 1908]), based on A Study in Scarlet (1888) by Conan Doyle; and the two volumes of Beike zhentan tan (Stories of Detective Beck [in collaboration with Chen Jialin, 1909 and 1914]), based on The Quests of Paul Beck (1908) and The Capture of Paul Beck (1909) by Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (1850–1933). A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle’s first novel about Sherlock Holmes, was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887 and attracted little public interest at the time.8 It was not until 1891 that the character of Holmes became an overnight sensation in The Strand Magazine, a British monthly targeting a readership composed mainly of office workers. The novel is split into two parts: the first describes the solution to the crime, and the second explains its motive. In the first part, entitled “Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department,” Watson narrates his introduction to Holmes in 1881 through a mutual friend, and the first time he accompanied Holmes on an investigation. The mystery revolves around a corpse found at a derelict house in Brixton Road, London, with the German word Rache (revenge) scribbled in blood on the wall beside the body. By the end of the first part, Holmes has solved the murder and arrested the killer. The second half of the story, entitled “The Country of the Saints,” is set twenty years earlier in Utah, United States, and told by an omniscient thirdperson narrator. The last two chapters of the second half return to Watson’s first-person account of Holmes’s investigation and of Holmes’s own explanation of his solution. The protagonist of the second part is the murderer himself, Jefferson Hope, a romantic hero of the American frontier whose fiancée and 7  According to statistics collected by Yu Jiuhong, Lin Shu translated 163 works of fiction, written by ninety-eight authors from eleven countries. He also completed eighteen translations that he did not publish. Yu Jiuhong, “Linshu fanyi zuopin kaosuo,” 403. 8  Conan Doyle first sent the novel to Cornhill Magazine for publication, but it was rejected because of its length. The editor James Payn explained that it was “neither long enough for a serial nor short enough for a single story.” Several other publishers also rejected it. Hardwick, Complete Guide to Sherlock Holmes, 16–17.

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intended father-in-law were persecuted to death by the Mormons. After his own escape from Utah, Hope devotes the rest of his life to tracking down the murderers and takes revenge on them in London. Lin Shu’s translation was well received by the public. By October it had gone into a third printing.9 Like the original novel, Lin’s translation is also divided into two parts, “Qianbian” (Part One) and “Houbian” (Part Two), and has fourteen chapters. Lin omits several features of the English original, such as the title of each chapter, some detailed descriptions of Jefferson Hope’s fiancée Lucy, and several abstract philosophical passages.10 Lin also added standard introductory words such as yue to indicate the speaker’s identity. But Lin’s translation was overall a faithful one, fairly close to Doyle’s novel and rendered in idiomatic Chinese. Lin Shu translated six historical novels by Conan Doyle, but A Study in Scarlet is the only Sherlock Holmes story that he translated. The question arises as to why he chose to translate only the novel in which Sherlock Holmes was introduced. Was he partial to Doyle’s historical works, and if so, why? Or did he have another motive? Lin’s good friend Chen Xiji wrote in his preface to Lin’s translation, “My friend Lin Weilu [Weilu is the literary name of Lin Shu] has always harbored the noble ambition of promoting social reform and education through his translation of Western novels…. This work [i.e., A Study in Scarlet] has been translated before and yet, coming from Lin’s brush, this version carries Lin’s finer intentions.”11 What “finer intentions” (weizhi) did Lin Shu aim to realize through this translation? As the earliest Sherlock Holmes story, Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet still belongs to the formative stage of Western detective fiction; although its first part follows a detective story formula, the American narrative embedded within the 9  10 

11 

Before Lin Shu, at least two writers completed translations of this novel, both of which were published by Shanghai xiaoshuo lin: Da fuchou (Great revenge [Xiruo, trans., June 1904]) and Enchou xue (Blood of revenge [Chen Yan, trans., July 1904]). For example, in the original text, Doyle describes Lucy as “as fair a specimen of American girlhood as could be found in the whole Pacific slope,” but Lin Shu simplified this to “tingting nülang” (a slender graceful girl). Descriptions such as that of Lucy “mounted upon her father’s mustang” were also deleted in Lin’s translation. Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 59; Lin Shu, Xieluoke qi’an kaichang, 62. Such small alterations slightly change Lucy’s image from that of an energetic girl to a traditional Chinese beauty. At the beginning of part 1, chapter 5, Watson expresses his idea of modern law: “Still I recognize that justice must be done, and that the depravity of the victim was no condonation in the eye of law.” Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 36–37. But Lin’s translation omits this sentence. Such omissions could be attributed either to the carelessness of Lin’s oral collaborator or to Lin’s decision that these details were insignificant to the development of the story. Lin Shu, Xieluoke qi’an kaichang, 1–2.

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second part has elements of a popular Western story and a melodramatic romance. The settings of the respective parts of the novel—London and Utah—also set up a distinctive contrast between civilization and wilderness. Whereas London is represented as a civilized society guarded by the scientific rule of law, the American West is portrayed as primitive and lawless, characterized by religious zeal, organized violence, and political radicalism. Such differences lead Ronald Thomas to conclude that in this first Holmes case, “The great detective is identified as the representative of a civilized and scientific English society protecting the capital of the British Empire against criminal contamination by the barbarity of the colonies in general and the irrational violence of America in particular.”12 The capture of Jefferson Hope in this novel therefore symbolizes the ideological establishment of justice embodied by modern law. However, as I will show in the following analysis, the preface of Lin’s translation suggests that late Qing intellectuals such as Lin Shu and his friend Chen Xiji espoused a rather unexpected understanding of the original text. Instead of identifying with the scientific hero embodied by Sherlock Holmes, they were more touched by the ill-fated romance in the second part, and they admired the spirit of chivalric vengeance and the mental toughness of the American frontiersman Jefferson Hope. There are two prefaces to Lin’s translation of The First Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes. In the first, written by Lin Shu himself, he briefly expresses his admiration for the opening sequence of the original novel and describes it as a hutou (literally, “tiger’s head”), or a dramatic beginning. The second preface was written by Lin’s good friend Chen Xiji, who discusses the content of this novel and then compares Jefferson Hope with traditional Chinese historical figures from Shi ji (Records of the Grand Historian): Alas! Jefferson is the Western counterpart of Gou Jian, and Wu Zixu of the Kingdom of Yue. Homeless and miserable, he traverses states and continents, suffering from severe snow and rain, hunger and thirst, and could have died, exposed in the gutters, many times. In the end, for all the physical pain and injuries to his name that he endures, Jefferson remains true to his intention, and will not stop until his goal is achieved. Is there any difference between him and the one who slept on firewood and tasted gall?13 12  13 

Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 227. Here Chen refers to Gou Jian, the king of Yue, who was captured by Fu Chai, the king of Wu. Fu permitted Gou Jian to live in a shabby stone house near his father’s tomb and ordered him to raise horses for him. Gou pretended to be loyal to Fu but never forgot his

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The Grand Historian [Sima Qian] remarks: “Wu Zixu set aside a small righteousness in order to wipe out a great shame! Stranded at the time by the riverside, he was reduced to begging for his food, but in his determination he did not for a moment forget the city of Ying!”14 I have the same thought about Jefferson. As for the enemies who consumed his mind, he finally takes revenge by poisoning one of them and cutting the stomach of the other. I think that even if he hadn’t met Sherlock Holmes, he would choose to go back to America and die there. Why? The longlasting vengeance is settled and his wishes are fulfilled, his mind is now set at ease. What other reason would he have to continue living in this world? Heaven has merely chosen to reveal his feats to the whole world through Holmes. Alas! If all men in our country were like him [Jefferson], resolute, sincere and persevering, then what could we not achieve? What kind of humiliations need we be worried about? It is human nature to be easily startled by pressing danger and, as soon as the danger is passed, to quickly forget about it. When the cause of provocation is not immediately present, people do not remain resolute for long. The evils of complacent contentment are to be avoided.15 In the past when France was defeated by Prussia, the failure of the country was depicted in paintings in order to warn the people of France.16 When Japan was beaten by Russia, songs

14  15 

16 

humiliation. After he was set free many years later, Gou secretly raised an army. To harden himself and remind himself of his humiliating past, Gou would eat a gall bladder before dinner and sleep on firewood at night. At the same time, he administered his country carefully, developing its agriculture and educating its people. When his country became strong after several years of careful management, Gou seized a favorable opportunity to defeat the Kingdom of Wu. From this story came the idiomatic expression “He sleeps on brushwood and tastes gall,” which describes one who endures self-imposed hardships to strengthen his resolve to realize his ambition. Watson, trans., Records of the Grand Historian, 28–29. In the original text, it is written as “Yan’an zhidu,” an allusion to the ancient Chinese history text Zuozhuan (Zuo tradition), completed by around 300 BCE. In the section “Lord Min (661–660 BCE),” the minister Guan Zhong advised the prince of Qi not to indulge in entertainment and neglect the military threat to the national border: “The Rong and the Di are jackals and wolves and cannot be satisfied. The central domains are close intimates and cannot be abandoned. Ease and repose are poisons and cannot be embraced.” Durrant, Li, and Schaberg, trans., Zuo Tradition, 1:229. Here Chen is referring to the Franco-Prussian War (July 19, 1870–May 10, 1871), which ended with a thorough Prussian and German victory and marked the downfall of Napoleon III and the end of the Second French Empire. As part of the settlement, almost all of Alsace-Lorraine was ceded to Prussia and remained part of Germany until the end of World War I.

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were written in Japan to stir up the spirit of its people.17 After China was forced to trade with the rest of the world, it was increasingly oppressed by many foreign forces. The Gengzi [Boxer] War in 1900 has inflicted great pain on us. I happened to be in the wartime city and witnessed the whole event. The unfairness and humiliations doled out to us in the treaty are too sad to be told, and can still be felt today. We should take the resolution of the French and Japanese as a model. Although this novel is short, it could become the beginning point for us to learn from the West. I hope that readers will not treat it as an ordinary detective story, but compare it with the stories in the “Hereditary Household (Shijia) of King Gou Jian of Yue” and the “Biography of Wu Zixu” in Shi ji.18 Chen begins by comparing Jefferson Hope with traditional Chinese heroes like Gou Jian and Wu Zixu. He argues that they share the same resolve to exact revenge and possess similar perseverance. In his novel, Doyle describes Jefferson’s search for his enemies thus: Jefferson never faltered for a moment. With the small competence he possessed, eked out by such employment as he could pick up, he traveled from town to town through the United States in quest of his enemies. Year passed into year, his black hair turned grizzled, but still he wandered on, a human bloodhound, with his mind wholly set upon the one object to which he had devoted his life.19 Similarly, Chen argues, the traditional hero Wu Zixu witnessed the execution of both his father and elder brother at the hands of the king of Chu. Having fled after experiencing a series of sufferings, Wu Zixu finally won the trust of the king of Wu and assisted him in defeating the king of Chu. Concerning Wu’s escape Sima Qian writes:

17 

18  19 

This probably refers to events in 1898, when Russia pressured China into granting it a lease for the strategically important Port Arthur (now Lüshun) on the Liaodong Peninsula in southern Manchuria. Although this port was ceded to Japan after its decisive victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Russia, in concert with other European powers, forced Japan to relinquish it. Lin Shu, Xieluoke qi’an kaichang, 1–2. Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 75–76.

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Wu Zixu hid himself in a sack and so escaped through the Zhao Pass, traveling by night, hiding by day, till he reached the Ling River, when he had not a morsel to put in his mouth. He crawled on his knees, inched over the ground, bowed his head, bared his arms, drummed on his stomach, and blew a flute, begging in the marketplace of Wu.20 Jefferson Hope therefore resembles Wu Zixu in his indomitable energy, untiring patience, and sustaining vindictiveness. In his preface, Chen calls upon his readers to learn from Hope’s individual consciousness of shame. Writing in the context of the late Qing, when China was facing a national crisis due to both foreign encroachments and domestic unrest, Chen cites similar events in the West to encourage his readers to develop a fighting spirit and prepare themselves to exact revenge in the future in a manner similar to Jefferson Hope, Wu Zixu, and Gou Jian. As a result, the logical deduction in the first part of the novel largely escapes Chen’s attention, and the role of the detective hero Holmes is clearly secondary to that of the romantic hero Hope, whose “heroic history” has been publicized by “heaven.” Can one deduce from Chen’s preface that Lin Shu translated this detective fiction because he too was attracted to the character of Jefferson Hope in the second part of A Study in Scarlet? For an answer, we will turn to the prefaces Lin Shu wrote for his other translated works. As mentioned earlier, The First Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes is the only detective tale among the seven of Conan Doyle’s novels that Lin Shu translated. As for the remaining six novels, four are historical novels and two social novels.21 The four historical novels are set in different historical moments in Britain and France: The Refugees takes place during the reign of Louis XIV (1638–1715), Uncle Bernac during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), and The White Company during the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), while the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 provides the setting for Micah Clarke.

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Watson, trans., Records of the Grand Historian, 136–137. These six novels are The Refugees (1892; Henqi chouluo ji, 1908), The White Company (1891; Heitaizi nanzhenglu, 1909), The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891; Dianying loutai, 1908), Uncle Bernac (1897; Rancike zhuan, 1908), Beyond the City (1892; Shenüshi zhuan, 1908), and Micah Clarke (1888; Jinfeng tieyu lu, 1907). With the exception of the translation of Micah Clarke, which Lin worked on with Zeng Zonggong, the translations were the results of collaboration between Lin and Wei Yi. Together with Xieluoke qi’an kaichang, all seven novels were published by the Shanghai Commercial Press.

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According to Lin Shu’s prefaces to these novels, he thinks that the British and French empires in the four novels are comparable to the traditional Chinese empire because they were still under the rule of monarchy. For example, in the preface to Rancike zhuan (Uncle Bernac), Lin compares Napoleon with Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty (156 BCE–87 BCE) and argues that his weakness lies in a tendency to “hanker after glory, show contempt for other countries, and hold deep grudges against others,” but nonetheless, as a great general, he is famous for his “numerous military decorations, and of all the heroes in Europe and Asia, no one could be compared to him.”22 In the preface to Jinfeng tieyu lu (Micah Clarke), Lin Shu considers the novel as an assessment of the life’s accomplishments of James the Scot, the Catholic king of Britain. Lin argues that after the Monmouth Rebellion, when James should have acted benevolently toward his citizens, he exhausted all his resources in wars, similar to what Fu Jian (338–385) and Wanyan Liang (1122–1161) did in Chinese history.23 In Heitaizi nanzhenglu (The White Company), Lin Shu praises Britain, saying that during the period of the Hundred Years’ War, the British were not afraid of dying. They considered the nation as their body rather than their physical body as their body. Therefore, their physical body could die, but they could not allow their country be taken away from them. During a time when education was not yet available to all people, the British had already shown such bravery. How is it possible that the intelligence and courage of our people today should fall behind theirs?24 In general, when writing about the Western historical novels he has chosen to translate, Lin compares them with traditional Chinese historical writings. By pointing out the similarities of imperial politics in the East and the West before the onset of modernity, Lin Shu explores strategies for exercising proper rule in the late Qing dynasty. He believes that both Western and traditional Chinese heroes shared common qualities of bravery and patriotism. As for the modernity of Western culture, Lin Shu does not give it much weight. Sometimes he even mocks it. For example, in his translation of Conan Doyle’s novel Beyond the City (Shenüshi zhuan), Ms. Snake—Mrs. Westmacott in the original novel— is a new woman with strange interests such as keeping pet snakes. In order to prevent their father from marrying Mrs. Westmacott, the two daughters of Dr. Walker deliberately imitate Mrs. Westmacott’s lifestyle by engaging in freethinking and indulging in fancy clothes, drinking, and smoking. Dr. Walker is 22  23  24 

Qian Gurong and Wu Jun, eds., Lin Qinnan shuhua, 87. Qian Gurong and Wu Jun, eds., Lin Qinnan shuhua, 57. Qian Gurong and Wu Jun, eds., Lin Qinnan shuhua, 102. 78B

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disquieted by such behavior. Worrying that Mrs. Westmacott might have a bad influence on his daughters, he gives up the idea of marrying her. In the translator’s preface, Lin Shu explains that he does not want to discourage the feminist movement, but he believes that a mother should serve as a good model for her children. Women should respect themselves and be of benefit to society: “Do [female] rights simply mean keeping snakes as pets, kicking a soccer ball, playing the clarinet, and smoking a pipe?”25 In his studies of Lin Shu’s translations of the novels of Sir Henry Rider Haggard, Leo Lee points out that Lin Shu came to appreciate the sorrow expressed in Haggard’s stories over the demise of ancient civilizations such as Egypt and Mexico. “This conclusion,” Lee writes, leads Lin Shu to reflect on whether the current situation of the Chinese empire is comparable to that of ancient Egypt and Mexico. How could it save itself from a similar fate of decline? His answer is to promote the spirit of masculinity and militarism, which is the opposite of femininity in traditional civilizations. This seems to have given Lin sufficient reason for selecting Haggard’s novels for translation. He then declared with confidence: “I will select the accounts of the deeds of chivalric heroes that can encourage the spirits of our nation, translate them, and bring them to the attention of the world.”26 To advance the cause of reviving the country, Lin Shu endorses the righteousness of chivalric burglars. In his preface to Guishan langxia zhuan (The wolfman in devil mountain, 1905), a translation of Haggard’s Nada the Lily (1892), he claims: As for the nature of thieves, even if they cannot match their opponents in strength, they still fight. They would not fear even if hundreds of them were to die, nor would they be frustrated even if they were to fail thousands of times. They will stop only when they win their freedom. Although the nature of thieves is merciless, it is enough to stir up the lethargy of the people as a way of reinvigorating a society in decline…. If our people would adopt the spirit of the chivalric burglar to defend against foreign invasions, it would not be completely unbeneficial to our society.27

25  26  27 

Qian Gurong and Wu Jun, eds., Lin Qinnan shuhua, 91. L. Lee, “Linshu yu Haggard,” 53. Qian Gurong and Wu Jun, eds., Lin Qinnan shuhua, 32–33. 78B

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Through these words, Lin Shu affirms the barbarity of thieves and considers it a quality that can revive the weakening Chinese civilization. Lin’s preface to The Wolfman in Devil Mountain (Nada the Lily) shows that when the law conflicts with poetic justice, he would choose the latter. In the name of patriotism and nationalism, he approves of the violence of traditional chivalry. Accordingly, he would be more likely to prefer the avenger Jefferson Hope over the detective Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet. It should be noted that in the novel, Jefferson Hope learns the spirit of vengeance from Native Americans, which is consistent with Lin Shu’s belief that the admirable “barbarian” spirit has been preserved by ancient civilizations. This may explain why Lin Shu selected this Sherlock Holmes novel, instead of other stories that are set exclusively in civilized London. Ironically, in the original novel, the primitiveness of Jefferson Hope’s vengeance is exactly the very spirit that the scientific authority of Sherlock Holmes sets out to suppress. In their particular historical moment of unprecedented political upheaval and foreign invasions, literati like Lin sought inspiration from the primitive passion, the individual consciousness of shame, and the unyielding devotion that they believed to exist in both Western civilization and Chinese tradition. Their quest led them to replace the “thinking machine” Sherlock Holmes with the “avenging angel” Jefferson Hope as the hero. Detective fiction, as a result, was but a side pursuit next to Lin’s numerous translations of Western historical fiction and adventurous novels in his quest for the Western spirit that could make China great again. 2

New Civilizations and Old Morals: Zhou Guisheng, Wu Jianren, and The Serpents’ Coils

From July 1903 to January 1906, Zhou Guisheng translated the French detective novel Margot la balafrée by Fortuné du Boisgobey and serialized it in issues 8 through 24 of the magazine Xin xiaoshuo (New fiction), where Wu Jianren was the chief editor. Zhou’s translation Dushe quan was based on the English version of the French original, The Serpents’ Coils (1885). The original English version contains eleven untitled chapters and an epilogue. Zhou Guisheng, however, had only translated up to the beginning of chapter 4 when New Fiction closed down. He reorganized what he had translated into twenty-three chapters, breaking off the narrative at moments of suspense at the end of each chapter, giving chapter headings in the form of two parallel sentences, and inserting words such as “qiedai xiawen fenshuo” (let’s wait until the next chapter), “queshuo” (meanwhile), and so forth in accordance with the

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format of traditional Chinese novels. In addition to Zhou’s version, there is a second Chinese translation of Margot la balafrée called Mu Yecha (Female yaksha), which was based on Kuroiwa Ruikō’s Japanese translation, Nyoyasha (Yaksha-like, 1891), which in turn was based on a different English translation of the French original titled The Sculptor’s Daughter (1884). The author of the French novel, Fortuné du Boisgobey (1824–1891), is not considered a first-class detective fiction writer, but he was popular and prolific, with over sixty works of fiction to his name. Born to a royal family, du Boisgobey had a wide social circle and had visited Africa and the Orient. “Wide travel, contact and interaction with international society, intimate friendships and intellectual exchanges with Parisian social and literary contacts provided du Boisgobey with greater insight into social life and problems outside the criminal and judicial worlds,” writes Nina Cooper.28 Many of du Boisgobey’s novels intertwine romance with detection and they “resemble contemporary soap operas more than genuine detective stories.”29 Margot la balafrée tells of a sculptor, Tiburce Gerfaut, who lives with his solicitous daughter Camille. One day, on his way home from a drinking party, Gerfaut helps a stranger carry his wife to the hospital, but the man flees when he sees two policemen coming. The police find a female corpse under the canopy of the stretcher. In order to prove his innocence, Gerfaut goes back to the apartment where he first met the stranger, but when he opens the door he is blinded by a mysterious woman who flings vitriol in his face. An investigation by Gerfaut’s apprentice, Jean Carnac, reveals that the mysterious woman is Margot, a notorious mafia leader disguised as a prima donna called Marguerite de Carouge. Together with the duke Philippe de Charny, they plan to gain control of Gerfaut’s considerable fortune by marrying the duke to Camille and then having her murdered. French detective fiction often mocks the imbecility of the police and shows the ubiquity of the dark power of underground gangs. This novel is no exception: the police are portrayed as either arrogant or clueless, and Graindorge, the only exception to this rule, is pushed from a rooftop by a gangster and dies. Jean Carnac and his artist friend thus assume the role of detectives. They convince Gerfaut that Camille is in danger by providing solid evidence of Margot’s real identity and the duke’s marriage trap. A unique feature of the original novel is that the characters’ backgrounds are introduced through long dialogues without any speech markers, such as “he said” or “she said.” For example, at the beginning of the novel, a dialogue between Gerfaut and his daughter Camille continues for three pages, disclosing 28  29 

Cooper, “Three Feuilletonistes.” Cooper, “Three Feuilletonistes.”

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important information about the handsome fortune left to Gerfaut by his wife’s aunt, Camille’s decision to marry the duke, and so forth. Du Boisgobey’s skillful use of dialogue to communicate information must have proved a great challenge for late Qing readers, who were accustomed to being told the speaker’s identity. Surprisingly, Zhou Guisheng translated the whole dialogue just as he found it and justified his decision by explaining it as a Western narrative technique in a statement added before the opening of chapter 1: Novels of our country usually introduce the names and backgrounds of the protagonists before elaborating on their stories, and sometimes prologues, introduction, poems, or disquisitions are used in the beginning of a novel [to orient the readers]. Without these practices, we would not know how to start a book. Our readers are also familiar with them as a tradition. This novel is written by the great French novelist Bao Fu. Out of the blue, he starts his novel with a conversation with a parent. It is as if a grotesque hill suddenly descends from the sky, or sparks are shooting randomly from firecrackers. But if we read it carefully, it all makes sense. No incompetent writer would dare to write in this way.30 Wu Jianren, the commentator of the novel, also expresses his appreciation of this narrative experiment in Western novels. In chapter 4, he writes with approbation: Both Jia Er’yi [i.e., the Duke] and Ms. Shi [i.e., Madame Stenay] are introduced casually through Miao’er’s [i.e., Camille’s] mouth. Both Bai Luyi [i.e., Marcel Brunier] and Ruifu [i.e., Tiburce Gerfaut] are also mentioned, to be sure, but nothing much about their personalities is given. Who would have guessed that these are the crucial points of the novel? Such is the marvel of this book.31 In a note in the upper margin in chapter 3, Wu writes: “In places below where there is no narration, the words spoken by different speakers are put in different lines, but the speakers are not identified. This is the way the original Western novel is written. This is one of the techniques of efficient narrative.”32 30  31  32 

Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:3. Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:24. Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:17. One year later Wu employed a similar technique in his own novel Jiuming qiyuan (The strange case of the nine murders, 1907), which starts with a conversation among a group of rascals who attack a stone house.

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In translating The Serpents’ Coils, Zhou Guisheng adopts a domesticating methodology, giving Chinese-sounding names to the Western characters. For example, he renames the sculptor Tiburce Gerfaut as Tie Ruifu, because the Chinese character tie usually relates to the profession of blacksmith, which is close to Gerfaut’s profession as a craftsman in the original novel. Duke Philippe de Charny is even given a style name, as is the custom for traditional Chinese intellectuals: Surname Jia (in Chinese, jia is a pun on a word meaning “fake,” as the Duke is eventually proved to be one of the accomplices), first name Eryi, style name Peili. To show courtesy, Zhou follows the practice in traditional Chinese novels of adding a few Beijing colloquial forms of address, such as “Diedie” (father), “Xianzhi” (dear nephew), “Shijiao” (friendship spanning for generations), “Er” (my child), and “Laorenjia” (respectable old man). To make Chinese readers feel close to the novel, Zhou changes some details. In The Serpents’ Coils, Jean Carnac is said to be “as brown as a mulatto,” which Zhou changes to “His complexion is yellow, like an Asian.” In chapter 19, Jean Carnac joins a masquerade. Only Japanese costumes are mentioned in the original novel, but Zhou adds Chinese costumes in his translation.33 Most place names are translated and not just transliterated, such as Labajie (the Rue Labat) and Dashuyuan (Collège Ladadens). In general, Zhou’s translation is faithful to the original English text. There are two distinctive changes in Zhou’s translation. First, Zhou adds numerous insertions that compare events in the plot with contemporary Chinese culture. Second, Zhou invited Wu Jianren to serve as a commentator in keeping with the Chinese practice of pingdian. In this translated detective novel, Zhou’s insertions and Wu’s pingdian not only alter the original narrative form of Du Boisgobey’s original work but also add complexity to the narrative voice. The narrative tone in the original text is indifferent and objective, but the voices of the translator Zhou Guisheng and the commentator Wu Jianren are parodic and sometimes didactic. Moreover, the two writers often hold contradictory views regarding Western modernity as it is depicted in the novel. These are the heteroglossic voices that the original Western detective novel lacks. Generally speaking, Zhou’s insertions fall into four categories. The first kind of insertion summarizes the plot of the previous chapter and provides psychological interpretations of the characters. For example, in chapter 13, Annette, 33 

As Zhou’s translated novel retains the Parisian setting of the original, sometimes these domesticating translations seem out of place. For example, in the original novel Camille’s mother is a skilled pianist, but Zhou changed the piano to the erhu, a traditional Chinese music instrument.

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the sister of Marcel Brunier, invites Jean Carnac to the Louvre. The original English translation on which Zhou’s translation is based reads: “You can rely upon me, Mademoiselle. Ah, if you only knew the pleasure you were giving me,” stammered Carnac, who was quite unprepared for so much happiness. “I am your brother’s most devoted friend for life. Ah, if I could only persuade my master to give him Mademoiselle Gerfaut in marriage!”34 But Zhou embellishes the thrill that Jean Carnac felt at such a romantic moment: It turns out that after Jiading met Miss Aiyuan, he entertained unrealistic thoughts about her. But not knowing how she felt, he did not dare to approach her. Now, unexpectedly, she came up to him. Overjoyed, he tried to think of something good to say to win her favor. He thought for a while and said: “I am a good friend of your brother, and I always do my best to persuade my master to marry his daughter to him.”35 The second kind of insertion explains Western social etiquette and culture to Chinese readers. For example, Jean Carnac first appears in chapter 11 as Gerfaut’s apprentice. The original text briefly gives his background: “he had begun by carving urns and other funeral emblems for contractors dealing in tombstones.” But Zhou Guisheng supplements this with a paragraph about Western funeral customs and argues that they are related to the equality between man and woman in Western societies: It turns out that people in civilized countries are particular about their tombs, which are more than heaps of dirt on the ground. The tomb illustrates their collectivism as well. Generally there is a cemetery in every locale, which is managed by a publicly appointed director. The cemetery is well decorated with fragrant flowers and trees like a park. Such a method is even more reliable than entrusting one’s remains to one’s own offspring. There is no saying whether one’s chain of descendants might be broken someday, or whether the fortunes of their families might decline. But directors can be appointed and replaced anytime. Such a system would not become derelict. Because of this important reason, 34  35 

Boisgobey, The Serpents’ Coils, 42. Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:83.

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Europeans and Americans regard their children as property of the country and therefore not as their own individual property. In this way, male and female children are treated equally after they are born. If not for this, who would take care of your remains after death besides your own children? Therefore children are valued, but enough of this digression.36 Zhou’s alert comparison of Western and traditional Chinese social practices is even more obvious in the third kind of insertion, in which he openly satirizes outmoded traditional Chinese conventions and corrupt practices. For example, in chapter 2, Gerfaut decides to attend a party in order to make the acquaintance of government officials so that he can be rewarded with a knighthood after providing services for them. The English translation reads: Now, in his secret heart Gerfaut was weak enough to long for a decoration—for one of those strips of red ribbon, which proclaim that the wearer is a Knight of the Legion of Honour. None of us are perfect; let it be remembered.37 Zhou translates the last sentence in a more colloquial manner, making the meaning more transparent: “This is the common problem of people in the world. The poor want to be rich, while the rich want social distinction. Will they ever be satisfied?”38 Prior to this, however, he criticizes the corrupt system of buying official posts during the late Qing period and considers Gerfaut’s thoughts more noble because he attempts to elevate his social status through his talents: This is unlike Chinese mingqi [literally “precious objects,” but here it means “official posts”]. Be it a red hat or a green hat, as long as you have the dirty money for it, it is for sale [the different colors of an official hat represent different ranks]. But in the present case, Gerfaut would need to have someone who truly appreciated his skills.39 A similar sarcastic note regarding the purchase of official titles in late Qing China appears in chapter 5 when a stranger asks Gerfaut to help carry his wife to the hospital. In a paragraph that has no counterpart in the original text, 36  37  38  39 

Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:73–74. Boisgobey, The Serpents’ Coils, 9–10. Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:13. Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:13.

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Zhou compares Gerfaut as he carries the stretcher with the subordinates who carried Chinese officials on sedan chairs: Gerfaut thought: “This is the first time that I have acted like a lowly servant (nucai)…. I have often heard that officials of China in the Orient are not selected by their citizens. As long as they have money, they can purchase an official post from the emperor. [Here Wu Jianren adds an in-text comment: “What you don’t know is that people can transact business through the purchase of official posts.”] When a person becomes a government official, he can do whatever he wants to exploit the commoners. The commoners can do nothing about it but fear him. When he visits his guests, he will sit in a sedan chair and ask the common people to carry him. If they do a poor job of it, they will be beaten. I wonder if my way of carrying the stretcher would pass muster in China? It is a pity that I didn’t get to go there and see it for myself.”40 There are many similar examples throughout Zhou’s translated novel. The original text is a typical French detective tale and does not mention China at all. But the combination of Zhou’s numerous insertions and Wu Jianren’s commentaries yield a Parisian mystery that acknowledges and responds to late Qing society. As the above example shows, they even associate the action of the Frenchman Gerfaut with things Chinese. Thus an ordinary detective novel performs the principal function of New Fiction, namely to criticize outdated social conventions and customs.41 The fourth kind of insertion shapes the characterization of protagonists, sometimes making characters behave in a manner consistent with the Confucian value of filial piety. For example, in chapter 5, the drunken Gerfaut hurries home when it occurs to him that his daughter Camille will worry about him. Patrick Hanan observes, “In a traditional father-daughter relationship, the father’s concern for his daughter should be at least balanced by her concern for him.”42 To maintain this balance, Wu Jianren persuaded Zhou Guisheng to add a particularly long passage in chapter 9 about how Camille is filled

40  41 

42 

Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:28. The literary movement was initiated by the novelist and reformist Liang Qichao. In 1902, he launched the journal New Fiction and published in the first issue an influential article, “Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi” (On the connection between fiction and the governing of the people), which advocates the educational function of fiction to reinvigorate the nation. Hanan, Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 158.

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with anxious thoughts about her father. In his commentary on chapter 9, Wu Jianren explained: The passage about Camille missing Gerfaut in the second part of this chapter is not found in the original novel. In my opinion, in view of the description of Gerfaut’s solicitous and genuine thoughts about his daughter in an earlier chapter, the narrative would inevitably be flawed if at this point, the story did not devote a few lines to describing Camille’s concerns for her father, to keep the relationship between ci (kindness from the parents) and xiao (filial piety from the children) in balance. Moreover, recently more and more people are advocating “family revolution” ( jiating geming) and disrupting social order. Something needs to be done to correct the ways of these evildoers who are there to destroy our ethical order. I thereby deliberately brought this up with the translator and asked him to insert this passage in the text. Although the episode is not found in the original, I know that Camille must have been preoccupied with these thoughts that night. Therefore, although the passage is fabricated, it is by no means superfluous.43 In the original novel, chapter 1 describes the entire sequence of events starting with Gerfaut going to a party and ending with the vitriol attack. Chapter 2 opens one week later when the doctor announces that Gerfaut has been permanently blinded. A brief flashback is introduced to describe the grief that Camille felt on the night when the police brought her father home. Zhou reordered this narrative sequence to create a chronological account of the events. In Zhou’s translation of chapter 9, he inserts many details into the description of Camille’s state of mind and her actions to show her filial piety: Alas! My father loves me so much, as if I were as precious as a glowing pearl held in his hand. Not only do I fail to fulfill my filial duty to him, but I could not find a way to make him drink less. How unfilial I am!44 More details are added in chapter 10 to illustrate Camille’s feelings of guilt: “Alas! Camille! All this is your fault! Why didn’t you wheedle your father [not to attend the party] when you could? Now Father is blinded. How unfilial you are!” There she cursed herself and felt deep regret, holding 43  44 

Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:61. Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:61.

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her ten gentle fingers tightly together and chewing them. How she wished she could just end her life by hitting her head against the wall. This might have done something to lessen her guilt over her unfilial behavior.45 The word xiao (filial piety) appears frequently throughout chapters 9 and 10. In the upper-margin commentaries, Wu Jianren stresses repeatedly that he is so touched that he could almost cry for Camille. In the original text, however, Camille does not blame herself for Gerfaut’s misery, and there is only a single reference to “filial duties.”46 The innocent, naïve, and credulous Camille plays only a secondary role in the original novel. Following Wu Jianren’s advice, however, Zhou Guisheng makes her a critical character with genuine affection and filial feeling. In Zhou’s translation, as an ideal female protagonist who respects traditional family values, Camille serves as a sharp contrast to the Westernized younger reformists who were calling for a revolution of the idea of family and for free marriage at that time. In addition to the novelty of the narrative techniques of The Serpents’ Coils, then, I argue that Wu Jianren is attracted to the benevolent family relationships and the healthy model of marriage that he sees in this Western novel. Du Boisgobey’s detective novel does contain moralistic messages. The salon of Madame Stenay is a dating agency in disguise, for example. Through various details du Boisgobey shows the hypocrisy of upper-class society. For her part, Camille is not an entirely blameless character. She agrees to marry the duke privately without asking permission from her father. Her hasty decision to marry almost leads her to fall into the trap laid by the duke and Margot. Camille is, in fact, faced with two marriage choices. Although the duke is handsome and has an attractive lifestyle, he is in truth a flattering playboy who is addicted to gambling and deeply in debt. By contrast, Marcel Brunier, the man who truly loves Camille, is kind and talented even though he is an ordinary office clerk. Along with Gerfaut, Carnac and the other positive characters in this novel are all from humble families and they owe their success to their own labor and talents. All of these people are better marriage choices. In this way, this detective novel promotes middle-class values. A healthy and honest family 45  46 

Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:63. Chapter 2 of the original English translation reads: “He had already been trying to persuade her that he could get on very well without her, and that she must not think of sacrificing all her former pleasures in order to remain constantly with him. But Camille would not even listen to these expostulations, and firmly declared her intention of devoting herself entirely to her filial duties, even if she were compelled to renounce all her hopes of happiness.” Boisgobey, The Serpents’ Coils, 31; emphasis mine.

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relationship is crucial to such values. In addition to contrasting different kinds of love relationships, this novel also examines various family relationships. Gerfaut and his daughter care deeply for each other. Carnac’s aim in investigating the case is to protect his master’s family, while the Brunier siblings also have genuine feelings for each other. In contrast, the duke attempts to murder his fiancée for money, and a gangster called Adrien threatens his wife mercilessly and maliciously. Therefore, even though Zhou, following Wu Jianren’s suggestion, strengthens the themes of family, filial piety, and friendship between teacher and student through numerous insertions, these themes are not completely lacking in the original novel, which contains warnings against free marriage and promotes the importance of good family relationships to individual success. This is consistent with Wu’s criticism of late Qing society, which convinced him to serialize this detective novel. In his commentaries, Wu repeatedly points out that neither Chinese nor Western societies are free from instances of immorality. For example, in chapter 18, when the gangster Adrien abandons his wife, Wu comments: I often hear the catchphrases of “Civilization” and “Freedom” bandied about by young students in our time, as if once the stage of civilization arrives, everything is civilized; once the stage of freedom arrives, one will find freedom everywhere. When I first heard these catchphrases, I was thrilled and embraced them. [The students] also advocate “free marriage.” When I first heard about it, I was thrilled and embraced it. I had thought that since the husband-and-wife relationship is the origin of all ethical values, if there was freedom in marriage, then the relationship would not fall apart. And harmonious relations in the family would ensue. But after I read this chapter, I was disappointed…. I now realize that the degree of civilization and barbarism varies from individual to individual rather than from nation to nation.47 In his commentaries on chapter 22, Wu Jianren again uses the example of Camille to criticize the danger of free marriage: The boundary between man and woman is usually not as rigid in Europe. Women can socialize with men, and so they are not as innocent as those who are completely inexperienced. Even then, one finds cases such as Camille, who falls into a marriage trap. How much more likely it would 47 

Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:120.

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be for women of our country to be entrapped, where there exist such rigid boundaries between man and woman! Women are considered good if they keep to their boudoirs. In navigating social relationships, they are as lost as if they are walking in deep fog. Why don’t people who advocate free marriage realize this?48 During the late Qing period, detective fiction was often regarded as a facet of New Fiction, but as my analysis of the translated novel The Serpents’ Coils shows, different writers had different ideas about which social reforms should be promoted in New Fiction. In the case of The Serpents’ Coils, its translator Zhou Guisheng and commentator Wu Jianren had opposite understandings of the social messages of this novel. As Patrick Hanan points out, Thematic shift in the case of this novel resolves itself into a tug of war between translator and commentator, the former trying to use du Boisgobey’s theme, which in its French and English versions had no obvious political subtext, to promote social change in China, the latter trying to portray it as a dreadful warning against the adoption of western ways.49 In other words, Zhou Guisheng perceives Western civilization to be superior and indicates the necessity of social reform by contrasting Western values with outdated Chinese social conventions, while Wu Jianren recognizes that du Boisgobey’s novel holds that certain social problems, such as broken family relationships and the dangers that women face upon their entry into the world, exist in both Chinese and Western societies. This Western detective novel, according to Wu, confirms the necessity of maintaining old morals. 3

Quwei: Zhou Zuoren and “The Gold-Bug”

As a popular literary genre, detective fiction satisfies readers with its puzzlesolving plot and its insights on human nature. These are the delights we experience when we read this genre. The Chinese word for such “delights” is quwei. Yet for Zhou Zuoren, “one of the most accomplished and most impressive proponents of the new art of modern essay writing,”50 quwei is a particular 48  49  50 

Wu Jianren, Dushe quan, 9:151. Hanan, Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 158. Wolff, “Preface,” in Chou Tso-Jen.

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yet rich aesthetic ideal. Zhou use of the term quwei can be treated as, to borrow Susan Daruvala’s words, “an alternative Chinese response to modernity”51 because it condenses Zhou’s values of individualism, localism, and humanitarianism. Because of this, Zhou Zuoren’s translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s detective story “The Gold-Bug” acquires particular literary and cultural significance as the intellectual wit and prosaic beauty in this Western detective story and Zhou Zuoren’s idea of quwei complement each other. Zhou’s understanding of quwei, therefore, adds another dimension to the delights of reading Poe’s detective story. The term quwei is key to appreciating the uniqueness of Zhou’s translation of “The Gold-Bug,” and so I preface my comparison of Poe’s story and Zhou’s Chinese translation with a discussion of Zhou’s understanding of this term. Zhou Zuoren is both a unique writer and an important representative of the May Fourth and New Culture movements. As David E. Pollard has rightfully stated, “Ch’ü-wei [i.e., Quwei] loomed large as a literary value both in Chou Tso-jen’s [i.e., Zhou Zuoren’s] mind and in other people’s conceptions of him.”52 Zhou’s aesthetic of quwei has rich meanings and includes at least three interconnected aspects. First, quwei emphasizes respect for the individual’s independent thinking and interests. The Western concept of individualism was introduced into China during the late Qing period and remained popular during the May Fourth movement. After discussing different concepts of individualism in early twentieth-century China, William Cheong-loong Chow identifies Zhou Zuoren’s variety as “individualistic humanitarianism.” While Zhou advocated the reform of “national character” through literature, as many May Fourth intellectuals did, his theory of “humane literature” (ren de wenxue) denies the political utility of literature as a tool of social mobilization but values its humanitarian power “as an independent power that would lead people to transform their ‘spirit’ or ‘character’ innerly and autonomously.”53 Second, the epistemological structure of quwei combines both traditional and Western scientific knowledge and values the idea of “broad learning,” with particular interests in natural history and local cuisines, scenes, and customs ( fengtu). Such an epistemological preference is closely related to Zhou’s idea of individualism. As Chow observes, before Zhou Zuoren, the concepts of individualism advocated either by late Qing thinkers such as Yan Fu and 51  52  53 

Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. Pollard, Chinese Look at Literature, 72. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 155.

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Liang Qichao, or by May Fourth liberal intellectuals such as Hu Shi, all share a pragmatic purpose that emphasizes the benefit of individual intellectual and moral cultivation to national salvation and the renovation of the whole society. But Zhou Zuoren does not agree with such a “socially oriented viewpoint.”54 For Zhou, “should we rely too much on eternity or on benefiting the society, we would then make an ultra-obliteration of ourselves.”55 Therefore, Zhou takes a biological view of human beings and states that “the highest value of life is life itself.”56 Rather than valuing self-sacrifice, Zhou’s individualism respects individuals’ biological needs as well as their moral pursuits. He argues that the ideal form of human morality “combines elements from both man’s original animal nature (shouhsing [shouxing]) and man’s divine nature (shenhsing [shenxing]).”57 The ideal way of life in human society should not suppress the individual’s desires or human nature but unify both bodily and spiritual needs. Such a rationale of individualism, Chow argues, explains Zhou Zuoren’s lifelong interests in natural history, as “he wanted to know man’s position in nature, to know the inner order of things and the natural feeling of man ( jien-ch’ing wu-li [renqing wuli]).”58 Zhou’s emphasis on individuality also leads him to pursue knowledge that is centered on local traditions instead of a general national culture. In comparing the two opposite understandings of individualism endorsed by Hu Shi and Zhou Zuoren, Chow points out, “To Chou [i.e., Zhou Zuoren], the problem of the man-society relationship should be solved in the reverse order of Hu Shih’s theory, that is: man does not exist for the sake of society, on the contrary, it is society that exists for the sake of individuals.”59 Chow’s observations on Zhou Zuoren’s treatment of the relationship between the individual and society also seem applicable to his idea of the relationship between local and national culture, namely that national culture can only be illustrated through local culture. Zhou Zuoren divides national essence (guocui) into two parts: “The living part is our blood and veins, it is the inheritance of ‘flavor’ (quwei), and we are powerless to discard it or keep it. The dead part is the morality and customs of the past, which are unsuitable for the present, which there is no point in preserving, and which cannot be preserved.”60 Susan Daruvala understands this 54  55  56  57  58  59  60 

William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 133. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 134. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 155. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 137–138. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 135. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 137. Zhou Zuoren, “Difang yu wenyi,” in Zhou Zuoren quanji 1:10. I quote the translation by Susan Daruvala; see Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren, 142.

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passage in a similar way. Zhou’s belief in localism, she concludes, shares the same rationale that Chow attributes to Zhou’s individualism: The essential thing to note here is the suggestion that blood and veins are meant to carry both the “living part” of the national essence, which is the heritage of quwei and “smell of the earth (tuqi) and the scent (wei) of growing things,” which are dependent on fengtu. In other words, the living, intangible “flavor” which is that part of the national essence that cannot be discarded is located in the locality.61 Third, as an aesthetic form, quwei refers to an elite aesthetic and style of language, including qualities of refinement (ya), lack of artifice (zhuo), straightforwardness (pu), lack of glibness (se), steadfastness (zhonghou), perspicuity (qinglang), enlightenment (tongda), moderation (zhongyong), and discrimination (youbieze).62 As a prose stylist, Zhou Zuoren is famous for his contributions to the literary form and language of the xiaopinwen (short essay). His essays, as Yang Mu comments, “combined the grace and restraint of wenyan and the novelty of foreign languages.”63 How does Zhou Zuoren’s rich understanding of quwei relate to his translation of Poe’s “The Gold-Bug”? Poe’s original story was published in 1843, when cryptography was popular and Poe himself was fascinated by the newly invented Morse code. He submitted “The Gold-Bug” to a writing competition sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper and won the grand prize. The story takes place on Sullivan Island, just off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, in the United States. William Legrand, a French aristocrat, lives on this island with his servant Jupiter. One day, Legrand catches an unusual goldbug and sketches it on a piece of parchment that his servant Jupiter hands him at random. The unnamed first-person narrator happens to visit Legrand. When the narrator puts this parchment close to a fire, the heat brings out traces of invisible ink. In the end, Legrand succeeds in deciphering the cryptogram written on the parchment and finds the treasure buried by the infamous pirate Captain Kidd. The treasure-hunting plot of “The Gold-Bug” inspired Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson. The device of cryptography also appears in Sherlock Holmes stories such as “The Adventure of the Musgrave 61  62  63 

Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren, 142. Zhou Zuoren, “Liweng yu suiyuan,” in Kuzhu zaji, 84. Here I consulted both David E. Pollard’s and Susan Daruvala’s translations of these terms. Pollard, Chinese Look at Literature, 74; Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren, 149. Yang Mu, “Zhou Zuoren lun” (On Zhou Zuoren), in Wenxue de yuanliu, 143.

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Ritual” (1893) and “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” (1903). Past studies of this story mainly focused on three aspects. First, the realism of the story was questioned. As early as 1910, Ellison A. Smyth studied this story from the perspective of entomology and asserted that Poe’s gold-bug is a “blending of several beetles into the one composite insect deemed necessary for the purposes for the tale.”64 J. Woodrow Hassell Jr. points out certain incongruities in the story’s realistic settings and argues that the tale blends realism with Poe’s fanciful imagination.65 Second, some scholars read this story semiotically. For example, Michael Williams treats it as an illustration of “Poe’s recognition of the instability of the arbitrary relationship between word and referent and, as a consequence, the contingency of meaning upon conventions of use and context.”66 Lastly, the story has also been approached from an allegorical or philosophical perspective. For example, after deciphering many cultural and linguistic codes and signs in this story as symbols of life and death or heaven and hell, William Goldhurst argues that, “The Gold-Bug” is “in reality an allegory about Death and Rebirth.”67 As a prolific translator, Zhou Zuoren is especially known for his renderings of Japanese literature and Greek literature. Poe’s “The Gold-Bug,” however, is the only detective story that he translated in his earlier years. His translation has particular cultural significance as the earliest Chinese translation of any of Poe’s works.68 In 1901, at the age of sixteen, Zhou Zuoren left his traditional family in Shaoxing and entered the School of Marine Management at Jiangnan Naval Academy (Jiangnan shuishi xuetang) in Nanjing. At school, besides traditional Chinese lessons, Zhou learned English through taking science classes that used English textbooks. He also sought diversion by reading Western literature translated by Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, and Lin Shu in his spare time.69 64  65  66  67  68 

69 

Smyth, “Poe’s Gold Bug,” 68. Carroll Laverty suggests that instead of seeing the bug with the death’s head in person, Poe might have relied on pictures of a death’s-head moth he encountered in his reading. Laverty, “Death’s-Head on the Gold-Bug,” 88–91. Hassell, “Problem of Realism in ‘The Gold Bug,’” 179–192. Williams, “‘Language of the Cipher,’” 647. Goldhurst, “Self-Reflective Fiction by Poe,” 9–10. After Zhou’s translation appeared, it was not until 1913 that Poe’s other works were translated into Chinese, such as “Bali qimiao ming’an” (Strange murder case in Paris, Xingqi huibao 1, February 1913) and Dubin zhentan’an (Detective cases by Dupin [Changjue, Changmi, and Chen Dieyi, trans.; Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1918]). When Zhou Zuoren recalled his education during his Nanjing period, he wrote: “While we were suffering from loneliness, as there were no novels to comfort us, the translation circle was flourishing gradually anyway. Yan Fu’s T’ien-yen-lun [i.e., Tianyanlun], Lin Shu’s Ch’a-hua-nü [i.e., Chahuanü], and Liang Ch’i-ch’ao’s [i.e., Liang Qichao] Shih-wu Hsiao-hao-chieh [i.e., Shiwu xiaohaojie] represented three different schools [of translated

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Poe’s short story “The Gold-Bug” was one of the few original Western literary works that Zhou was exposed to. Encouraged by the popularity of Sherlock Holmes in China, Zhou translated “The Gold-Bug” and sent it to Ding Zuyin, the chief editor of the magazine Nüzi shijie (The world of women).70 Zhou submitted his manuscript under the title “Shanyang tu” (A parchment map), but Ding Zuyin changed it to “Yuchong yuan” (Serendipity of the jade bug). It was published in a book by Shanghai Xiaoshuo lin in April 1905 and reprinted in January 1906. Drawing on the three characteristics of Zhou Zuoren’s idea of quwei that I discussed earlier, I will analyze how the aesthetics of quwei is illustrated in Zhou’s translation of “The Gold-Bug.” First, in terms of characterization, its protagonist, the entomologist William Legrand, functions like a detective and becomes rich because of his broad learning, analytical skills, and curiosity and persistence, which lead him not only to decipher the mysterious code but also to discover a treasure left by the pirates. This character resonates with Zhou’s ideal of individualism. Second, “The Gold-Bug” features Western knowledge of natural history, chemistry, and cryptography. Taking place on Sullivan Island, South Carolina, “The Gold-Bug” is known for its realistic portrayal of the local setting. Both of these features echo Zhou Zuoren’s aesthetics of broad learning and local flavor. Third, Zhou’s translation of the story into traditional Chinese guwen reinforces a vivid and accurate picture of this American island in a style that reflects Zhou’s elite taste, marked by simplicity, refinement, and perspicuity. Described as “well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy,”71 Poe’s Legrand is a typical detective hero. He does not follow the crowd. Instead, he lives like a recluse on Sullivan’s Island, where “Legrand had built himself a small hut,”72 and shows genuine interest in its natural history. Instead of immersing himself in book learning, he studies nature through practical observations; “his chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or

70  71  72 

novels]. At that time, the period I was supposed to study Chinese was actually spent reading these things. Among the three schools, Lin’s translated fictions were my favorites. From Ch’a-hua nü to Hei t’ai-tzu nan-chen lu [i.e., Heitaizi nazhenglu], there were almost no novels that I hadn’t read.” Zhou, “Wo xue guowen de jingyan” (My experience of learning Chinese), trans. in William Cheong-loong Chow, 46. “The Gold-Bug” is the second English story that Zhou translated. In December 1904, Zhou had translated the story “Xia nünu” (Chivalric female slave) from Arabian Nights and sent it to Ding Zuyin. Zhou Zuoren, Zhitang huixianglu, 140. Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 42. Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 42.

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sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens—his collection of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm.”73 His aristocratic taste, pursuit of strangeness, and dual personality establish Legrand’s unique individuality. When Legrand meets the narrator, he is eager to show off his discovery, a special gold-bug, or in his words, “a beautiful scarabæus.” In the course of finding the treasure, Legrand also demonstrates a broad knowledge of chemistry and semiotics. At first, Legrand and the narrator quarrel because the narrator claims to have seen the image of a skull on the parchment, but Legrand denies that he ever drew it. After the narrator leaves, Legrand, drawn by his strong curiosity, keeps thinking about the reason for their disagreement. Unaware that Legrand is concentrating on solving the problem, his servant Jupiter believes that Legrand is sick and notes his strange behavior: he writes figures on a slate, slips out from home before sunrise, and spends the whole day outside. Finally, thanks to his rich chemical and cryptological knowledge, his familiarity with French, Spanish, and English, and his accurate observation skills, Legrand deciphers the hidden message on the parchment. These qualities of intelligence, curiosity, persistence, and marvelous analytic power further justify Legrand’s wealth and success, and the character impressed Zhou Zuoren as an ideal modern individual. In an appendix to the translation, Zhou Zuoren points out that it is Legrand’s fine qualities that lead to his success. “My readers,” Zhou writes, “please do not misread this story as offering tips on striking it rich. Rather, it advocates that, like Legrand, one should be intelligent, careful, and patient. With these three qualities, one will be rich even if one does not go about digging up treasure.”74 Zhou’s endorsement of individualism is also reflected in both the preface and the appendix of his translation. Zhou is against the idea of economic equalism and considers it reasonable for individuals to become rich through hard work and wisdom: Inequality in wealth is a defect in the world. But there are reasons why certain people remain poor while others are rich. Idleness is the price of poverty, and wealth is the reward for diligence…. In this story about the character Legrand translated by Ms. Biluo [“Ms. Biluo” is the pen name of Zhou Zuoren], Legrand is rewarded with 1.5 million dollars in one month. But that is no surprise. In that month, he gave all he had to solving the puzzle, his brain was racked and his heart churned. The effort that he expended is worth more than 1.5 million dollars.75 73  74  75 

Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 42. Zhou Zuoren, “Yuchong yuan,” 69. Zhou Zuoren, “Yuchong yuan,” 31. 78B

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In the appendix, Zhou reiterates his approval of individuals who succeed through their own effort: “If equalism were adopted, who would exert any effort? Poverty and wealth are the media (meijie) of the mind’s effort. The mind’s effort is the price of poverty and wealth.”76 In addition to individualism, the broad knowledge that Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” demonstrates and the local flavor that it captures also resonate with Zhou’s idea of quwei. Compared with A Study in Scarlet and The Serpents’ Coils, which attract readers with their dramatic plots, “The Gold-Bug” resembles more an encyclopedic presentation of the various branches of Western science. Generally speaking, there are five kinds of knowledge in this short detective story: semiotic knowledge that enables Legrand to solve the cryptogram, chemical knowledge that reveals the writing on the parchment, geographic knowledge about Sullivan’s Island, historical knowledge about pirates, and a knowledge of natural history, including insects and shells. Of these five, natural history interests Zhou the most. When the narrator meets Legrand after several weeks, the narrator notices that he is in “one of his fits of enthusiasm” because “he had found an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus” and “he had hunted down and secured, with Jupiter’s assistance, a scarabæus which he believed to be totally new.”77 Legrand draws a picture of the bug for the narrator, as he has lent the actual bug to an acquaintance. The narrator comments that Legrand’s picture looks like “a very excellent skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology”78 and suggests that he call the bug “scarabæus caput hominis, or something of that kind—there are many similar titles in the Natural Histories.”79 When the narrator visits Legrand one month later, he is shown the exact bug he caught earlier: [Legrand] brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it was enclosed. It was a beautiful scarabæus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists—of course a great prize in a scientific point of view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting it.80

76  77  78  79  80 

Zhou Zuoren, “Yuchong yuan,” 70. Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 43. Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 44. Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 44. Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 48. 78B

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Here Poe’s description of the gold bug is both vivid and scientific, employing many professional zoological terms such as “bivalve,” “scarabæus,” and “scarabæus caput hominis.” Zhou Zuoren translated them all accurately. Legrand’s enthusiasm for biology may have evoked a sympathetic resonance in Zhou Zuoren’s heart and motivated him to translate Poe’s story.81 William Cheong-loong Chow points out that even at an early age, Zhou Zuoren “was enthusiastic about the study of nature, especially biology.”82 In his memoir, Zhou remembers that during his childhood, in order to collect the ingredients needed to prepare a Chinese medicine for his sick father, Zhou and his brother Lu Xun tried to catch pairs of male and female crickets in their garden, and looked for the plant Pingdi mu (Japanese ardisia) recorded in Hua Jing (Mirror of flowers, 1688) by Chen Haozi (1612–?), a traditional Chinese book on botany.83 Besides, during his childhood, Zhou Zuoren read many traditional Chinese books on natural history, such as Hua Jing, Maoshi pinwu tukao (Illustrations of flora and fauna of Mao’s edition of The Book of Songs, 1784) by Genpō Oka, and Maoshi caomu niaoshou chongyu shu (Mao’s edition of The Book of Songs, with commentary on the flora and fauna) by Lu Ji (261–303). In particular, Mirror of Flowers provides detailed explanations about the shape and color of flowers and the methods of planting them. Zhou Zuoren attributed the book’s merits to the practical experience with flowers demonstrated by the author, who was unlike traditional Confucian scholars who only knew the classics in an abstract way.84 When Zhou was a foreign student in Japan from 1906 to 1911, he read “a number of books in anthropology, biology, mythology and sexual psychology.”85 Zhou’s numerous popular scientific essays86 also indicate his wide reading of 81 

82  83  84  85  86 

When talking about White’s The Natural History of Selborne, Zhou Zuoren particularly mentioned his interest in entomology: “My favorite part of the book is still the insects, the best three pieces among which are ‘Field-cricket,’ ‘House-cricket,’ and ‘Mole-cricket.’” Zhou Zuoren, “Natural History of Selborne,” in Zhou Zuoren wenleibian, 4:205. Zhou Zuoren explained the title of his translation thus: “The title of ‘Yuchong yuan’ is based on its original name ‘The Gold-Bug.’ Because at that time we were using an English-Japanese Dictionary published in Japan, in which the beetle is called yuchong. In fact, the bug in question is a Jewel Beetle. In our dialect, we call it jinchong (gold-bug). It is a beautiful flying beetle with a shell.” Zhou Zuoren’s comments on the bug’s name indicates his interest in insects. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 40. Zhou Zuoren, Zhitang huixianglu, 30–31. Zhou Zuoren, “Hua Jing,” in Zhouzuoren wenleibian, 4:29. William Cheong-loong Chow, “Chou Tso-jen,” 40. E.g., vol. 4 of Zhou Zuoren wenleibian. This volume is devoted to the topics of plants, insects, and fish and includes over one hundred short essays by Zhou Zuoren.

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Western works on natural history, including The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White (1720–1793), The Records about Insects by Jean-Henri Fabre (1823–1915), and Secrets of Animal Life and The Outline of Science by John Arthur Thomson (1861–1933).87 Zhou Zuoren calls these Western works kexue xiaopin (short essays on science),88 as distinct from dull and arid scientific documents, and considers them excellent in both their scientific content and literary merit. Take Fabre’s Records about Insects, for example. Zhou claims that this book can be read as a novel and that it is “more interesting, more meaningful than those boring novels and dramas.” Instead of the usual research methods of anatomy and classification, Zhou points out, Fabre recorded the habits of insects through his personal observations and experiments, making his work “the epic of insects” for the literary delights it provides.89 Sometimes, these scientific essays provide a site for Zhou’s philosophical and humanistic ruminations about life. In his two articles on John Arthur Thomson, Zhou points out that Thomson’s studies of falling leaves illustrate the cycle of life.90 From this perspective, “The Gold-Bug” would have been more than a detective story in the eyes of Zhou Zuoren. As a piece of popular fiction informed by a knowledge of Western science and natural history, it successfully aroused Zhou’s own interest in natural history, reminding him of the nature writings he read during his childhood, even before he came into contact with Western “short essays on science.” Because of his humanitarian views, for Zhou Zuoren natural history and science are not about strange and unusual facts, but about ordinary things like insects, local cuisine, goldfish, and so forth that can enable humans to better appreciate the place where they live. All these ordinary things from nature constitute Zhou’s aesthetic ideal of quwei on the epistemological level. As Susan Daruvala observes, The claim of intrinsic value for these living creatures, or indeed for anything appertaining to the “ordinary and the everyday,” was best rendered in literary terms through the aesthetics of quwei. This was the category through which Zhou was able to detach the quotidian from dominant orthodoxies such as politics and religion. But the very recognition of their implicit value functions to resacralize them.91 87  88  89  90  91 

Zhou Zuoren, “Kexue xiaopin,” in Zhou Zuoren wenleibian, 4:37. Zhou Zuoren, “Kexue xiaopin,” in Zhou Zuoren wenleibian, 4:36. Zhou Zuoren, “Fabu’er de kunchongji,” in Zhou Zuoren wenleibian, 4:121. Zhou Zuoren, Wo de zaxue, 20. Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren, 142.

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“The Gold-Bug” seems also to contain just such a rationale. Both the bug and the parchment are ordinary things, but upon “recognition of their implicit value functions,” they could be “resacralized” as a precious map that leads to untold wealth. Following Zhou’s thoughts on the relationship between natural history/ science and ordinary things, we can understand his preference for writings that focus on locality, since ordinary things are the representation of local culture. In “The Gold-Bug,” locality has already been recognized as a particular characteristic in Poe’s original story. In the beginning, Poe delineates a general yet vivid picture of the geography and botany of Sullivan Island: This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance.92 Poe’s knowledge of the geography and insects of Sullivan Island comes from his own experience as a soldier, when he was stationed on this island for about a year. In “The Gold-Bug,” as Ellison A. Smyth Jr. notes, “[Poe] has given vivid and accurate pictures of Sullivan’s Island, the scene of the tale,”93 adding that “Poe was really a keen observer of the actual, and … in the locality of Sullivan’s Island there are four beetles with which he could have been and doubtless was familiar, each of which might have lent something to the new creation.”94 In Zhou’s translation, he is not only touched by the lyrical portrayal of nature on this island, but also develops his own aesthetic of quwei on the rhetorical 92  93  94 

Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 42. Smyth, “Poe’s Gold Bug,” 67. Smyth, “Poe’s Gold Bug,” 68.

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level. As a loyal reader of Lin Shu’s translations of Western novels, Zhou Zuoren imitated Lin Shu’s guwen style when he translated “The Gold-Bug.” He uses yu to represent the first-person narrator of the original story. In dialogues, Zhou adds the tag “[the speaker] yue” (says) to mark the speaker’s identity. Slightly different from Lin Shu, Zhou also inserts passages that elaborate on the emotions of the speakers to make the dialogue more vivid.95 However, the original story deliberately uses nonstandard, phonetic spellings to render the dialect of the black servant Jupiter, a feature that cannot be reproduced in the elegant guwen that Zhou Zuoren uses in his translation. Even Zhou admits this in his preface: The original story tries its best to describe the stupidity of the black servant Jupiter. There are errors in his words, such as saying “dar” for “there” and “taint” for “it is not.” When I first translated it, I found it quite difficult…. But only in English can the mistakes made by the black people be shown. When they are translated into another language, it is impossible to differentiate [standard English from black English].96 On the whole, Zhou’s translation is an accurate one. He sometimes inserts a few passages to round out the narration. For example, Zhou ends the story with the statement, “So the poor recluse on this desert island suddenly

95                    96 

For example, in the original story, when Legrand invites the narrator to dig for the treasure, they have the following conversation (Poe, “Gold-Bug,” 4): “I am anxious to oblige you in any way,” I replied; “but do you mean to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your expedition into the hills?” “It has.” “Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding.” “I am sorry—very sorry—for we shall have to try it by ourselves.” Zhou Zuoren translates: I said: “I am happy to oblige you in any way, as long as it is good for you. But do you mean to say that this infernal beetle in connected with your expedition into the hills?” Hearing my words, Legrand was filled with happiness and said loudly: “It is. It is. How could it not be? It is the point of my adventure.” Knowing that this beetle was somehow connected with our undertaking, I could not but give a disgusted look and said: “Well, Legrand, please forgive me. I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding.” Hearing my words, Legrand looked up and signed: “What a pity that you do not want to lend a hand. I shall try it with Jupiter” (Zhou Zuoren, “Yuchong yuan,” 43). Zhou Zuoren, “Yuchong yuan,” 32. Here it should be noted that Zhou Zuoren misunderstood African American dialect expressions in the original text as mistakes that Jupiter made when speaking English.

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becomes a rich man. He enjoys a happy life thereafter.”97 Compared with Poe’s original story, Zhou’s guwen translation adds a stylish touch and conveys the poetic simplicity found in traditional Chinese short essays of the Ming and Qing periods. Zhou’s rendition of Poe’s description of the scenery on the island, quoted above, provides a good example of how he transforms the style and indeed the meaning of the English text. According to William Goldhurst’s allegorical reading of “The Gold-Bug,” the eastern end of the island that Legrand has settled represents death.98 As a result, Goldhurst concludes, “Legrand, without resources or status in society, has symbolically entombed himself.”99 The word “scarabæus” is repeated many times in Poe’s original text. Goldhurst points out that this is a motif associated with the tomb metaphor because the scarabæus “was regarded by the ancient Egyptians as a symbol of resurrection and immortality.”100 Thus Legrand’s discovery of the gold bug symbolizes that he “has found a sign of the life that conquers death.”101 However, if Goldhurst had read Zhou Zuoren’s guwen translation, he might have come to the opposite conclusion. Zhou’s translation is faithful to the content of the original, but due to his elegant yet simplistic guwen style, the landscape of this island now seems serene, lyrical, romantic, and even full of vigor. For example, in the original story, the reeds and slime are described as “wilderness,” but Zhou translated this word as maosheng, which gives a feeling of “exuberant growth.” When Poe writes that, “no trees of any magnitude are to be seen,” Zhou translates this sentence as: “The land is so spacious that one cannot see any boundary” (yiwang kuangmo wuji). The Chinese word kuangmo (spacious desert) used here often conveys a sublime feeling of grandeur and magnificence.102 In Poe’s description, the frame buildings look “miserable,” but Zhou translated this word as gupu, meaning simple and unadorned. Poe refers to “the marsh-hen” that 97  98 

Zhou Zuoren, “Yuchong yuan,” 54. Goldhurst points out that also in “The Island of the Fay,” another short piece by Poe that was written around the same period as “The Gold-Bug,” the eastern portion of the island represents death. He believes that “The Gold-Bug” continues Poe’s geographical symbolism of “the mainland as life and the island as death.” Goldhurst, “Self-Reflective Fiction by Poe,” 8. 99  Goldhurst, “Self-Reflective Fiction by Poe,” 8. 100  Goldhurst, “Self-Reflective Fiction by Poe,” 8 101  Goldhurst, “Self-Reflective Fiction by Poe,” 8. 102  For example, note the famous lines by the poet Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty: “A plume of smoke rises up into the evening sky of the Great Desert, while the Yellow River dimmed as the setting sun goes down.”

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lives on the island, but Zhou Zuoren replaces this species with “white egrets and water birds” (bailu shuifu), a phrase that adds color to the serene picture. David E. Pollard has discussed how Zhou’s aesthetic of quwei includes huiwei (literally a “returning” flavor or aftertaste) and yuxiang (lingering fragrance).103 To achieve these effects, Zhou Zuoren recommends xing, a technique of metaphor in traditional Chinese poetry, which is similar to imagism’s use of image to indicate a certain event, subtle tone, or mood without forthright expression. Zhou Zuoren’s translation of this American island’s scenery exactly illustrates his idea of quwei in the aesthetic form: picturesque, simple, and with a lingering fragrance. Through his choice of words and his elegant guwen style, he creates a reclusive yet scenic place where traditional Chinese mingshi (elites) often dwell. At the same time, Zhou’s translation also transforms Sullivan Island from the desolate place of Poe’s text to an ideal location for the traditional Chinese recluse. If, as Goldhurst claims, Legrand feels that he lives in a tomb in the original text, then in Zhou’s translation, the island seems to be a paradise for Legrand, who has a fervent interest in nature.104 When Zhou translated the “The Gold-Bug,” he was studying at the Jiangnan Naval Academy. The curriculum of the school included both traditional and Western subjects: “Throughout the week, they learned Western subjects for five days and Chinese subjects for one day. The Western subjects included courses at the middle-school level such as English, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. They also learned practical knowledge such as driving and engineering in English.”105 Although his brother Lu Xun complained that such a curriculum was “a compromise between ‘Sound, Light, Chemistry, and Electricity’ in the morning and ‘Confucius says and The Book of Songs says’ in the afternoon,” Zhou Zuoren seemed to enjoy such a mixture of old and new subjects. His translation of “The Gold-Bug” demonstrates his unique aesthetic of quwei and realizes a harmony between Western science and traditional literati’s connoisseurship of nature. It maintains the poetic and simplistic nature of guwen style, promotes the scientific and rational spirit, and at the same time shows an appreciation of the refined hobby of natural history embodied by the detective Legrand. A piece of Poe’s intellectual puzzle has thus been transformed into a short essay embodying Zhou Zuoren’s style of quwei.

103  Pollard, Chinese Look at Literature, 77. 104  Zhou Zuoren was very satisfied with this passage he translated. In his later years, when he read this translation again, he still felt that “some descriptions in the beginning are pretty good.” Zhou Zuoren, Zhitang huixianglu, 140. 105  Qian Liqun, Zhou Zuoren zhuan, 80.

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To conclude, the three translations by Lin Shu, Zhou Guisheng and Wu Jianren, and Zhou Zuoren studied in this chapter showcase the diverse responses of readers when they were confronted by Western detective fiction in the troubled late Qing period. In their work, these translators participated actively in cultural negotiations through various devices such as prefaces, insertions, and commentaries. As a result, one should consider not only the translation techniques they adopted when assessing their work. Instead, a profound understanding of the individual translator’s (or commentator’s) political and cultural standpoint, as well as his aesthetic taste, could be a more effective and appropriate tool for evaluating the cultural significance of late Qing translation activities. This requires an approach that focuses on the creative work of the translators themselves, including the language that they adopted in domesticating their translation, the prefaces and appendices in which they offered their interpretation of the work being translated and explained the circumstances of the translation, the process by which they chose the titles they translate, and their political and cultural affiliations as well as their biographical background. By taking these factors into consideration, we achieve a clearer understanding of translators’ reinterpretation of the original texts and the significance of their transculturation practices. In the three works discussed in this chapter, Chinese translators imbued original Western detective fiction with new and rich meanings by uncovering the correspondence between the revenging spirit of the criminal Jefferson Hope and the traditional heroes from Shi ji, identifying contrasting views on Western modernity, and deciphering the Chinese elite’s taste on the basis of a Western detective tale of cryptography.

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The Detective Story in Traditional Clothes: the Embryonic Form of Native Chinese Detective Fiction Western detective fiction quickly became the most widely read genre of popular literature during the late Qing period, but the production of native Chinese detective fiction remained limited. Nevertheless, these sporadic early works possess cultural significance because they capture the embryonic stage of the appropriation of detective fiction in a Chinese way on the eve of political change, when the power of imperial tradition was still strong. On the one hand, the earliest Chinese detective stories contain features—such as trial narratives familiar from traditional Chinese gong’an literature and the traditional Chinese epistemology of zhiguai tales—that give them an unusual appearance compared to the canonical look of Western detective fiction. On the other hand, the insertion of elements from Western detective fiction, such as suspenseful openings, Holmesian investigative methods, and women detectives, differentiated these Chinese detective works from the gong’an tradition. The hybrid outlook of late Qing detective fiction mirrored cultural conflicts and reconciliations during a transitional time when Western science and culture started to permeate into traditional Chinese society and authors explored the new possibilities of the detective formula in a different national culture. This chapter examines four representative works of native Chinese writing from the late Qing period for signs of the integration of traditional Chinese gong’an literature and zhiguai tales with Western detective fiction and gendered writing. Liu E’s The Travels of Lao Can and Lin Shu’s The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases look like traditional gong’an novels, but they use the investigative process depicted in Western detective fiction to reflect on the intrinsic defects in the traditional Chinese legal system. Liu E discovers that the incorruptible judge, a figure praised in traditional gong’an literature, is the ultimate source of cruelty and irrationality because of his blind self-confidence and his abuse of torture to extract confessions. Lin Shu reveals that corruption is ubiquitous throughout the legal institutions of the late Qing government, including officials of lower status such as constables, coroners, and local court clerks. The Western way of investigation often proved incompatible with the traditional Chinese trial process, such that even if a Chinese judge opted to

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_004

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base a decision on evidentiary proof, in reality he had to resort to traditional torture to convict the criminal. The short story “The Shouzhen” is the subject of the third case study. “The Shouzhen” is actually a zhiguai story of the late Qing period that was reclassified as a detective story by Wu Jianren when he included it in his anthology of Chinese Detective Cases. The tale may be viewed as a Chinese parallel to Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” for in both cases the victim is killed in a closed room by a ruthless animal. Wu’s explicit treatment of “The Shouzhen” as a Chinese detective story challenges us to rethink the possibility of writing detective fiction that operates within the frame of traditional Chinese epistemology and thus conflicts with Western ideas of rationality. In the last case study, Lü Simian’s Chinese Female Detectives distinguishes itself in two aspects. First, it is the earliest Chinese story to depict women performing heroic deeds as modern detectives. Second, the narrative order of the three cases described in Chinese Female Detectives illustrates the transition from the traditional gong’an story to Western-style detective fiction. The first case is decided by a traditional imperial judge, but the resolution of the second and third cases generally follows the formula in Western detective fiction. This sequence reflects the fact that the traditional Chinese gong’an story at first coexisted with Western detective fiction but gradually came under its influence. The transition from gong’an story to Westernized detective story in Chinese Female Detectives represents the end of the late Qing hybrid mode of localizing detective fiction by blending the new genre with traditional literary forms and makes this novel a forerunner of the Republican mode of writing fully Westernized detective fiction in an emphatically local Chinese setting. 1

Sherlock Holmes and the “Quickening Incense”: the Poisoning Case in The Travels of Lao Can

Written by Liu E (1857–1909), The Travels of Lao Can, one of the most popular and influential novels of late Qing China, serves as the harbinger of modern Chinese detective fiction.1 The eponymous protagonist Lao Can, a doctor by 1  Liu E is considered a legendary renaissance man of the late Qing period. He took an interest in Western science and attempted to promote commerce, industry, and the building of railways throughout his career. He was one of the earliest collectors of the inscribed oracle bones of the Shang period, an expert in flood control, and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. Influenced by the esoteric thought of the Taigu School, Liu’s personal philosophy was a fusion of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The Travels of Lao Can reflects his various interests and profound knowledge. For more about Liu E’s life and a general introduction

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profession, journeys through the province of Shandong in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion and witnesses an array of perils caused by foreign invasions, dynastic decline, social chaos, and legal injustice. The last five chapters of the first volume of the novel recount a poisoning case: a Mrs. Jia is accused of poisoning thirteen of her husband’s family members. Even though she is innocent of the crime, her father tries to bribe the judge Gang Bi in the hope of reducing her sentence, as was customary at the time. It so happens that Gang Bi is known for his “incorruptible” virtue. Doubly suspicious of Mrs. Jia’s guilt, he orders physical torture of the cruelest kind in order to extract a confession from her. Incensed by Gang Bi’s cruelty, Lao Can, a bystander and a good friend of Prefect Bai, urges the latter to review the case. After carefully interviewing the witnesses and examining the ingredients in the fragments of a half-eaten moon cake, Prefect Bai proves that Mrs. Jia and her father are innocent and that the poison in the moon cake was put there after the death of the thirteen people. Calling Lao Can “Sherlock Holmes,” Prefect Bai then asks him to assist in capturing the poisoner. Lao Can discovers that the thirteen people are not in fact dead, but have only been put to sleep by a drug called Qianri zui (Thousand days’ sleep) and can be revived if an antidote is found. In the end, he finds the herb that can counteract the drug, Fanhun xiang (Quickening incense), at a Daoist’s cave and succeeds in reviving the thirteen people. The first eight chapters of The Travels of Lao Can were serialized in the magazine Xiuxiang xiaoshuo (Illustrated fiction) from September 1903 to January 1904 under the pseudonym Hongdu bailiansheng (literally, “the hundred-times tempered student of Hongdu”). Dissatisfied with the editors’ random alterations, Liu E turned to another newspaper, Tianjin riri xinwen (Tianjin daily news), where the first volume (twenty chapters) and the second (fourteen chapters) were serialized from 1905 to 1907. Taking advantage of the popularity of Western detective fiction, Liu E called the protagonist Lao Can “Sherlock Holmes” to promote sales. Serving as a private detective and solving the case independently just as Sherlock Holmes would, Lao Can stands in sharp contrast with the self-righteous and tyrannical judge Gang Bi. Furthermore, Lao Can not only discovers the identity of the poisoner, but also questions a fundamental defect in the law of late Qing society. As David Wang argues:

to the novel, see Shadick, “Translator’s Introduction,” in The Travels of Lao Ts’an, xx–xxxv. Besides Shadick, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang also translated the first twelve chapters of Lao Can youji into English (Beijing: Panda Books, 1983). In this book, all the quotations from the novel are taken from Shadick’s translation.

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Beyond bringing villains to light, Lao Can points out the source of injustice where it is least suspected: the decision to assign judgment to judges, especially to good judges. Can there be a more successful whodunit than one that reveals the judges—the symbols of law and justice—as the ultimate criminals? This is where Liu E truly brings his character Lao Can to the level of the British detective.2 To further Wang’s argument, I read The Travels of Lao Can not only as a criticism of the traditional discourse of law and justice, but also as a novel informed by the modern technological culture that is embodied in Western detective fiction. In The Travels of Lao Can, the appearance of the name “Sherlock Holmes” is not incidental but part of a larger pattern of references. Even though Liu E chose to write in a traditional narrative style, The Travels of Lao Can features many new inventions and modern concepts. For example, in chapter 1, Lao Can and his friends spot a big ship out on the ocean through telescopes. The steamer has foreign-style paddle wheels. Poor passengers sitting on the deck without any shelter are “like the people in third-class cars on the railway from Tiantsin to Peking”.3 Chapter 9 describes a woman’s dwelling on the Peach Blossom Mountain. In her father’s bedroom, there are glass windows on the north and east so that one can have a clear view of the mountains: “If you looked out of the north windows, the mountain was very close—a sheer cliff that shot up into space; if you looked down, it seemed to be very deep”.4 In chapter 12, Lao Can sees a Taigu lamp at the residence of the wealthy Mr. Huang. After explaining the origin of the lamp, Mr. Huang thinks it is a pity that in China there is no patent law that would allow the inventor to make a name for himself: “It is unfortunate that [the lamps] are produced in China. If they were produced in any European or American country, all the newspapers there would help the first maker of such lamps to become known, and the government would grant him a patent!”.5 In chapter 18, after Prefect Bai concludes the poisoning case and returns to his garden, “he heard a clock in the room striking eleven as though to welcome him”.6 All of the new inventions and ideas listed above realistically demonstrate the degree to which Western modernity had gradually permeated into late Qing society. Foucault argues that in the modern disciplinary society, individuals are monitored, controlled, and disciplined by new technological powers rather 2  D. Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 152–153. 3  Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 7. 4  Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 105. 5  Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 136. 6  Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 205. 78B

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than punished with public torture.7 Ronald Thomas describes the detective narrative as an invention of the modern technological culture of the nineteenth century. Technologies and forensic science convert the body into a readable text. These developments, writes Thomas, “invented this resilient and popular literary genre so centrally concerned with the act of investigating bodies, exposing and submitting for scrutiny the most carnal of secrets, and offering as evidence brutal facts about the body in order to control its functioning—either by explanation or confinement.”8 In The Travels of Lao Can, Western industrial culture fundamentally reconfigures the way that the individual perceives the world and himself, for example in relation to time and timekeeping. In chapter 2, Lao Can attends a performance by a famous drum singer. The show is so popular that Lao Can is advised to go early: Although the performance starts at one o’clock, if you go at ten o’clock there won’t be any seats…. The next day he [Lao Can] got up at six o’clock…. When he returned to his inn, it was already about nine o’clock, so he made a hasty breakfast and then went to the Ming Lake House, where he arrived before ten o’clock…. By eleven o’clock sedan chairs began to crowd at the door. Numerous officials in informal dress came in one after another, followed by their servants. Before twelve o’clock the empty tables in the front were all full…. At half-past twelve a man wearing a long blue cloth gown appeared through the curtained door at the back of the stage…. After a pause of several minutes a girl came out from behind the curtains…. After two or three minutes it was as though a small sound came forth from under the ground…. It was not yet five o’clock, and everybody assumed that Little Jade Wang would sing once again.9 The passage about the vocal art of the drum singer in this book is often considered a masterpiece of writing about music in modern Chinese literature, but here I want to highlight the tight schedule that Lao Can keeps during this concert. It entails a completely new, and even hectic pace of life among late Qing intellectuals. The Western way of keeping time leads to a new perception of time. Such heightened awareness of the passage of time and the new way of dividing time furthermore influenced late Qing intellectuals’ perceptions of bodily activities and the duration of events.10 7   8   9   10 

Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 43–47. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 17–18. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 24–29. In the essay “Lao Can youji zhong de shenti yinyu” (The body metaphors in The Travels of Lao Can), Hsui Hui-Lin attributes Liu E’s sensitivity to the Western reckoning of time and factory management to his experiences as an entrepreneur who started to build a 78B

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While the individual body is monitored by the Western clock, the national body is also examined with a precision that comes with modern technology. In chapter 1, Lao Can dreams of a sinking ship, which is an allegory of the national crisis faced by late Qing society. Lao Can watches this ship through a telescope: It was a fairly large boat, about twenty-three or twenty-four chang [one chang is around ten feet] long. The captain was sitting on the poop, and below the poop were four men in charge of the helm. There were six masts with old sails and two new masts, one with a completely new sail and the other with a rather worn one, eight masts in all. The ship was very heavily loaded; the hold must have contained many kinds of cargo…. There were many places in which it was damaged. On the east side was a gash about three chang long, into which the waves were pouring with nothing to stop them. Further to the east was another bad place, about a chang long, through which the water was seeping more gradually.11 Here the symptoms of the national body are examined through Lao Can’s careful investigation of the physical conditions of the big ship. As Yang Xianyi points out, The boat in danger of being wrecked is China, the four men at the helm being the four ministers of war, the six old masts standing for the six old departments of war and two new masts for the two newly created departments. The length of the boat was two hundred and forty feet, symbolizing the twenty-four provinces of China, while the thirty feet on the north-east side were the three provinces of the north-east, and the ten feet on the east stood for Shandong province.12 The body of the ship is scrutinized through accurate quantitative measurement and is allegorically turned into a text on anatomy and a diagnosis of a national crisis.

11  12 

railway and organized trading companies. Hsui uses Lao Can’s dream of hell in chapter 8 of volume 2 of The Travels of Lao Can as example. As a form of punishment, prisoners are thrown into the stone mills and thus pulverized by them. Hsui argues that here the prisoners are processed like the products of the assembly line in a modern factory. Hsui Hui-Lin, “Lao Can youji zhong de shenti yinyu,” 255–290. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 7. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, “Preface,” in Liu E, The Travels of Lao Can, trans. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, 8.

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To return to the poisoning case, the use of an unknown drug such as “Thousand Days’ Sleep” as a literary ploy is against the rules of Western detective fiction.13 Moreover, although Lao Can is lauded as “Sherlock Holmes,” he is different from a Western detective in that he seems to be more concerned with curing the individual body than finding out the criminal’s identity. In fact, Prefect Bai suspects that the daughter of Mrs. Jia is an accomplice to the crime, but he does not want to involve too many people and complicate the case, so he warns Jia Gan, the son of Mrs. Jia, who together with his sister made a false accusation against Mrs. Jia: It’s lucky for you that you’ve got me for judge. If it had been one of your thorough and efficient deputies, the moon cake case being settled, this question of the arsenic would have become an affair of world-shaking consequences. But I do not like to bring people’s womenfolk into the court if it can be avoided. You go home and tell your sister that this court asserts that the arsenic was put in the moon cakes after the event. For the time being I am not in a hurry to find out who put it in, because the death of thirteen people in your household is a very great mystery and must be probed to the very bottom till “the water has gone down and the rocks emerge.”14 As a result, the climax of the poisoning case lies in obtaining the antidote to awaken the thirteen people. Through his manipulation of the plot, Liu E has actually transformed a detective case into a political allegory about finding the appropriate solution to revive the Chinese nation. When inquiring about the ingredients of the poison, Lao Can at first suspects that it is “some sort of Western poison, probably some sort of ‘Indian Grass.’”15 But when he seeks help from a Sino-European medicine shop, “it turned out that this shop deals only in bottles of prepared medicine sent up from Shanghai and had no unprepared drugs.”16 The next day, Lao Can goes to the Roman Catholic mission to see an Italian priest who is proficient in Western medicine 13 

14  15  16 

According to the instructions in this novel, after mixing the drug with water, the person who drinks this drug of “Thousand Days’ Sleep” will sleep as if he is dead. The Daoist Green Dragon explains: “This ‘Thousand Days’ Sleep’ is very potent. If you take a little, you are intoxicated for a thousand days and then wake up; if you take a lot, you won’t come to life again.” Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 228. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 203. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 208. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 210.

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and chemistry, but nevertheless learns nothing from his visit: “K’e-ch’e-ssu [the priest] thought for a long time but couldn’t decide. Then he consulted his books, but found nothing corresponding to the symptoms described and said, ‘My knowledge is insufficient; I will have to ask someone else about it.’”17 In the end, Lao Can captures the poisoner and goes to great trouble to locate a Daoist recluse named Green Dragon, who provides the antidote called “Quickening Incense”: “It is produced among the immemorial ice and snow of Huashan, the Western Peak, and is a quintessential extract from an herb. If this incense is slowly burnt over a gentle fire, you can be brought back to life, no matter to what degree you have been intoxicated.”18 Finally Lao Can succeeds in awakening the thirteen people from their sleep. An allegorical reading of this journey in quest of an antidote shows that by consulting various sources, Lao Can compares different social paths that could awaken the Chinese nation. The drug that put thirteen people to sleep turns out to be a kind of grass growing on Mount Hua in China instead of a product from the West. Here Liu E might be indicating that the decline of the Qing dynasty was caused not by external threats but rather by internal defects. The manager of the Sino-European medicine shop represents those Chinese who worship foreign things, but only have a superficial knowledge of Western science (i.e., the prepared medicine). The helplessness of the Italian priest similarly shows that Western civilization is not the ideal treatment for the intrinsic problems of Chinese society, either. The real antidote, “Quickening Incense,” is a native herb growing at the peak of Mount Hua. It appears “a dull black in color” and has a bad smell. The drug “Thousand Days’ Sleep” is used to put people to sleep while “Quickening Incense” is used to awaken people. The opposite function of these two Chinese herbs implies the paradoxical nature of traditional Chinese culture. It is the Daoist recluse Green Dragon who first finds out that “Quickening Incense” can counteract the effect of “Thousand Days’ Sleep.” The background of Green Dragon is elaborated in the second volume of The Travels of Lao Can. He and another Daoist, Yellow Dragon, are both students of the hermit Zhou Er, who “has mastered not only Daoism, but also Confucianism and Buddhism.”19 Here Zhou Er may be referring to Zhou Taigu (1762?–1832), the founder of the Taigu School of Confucianism. The Taigu School is an esoteric and religious school with syncretic doctrines combining elements of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. As a student of the Taigu School, Liu E used the figure of Green 17  18  19 

Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 211. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 228. Liu E, Lao Can youji, 149.

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Dragon to represent his view of the need to cultivate people by combining these three schools of teachings. To apply “Quickening Incense,” one needs to “shut the sick people up in a room; no fresh air must get in through the windows and doors; and then burn the incense. Its effect will depend on whether the nature of the individual is good or bad. If it is good, he will come to life as soon as it is lighted; if evil, you must go on heating it for a long time, and in the end he will revive.”20 The allegorical dimension of the antidote “Quickening Incense” is part of the rhetoric of the spirit that was widely used by late Qing writers. In Guan Kean-fung’s studies of the narrative mode of “construction of the spirit,” he points out that before the May Fourth writers made use of a “medical” narrative, late Qing writers had already used it to manifest their patriotic perspective on national reform. For example, in his essay “Zhongguohun anzaihu?” (Where is the Chinese spirit?), Liang Qichao recounts how he looked everywhere for the Chinese spirit but could not find it. As a result, he decided to build a new one with a core of binghun (military spirit). In his article “Guomin xinlinghun” (Citizen’s new spirits), Zhuang You made a list of the most useful spirits, including “Spirit of the mountain and the sea; Spirit of the soldiers; Spirit of the chivalric knights; Spirit of social-mindedness; Spirit of the devil.”21 In chapter 22 of Wu Jianren’s novel Xin shitouji (New story of the stone, 1905), the protagonist Jia Baoyu comes to a clinic at the Wenming jingjie (civilized realm), where he sees an official known as Lao Shaonian (old youth) using an X-ray-like lens that can look inside one’s body and detect his nature: “If his nature is civilized, it looks clear and bright like ice and snow. If his nature is barbaric, it is as murky as smoke. You can evaluate the degree of barbarity of a person by examining the density of the smoke. If it is as pitch-black as ink, it will be impossible to improve his nature.”22 Along with the metaphor of “Quickening Incense,” these rhetorical narratives of the spirit all show that at a perilous moment of national crisis, late Qing intellectuals were obsessed with the necessity of reforming the national spirit with the aid of either Western civilization or the moral cultivation of traditional philosophies. Such metaphors became the precursors of the thematic connections between individual illness and national trauma that have persisted throughout the history of modern Chinese literature.

20  21  22 

Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 228. Guan Kean-fung, Cong shenti dao shijie, Wan Qing xiaoshuo de xin’gainian ditu, 231–232. In Zhuang You’s essay, shanhaihun, or “Spirit of the mountain and the sea,” means an adventurous spirit. Mogui hun, or “Spirit of the devil,” refers to religious belief. Wu Jianren, Xin shitouji, 6:176.

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In The Travels of Lao Can, Yu Xian and Gang Bi are the two ruthless officials that Liu E singled out “as prime symbols of the cruel and blundering government.”23 Yu Xian uses an instrument of torture called a “standing cage,” and two thousand people have died from it.24 As soon as the poisoning case is brought before him, the judge Gang Bi “had old Mr. Wei put in the anklesqueezers and Mrs. Chia Wei [i.e., Mrs. Jia] in the thumbscrews. Both fainted completely away”.25 In contrast, Prefect Bai and Lao Can “decide about things according to the things themselves, and make detailed investigations.”26 Not only do they think like Sherlock Holmes, who makes logical deductions based on solid evidence, but they also live like Sherlock Holmes in a technological society of trains, ships, Western clocks, and factories, although on a much more primitive level. On the other hand, this Chinese detective case does not end according to the formula of Western detective fiction with the exposure of the criminal. Being a detective is not the final mission of Lao Can. His real role, rather, is to assume the job of a doctor to awaken the thirteen people who had been drugged, and furthermore, to find the appropriate medicine to heal the declining Chinese nation. 2

To Be a Detective or a Cruel Judge: Judge Lu’s Dilemma in The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases

The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases was serialized in Xiaoshuo yuebao (Fiction monthly) from October to December 1915, under the name Weilu, a style name of Lin Shu. In 1916 Shanghai Commercial Press published it as a book. It is a traditional gong’an novel about a murder case in the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor (1862–1874). Compared with Lin Shu’s other works, this novel has been little studied. Zhou Shoujuan considers it a work of high 23 

24  25  26 

C. T. Hsia, “The Travels of Lao Ts’an, An Exploration of Its Art and Meaning (1969),” in C. T. Hsia on Chinese Literature, 261. In this essay, Hsia treats The Travels of Lao Can as a political novel about the Boxer Incident. Both Yu Xian and Gang Bi (Kang-I in historical documents) are historic late Qing officials who supported the Boxers’ massacre of foreign missionaries and Chinese Christians. Yu Xian was decapitated by the Empress Dowager at the Allies’ request. Kang-I died from sickness but was posthumously stripped of his titles and honors. In The Travels of Lao Can, Liu E documented their earlier tyranny. See Hsia, C. T. Hsia on Chinese Literature, 259–265. The “standing cage” was an authentic instrument of torture in the Ming Dynasty of China. It is constructed so as to prevent prisoners from doing anything but stand. The prisoner usually dies of unbearable exhaustion. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 171. Shadick, trans., Travels of Lao Ts’an, 298.

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originality, much better than the Western detective fiction that Lin Shu had translated before.27 Yang Lianfen argues that it is influenced by Western detective fiction in its dramatic plot, methods of investigation, and artistically crafted suspense.28 Lin Wei thinks that the novel’s focus on life on the street betrays the influence of Dickens.29 The seven chapters of the novel unfold a story that takes place in Jianyang County in Fujian Province. In order to stop the continuous harassment by the tramps of the Jiangxi gang, the Wu family, part of the local gentry, decides to have Wu Zhong, their second son, marry the daughter of the You family, which heads the Jiangxi gang. Twenty years later, Wu Zhong’s parents pass away. The two families of Wu Zhong and his elder brother Wu Bo live together. One day, Ms. You comes back from her parents’ house to find her husband Wu Zhong dead in bed. On the day of Wu Zhong’s funeral, Ms. You accuses Wu Bo of murdering his brother. Counting on the influence of her family, she urges Judge Lu to sentence Wu Bo to death. In the end Judge Lu finds out that the real murderer is Ms. You herself and makes her confess her adultery. The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases is influenced by Western detective fiction in both its narrative form and judicial ideas. Although the novel was written in the style of traditional gong’an literature, Lin Shu succeeded in generating suspense of the kind often found in Western detective fiction. Instead of beginning the story by introducing the characters and giving their background, as many traditional Chinese gong’an stories would, Lin Shu set up a suspenseful opening in which Ms. You goes to the court and accuses Wu Bo of murder. Ms. You’s past history and her motivations are concealed until chapter 5, which effectively increases the tension for the reader. The narrator’s voice in this novel often serves as a metatext that shows Lin Shu’s consciousness of his suspenseful narrative technique. At the beginning of chapter 3, the narrator comments: Dear readers, in the previous chapter, you were abruptly brought to the scene where Ms. You was asking for justice and Wu Bo was defending himself from accusations. But the background of the Wu family is yet to be known. Before Judge Lu comes down to the village to start his 27 

28  29 

Zhou Shoujuan comments: “Lin Qinnan [i.e., Lin Shu] has translated several works of Western detective fiction. This may not be a genre that he is good at; none of his translations are good. He has written a novel called The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases, which is quite worth reading.” Zhou Shoujuan, “Ziluolan an zabi,” ZZXLZ, 46. Yang Lianfen, Wan Qing zhi wusi, 28. Lin Wei, Bainian chenfu, 315.

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investigation, the author will take advantage of this idle evening to fill in the Wu family’s background to satisfy the readers. This is the proper way of composition.30 Because this novel was first serialized in a literary magazine, readers who were not familiar with the mechanisms of suspense were dissatisfied with Lin Shu. In response, the narrator provided a justification at the beginning of chapter 6: “The author has translated over one hundred foreign novels. He has also written five or six novels. Readers may find the narrative gap in the story disconcerting and may want to send letters questioning it. Well, this does not have to be. Provided herein is the relevant information to open the readers’ eyes [to the event]. This is also the proper way of writing a novel.”31 In chapter 1, Lin Shu compared the judicial systems in China and the West. Already in his translation of the Western detective novel The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (1895) by Arthur Morrison, published as Shenshu guicang lu (Records of remarkable cases), Lin had expressed admiration of the advantages of the judicial institutions of the West. Similar to Liu E, Lin Shu thinks that the problem of the Chinese legal institution lies in its overuse of torture rather than the activity of corrupt officials: “Uncertain cases often lead to the false accusation of the innocent. Even after they have suffered and died in prison, the cases may remain unsolved.”32 Lin Shu argues that although European lawyers might sometimes indulge in sophistry, the investigators are well educated and are masters of the law. The jury also makes an independent judgement, in order to ensure a fair trial. Lin speaks highly of Western detectives: “They are proficient in scientific knowledge and the ways of the world. They are so quick in thought and action that it is impossible to tell what they’ll do next. Even if one has something to hide from them, the detective will always find out.”33 Moreover, the judges are cautious when delivering verdicts. As a result, miscarriages of justice are rare. By contrast, the Chinese songshi (litigation master) and constables are profit-driven.34 Commoners may lose their case if they are 30  31  32  33  34 

Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:303. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:332. Lin Shu, “Preface,” Shenshu guicang lu, 17. Lin Shu, “Preface,” Shenshu guicang lu, 17. In traditional China, not all plaints submitted to the court were accepted. To ensure that the correct forms were filled out, expert help was necessary. Songshi acted as proxies for litigants, helping them to write plaints for the court and coaching them in their presentation. But they did not belong to the legal profession (they were not lawyers in the Western sense) nor were they recognized by the state. The legal culture of traditional China usually encourages commoners to solve disputes by mediation rather than settling in court. As a result, a career as a songshi is not held in high esteem. Songshi are often considered

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involved in a lawsuit. For this reason, Lin Shu wishes to promote the adoption of Western investigative practices by Chinese legal institutions through his translation of Western detective fiction: If the popularity of this novel can influence our legal ministry and make it change its ways by using lawyers and detectives and establishing schools to train them, then everyone will want to have the fine reputation that comes from practicing these professions. Given the handsome salary that comes with the reputation, who would want to live a life of deceit? Once commoners can be free from the scourge of pettifoggers and constables, they will see a fair and just world again. Won’t this be the greatest achievement of the novel?35 The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases also advocates such a view of judicial reform. In chapter 1, Lin Shu writes: “Most (Western detectives) are learned. They do not ensnare people with their traps. Instead, [in their investigations,] they follow the sound to find the tracks, then follow the tracks to arrive at a world of wonderment.”36 Although sometimes those who are accused of wrongdoings also complain, “[compared to the Chinese legal system where] the suspect is subdued through torture before he has a chance to put up a defense, [the Western way of trying cases] is much more civilized.”37 Lin Shu admitted that when he wrote this novel in the Republican period, the use of torture had become less frequent than in the late Qing era; nevertheless, “we must promote the practice of rational investigation and appoint intelligent and upright persons to uncover the truth. Based on the fair law and solid evidence, there will be no miscarriage of justice.”38 In Lin Shu’s novel, Judge Lu is an ideal wise and honest late Qing official. He “always has a good reputation and considers it his responsibility to maintain the good order of the world. He has the clearest understanding of the hardship of the commoners.”39 Often dressed like a commoner himself, Judge Lu can always see through the tricks played by unscrupulous merchants. When Ms. You requests that Wu Bo pay for his crime with his life, Judge Lu insists on

35  36  37  38  39 

as profit-driven and deceitful persons who take advantage of the plaintiffs’ lack of legal knowledge. The term is sometimes translated as “litigation master,” “litigation trickster,” or “pettifogger.” Lin Shu, “Preface,” Shenshu guicang lu, 17. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:291. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:291. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:292. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:294.

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convicting him only on the basis of solid evidence. After carefully observing Wu Bo’s facial demeanor and listening to the opinions of different people, Judge Lu concludes that Wu Bo is not guilty. Not only does he refuse to put him in shackles, but he also deliberately defers Ms. You’s request to exact a confession from Wu through torture. The next day, Judge Lu visits the Wu family’s house in person and examines Wu Zhong’s corpse. He takes great pains to identify multiple witnesses and eavesdrops on a conversation between Ms. You and her servant. All this shows that Judge Lu is the kind of ideal detective that Lin Shu advocates. On the other hand, this novel also draws a realistic picture of the corruption ubiquitous in late Qing legal institutions. Despite Judge Lu’s righteousness, the entire legal system is rotten. In chapter 3, when Judge Lu decides to visit Wu’s house the following day, his constables start to exact from Wu Bo various administrative expenses, including one hundred yinyuan (silver dollars) for bail, and four hundred yinyuan to hire the sedan chairs that will be used to carry Judge Lu and his staff. When Judge Lu goes on a trip, it is the constables’ job to find lodging for him: “Whenever they saw a wealthy house, the constables would ask the owner to prepare accommodations. Scared, the villagers would offer to bribe [the constables] as much as ten jin (gold dollars).”40 When Judge Lu orders an autopsy, the coroner places the corpse at the gate of a wealthy family. Afraid of hosting an inauspicious event, the family “bribes the coroner, and so the table bearing the corpse is moved to the central square of the Wu family’s house.”41 The suspect Wu Bo spends eight hundred yinyuan to hire songshi and bribe the lower court clerks. He also needs to pay additional fees for prison expenses and the labor of the coroner. As a result, Wu Bo is forced to sell his land. Traditional gong’an novels never calculated the litigation costs in such detail as Lin Shu did in The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases. Whereas Liu E voiced sharp criticism of the self-righteousness of the incorruptible but tyrannical officials in The Travels of Lao Can, in this novel Lin Shu attributed the fundamental weakness of the traditional judicial system to the pervasive corruption afflicting all the administrative agencies. To pay for such huge expenses, he noted, the defendant often “goes bankrupt before he can clear all the false charges.”42 40 

41  42 

Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:314. Both yinyuan and jin were currency units circulated in the late Qing period. Yingyuan was also called yangqian (foreign money) because foreign dollars started to circulate during that period, including the Mexican dollar, the British trade dollar, and the Japanese dollar. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:314. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:292.

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The authority of Judge Lu as described in The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases also sets the novel apart from traditional gong’an literature, where the judge’s authority is never challenged. Even The Travels of Lao Can is no exception to this rule. In Lin Shu’s novel, however, Judge Lu, a county magistrate, is often humiliated by the local criminals. The You family, the leaders of the local mafia, would bring a crowd of rascals to court in order to put pressure on Judge Lu. When Judge Lu refused to have Wu Bo tortured to extract a confession, Ms. You would “cry outside the court every day and accuse Judge Lu of accepting bribes and would threaten to appeal to a higher authority.”43 Half a month later, “letters pressing for the case from [Ms. You] came like snowflakes. Accompanied by over one hundred rascals from the Jiangxi gang, she goes to the court every day to raise a racket.”44 As a result, Judge Lu is “very embarrassed.”45 When Ms. You is later apprehended and taken to court, she “bids her father secretly to summon a few hundred gangsters in her support. [They plan to] cause such a disturbance as to unseat Judge Lu.”46 In court, Ms. You keeps cursing Judge Lu as a “corrupt official.” Because of his humble status, Judge Lu has great difficulty getting the witness to testify against Ms. You, even though he has suspected her for a long time. The second half of the novel follows the clichéd pattern of traditional court-case stories. In chapter 5, even after Judge Lu succeeds in staving off the pressure to have Wu Bo tortured for a confession, he is unable to unearth any useful clues. In the end, he has to visit the local temple, where he prays for a revelation from the god. In traditional Chinese crime literature, dreams or omens, sometimes given by the ghost of the murdered, often play a decisive role in leading the judge to clues.47 The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases adopts precisely such a deus ex machina device, and thus Judge Lu has a dream: “It was the twenty-fourth day of December. Judge Lu suddenly decided to send a letter to the god of the local temple.” When he visits the temple he falls asleep.

43  44  45  46  47 

Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:324. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:324. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:324. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:345. In traditional Chinese crime literature, dreams or other supernatural powers presuppose that some force of heavenly grace acts indirectly on behalf of human justice. The ability of the wise judge to connect with such forces is also regarded as proof of the righteousness and intelligence of the judge.

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Suddenly he heard the sound of the gongs outside the temple and rushed out to find a beggar playing with a monkey. The monkey got on a dog’s back and rode away. Then, the day broke, but soon it turned dark and all the lights came on brightly. Startled, Judge Lu woke. He realized it was a dream.48 Judge Lu’s dream offers a key to the criminals’ identities. The monkey refers to Ms. You’s servant, whose nickname is Xiaohou (little monkey), while the dog points to Ms. You herself, who was born in the year of the dog. The image of the monkey riding on the back of the dog implies their adulterous relationship. Based on this clue, Judge Lu determines to have the two captured. However, in a slight departure from traditional gong’an novels, in which the judge never casts doubt on the validity of his dreams, in The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases, Judge Lu at first wonders whether his dream could lead him to make the wrong judgment: Judge Lu thinks to himself: in the novel, when the author does not know what to do with the story, he relies on the supernatural for a solution. But one should be prudent in using such a ploy to avoid being laughed at by more talented writers. On second thought, what if this stubborn Confucian scholar [Wu Bo] is immoral and commits crimes for money? If he is guilty, but I not only set him free, but accuse others of adultery on top of it, would I be stupid?49 Following the introduction of Western detective fiction in China, the supernatural associations in traditional Chinese crime literature were often criticized by late Qing intellectuals as pandering to the superstitious. Here Lin Shu has his protagonist Judge Lu reflect in a metatextual way on the practice of using supernatural agents in traditional Chinese novels. Judge Lu even wonders whether his bias toward Ms. You might cause him to have such a dream. Although in the end Judge Lu still solves the case by following the guidance of his dream, Lin Shu has at least attempted to rationalize his authorial use of such a device. In chapter 7, Judge Lu catches the culprit, Ms. You, but she would rather endure physical pain than confess her crime. Finally, Judge Lu’s advisor proposes a particularly cruel torture: “Pierce her nipple with a pig’s bristle. Her body

48  49 

Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:325. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:325.

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won’t be hurt, but she will tell the truth once the pain becomes unbearable.”50 Under duress, Ms. You confesses everything. The cruel torture used here originates in Qingfeng zha (Clear Wind Sluice), a thirty-two-chapter gong’an novel of the mid-Qing period.51 In that story, Ms. Qiang is married to a fifty-year-old man called Sun Dali. Later she has an affair with Sun’s adopted son. Together they murder Sun. Judge Bao forces her to confess by inserting a pig’s bristle into her nipple. Clear Wind Sluice anticipates the plot of The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases in many ways; for example, it features an adulterous woman who murders her husband and denies her guilt even after a severe beating, and a judge who uses a pig’s bristle as the ultimate tool of torture to make her confess. In this way, Lin Shu reveals realistically and vividly that under the Qing Code, even a wise and rational official such as Judge Lu could behave in a ruthless, monstrous manner: Judge Lu ordered to have her face beaten…. Four constables stepped forward. Two of them firmly pinned down the woman’s arms. The third lifted her head, and the fourth beat her face with a folded cowhide as thick as the sole of a shoe. It hurt the woman so much that she screamed uncontrollably. Meanwhile, she kept on cursing the judge. Judge Lu ordered to have her beaten until her face swelled up badly…. Judge Lu ordered to have her kneel down and had her feet put in chains, but the shouting never stopped. Thumbscrews were then put on her. Her fingers were numb with pain, but she thought that as long as Xiaohou [the nickname of her lover] did not show up, there would be no witness [to testify against her]. For this reason, she kept up her shouting and denied her guilt. Judge Lu ordered to have her back beaten, but this evil woman was as stubborn as before and shouted even louder.52 Ms. You still refuses to confess after suffering ten rounds of abuse. When describing these inhuman tortures, the narrator admits that laws have greatly improved in the Republican period:

50  51 

52 

Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:351. Qinfeng zha is also based on the story “Sanxianshen Baolongtu duanyuan” (The ghost appeared three times), a short gong’an story solved by Judge Bao, collected in Jingshi tongyan (Lasting stories to awaken the world, 1624) by the novelist Feng Menglong (1574–1767) during the Ming Dynasty. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:348–350.

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The law of the Qing Dynasty requires the culprit’s confession before he can be convicted. Therefore cruel torture is unavoidable. But for the judicial officials of the Republican period, once they secure solid evidence and prove the criminal guilty, the latter will be sentenced to death even if he refuses to admit his crime. This practice is better…. Regarding the case of Jianyang [the setting of The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases], even though Judge Lu is a wise and honest judge, he is almost no match for this evil woman’s sophistry. In the end he has to resort to cruel torture to wrap up the case, a much more troublesome undertaking than today.53 Like most traditional Chinese novels, The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases also contains didactic messages drawn from Ms. You’s behavior, such as “The mind of a lustful woman is the same as the mind of a criminal,” and “When the sense of shame disappears, evil thoughts will appear.” On the other hand, Ms. You is portrayed as a strong woman with redeeming features. Her suppressed female sexual desire is depicted boldly. Ms. You “has an attractive appearance, tall and as athletic as a man.”54 Her masculine traits are established in other ways. She is an industrious woman. After marrying Wu Zhong, “she wakes up early in the morning and goes to bed late at night. She works even harder than a strong man.”55 The readers learn that “she carries water from the well and cleans the room with the broom. The whole house is spotless.”56 Her infidelity is to some degree justified, as Wu Zhong has been sick in bed for years. Ms. You intended to marry her lover after burying her husband. But on the day of the funeral, Wu Bo insists that since Ms. You has no son, according to tradition she needs to adopt Wu Bo’s eldest son as the heir to Wu Zhong’s property: “The woman at first did not want to frame Wu Bo. But she figured that if she adopted Wu Bo’s eldest son as her heir, the Wu family would not agree to her request to remarry. For this reason, she did her utmost to frame Wu Bo.”57 Ms. You’s murder of her husband is a crime of passion. The masculine traits of Ms. You contrast sharply with the passiveness of men in this novel: her husband is bedridden, and after her father learns of her secret affair, she blackmails him into silence by reminding him of the damage it would do to his family’s reputation. When her accomplice Xiaohou 53  54  55  56  57 

Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:351. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:304. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:304. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:304. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:338.

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grows nervous as Judge Lu’s investigation progresses, Ms. You calls herself a “female general” and scolds him: You are as cowardly as a small mouse. Once you hear words from the officials, you tremble with fear and can think of nothing but fleeing. Consider this: wouldn’t it be even worse if we were to escape? I have planned everything out and will prove to be a powerful opponent to this corrupt judge [i.e., Judge Lu]. I am not afraid at all. I am disappointed to find that you are so weak. Now I seriously warn you that you have to keep in mind the words “I don’t know.” These three words will protect you from trouble. I, as a female general, will take good care of the rest!58 Given the ways in which Ms. You has established herself as the “man in charge,” it is no surprise that her murder of her husband can be viewed as an act of emasculation: She tied one side of a long scarf to the bed pillar and pulled the other side…. She used all her strength to stuff Wu Zhong’s mouth with cotton…. Putting her hand on his chest, she felt that his lungs were rasping inside and knew that he was still alive. She wanted to strangle him with the scarf again but she had no more strength left in her. She then grabbed Wu Zhong’s testicles tightly and pushed them back into his belly. The man finally died.59 For such inhuman violence, Judge Lu sentences this merciless woman to the “lingering death,” a punishment that not only brings justice to the Wu family but also represents a symbolic elimination of a dangerous woman who posed a severe threat to the patriarchal order. The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases is a neglected gem produced during the transition from the traditional Chinese gong’an novel to Western detective fiction. Blending a realistic social picture of bureaucratic corruption with a dreadful murder by a cold-blooded female killer, this novel expresses Lin Shu’s acute criticism of the exploitation of commoners by traditional judicial procedures, on the one hand, and his male anxiety about provocative female power on the other. Influenced by Western detective fiction, this story skillfully adds suspense to a traditional gong’an narrative and portrays an ideal, fair-minded official capable of rational judgment. Such a righteous 58  59 

Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:328. Lin Shu, Yuanhai lingguang, 2:328.

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official, however, would be met with defiance by the local powers, as Lin Shu realistically shows. The compromise worked out in the narrative between a rational investigative procedure, reliance on supernatural revelation, and the use of torture to obtain confessions underscores the dilemma that arose as Western judicial ideas started to be integrated into Chinese society in the late Qing period. 3

An Alternative View of Chinese Detective Fiction: the zhiguai Tale “The Shouzhen” in Chinese Detective Cases

Besides gong’an novels, traditional Chinese crime literature also included zhiguai, a genre that was established in the Six Dynasties (220–589 CE) and enjoyed a revival during the Qing dynasty. In 1902, in response to the influx of translated Western detective fiction, Wu Jianren edited the volume Chinese Detective Cases. In this collection, Wu deliberately chose the short story “The Shouzhen,” a zhiguai tale of the Qing dynasty, as representative of native Chinese detective fiction. “The Shouzhen,” in which the culprit is a creature whose name literally means “preserver of chastity,” can be read as a companion piece to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1842), acknowledged as the earliest work of modern detective fiction. Fascinatingly, in both of these locked-room mysteries, the murderer is a vicious animal, but the tales are embedded in different epistemological systems stemming from the East and the West. This section will look into the rationale behind Wu’s choice of such a zhiguai story, through which he expressed an alternative view of Chinese detective fiction that emphasizes traditional ethnic knowledge known exclusively to well-educated Chinese. As the best-known novelist of the late Qing period, Wu Jianren involved himself early in the translation of Western detective fiction. Chapter 1 of this book has discussed his role as a commentator on Zhou Guisheng’s translation of the French detective novel Margot la balafrée by Fortuné du Boisgobey. Wu’s foray into the translation of Western detective fiction came to shape his own writing. Gilbert Fong argues that the Chinese translation of The Serpents’ Coils (1903) had a direct influence on the writing of the opening dialogues in Wu’s novel A Strange Case of Nine Murders (1907).60 In another novel, Ershinian mudu zhi guaixianzhuang (Strange things observed over the past twenty years, 60 

Fong, “Time in Nine Murders,” 123–124.

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1906), Wu emulated the techniques of Western detective fiction and adopted the perspective of a first-person narrator, which Patrick Hanan considered to be “the most striking technical innovation in modern Chinese fiction.”61 In the preface to Chinese Detective Cases (1902), Wu admitted that the strength of Western detective novels lies in their dramatic plots and imagination: After reading the translated detective fiction and speaking to the Chinese translators, I realize that their detective stories are not necessarily based on real life. In fact, most of them are fictional. I have also pondered the difficulties of writing a book, and have come to realize that it is easier to document the facts than to create fictive events. A real case is often simple but [the plot of] the fictive one is often complicated. That is because factual documents are plain narratives, but for fictional stories to impress the readers, they must have something beyond the facts that succeeds in surprising the readers. The translated Western detective fiction of today is exactly like this.62 Yet, even as Wu acknowledged that the attraction of Western detective fiction lies in its fictional nature, he proceeded to point out the distinctive feature of Chinese Detective Cases: all the stories he chose to include in his collection are based on real events, which makes the Chinese detectives and their deeds more convincing: The criterion that I adopt in editing this book is that all cases must be real. Any fictional element will be removed. It is not that I give up the difficult way and choose the easier one, or that I opt for simple solutions over complicated ones. If [the stories in this book] are not supported by factual evidence, my readers will not be satisfied, nor will I be able to rid people of their love for Western detective fiction. Dear readers, I beg you to use the time and attention that you have spent on Western detective fiction to sample the stories of Chinese Detective Cases and compare them with the Western stories: Which do you admire more? Those from the foreign countries or our own?63

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Hanan, “Wu Jianren and the Narrator,” in Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Essays, 165. Wu Jianren, Zhongguo zhentan’an, 7:72. Wu Jianren, Zhongguo zhentan’an, 7:72.

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Chinese Detective Cases includes thirty-four short cases in classical Chinese. Wu claims that, “not all of them are solved by the detective, but detective skills are crucial to all the solutions.”64 None of them were original works by Wu Jianren; rather, all were collected from various sources such as oral legends, gong’an stories, and zhiguai tales of the Ming and Qing dynasties. These cases feature crimes committed by commoners. In some stories, the identity of the criminal is revealed at the beginning. Many stories conclude with an “authorial comment” by Wu Jianren, writing under the name “Yeshishi” (Historian of unofficial history), following the common practice of ending a zhiguai tale with commentaries. Critics did not show much enthusiasm for this collection at the time. Liu Bannong, a well-known Chinese linguist and poet, questioned its value as detective fiction: “Although there are some good points, many stories are superficial and superstitious. They cannot be regarded as detective stories.”65 Nevertheless, it can be seen that Wu Jianren gave serious thought to selecting his stories, and that despite Liu Bannong’s observation that the stories contain superstition, Wu removed supernatural devices and agents from the stories and the solutions to the cases are by and large rational and objective.66 In this collection, the story “The Shouzhen” stands out as a unique piece because of its ambiguity on two levels: First, does this animal murderer truly exist? Second, should the brutal murder that the animal commits be viewed as a way of preserving female virtue or as a ruthless destruction of family values? “The Shouzhen” first appeared in Li Sheng (1874), a biji (miscellaneous notes) collection written by Xu Feng’en in the late Qing period.67 A merchant returns home after being away on business for over ten years. On his first night home, 64  65  66 

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Wu Jianren, Zhongguo zhentan’an, 7:69. Chen Pingyuan and Xia Xiaohong, eds., Ershi shiji zhongguo xiaoshuo lilun ziliao, 1:460. Two stories in this collection adopt the common plot where the suspect confesses to a crime out of terror after being placed in a temple. For example, in the story “Jianwei yuanfu’an” (The wronged woman in Jianwei), the judge places two suspects in a temple for three nights and eavesdrops on their conversations to discover the truth. In the comment, Yeshishi defends this way of obtaining a confession: “I know readers who enjoy Western detective fiction will say: ‘The Chinese tricks are no more than this.’ They don’t know that the divine power from the temple serves only a complementary role to the imperial law. It depends on how it is put to use. If we can make good use of it, how marvelous it will become! Today it is belittled as an outdated method because people don’t know how to use it.” Wu Jianren, Zhongguo zhentan’an, 7:103. “The Shouzhen” is in volume 8 of Li Sheng. The volume includes thirteen crime stories, three of which feature animal killers. “Nigong Chunyan” (The Judge Ni Chunyan) is a gong’an story about a woman killing her husband by using a tiny snake that crawls into his belly. “The Shouzhen” and “Tuike gui” (The turtle without a shell) are zhiguai tales. As the name suggests, the monster in the story “The Turtle without a Shell” is a turtle. One

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his neighbors are awakened by his wife’s cries. They come to the couple’s bedroom and are shocked to find the husband castrated and dead. Because all the windows and doors of the house are locked, the wife is the only suspect, but she denies killing him. Many years later, a seventy-year-old detective named Mr. Shang happens to pass through the town and is asked to investigate the case.68 Mr. Shang observes that the wife “conducts herself in a considerate and compassionate manner, and speaks in a gentle and congenial way, showing no signs of being a shrew.”69 After he wins the trust of the wife, she tells him that her husband met with his gruesome death because he was too eager to sleep with her after a long period of absence from home. Upon hearing this, the experienced detective immediately hypothesizes that the killer is located inside the wife’s body and sets out to verify this theory: Mr. Shang asked the wife to return to her bedroom and lie on the bed naked. He told her not to be shy. He then fetched a small piece of pork and cut it into the shape of a man’s penis. He put an iron hook through the pork and ordered a midwife to insert it into the wife’s vagina and observe what happened. The midwife did as she was told. Just as expected, something inside the wife’s vagina latched onto the meat with great strength, like a fish hanging on to the bait. The midwife pulled out the meat for a look. [The animal] was seven cun (12 cm) long with yellow fur all over its body. With four legs and a long tail, it looked like some kind of a rodent.70 The story ends with an explanation of the name and genesis of this animal: Someone explains that it is called a shouzhen or xuebie (blood turtle) that often lives in the bodies of elderly widows; other people such as old virgins and nuns also have it sometimes. Most likely it is conceived from loneliness and resentment over long years of living alone. But I don’t

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day, it is stuck in a cat’s house. After slipping off its shell, this turtle turns all the animals that come close to it into a pool of blood. The original Chinese text calls Mr. Shang a “Shenhan jia.” The term “Shenhan jia” literally means a legal specialist. Shen refers to Shen Buhai (400–337 BCE) and Han refers to Han Fei (280–233 BCE). Both Shen and Han were considered the founders of the Chinese Legalism or Fajia school of the pre-Qin period. For more discussions on the history and works of legal specialists in the Qing period, see Li Chen, “Legal Specialists and Judicial Administration in Late Imperial China, 1651–1912,” Late Imperial China 33, no. 2 (2012): 1–54. Xu Feng’en, “The Shouzhen,” in Li Sheng, 266. Xu Feng’en, “The Shouzhen,” in Li Sheng, 266.

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know what book this piece of lore comes from. I will ask people with broad learning when I have a chance.71 In Wu Jianren’s version, the plot of the story remains unchanged, although the beginning has been made more suspenseful and a few speeches have been added for the sake of character development.72 At the end of the story, Yeshishi comments: I heard of this story from the elders when I was a child. A few widows in my town also talk about it. But I do not believe it at all. When I traveled to Shanghai, my friend Gu Yunhang also told me this story, claiming to have seen it in the book Xiyuan lu (Records for washing away of wrong cases).73 I checked and could not find a record of the story. Perhaps there are different versions of Xiyuan lu and the one that my friend Yunhang has seen is different from the one I checked. Yunhang is a learned intellectual and he would not mislead me. After that, I began to believe it. Later, I found this story in the collection Li Sheng, written by Xu Shuping. I took the general idea and made some changes. We don’t know the author or place of origin of this story. It perhaps comes from some hearsay. And this is clearly a yuyan (allegory) because the detective Mr. Shang plays a crucial role in solving the case.74

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Xu Feng’en, “The Shouzhen,” in Li Sheng, 267. In the original text of Li Sheng, the wife appears to be innocent at the very beginning. When her husband dies on the bed, she is very sad. Wu’s version devotes more energy to creating a suspenseful atmosphere. In his version, the wife appears to be very upset but there is no description of her feelings regarding the death of her husband. Wu also added dialogue to flesh out the characters. For example, when Mr. Shang finds out that the wife has been wrongly accused, he says indignantly: “This woman is innocent! If I cannot clear all the false charges against her, I swear that I will quit my job as a detective!” When the wife describes the crime scene to Mr. Shang, Wu adds, “She cries for a while before starting to tell the truth: ‘My husband was alone for a long time. When he came back, he could not wait to sleep with me. At the very moment he touched my skin, tragedy struck.’ After these words, her face reddened and she wept sadly.” Wu Jianren, “The Shouzhen,” Zhongguo zhentan’an, 7:113. Records for Washing Away of Wrong Cases is a book of forensic medicine written in 1247 by Song Ci of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279). For English translations, see Giles, Instructions to Coroners, and McKnight, Washing Away of Wrongs. Wu Jianren, Zhongguo zhentan’an, 7:114. The surname of the detective indicates that he is a descendant of Shang Yang (390–338 BCE), who is considered the central figure in the pantheon of Legalist thinkers in ancient China.

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As mentioned earlier, Wu Jianren claims that all stories in his Chinese Detective Cases are real, but the existence of the shouzhen animal is not supported by modern science.75 Moreover, in his comments, Wu admits that this story is a yuyan (allegory). Does this comment contradict Wu’s claim that realism is the characteristic feature of the tales in his collection? To answer this question, it is necessary to consider the unique epistemological system of the traditional zhiguai genre. In Li Sheng, the story “The Shouzhen” is considered a zhiguai tale. Zhiguai is a specific form of traditional Chinese epistemological writing. Written in classical language, this body of literature reflects a kind of aesthetic interest in anecdotes of paranormal, rare, and bizarre things or events. Although most zhiguai stories include supernatural associations, Karl S. Y. Kao reminds us that these tales “have features and characteristics distinct from the supernatural and the fantastic of the Western tradition.”76 They are “considered as ‘records’ of facts and observable natural phenomena (or hearsay).”77 Sometimes, they are also treated as supplements to official histories, “preserving information and incidents not recorded elsewhere because of their weird subject matter.”78 In other words, as a specific form of traditional Chinese epistemological and historical writing, zhiguai presents an understanding of reality unlike Western epistemologies. As Lu Xun points out: “The men of that age (Six Dynasties) believed that although the ways of mortals were not those of spirits, none the less spirits existed. So they recorded these tales of the supernatural in the same 75 

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Based on existing documents, it appears that the origin or archetype of the shouzhen probably evolves from certain endogenous pathogens called gubing. N. H. van Straten explains that according to traditional Chinese medicine, the gubing is believed to originate as a type of dangerous poison that would gradually develop within the vagina of a married woman who, being separated from her husband, has neither sexual intercourse nor an orgasm for a long period. Because of her unsatisfied sexual desires, she suffers from vaginal secretions that become poisonous due to stasis and then eventually materialize into a gubing. Presumably, in the story, at the first instance of sexual intercourse after a period of abstinence, the gubing bites off the penis of the husband, who subsequently dies. Van Straten, Concepts of Health, Disease and Vitality in Traditional Chinese Society, 72. Van Straten also noted two other explanations for gubing. Some say that gubing is a kind of poisonous vaginal secretion that can penetrate the penis and infect a man with a serious disease. Other believe that evu, an infection of the upper part of the stomach, wanders about the body and causes many diseases. Women who have evu in the vulva may cause penis captivus, the remedy for which is to pour blood into her mouth or vagina. See van Straten, Concepts of Health, Disease and Vitality in Traditional Chinese Society, 50–70. Kao, “Introduction,” in Classical Chinese Tales, 1. Kao, “Introduction,” in Classical Chinese Tales, 2. Huntington, Alien Kind, 16.

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way as anecdotes about men and women, not viewing the former as fiction and the latter as fact.”79 Karl S. Y. Kao attributes zhiguai’s alternative understanding of the supernatural and the fantastic to differences in worldview between the West and the East. In the West, he writes, “the fantastic was a product of an uneasy, ‘pulverized’ consciousness resulting from the loss of faith in the unity of man and nature with the advent of the Enlightenment, when the belief in animism and magic was no longer possible.” But in traditional China, Kao observes, “there was no such schism of consciousness.”80 In her studies of the medical discourse on cases of sexual and reproductive anomalies in late Ming China, Charlotte Furth cites the works of the natural philosopher Li Shizhen (1518– 1593) to illustrate the traditional Chinese cosmological view that “sought to incorporate anomaly rather than reject the irregular as inconsistent with the harmony of natural pattern.”81 Underlying the recording of tales of anomalies is a recognition of them as factual and a belief in their testimonial value. This is different from the rational spirit in Western detective fiction, in which testimonies are often unreliable and should be verified by evidentiary procedure. Therefore, by incorporating such a zhiguai story into a collection of detective fiction, Wu explores the possibility of writing Chinese detective fiction based on traditional ethnic knowledge known exclusively to well-educated Chinese, which Wu believes to be superior to modern scientific knowledge. As Yeshishi comments at the end of “The Shouzhen”: “I wonder, if an expert detective from a country where science is well developed met such a strange case, could the methods of detection he employed ever match what Mr. Shang did here?”82 The reason that the Western detective might feel clueless when dealing with such a case is that capturing this particular monster requires special ethical knowledge about female chastity—knowledge that is excluded from the scientific discourse in Western detective fiction. The different epistemologies at work in zhiguai and Western detective fiction can be further illustrated by comparing the story “The Shouzhen” with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1842), which is often regarded as the first work of modern detective fiction in the West.

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Lu Xun, Brief History of Chinese Fiction, trans. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, 42–43. Kao, “Introduction,” in Classical Chinese Tales, 3. Furth, “Androgynous Males and Deficient Females,” 7. Wu Jianren, Zhongguo zhentan’an, 7:124.

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Both stories are locked-room murders featuring an animal murderer. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a Caucasian mother and her daughter are found brutally slain in a locked room. The criminal has fled through the window. After rational analysis, the detective Dupin determines that the murderer is not human but an orangutan. Ronald Thomas argues that this story could be read as a political allegory of racial conflicts between Anglo-Saxons and Native Americans in nineteenth-century America.83 The elaborate set of propositions in the preface to this story states the importance of analytic power, which is a crucial skill enabling Dupin to solve this case. Dupin examines the corpses and concludes that the brutal criminal has extraordinary strength. When he interviews the witnesses, none of them agree with each other on the nationality of the culprit’s voice. Finally, based on the handprint and orange hair that Dupin finds in the locked room, he hypothesizes that the murderer is not human. He finds confirmation of his hypothesis in a passage about animal physiology in George Cuvier’s study, Le règne animal (The Animal Kingdom, 1817): It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and the imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well known to all. I understood the full horrors of the murder at once. “The description of the digits,” said I, as I made an end of reading, “is in exact accordance with this drawing, I see that no animal but an Ourang-Outang, of the species here mentioned, could have impressed the indentations as you have traced them. This tuft of tawny hair, too, is identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier.”84 Cuvier was a famous French naturalist who was able to extrapolate the body structure and habits of animals from what he believed to be antediluvian times on the basis of a single fossil bone. Such a method, namely reconstructing past events through evidentiary procedures, has become the model for the discovery

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Thomas argues that Poe tried to justify the practice of slavery and racial differentiation in various reviews, letters, and essays. In the media culture during that period, both slaves and Native Americans were often portrayed as “primitive” and “inferior to the Anglo-Saxon race.” “Like Poe’s orangutan, they were the threatening savage foreigner that had to be contained, a separate and inferior species.” Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 51–53. Poe, “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” 161.

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of truth in forensic science.85 In this story, Dupin invokes Cuvier as a scientific authority and confirms the culprit’s unique identity through the scientific evidence in the latter’s text on anatomy. When the witnesses’ testimonies conflict with each other, circumstantial evidence supported by scientific authority becomes a more effective way to uncover the criminal’s identity. By contrast, in the story “The Shouzhen,” empirical knowledge, or making deductions based on personal experience rather than relying exclusively on the existing evidence, plays a decisive role in finding out the animal’s location and identity, as the detective Mr. Shang is described as a seventy-year-old man who has traveled widely. After observing the wife’s demeanor, he immediately believes she is innocent. Unlike “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” in which Dupin confirms his findings of the Asian Orangutan with the aid of the biology book by Cuvier, in “The Shouzhen” it is not clear where Mr. Shang learned about the shouzhen animal. He probably obtained such knowledge from his travels over the years. The second half of the story recounts in detail how he captures this animal with the help of the midwife. In other words, the climax of the story lies not in revealing the murderer’s identity, but in making visible an otherwise invisible or hidden guai (anomaly) in the female body. The ability to transform the invisible strangeness into visible objects depends on one’s empirical knowledge. Such subjective experience is different from the scientific discourse in Western detective fiction, which is considered to be objective and rational. Allegorical significance is another epistemological characteristic of zhiguai tales. Many zhiguai stories, such as Records of the Strange, are often considered as yuyan, “which work like fables in that they often carry a symbolic, non-literal level of meaning, more or less as allegory does.”86 Liu Yuan-ju has pointed out that since the time that Shanhai jing (The classic of mountains and seas, probably written from the period of Warring States [475–221 BCE] to the beginning of the Han dynasty [206 BCE–220 CE]) was produced, Chinese zhiguai writings have “mixed the modes of epistemology, allegory and irony.”87 Citing the zhiguai tales of the Six Dynasties as examples, Liu argues that, “the perception of the guai and yi is a value system established through the contrast with the structure and order of chang (the normal). In other words, when writers of the Six Dynasties collected zhiguai tales of weird and paranormal subjects, they also reflected on the perceptions of ‘normality’ and ‘order’ in their times.”88 85  86  87  88 

Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 54–55. Kao, “Projection, Displacement, Introjection,” 204. Liu Yuan-ju, Shenti, xingbie, jieji, 14. Liu Yuan-ju, Shenti, xingbie, jieji, 16.

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A good zhiguai tale can be both realistic and allegorical. In his preface to Records of the Strange, Kong Jihan (1739–1789), a philologist and an official of the Qing dynasty, suggests that an ideal reader of this collection of tales would be a “hybrid reader” who is not only attracted by its bizarre stories but also understands its hidden allegorical messages. As Judith Zeitlin points out: He [Kong Jihan] is ambivalent about whether as a concept strangeness exists independently in the abstract or whether it must be grounded in concrete readers and reading. In the end, he seems to propose a two-tiered reading method, in which the strange is accepted as both a subjective and an objective phenomenon, and in which the surface allure of strangeness and the internal moral balance each other out.89 In his “authorial comment” on the story “The Shouzhen,” Wu Jianren also considered this story as yuyan. When read as an allegory, the tale distinguishes itself through the paradoxical ambivalence of its moral teachings. Shouzhen, the name of the animal, literally means “preserving chastity.” The creature hides inside a woman’s body in order to protect her chastity from outside threats and thus confirms the importance of preserving female chastity, as traditional morals advocate. In this story, the husband is killed because he is eager to have sex with his wife. A plausible moralistic reading of his death is that it serves as a warning of the consequences of a reckless transgression of the boundaries of propriety between man and woman. But according to the legend, the shouzhen animal usually resides in the bodies of females who are not expected to be sexually active, such as widows, nuns, and old virgins. It seems that the animal usually imposes a form of imprisonment on the single woman. In this story, however, in order to protect the wife’s chastity, it castrates and effectively kills the husband, thereby destroying the family’s unity. Mencius taught that “there are three things which are unfilial, and to have no posterity is the most serious of them.”90 A family without children was traditionally considered the gravest of unfilial situations. Yet in this story, the man is deprived of his role as both husband and father by this monstrous animal, which according to Confucian values constitutes “the gravest unfilial circumstance.” Thus, this story is not only marked by men’s castration anxiety,91 but it also implies a critique of what the modern Chinese writer 89  90  91 

Zeitlin, Historian of the Strange, 33–34. Legge, trans., Works of Mencius, 313. In Western literature, there is a similar motif, the vagina dentata (toothed vagina), which expresses male castration anxiety regarding the female body.

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Lu Xun would later call “the ethical codes that eat people.” The shouzhen is both the guardian of traditional morals, and an allegorical trope communicating that such morality could in itself be a brutal monster. While the shouzhen guards female chastity, it also causes a profound disturbance to the order and continuation of patriarchal society.92 In the late Qing period, after Western scientific knowledge had been introduced into China, the supernatural element in the traditional gong’an stories and zhiguai tales was scorned by contemporary readers as superstition. In this context, Wu Jianren’s Chinese Detective Cases stands out as a unique attempt to define Chinese detective fiction according to the rules of traditional epistemology, with the story “The Shouzhen” being a prime example. Unfortunately, Wu’s literary experiment was discontinued when “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” entered China during the May Fourth Enlightenment and the discourses of science and revolution came to occupy a dominant position in modern Chinese literature. 4

The New Woman and the New Fiction: Lü Simian’s Chinese Female Detectives

In 1907, the Shanghai Commercial Press published the novel Zhongguo nüzhentan (Chinese Female Detectives), written by Yanghu lüxia, the pen name of Lü Simian (1884–1957). Lü’s novel was probably the first in the history of Chinese crime literature to celebrate women who solve crimes as heroes; he even refers to them as “Chinese female Sherlock Holmeses.” Lü later became a prominent Chinese historian, but during his early years he was an active participant in the New Fiction literary movement. Chinese Female Detectives is one

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Such reflections on the paradox of morality also appear in Wu’s other novels. For example, in the introduction to his English translation of Wu Jianren’s famous novel Hen hai (The sea of regret, 1906), Patrick Hanan argues that its greatness lies in its sophisticated moral ambivalence: “Whereas some readers may read this story as a brilliant illustration of how a girl brought up on the Confucian texts could internalize their precepts and willingly practice them, taking the blame for things that go wrong, even when she is innocent of any responsibility, others may believe that the heroine’s perseverance in maintaining her virtue borders on foolishness.” Sea of Regret, trans. Hanan, 14. Rey Chow also makes similar comments: “Given the significance of filial piety (xiao) in feudal Chinese morality, why is it that she would leave her own father behind for what appears to be a selfish life in nunhood? It is as if the need to prove herself ‘pure’ sexually far overrides even the important duty to serve her own parents.” Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity, 57.

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of his representative works.93 This section will probe the correlation between the New Woman and the New Fiction in this novel. It further borrows Rey Chow’s concept of “feminine details” to rethink the disruptive roles of both female detectives and female criminals in the novel as a female counterpoint to patriarchal hegemony. The intellectual appeal of detective fiction comes from the process whereby the detective rearranges and recontextualizes details that appear inconsequential earlier in the story but make all the difference in the conclusion. As a result, since the late Qing period, this genre was considered to be a branch of New Fiction that promotes the spirit of positivism and logical thinking. On the other hand, the tendency to concentrate on minor details is often associated with femininity. In her reading of modern Chinese literature, Rey Chow adopts a perspective that relates the histories of details and of the feminine, suggesting an interpretative strategy focused on “feminine details” that could deconstruct the grand narratives of Chinese modernity that feature progress, evolution, and revolution. Chow writes, “The detailed and the feminine, figures that have in common an ambiguous relation to the centrism and purposiveness of tradition, signify epistemological differences to the effect of disrupting the idealist construction of a new China.”94 Detective fiction itself reflects the deconstructive power of “feminine details” on two levels. On one level, the discourse of truth in this genre relies on the detective’s ability to dismantle a culprit’s deceptive statement by uncovering the information hidden in minor details. Although a large proportion of works in this genre are produced by female authors, I do not mean to suggest that detective fiction has an intrinsic femininity. In fact, feminist scholars have pointed out that works by female authors also appropriate the allegedly masculine values of courage, stamina, and the ability to reason. But the logic of the basic formula of detective fiction has the same goal as Chow’s hermeneutic of “feminine details”: both try to undermine and overthrow established testimony. On another level, however, the hermeneutic of “feminine details” emphasizes the subversive messages underlying authoritative narratives, and in this respect it calls to mind the intrinsic paradox within the genre of detective 93 

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In response to Liang Qichao’s call for New Fiction, Lü Simian wrote a few new novels. Besides the detective novel Chinese Female Detectives, Lü had written an education novel, Weilai jiaoyushi (The history of future education), and a long essay “Xiaoshuo conghua” (Colloquy on fiction, 36,000 words, 1914), which has been recognized as the most important work of literary theory during the early Republican period. For a study of this essay, see Guan Shi-pei, “Lü Simian ‘Xiaoshuo conghua’ dui Ota Yoshio Wenxue gailun de xiru,” 20–35. Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity, 86–87.

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fiction, as discussed in the introduction to this book—namely, detective fiction reinforces the disciplinary regime through the work of the detectives, but at the same time it also challenges the rules of that regime through the activity of the criminals. Like the hermeneutic of “feminine details,” detective fiction foregrounds the tension between authority and subversive elements. This is particularly relevant to my reading of Lü Simian’s Chinese Female Detectives, which features both female detectives and female criminals. Adopting the hermeneutic of “feminine details” as a reading strategy, I intend to discuss three things in this novel: First, how is the New Woman represented in this work of detective fiction, and what is her relationship to the traditional women in the novel? Second, how and why are the female criminals punished? Third, what is the power dynamic between female and male characters in this novel? I argue that although Lü Simian intends to use detective fiction as a form of New Fiction to advocate the importance of logical thinking and to glorify the wisdom of the New Woman, Chinese Female Detectives inadvertently reveals an ambivalence toward the political power of women at the turn of the twentieth century. Female detectives and female criminals alike have the potential to disrupt the hegemonic order. The novel thus praises the new female detectives for their mobility and critical thinking, on the one hand, and on the other hand it expresses anxiety regarding the intelligent female criminals who threaten to disturb the order of the patriarchal society. Moreover, this novel not only exhibits an ambivalent attitude toward modernity, but it also upholds the Confucian values of filial piety in traditional gender roles. Together, the “feminine details,” both literal and metaphorical, in this work of New Fiction provide an opportunity to investigate the novel’s heteroglossia regarding the issues of gender and genre in late Qing literature. Set in the late Qing period, Chinese Female Detectives includes three cases that are solved either by a traditional judge or by women. It opens with six young women having a small party in a private garden, where they talk about the popularity of Western detective fiction. Two of the guests each narrate a Chinese detective case: “Xue shoupa” (Bloody handkerchief) and “Bai yuzhuo” (White jade bracelet), which take place in Kaifeng, Henan Province, and Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, respectively. The storytelling session lasts until dawn, when the women learn that a theft has occurred in the neighborhood. Inspired by the two detective stories they heard the night before, the six women immediately decide to become detectives and carry out an investigation. Through their efforts the third case, “Kujin shi” (Rocks in a dry well), is also solved successfully. Structurally speaking, the three cases are arranged in such a way that these six women gradually develop from passive listeners to detective stories into real detectives who participate actively in an investigation. Moreover, the

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narrative sequence of these three cases represents the transition from the traditional gong’an story to Western detective fiction: the mystery in the first story, “Bloody Handkerchief,” is solved by an intelligent judge, while the second case, “White Jade Bracelet,” is solved by a woman who does not appear until the end of the story but successfully protects her younger brother from being cheated by gangsters. In the third story, “Rocks in a Dry Well,” the six women investigate and solve a case of theft on their own. As Fujii Tikuhiro points out, “As the stories unfold, the plots gradually approach those of detective fiction. They represent an attempt to jump from the tales of the talented judges to detective fiction. Only in the third story does one find the image of the ideal detective that the author admires.”95 In addition to its structure, Chinese Female Detectives distinguishes itself through its characterization. Not only the detectives but also most of the victims and criminals are women, and together they represent the courage and intelligence of the New Woman, qualities that are quite the opposite of the traditional female virtues associated with filial piety. To illustrate the diversity of these female roles, I will first discuss the female victims, followed by the female criminals and finally the protagonists of the novel, the female detectives themselves. At the opening of the first story, “Bloody Handkerchief,” two sisters have committed suicide, and it is the search for their motive that provides the story’s suspense. At first, it is suspected that they killed themselves for love, or in protest against the marriage arranged for them by their father. But in the end, the handkerchief on which they wrote their last words in blood is found. It turns out that they were misled into believing that their biological mother had returned. Their adopted father, in the meantime, planned to marry them to a powerful gangster, casting uncertainty on their future. When the “mother” of the sisters passes away, out of desperation they decide to follow her by killing themselves. As in “The Shouzhen,” a knowledge of traditional ethnic culture is crucial to solving the case. The two sisters are portrayed as moral paragons. Although they want to show filial respect to their destitute “biological mother” (this woman is in fact an imposter assisting a neighbor who plots to defraud the sisters), they refuse to rob their adoptive parents to relieve her poverty. The narrator praises their action: “They are not willing to take from others to give to their mother. Their moral virtues are truly admirable.”96 Even the judge is impressed by their suicide for the sake of filial piety and comments: 95  96 

Fujii Tikuhiro, “Zhongguo zaoqi zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de yixue yu zhentan,” 325. Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 26.

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How remarkable these two women are! They sincerely love their birth mother, which shows their filial piety. They would rather die than be humiliated, which shows their courage. They would not take anything that does not belong to them, which shows their honesty! Being filial, brave, and honest, how remarkable these two women are!97 By contrast, the third story, “Rocks in a Dry Well,” warns readers of the consequences of infidelity. An unchaste widow is murdered by her lover because of a dispute over money. That the two stories deliver opposing social evaluations of their female victims shows that Chinese Female Detectives, even as it aspires to be a work of New Fiction, nevertheless promotes traditional Confucian morals and female virtues such as filial piety and virginity. The female criminals in Chinese Female Detectives are also noteworthy for their political ambition, intelligence, and cruel personalities, as seen in the story “White Jade Bracelet.” The title of the story refers to a token of membership in a secret organization. Each member has to guard the white jade bracelet carefully. Anyone who loses it is punished severely. A gangster named Yinfu loses his token when his mistress hides it to punish him for his infidelity to her. This woman later marries a wealthy merchant, Mr. Huang, and buries the bracelet in a dry well in her big house. After his former mistress and her husband have died, Yinfu tries to recover the bracelet. He arranges for Wang Yaobao, a seventeen-year-old girl, to marry Mr. Huang’s fifteen-year-old son Changfu. In exchange, Yinfu promises to sponsor Wang Yaobao as a candidate for membership in the secret organization. Wang Yaobao agrees, but her real intention is to get rid of Yinfu and use his bracelet as proof of her identity as a member of the secret gang. Ironically, she is attracted to this secret society of thieves because of its position on female rights: “Our party values female rights greatly. Once a woman becomes a party member, she will enjoy rights not given to ordinary women.”98 The conflicts between Wang Yaobao and Yinfu therefore not only arise from competition between gangsters of 97  98 

Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 29. Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 64. In China, the earliest theory of women’s rights was introduced through secondary materials in Japanese translation. In 1902, Ma Junwu started to translate Western books on women’s rights. Soon the Western theory of women’s rights became popularized. For studies on the introduction of Western theories of women’s rights into China, see Xia Xiaohong, Wan Qing wenren funü guan, 64–83. Chinese Female Detectives shows that women like Wang Yangbao have a narrow understanding of women’s rights. They equated women’s rights with more political power rather than with independent thinking. In this story, it seems ironic that Wang Yaobao has to join a gang of thieves to obtain women’s rights, which contrasts sharply with the new female detectives who pursue equality between woman and man by a drastically different path.

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different generations, they also point to the New Woman’s political ambitions to overthrow the established patriarchal order. In a similar manner, the maid Ms. Yin, one of the culprits in the story, is also portrayed as a sly and intelligent woman who knows Western science. She carefully stages a crime scene and uses hypnosis to induce the house owner to reveal the location of his treasure. When she finds out that her lover is going to abandon her for another woman, “she becomes exceedingly furious and thinks, ‘I would betray all others rather than have them betray me.’” She waits until her lover climbs into the dry well to retrieve the treasure, then cuts the rope and, “worried that he is not yet dead, she throws rocks into [the well].”99 The brutality of this female criminal is made eminently clear in her macabre crime. In the case of these two female criminals, Wang Yaobao and Ms. Yin, men are the objects of their violence. They are portrayed as scheming, cunning, patient, and merciless, qualities that are almost identical to those that the female detectives possess, although the latter put them to different use. The dichotomy between cunning women criminals and intelligent women detectives indicates an ambivalence toward the double image of the New Woman: they can be both preserves and usurpers of the social order. Moreover, in contrast with the dominant power position that women occupy, the men in this novel are often cast in passive roles. As in the story “White Jade Bracelet,” male characters are protected, watched, framed, or abandoned by women. The gangster Yinfu has two mistresses who eventually either betray him or refuse to follow his orders. Wang Yaobao even fantasizes about getting rid of him and taking the membership token from him. As for the male protagonist Changfu, although he is portrayed as an innocent and sympathetic figure, he is completely kept in the dark about the history of his family while all of his female relatives, including his mother, mother-in-law, and wife, are involved in the secret of the white jade bracelet. Even the maid turns out to be his elder sister in disguise. Living in a world ruled by women, Changfu seems to be able to act freely but in fact he is manipulated by the women around him. As its title indicates, the novel Chinese Female Detectives intends to extol the deductive talents of Chinese women. In traditional Chinese crime literature, women seldom play a decisive role in solving cases. Chinese Female Detectives might well be the earliest Chinese novel to celebrate women’s rational and analytical power. Although the first case, “Bloody Handkerchief,” is solved by a wise judge, it is his wife who gives him important tips when he is stymied. Ever so attentive to “feminine details,” the wife observes the condition 99 

Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 118.

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of the victims’ wounded arms and is able to deduce the date and location of their posthumous letter. Whereas the judge’s detective wife remains behind the scenes in this story, Ms. Lu, the female detective of “White Jade Bracelet,” solves the case all by herself. After reading a letter from her brother Changfu, she concludes that he is in danger and secretly sends bodyguards to protect him. She knows how to forge the seal of the post office. Disguising herself as an old woman and working at Changfu’s house, she finds out where the bracelet is hidden by observing Wang Yaobao’s suspicious behavior. When the six girls hear of Ms. Lu’s deeds, they cannot help but show their admiration: “This case is so complicated that even Sherlock Holmes would feel helpless if it fell into his hands. [Now] it is solved by a woman who returned from abroad for a brief visit to her hometown. Who is to say that the wisdom of Chinese cannot compete with the Westerners?”100 As the climax of the novel, the third story, “Rocks in a Dry Well,” portrays a group of female detectives as contemporary representatives of the New Woman. These six female detectives, ranging in age from seventeen to thirtysomething, all live in Changzhou. They enjoy reading translated Western fiction and are familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories. Unlike traditional women, who are usually confined to their boudoirs, these six female detectives not only drink tea and wine together in the garden, but also stay outside chatting overnight. When one of them suggests that they should go home as it is getting late, another objects and calls for a vote. Not as timid as traditional gentry women, these six women volunteer to serve as detectives. They are very excited when they hear a crime has occurred in the neighborhood and immediately ride out on their horses to investigate the case.101 They interview witnesses, examine the corpse, compare footprints, and disguise themselves to look for suspects. When captured by villains, they remain calm and find ways to escape. Their professional attitude at the crime scene impresses a male official greatly and he agrees to work with them. After they succeed in solving the case, the author writes: “Let the music play to celebrate the triumph of Chinese female detectives.”102 Among these six women, Chu Yi represents the female detective’s ideal of assertiveness, independence, logic, leadership, and intelligence. At seventeen, she is the youngest of them all and enjoys physical exercise very much: “Although she sometimes reads books, she does not enjoy them. Rather, she is fond of martial arts. There is nothing that she is not good at, including 100  Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 70. 101  The next morning, they “each ride a horse and leave without eating breakfast.” 102  Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 113.

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horse-riding and swordplay.”103 Such athletic training enables her to easily jump up into a high tree. When listening to the first two detective cases, she correctly predicts the criminal’s identity. At the crime scene, she takes charge of the investigation and assigns tasks to her female companions. In deliberate imitation of Sherlock Holmes, Chu Yi smokes while she thinks and insists that a good detective should be cautious and keep her thoughts to herself. When her friends question her judgment, she confidently swears that “I will cut off my head if we cannot find anything in the well”104 and volunteers to go down into the well by herself. However, unlike the infallible Sherlock Holmes, Chu Yi sometimes makes mistakes. She asks her friends to investigate a house and to wait for the suspect at the harbor, but neither task leads anywhere. The detective is thereby shown to be a flawed human capable of errors rather than a perfect thinking machine, which indeed is a feature of Chinese detective fiction throughout the Republican period. Our previous discussion of The Travels of Lao Can showed that the Western way of keeping time is an important embodiment of modernity. This is also observable in Chinese Female Detectives. When the six girls listen to the stories, they are aware of the passing of time and check their watches almost every seventy-five minutes. They keep a detailed log of their investigation. Even a witness whom they interview is able to describe the duration of an event in a precise manner: “Last night when I heard the knock on the door, it was four o’clock in the morning. We spent around thirty minutes checking out the noise. After that I slept again and woke up in twenty-five minutes.”105 The author Lü Simian maintains that in Western detective fiction, “everything must be anchored in facts and the story has to be logically tight at every turn,” while in traditional Chinese novels, “everything is imagined and cannot be verified.”106 Because Western detective fiction privileges realism, Lü Simian believes that this genre can remedy the weakness of Chinese novels. The detailed record of timekeeping cited above illustrates Lü’s effort to transplant the “realistic” emphasis of Western detective fiction into native Chinese writing. It also 103  104  105  106 

Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 2. Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 112. Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 72–73. Lü Simian, “Xiaoshuo conghua,” 824. In this essay, Lü Simian expresses a view opposite that of Wu Jianren about the characteristics of Western detective fiction. As discussed in the previous section, Wu Jianren views fictionality as characteristic of Western detective fiction, whereas Chinese novels are often based on historical documents. But Lü Simian admires the rational discourse in Western detective fiction and disapproves of the supernatural and unscientific elements in traditional Chinese literary narratives that cannot be explained by logic.

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underscores the scientific spirit and predilection for accuracy that his female detectives possess. The use of a medical metaphor as an allegory of the Chinese nation, noted earlier in The Travels of Lao Can, also recurs in this novel. In the third case, “Rocks in the Dry Well,” Lü Simian deliberately inserts a medical discussion that is unrelated to the investigation, but the outcome of the discussion indicates the author’s cultural preference. Three doctors are invited to examine a patient who has a stroke. At first Dr. Miu (a pun suggesting “absurd”), a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, claims that although the patient appears to have a fever, it is an illusion; in fact, the patient’s body is very han (cold) inside, and thus his fever should not be reduced at this moment. Chu Yi is the second person to examine the patient. She objects to Dr. Miu’s conclusions in the following conversation: Chu Yi said: “Westerners usually use croton oil as a laxative to deal with such a disease. Now even if one refrains from using [croton oil], it is still appropriate to use five qian of dahuang (rhubarb) to reduce his fever.” Doctor Miu laughed: “Your suggestion is like killing someone without the use of a knife. One should be cautious in using dahuang and croton on people in good health, let alone the patient. Even a young man cannot withstand such a heavy dosage, let alone an old man.” Chu Yi said: “I don’t think so. Laxatives can clean the body. Westerners have often cured a stroke in this way with a huge incidence of success.” Doctor Miu said: “How can we compare the physique of the Westerner with the Chinese?” … [Chu Yi] said: “Let’s put this aside for now. But now the patient has the symptoms of a high fever, and you use ginseng and cinnamon to increase his heat. What is your rationale?” Doctor Miu said: “This is exactly the wonderful working of wuxing (the Five Elements).” Chu Yi could not help laughing and said: “What does this disease have to do with wuxing?” Doctor Miu said: “There are too many things to explain, but let me just focus on the stroke. The kidney supports the liver. When the liver is in the position of heaven, it generates wind. When the wind moves, the symptom of stroke will appear.” … Chu Yi said: “The theory of wuxing is groundless in and of itself, and it becomes all the more unreasonable to apply it to medical science. For example, if the kidney is associated with the element of water, water should be wet and flowing. How, then can the kidney store jing

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(essence)?107 The heart represents the element of fire and fire moves upward. How can our blood still circulate within our body and not burst out from the mouth and nose?” Those who were listening laughed. Doctor Miu said: “For that, you would have to bring the Yellow Emperor and Qibo108 back from the dead and ask them. It is more than I can know.”109 Because Dr. Miu and Chu Yi cannot come to an agreement, another doctor, Gu, is invited to make the final decision. He agrees with Chu Yi’s solution, but thinks five qian of rhubarb is too much. So he changes the dosage to three qian. After the patient takes it, he regains consciousness that night. In this medical allegory, the patient refers to the crisis that China was facing. The aggressive Western treatment that Chu Yi recommends implies that radical reform is needed, while Dr. Miu, who stands for a group of conservative intellectuals, objects to such a drastic measure. The method proposed by Dr. Gu combines the approaches of Chinese and Western medicine, bespeaking a political or ideological compromise. Fujii Tikuhiro points out that in the formative stage of Chinese detective fiction, Chinese authors noticed the similarity between the professions of detective and doctor. They often created detectives who also practice medicine. Lao Can and Chu Yi are two examples of “the symbolic merging of the detective and doctor produced in the political rhetoric of medical metaphor in China at that time.”110 Although the stories of Chinese Female Detectives take place in the patriarchal society of the late Qing period, they turn the dyad of the detective and the doctor into a triangular configuration by introducing the New Woman, thereby establishing a parallel between the feminine trait of thoughtfulness and the meticulous attention to detail characteristic of detective fiction. To conclude, through the analysis of the four cases recounted above—Liu E’s The Travels of Lao Can, Lin Shu’s The Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases, the story “The Shouzhen” from Chinese Detective Cases edited by Wu Jianren, and Lü Simian’s Chinese Female Detectives—I have attempted to describe and evaluate the narrative and cultural significance of the earliest stage of modern 107  Jing is considered to be the underpinning of all aspects of life. Stored in the kidneys, it is the material basis for all kinds of functional activities and is responsible for human growth and development. 108  Qibo was a Chinese doctor employed by the Yellow Emperor as his minister. It is said that he was skilled in traditional Chinese medicine. 109  Yanghu lüxia, Zhongguo nüzhentan, 101. 110  Fujii Tikuhiro, “Zhongguo zaoqi zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de yixue yu zhentan,” 326–327.

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Chinese detective fiction, at a moment of transition between native Chinese storytelling and Western narratives. Even though their output was limited, the authors of detective fiction at this time pursued a number of literary innovations. On the one hand, indigenous crime literature now took on a new face, featuring new characters such as the Western-type heroes represented by Sherlock Holmes and Chinese women detectives, and it also offered reflections on the injustices and weaknesses of the traditional legal system. On the other hand, native writers were also at times dubious about the compatibility between Western epistemology as embodied in Western detective literature and Chinese society in the late Qing. Compared to Western detective writers’ fascination with solving the mystery behind the crime, Chinese writers of the time were more eager to find solutions to awaken the nation. As a result, the protagonists in these stories are not just detectives, they are doctors who set out to diagnose the symptoms of the diseased social body and offer prescriptions for national revival.

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PART 2 The Golden Age: Chinese Detective Fiction in the Republican Period

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After its formative stage during the late Qing period, Chinese detective fiction reached its heyday during the 1920s to the 1940s, a period marked by “copious translations of Western classics and native Chinese series detectives in genre fiction.”1 Besides Conan Doyle and Maurice Leblanc, who had enjoyed great popularity since the late Qing period, more Western writers and their works were introduced into China, including S. S. Van Dine, Edgar Wallace, Austin Freeman, Earl Derr Biggers, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Dashiell Hammett, Katharine Green, Agatha Christie, and so forth. Sherlock Holmes stories were still the most popular. Publishers competed to produce the most complete and up-to-date Sherlock Holmes collections. It is estimated that from 1916 to 1946, at least ten Sherlock Holmes collections were put out by different publishers.2 Fu’ermosi zhentan’an quanji (The complete collection of Sherlock Holmes detective stories), a twelve-volume series translated into classical Chinese by various translators and published by the Zhonghua Press in May 1916, was the most widely read version and by 1936 it had already gone through twelve printings.3 Since the 1920s, following the call of the New Literature Movement, Western detective fiction started to be translated into vernacular with new punctuation. For example, in 1927 the World Press invited Cheng Xiaoqing to coordinate and translate a thirteen-volume edition of Biaodian baihua Fu’ermosi tan’an daquanji (The complete Sherlock Holmes detective stories in vernacular with punctuation), which is the earliest complete translation of the Sherlock Holmes collection into vernacular Chinese.4 Translated Western detective stories set rich literary examples for Chinese detective fiction.5 Contemporary political, cultural, and economical turbulence 1  Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 170. 2  For statistics on the publishers who published Sherlock Holmes stories in China between 1910s and 1940s, see Ellry’s essay “Sherlock Homes in China 1896–2006, the history of translation and reception,” http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_566947dd010007gn.html (accessed August 28, 2019). 3  This Zhonghua Press version included forty short stories and four novels of the Sherlock Holmes series. They were translated into classical Chinese by Zhou Shoujuan, Liu Bannong, Chen Xiaodie, Li Changjue, Yan Duhe, Cheng Xiaoqing, and Tianxuwosheng. This series was not the most complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, for it only included the Sherlock Holmes stories that Conan Doyle published before 1915. 4  This World Press collection included fifty-four Sherlock Holmes tales, all translated into vernacular Chinese with new punctuation and illustrations (all the pictures were published separately in the thirteenth volume). In December, 1941, the World Press re-edited this series into an eight-volume version and invited Cheng Xiaoqing to translate the six missing Sherlock Holmes stories. 5  Besides the Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin series, other best-selling series includes the eleven-volume Philo Vance series by Van Dine, translated by Cheng Xiaoqing, published by

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also provided abundant materials for native writings. Westernized police forces began to be established in China’s large cities. The rise of the cosmopolitan culture and print culture in Shanghai promoted the consumption of this popular genre. And the trend of scientism during the May Fourth Movement also prompted Chinese detective writers to elevate the status of detective fiction by positioning it as “disguised textbooks for science.” All of these factors contributed to the upsurge in the production of Chinese detective fiction in this period.6 Chinese detective writers during the Republican period far outnumbered those of the late Qing period, and their works were often produced in different series concerning various topics in the everyday life of Chinese, and of Shanghai urbanites in particular. To provide a more complete analysis and evaluation of selected works of Republican-era Chinese detective fiction, instead of the case-study approach I used in my analysis of late Qing detective fiction, I examine Republican Chinese detective works through the lens of four discourses: science, justice, the modern city, and the practices of everyday life. Tracking these four discourses across a broad array of tales shows that during the Republican period, Chinese detective fiction adopted a different way of domesticating Western fiction. Instead of retaining the traditional gong’an formula favored in the late Qing mode, Republican detective fiction imitated the Western detective fiction formula faithfully. But in terms of their criminal plots, details of everyday life, and emotions, the new wave of novels and stories remained Chinese. The local features recorded in these native writings vividly document the anxieties of Chinese urbanites during the transition from traditional society to the modern.

the World Press from 1939 to 1941; the Charlie Chan series (six volumes) by Earl Derr Biggers, translated by Cheng Xiaoqing, published by Zhongyang Press of Shanghai from 1939 to 1941; the Wallace detective series (nine volumes) by Edgar Wallace, translated by Qin Shou’ou and published by Chunjiang Press from 1940 to 1942; and the Saint series (ten volumes), translated by Cheng Xiaoqing, published by the World Press from 1943 to 1946. 6  It should be noted that in terms of the scale and quality of the works, the so-called golden period of Chinese detective fiction is not at all comparable with the golden age of detective fiction in the West during the 1920s and 1930s. If we compare the production of Chinese detective fiction during the Republican period with other popular genres such as romance and martial arts, its market share, social influence, and popularity were still relatively limited. It is only when we compare the general production of this genre with that of the late Qing period and of the decades after 1949, when translated Western detective fiction was eventually terminated during the Cultural Revolution, that we can conclude that the Republican period was the golden period for Chinese detective fiction.

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“Disguised Textbooks for Science”: Detective Fiction as a Pedagogical Tool The history of detective fiction is deeply intertwined with the progress of science. As Ronald Thomas points out, on the one hand, forensic techniques such as fingerprint technology, forensic profiling, and crime photography provide literary detectives with “devices of truth” and convert the body into a readable text. On the other hand, like science fiction, detective narratives written by Poe, Dickens, and Conan Doyle sometimes anticipated procedures later introduced into scientific police practice. Early forensic scientists often found inspiration for their theories in detective cases solved by Sherlock Holmes or Auguste Dupin.7 Part 1 of this book has shown that since the late Qing period, Chinese intellectuals had been convinced that detective fiction was a useful tool to promote modern technology and scientific thinking. As Eva Hung has observed of the scientific elements in the translated Western detective fiction of this period, The stories refer frequently to such modern inventions as the railway system, the underground, and the telegraph—all features of Western life which the nineteenth century Chinese greatly admired…. The detective hero, who solves seemingly impossible problems through the use of logical deduction and disciplined action, exhibits qualities which the average Chinese of the late Qing was seen to be lacking—intellectual and physical robustness.8 During the May Fourth movement, the status of science in China was rapidly elevated until it became an ideology. “Mr. Democracy” and “Mr. Science” were powerful slogans in the attacks on traditional culture and in the call for national rejuvenation. In the 1920s, scientism began to evolve into a new philosophy of life and challenged traditional Confucian philosophy. In response, a nationwide debate over the merits of “science” versus “metaphysics” (xuanxue)

7  Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 3–5. 8  Hung, “Giving Texts a Context,” 156.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_005

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that erupted in 1923 effectively widened the scope of science to encompass aspects of both the natural world and human society.9 The Chinese elite intellectuals who debated the value of scientism, however, paid little attention to the way scientism was manifested in Chinese popular fiction during the Republican period. Take the reception of science fiction in modern China, for example. David Wang notes that “although ‘Sai xiansheng’ (Mr. Science) was a familiar figure of the time, May Fourth literati seemed determined to overlook science fiction as an integral part of Western scientistic discourse, to say nothing of its Chinese counterpart, which predated the founding of the new republic.”10 Wang’s observation can also be applied to the discussion of Chinese detective fiction. Although May Fourth writers eulogized science, very few of them actually dabbled in the genre of detective fiction, which demonstrated the value of scientific reasoning in the pursuit of justice. Instead, Chinese detective fiction was by and large produced by writers of Butterfly literature, a body of popular fiction that is often considered conservative and old-fashioned. Writers such as Cheng Xiaoqing succeeded in establishing a niche for detective fiction, and Cheng himself positioned his stories as “disguised textbooks for science” in order to elevate the status of Chinese detective fiction. Indeed, the efforts of these writers challenge our stereotypical impressions of the “backwardness” of Butterfly literature and demonstrate its modern facets. This chapter analyzes the scientific discourse in detective stories written by Butterfly authors. Wang Hui uses the term kexue huayu gongtongti (community of scientific discourse) to designate a group that “uses scientific discourses that are distinctly different from the everyday language of its era.”11 The Butterfly writers of detective fiction belonged to such a group. The first section of this chapter chooses two representative Butterfly literature writers, Cheng Xiaoqing and Tianxuwosheng, and argues that because they played a unique role in popularizing science for urbanites, they represent a community of scientific discourse that served the important function of disseminating abstract scientific knowledge to the masses. The second section discusses three kinds of knowledge in the scientific discourse of Republican detective fiction, namely, forensic science, psychoanalysis, and moral scientism. My analysis of the scientific discourse in Chinese detective fiction during the Republican period shows that Chinese detective works resembled their Western models in so far as their 9  10  11 

On this debate that pitted scientism against traditional Chinese philosophy, see Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900–1950. D. Wang, Repressed Modernities, 252. Wang Hui, “Discursive Community,” 84.

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narratives turned the individual body into an analyzable text through forensic technology. But they are distinguished from their Western counterparts by their emphasis on the role of morality in relation to science. Their ideal detectives, in addition to possessing scientific knowledge, must be men of virtue, staying humble while bravely fighting for the poor and the humiliated. 1

Chinese Detective Writers and the Community of Scientific Discourse

According to Wang Hui, what he defines as “the community of scientific discourse” originally comprised scientists and scientific associations and publications that applied “scientific concepts to important social and cultural issues,” but its influence soon expanded to the whole of society through “print culture, educational institutions, and other media.”12 Gradually, even nonscientists joined this discursive community and used “scientific language and concepts to describe social issues unrelated to science.” The core ideology of this community in China was “a totalizing scientific worldview that spread to replace the cosmology based on the law of heaven.”13 Correspondingly, this community of scientific discourse consists of two parts. At its center, besides scientists, it includes “scientific publications and intellectuals in various other fields and their publications”14 in so far as they used scientific language to analyze social and cultural issues. On its periphery, there is “a new generation of students, bureaucrats and urbanites”15 who understand social and daily life through “new education and knowledge systems.”16 Chinese detective fiction writers, who tried to “awaken readers to the advantages of careful observation and rigorous reasoning,”17 belonged to the periphery of this community of scientific discourse. But at the same time, because their targeted readers were students, women, and urbanities,18 these popular writers also assumed a special duty to popularize, or “translate,” the professional and 12  13  14  15  16  17  18 

Wang Hui, “Discursive Community,” 85. Wang Hui, “Discursive Community,” 85. Wang Hui, “Discursive Community,” 86. Wang Hui, “Discursive Community,” 86. Wang Hui, “Discursive Community,” 86. Timothy C. Wong, “Preface,” in Wong, trans., Sherlock in Shanghai, vii. My estimation of the targeted readership of Chinese detective fiction during the Republican period is based on the venues in which these stories were published. Many stories were published in magazines such as Funü zazhi (Women’s magazine) and Xuesheng (Student), or in Butterfly journals such as Banyue (The half moon), Libailiu (Saturday), and many others, which catered to these audiences.

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abstract scientific knowledge and attitude of the central members (authoritative scientists and reformists) for the peripheral members so that the latter could learn how to apply scientific thinking to their daily lives. While Wang Hui’s analysis of the community of scientific discourse mainly focuses on the elites at its center, my discussions, which take as their starting point popular writers on its periphery, may further enrich Wang’s original concept and help complete our picture of the development of scientific discourse in Republican China during the early twentieth century. Of the Butterfly writers who turned their hand to detective fiction, Cheng Xiaoqing (1893–1976) and Tianxuwosheng (1879–1940) are two of the most representative. Cheng Xiaoqing is called the “Grand Master of Chinese Detective Fiction”19 because of the high quantity and quality of his detective stories. Detective Huo Sang, the so-called Oriental Sherlock Holmes created by Cheng, is the most famous literary sleuth in the history of Chinese detective fiction. Tianxuwosheng was one of the translators of the twelve-volume collection Fu’ermosi zhentan’an quanji (A complete collection of Sherlock Holmes detective cases), published in classical Chinese by the Zhonghua Press in 1916. He also served as the editor of a special issue on detective fiction for the magazine Xiaoshuo shijie (Fiction world) and wrote several detective stories. More unusually, besides promoting science through literary activities, Tianxuwosheng was a successful entrepreneur and prolific industrial inventor. He founded a number of factories and devoted his whole life to promoting national products for industrial use. Cheng Xiaoqing’s Call to Popularize Science through Detective Fiction Cheng Xiaoqing was “considered by his contemporaries to be the best detective fiction writer of his day.”20 Born on August 2, 1893, in the Old City or Nanshi district of Shanghai, Cheng was the eldest son of a former peasant family from Anhui Province.21 Cheng studied classical Chinese at an old-style private school from the age of eight until poverty forced him to drop out in 1908. Cheng never traveled abroad, but he was exposed to Western culture at an early age. At thirteen, he learned to play the clarinet from an Italian musician and joined the first symphony orchestra in China. When he was sixteen, Cheng became 1.1

19  20  21 

This title was conferred on Cheng by Fan Boqun (1931–2017), a scholar of Chinese popular fiction. King-fai Tam, “Traditional Hero as Modern Detective,” 144. For a detailed account of Cheng Xiaoqing’s biography and a list of his works in chronological order, see Wei Shouzhong, “Cheng Xiaoqing shengping ji zhuzuo nianbiao,” 131–155. Lu Runxiang, Shenmi de zhentan shijie, 25.

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an apprentice in Hope Brothers and Company, a famous clockmaker’s shop in Shanghai, and took free English lessons at the YMCA. After getting married in 1915, Cheng moved his family to Suzhou where he taught literature at local schools. Meanwhile, he improved his English by exchanging language lessons with an American teacher of English at a local high school. After 1917, Cheng often went to the Methodist church, and he also showed films to the public in an open-air cinema at a local park. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, Cheng and his family escaped to a small county in Anhui province but went back to Shanghai the next year. From 1938 to 1945, Cheng continued to translate Western detective fiction and wrote more Huo Sang stories. He also adapted many historical plays for major film companies such as Guohua and Star. In 1946, over thirty volumes of his Huo Sang stories were collected and published.22 Cheng Xiaoqing wrote some romantic stories in his early years but found his niche in 1914, when he published his first story featuring Huo Sang. Cheng’s early stories were written in classical Chinese, but in 1922, in response to the New Culture movement, Cheng began to publish stories in vernacular Chinese. These stories were well received. They were initially serialized in newspapers and journals, and were later anthologized repeatedly. Some of these books were so popular that they were reprinted over eight times.23 Two stories were made into movies. 22 

23 

Cheng remained in Suzhou after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (1949). To support the Communist Party’s campaign “Wiping Out Hidden Counterrevolutionary Elements” in 1955, Cheng wrote several espionage novels. During the Cultural Revolution, Cheng was charged with having conspired with fellow popular writers Zhou Shoujuan (1895–1968) and Fan Yanqiao (1894–1967) to form the Three Family Gang in Suzhou. He died of pneumonia in Suzhou in 1980. The earliest Huo Sang collection of stories, Dongfang Fu’ermosi tan’an (Detective cases by the Oriental Sherlock Holmes), consisting of a selection of seven short stories, was published by the Great East Publishing House in Shanghai in 1926. In 1933, the Great East Publishing House issued another six-volume collection entitled Huo Sang tan’an waiji (New collections of Huo Sang detective stories). In the same year, the Wenhua Arts Publishing House also published a twelve-volume collection entitled Huo Sang tan’an huikan (A collection of Huo Sang detective cases). From 1942 to 1945, the World Press published a thirty-volume collection entitled Huo Sang tan’an xiuzhen congkan (A pocket collection of Huo Sang detective cases), which, with seventy-three Huo Sang stories, is the most complete collection. Publishers at that time usually limited the number of copies in each printing to save money. Perry Link has noted that in the 1930s, it was common for 3,000 copies of bestsellers to be produced at each printing. Regarding his Huo Sang detective stories, Cheng Xiaoqing stated, “Some popular stories would have eight to nine printings. Each printing contained 1,000 or 2,000 copies. The most popular ones would have 10,000 copies.” After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Huo Sang stories were not available on the Chinese book market until 1986, when the Masses

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Cheng’s reputation as the “Grand Master of Chinese Detective Fiction” can be attributed to several factors. He was very knowledgeable in Western detective fiction and wrote a few critical essays on this genre.24 His Huo Sang detective stories were a huge success, and they are still regarded as exemplary works of Chinese detective fiction even today. But most importantly, he wrote at just the right moment, when science acquired an incomparable position of respect in China. Cheng called detective fiction “disguised textbooks for science.” This didactic stance, in today’s view, might reduce the entertainment value of his stories. However, from the 1920s to the 1940s, when the worship of science became fashionable in China, the reference to science textbooks must have had a magnetic effect on his readers. As Jeffery Kinkley points out, Cheng justifies the reading of detective stories because they “develop one’s powers of reasoning, theorizing, observation, imagination, analysis, and concentration.”25 In the essay “On Detective Fiction,” for example, Cheng Xiaoqing extols the reading of detective fiction as an effective way to stimulate people’s curiosity about the world. He writes: Although curiosity is a gift of nature, our family education, traditional superstition, and social influence have from different angles suppressed its development. If we observe the various kinds of people in our society with a calm and collected eye, we will see that besides the children, the youth, and others who have been baptized by science, most people of middle age and older have little curiosity. No matter how strange and questionable things might be, in their eyes, there is nothing unusual about them…. In the long run, in the world today, which is controlled by

24 

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Publishing Press of Beijing republished a thirteen-volume Huo Sang detective collection based on a revised version originally published by the World Press. In 1931, Cheng Xiaoqing translated The Great Detective Stories (1927, edited by W. H. Wright, who used the pseudonym S. S. Van Dine) into Chinese. The detective writers in this collection included Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Wilkie Collins (1824–1889), Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), Arthur Morrison (1863–1945), Austin Freeman (1862–1943), and Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957). From the 1930s to 1940s, Cheng Xiaoqing translated the Philo Vance series by S. S. Van Dine (1888–1939), the Charlie Chan series by Earl Derr Biggers (1884–1933), and the Saint series by Leslie Charteris (1907–1993). All of his translations were well received. Besides these collections, Cheng also translated into Chinese N or M (1941), an espionage thriller by Agatha Christie (1890–1976), and The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932), the most famous work of Ellery Queen. In a short essay “Lun zhentan xiaoshuo” (On detective fiction), which was published in the first issue of the detective journal Xin zhentan (New detective) in 1946, Cheng Xiaoqing introduced the history of Western detective fiction. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 199.

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science, if our next generation has come to the point where they exhibit zero curiosity, the future of our nation will be in great danger!26 With this logic, Cheng Xiaoqing successfully argues that “the detective story developed habits of skepticism and curiosity necessary for China to progress and defeat superstition.”27 Cheng’s use of forensic science and psychoanalysis will be elaborated later in this chapter. Here I want to end with an example from Cheng’s story “Chuang” (Window), to illustrate how Cheng uses his detective stories to popularize a scientific law. The plot of “Window” is relatively simple: A woman is murdered in her study. The victim’s brother reports that in the afternoon, he witnessed the window of the study being suddenly closed by some force. After discovering that their servant happened to enter the study at that very moment, the brother suspects the servant to be the murderer. In the end, detective Huo Sang (who will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4) finds out that the real murderer is the victim’s sister, who accidentally commits the crime out of jealousy. To prove the window was closed by the wind rather than by the servant, Huo Sang conducts a scientific experiment in front of his assistant Bao Lang: He stood up and opened the window halfway. Then he walked to the door, held the knob and pulled it strongly. Once the door opened, it created a partial vacuum in the room. That window which had been open halfway shut by itself with a slam.28 In this example, Cheng Xiaoqing lets his detective Huo Sang perform a simple experiment to illustrate a physical law about the motion of air. Through lecturing Bao Lang, Huo Sang furthermore imparts to readers the idea that science is everywhere in our life. He says: “This should be a simple scientific law that everyone has experienced. But people sometimes become too inert to figure it out.”29 As a result, reading detective stories reminds readers to rethink their daily experience, which they used to regard as mundane, in terms of science.30 26  27  28  29  30 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Lun zhentan xiaoshuo,” 211. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 199. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Chuang,” 23. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Chuang,” 23. Besides writing detective fiction, Cheng Xiaoqing also translated and adapted numerous scientific essays from Western magazines such as Readers’ Digest to popularize scientific knowledge of every type; he published them in magazines such as Funü zazhi (Women’s magazine, 1915–1937), targeting a readership of women and students. The titles of his scientific essays, such as “Mei shi shenme zuode?” (What is coal made of?), “Richang

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1.2 Tianxuwosheng’s Promotion of the Empirical Virtue of shiyan A similar advocacy for understanding things through scientific experiment is also illustrated in Tianxuwosheng’s detective stories. Among Chinese detective fiction writers, Tianxuwosheng is unique. He was a traditional Butterfly literature writer, and writing detective fiction was one way he attempted to popularize science and law. Meanwhile, he was also a prolific scientific inventor and successful entrepreneur.31 Tianxuwosheng was the pen name of Chen Shousong. Born in Hangzhou in the late Qing period, Chen Shousong was originally a candidate for the imperial examination. After the imperial examination system was abolished in 1905, Chen Shousong changed his name to Chen Xu. His pseudonym Tianxuwosheng literally means “My futile existence, given to me by Heaven,” a self-deprecating humorous play on the famous line of the Chinese poet Li Bai: “Heaven bred talents in me; they must be put to use.”32 He had another well-known pen name, Chen Diexian, taken from the famous Zhuangzi story in which Zhuangzi dreams that he has become a butterfly. As a typical Butterfly literatus, Tianxuwosheng wrote many romance novels and much classical poetry. He was also an active translator of Western romance and detective novels. In addition to literature, Tianxuwosheng devoted himself to popularizing law and medical science among commoners by publishing various compilations on these subjects.33 Tianxuwosheng did not write many detective stories; among his works, the story “Yidai yuanhun” (The aggrieved ghost of the sash murder) is the most famous. The story adopts the perspective of a ghost who follows a detective to find out the identity of his murderer. It is probably the earliest Chinese detective story to describe the process of collecting footprints in great detail:

31  32  33 

shenghuo yu huaxue” (Daily life and chemistry), “Riluode shihou riguang weishenme fenwai meili?” (Why is the sunlight particularly beautiful during the sunset?), and “Tang de yuanzhi shi shenme?” (What is the essence of sugar?), testify to his efforts to encourage readers to be curious about their daily lives. The essays were in vernacular Chinese, and most of the vocabulary that Cheng used was simple and easy to understand. To introduce readers to modern chemistry, Cheng devised accurate translations of professional terms, including chemical names like “coal-tar,” “benzene,” “toluene,” and “aniline.” For research on Tianxuwosheng, see Lean, “Proofreading Science,” 185–207. Li Bai, “Bring On the Ale” (Jiang jin jiu), trans. Stephen Owen, in Chang and Owen, eds., Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, 1:308. These compilations include Andu jinghua (Essence of legal cases, 2 vols., 1917), Faling jieshi (Interpretations of law, 4 vols.) and Xiyao zhinan (A guide to Western medicine).

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He [the detective] immediately took out a box of gypsum powder from his leather bag and blended it with water in a basin until it thickened like paste. He found the clearest footprint and poured the gypsum slurry to fill the hole. He found another footprint and poured in the slurry as he did before. Then he brought some straw and put it on top of the gypsum. He took out some matches and set fire to the straw…. After a while, he squatted down and pushed the ashes of the straw aside. The gypsum slurry had dried into plaster. He loosened the soil on the four sides with a small knife and dug the footprint plaster out with his hands. The five toe-prints were clearly visible. There was a whorl on the big toe and loops on the other four. On the heel, there was a thick crack in the pattern of an orchid.34 Eugenia Lean has pointed out that Tianxuwosheng values the empirical virtue of shiyan, or hands-on testing. Through shiyan, even foreign knowledge can be internalized. In the story “The Aggrieved Ghost of the Sash Murder,” the detective goes about collecting footprints as if he were making a scientific test. After obtaining the footprint plaster, he uses a microscope to observe the whorls. Furthermore, he cuts a bamboo stick to the same length as the plaster cast of the footprint, and goes to different fields nearby to check whether there are any footprints of similar length. Here, for the first time, a modern detective appears in Chinese detective fiction. Equipped with boxes of gypsum powder, matches to light a fire, and a microscope, he knows how to produce a plaster cast and observes the footprint patterns carefully. Based on the length of the footprints, the detective concludes that the criminal is short and fat. The human body has been transformed into a cache of data that can be measured and read. Zhou Shoujuan lauds this story for this very reason, saying that, “it takes all minor details into consideration and can be used as a textbook for detectives.”35 Tianxuwosheng is better known as a diligent industrial entrepreneur and a columnist who popularized household knowledge than as a writer of detective fiction. From 1916 to 1918, when serving as editor of Ziyou tan (Free talk), a literary supplement of the Shanghai newspaper Shenbao, Tianxuwosheng started writing a column called “Jiating changshi” (Household knowledge). He also contributed hundreds of essays on popular science to the journal Jilian huikan 34  35 

Tianxuwosheng, “Yidai yuanhun,” in Yu Runqi, ed., Qingmo minchu xiaoshuo shuxi: Zhentan juan, 215–216. Zhou Shoujuan, “Ziluolan’an zabi,” 46.

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(Journal of the associations of factories of machine-made local products in Shanghai), such as “The Papermaking Industry in Rural Areas,” “Studies of Soda-making,” “Methods of Grape Wine-making,” “Plans for Man-made Milk,” and “Methods of Making Fine Salts.” As an entrepreneur, Tianxuwosheng founded the factory Jiating gongyeshe (Household Industries) in 1918. It produced the Wudipai (Peerless) brand of tooth powder, which was invented by Tianwuwosheng himself in order to compete with a popular Japanese brand. In the following nine years, Tianxuwosheng founded factories that produced watches, sodium bicarbonate, glass, paper, and mosquito-repelling incense.36 The scientific knowledge in Tianxuwosheng’s essays, therefore, came from his hands-on experience. For example, in an essay on a liquid fire-extinguishing agent that he invented, Tianxuwosheng explained: Similar imported products put sulfuric acid into glass bottles. To use a device of this kind, one must break the bottle. The broken glass might clog up the mouth of the sprayer, causing it to break and hurting people in the process…. Carbon dioxide can extinguish fire and ammonia can cool down the heat around the burning items. Once they are sprayed on the fire, the fire will be extinguished immediately, and there will be no dark and smelly smoke like that produced by sulfuric acid. This product [i.e., the one that Tianxuwosheng was selling] features such a sodium chloride solution. The solution, once saturated with heat, can cover the burning item so that it will not burn or decompose. If we soak a piece of cloth with such a saturated salt solution and burn it, it won’t burn completely into ashes. Or, in the same way, if we spray salt onto burning coals, they will stop burning. These are solid pieces of evidence.37 Tianxuwosheng wrote this short essay to introduce the fire-extinguishing agent he had invented. The essay targets professional users and adopts chemical terms and theories. By comparing his own invention with imported products, Tianxuwosheng expresses his confidence in the superiority of the Chinese product. For Tianxuwosheng, scientific discourse is more than scientific facts and knowledge, for it also includes an experimental attitude and patriotic spirit. As Lean points out, in the case of Tianxuwosheng, science is

36  37 

Zhang Jingren, “Tianxuwosheng Chen Xuyuan xiansheng zhi chenggong shi,” 7–8. Tianxuwosheng, “Xiao changshi,” 50–51.

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something whose definition and articulation are inextricably linked with and, indeed, mutually constitutive of the making of social identities (e.g., the industrialist, the modern connoisseur of scientific knowledge, the authoritative compiler of industrial know-how), the establishment of new epistemological regimes and practices (e.g., empiricism, experimentalism), and the formation of a new society and nation that is patriotic and productive.38 To conclude, most authors of Republican detective fiction were Butterfly writers active in Shanghai and Suzhou who shared similar life experiences. After the imperial civil-service examination system was abolished in 1905, these intellectuals, who had received a traditional Chinese education, came to Shanghai at an early age. At first they published romance novels or classical Chinese poems. Acquainted with each other through Butterfly writers’ clubs such as Qingshe (the Green Society) and Xingshe (the Star Society), these writers often invited each other to publish stories in the Butterfly literary magazines they edited. With their knowledge of English, they first translated Western fiction and eventually developed their own stories. Besides translation and writing, many of them often worked for film studios as scriptwriters or taught Chinese literature at schools. The early experiences of these writers did not seem to have any connection with science; however, the examples of Cheng Xiaoqing and Tianxuwosheng both demonstrate the active roles that these men played in popularizing science in everyday life, including spreading scientific knowledge and the experimental spirit through detective stories, translating scientific essays to arouse readers’ curiosity about their daily lives, and even establishing industrial companies and inventing Chinese products to replace imports. Through these specific activities, the abstract scientific discourse was able to seep into the realm of daily life and reach a wider audience. Republican detective fiction writers, as a result, fully deserve to be considered part of the community of scientific discourse. 2

Three Aspects of Scientific Discourse in Republican Detective Fiction

As members of the community of scientific discourse, Republican detective fiction writers distinguished themselves in at least three kinds of scientific 38 

Lean, “Proofreading Science,” 188.

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discourse. The first was forensic science. Because the genre of detective fiction is closely related to criminology, forensic science is the dominant scientific discourse in Republican detective stories. This section refers to two branches of forensic science, fingerprint analysis and criminal typing, to discuss how Chinese writers adapted these approaches in their stories to convert the human body into a legible text. Meanwhile, it should be noted that in Republican detective stories, reliance on forensic science to solve crimes was also controversial. Because of the chaotic and lawless nature of social reality, some readers criticized the fictional descriptions of scientific investigative methods and the efficiency of the Chinese police as purely utopian. The second type of discourse is psychoanalysis. Freudian psychoanalysis was introduced into China in the 1920s, and “by the mid-1930s, Freudian theories were familiar to many Chinese intellectuals and, in reductive forms, to a surprisingly broad sector of the non-intellectual population.”39 Though “psychoanalysis never became a professional field in China,”40 it had a huge impact on modern Chinese literature. Past studies have focused mainly on Chinese modernist writers. My readings of Republican detective stories will show how popular writers accepted and applied such knowledge in their analysis of the victim and criminal. The third discourse is moral scientism. Because of the close relationship between Butterfly literature writers and traditional culture, their scientific discourse is also blended with traditional philosophy. Their attitude toward the tradition is complicated. On the one hand, like the May Fourth intellectuals, they criticized old customs as superstition. On the other hand, they compared the concept of gezhi (inquiring into and extending knowledge) in traditional Chinese Confucianism with Western science, promoted moral scientism, and advocated individual moral cultivation along the lines of traditional Confucianism. 2.1 Forensic Science In the beginning of Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective story “Yingwu sheng” (Sound of a parrot), when Huo Sang arrives at the crime scene, his client tells him that he is convinced that the victim was strangled due to the circular marks on his neck. The client has read in Xiyuan lu (Records for washing away of wrong cases), a traditional manual of criminology compiled by commissioner of justice Song Ci (1186–1249) in 1247, that if the victim committed suicide by hanging, the base of the throat will bear the marks of a crossover knot. If the 39  40 

Zhang Jingyuan, Psychoanalysis in China, 34. Zhang Jingyuan, Psychoanalysis in China, 25.

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victim was strangled by someone else, the marks of the rope on the neck will be circular. Although Bao Lang admits that the client has some knowledge of detection, he belittles Records for Washing Away of Wrong Cases as “oldfashioned, though long respected by Chinese as the authority on examining a corpse.”41 Eventually Huo Sang proves the victim died from suicide. The circular mark was caused by the special way in which he wrapped the rope around his neck. Huo Sang, a representative of modern (Western) forensic science, thereby indirectly criticizes Chinese readers for accepting traditional Chinese forensic knowledge without reflecting on its validity in different scenarios. In traditional China, Records for Washing Away of Wrong Cases was the most authoritative book on forensic practice.42 Huo Sang’s rejection of its content not only challenges the authority of the work, but also represents a new kind of reading facilitated by modern forensic techniques. According to Ronald Thomas, modern forensic science distinguishes itself through at least two features: first, its “devices of truth,”43 or technological apparatus, such as the lie detector, the mug shot, the magnifying glass, photography and cameras, and fingerprint identification; and second, an implicit political ideology, because “the forensic techniques that make up this new literacy, however scientifically represented, often prove to have a political genealogy that becomes inflected into the act of analysis the detective practices and promulgates.”44 The following discussion first looks at how Cheng Xiaoqing adopts the forensic science of fingerprints and criminal types in his stories. It then describes the different rhetorical strategies that Chinese detective writers use in describing the investigation of the crime scene. Finally, it points out the idealized characteristics of the descriptions of forensic techniques in Chinese detective fiction. 2.1.1 Fingerprints and Unique Individual Identity Fingerprint identification is a frequent device in Republican detective fiction. Its adoption in policing was a crucial step in the process of directly transforming the human body into a readable text. As Thomas notes, “the criminal could 41  42 

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Cheng Xiaoqing, “Yingwu sheng,” 10:115. Records for Washing Away of Wrong Cases is also considered the world’s earliest systematic treatise on forensic science. For years, this book served as a handbook for coroners and judges. For example, it teaches how to examine the corpse before and after burial, how to distinguish between real and counterfeit wounds, the proper way to examine a female corpse, the characteristics of the human skeleton, blood vessels, and bones, and how to tell whether the bones were injured before or after death. “Devices of Truth” is the title of a chapter in Ronald Thomas’s Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 3.

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now be captured in police files in the form of a concise ‘primary text’ literally ‘hand-written’ by (and on) the suspect body itself rather than in the form of a ‘secondary text’ or image of that body produced by some mechanical device, police expert, or other ‘witness.’”45 In China, fingerprints in ink had been used since the Tang dynasty to stamp agreements or confessions in lieu of a seal or signature. Chinese chiromancy was many years ahead of its European counterpart. Distinctive patterns of spirals, loops, and whorls on human fingertips are well illustrated. However, analysis of dermatoglyphic patterns had never been used in criminology. In the essay “The Fingerprint and Its Application,” serialized in the Republican magazine Da zhentan (Great detective), Lu Shengping states that it was Sir William Herschel who first collected fingerprints in colonial India in 1858 and applied them to forensic science, but “at that time, the sheets of fingerprints that could be used for verification numbered no more than a few thousands. Only the index and middle finger of the right hand were used for identification.”46 In 1903, Edward Henry became commissioner of the London police. He introduced fingerprint identification, which he had learned in India, and soon it was used all over the world.47 As for the history of fingerprinting in modern China, Lu says that it was Xia Quanyin who learned this technique in Shanghai and popularized it when he taught at the police schools in Beijing, adding that, “The development has been so rapid that both national and provincial capitals [now] have fingerprint verification.” However, the results were not satisfactory because of poor organization and different fingerprint standards.48 Cheng Xiaoqing’s “Shuangren bixue” (Blood on the knife) is a representative example of how a Chinese detective uses modern fingerprinting techniques 45  46  47 

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Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 203. Lu Shengping, “Zhiwen de renshi yu yongtu,” 48–49. Ronald Thomas points out that the London police began recording the fingerprints of suspected criminals in 1894. However, at that time, fingerprinting “served primarily to complement the established system for identifying criminals called ‘anthropometry’ or ‘signalectics,’ Alphonse Bertillon’s elaborate procedure for measuring and recording a subject’s anatomical characteristics.” In 1903, Bertillon’s system was abandoned and “Scotland Yard instituted the first official fingerprint file in Europe.” Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 201. Lu Shengping, “Zhiwen de renshi yu yongtu,” 49. Part 2 of Lu’s essay elaborates on the composition of fingerprints and palm prints and lists principles for solving crimes on the basis of the permanent characteristics of fingerprinting. The third part points out other wider applications of fingerprinting technology in addition to its criminological use, such as passports and the identification of children. The last part looks forward to future developments such as fingerprints on identification cards, traveler’s checks, and insurance certificates.

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to facilitate his investigation and identify the criminal. In the story, a wealthy young woman is murdered in her own house. When detective Huo Sang arrives at the crime scene, he first examines the black door with a magnifying glass and finds three fingerprints on it, but one of them is obscured by an overlapping handprint. After confirming that no one touched the door after the crime was committed, Huo Sang starts to collect the fingerprints with his professional tools. Huo Sang opened again his small leather bag, took out a bottle of a powder mixture that contained mercury, and carefully poured the powder on the fingerprints on the door. He then took out a small brush made of camel hair and swept the door gently. Soon a clear white handprint and fingerprints appeared. Huo Sang took pictures of the fingerprints with his camera. He then used a rope to measure the distance from the fingerprints to the ground.49 Based on these clues, Huo Sang concludes that the criminal was not tall. After interviewing a few witnesses, Huo Sang returns to his lab and spends two hours developing and enlarging the photographic images. Studying the photos, he deduces that those three fingerprints are from the left hand. The thin lines on the print of the small finger on the bottom are clearly visible. I know that the palm print and fingerprints belong to two different persons, because the lines of the handprint are much thicker than the fingerprints. Moreover, the palm print and fingerprints overlap, which indicates these two persons have different heights.50 After the investigation, Huo Sang believes that the fingerprints were left by a woman, while the thicker handprint belongs to a male driver. Since the female suspect is in the hospital, Huo Sang obtains her fingerprints from a cup she has used and confirms his hypothesis. Through this detective story, Cheng Xiaoqing popularizes the method of fingerprint collection and identification. Moreover, as this example demonstrates, mercury powder can make an invisible fingerprint visible. A camera can record, enlarge, and duplicate a minor piece of evidence. With the power

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Cheng Xiaoqing, “Shuangren bixue,” 5:187. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Shuangren bixue,” 5:223.

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of forensic knowledge and equipment, the unseen individual body automatically reveals its height, sex, and, in the case of the driver, social class. 2.1.2 The Criminal Type In “Blood on the Knife,” Huo Sang suspects that the handprint with thicker lines is from the male driver Ma Ada. When Ma is arrested, Huo Sang feels that his hypothesis of Ma’s evil nature is confirmed by his appearance. Bao Lang describes the driver as follows: “Ma Ada had a pair of frightening black eyes with two thick eyebrows in the shape of crooked knives. On his dark face were knotty muscles and a big mouth with thick lips, which symbolized his ferociousness and cruelty. He was short, but his physique was solid and powerful.”51 In traditional Chinese gong’an literature, villains often have stereotypical faces so that readers can recognize their criminal identity from the very beginning. But in the story “Blood on the Knife,” Cheng Xiaoqing’s description of Ma Ada’s facial features does not derive from the Chinese tradition. Instead, it is influenced by nineteenth-century Western criminology. Cheng Xiaoqing learned forensic science on his own. In 1924, Cheng took courses in criminology and criminal psychology from an American correspondence school. In his critical essays on detective fiction, Cheng mentions various theories about the appearance of criminals formulated by Hans Gross (1847–1915),52 Alexandre Lacassagne (1843–1924),53 and Katsumizu Junkō.54 In the short story “Wufu dang” (The five blessings gang) Cheng Xiaoqing quotes the criminal theory of Cesare Lombroso (1836–1909),55 the pioneering Italian criminal anthropologist:

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Cheng Xiaoqing, “Shuangren bixue,” 5:277. Hans Gross was an Austrian criminal jurist and an examining magistrate. The publication of his Handbook for Examining Magistrates, Police Officials, Military Policemen, etc. in 1893 is believed to mark the birth of the field of criminology. Alexandre Lacassagne, a French physician and criminologist, was a principal founder of the fields of medical jurisprudence and criminal anthropology, a specialist in the field of toxicology, and a pioneer in bloodstain pattern analysis. He considered an individual’s biological predisposition, as well as his or her social environment, to be important factors in criminal behavior. Katsumizu Junkō’s Hanzai shakaigaku (Tokyo: Ganshōdō Shoten, 1922) was translated into Chinese as Fanzui shehuixue (Criminal sociology; Shanghai: Beixin shuju, 1929). Fan Boqun, “Lun Cheng Xiaoqing de Huo Sang tan’an,” 253. Cesare Lombroso’s Crime: Its Causes and Remedies (1899) was translated into Chinese as Langbo luosuo shi fanzuixue (Liu Linsheng, trans.; Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1922).

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At that moment, a dark-complexioned man suddenly put his head through the broken car window. I saw that the man had a dark face. The corners of his forehead slanted at a sharp angle toward the top. His two ears were very big but of different height. The top of his eye sockets protruded like bows, and his face was covered with stubble. Even his two round eyes were hideous and scary. This momentary impression reminded me of what C. Lombroso, the Italian authority on criminology, has summarized regarding the typical physiognomy of the criminal. This person was definitely Hairy Lion [the criminal’s nickname], who had escaped from prison.56 Ronald Thomas has pointed out that Lombroso’s criminal theory represents the typical approach of nineteenth-century criminology, that is, to explain criminal behavior through scientific analysis. Moreover, different methods adopted by criminologists of different nationalities were fraught with different political implications: “the French school (following figures like Alexandre Lacassagne, Gabriel Tarde, and Henri Joly) emphasized the sociological conditions rather than the anatomical determinants that led to crime,”57 while the Italian school, Ronald argues, studied “the born criminal” from the perspective of biological positivism. The British and the Americans “tended to take a middle way between biological and sociological explanations for deviant behavior.”58 As a result, Lombroso’s criminal theory implies a racist ideology, as seen in his observations about “the correlation between the typically criminal body and the physiology of Jews and gypsies in Southern Italy.”59

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Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wufu dang,” 9:246–247. “Wufu dang” is adapted from Cheng’s early detective story “Mao shizi” (Hairy lion), which was published in the magazine Zhentan shijie, nos. 16–21 (1923). The original passage in “Hairy Lion” read as follows: “At this time, I suddenly saw a dark-complexioned man put his head through the broken window. That man had a dark face with stubble all over it. His two round eyes were hideous and scary. He is definitely the Hairy Lion.” Cheng Xiaoqing, “Mao shizi,” 14. But in Cheng’s revised version of the story, “The Five Blessings Gang,” he adds details to the facial description of the criminal Hairy Lion. Cheng also quotes an Italian academic authority on criminology in support. These two different versions show that as Cheng Xiaoqing learned more Western criminology, the vocabulary and expressions in his Huo Sang detective series also became more scientific and theoretical. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 24. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 24. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 24.

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Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective stories combine Western criminal theories from different schools. Since no foreigners or minorities appear in this story, the political implications of racism can be excluded. In his stories, there are two types of criminals. One is the gangster, such as Ma Ada and Hairy Lion. Cheng Xiaoqing borrows the biological theory of Lombroso and describes their faces as those of born criminals: scary eyes, a dark complexion, thick lips, and protruding eye sockets. The other type of criminal reflects the sociological theory of the French school. These criminals are usually deviant intellectuals who have received a Western education abroad. Cheng criticizes the contemporary education system and argues that the diabolical behavior of these intellectuals is caused by their pursuit of materialism. In the story “Di’er zhang zhaopian” (The other photograph), Cheng Xiaoqing quotes the French criminologist Lacassagne when analyzing a devious intellectual: According to Gu Yingfen [i.e., the criminal], the man had been a law student, hence a recipient of higher education and a member of the intellectual elite. Lacassagne, the French criminologist, has said, “Those who possess knowledge, yet lack morality, are truly frightening when they commit a crime.” The Belgian Quetelet has also said that training and education are two different matters. Simply being literate or trained is an insufficient gauge of whether a person is more or less likely to become a criminal: It is only a measure of a person’s ability to become a higher- or lower-level wrongdoer. In other words, someone who has been through higher education is in no way less prone to break the law than someone who has not. Moreover, when an intellectual commits a crime, his modus operandi is far more formidable. Mr. Hu Zhantang has therefore made the painful admission that “It is fortunate for us that our educational system is not universal!” This remark was of course aimed at education that focuses on providing knowledge and nothing else. We realized from experience that this insight was worth taking seriously.60 2.1.3 The Rhetoric of Forensic Practice In Republican detective fiction, the rhetoric of forensic practice varies from writer to writer. Authors such as Cheng Xiaoqing impress readers with their use of professional terms, accurate measurement data, and an authoritative tone. Let us take the autopsy in Cheng Xiaoqing’s short story “Xue bishou”

60 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Other Photograph,” in Timothy C. Wong, trans., Sherlock in Shanghai, 69–70.

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(A bloody dagger) as an example. At the crime scene, the medical examiner shows Huo Sang the cause of the victim’s death: That medical expert says in a low voice: “This is the only deadly wound but the weapon is not there. Let me explain that wound; please take note of it…. The wound is under the second rib on the left side of the chest, about 1 cun and 4 fen [38.1 mm] from the heart. The wound is 1 cun and 2 fen [31.75 mm] long; about 3.5 fen [11.11 mm] wide from the left, about 1.5 fen [4.76 mm] from the right side to the heart; and about 2 cun [50.8 mm] deep. The deadly weapon seems to be a dagger with a singleedge blade. The cutting edge is sharp and the body of the dagger is thick. Therefore, when it went into the body of the victim, the tip of the dagger had already injured the heart. That is what killed the victim. Now the cutting edge is sharp, but the dagger seems not to have been used for a while. Look, on the wound there are some traces of rust. This is the condition of the wound. Have you noted it all down clearly?”61 In this passage above, the manner in which the medical examiner describes the wound is precise, professional, and objective. Based on the data he has collected, Huo Sang concludes that the person has committed suicide. He explains: Now let’s talk about that wound first. It is under the second rib on the left side of his chest. It curves from top to bottom, and is 1 cun and 2 fen [31.75 mm] in length, which is the width of the weapon used. The width on the left is 3.5 fen [11.11 mm], on the right 1.5 fen [4.76 mm], which is the difference between the back and the cutting edge of the blade. Judging from this wound, we could see that when he [i.e., the victim] held the knife to kill himself, he must have used his right hand, with the blade of the knife facing his palm, which is the way that one usually holds a knife. From a biological perspective, there is no difference between our left and right hands. But the majority of people are right-handed. Therefore their every action must favor the right, particularly when holding a knife. Moreover, when we hold a knife, the blade usually faces outside, which naturally is facing the palm. This, too, is incontrovertible. Therefore, we know that if someone commits suicide holding a knife in his right hand, the wound must be on the left side, and the blade must face right. This can be proven by a test…. If someone grabs the knife and commits a crime, 61 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Xue bishou,” 6:78.

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there will be a struggle. For the wound to be like this, the perpetrator must be someone holding the knife with his left hand, and Zihua [i.e., the victim] would have to have been asleep when the murder took place so that [the criminal’s] hand could have enough time to cut in the opposite direction. But according to the situation at hand, this scenario definitely could not have come to pass…. Moreover, when the victim died, he was wearing a suit made of white flannel, but his collar and tie had been loosened. It would seem that he untied them so as to make it easier for him to kill himself. If he had been murdered, how could the criminal have acted so freely? This is also an obvious piece of evidence. To conclude, the cause of Zihua’s death is suicide; there should now be no doubt about it.62 At first glance, Huo Sang’s deduction appears to be objective, as it is supported with solid medical data and logical analysis, but a closer look reveals holes in his arguments. For example, couldn’t the criminal indeed be left-handed? Or couldn’t the victim have opened his own collar while he had a relaxed conversation with the criminal? It seems that readers were convinced by Huo Sang’s irrefutable rhetorical tone rather than the validity of his reasoning. The detective has become an absolute scientific authority, and because readers have already been impressed with the scientific discourse he represents they accept his arguments without question. Wei Yu’s detective stories adopt the opposite strategy of demystifying science through simple and popular expressions. Wei’s Xia Hua tan’an (Detective cases of Xia Hua) describes an autopsy as follows: Zheng Dan [the detective] came down from the stairs again. He had changed into a doctor’s white gown. In his hand, he held many small delicate tools, which he put on the ground of the patio before starting to work. He first took many photos of the crime scene from different angles. After that, he put down the camera and the responsible staff member took the film away to be developed. He squatted down next to the corpse, wiped away the bloodstain on the head of the victim and measured the wound with a tape measure. He measured the body, flipped open the eyelids [to look at the eyes], checked the mouth, and took off every piece of the victim’s clothing and checked each of them carefully. He noted down everything in a small notebook…. When Zheng Dan was going over the corpse—it is said that going over the corpse in this way is called autopsy—Xia Hua [another detective] also started his investigation. 62 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Xue bishou,” 6:132–133.

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He squatted down outside the gate, and with the middle finger and index finger of his two hands supporting his weight, he was almost bent over like a big monster toad with two shining eyes looking at the ground. At this time, the evening rain had just stopped but the ground was still very wet. As he crawled forward in this way, he observed with his full concentration.63 This passage vividly describes the process of autopsy and investigation. Autopsy is simply presented as “going over the body in this way,” and the detective’s movement is compared with that of a crawling toad. In contrast with Cheng Xiaoqing’s use of professional words drawn from forensic science, Wei Yu’s descriptions of the investigation process are more lively and easier to understand. 2.1.4 The Utopian Aspect of Forensic Practice At the end of Tianxuwosheng’s story “The Aggrieved Ghost of the Sash Murder,” the detective identifies a burglar as the murderer based on the footprint he has found earlier. Tianxuwosheng comments, But then, I suspect that that burglar might have been paid by Jin Ruiyun [another suspect] [to serve as the scapegoat]. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be too much of a coincidence [that the burglar admitted that he mistook the victim as another wealthy man that he had sworn to revenge]? But even the victim himself does not understand this case, let alone myself, a mere writer. I think both of them [the victim and the burglar] probably were killed by mistake, so I named my story “The Aggrieved Ghosts of the Sash Murder.”64 Tianxuwosheng’s suspicions about the truth of the murder would seem to be an admission that there is a limit to the effectiveness of forensic techniques in the dark reality of Chinese society. Republican detective stories often take place in Shanghai and its surrounding areas. Life in Shanghai was chaotic and lawless. Because of the city’s rapid development, the influx of immigrants, wars, and the presence of foreign concessions, Shanghai was described by Western journalists as the “Oriental Crime Center.” Its crime rate had soared since the early 1920s. Theft, robbery, and kidnapping were the most common crimes. Opium use, gambling, and 63  64 

Wei Yu, “Hansha sheying,” 520–521. Tianxuwosheng, “Yidai yuanhun,” 220.

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prostitution were rampant in the foreign concessions. Extraterritoriality in these foreign concessions exacerbated the city’s lawlessness because “criminals could flee from arrest by the Chinese authorities for crimes committed in the native parts of the city.”65 Crime organizations were numerous and they were ruled by a massive secret society called Qingbang (the green gang). As Wakeman points out, “Very little that was illegal—ranging from the organization of beggar gangs to the procuring of prostitutes and the management of opium parlors—went on without the Green Gang’s permission.”66 Not only did the International Settlement, the French Concession, and the Chinese police tolerate the Green Gang’s illegal behavior, they even recruited gang members into their police forces. For example, Huang Jinrong (1868– 1953), a big boss in the gang, served as the head of the French Concession’s Chinese detective squad. The Chiang Kai-shek government relied on underground gangs to assassinate political dissidents and to protect the official narcotics monopoly. Wakeman describes the collusion of the Chinese government with the racketeers as a “bureaucratized criminality” that “criminalized the government.”67 The collaboration between police and racketeers led to the notoriety of Chinese detectives who “extort[ed] money from the innocent, rap[ed] young girls, and falsely accus[ed] people of belonging to gangs.”68 Before 1927, a detective’s salary came mainly from the bonuses he won for solving cases successfully. As a result, “even if a detective were not a gang member, then he at least had to consort with underworld informants in order to solve crimes.”69 Chinese police at that time did not provide the public with much information about criminal cases and they often blocked crime news from being reported. As a result, in real life it was impossible to solve cases through collaboration between a private detective and police officers.70

65  66  67  68  69  70 

Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 9. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 25. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 254. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 24. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 30. Regarding the efficacy of the Chinese police, the famous Chinese popular writer Qin Shou’ou (1908–1993) quoted the opinion of an American journalist who worked for an English newspaper, the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury: “In Europe or America, if news reporters want to look into a crime, it is no more difficult than inquiring about other kinds of news, unless the information is confidential, such as when the case is too complicated or the criminal has not yet been identified. The police officers always answer their questions without holding anything from them. But in Shanghai, if one occasionally comes to the police squad to inquire about a certain case, it is more likely that one won’t receive any satisfactory answers. Some [officers] may deal with the reporter with a

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Moreover, because of a lack of awareness of the law, a disregard for human rights, the poor development of science, and the inadequacies of police equipment, both criminal activity and the response of the police were very simple, even primitive. For example, in the essay “How I Write Detective Fiction,” the author Yang Liulang argues that in an environment that does not value science, investigation does not require professional “chemical knowledge.” “Driving a car over miles of flat grasslands,” Yang writes, one has a glimpse of the red chamber [i.e., one observes some clues] and finds a few drops of blood and a fingerprint. This already looks like a detective [story]. But in Beijing (or perhaps even China), there is nothing like this [in our detective fiction]. The detective seldom takes out his gun during an investigation. I am convinced that in a place where the thieves have yet to master science, there is no need for a detective with knowledge in chemistry.71 Xiao Qian made a similar argument, claiming that in a place where there are no human rights, rational detection is unnecessary.72 Because science and law seemed to have no purpose in lawless Shanghai, the depiction of rational investigations conducted with the aid of forensic science in Republican Chinese detective fiction was, to a large extent, a utopian idea. There were readers who believed that the popularity of detective fiction in Republican China was a kind of psychological compensation for the absence of law and rationality. As the editor of Shanghai wenhua (Shanghai culture) pointed out: “Because this kind of story does not exist in China now, readers feel curious about it. Moreover, because this kind of story is about quotidian life, and is about something that should exist now but does not, readers are not indifferent to it. Instead, they crave it.”73 As a result, the approach of popularizing forensic science through detective fiction was perceived differently by different audiences. On the one hand, readers such as Xiao Qian complained that representations of an idealized investigation method actually made Chinese detective fiction less realistic and convincing. Given the poor state of the legal system in Republican China, Xiao Qian argued,

71  72  73 

suspicious attitude, as if he were an accomplice of the criminals.” Qin Shou’ou, “Guanyu zhentan xiaoshuo,” 182. Yang Liulang, “Wo zenyang xie zhentan xiaoshuo,” 187. Xiao Qian’s full quotation is included in the introduction to this book. Xiao Qian, “Zhentan xiaoshuo zai Hua buzouyun lun,” 217.

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It [Chinese detective fiction] abandons direct trial methods [namely, eliciting confessions through torture] and instead hires some Sherlock Holmes to enter the dark alley of Simalu [Fuzhou Road]. And when the criminal refuses to admit his crimes after he is caught, [the detective] uses airplanes to fly in the witnesses. No wonder readers consider these stories artificial and not realistic!74 Yang Liulang also suggested that at this stage in the development of Chinese detective fiction, plots should be based on real crimes instead of fictional ones, so that they can provide realistic guidance for police detectives.75 On the other hand, supporters of the representation of forensic science in Chinese detective fiction felt that these stories were not idealized enough, but conceded that the limited scientific knowledge of Chinese readers would not allow it. As Quan Zenggu argued: Many marvelous plots in Western detective fiction are based on the secrets of science. For example, poisonous gas or germs can be used to kill; air can be injected into veins with the same effect; carbon dioxide (CO2) can be condensed into a very solid icicle that can be used to pierce a body like a sharp knife, and that melts instantly in the body so that the weapon won’t be found; after someone is dead, the contracted muscles of his hand can still cause the gun in his hand to fire—how can someone with no scientific knowledge appreciate all this?76 Wei Yu suggested that detective fiction writers should have a wealth of scientific knowledge so that they can design original investigation methods that employ advanced technology such as spectrometers and infrared light. “For example,” Wei Yu writes, if you write about a criminal from Pudong committing crimes in the residential areas in the Western district of Shanghai. It is clear that he is under suspicion, but it takes a long time to finally prove [his guilt]. Readers can challenge you right away: “Why doesn’t the detective analyze the dirt in the crime scene with a spectrometer? This would prove that the dirt comes from Pudong.” If you don’t understand the function

74  75  76 

Xiao Qian, “Zhentan xiaoshuo zai Hua buzouyun lun,” 215–216. Yang Liulang, “Wo zenyang xie zhentan xiaoshuo,” 188. Quan Zenggu, “Lun zhentan xiaoshuo,” 167–168.

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of a spectrometer, you will be dumbfounded, not knowing what to make of it.77 To sum up, the use of forensic science in Republican detective fiction, though idealized, still had its positive values. Most importantly, it led to the creation of modern Chinese detective figures who possessed professional expertise. In reality, private detectives were not allowed to enter the crime scene. But in Chinese stories, intelligent detectives equipped with modern scientific knowledge and tools turn corpses into clear texts that can be analyzed. And by doing so, they become spokesmen of Western forensic science and undertake the responsibility of casting out superstition and enlightening citizens. 2.2 Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis was the second kind of scientific discourse featured in Republican detective fiction. During the 1940s, some readers in Republican China started to consider psychoanalysis to be a more effective way of solving crimes than the science of deduction advocated in the Sherlock Holmes stories. These readers observed that contemporary detectives seldom disguise themselves with a false beard or wig as Sherlock Holmes did. Rather, modern detectives “act out the character that they are pretending to be based on the theory of psychology. He will imitate his or her habits, language and actions in a scientific way.”78 Cheng Xiaoqing was an expert in applying psychoanalysis in his detective stories. His interest in psychoanalysis may have derived from his translation of the Philo Vance detective novels by S. S. Van Dine; Cheng expresses his appreciation of the use of popular behavioral psychology theories in these stories.79 In Cheng’s own stories, the fictional detective Huo Sang publishes a book called Introduction to Criminal Psychology. Sometimes, even the antagonists, such as a character called Xu Zongyu in “Huo shi” (A living corpse), are also adept at using psychological theory to defend themselves. Influenced by Freudian psychology, Republican detective stories often contain plots involving hypnosis, hallucinations, or symptoms of hysteria. If we take Cheng Xiaoqing as an example, his introduction of the technique of hypnosis can be traced to “Hairy Lion,” published in the magazine Detective World in 1923. In this story, when the police catch a gangster, detective Huo Sang offers advice: “Mr. Bao Lang has recently studied a kind of hypnosis technique. 77  78  79 

Wei Yu, “Lun zhentan xiaoshuo,” 228. Huai Bin, “Ni yao xie zhentan xiaoshuo ma?,” 232–233. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Lun zhentan xiaoshuo,” 207.

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In a previous experiment it was very effective.”80 Persuaded by this, the police agree to let Bao Lang conduct an experiment on the criminal. In “The Five Blessings Gang,” the revised version of “Hairy Lion” published in 1930, the brief reference to hypnotism in the original tale was further elaborated: “You should know that hypnosis can make a liar tell the truth, and admit his hidden secrets. Now, Western legal institutions have used it as a tool of interrogation. This is a kind of new science. Mr. Bao tested it in the kidnapping case of Xia Zhixin and it was very effective.”81 In this revised passage, the endorsement of hypnosis by Western legal institutions serves as powerful authoritative proof of its effectiveness. In another story, “Cuimian shu” (Hypnosis technique), Miss Sun becomes ill because she is disappointed over the sad ending of a story. Before Huo Sang is brought in, a traditional Chinese doctor examines Miss Sun and concludes that she has caught shihun bing (soul-loss disease). The doctor can do nothing to help Miss Sun, but Huo Sang cures the patient in five minutes. Bao Lang at first suspects that Huo Sang knows “the Chenzhou spell.” But Huo Sang denies this: “The Chenzhou spell is quackery. My medical treatment is based on science.” To treat the patient, Huo Sang moves her to a well-ventilated room and hypnotizes her before using the “talking cure.” He explains, It is also known as the “cathartic treatment.” It was invented by an Austrian doctor named Breuer…. She [i.e., the patient] looked at the name card, then stared at me without speaking or moving. I also gazed at her with my full attention. Meanwhile, I took out my nickel-plated cigarette case and put it about 1 chi [30 cm] from her eyes and had her focus on it. Two minutes later, her eyelids began to droop and she gradually fell asleep.82 Huo Sang continues to allude to psychological theory when Bao Lang is amazed by what he regards as an incredible medical technique: You should know that hysteria is most likely caused by a traumatic experience that has been forgotten or suppressed. In the state of hypnosis, if the doctor can awaken [the patient] to his or her experience so as to relieve or eliminate the patient’s pain, the symptom will disappear. This has become an effective treatment of hysteria.83 80  81  82  83 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Mao shizi,” 3. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wufu dang,” 9:217. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuimian shu,” 5:168–169. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuimian shu,” 5:179.

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In this passage, Cheng Xiaoqing offers a popularized explanation of psychoanalytic technique peppered with a series of professional terms and phrases, such as “an experience that has been forgotten or suppressed” and “cathartic treatment.” The rationality and authoritative voice of Western science is established through the sharp contrast between the new method and the inefficacies of traditional Chinese medicine and spells. The story “Huanshujia de anshi” (Hints of an illusionist) uses psychology to explain the cause of hallucinations. In this story, after a magic show, the master of the house finds that he has lost his diamond ring. One of the guests is accused of being the magician’s accomplice, and it is believed that the two of them have stolen the diamond by magic. This guest admits his guilt. However, Huo Sang denies the power of the magicians, arguing that “Magicians only make use of people’s psychological and sensory weakness, as well as the dexterity of their practiced hands.”84 Based on the glazed look on the guest’s face and sound of his voice, Huo Sang concludes that he is mentally ill and suffers from hallucinations. After Huo Sang looks into the guest’s past, the detective finds out that he has been fired by a bank and is rumored to have appropriated public funds. Influenced by these miserable experiences and by alcohol, he comes to believe that he is a thief: “His nervous system has strayed from its normal course so that he has all kinds of unimaginable hallucinations.”85 For Huo Sang, the Western psychological term “hallucination” has replaced the traditional Chinese term zhongxie (possessed) as a symbol of objectivity, authority, and truth. Last, the story “Wuzhong hua” (Flower in the fog) invokes hysteria to explain the murderer’s motive. The victim has been murdered in her sleep, her head smashed in with a rock. After interviewing different witnesses, Huo Sang concludes that the criminal is the victim’s half-sister. This woman is small and appears weak, and she usually behaves timidly and overcautiously. But Huo Sang refers to Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and posits somnambulism as an explanation for her criminal behavior. To confirm his hypothesis, Huo Sang reconstructs the crime scene and catches her preparing for an attack. Huo Sang explains to Bao Lang afterward: Bao Lang, you may know that there is a mental disease in abnormal psychology which is translated as xieduliya [hysteria]. There are many kinds of hysteria and somnambulism is a common one. The book Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis has explained it in great detail. If you are 84  85 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Huanshujia de anshi,” 10:319. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Huanshujia de anshi,” 10:327.

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not familiar with its symptoms, you can turn to another book, Abnormal Psychology, by the Chinese scholar Zhu Guangqian; it’s on the table. On pages 58 and 59, I have underlined [the relevant passages] in red pencil.86 Huo Sang arrives at this conclusion based on psychological and medical clues. During Huo Sang’s interviews with the half-sister, she often says, “I feel like I am in a dream.” She frequently takes sedatives and she does not dare to fight back when bullied. Consequently, Huo Sang comments, “This growing resentment was restrained by her environment and repressed in her unconsciousness…. [W]hen her sleepwalking strikes, that force of restraint—the psychological term in English is ‘censorship’—loses its control. Her painful experience calls for revenge. Therefore she did what she wouldn’t do when she is awake.”87 Here it should be noted that Cheng Xiaoqing’s embrace of Freud’s theory is not limited to the latter’s medical interpretation of hysteria, but also includes Freud’s view of the connection between women and hysteria. In Freud’s research on hysteria, most of his patients were female. In “Flower in the Fog,” all three female characters suffer from mental illness to some degree: besides the criminal mentioned earlier, the stepmother of the sister has been lying in bed due to mental illness, and the victim herself was arrogant and also abused animals. The male characters in this story, however, are either doctors or detectives, whose professions are related to curing disease and preventing danger. Such differences in characterization reveal that Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang detective stories are based on traditional patriarchal ideology, where men act as the saviors of women. Because they live in a repressed environment, traditional women are more inclined to develop hysteria. 2.3 Moral Scientism Republican detective fiction writers advocated the worship of science. As Cheng Xiaoqing writes in the preface of his Huo Sang detective series: “The twentieth century is a world of science. All the studies in physical mechanics are controlled by science. Even those subjects that have been regarded as the realm of the mind, such as philosophy, psychology, and parapsychology, cannot escape [the fate of being included in] the scientific field.”88 But Butterfly literature writers differentiated themselves from the May Fourth reformists in their attitude toward tradition. Influenced by traditional Confucianism, they

86  87  88 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wuzhong hua,” 37. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wuzhong hua,” 37. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Zhuzhe zi xu,” 202.

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adopted a position of moral scientism and attempted to integrate Western scientific concepts into traditional Confucian philosophy.89 The concept of “moral scientism” is used by David Wang in his study of the science fiction of the late Qing period. Wang points out that many late Qing intellectuals advocated a complementary relationship between Western science and traditional Chinese morality.90 As I explained in the introduction to this book, traditional Chinese Confucians considered the cultivation of one’s moral character as a prerequisite for acquiring knowledge of natural science. The English word “science” was first translated into Chinese during the Ming dynasty. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), an Italian Jesuit, along with his Chinese friend Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), rendered “science” as gewu qiongli zhi xue, which literally means, “a study made through carefully investigating things and finding out their fundamental principles.” From then on, the Chinese term gezhi, which is borrowed from the Confucian classic Liji (Record of rites), was often used by traditional Chinese intellectuals to translate the English concept of “science.” However, the ideas associated with the classical Confucian term gezhi differ from the Western connotations of “science.” As Chi Limin observes, gezhi in traditional Chinese culture “pertains to Dao, the moral way that a gentleman-sage is expected to follow, while the general understanding of Western science during the Self-Strengthening Movement was qi, the ‘clever techniques’ of machine-building.”91 Therefore, Chi concludes, the translation of science as gezhi by Chinese literati of the Ming dynasty is an attempt to assimilate Western concept of science into a traditional Chinese way of thinking and to add moral values on it.92 Kexue, the modern Chinese translation for science, was borrowed from the Japanese word kagaku93 and came into wide use after well-known Chinese reformers and translators such as Kang Youwei and Yan Fu adopted it. Gezhi, on the other hand, was gradually abandoned after the 1900s.94 Nevertheless, the term gezhi with its connotations of Confucian moral values was favored 89 

90  91  92  93  94 

The scientism promoted by May Fourth literati treated Confucianism differently. During the New Culture movement of 1919, traditional values were questioned and attacked. May Fourth intellectuals encouraged society to replace Confucian teachings with scientific principles, arguing that the scope of science was “primarily the domain of ethics, morals and faith.” Wang Hui, “Fate of ‘Mr. Science’ in China,” 38. D. Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 275. Chi, “Modernization through Translation,” 69. Chi, “Modernization through Translation,” 69. Chi points out that it was Inoue Kowashi (1843–1895) who translated the English word “science” using the Japanese word kagagu in 1871. See Chi, “Modernization through Translation,” 70. Chi, “Modernization through Translation,” 70.

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by Chinese detective writers and critics during the Republican period. They argued for a similarity between modern science and the concept of gezhi in traditional thought, claiming that the scientific spirit also exists in traditional philosophy. In the preface to Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective stories, Zhang Yihan (1895–1950) associated traditional gezhi learning with the scientific spirit found in those tales: In the Song Dynasty, there was also a Mr. Cheng [i.e., Cheng Yi (1033– 1107)], who shares the same family name of Mr. Cheng Xiaoqing. He said “When things are investigated, knowledge is extended. When knowledge is extended, the will becomes sincere … there will be peace throughout the land.”95 It seemed that the scientific mind could replace metaphysical thought and peace would rule the world. Who would have known that mysterious thought could be too deeply rooted [in our world]? Not only did we fail to get rid of it completely, but even the method of gewuzhizhi (the extension of knowledge through the investigation of things) also became mystified. Therefore the minds of Chinese are still full of superstitious views. Chinese culture is still a backward culture.96 One finds a similar endorsement of the traditional research method of gezhi in Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang detective series. In the first Huo Sang story, “Jiangnanyan” (Swallow of the South), Bao Lang provides a detailed description of the structure of Huo Sang’s knowledge: Huo Sang is well educated and fully conversant with both new and traditional learning…. The subjects he has studied include mathematics, physics, and biology, as well as philosophy, law, sociology, and economics, and he is particularly insightful in the study of experimental psychology and abnormal psychology. He also put effort into mastering other disciplines, such as the fine arts, pharmacology, and traditional martial arts. One could call him “a repository of all knowledge.” As far as traditional learning is concerned, he has studied a variety of schools with an open mind, but tends to pay more attention to yili (nature, or what is ethical) than to xungu (the explication of words in ancient books). Moreover, with the help of his scientific mind, he is often able to separate the wheat from the chaff of traditional learning. Huo Sang feels that in 95  96 

This quote is actually not from Cheng Yi but from “Daxue” (The great learning), a chapter from Liji. Zhang Yihan, “Preface,” 142.

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the end, the Confucian method of gewuzhizhi is similar to the modern scientific method. He has great admiration for it, and he never hesitates to put this method into practice.97 Wang Hui has criticized the concept of gezhi because “It emphasizes more the moral and political issues, while its study of the natural sciences never developed into an independent field.”98 But in the passage quoted above, we can see that Huo Sang’s knowledge structure stresses classification and systems. He studies both the natural and social sciences so as to make up for the weaknesses of categorization in traditional gezhixue (gezhi studies). Compared with that of his archetype Sherlock Holmes, Huo Sang’s knowledge structure is more comprehensive, especially his knowledge of psychology and traditional learning. As Cheng Xiaoqing writes: “Huo Sang tends to pay more attention to yili than xungu.” Both yili and xungu are methodologies of traditional learning. Cheng Yi (1033–1107), the influential Northern Song thinker, was among the earliest to suggest that the traditional learning method consisted of three branches: literary composition (Wenzhang zhi xue), textual criticism (Xungu zhi xue), and Confucianism (Ruzhe zhi xue).99 Of these three, Cheng Yi considered Confucianism to be the most important. The essentials of Cheng Yi’s tripartite division of learning still persisted in the latter half of the seventeenth century, although some were renamed. Textual scholarship was called kaozheng or kaoju, while Confucianism had long been thought of as yili, or moral philosophy. Evidentiary and philological scholarship became dominant in the Qianlong period (1736–1796) of the Qing Dynasty. Yu Yingshi has explained this change of methodological emphasis: [T]he Confucian movement of “return to the sources,” which had begun in the 16th century and extended well into the Ch’ing [Qing] dynasty, resulted largely from the fact that metaphysical controversialists, being at their wit’s end, appealed to the supreme court of the earliest sages and grounded their arguments ultimately on the sacred texts of the Classics. Once textual evidence was introduced into the metaphysical lawsuit, it was practically impossible not to call philology to the stand as an expert witness. Thus philological explication of classical texts gradually replaced

97  98  99 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiangnanyan,” 2:1–2. Wang Hui, Wudi panghuang, 434. Chan Wing-tsit, trans. Reflections on Things at Hand, 63.

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moral metaphysical speculation as the chief method for the attainment of Confucian Truth (Tao).100 While kaozheng and xungu were linked in the Qing period with erudition, solid learning, and empirical research, their position gradually declined after 1800. Especially during the New Culture movement of 1919, kaozheng and xungu were targeted by attacks on traditional learning. Scientific analysis, on the other hand, eventually replaced the old methods of textual analysis as the proper way of learning. As a result, Huo Sang abandons traditional Chinese textual analysis, but he distinguishes himself from the May Fourth intellectuals in his insistence on the value of moral cultivation drawn from traditional Confucianism. Such moral scientism insisted by Chinese detective writers can be traced back to the late Qing period. As Charlotte Furth has observed, the first Chinese exposed to Western science attempted to associate it with the intellectual predispositions inherent in traditional Chinese philosophy. Specifically, [w]hen thinking of nature, they imagined an organic, harmoniously functioning cosmos, where the social and moral order was integrally linked with natural processes…. Because they assumed the fundamental unity of natural and moral truth, Chinese were quick to conclude that Western scientific theories were applicable to the whole world and had ethical relevance.101 Tan Sitong (1865–1898), an important reformist thinker of the late Qing period, used the Western concept of yitai (ether) to replace the traditional Chinese concept of qi to explain the substance of the cosmos and of human relationships. As David Wright points out, “For Tan, yitai is the vector of ethical values as well as the primary physical substance, and it is this refusal to separate the physical and the spiritual realms which makes his system so interesting and significant in the history of the interaction of Chinese and foreign ideas.”102 According to Tan Sitong, although yitai had different names in the East and the West, they all shared the same ethical values of love and forgiveness:

100  Yu Yingshi, “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch’ing Confucian Intellectualism,” 125–126. 101  Furth, Ting Wen-chiang, 10–12. 102  Wright, “Tan Sitong and the Ether Reconsidered,” 552–553.

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As a practical concept, Confucius variously referred to it as loving kindness (ren), as the origin (yuan), or the nature (xing). Mo Zi referred to it as universal love ( jian’an). The Buddha referred to it as the Buddha-Nature (xinghai), and as compassion and mercy (cibei). Jesus referred to it as [the Holy] Spirit (linghun) and as loving others as oneself and regarding one’s enemies as if they were friends. The scientists refer to it as the power of [chemical] affinity (aili) and gravitational attraction (xili).103 David Wang has demonstrated that Tan’s idea of the ethical value of yitai was influenced by the pseudo-scientific approach of his teacher Kang Youwei to the virtue of ren in Datongshu (The treatise of grand unity). Wu Jianren, who is considered one of the earliest Butterfly literature writers, also accepted such moral scientism. In his novel New Story of the Stone, Dongfang Qiang (literally “Eastern Strength”) is a venerable ruler in the realm of the Civilized World who intends to establish the realm of the “Real Civilized World” in contrast to the “Fake Civilized World.” The difference between these two worlds lies in the fact that the former integrates ren and uses scientific techniques to enlighten its enemies while the latter simply treats science as a tool of killing and suppression. As Wang argues, “For Wu Jianren, the achievement of ren can be substantiated only when scientific progress is implemented in everyday life; material modernization is the external radiance of the innate power of ren, or humanity. In other worlds, ren means both the platform of political administration and the springboard to scientific advancement; both a supreme sign of ethical immanence and a law of physical mutability.”104 In the introduction to this book, I showed that the belief in moral scientism led Chinese critics to neglect the eccentricities in the personality of Sherlock Holmes and instead to respect him as a man of virtue. In Republican detective fiction, the embrace of moral scientism also gave rise to a paradoxical attitude toward Western modernity. For example, Cheng Xiaoqing admires Western criminology, psychology, and forensic science, and he often quotes a relevant theory as the authoritative basis for Huo Sang’s deductions. But at the same time, Cheng reminds readers of the importance of traditional morality and attacks the blind worship of Western materialism. In his Huo Sang detective stories, Western-style dancing halls are always degenerate places, and students who have received a Western education are often cunning criminals who make use of Western science to devise evil plans.

103  Tan Sitong, Tan Sitong quanji, 293; Chan Sin-wai, trans., Exposition of Benevolence, 67. 104  D. Wang, Repressed Modernities, 279.

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The characterization of Huo Sang also displays such a paradox. Although Cheng Xiaoqing tries to make him an ideal detective who combines the strengths of Chinese and Western civilizations, Huo Sang’s rejection of certain aspects of the Western lifestyle is revealed through a few minor details: Huo Sang drinks milk but “usually does not like Western food.”105 He has an electric fan at home, but prefers to use a traditional Chinese fan. When Bao Lang mocks him, asking whether he wants to save on the electricity bill, Huo Sang responds in seriousness that indulging in the comfort of modern material civilization will weaken one’s will: Is the reason that I use a hand-held fan instead of an electric fan to save a little on the electricity? A hand-held fan needs the movement of the wrist to produce a breeze. Moreover, the strength of the breeze can also be controlled by the wrist. You should know that the human body and mind should receive the right amount of exercise regularly. One feels tired if overworked, but if one is too comfortable, one will also become lazy in body and mind.106 Leo Lee has said that Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang detective series failed to appeal to him because Cheng “does not understand and is not sufficiently sensitive to urban culture, especially its modern side.”107 My analysis shows that Cheng’s rejection of material culture is probably due not to a lack of understanding, but to his firm grounding in moral scientism. The moralistic and didactic standpoint of Republican detective writers restrained them from depicting sensational violence and imposed limits on the kinds of entertainment offered by the stories. Thus, when Cheng Xiaoqing introduces supposedly supernatural elements into his tales, he does not exploit them to create an atmosphere of terror. Instead, he describes them in bland terms in order to assure readers that they are merely artificial tricks. For example, in the story “Baiyi guai” (A ghost in white), a large mansion is said to be haunted by a ghost, but Huo Sang’s investigation proves that the ghost is a fraud. In Cheng’s description, the ghost seems “to be covered with a long robe. On its pale and scary face, there are two eyes like black holes, a high-bridged nose, and a short beard under it.” The ghost runs away after Bao Lang fires a gun, leaving behind a thin white bed quilt and a mask made of cotton paper: “On the mask were drawn two round eyes, 105  Cheng Xiaoqing, “Zhuxiangquan,” 1:29. 106  Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuimian shu,” 5:159. 107  Lee Ou-fan, “Fu’ermosi zai Zhongguo,” 14.

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two eyebrows, and lips painted red, over which was drawn a small mustache.”108 To avoid over-sensationalizing the ruse, the man-made ghost costume and makeup are made to look clumsy. As a result, the story contains no gothic suspense; as Wu Chenghui observes, “appearing always at night, this ghost in white soon loses its mysteriousness. Even without the help of Huo Sang’s investigation, the readers can figure out that it must be a trick played by a certain family member.”109 To conclude, the aforementioned three aspects in the scientific discourse of Republic detective fiction—forensic science, psychoanalysis, and moral scientism—add more nuances to our understanding of Wang Hui’s concept of “the community of scientific discourse.” Chinese detective fiction writers closely followed the trend of scientism and through their detective stories disseminated knowledge of the science of daily life, forensic science, and psychology at the popular level. They treated rationality as a crucial tool for cultivating a sense of curiosity and combating superstition. The enthusiasm of these Butterfly literature writers for science and ratiocination may change the received opinion that they were conservative and backward. Meanwhile, their traditional aesthetics and Confucianism distinguish this group of writers from the May Fourth reformers. Chinese detective fiction writers inherited the tradition of moral scientism from the late Qing intellectuals. Not only did they interpret Sherlock Holmes as a man of virtue, but they also held a skeptical and even negative attitude toward Western material culture. For them, detective fiction was not only “science textbooks in disguise,” but also “moral textbooks in disguise.” Unfortunately, such an emphasis on the didactic function of literature also limited, to some extent, the entertainment value and imaginative reach of Chinese detective fiction in this period, and thus cannot but be regarded as a shortcoming.

108  Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:310–311. 109  Wu Chenghui, “Cheng Xiaoqing he Huo Sang tan’an,” 19–20.

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Chapter 4

Justice and the Chivalric Detective On December 18, 1904, the Shanghai newspaper Shibao (Eastern times, 1904– 1939) published a short comical detective story, “Xieluoke laiyou Shanghai diyi’an” (Sherlock Holmes’s first case in Shanghai), by Lengxue (Chen Jinghan, 1878–1965). From 1905 to 1907, Eastern Times serialized three similar stories written by Lengxue or by Bao Tianxiao (1876–1973).1 These four stories open in the typical Conan Doyle manner, as Sherlock Holmes dazzles his visitors with his remarkably accurate deductions based on physical clues, but they are in the final analysis parodies of Holmes’s creator. The failures of Holmes are used to satirize the foibles, failings, and idiosyncrasies of everyday life in Shanghai. Holmes still makes correct judgments; however, his analyses fail to surprise his Chinese clients. So jaded are they by the highly corrupt society of Shanghai that they do not consider the detective’s discoveries remarkable in any way.2 Sherlock Holmes, as a representative Western detective, runs into a wall everywhere he turns in China. These four Chinese comical detective stories symbolically indicate the dilemma posed by the localization of Western detective fiction in Republican China: the genre, especially in its classic form, originated in democratic societies “on the side of ‘law and order.’”3 But when this Western genre was relocated to early twentieth-century Republican China, 1  They are “Xieluoke chudao Shanghai di’er’an” (Sherlock Holmes’s second case at Shanghai), published on February 13, 1905, by Lengxue; “Mafei’an—Xieluoke lai Hua di’san’an” (Morphine—Sherlock Holmes’s third case in China), published on December 30, 1906, by Bao Tianxiao; and “Cangqiang’an—Xieluoke lai Hua disi’an” (Hidden guns—Sherlock Holmes’s fourth case in China), published on January 25, 1907, by Bao Tianxiao. 2  For example, in “Sherlock Holmes’s First Case in Shanghai,” after observing the face of his Chinese client, Sherlock Holmes deduces that he must have smoked opium, played mahjong till the early hours, and spent the night with a dancing girl. However, the Chinese client confronts Sherlock Holmes by asking him a few questions: “I know you are a man, right? … I know you are not a Chinese, right? … You have a body, two arms and two legs, right?” When Sherlock Holmes replies that these questions are too ordinary, the Chinese client laughs and says, “What you have told me is also the ordinary life of a Shanghai urbanite. Why do you take the trouble to analyze it?” In “The Case of the Hidden Guns—Sherlock Holmes’s Fourth Case in China,” Holmes hears that someone has an illegal collection of guns. The collector admits this without any hesitation when Holmes confronts him. But it turns out that his collection is not one of firearms but of opium pipes, which in Chinese are called yanqiang (smoke gun). Moreover, this collector of opium pipes tells Holmes indifferently, “Today most Chinese of the upper class are like me. I am not the only one [who owns such a collection].” 3  Symons, Bloody Murder, 20.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_006

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the lawless and autocratic reality made it very difficult for detectives to achieve justice in a legal way. As a result, investigations frequently result in the delivery of poetic justice. Even private detectives, who often cooperate with the police, admire the values of the traditional youxia (knight-errant) and sometimes act outside the law, to say nothing of characters like the burglar-detectives who take a cynical attitude toward law and order and achieve justice on their own.4 This chapter examines the discourse of justice in Chinese detective fiction of the early Republican period. I have chosen two investigators, Huo Sang, the so-called Oriental Sherlock Holmes, and Lu Ping, the so-called Oriental Arsène Lupin, created by Cheng Xiaoqing and Sun Liaohong respectively, as representatives of two types of agents of justice in Republican-era Chinese detective fiction: the private detective and the burglar-detective. In Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective story “Swallow of the South,” the erudite, scientific, and athletic Huo Sang is also chivalrous, influenced by the teaching of the Mohist school: “In the meantime, he admires Mozi’s ideal of jian’ai (universal love). [He has] long [been] immersed in the heroic and chivalrous ideas of Mohist philosophy, which nurtures in him a deep hatred for evil and wrongdoers, and a character that allows him to stand up against injustice, help the poor, and fight against the powerful.”5 The first section of this chapter discusses the cases in which detective Huo Sang upholds a view of justice that transcends the law. Jiang Weifeng describes such justice as “the implicit traditional ethics and morality.”6 When the criminal cannot be captured because of loopholes in the law, or when the criminal turns out to be a good person who commits crimes for the sake of social justice, Cheng Xiaoqing brings poetic justice into play in his writings: the evil criminal who escapes the punishment of the law often meets his just deserts in some other way, such as a sudden, fatal illness, while the sympathetic criminal successfully escapes from prison. The second section of this chapter focuses on the image of the burglardetective represented by Lu Ping. Lu Ping has greater freedom to act than Huo Sang because of his ambiguous identity as the leader of a secret gang in 4  Discussing poetic justice, Martha C. Nussbaum argues that in literature, writers serve as judges. Moreover, the idea of poetic justice is not at odds with the practice of proper legal impartiality. Besides factual evidence, poetic justice also relies on the judge’s sympathy and capacity for humanity when passing sentences. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice, 79–121. In his studies of justice in the chivalric and court-case novels of the late Qing period, David Wang defines poetic justice as “an imaginary deployment in a narrative sequence that vindicates authorial wish fulfillment as it coalesces with a consensual notion of ‘justice.’” D. Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, 121. 5  Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiangnanyan,” 2:2. 6  Jiang Weifeng, Jinxiandai zhentan xiaoshuo jia Cheng Xiaoqing yanjiu, 106–107.

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Shanghai. Unlike Huo Sang, who still obeys the law when carrying out his investigations, Lu Ping uses dirty tactics such as disguise, kidnapping, and deceit to solve his cases. Centering on the burglar as a detective, the second section discusses two sources of influence on the characterization of Lu Ping. First, as the detective’s name suggests, Sun Liaohong owes his inspiration to the French popular novelist Maurice Leblanc, who created the gentleman-burglar Arsène Lupin. Both Lu Ping and Lupin “have innumerable pseudonyms and make up more as need calls.” They “can call up favors from the whole hidden-in-plainsight underground of accomplices in every walk of Parisian and Shanghai life” and “wiggle out of the most impossible dilemma in an amusing way.”7 The second influence comes from the image of the chivalric burglar in traditional Chinese literature, beginning with the great burglar leader Dao Zhi in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi and continuing through the numerous chivalric burglar tales in huaben collections and novels of the Ming and Qing periods. In line with the ironic maxim in Zhuangzi that “petty thieves are hanged while usurpers are made princes,” Lu Ping despises bigwigs and blames these seemingly “decent” persons for actually causing more damage to society. At the same time, Lu Ping also deviates from the altruistic image of the traditional chivalric burglar. Sun Liaohong denies that any noble motivations underlie Lu Ping’s investigative behavior: “He does not rob the rich to give to the poor! He only wants to relieve his own poverty.”8 As a result, Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping stories stand apart from most Chinese detective fiction because they refuse to be burdened with moralistic considerations. 1

Private Detective Huo Sang and Mozi’s Ideas of jian’ai and youxia

As noted in Chapter 3, Cheng Xiaoqing created his literary detective Huo Sang in 1914 for a story contest held by a local newspaper. Cheng went on to write hundreds of detective stories featuring Huo Sang, who even today remains the most well-known Chinese detective among Chinese readers. As a private detective, Huo Sang lives at the fictional address of 77 Aiwen Road, together with his assistant Bao Lang and two servants. As an embodiement of values derived both from his Western model Sherlock Holmes and from Mozi’s ideas of jian’an and youxia in traditional Chinese philosophy, Huo Sang represents Cheng Xiaoqing’s ideal of the modern Chinese detective.

7  Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 210–211. 8  Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 405.

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1.1 The Archetype: Sherlock Holmes Huo Sang resembles his literary archetype Sherlock Holmes in many ways. Kinkley suggests that H. S., the romanized initials of Huo Sang, could be an inversion of S. H., the initials of Sherlock Holmes.9 In stature, at five feet nine inches and one hundred fifty pounds Huo Sang is somewhat shorter and stockier than his model; Holmes is over six feet tall and excessively lean. But Huo Sang has the long, square face, sharp eyes, and long nose of the London detective.10 Like Holmes, Huo Sang plays the violin very well and has mastered an extensive range of knowledge. He is paired with an assistant, Bao Lang, in imitation of the partnership of Holmes and Watson.11 In my discussion of Chinese popular writers’ belief in moral scientism in Chapter 3, I compared the scope of Huo Sang’s knowledge with that of Sherlock Holmes and concluded that the former is more comprehensive, particularly due to the Chinese detective’s studies in psychology and traditional Confucian philosophy. Treating humbleness as an essential virtue of the Chinese detective, Cheng Xiaoqing sometimes allowed Huo Sang to make faulty judgments. In the story “Wuzui zhi xiongshou” (The innocent killer), Huo Sang even asks Bao Lang to publish a few cases that he has failed to solve so that his readers can be aware that he is not almighty. After hearing his words, Bao Lang respects Huo Sang even more. He comments:

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Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 187. According to Lu Runxiang, Cheng Xiaoqing’s first Huo Sang story was probably “Dengguang renying” (A human shadow in the lamplight), which he sent to the newspaper Kuaihuolin (Fun grove) as an entry in an essay competition in the fall of 1914. Cheng originally named his character Huo Sen, but due to a typographical error by the publisher, the name became Huo Sang in print. Lu Runxiang, Shenmi de zhentan shijie, 4. The story “A Human Shadow in the Lamplight” is no longer extant. The earliest of the surviving Huo Sang stories is “Swallow of the South,” which Cheng wrote in classical Chinese in 1919. In that story, the narrator Bao Lang states: “When we were classmates, I was involved in an incident involving a certain Doctor Liu. Thanks to Huo Sang, who extended a helping hand to me, the matter was cleared up and my innocence was vindicated.” Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiangnanyan,” 2:2. Doyle describes the appearance of Holmes thus: “his eyes were sharp and piercing … and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination.” Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 18. Bao Lang is a writer who was Huo Sang’s classmate for six years at the fictitious Dagong University and Zhonghua University. They live together while Bao Lang is a bachelor. Sometimes they disguise themselves as a couple to solve cases. Like Dr. Watson, the primary function of Bao Lang is to narrate Huo Sang’s cases. Furthermore, as a witness to the detective’s adventures, it is also Bao Lang’s role to convince readers of the intellectual acumen of Huo Sang.

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Among Chinese detectives, whether private or professional, Huo Sang’s wits and talents are second to none. Yet in terms of his virtues of being modest and open-minded, too, few people can compare with him. It reminds me of Sherlock Holmes in the West. Although his talent is marvelous, he thinks highly of himself and is conceited. If we compare Sherlock Holmes with Huo Sang, we can see the obviously different cultural values of Chinese and Westerners.12 The contrast between Huo Sang’s modesty and Sherlock Holmes’s pride is mirrored in their respective clienteles: while both detectives are on the side of law and order, each serves the interests of a different socioeconomic stratum. As an ideal Victorian hero, Holmes upholds the values of the middle and upper classes and preserves the order of the British Empire.13 Huo Sang, however, belittles the wealthy and stands up for the poor, in part due to his Mohist belief in the virtue of jian’an and the heroic figure of the youxia. 1.2 Mozi’s Ideas of jian’ai and youxia The school of Mohism originates from the teaching of Mo Di, or Mozi (479– 438 BCE).14 The concept of jian’ai, “the cornerstone of Mohism,”15 is often translated as “universal love.” It promotes a kind of undifferentiated love of people for each other, which is different from the discriminating or partial love that Confucius and Mencius advocate. Mohism maintains that if one can learn to love others as one loves oneself, one will receive love from others as well, which is beneficial to both sides. As Ian Johnston points out, this principle “applies at all levels of society from families through communities to states, and even to collections of states.”16 King-fai Tam understands it as “advocat[ing] a primitive form of equality that threatens to eliminate differentiation of human society by social roles.”17 Upholding the value of jian’ai, Huo Sang is deeply concerned with the deterioration of social morality, unequal 12  13  14 

15  16  17 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wuzui zhi xiongshou,” 13:134. For a discussion of British imperialist ideologies in Sherlock Holmes stories, see Thompson, Fiction, Crime, and Empire. The details of Mozi’s life are little known. According to Shi ji, Mozi was an officer of the Song who lived at the same time or later than Confucius (Shi ji 74, 2350). For a detailed introduction to Mozi and the core doctrines of his book, see Ian Johnston, “Introduction,” Mozi: A Complete Translation, xviii–lxvi. Johnston, “Introduction,” Mozi: A Complete Translation, xliii. Johnston, “Introduction,” Mozi: A Complete Translation, xliv. King-fai Tam, “Traditional Hero as Modern Detective,” 143.

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distribution of resources, poverty, and injustice. He sees these as caused by a myriad of social evils, including the negative influence of Western materialism and consumerism. The figure of the youxia or knight-errant, famous for “his strict adherence to a code of honor and his readiness to help the oppressed,”18 is a manifestation of Mozi’s doctrine of jian’ai in his devotion to altruism and his practice of poetic justice. He represents an alternative to the force of law, and the recurrent popularity of the youxia in traditional Chinese literature is due, as King-fai Tam states, to the fact that he “fulfills in every way the popular wish for a hero at a time when legal channels cannot be counted on to carry out justice.”19 As a result, the youxia and the enforcer of the law are essentially in conflict. Such a contradiction is also manifested in the character of Huo Sang. As a detective, Huo Sang is obliged to preserve the social order, but as a youxia, he is aware of the rotten nature of the legal system in Republican China.20 In many cases, when the law is helpless to redress a crime, Huo Sang steps in, motivated by a sense of moral justice. As Bao Lang says in the story “Bai shajin” (The white kerchief): We investigate the cases, half to satisfy our curiosity for knowledge and half out of the duty to serve and uphold justice. In the realm of justice, we are not constrained by the rigid law. Often we use our discretion with people who break the law in the name of public righteousness, because in this society, which becomes more and more materialistic, the spirit of the rule of law cannot be put into general practice, and weak and ordinary people are often wrongly accused, and are often not protected by the law. Therefore, we cannot but act expediently in accordance with our code of morality.21 18  19  20 

21 

King-fai Tam, “Traditional Hero as Modern Detective,” 148. King-fai Tam, “Traditional Hero as Modern Detective,” 148. As discussed in the previous chapter, the social order in Republican Shanghai was in shambles. Frederic Wakeman has pointed out the speed with which crime increased and the disparity between the number of crimes reported and criminals arrested in 1920s Shanghai: “In 1922 there were 47 armed robberies reported in the International Settlement. Two years later the number had increased more than fourfold to 204 armed robberies, and by 1926 there were 448 instances of this felony—an increase of more than 950 percent within five years. The number of robbers arrested during this period also increased nearly threefold, which was not nearly at the same rate as the number of armed robberies committed.” Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 6. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Bai shajin,” 1:172.

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“Swallow of the South,” the earliest surviving Huo Sang story, indicates a subtle relationship between the traditional youxia and the modern detective. Considered by Bao Lang to be Huo Sang’s “formidable adversary,”22 the character of Jiangnanyan appears in several Huo Sang stories as a traditional youxia who robs the rich to support the poor. Unlike Sherlock Holmes’s rival, Professor Moriarty, Jiangnanyan never endangers the life and property of good people. He even occasionally helps Huo Sang to fight against other mobsters. In “Swallow of the South,” someone disguises himself as Jiangnanyan to commit a series of thefts. Huo Sang captures the culprit and helps Jiangnanyan clear his name. The juxtaposition between Huo Sang and Jiangnanyan shows the cultural significance of two at times conflicting types of justice. On the one hand, the real Jiangnanyan himself never appears in this story, which seems to imply that the new modern hero, represented by detective Huo Sang, has gradually replaced the traditional youxia as the agent who restores social order. On the other hand, Huo Sang sympathizes with and respects Jiangnanyan as a youxia. In Huo Sang’s opinion, “although [Jiangnanyan] acts outside of the law, he never crosses the line of justice. He targets either the class that suppresses the people or those who consume but do not work.”23 At the end of the story, Jiangnanyan sends a thank-you letter to Huo Sang. When the police invite Huo Sang to capture Jiangnanyan based on the clues in this letter, Huo Sang refuses: “Huo Sang did not answer. He put the letter on his knees, his gleaming eyes staring at the letter. He bit his lips and lowered his head. For a long while, Huo Sang didn’t utter a word.”24 Huo Sang’s silence indicates that he is caught in a dilemma as he faces Jiangnanyan, who embodies traditional justice; nevertheless, he chooses to protect his rival. Sometimes Huo Sang’s admiration for the youxia spirit leads him to sympathize with characters who lie beyond the reach of the law. For example, in the story “Langman yuyun” (The aftermath of a romance), a ventriloquist kills a wealthy man who has abandoned his wife. When the ventriloquist learns innocent persons have been arrested as suspects, he turns himself in to the police. Huo Sang hires a lawyer for the ventriloquist, but the lawyer fails to secure his release. After one month, the ventriloquist breaks out of prison. Both Huo Sang and Bao Lang feel satisfied with this ending and approve of the ventriloquist’s action. As Bao Lang comments:

22  23  24 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Mao’er yan,” 9:129. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Mao’er yan,” 9:128. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiangnanyan,” 2:69.

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The Orientals have always had a great romantic tradition. I thought that with the influence of modern material culture, everything has now become rationalized to the point of being boring. The romantic passion seemed to have gradually disappeared. But I was wrong. Such a noble and passionate chivalric spirit still exists in the blood of our Chinese nation.25 To achieve a compromise between the law and Huo Sang’s “higher-than-thelaw attitude,”26 Cheng Xiaoqing often adopts one of three kinds of solutions. First, if the culprits commit crimes for the public good, they are arrested after Huo Sang finds out the truth, but they always manage to escape from prison in the end.27 For example, in “Duanzhi tuan” (The finger-cutters gang), a group of patriotic young men organize a gang that employs a distinctive brand of mutilation against its targets. After kidnapping a profiteer, members of the gang cut off one of his fingers as a warning. If the profiteer continues with his evil ways, he will be assassinated. When Huo Sang discovers the identity of the leader of this group, he asks why they resort to such a violent method to accomplish justice. The leader replies, “We don’t have the wherewithal to enter the top echelon of politics, and so we have to start from the bottom to nurture a kind of force of arbitration in society.”28 After explaining his actions, the leader surrenders himself to the police. But in the end, the possibility that he escapes punishment under the law is raised. Bao Lang notes:

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Cheng Xiaoqing, “Langman yuyun,” 2:259. Cheng Xiaoqing’s sympathy for chivalric outlaws is also indicated by his decision to translate the Simon Templar (aka the Saint) series in the 1930s. Created by Leslie Charteris in 1928, the Saint was called the “Robin Hood of Modern Crime.” In these stories, Charteris describes “Saints” in general as a group of outlaws who are “not bothered about the letter of the law, they act exactly as they please, they inflict what punishment they think suitable, and no one is going to escape them.” They “worked on the side of the law and were yet outside the law.” Charteris, Enter the Saint, 5. Cheng Xiaoqing once commented that the Saint is a humorous, energetic, and righteous outlaw. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Lun zhentan xiaoshuo,” 207. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 206. Kinkley also points out that in some cases, Huo Sang conceals the culprit’s identity after he has solved the case. In the story “Lunxia xue” (Blood under the wheels), the culprit is a young socialist. He accidentally kills a bully in self-defense. In order to collect life insurance, the socialist fakes his own suicide by dressing the bully’s corpse in his own clothes and placing it on the railway tracks. Huo Sang finds out the truth, but because he considers the insurance company to be crooked he sets the young socialist free and even helps him commit insurance fraud. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 206. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Duanzhi tuan,” 5:98.

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Recently it was said that there was a breakout from the local prison in Nanjing. A young culprit who had recently been captured escaped. A prison guard also went missing at the same time. Whether he released this young man for money or out of sympathy is unclear. Everyone hoped that the young man in question was the leader of the Finger-Cutters. Even Huo Sang was happy about this news.29 In the second type of solution, the victim of the crime turns out to be vicious and deserving of death, and sometimes actually kills himself in the story. As a result, the suspect accused of murdering him is proven innocent, even though he may have made attempts on the victim’s life earlier. For example, in the story “An zhong an” (A case within a case), a wealthy playboy named Mr. Sun rapes a female doctor who consequently commits suicide. Sun’s butler decides to take justice into his own hands by having Sun drugged and then murdered. Huo Sang discovers the butler’s criminal plot. But when the butler is about to confess, Huo Sang surprises him by pointing out that before the butler stabbed Sun in the back with a dagger, Sun had already killed himself once his bankruptcy became public news. Huo Sang’s evidence is that since the wound in Sun’s back left no bloodstain, he must have died before the butler stabbed him. In another story, “A Ghost in White,” two brothers covet their eldest brother’s wealth and collaborate to have him murdered. Many years after the crime, in the space of one week, these two brothers die mysteriously in their haunted mansion. Although Huo Sang catches the suspect, who pretended to be a ghost in order to frighten the brothers, he concludes on medical evidence that the brothers actually died of heart attacks rather than being murdered by the suspect. The incident at the heart of “A Bloody Dagger” seems to be a crime of passion involving two male students. But Huo Sang proves that the victim killed himself. Because he was about to be exposed as a traitor to the revolution and had been frustrated in love, he committed suicide out of despair and attempted to frame his romantic rival for his death. In the third type of solution, the culprit is a villain who is proved guilty by Huo Sang but manages to escape punishment through a legal loophole. In the end, Cheng Xiaoqing often arranges for such villains to die of disease. For example, Mr. Xu in the story “A Living Corpse” is a philanderer. Although he is arrested for murder, his lawyer uncle succeeds in postponing the trial. Nevertheless, Xu incurs a fatal bacterial infection. Since most Chinese detective writers belonged to the Butterfly literature school, their sense of justice was influenced by the moralism of traditional 29 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Duanzhi tuan,” 5:98.

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Chinese literature, which exhorts readers to goodness by ensuring that the wicked are punished. But such moralism has its literary disadvantages, especially regarding the creation of suspense and complex characters. Many Chinese detective stories written in the Republican period reiterate stereotypical values such as hostility toward the rich and sympathy for the poor and are often serious, didactic, and less than entertaining. Meanwhile, although novelists like Cheng Xiaoqing often invoked poetic justice, they never delved into the deeper causes of corruption in real life. The police in the Huo Sang detective stories, for example, are impotent but not sinister. Detectives such as Huo Sang never develop a cynical attitude like their counterparts in the American hard-boiled fiction of the 1940s, in which the private investigator is a lone hero who considers society as a whole to be nothing but cruel.30 Chinese writers still followed the classic tradition of Western detective fiction, in which the police and the detective are both competitors and collaborators. The compromise made by the detective with legal institutions, and the limited nature of any revelations of social darkness, regretfully set limits on the breadth and depth of Republican-era Chinese detective fiction. 2

Burglar-Detective Lu Ping and the Philosophy of Thieves in Zhuangzi

Lu Ping, the leader of a fictional underworld gang in Republican Shanghai, made his first appearance in the story “Kuileiju” (A wooden mannequin play), which was written by a young popular novelist named Sun Liaohong and serialized in the Shanghai detective magazine Detective World in 1923.31 Lu Ping plans to steal a famous painted scroll from a client of Cheng Xiaoqing’s fictional detective Huo Sang. A master of disguise and an expert on Shanghai’s streets, Lu Ping makes Huo Sang look like a fool as he communicates with his gang secretly by posing as a wooden mannequin in a window display, uses a mirror in a cosmetics store to spy on Huo Sang, arranges for his gang members to stage auto accidents to block Huo Sang’s investigations, and uses doubles to lure Huo Sang on a wild goose chase until he falls into a trap. After Huo Sang is disarmed, Lu Ping disguises himself as Huo Sang and tricks Huo Sang’s client into giving him the precious scroll to guard. As the first Lu Ping story, 30  31 

Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping stories sometimes exhibit such a cynical worldview. Sun Liaohong renamed this story “Mu’ou de xiju” and republished it in the magazine Chunqiu (Spring and autumn), nos. 1–4 (August–November 1943).

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“A Wooden Mannequin Play” introduces the ongoing struggle between the detective Huo Sang and the burglar-detective Lu Ping, the best-known rivals in Chinese detective literature. Little is known about Lu Ping’s creator, Sun Liaohong (1897–1958). Born in Wusong, Shanghai, his original name was Sun Yongxue. Sun was a man of medium height and his back was slightly hunched. He made a living by writing detective stories but was always impoverished and slovenly. Sun, a Buddhist, led a solitary life in a narrow attic in Shanghai and did not belong to any literary communities. Besides writing Lu Ping stories, Sun served as editor for a few detective journals such as Great Detective and The Blue Book. After 1949, Sun made a living by adapting historical plays for the Shanghai Opera House. He died of tuberculosis in 1958. Unlike Cheng Xiaoqing, who was eager to affiliate his detective fiction with May Fourth ideology and its scientific philosophy of life, calling his stories “comics at the urban crossroads” (“shizijietou de lianhuanhua”) , Sun denied any educational purpose to his works. He once claimed, “I don’t have a definite philosophy of life—I don’t even know what ‘philosophy of life’ means.”32 Lu Ping was not an original creation of Sun Liaohong. Before Sun’s stories, He Puzhai and Zhang Biwu had produced a few stories about an Oriental Lupin named Lu Ping.33 But it was only through Sun’s fiction that Lu Ping became known nationwide. From 1924 to 1946, Sun Liaohong wrote over twenty tales comprising “The chivalric burglar Lu Ping detective series” (“Xiadao Lu Ping xilie”).34 Like his archetype, the Frenchman Arsène Lupin, Lu Ping is a leader of an underworld gang in Shanghai. Surreptitious in his movements and skilled at disguise, Lu Ping is recognizable only by his unique features: he wears a red bow tie, has a red mole on his left ear, and always smokes Turkish cigarettes. Lu Ping is more Westernized than Huo Sang in his dress and lifestyle.35 32  33  34 

35 

Sun Liaohong, “Shenghuo zai tongqing zhong,” 203–204. In Zhang Biwu’s serialized novel Shuangxiong douzhi ji (The rivalry of two masters), Lu Ping is called Luo Ping. The image of Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping is not always consistent across stories. In some early tales, such as “Hei qishi” (Dark knight, 1924), Lu Ping is portrayed as a patriot who calls himself “Zuguo zhi hun” (The soul of the nation). In that story, Lu Ping steals a Sino-Japanese treaty from a Chinese traitor for the sake of national security. In another story, “Lanse xiangweishe” (The blue rattlesnake, 1947), however, Lu Ping almost falls in love with a Japanese spy. In “A Wooden Mannequin Play,” Huo Sang chases Lu Ping through a building. Sun Liaohong adopts an ironic tone to contrast the nimble-footed Lu Ping, a modern person dressed in a Western suit, with Huo Sang, an old-fashioned person wearing a traditional long gown. Sun writes, “While he [Huo Sang] was still thinking, the person [Lu Ping] in front had already jumped onto the fourth-floor staircase. There, he widened his stride,

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“A Wooden Mannequin Play” introduces his wife and son, with whom he lives in a big Western-style house in Shanghai. His wife is a Westernized woman who plays jazz piano and dislikes the old-fashioned dress of the Chinese gentry. His son is also skillful at deception; in “A Wooden Mannequin Play,” he poses as an innocent lost child to lead the detective Huo Sang into a staged accident. Generally speaking, Lu Ping is the product of two sources of influence: Maurice Leblanc’s gentleman-burglar Arsène Lupin, on whom Lu Ping is modeled; and Zhuangzi, the classic of Chinese philosophy that provides the grounding for Lu Ping’s worldview. 2.1 The Archetype: Arsène Lupin The archetype of Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping is Arsène Lupin, created by the French popular novelist Maurice Leblanc.36 Leblanc wrote about fifty works featuring Lupin, which were published in France between 1905 and 1939.37 According to Leblanc, Arsène Lupin is a rogue rather than a villain, a magician rather than a logician, a burglar and a dilettante. Lupin’s original name was Raoul d’Andrézy. He received an excellent classical education in Latin and Greek and mastered many languages. In his early days, he studied law and medicine, completed an internship in dermatology, and became an expert in disguise.

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taking almost three to four steps at a time. This mannequin machine [Lu Ping] ran so fast that Huo Sang had to speed up. But the mannequin in front was dressed in a Western suit, while the gentleman running after him was dressed in a long gown. The result of the competition between a modern Western person and a traditional made-in-China person was too obvious. It goes without saying that the latter was destined to lose the race. All of a sudden, Huo Sang stepped on his gown. Our old gentleman stumbled and almost fell behind.” Sun Liaohong, “Mu’ou de xiju,” 249–250. Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941), a writer of Franco-Italian descent, was born in Rouen. His father was the wealthy owner of a shipping firm. After studying in France, Germany, and Italy, Leblanc worked for the family business. He then studied law but dropped out to become a crime writer and police reporter for periodicals in Paris. A very prolific writer, Leblanc published over sixty novels and short stories. But it is Arsène Lupin, a character he created in his forties, that gained him international fame. The character of Lupin was conceived to fulfill an assignment from Pierre Laffitte, the publisher of a new journal, Je Sais Tout (I know all), which was modeled on The Strand. Laffitte commissioned Leblanc to write a story featuring a hero of the Holmes or Raffles type. The first Arsène Lupin story, “L’arrestation d’Arsène Lupin” (The Arrest of Arsène Lupin), was published on July 15, 1905, and became a surprise success. The first collection of Lupin stories, Arsène Lupin: Gentleman-Cambrioleur (Arsène Lupin: Gentleman-Burglar), was published in 1907, followed by other volumes in rapid succession until the early 1930s. Lupin’s adventures have been the basis for several movies and television series. In Japan, the tales of this gentleman-burglar have inspired a series about Lupin’s grandson, Lupin III.

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In all of the early books, Lupin is the gentleman-burglar of the original title. As the leader of a gang of thieves in Paris, he outwits the police of every country. For instance, he impersonates an English detective from Scotland Yard and makes a fool of Sherlock Holmes. He seems to pursue criminal activities for the sake of amusement rather than personal gain: “If he steals a painting, it is so that it may be genuinely appreciated. If he deliberately enchants a woman, it is because she is about to marry the wrong man. His disguises, so baffling to the police, are usually adopted for the sheer fun of the deception.”38 The fictitious adventures of Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin reenact what Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857) purportedly went through in his life. In his Mémoires, Vidocq revealed that he had been a criminal in his early years. But he atoned for his crimes by serving as a police informer in prison. Because of his loyalty, “his ‘escape’ was arranged [by the French police],”39 and he was appointed as the first chief of the Sûreté, where almost all of his detectives were ex-convicts.40 Vidocq later started “the first modern detective agency, Le Bureau des Renseignemenets.”41 The greatest contribution of Vidocq to crime literature is his creation of “the archetypal ambiguous figure of the criminal who is also a hero.”42 As Julian Symons observes, “the interpenetration of police with criminals, and the doubt about whether a particular character is hero or villain, is an essential feature of the crime story, and Vidocq embodied it in his own person.”43 Vidocq was known for his ability to disguise himself. He could even shorten his stature by several inches while walking and even jumping.44 With his talent, Vidocq “started a tradition of disguise in the French detective force which persisted at least until the end of the century.”45 Most Lupin stories take place in prison, castles, and hotels, and Lupin and his gang members often escape through numerous secret channels in Paris. Criminals usually turn out to be the wives or servants of certain aristocrats and what they steal are often objects related to Napoleon or the confidential treaties signed between France and other countries. The largest source of suspense in Lupin stories lies not in learning the identity of the criminal, but in discovering which character is actually Lupin in disguise. 38  39  40  41  42  43  44  45 

Reilly, ed., Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, 424. Symons, Bloody Murder, 31. Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin stories pay homage to Vidocq. In the novel 813, for example, Lupin disappears for four years. But in the end, he turns out to have been disguised as the chief of the Sûreté during the entire time. Symons, Bloody Murder, 31. Symons, Bloody Murder, 32. Symons, Bloody Murder, 32. Symons, Bloody Murder, 32. Symons, Bloody Murder, 32. 78B

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Arsène Lupin was introduced into China in 1912 by Yang Xinyi, who published a story in Xiaoshuo shibao (Fiction times) under the title “Fu’ermosi zhi jindi” (Holmes’s great rival). In January 1914, Xu Zhuodai and Bao Tianxiao translated the novel 813 and serialized it in issues 1–12 of Zhonghua xiaoshuo jie (The world of Chinese fiction). Zhou Shoujuan was also one of the main translators of Lupin stories, completing six in 1914–1915. In 1917, Arsène Lupin stories began to be collected in books. From 1925 to 1933, the Great East Press published a four-volume work entitled Yasenluoping’an quanji (The complete collection of Arsène Lupin), which contains ten novels and eighteen short stories in vernacular Chinese. Sun Liaohong was one of the translators of this collection. We may gain a glimpse of contemporary readers’ response to this character from the prefaces to The Complete Collection of Arsène Lupin. Writers of these prefaces all agreed that the attractiveness of Arsène Lupin stories lies in their unexpected and fast-moving adventures. In comparing them with Sherlock Holmes stories, Bao Tianxiao evaluates them accurately: “With his wisdom, Sherlock Holmes unmasks people’s disguises; while Arsène Lupin could become anyone through his disguises.”46 As Bao observes, Sherlock Holmes stories are essentially different from those of Arsène Lupin in their view of social stability: the former always stress the preservation of the social order through the efforts of the detective, while the latter object to any specific and fixed social identity and exploit the anonymous nature of urban life. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Man of the Crowd” was one of the earliest pieces to explore the theme of anonymous identity in cities. The first-person narrator sits in a coffee house in London and observes passersby. The first half of the story imitates a detective’s analysis, as the narrator makes judgements on the social class of pedestrians based on their body size, dress, facial expression, and habits. For example, the senior clerks of well-established firms were known by their coats and pantaloons of black or brown, made to sit comfortably, with white cravats and waistcoats, broad solid-looking shoes, and thick hose or gaiters. They had all slightly bald heads, from which the right ears, long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing off on end. I observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands, and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient pattern.47

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Bao Tianxiao, “Ba,” 109. Poe, “Man of the Crowd,” 476. 78B

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But in the second part of the tale, the narrator notices an old man in the crowd who does not neatly fall into any of the categories he has defined. After tailing him for a while, the narrator gives up and concludes that this old man “is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow; for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.”48 Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin stories further develop Poe’s question of whether urban residents can be sorted into neat and clear-cut categories. Is it possible that dress, behavior, and appearance are only disguises? It seems that workers, people on horseback, or youths hanging around belong to certain classes, but meanwhile they can all be impersonated by people with other identities. There is no fixed identity in urban life. Every person is the man of the crowd. For example, in the story “Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes” (Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes), in the two days after Sholmes—an obvious stand-in for the British detective—arrives in Paris, Lupin sends his rogues to attack him three times. The first time, Sholmes is walking with Dr. Watson on the street. They are nearly wounded by a sandbag falling from the sixth floor of a building. When they go upstairs to check, the workers have disappeared. A servant in the building tells Sholmes that these workers are new; they have only come this morning. On the second occasion, Sholmes and Dr. Watson are sitting on a bench along the street when a man on horseback nearly hits Sholmes’s shoulder. On the third occasion Sholmes and Dr. Watson are trapped in a narrow alley by three young workers. Only then does Holmes realize that the workers, the horseman, and the young men in the alley are all Lupin’s accomplices in disguise. His discovery reveals the multiple social roles and identities that one can assume in the big city. This theme of ambiguous identity in urban life is reflected in Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping stories. In “A Wooden Mannequin Play,” Lu Ping pretends to be a wooden mannequin in a shop window; in “Gui shou” (The ghost’s hand), he disguises himself as detective Huo Sang; in “Xuezhiren” (The bloody paper man), he dresses up as a doctor’s assistant. Lu Ping’s accomplices are ubiquitous too. In “A Wooden Mannequin Play,” Lu Ping orders all of them to disguise themselves as Lu Ping so that they are ready to support him at any time. Not only is Lu Ping good at disguising himself, he can also alter the appearance of his opponent to such a degree that even he cannot recognize himself. In the story “Tun yuganyou zhe” (The hoarder of cod liver oil),” Yu Weitang, a cunning fifty-year-old merchant has always dressed in a traditional long gown and feels proud of his moustache. One day he is kidnapped. After having been drugged 48 

Poe, “Man of the Crowd,” 481.

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and thrown out of a car, Yu wakes up. He walks into a café and is surprised to see a man in a Western suit in the mirror: He wore a light-colored Western suit, which was fashionably fitted, a white shirt with a brightly colored tie, and a shiny diamond tie pin shaped like a plum flower. On his neatly combed head there were only a few grey hairs. It looked as if much hair cream had been applied. This modern fellow looked at most forty years old. Most importantly, the young dapper figure in the mirror was clean-shaven. Even if you examined the whole face with a microscope, you wouldn’t be able to find any trace of a moustache.49 Yu is of course looking at himself in the mirror, but he has such a completely different look that he thinks that he is possessed by a ghost. Through this moment of disorientation, Sun Liaohong satirizes the fact that in Republican Shanghai, one’s social identity was completely determined by one’s appearance and manner of dress. The Burglar Philosophy of Zhuangzi and the Chivalric Burglar Tradition Meanwhile, Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping stories are not “simply a clone of the West,”50 but also have their distinctive Chinese sources. In the preface that Zhou Shoujuan wrote for the Chinese translation of The Complete Collection of Arsène Lupin, he introduces Arsène Lupin alongside the burglar philosophy that “petty thieves are hanged while usurpers are made princes.” Zhou explains: 2.2

Although he is a burglar and a thief, he has never killed anyone in his life. Besides, he would often use his intelligence to eliminate the evil and the cruel, to make up for what the official police may have failed to do, and to overturn false accusations on behalf of the innocent. His action are often carried out in a chivalric manner…. Now there are many burglars in our country. The most cunning of them pillage the country, and are proud of themselves for the support they can summon from the petty gangs. Their behavior is no different from that of the burglars. Warlords resort to power and forcibly occupy different regions. With their armies, they defy orders from the central government. Are they any different from a cohort of burglars? … Although Arsène Lupin is a burglar, there are times when he does not act like a burglar at all. If we compare him with people 49  50 

Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 265. King-fai Tam, “Traditional Hero as Modern Detective,” 154.

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in our country who are not burglars but act like burglars, what a world of difference there is between them!51 The Lu Ping stories take a similar view. In the stark reality of Shanghai, the true burglars are the members of the upper class who hold power, while a minor burglar like Lu Ping is a genuine hero who fights for the weak against the strong and rights wrongs. The burglar philosophy that “petty thieves are hanged while usurpers are made princes” originates from the story of Dao Zhi in Zhuangzi.52 Dao Zhi (Robber Chih [Zhi] in Burton Watson’s translation) is the younger brother of Liu Xiaji, a dafu (great officer) of the state of Lu during the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE). He is the most famous burglar of the time, who “had a band of nine thousand followers [and] rampaged back and forth across the empire.”53 When Confucius tries to persuade him to give up his dirty business, Dao Zhi replies that Confucius is worse than he is because the philosopher’s deceitful words and hypocritical actions will do more harm by misleading the rulers of the world.54 The story of Dao Zhi influenced chivalric burglar literature in two respects. The first concerns the virtues of a chivalric burglar. In section 10 of Zhuangzi, “Rifling Trunks,” Dao Zhi has a conversation with his accomplices and argues that even the burglar needs extraordinary talent: the clarity of mind to observe, the bravery to be the first to act, the righteousness to care about his followers, the ability to make correct judgements, and a fair mind: One of Robber Chih’s followers once asked Chih, “Does the thief too have a Way?” Chih replied, “How could he get anywhere if he didn’t have a Way? Making shrewd guesses as to how much booty is stashed away in the room is sageliness; being the first one in is bravery; being the last one out is righteousness; knowing whether the job can be pulled off or not is

51  52 

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Zhou Shoujuan, “Xu,” 111. Zhuangzi is considered a classic of Daoism. Dao Zhi himself, as the greatest leader of burglars in Zhuangzi, establishes a connection between burglars and Daoism. In later stories, especially in the literature of the Tang Dynasty, burglars are often Daoists and their martial arts skills are derived from Daoism. This association of burglars with martial arts gradually evolved into the burglar’s extraordinary ability to leap onto roofs and vault over walls in chivalric burglar literature. Watson, trans., Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 324. Watson, trans., Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 325.

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wisdom; dividing up the loot fairly is benevolence. No one in the world ever succeeded in becoming a great thief if he didn’t have all five!”55 In this passage, the tactics of a burglar have been turned into the virtues essential to a particular way of life. The idea that a great burglar should be intelligent and brave was preserved throughout the chivalric burglar literature of later generations.56 The story of Dao Zhi also shaped dialectical thinking regarding the differences between small and big burglars. Dao Zhi considers the burglar who steals from ordinary people to be a small thief, while the really big burglar is the powerful man who steals a whole country. According to Dao Zhi, not only do the big burglars usurp the sovereignty of a country, they also take away and regard as their own the laws and morality that support the country and maintain its governance. Therefore the sage who initially set up the law and the system of rituals becomes the accomplice of these big burglars. It follows, then, that “when the sage is born, the great thief appears.”57 Such skeptical and radical arguments went against the rational claims of knowledge, politics, and morality found in Confucius’s teachings. Zhuangzi suggests that “if the sage is dead and gone, then no more great thieves will arise. The world will then be peaceful and free of fuss.”58 By equating real thieves with the political authorities, Zhuangzi questions the false order present in the world. Influenced by Zhuangzi’s skepticism regarding the social order and its relativistic perspective on truth, the Lu Ping stories also mock the deceptive nature of politics and the skewed value system of the war period. The ironic parallel between an ordinary thief and a corrupt political authority becomes a recurring theme. For example, in the story “A Blue Rattlesnake,” Lu Ping distinguishes himself from an ordinary thief in that he “likes to look decent and pays special attention to his appearance.” In Lu Ping’s life philosophy, in order to be a new type of thief that fits into modern society, one must appear decent. “Although not all decent friends are thieves,” Sun writes ironically, “every thief

55  56 

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Watson, trans., Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 107. To be sure, when Zhuangzi compares the virtues of a great burglar with those of a Confucian saint, he may simply be using sarcasm to mock the hypocrisy of the latter. Nevertheless, the qualities attributed to a great burglar in Zhuangzi’s description, such as bravery, wisdom, benevolence, and righteousness, are also found in the portrayal of the chivalric burglar in Chinese literature. Watson, trans., Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 108. Watson, trans., Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 108.

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of the upper class indeed looks decent.”59 And the harm caused by an ordinary thief is much less than that wrought by an official in power: Lu Ping thought that he looked like a proud official. He suddenly reflected, “Why are there so many people in the world who always want to become an official instead of a thief? Generally speaking, both official and thief want to act secretly and stretch out their hands in the dark [to steal]. Their goals and methods are almost the same. They are different only in that the hand stretched out by a thief only brings a frown to one person or one family but the hand of the official will make the whole country frown! Based on the above theory, we know that when we compare the thief with the official, the degree of harm [of the former] is much less! In this world, in the eyes of the ordinary people, as long as one causes less harm, one will be regarded as very charming! Then, why do the people who want to become officials not choose the relatively charming profession of a thief?”60 The theme that an official is nothing but a thief is expressed in dramatic form in another short story, “Yanjing hui” (The sunglasses society). At a party held by a few jewel merchants, a police officer comes and announces that the burglar Lu Ping may be hidden among the guests. Frightened, all the merchants decide to entrust their precious gems to the police officer for safekeeping. But after the officer leaves, a guest finds out that he was none other than the real Lu Ping in disguise. After Zhuangzi, the chivalric burglar tradition continued to develop. Examples include the “Knight-errant Biography” of Shi ji (Records of the grand historian, 94 BCE), the chuanqi (tales) of the Tang Dynasty, the various texts from the Song and Yuan period that coalesced into Shui hu zhuan (Outlaws of the marsh, around the late fourteenth century CE), the nihuaben (“imitation” master scripts for storytellers) of the Ming Dynasty, and the full-length novel Sanxia wuyi (Three knights-errant and five sworn brothers, 1879) of the Qing. Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping stories inherit certain characteristics from this tradition. Similar to most traditional chivalric burglars, Lu Ping targets rich men who obtain their wealth illegally. For example, Yu Weitang in “The Hoarder of Cod Liver Oil” is a profiteer who “hoarded rice, coal, satin and every necessity of life” during

59  60 

Sun Liaohong, “Lanse xiangweishe,” 9. Sun Liaohong, “Lanse xiangweishe,” 9–10.

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the war.61 The capitalist Wang Junxi in “Xue zhiren” (The bloody paper man) causes the death of another merchant by framing him and then seizes his wealth. At the same time, Sun Liaohong also departs from the tradition of the chivalrous burglar in his Lu Ping stories. First, in traditional stories, the actions of the burglar, although illegal, are often justified by the moral superiority of his actions of punishing the evil and helping the good. However, in Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping stories, Lu Ping is called a dushi liumang (urban rogue). Sun points out that despite the fact that Lu Ping helps a few people, in such a corrupt political system his efforts are too weak to enlighten or save society. Therefore, far from borrowing the chivalric quality that Cheng Xiaoqing bestows on his detective Huo Sang, Sun denies that any noble objective motivates Lu Ping’s actions. Sun writes in a helpless and resentful voice: It should be announced that he definitely does not act out of any socalled great “sense of justice,” he doesn’t want to rob the rich to give to the poor. He only wants to lessen his own poverty. To put it briefly: he is no different than those gentlemen with vicious faces!62 In the story “Zise youyongyi” (A purple swimsuit), Lu Ping succeeds in preventing the female protagonist from being blackmailed. But in a conversation with her lawyer, he denies any altruistic motive: It happens that I got her out of trouble without any conditions. She must think that I am a good person, or some kind of chivalric knight. If so, it is a big mistake. In fact, I disguised myself as a chauffeur at her home because I heard that they have too much money to spend, so I wanted to slip into her house and play some magic tricks. After I found out that the family houses widows of two generations, however, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That’s why I ended up not doing it. Look, do you think I am a good person? Do you think there are any good people in the world?63 Sun Liaohong’s cynical view of the prevailing social darkness sets his Lu Ping apart from the traditional, morally righteous chivalric hero. As Feng Jinniu points out,

61  62  63 

Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 281. Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 304. Sun Liaohong, “Zise youyongyi,” 182.

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Sun Liaohong’s “chivalric burglar” Lu Ping is not a hero with a noble image. The author portrays him as a cynical urban rebel of society. He treats solving crime as a kind of “business.” He believes that “business is business; all else does not matter” (from “The Bloody Paper Man”). All of this has shaped the unique charm of Sun Liaohong’s detective fiction.64 Sun also parted ways with traditional Chinese chivalric burglar literature by dispensing with the marvelous martial skills of the burglar. Lu Ping is not a brave fighter but rather a master of using psychological tricks to obtain the truth. For example, the story “Qiechi ji” (A tale of stealing a tooth), told through dialogue, takes place at night in a dancing hall. Lu Ping solves the case by exploiting the anxieties of the criminals. A rice merchant is found dead. Lu Ping suspects foul play and thus, using the name of a friend, he invites the two suspects—the victim’s sixth concubine and a dentist—to a dance hall. He sits at the next table and expounds in a loud voice his theory that the death of the rice merchant was in fact a murder; he was killed by the poison that had been placed in the filling of his tooth. In this case, Lu Ping has no solid evidence, as he has not had a chance to examine the corpse. He forms his hypothesis based on the news that the victim had visited a dental clinic before he died. In order to prove his hypothesis, Lu Ping invites the couple to the dance hall and prepares a false poisoned tooth. Lu Ping’s analysis succeeds in attracting the attention of the neighboring table. Unfamiliar with Lu Ping’s psychological tricks, the two criminals fall into his trap and admit everything. Lastly, Lu Ping, both in his style of dressing and ways of thinking, appears to be a modern Shanghai urbanite. He has no martial arts skills that would enable him to leap onto roofs and vault over walls like a traditional chivalric burglar, nor does he show much interest in ballistics or the scientific investigation of fingerprints, as Sherlock Holmes and Huo Sang do. Most Lu Ping stories are about deciphering puzzles that are often based on objects in daily use, or on the novelties of urban life such as mahjong, poker, and fish tanks. Therefore, the attractiveness of Lu Ping stories lies in their vivid description of the everyday entertainments enjoyed by Shanghai residents.65 Further analysis 64  65 

Feng Jinniu, “Sun Liaohong he tade zhentan xiaoshuo,” 27. Let us take the story “Sanshisan hao wu” (House No. 33), for example. In order to locate a precious pearl, Lu Ping moves into a haunted house (No. 33) and notices that every day a puzzling display appears on the balcony of No. 43, the house across from him. The first puzzle is a calendar bearing an image of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a popular animated film in Shanghai at that time. The second is a long glass fish tank containing two rare tropical fish. On the fifth day, the puzzle involves a series of poker hands, namely

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of the characteristics of urban space in the Lu Ping stories will be provided in the next chapter. Martha C. Nussbaum points out that “novel-reading will not give us the whole story about social justice, but it can be a bridge both to a vision of justice and to the social enactment of that vision.”66 While Western detective fiction, especially classic detective fiction, assures its middle-class readers that their property and individual rights can be protected through the law, Republican-era Chinese detective fiction exhibits judicial ambiguities through its agents of justice. Constrained by the dark reality of an inefficient criminal justice system, Chinese writers realize poetic justice through their pens. They sometimes arrange for the death of corrupt members of elite society, or draw a window on the prison through which the chivalric hero can escape. Burglar-detectives like Lu Ping even free themselves from the limitations of the law and take the punishment of the rich into their own hands. The incompatibility between the rule of law as seen in Western detective fiction and the lawless nature of Chinese society manifested itself in Republican detective fiction’s representation of the dilemma of legal justice in China. This dilemma, on the other hand, encouraged writers to dispense poetic justice and made the chivalric solution an emotional experience concomitant with justice throughout modern Chinese detective fiction.

66 

5A33, 57A33, K433, and 33A5. Lu Ping finally solves these puzzles. It turns out that they are coded messages from a young man in love, created in order to attract the attention of his neighbor, Shanshan. For example, the poker cards encode puns including “I love Shanshan,” “I genuinely love Shanshan,” “Kiss Shanshan,” and “Shanshan loves me?” Nussbaum, Poetic Justice, 12.

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Shanghai Modern: the Metropolitan Landscape in Chinese Detective Fiction Scene One: A polar bear specimen has recently disappeared from a museum in Shanghai. One day, it is spotted by a policeman next to the plane tree at the corner of Liming Road: A giant beast with a snow-white body, it stood up like a man, reached out its two massive paws and opened its huge mouth. It looked as if it would pounce and swallow him in one bite while he was unprepared!1 Scene Two: A popular taxi dancer called Zhang Li is tricked into entering a car by several mobsters disguised as her clients. She is drugged and the mobsters remove a long stocking from her leg and put it around her neck: Usually such behavior would be interpreted as the mobsters preparing to strangle her with this stocking if necessary, if she suddenly came to and shouted out. It would be a reasonable explanation. But in fact, in addition to preventing her from shouting, there was another, more mysterious reason for wrapping a long stocking around the girl.2 Scene Three: On Christmas Eve, a costume party is held at a mansion in Shanghai: The costume party would start after one o’clock. In order to add to the merry atmosphere, most of the guests were already in costume when they arrived at the house. They dressed as different characters from history, drama, and fiction, such as the great emperor who was an artillery officer on the island of Corsica, the cowherd from the Peking Opera Little Cowherd … The entire expanse of history had been concentrated into a single moment. All the people from China and the West were mixed together. Although it was neither fish nor fowl, it was full of fun.3 1  Sun Liaohong, “Yelie ji,” 161. 2  Sun Liaohong, “Zhangli de siwa,” 27–28. 3  Sun Liaohong, “Zhen jia zhi jian,” 5–6.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_007

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1

Shanghai Cosmopolitanism and Republican Detective Fiction Writers

The preceding three scenes are taken from the “Chivalric Burglar Lu Ping” series by Sun Liaohong. A giant polar bear, a stocking around a taxi dancer’s neck, and a fancy costume party with Chinese and Western characters: the glamorous and mysterious facet of life in modern Shanghai is a signature element in the colorful world of Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping detective stories. Even when Chen Dieyi, the chief editor of the magazine Wanxiang (Panorama), wrote the preface for Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang detective series, it is clear that Chen was thinking of his good friend Sun’s works: [It is said that] “detective fiction is a scientific textbook in disguise,” but I think this is not enough; I will add one more sentence: “At the same time, detective fiction is the guidebook of adventure.” Detective fiction not only teaches you scientific subjects that you don’t usually know, it also guides you into the darkest and scariest situations—the background of detective fiction is made up of all kinds of mysterious and extraordinary scenes. This is a unique style not found in other literary genres.4 “Detective fiction is a scientific textbook in disguise” is the famous slogan that Cheng Xiaoqing created to emphasize the educational function of detective fiction. On the other hand, Sun Liaohong, who called his own detective fiction “comics of the urban crossroads,” adopted the Arsène Lupin approach to detective fiction as “a guidebook of adventure.” For Republican readers, who seldom had the opportunity to go abroad at that time, detective fiction became a unique window on the world. As Chen Dieyi pointed out, “Today, when we are unable to travel to the freezing islands of the north pole or the forests of Africa, reading a detective story to pass the time is the best ‘spiritual adventure.’”5 As the new urban culture flowered in Republican Shanghai, the coffeehouse, swimming pool, museum, shopping mall, and cinema were quickly incorporated into contemporary Chinese detective fiction. Modern forms of media and transportation such as telephones, cameras, phonographs, newspaper advertisements, elevators, airplanes, trains, and ships set the stage for the struggle between detective and criminal. Readers were notified that insurance and credit fraud constituted new economic traps in modern urban life. Through their fan fiction, not only did Chinese detective fiction writers 4  Chen Dieyi, “Xu,” 201. 5  Chen Dieyi, “Xu,” 201.

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keep alive the rivalry between Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin in London and Paris respectively, they even invited these world-famous detectives (not to mention Charlie Chan) to attend an international detective conference in China. Their Chinese counterparts, Huo Sang and Lu Ping, also played hideand-seek in Shanghai. All this made it possible for Chinese detective fiction writers and readers to place themselves in the imagined community of global detective fiction while experiencing Shanghai cosmopolitanism in person. This chapter adopts Leo Lee’s concept of “Shanghai cosmopolitanism” and examines Republican detective fiction from the perspective of the new urban culture of Shanghai from the 1920s to the 1940s. Lee introduced the concept in his Shanghai Modern, a pioneering book on Shanghai urban culture of the first half of the twentieth century. Lee views the phenomenon of Chinese writers “eagerly embracing Western culture in Shanghai’s foreign concessions” as “a manifestation of a Chinese cosmopolitanism” and considers it as “another facet of Chinese modernity.”6 The defining characteristic of Shanghai cosmopolitanism is to treat cosmopolitanism as “an abiding curiosity in ‘looking out.’”7 The Shanghai cosmopolite was “a cultural mediator at the intersection between China and other parts of the world.”8 Although these cosmopolites appeared to be Westernized “in their lifestyle and intellectual predilections,”9 they remained confident in their Chinese identity and insisted on writing in Chinese. The hybrid values that they held differentiate them from the kind of cosmopolitanism that has been regarded as a by-product of colonialism. As Lee points out, “It was only because of their unquestioned Chineseness that these writers were able to embrace Western modernity openly, without fear of colonization.”10 In other words, in Lee’s opinion, the Shanghai cosmopolites identified themselves as Chinese and upheld a positive and inclusive attitude toward Western culture. In Shanghai Modern, Lee focuses on modernist writers such as the members of the New Sensation School (Xinganjue pai) and Eileen Chang (1920–1995).11 I argue that according to Lee’s definition, Chinese detective fiction writers of 6  7  8  9  10  11 

Lee, Shanghai Modern, 313. Lee, Shanghai Modern, 315. Lee, Shanghai Modern, 315. Lee, Shanghai Modern, 309. Lee, Shanghai Modern, 312. The New Sensation School of fiction was formed in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s. Its most representative writers were Liu Na’ou (1905–1940), Mu Shiying (1912–1940), and Shi Zhecun. Influenced by modernism in French and Japanese literature, Chinese writers of the New Sensation School were particularly interested in exploring the sensory landscape of Shanghai and applied modernist techniques in their narratives. For studies of this school, see Lee, Shanghai Modern; Shih Shu-mei, Lure of the Modern.

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the Republican era could also be considered to be Shanghai cosmopolites, although they differ from Lee’s examples in their degree of Westernization. Many Republican detective fiction writers were fans and translators of Western detective novels. Their own works not only explore the attractions and danger of the new cosmopolitan life, but also exhibit confidence in native Chinese detective fiction. The attitudes of these writers toward urban modernity varied. For example, Cheng Xiaoqing had a strong sense of patriotism, insisted on the moral and educational function of literature, and criticized the consumerism and materialism in modern Shanghai, while writers such as Sun Liaohong and Xu Zhuodai (1881–1958) were more like the New Sensation School writers of popular literature, who guided readers to explore the novelties and anxieties contained in various urban facilities in a much more delightful and entertaining narrative tone. In Shanghai Modern, Lee posits three characteristic features of Chinese urban modernity. The first is its material aspect: its consumer culture, urban entertainment, and print and media culture were the same as that of urban modernity in Western countries. The second is the psychological aspect: literature about modern Shanghai explored the feeling of the uncanny and depicted the anxiety brought on by the speed and ruthlessness of urban life. Third, Shanghai modernity blended the experience of real life with an imaginative dimension drawn from print culture. Advertisements, print media, cinema, and transcultural translation provided the cultural imaginary of modern life. As Lee puts it, “‘Modernity’ is both idea and imaginary, both essence and surface.”12 Based on Lee’s three characteristics of Shanghai modernity, this chapter discusses how Republican detective fiction writers imagined a new kind of urban life in their writings and how they participated in the imagined community of global (mainly Western) detective fiction through their transnational literary practices. The first section focuses on three types of urban space: public facilities and institutions such as modern roads, dance halls, coffeehouses, and swimming pools; print culture as represented by newspaper reports; and cinema as a new media. The second section examines two texts: “Qianting tu” (A submarine design), Cheng Xiaoqing’s fan fiction about the rivalry of Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin; and “Xiongzhai” (The haunted house), a short thriller by the modernist Shi Zhecun. Both stories feature Westerners as the main characters. The former takes place in London and the latter is set in the French Concession of Shanghai. Both Cheng Xiaoqing and Shi Zhecun were fans of Western detective 12 

Lee, Shanghai Modern, 63.

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fiction, but whereas Cheng never went abroad, Shi was very Westernized and fluent in French. Cheng is usually considered a Butterfly writer while Shi is a modernist of the New Sensation School. Given these similarities and differences, how did these two writers portray the West? What kind of role does Shanghai play in their transnational imaginations? What are their intertextual connections with Western detective fiction? The second section of this chapter will explore these questions. 2

Redrawing the Spectacle of Shanghai Modernity

The dynamics of detective fiction are closely related to the material conditions of urban modernity. Its devices, such as the tricks made possible by the availability of different means of transportation or the proof of one’s presence or absence by means of photographs are dependent upon the new technologies and media of urban living. Modern inventions such as the telephone directory, the shopping receipt, the camera, and automobile registration enable the individual to be located and identified with precision. On the other hand, the advance of material technology is convenient for the criminal as well. Criminals can fake their identities and blackmail victims by manipulating photographs and forging documents. The dialectical aspect of modern technology—where enhanced accuracy of detection facilitates the panoramic surveillance of society, and cunning vision-distorting devices spawn new methods of evasion at the same time—contributes to the duality in the genre of detective fiction. In Chinese detective fiction of the Republican era, Shanghai becomes an ideal playground for such games of “hide and seek” involving detectives and criminals. I will elaborate this observation through an analysis of three typical urban spaces: public facilities and buildings, newspapers, and the cinema. 2.1 On the Streets of Shanghai: Public Facilities and Buildings 2.1.1 Modern Roads The road is a necessary geographic space in detective fiction. In her study of Shanghai urban planning in Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective fiction, Lai Yi-lun argues that modern roads, especially roads in the foreign concessions, served as the chief symbol of Shanghai’s transition into modernity in the early Republican period: The Shanghai Municipal Council [of the International Concession] and the Municipal Administrative Council (Conseil d’Administration Municipal of the French Concession) tore down the city walls and built 78B

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modern roads in accordance with the standards of the Western metropolis. They built two roads from south to north and one road from east to west. Forming the shape of the Chinese character gong 工, these three main roads laid down the primary framework of the modern thoroughfares of the new Shanghai. In 1925, there were over a hundred roads in the foreign concessions. Harbors, bridges, and the drainage and sewage systems were also put in place. The urban look of the foreign concession contrasted sharply with the old town…. In the concessions, with the divisions of roads and streets, the crammed layout of the traditional Chinese town with its narrow alleys has been drastically altered. Not only did it turn into the network of Shanghai urban roads of some magnitude, but it also took on the appearance of straight and orderly rectangular city blocks.13 Lai shows how Cheng incorporates modern roads into his detective stories: “It only takes ten minutes by car to go from the police department to Jinshan Road,”14 and “Streets are scheduled to be cleaned every day before nine o’clock in the morning.”15 He further argues that all of these details are used not only to advance the plot, but also to represent rationality and order in the Huo Sang detective series.16 Let me give another example of how the modern road is described in Cheng’s “Wuhou de guisu” (The end of a dancing queen): April 19th, Monday, 7:30 A.M. To go to Qingpu Road from Huo Sang’s residence, it only takes seven minutes by car. Huo Sang’s car came to a sudden stop in front of the door of No. 27. Police Officer No. 99, who was assigned to guard the murder scene, hurried over to open the car door.17 This passage paints a picture of modern urban surveillance. The city is running on Western time: “7:30 A.M.,” “April 19th,” “Monday.” “The door of No. 27” reflects the populated urban environment and indicates the accuracy possible in geographic identification. The anonymous policeman is given a numerical code, “No. 99.” The note on travel time reminds readers of the speed of transportation. However, all the place names in this passage are fictional. These

13  14  15  16  17 

Lai Yi-lun, “Cheng Xiaoqing zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de Shanghai wenhua tujing,” 16–17. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Huo shi,” 8:265. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Qingchun zhi huo,” 3:269. Lai Yi-lun, “Cheng Xiaoqing zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de Shanghai wenhua tujing,” 27. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wuhou de guisu,” 3:9. 78B

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seemingly realistic descriptions of roads can therefore be regarded as Cheng Xiaoqing’s idealized construction of the modern Shanghai city map. Huo Sang drives his own car and he always stops at red lights. While the road thus serves as a symbol of order and obedience in Cheng Xiaoqing’s stories, in Sun Liaohong’s and Zhang Biwu’s imagination it is the representative of the uncanny and the mysterious. For example, in Sun Liaohong’s “The Hoarder of Cod Liver Oil,” after the wealthy merchant Yu Weitang is pushed out of a car by a group of gangsters, he walks down the street and is frightened by the passing shadows: [Yu] looked around. The streetlight was very dim. The shadows of the trees fell on the ground, quiet and eerie. “Click, clack, click …” He heard the sound of broken footsteps in front of and behind him, which aroused uncanny feelings in him. The shadows of each passerby flickered by him, like haunting ghosts!18 Yu feels that “something is running after him, what it was, he cannot say at all.”19 Symbolically, the thing that chases Yu is the neurotic feelings that urban dwellers often encounter. In this story, anxiety over one’s safety is further exaggerated by the shadows cast by trees on the street. In another serialized detective novel, The Rivalry of Two Masters,20 Zhang Biwu describes a mysterious scene in which a car suddenly disappears in front of a wall. In chapter 16 of that novel, Huo Sang’s car is about to catch up with the gang leader Luo Ping when his two-car convoy vanishes through a secret door in the wall. Bao Lang is riding in Luo Ping’s car, and he records his mysterious adventure as follows: [Luo Ping]’s two cars stopped under a high wall. Luo Ping stood up, bent forward, and reached out his right hand to press on the wall. Surprisingly, a big hole appeared in the wall with a clang and a wide wooden plank came down. One end of it was propped up on the side of the hole and the other end on the ground. One by one, the two cars drove on the plank and went into the big hole. Then I saw Luo Ping again press something on the wall. There was another clang. I hurried to look back and found the hole

18  19  20 

Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 256. Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 258. Zhang Biwu’s novel was serialized beginning in the first issue of the fiction magazine Banyue in 1921. It is about the struggle between detective Huo Sang and the burglar leader Luo Ping.

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in the wall had disappeared. [Luo Ping’s] two cars had now stopped safely inside a big house.21 This description suggests a modern automatic garage door, which was still a novelty in the 1920s. Meanwhile, the disappearance of the cars from the street also metaphorically points out the possibilities that modern roads can afford: on the one hand, wide and unobstructed, they indeed facilitate the tracking of criminals, but on the other hand criminals can also take advantage of them to hide and escape. 2.1.2 Dance Halls Social dance in Shanghai made its debut around 1850 at parties held by Westerners. In 1897, for the first time, Chinese officials held a dancing party as a gesture of hospitality to Westerners. Arcadia Hall, a Western-style building in Zhang Garden in Shanghai, was one of the most famous dance halls.22 Beginning in the 1920s, articles and photos in Chinese magazines introduced different dances popular in the West. According to Ma Jun’s statistics, from 1912 to 1917 there were about ten to twenty dance halls with regular business hours, the most famous of which was the New Carlton at No. 15 Jing’ansi Road.23 Chinese detective writers held opposite opinions on dance halls. For example, in his Huo Sang stories, Cheng Xiaoqing states that the traditional Confucian worldview usually repressed and neglected the materiality of life. Cheng argues that although the traditional attitude delayed Chinese social and economic development, it also reduced social conflict. Once China became a modern society, however, urbanites grew so fond of consumer culture that Western materialism caused many social disputes and weakened the national power of China.24 Moreover, Cheng believed that Western culture was often distorted when it came to China. For example, social dance was a form of elite entertainment in the West, but when it was introduced into China, it was often associated with sexual transactions. In “A Living Corpse,” Bao Lang comments: Most owners of dance halls are rogues, otherwise known as “celebrities.” They use money to seduce beautiful girls from poor families into becoming taxi dancers, so that the magnates who gained their wealth by exploiting the poor, as well as their sons and nephews, can come to toy 21  22  23  24 

Zhang Biwu, Shuangxiong douzhi ji, ch. 19, Banyue 1, no. 21 (1922): 4. Ma Jun, Wuting shizheng—Shanghai bainian yule shenghuo de yiye, 28–30. Ma Jun, Wuting shizheng—Shanghai bainian yule shenghuo de yiye, 47–60. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wuhou de guisu,” 3:209.

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with the girls. In this way, the owners of dance halls can make a fortune through these semi-prostitutes. Although some people bring their own girlfriends to the dance halls, there are very few of them. Most of the customers of the dance halls are unaccompanied single men who go there with the sole purpose of having their way with the taxi dancers.25 In Cheng Xiaoqing’s stories, the dance hall is a “den to squander money, a place to lose your soul, and a bottomless pit into which many young people have fallen.”26 Although taxi dancers have a past that demands our sympathy, they also become victims of crime because they work in such a degenerate place. In “The End of a Dancing Queen,” Bao Lang describes the look of a famous taxi dancer as follows: She had a small and delicate face in the shape of a melon seed. Her cheeks were so red that they dazzled the eyes. Her two eyes were black and lively, with two slim long artificial eyebrows on top—her natural eyebrows, having to endure often the damage done by hair-dressers, had completely disappeared…. Her dainty mouth should be one of her main attractions, but because she had put too much lipstick on it, it looked a bit “forbidding” for me.27 These negative descriptions reveal Cheng Xiaoqing’s traditional attitude toward women who wear make-up. Leo Lee suggests that the tedium of Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang stories is a consequence of his failure to discover the excitement of Shanghai urban life. By comparing the images of taxi dancers in Cheng Xiaoqing’s work and those produced by writers of the New Sensation School, Lee argues that women in Cheng’s stories seldom have the look of a femme fatale, unlike the stories by Liu Na’ou and Mu Shiying whose “Western style women” can easily wrap men around their fingers. As a result, [in Cheng’s stories] there is absolutely no erotic element at all. Taxi dancers—such as those in “The End of a Dancing Queen” and “Wugong moying” (Evil shadow in a dance hall)— are neither daring nor sexy. Moreover, Cheng’s brushstrokes seem clumsy, as if he did not know what he was doing.28 25  26  27  28 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Huo shi,” 8:243. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Huo shi,” 8:244. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wuhou de guisu,” 3:3. Lee, “Fu’ermosi zai Zhongguo,” 14.

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In contrast with Cheng’s negative view of Western dance halls, Sun Liaohong depicts this new place of entertainment with great enthusiasm as a symbol of the artificiality of urban life in his story “A Tale of Stealing a Tooth”: “In the spacious hall, the band was playing alluring rhythms and the electric lamps were casting gleams of dreamy light. Many pairs of lovers were floating in the center of the dancing floor, making man-made waves with their twirling bodies.”29 Sun Liaohong admits that the taxi dancers lose their true beauty because of their heavy makeup. But unlike Cheng Xiaoqing, Sun shows his empathy for them by writing from their point of view: The music started again. The girl’s heartstrings trembled in excitement with the rhythm of the piano on the stage. If someone could see into her heart, he would see the conflicting thoughts inside her: when nobody walked up to her, she seemed to feel empty and disappointed; but if someone stood before her, a fearful feeling would immediately rise in her young and fragile heart.30 As a public space, the dance hall is an ideal place for gossip. As I noted in Chapter 3, Lu Ping arranges for his suspects to sit next to his table so that they will overhear his analysis of a murder case. When Lu Ping relates the macabre process of the murder, the lighting and music in the dance hall strengthen the terrifying effect of his story: “The lights of the whole room again entered a state of hazy somnolence, while the music got all the more tense”; “The lights in the room suddenly came back on, leaving all the ugly expressions that had come out in the dark no place to hide”; “A trembling made the giant diamonds on her fingers shimmer in the flickering light.”31 Frightened, the suspects reveal the truth. After Lu Ping solves the case, he tells his friends to continue dancing: “There is no tomorrow here. Meng Xing [Lu Ping’s assistant], how should we spend this long night? How about another round of dancing?”32 The long night is a common metaphor for the darkness of society. Unlike Huo Sang, who refuses to be contaminated by the corrupt environment, Lu Ping takes a cynical attitude by choosing to lose himself on the dance floor.

29  30  31  32 

Sun Liaohong, “Qiechi ji,” 228. Sun Liaohong, “Qiechi ji,” 229. Sun Liaohong, “Qiechi ji,” 244–245. Sun Liaohong, “Qiechi ji,” 252.

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2.1.3 Coffeehouses Cheng Xiaoqing’s and Sun Liaohong’s attitudes toward coffeehouses are also different. The traditional tea house is a common scene in Cheng’s Huo Sang stories. Western restaurants appear occasionally but are often associated with negative images of luxury and waste. Sun Liaohong, on the other hand, makes use of the Westernized setting of the coffeehouse to enhance his protagonist’s feeling of dislocation. Coffeehouses appeared in Shanghai after 1920. Most of them were run by and for Westerners. In the 1930s, it became fashionable for intellectuals as well as Chinese people working at foreign companies to go there. Because of the quiet and privacy offered by the coffeehouse, it was also a secret meeting place for political party members. Leo Lee thinks that the coffeehouse, as a “public space fraught with political and cultural significance,”33 is representative of European culture, especially French culture. Hence, drinking coffee at a coffeehouse was an important gesture through which Chinese writers imagined themselves to be part of the community of Western modernity. As Lee points out, they “did not take the coffeehouse merely as a ‘decoration of modern urban life’ or ‘a good place for rendezvous’; instead, it was one of the crucial symbols of modernity, together with the cinema and the automobile.”34 A coffeehouse appears in the Lu Ping story “The Hoarder of Cod Liver Oil.” After the wealthy merchant Yu Weitang is pushed out of a car, he walks into a coffeehouse, where “a boy in a neat uniform opened the door for him with great respect…. Waitresses as beautiful as phoenixes were all dressed the same. Under the soft light, they shuttled busily back and forth like [butterflies] flying among the flowers.”35 Later, this coffeehouse is described as “decorated splendidly”: there is “a spacious square hall with four big columns at the four corners, and the columns were decorated with glittering mirrors.”36 But if Shanghai writers experienced a casual and cozy atmosphere when they drank coffee, the mirrors in the coffeehouse make Yu dizzy. He feels “many people nearby are glaring fiercely at him.” In the mirror, Yu sees a forty-year-old man in fancy dress. Unable to recognize himself in his modern look, Yu starts to wonder who he is. Moreover, Yu has an auditory hallucination in the coffeehouse, for he suddenly hears a strong voice saying clearly: “Danger is just around the corner! Will you look out?” But when he looks for the source of the

33  34  35  36 

Lee, Shanghai Modern, 17. Lee, Shanghai Modern, 22. Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 259. Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 260.

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voice, he only sees “a man in a black Western suit sitting next to him, his head bent [over his cup], focusing on putting sugar into his coffee and stirring it.”37 “The Hoarder of Cod Liver Oil” is adapted from Sun’s earlier story “Yanweixu” (The handlebar mustache), which was serialized in the magazine Red Rose in 1925.38 In the original story, “The Handlebar Mustache,” Yang Xiaofeng (i.e., Yu Weitang in “The Hoarder of Cod Liver Oil”) enters a Cantonese restaurant instead of a coffeehouse. The coffeehouse setting in the revised tale is an improvement; its modern and Western atmosphere is more appealing to readers. The mirrors hanging all around the coffeehouse (versus the single mirror hanging on the wall in the Cantonese restaurant in “The Handlebar Mustache”), and the Western music and food all contribute to a cultural shock that matches Yu’s feelings of displacement and unreality. Moreover, the Western decoration of the coffeehouse is consistent with Yu’s Western dress, which further leads Yu to suspect his own identity since he usually wears only traditional Chinese clothing. To conclude, both the dance hall and the coffeehouse in Sun Liaohong’s stories are associated with lies, deceit, dizziness, and the uncanny. In the story “A Tale of Stealing a Tooth,” Lu Ping solves the case by telling a lie in the dance hall to deceive the suspects. In “The Hoarder of Cod Liver Oil,” it is uncanny that Yu Weitang sees a man in Western clothes in the mirror of the coffeehouse but does not understand that he is looking at himself. Sun Liaohong sets up these scenes to criticize the hypocrisy of the upper class, and his irony feels more natural and sophisticated than that of Cheng Xiaoqing, for he seamlessly combines the urban space of entertainment with the narrative. These public spaces further strengthen the dialectical relationship between the real and the fake in his Lu Ping series. 2.1.4 Swimming Pools The swimming pool is another novel public space in Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping series. It appears in the story “Jiexin ji” (A tale of stealing a heart, republished in 1946 as “A Purple Swimsuit”), in which Lu Ping helps a Ms. Miao retrieve a necklace that she lost at a public swimming pool, thereby avoiding a scandal. The swimming pool was an urban novelty during the Republican period. The first Chinese indoor swimming pool was built in Guangzhou in 1887 and was only open to foreigners. Shanghai’s earliest swimming pool was built in 1892 and again, only foreigners were allowed to use it. In 1909, the first swimming pool open to Chinese in Shanghai was constructed. The Chinese 37  38 

Sun Liaohong, “Tun yuganyou zhe,” 265–267. Sun Liaohong, “Yanweixu.”

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Swimming Association was established in 1929. In the 1930s, swimming became more and more popular in cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Tianjin.39 News about female swimming athletes was often published in local newspapers. The practice of males and females swimming together in one pool gave rise to controversy.40 For Sun Liaohong, the swimming pool is a typical artificial spectacle in Shanghai, and an ironic reflection of the limited freedom of urbanites. As the narrator states at the beginning of “A Purple Swimsuit”: Although Shanghai is a seaside metropolis, the urbanites are not intimate with the sea. Not only are Shanghailanders not intimate with the sea, they are not intimate with water either, other than the muddy water in the Huangpu River and the waves in the public bathhouses. Even a fountain is regarded as a miracle…. People from other places treat the sea as a swimming pool, while Shanghailanders regard a swimming pool as the sea. This is a Shanghai-style story and happens in the “Sea of the Shanghailanders.”41 Sun Liaohong describes the swimming pool as a tank in which the swimmers are tropical fish to be watched. Here the metaphors of fish and fish tank have multiple implications. First, they evoke the artificial and cramped living arrangements in the city. Second, the female protagonist, Ms. Miao, is a “fish.” Before her marriage, Miao was a modern girl with a college degree. She used to be an expert swimmer with numerous male admirers. Miao enjoys a Western lifestyle: “she loved watching films, especially MGM films, and attended every premiere. If she missed the opening of a film, no matter how good it was, she would rather not see it at all.”42 However, after her marriage, Miao comes under the strict control of her oppressive mother-in-law, who comes from a patriarchal family, and she is forbidden to participate in many social activities such 39  40 

41  42 

“Shengshu youyong de kuangre” (The mania for swimming in a hot summer), Sheying huabao (Photo pictorial), no. 375 (July 16, 1932). For example, Guangzhou forbade males and females from swimming together: “All public swimming places must be divided into separate male and female areas. There should be a fence between them. At no place should it be possible to pass through it [the fence] or look over [it].” See “Guangzhou jinzhi nannü hunza youyong” (The city of Guangzhou forbids man and woman from swimming together), Renyan zhoukan 1, no. 1 (1934). In 1935, Beiping (Beijing) also divided some swimming pools into different areas for men and women. See “Pingshifu jue qudi nannü tongchi youyong” (The city of Beijing decides to forbid man and woman from swimming in the same pool), Funü yuebao 1, no. 6 (1935). Sun Liaohong, “Zise youyongyi,” 126–127. Sun Liaohong, “Zise youyongyi,” 129.

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as dancing, going to cinemas, and swimming, as well as the Western custom of hugging. Therefore, for her, getting married is like becoming a fish in a fish tank—she is controlled and watched all the time. Third, women become a spectacle for the male gaze. When Miao changes into her swimsuit and swims laps around the pool, “many eyes from different directions turned to gaze at the whirling water wave.” Miao also enjoys the attention: “every now and then, she raised her head and looked proudly at the bleachers.”43 At the swimming pool, Miao loses a necklace with a heart-shaped locket containing a picture of her husband.44 A few years earlier, Miao’s husband left home mysteriously: The night before Mr. Guo left home, something unusual happened: he took away all his photos, not leaving a single one. He even went to the trouble of destroying the pictures on his cards and passes. The only thing left was a heart-shaped golden locket from Germany. Inside was a small and delicate portrait photograph of himself set in enamel. Mr. Guo could not take it away with him or destroy it because the locket was hung on Ms. Miao’s chest. In this way, Mr. Guo left behind the only memento that he had in the world.45 The portrait photograph in the necklace represents a new relationship between the individual and the material object in urban life: even if one disappears without a trace, a photograph can still take that person’s place as a kind of portable symbol. As Ronald Thomas points out, “The photographic portrait permits the body instantly to overcome the limitations of space and time by displaying the self in public arenas outside the intimate, domestic space normally occupied by the traditional oil portrait or miniature.”46 For Miao, her husband’s photograph is both a memento and an obligation. It is visual evidence of her marriage and a way to tie her to this traditional patriarchal family. Her mother-in-law checks her necklace from time to time to make sure that she is on her best behavior. Criminals are able to blackmail Miao because of the transportable nature of the photograph.

43  44 

45  46 

Sun Liaohong, “Zise youyongyi,” 145. Using photographic evidence of a scandal to blackmail a victim is a common device in Western detective fiction, such as the Sherlock Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Jeffery Kinkley suggests that the story “A Purple Swimsuit” is indebted to Leblanc’s “The Wedding Ring.” Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 222. Sun Liaohong, “Zise youyongyi,” 134. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, 180.

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The function of the swimming pool in this story lies in its special characteristic as a public space: one needs to change clothes before and after swimming. Before Miao changes into her swimsuit, she takes off her necklace, puts it into her bag, and asks her friend to watch it. But she does not know that her friend is one of the criminals, and the necklace is stolen. The swimming pool and the necklace on Miao’s neck mark a contrast between public and private space. The interesting point of this story is that it exhibits the paradoxical nature of public space: it can both threaten and protect individual privacy. The criminal makes use of the public space of the swimming pool to steal Ms. Miao’s personal belongings, but Lu Ping also relies on the portable nature of the photo and the public circulation of newspapers to stop the blackmail. 2.2 Clues in the Daily Press: Newspaper Reports and Advertisements Newspaper reports and advertisements were incorporated into the plots of detective fiction already at the very birth of this genre. For example, in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe, the armchair detective Dupin deduces the criminal’s identity based entirely on the newspaper reports of the slain woman. By studying the typeface of the letters pasted into an informant’s anonymous letter, Sherlock Holmes can immediately identify the newspaper from which the letters were cut and therefore deduce the informant’s educational level. In Cheng Xiaoqing’s detective stories, detective Huo Sang makes it a daily habit to read the newspaper, where he gets information on many cases. According to Bao Lang, Huo Sang’s assistant, the language and content of different Shanghai newspapers distinguish them from each other. For example, the reports in the Shanghai Daily are relatively objective, whereas the tone in Shanghai News is often exaggerated. The Daily Telegraph is even worse, as “it not only indulges in malicious satire, but also fabricates news to the point of slander. But it is very cunning in the way it uses words to make irresponsible or questionable innuendoes. If someone lodges an official complaint, they would just publish a correction.”47 Lai Yi-lun argues that Huo Sang’s mastery of the various reporting styles of these newspapers is a crucial skill that keeps him from being misled by red herrings.48 By comparing reporting styles, Cheng Xiaoqing criticizes the vulgarity and distortion of truth in certain newspapers while praising the critical perceptiveness of Huo Sang and Bao Lang.

47  48 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Huo shi,” 8:191–193. Lai Yi-lun, “Cheng Xiaoqing zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de Shanghai wenhua tujing,” 93–97.

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In the Huo Sang detective series, the newspaper is not only a source of information, but also a channel allowing urbanites to exchange messages. In “Shuangxun” (Double suicide), Huo Sang receives an anonymous letter asking him to investigate the cause of a woman’s death. The sender writes: “If she committed suicide, please post the word ‘Yes’ in the National Citizen Newspaper; if she was murdered, you can post the word ‘No.’”49 Because the anonymous letter is wrapped in the National Citizen Newspaper, Huo Sang concludes that this mysterious sender must be a frequent reader of the newspaper, and judging from the modern reporting style of this newspaper, this client must be a reformist. In “Huqiu nü” (Woman in a fox-fur coat), Huo Sang publishes a false news report announcing that the case has been solved. This puts the real criminal off guard and he reveals his secret. As Lai Yi-lun comments, “Ordinary readers often read newspapers from the ‘passive/receiver’ perspective, but Huo Sang does not confine himself to such a position. Rather, he takes the initiative to assume an ‘active/speaker’ perspective. This can be attributed to Huo Sang’s zealous investigations, which enable him to add to, change, or even lead news reports.”50 As a burglar-detective, Sun Liaohong’s Lu Ping is adept at manipulating the news. In “A Purple Swimsuit,” the criminal exploits the public circulation of newspapers to threaten Miao after he steals her necklace. If Miao fails to pay the ransom, he will publish a fraudulent story in the newspaper about her secret meeting with a film star in a hotel where she gives him a very intimate gift, namely the locket that she wears all the time. Once the public reads the news, Miao’s reputation will be completely ruined.51 Here the reason that the blackmailer is able to threaten Miao is that the public believes in the objectivity of the newspaper and its powers of surveillance. Like the blackmailer, Lu Ping also makes use of fake news and relies on the instantaneity of the newspaper to solve the case. For urban Chinese at that time, the newspaper was an effective way to report crime news promptly and to alert residents to local problems and conflicts. Li Li has noted that the miscellaneous stories collected under the editorial headline of “Shehui xinwen” (social news) in Shanghai’s newspapers primarily recount violations of social norms and crimes such as political corruption, suicide, robbery, rape, and

49  50  51 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Shuangxun,” 2:269. Lai Yi-lun, “Cheng Xiaoqing zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de Shanghai wenhua tujing,” 93. Sun Liaohong, “Zise youyongyi,” 152.

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murder.52 Lu Ping asks Miao not to tell anybody about her missing necklace. Instead, he instructs her to wear a fake locket and to invite her mother-in-law to travel to town with her by car. Lu Ping’s accomplices arrange a “robbery” on the way so that Miao’s mother-in-law can witness the locket being taken forcefully from Miao’s neck. The next day, Lu Ping publishes a report of this incident: Around nine o’clock last evening, a robbery occurred on Haige Road. The victims were Mr. Guo Dazhao’s mother and his wife. (Mr. Guo went to study in Germany. He left home five years ago and has not returned.) At that time, Mr. Guo’s mother and wife were driving from their house at Tongfu Road to a certain place in the city. Unfortunately, when the car passed Haige Road, a few gangsters jumped out from the roadside and stopped the car with guns. They climbed into the car and wantonly made off with what they found, including valuable jewelry and a certain amount of cash. The Guo family has reported this incident to the police and requested an investigation.53 Dramatically, because of the power of the newspaper as an authoritative witness, the blackmailer who stole the real necklace is replaced in the public mind by a robber, and his blackmail letter becomes useless. From these examples, we can see that the newspaper has opened a new channel for the exchange of information between people. In detective fiction, it becomes a virtual space of confrontation between the detective and the criminal. News reports could cater both to the public and to a specific group of readers, and the use of newspapers in detective stories reveals the modern characteristics of the interdependent relationship between the consumer and producer of information. The Vicious Gaze: Western Detective Films and Thrillers in Shanghai Cinema Western detective serial films were extremely popular in Republican China. Zhang Biwu remembers: 2.3

52  53 

Li Li, “Translation, Popular Imagination, and the Novelistic Reconfiguration of Literary Discourse, China: 1890s–1920s,” 283. Sun Liaohong, “Zise youyongyi,” 169.

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A few years ago in Shanghai, cinemas competed with each other in screening the latest detective serials. As soon as the title of a film was announced in the newspapers, audiences would scramble to watch it, creating a sensation that drew crowds to the cinemas and emptied the streets. For ordinary urbanites, if they talked about films, ninety percent of the time, it was about detective serials, such as how brave the detective was and how unexpected the plot was … as if there were no other good films worth watching except the detective serials.54 Zhou Shoujuan also comments: “In the dusk, Muqin, Changjue [i.e., Zhou’s friends], and I would often walk along Nanjing Road…. After dinner, we would go to the Ailun Theatre on Haining Road to watch detective serials. Films such as The Purple Mask (1916, translated as Zi mianju) and The Ace of Spades (1925, translated as Sanxin pai) were all good films that we watched in those days. One episode after another, we finished them all.”55 According to Zhang Biwu, each detective serial “has fifteen to sixteen episodes. Each episode contains two parts. Altogether each serial would have over thirty parts.”56 On Monday and Thursday, the theater screened four episodes. It took about one month to finish the whole serial. The content of the serials was invariably about a chivalric detective saving a beautiful girl from gangsters who conspired to steal her fortune.57 Although the criminal was punished in the end, most of the serials vividly depicted how the villains committed the crime. Therefore they were often criticized for their negative social influence.58 When motion pictures were introduced into China, only English subtitles were projected on the screen. Therefore, imported detective serials, which consisted of many action scenes and therefore required comparatively fewer subtitles, were easy for Chinese audiences to understand. As Pan Yihua has observed,

54  55  56  57  58 

Zhang Biwu, “Zhentan changpian zhi shibai,” 5–6. Zhou Shoujuan, “Libailiu yiyu,” 28–29. Zhou Shoujuan, Changjue, and Xiaodie all were translators of Western detective fiction. Zhang Biwu, “Zhentan changpian zhi shibai,” 5. Zhang Biwu, “Zhentan changpian zhi shibai,” 5. Zhang Biwu, “Zhentan changpian zhi shibai,” 5–6. In another essay, when the critic Chi Ping introduces the Chinese detective film Nüzhentan (Female detective) directed by Zhang Shichuan (1890–1954), he also points out that in order to set a good example for the audience, it is better to focus on the intelligence of the detective rather than on descriptions of the criminal’s methods. Chi Ping, “Tan Nüzhentan.”

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The subtle performances and detailed and reasonable plots of famous films are unnecessary in serial films. An uneducated audience, consisting of peddlers, laborers, women, and children, could easily understand the content of serial films without having to give too much thought to them. Moreover, the serials were full of heroes and beautiful women. The audience would therefore consider serial films as their only choice.59 Zhou Shoujuan once cited the serial film The Phantom Bandit to illustrate the extraordinary use of gimmicks in the genre. In this film, police detectives carry out a raid on a gambling house. The rogues quickly hide behind the wall: All the poker cards that were scattered on the table disappeared, while the tables, chairs, and other things moved automatically, coming together to form different pieces of furniture such as a music table, a stand, and chairs for the audience. They arranged themselves in an orderly way with lightning speed. The rogues also reappeared, now disguised as guests and the pianist. With the music, the place looked as if a concert was going on.60 Yingxi xiaoshuo (fiction adapted from film) with a detective as the subject was a by-product of detective serials. Yingxi fiction is a literary genre that “translates” the visual images of film into a fictional narrative that is published concurrently with the release of the film. It is often illustrated with stills from the film. As a substitute for film, yingxi xiaoshuo aims to entertain readers who are unable to watch the film, and provides viewers with a second chance to enjoy the story. During the Republican period, yingxi fiction was very popular and was often published in the supplements of newspapers and magazines. Lu Dan’an (1894–1980) was an important contributor to this genre.61 Haishang shushisheng once used Lu’s Dushou (The poison hand) as an example to explain the process of writing a yingxi story: “[Lu Dan’an] brought his perceptive mind and dexterous writing skill to work. After he watched one episode, he translated it into a story the next day and published it in Dashijie bao (Great world daily). In about one hundred days or so, he had completed sixty thousand words. 59  60  61 

Pan Yihua, “Jinnian dianying guanzhong zhi quxiang.” Zhou Shoujuan, “Shuo zhentan yingpian.” In 1918, Lu Dan’an wrote the novel Dushou based on the American serials The Hidden Hand (1917) and serialized it in Great World Daily. Because of its popularity, a book version was also published. After that, Lu continued to write detective yingxi fiction such as Heiyi dao (The Shielding Shadow, 1916), Hong shoutao (The Red Glove, 1918), and Laohu dang (The Tiger’s Trail, 1919).

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His book was finished just as the serial came to an end.”62 In her analysis of Lu’s yingxi detective novels, Fang Ying points out that compared with classic detective fiction, this kind of literature imitates the cinematic approach of quick cutting between different scenes. It has a tight structure and fast pace. It also uses onomatopoeia to imitate sound effects, and emphasizes in particular the fight scenes in the film.63 Since many Republican detective writers were fans of cinema, Western films became a direct source of inspiration for their writings. Sometimes they borrowed images of film actors when designing their characters. For example, in the Li Fei series by Lu Dan’an, the twenty-year-old detective Li Fei is described as “wearing a pair of tortoise-shell glasses like Harold Lloyd.”64 Sun Liaohong even imagines that his Lu Ping “has a face like Basil Rathbone,” the actor who played Sherlock Holmes in a popular series of British films that began to appear in 1939.65 The use of gimmicks common in serial films was also adopted in Chinese detective stories. For example, in Zhang Biwu’s The Rivalry of Two Masters, Huo Sang and Bao Lang literally fall into a trap after their arrival at the gangster leader Luo Ping’s mansion: [Luo Ping] had set a trap by the right side-entrance and covered it up, making it no different from an ordinary floor. As soon as someone stepped on it, he would fall into the hole below. Inside the trap there was a small battery. Although it was a dry cell battery, it was powerful. It was connected by an electric wire to an electric bell behind Luo Ping’s clothes rack in his room. On the battery there was an electric needle. When pressed, it produced a signal that would be sent on the wire to the bell. As it turns out, Huo Sang falls into the trap and ends up sitting on a special spring-loaded chair: “at the slightest pressure on the spring, the arms on both sides would snap around the waist of the one sitting on the chair.”66 Lastly, Chinese detective fiction writers such as Sun Liaohong often turned Western thrillers and horror movies into plot elements in their own stories, as a way of showing the power that film had on the psychology of Shanghai urbanities. For example, Frankenstein (1931) was one of the earliest Western 62  63  64  65  66 

Haishang shushisheng, “Xu,” Dushou (Shanghai: Xinmin tushuguan, 1919). Fang Ying, “Lu Dan’an jiqi xiaoshuo yanjiu.” Lu Dan’an, “Yeban zhongsheng,” 8. Sun Liaohong, “Qiechi ji,” 229. Zhang Biwu, Shuangxiong douzhi ji, Banyue 1, no. 3 (1921): 6–8.

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horror movies introduced into China, and its star Boris Karloff (1887–1969) was well known to Chinese audiences. Karloff’s other films, such as The Old Dark House (1932) and The Mummy (1932), were shown in China too. Frequently in Sun Liaohong’s detective stories, the protagonists feel upset after watching a Karloff film. In the story “The Ghost’s Hand,” for instance, after watching the film The Mummy’s Hand (1940) a woman feels a strange hand touching her neck while she sleeps. Her husband invites Huo Sang to solve the case, but the Huo Sang that shows up is in fact Lu Ping in disguise.67 Lu Ping finds out that the criminal wanted to steal the necklace that the husband wears because it can open a box full of precious jewelry. But because the couple switched their positions on the bed that night, the criminal ended up touching the wife’s neck by mistake. The story vividly portrays the wife’s neurosis, which is caused by urban entertainment. She used to be a woman with “a simple mind” when she was growing up in the countryside. After marrying, she moved to Shanghai and the horror movie became her earliest exposure to the stimuli of metropolitan life. The film The Mummy’s Hand is about a two-thousand-year-old mummy in an Egyptian pyramid. Although the film is pure entertainment, “the setting, sound effect, camera angles and the makeup of the cadaver surely stimulated the audience’s senses greatly.”68 Moreover, in the story, the wife’s maid recounts an urban legend about a handprint found on the chest of the corpse of an evil litigation master (songshi). Frightened, the wife does not dare to sleep in the evening. “The horrible film and horrible conversation with the maid seemed to have been distilled into a liquid and injected into her veins, so that every drop of her blood seemed to be mixed with the elements of horror.”69 To ease her anxiety, the wife takes a tranquilizer. But in her sleep, she feels a hand touching her: She clearly felt the cold, rigid fingers of the hand, and the sharp nails at the fingertips. All the horrible memories immediately came together. The mummy’s face in the pyramid floated in front of her eyes, the terrifying hand of the ghost that struck dead the evil litigation master seemed to be moving closer to her chest. She was bathed in a cold sweat. She wanted to shout, but couldn’t make a sound. Was it a nightmare? Or was it real?70

67  68  69  70 

The film The Mummy’s Hand is the sequel to The Mummy (1932). Sun Liaohong, “Gui shou,” 453. Sun Liaohong, “Gui shou,” 445–456. Sun Liaohong, “Gui shou,” 446–457.

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As this passage illustrates, the Western horror movie adds a visual element to the onset of the wife’s neurosis. The title “The Ghost’s Hand” alludes to the criminal’s hand, but it could also be read as a symbol of the assault of the uncanny urban experience on a formerly rural woman. “The Bloody Paper Man” (1942) is another story that refers to Karloff’s films. A tale that exposes the dark past of a capitalist in Shanghai, it impresses readers with its vivid description of neurasthenia under the stimuli of urban life. Narrated in a flashback, the story tells of a capitalist named Wang Junxi, who used to own an inn in an isolated town in Zhejiang. Covetous of the gold that he saw in a guest’s luggage, Wang framed this guest as a terrorist and he was executed by the police. Wang Junxi travels to Shanghai and uses the gold to become a successful businessman. One day, he attends a lecture on Buddhism and is frightened by its message about karma. Watching a Western horror movie disturbs him even more. Soon, Wang claims to see the ghost of the victim whom he had framed twelve years ago on the stairway and in the garden of his house. Lu Ping, who noticed Wang’s unusual reaction at the lecture, pretends to be a doctor in order to gain entry to Wang’s house. To his surprise, Wang’s wife is the daughter of the man who was framed by Wang twelve years ago. It turns out that Wang once revealed his secret crime when he was drunk. In order to take revenge, Wang’s wife asked her brother to disguise himself as the ghost and haunt her house to frighten Wang. She also added slow-acting poison to Wang’s food, which finally killed him. Sun Liaohong used many psychological terms to describe Wang’s neurasthenia, such as hysteria, somnambulism, and depression. The horrifying scenes in The Man They Could Not Hang (1939, Zaishi fuchou ji in Chinese) lead to Wang’s breakdown. In the film that Wang Junxi watched, an unemployed man who has been framed by five villains is arrested and sentenced to death. An old doctor retrieves the man’s corpse and revives him. This man then begins to seek revenge on his persecutors.71 What impresses Wang Junxi most are the film’s sensational scenes, such as the monologue delivered by the falsely accused scientist on the electric chair. As violin music fills the prison, “every nerve of the audience feels as if it is being pierced by a needle.” Moreover, after the scientist revives, the film includes a close-up of him staring at his enemies:

71 

Sun Liaohong’s summary of the plot of this Western film differs slightly from the original. In the original film, a doctor is obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. Someone reports the doctor to the police and he is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death. He vows revenge on the judge and the jury before he is executed. The doctor’s assistant recovers the doctor’s corpse and revives him. The doctor then proceeds to wreak revenge.

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In this short close-up shot, he seems to hold all the evil and resentful feelings in the world in his eyes and project them all onto his enemies! As a result, not only do the bad guys on the screen look nervous; even the audience sitting in the dark was gripped by the same feeling of anxiety.72 This scene reminds Wang Junxi of his criminal past. His victim, when being executed, also shouts at the crowd in a similar manner: At the moment when he shouted out the most malicious curse, his eyes turned into two angry fireballs. His tears had been burned away. He turned his vicious snake-like gaze on the faces of the crowd, calmly searching through them one by one. Finally, his eyes stopped on the face of Wang Aling [which is Wang Junxi’s real name]—we cannot be sure whether this condemned man did it on purpose or by accident—but Wang Aling felt that the eyeballs of this man who was going to die seemed to hold all the evil and resentful feelings in the world and he was projecting all of them onto him!73 Such a vicious gaze appears again in the second part of the story. When Wang Junxi feels uneasy and nervous at his house, he sees that pair of eyes again on the stairway: Under the intertwining of sunlight and lamp light, there was a man with a deadly face. Pallid and bloodless, that face looked as if a thin layer of plaster had been smeared on it. It was a familiar yet frightening face, a face that he wouldn’t easily forget even in his dreams, especially when this person had a pair of vicious eyes, shining with a dark green light like a viper, which, at this instant, were glaring at him resentfully.74 These two vivid passages illustrate how Sun Liaohong interwove sensual experiences into his plot and established an intertextual connection between a Western horror movie and his detective story. In Wang Junxi’s mind, the grotesque spectacle is tied together with his own criminal past, giving him terrible illusions. As a result, “his whole body felt as if it had been put into an icehouse. Cold sweat came out from his pores, sticking to his underwear.”75 In the 1930s 72  73  74  75 

Sun Liaohong, “Xuezhiren,” 8. Sun Liaohong, “Xuezhiren,” 17–18. Sun Liaohong, “Xuezhiren,” 22–23. Sun Liaohong, “Xuezhiren,” 23.

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and 1940s, when film-watching gradually became part of the lifestyle of modern Shanghai residents, Sun Liaohong made the earliest attempt to capture the metropolitan uncannily produced by this form of Western entertainment and imagined how such a modern visual stimulus could affect the daily life of urbanites. 3

The Transnational Imagination of Republican Detective Fiction

Having originated in America and Europe, detective fiction quickly spread globally and achieved worldwide popularity. Even in the case of Republican writers who had never been abroad, their experience of reading and translating Western detective fiction fired their transnational imagination. They considered themselves to be members of the imagined community of global detective literature because they wrote fan fiction in response to the Western detective canon or used Westerners as protagonists in native detective stories. In this section, I will use Cheng Xiaoqing’s Sherlock Holmes fan fiction story “A Submarine Design” and Shi Zhecun’s short thriller “The Haunted House” as examples to discuss the transnational imagination and intertextuality with Western detective stories in Republican-era Chinese detective fiction. Imagining Europe with the Help of Sherlock Holmes: “A Submarine Design” by Cheng Xiaoqing In 1917, unsatisfied with the endings of Leblanc’s stories, in which Arsène Lupin always outwits Sherlock Holmes, Cheng Xiaoqing, who was still a young writer, decided to write a piece of fan fiction called “Juezhi ji” (Battle of wits) in defense of Holmes’s honor. In the preface, Cheng Xiaoqing expressed his firm intent to defend Holmes’s reputation: 3.1

I am not sure whether Leblanc did it on purpose, but it is surely his mistake to have scornfully distorted the history and reputation of Holmes. In his stories, Holmes is not as brave as a tiger, but rather as stupid as a pig. True, Mr. Doyle generously forgave him at that time … but I, as a Holmes reader, feel indignant! Cheng’s “Battle of Wits” was serialized in issues 9 and 10 of the literary journal Xiaoshuo daguan (The grand magazine). Written in classical Chinese, the story includes two separate cases: “Zuanshi xiangquan” (The diamond necklace) and “Qianting tu” (A submarine design), which take place in Paris and

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London respectively. In 1942, Cheng Xiaoqing rewrote “Battle of Wits” in the modern vernacular and serialized it in the literary journal Ziluolan (The violet) from 1943 to 1944, under the title “Longhu dou: Fu’ermosi yu Yasenluoping de bodou” (The dragon-tiger combat: The fight between Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin). Cheng’s fan fiction has two noteworthy features. The first is its intertextual relationship with Conan Doyle’s and Leblanc’s detective stories. “Battle of Wits” is narrated from the first-person perspective of Dr. Watson. As a translator of Western detective fiction, Cheng demonstrated his familiarity with the narrative techniques of this genre. Second, Cheng’s stories show how he imagined Europe, as they include characters from the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, France, Britain, and Germany. Cheng Xiaoqing himself never went abroad. Apart from the fact that he learned English from an American at Suzhou, there is no record of him associating with other Westerners. Cheng’s image of foreigners is largely drawn from his reading of Western works. In his fan fiction, Cheng Xiaoqing not only imitated the narrative and investigative techniques he found in Western detective stories, but more importantly he accepted the British imperial ideology present in Conan Doyle’s works, which belittles the non-British as rude or cunning. Let us look at Cheng Xiaoqing’s “A Submarine Design,” which is set in London.76 In the story, a Russian expert intends to sell his submarine design to Britain, but spies of various nations all want to steal the design. After kidnapping the expert, Arsène Lupin disguises himself as the man and sells his design to the British government for a profit. In the end, Sherlock Holmes realizes Lupin’s trick and catches him at the airport. The espionage activities and military secrets narrated in the story suggest that it is based on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story “The Naval Treaty,” which Cheng Xiaoqing had once translated into classical Chinese. 76 

“The Diamond Necklace,” Cheng Xiaoqing’s first story about the rivalry between Holmes and Lupin, is narrated by Dr. Watson and mainly takes place in Paris. In that story, Lupin challenges Holmes to come to Paris to retrieve a diamond necklace that he has stolen from a duke. Holmes manages to acquire a map of Lupin’s hideout. Lupin promises to return the necklace if Holmes agrees not to arrest him and to take the ship back to London. They make a deal and the necklace is safely returned. But in fact Holmes had sent the map to the head of French police before he boarded the return ship, and Lupin and his team are arrested. Holmes does not break his oath because the arrest takes place when he is in London. Kinkley considers Cheng’s arrangement of Holmes’ victory to be unwitting and ungentlemanly. He argues that this plot expresses Cheng Xiaoqing’s support of moral ethics above the law. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 227–235.

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Due to Cheng’s unfamiliarity with the administration of the British government, however, there are some logical gaps in “A Submarine Design,” including the hasty decision on the part of the British government to purchase the submarine design for a huge amount of money. But as a translator of Sherlock Holmes stories, Cheng knew the geography and customs of London well. In this story, Cheng accurately names streets and hotels to strengthen the realistic effect. As Leo Lee points out, Cheng Xiaoqing takes “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson from Baker Street in the West District to Paddington Road in the North District, and back to the West District again. [We will see that this route] is correct even if we check a real London map.”77 The influence of the Western detective canon on “A Submarine Design” is evident in three aspects. First, Cheng consciously regarded himself as a member of the global readership of detective fiction and took the initiative to defend the esteem and authority of Sherlock Holmes. For example, when Dr. Watson learns of Lupin’s arrival in London, he is worried that Holmes’s reputation will be ruined if he loses to his rival: “What will London,” Watson says, “no, what will all of England, or the whole world think of my friend?” In Cheng’s version, Lestrade, the inspector of New Scotland Yard whom Cheng borrows directly from Conan Doyle’s stories, considers Lupin “an enemy of the whole society” on an international scale, even though Maurice Leblanc may never have intended Arsène Lupin to pose a global threat.78 Phrases such as “the whole world,” “the whole society,” and “on an international scale” used by Cheng Xiaoqing indicate that he not only respected Sherlock Holmes as a British hero, but also as the greatest authority in the genre of detective fiction on the global level. Second, regarding his method of detection, Cheng Xiaoqing retains Holmes’s style of solving mysteries through physical clues. For example, when Holmes meets the Russian (actually Lupin in disguise) at a hotel, he deduces that the man must have stopped in Paris because his leather shoes with their very narrow toe are the latest Parisian fashion. Cheng inserted a few urban details in the plot. For example, Sherlock Holmes concludes that Lupin will leave London by plane because a man wearing the uniform of an airline delivered a letter to the hotel where Lupin stayed:

77  78 

Lee, “Fu’ermosi zai Zhongguo,” 13. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 167.

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Turner also gave me a clue—the most important and direct clue. He told me that today at 11 o’clock a man in a yellow uniform and a cap with a red brim brought a letter on thin cardboard to Morgen. Watson, do you know what company men dressed like that belong to? They are the messengers of the European Airplane! Thus, what else could he have delivered but airplane tickets?79 When Cheng Xiaoqing wrote this work in 1917, airplanes were rare in China. But in the story, he used the flight schedule published in the newspaper as a crucial clue to capture Lupin. Sherlock Holmes remembers that the Times was on the table in Lupin’s hotel room. In that newspaper there was an advertisement for airplane tickets. Based on that, Holmes deduces the exact departure time of Lupin’s plane: Today at two o’clock, there is an airplane flying from London to Rome— it goes three times a week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. (I have to add that at that time the airline was still in its testing stage. The flight schedules were limited.) If Lupin misses this flight, he will have to wait until next Tuesday; he would have to stay in London for three more days, which would be too dangerous.80 By the time that Holmes finds out the truth, it is already 1:35 P.M., so Holmes gets behind the wheel of “a seven-cylinder official car” and rushes to the airport. After a gunfight with Lupin’s accomplice, Holmes succeeds in capturing Lupin before he boards the airplane: “The chugging sound of the plane engine pierced the sky. The delayed plane finally took off.”81 Third, Cheng’s story describes Europeans of different nationalities. His characters include an inspector from New Scotland Yard called Turner, who “was a muscular man of medium height. A red nose and two black and thick eyebrows were the signature marks on his brown face.”82 Two German women are suspected of being spies: “One was a twenty-four-year-old lady called Mrs. Olgaine, whose dead husband was a steel baron from Hamburg. The other was the stage star Florence, who was only seventeen years old.”83 A missing patient claims to be a Norwegian: “His accent was unnatural. It sounded Germanic.”84 The hotel 79  80  81  82  83  84 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 169. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 179–180. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 156. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 144. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 147. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 148.

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owner Johnson is described as follows: “He was a short and small man over sixty years old. Although there were few hairs on his balding head, he still used hair cream. He had a thin face like a monkey with two jittery and mysterious eyes.”85 In Room 202 lives a Russian, who was very tall and strong. His hazelnut-colored hair was thick and messy, which indicated that he had not combed it yet after waking up. He had a dark face with a thick moustache like wild grass, which is typical of the Slavs…. He was dressed completely in black, which was rare in London and marked him as a foreign visitor at first sight…. He seemed to know nothing about British etiquette. He didn’t ask for Turner’s name or mine, nor did he invite us to sit down. He just answered my friend [Holmes]’s questions, ignoring all else.86 A Dutchman lives in Room 201, “a young man with red hair and a dark face with roughly hewn features and a pair of dull eyes as if he had not slept enough…. He spoke even worse English than the Russian…. His manners were even worse.”87 The female owner of the Mason Apartments is about “sixty years old, with wrinkled skin and white hair.” As seen through her eyes, Mr. Morgan, an accomplice of Lupin, “was a young man with a clear complexion, a pair of lively dark eyes, and a head of beautiful golden hair.”88 Lestrade of New Scotland Yard “had an aquiline nose and a square face and wore a thin grey coat.” The Duke “had white-grey hair [and was] tall and thin.” His right hand was “white, soft, and plump.”89 These physical descriptions show how Cheng imagines Europeans of different countries who vary in age, sex, and class. He also manages to differentiate nationalities by their accents. Meanwhile, Cheng’s imagination also exhibits biases, as non-British foreigners, old men with little education, and women are generally depicted negatively. They are slovenly dressed, know little about British manners, speak broken English, have the habit of gambling, are good at disguises, and are cunning and untrustworthy. Jon Thompson has analyzed the stereotypes in Sherlock Holmes stories and argues that these negative characterizations are indicative of Doyle’s British imperial ideology. He observes that in Conan Doyle’s detective fiction, “once individuals are designated as 85  86  87  88  89 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 150. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 152–154. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 168–169. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 173–174. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 188–190.

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cultural ‘others’ by virtue of being foreign, lower-class, or simply female, they are scarcely characterized at all or are only handled in the most stereotypical fashion.”90 Thompson’s observation also seems applicable to Cheng Xiaoqing’s fan fiction. In other words, when Cheng Xiaoqing wrote this story, he not only imitated the narrative style of Sherlock Holmes stories but also accepted Doyle’s imperial ideology to such a degree that in his tale too, “characterization is replaced by an assumption of inferiority.”91 But unlike Conan Doyle, who wrote international disputes into “The Naval Treaty,” Cheng Xiaoqing on the whole avoided politics in this piece of fan fiction. To be sure, when Lupin disguises himself as a Russian, he claims that he escaped from Russia because of its corrupt politics: “Those men in power are dominated by selfishness and jealousy. They have ruined everything. At first I had thought of sending [the submarine design], which cost me nine years of research, to our own government. But even before we got into any discussion, they asked me to pay a large bribe first.”92 Although it might seem that Cheng Xiaoqing used this passage to indirectly criticize political corruption in China, when the real Russian appears at the end of the story, he denies that large-scale corruption afflicts his government. Rather, he explains his actions as a response to the threat posed by another individual: “His motivation to sell the submarine design is different from what Lupin had made up. He said that there was a powerful man in his own government who conspired to steal his invention. That’s why he had to escape with the design.”93 Similarly, Lupin snatches the submarine design merely because of his personal vendetta against Sherlock Holmes. Cheng’s plot therefore skirts the complexity of international politics, and his fan fiction is an entertaining account of a battle of wits between Holmes and Lupin that contains little social critique. 3.2 Hearts of Darkness: “The Haunted House” by Shi Zhecun In modern Chinese literature, Shi Zhecun is regarded as a pioneer for two reasons. First, he is “the first modern Chinese writer to have consciously used Freudian theory in order to bring out an undercurrent of sexual obsession in his fictional landscape.”94 Second, Shi’s short stories are known for their intertextual connections with Western literary materials. These two characteristics are illustrated in Shi’s short story “The Haunted House” (1933), 90  91  92  93  94 

Thompson, Fiction, Crime, and Empire, 69. Thompson, Fiction, Crime, and Empire, 69. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 161. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Longhu dou,” 202. Lee, Shanghai Modern, 154.

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the only crime story that Shi wrote. Featuring Westerners as the central characters, this thriller centers on three mysterious suicides in a Dutch-style cottage on Gordon Road in Shanghai’s International Settlement. Compared to contemporary detective fiction, “The Haunted House” is an experimental work: there is no detective at the center of the story, and the truth is revealed bit by bit through newspaper reports, diaries, interviews, and judicial confessions, all of which show Shi’s indebtedness to the Western gothic tradition and Western detective stories, especially those by Edgar Allan Poe. The documents cited in the story are said to have been written in different languages such as English, Russian, and French, but the narrator who quotes them has translated all of them into Chinese. Structurally, “The Haunted House” is composed of four parts, and the story spans eleven years. Imitating Poe’s narrative in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” which incorporates newspaper reports into its account of an investigation, the first part starts with a report from the Shanghai English newspaper Yingwen Hubao (Shanghai gazette) in 1919: within one year, three young foreign wives have hanged themselves one by one in a mansion located in a Shanghai suburb. The first victim, Katherine, was the wife of Vladinckii, a Russian jewelry merchant. After Katherine’s death, Vladinckii moves downstairs and sublets the room upstairs to an Italian couple, Mr. and Ms. Mohalini. Mr. Mohalini is a musician, and Ms. Mohalini, a Romanian princess, becomes the second victim. The third victim, Marie, is the wife of James, an American who came to Shanghai to work at the Shanghai Gazette as a journalist and rented Vladinckii’s room for three months. After his colleagues warn him about the two previous deaths, James decides that he and his wife will move out when the lease terminates. But suddenly, Marie mysteriously hangs herself. The second part of the story is set nine years later. In July 1928, Vladinckii is arrested at Harbin for selling fake jewelry and dies of an illness four months later. A journalist from Paris accidentally receives Vladinckii’s diary during his visit to Harbin. He translates it into French and sends it to Paris for publication. In the diary, Vladinckii explains Katherine’s and Ms. Mohalini’s deaths in 1919: he insists that Katharine committed suicide because she was ill, and admits to having an affair with Ms. Mohalini and suspects that she hung herself because of the inauspiciousness that surrounds the house. The third part takes place in December 1928. Mr. Mohalini visits the Leblanc Law Firm at Harbin after reading Vladinckii’s diary in the Parisian newspaper. Mr. Mohalini believes that his wife hung herself out of shame after she was tricked into buying fake jewelry from Vladinckii. Mr. Mohalini wants to sue Vladinckii, but the lawyer Leblanc informs him that the Russian died three weeks earlier and advises him to remain silent for the sake of his wife’s reputation. The final part of the

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tale unfolds in San Francisco in May 1930. James, the American, turns out to be a serial killer who has murdered five wives. He confesses to staging the suicide of his third wife, Marie, in Shanghai in 1919 in order to embezzle her property. He made use of the mansion’s reputation as a haunted house to cover up his crime. Unlike the objective truth that detective fiction usually reveals, materials such as the diary and confession in Shi’s “The Haunted House” are highly subjective. The true circumstances of these three women’s deaths are not clear. The personality of Vladinckii as revealed in his own diary in part 2, and Mr. Mohalini’s impression of him in part 3 seem contradictory in many ways, which leads readers to wonder whether Vladinckii’s wife Katherine committed suicide or was murdered. The credibility of these subjective texts is further undermined when they are retold and translated into other languages, heightening the possibility that their content has been distorted. Such emphasis on subjective narrative, and on the distortion of information when it is communicated and distributed transculturally, transnationally, and translinguistically, is a unique characteristic of this story. Another distinctive feature of “The Haunted House” as a crime story is that it refers to the criminal instinct. As a modernist writer, Shi Zecun is known for his use of the Freudian concepts of the death instinct and libido to explore criminal psychology. Shi chose to set “The Haunted House” in the International Settlement, and as in the case of his historical stories set in ancient China, the exotic setting allowed him to “pursue the theme of eroticism without the need for verisimilitude or fear of moral censure.”95 The abnormal psychology of the two criminals in “The Haunted House”—Vladinckii and James—is explained through a diary and a confession. Vladinckii’s wife Katherine has pulmonary disease, which worsens before they move to the haunted house. According to Vladinckii’s diary, he often sees a female shadow with a rope about her neck in their room: “It looked as if the woman has hanged herself. The rope, still tied around her neck, came dangling down. Even the bruise from the knot was clearly visible.”96 Later he discovers several ropes in his house, which he “picked up in disgust, tore up, and threw in the trash bin.” Two days later, Katherine is found hanged in suspicious circumstances. The illusion of the hanged woman and the rope that Vladinckii keeps seeing can be regarded as a psychological foreshadowing of the murder he is about to commit. Moreover,

95  96 

Lee, Shanghai Modern, 156. Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 194–195.

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one day before Katherine’s death, Vladinckii writes in his diary that she has tried to persuade him to give up selling counterfeit jewelry.97 This detail may suggest that Vladinckii chooses to murder his wife to stop her from revealing his illegitimate business practices. After Mr. and Ms. Mohalini move into the upstairs room, Vladinckii is attracted to Ms. Mohalini. In an attempt to transfer his desire to another person, he first rapes his simple-minded Chinese maid. After that, he seduces Ms. Mohalini with fake jewelry. But he deceives himself into believing that it was Ms. Mohalini who seduced him: God, please forgive me! In such an unavoidable situation, I could not stop myself. Why didn’t she follow him [her husband] to the concert? Why did she come downstairs to ask to borrow books from me? Why didn’t she leave immediately after she borrowed the books? Why did she ask me to shut the windows facing the main road and pull down the shade on the excuse that the wind was too much for her? … Under the circumstances, it seemed I had to comfort her. Yes, it seemed I had to show her my love.98 In Vladinckii’s diary, the descriptions of his crime and sexual desire remain implicit, but in James’s confession, the criminal instinct to kill is directly shown. While they were still living in the United States, James was attracted to the idea of murdering his wife Marie. As he confesses, Whenever I hugged and kissed her, a stench of blood seemed to rise in my heart…. It was not necessary to think about how I would take over her fortune—if only just for my fervent love, I should strangle her. This desire grew gradually in my mind. Unconsciously I became a merciless killer for love and money.99 Driven by his criminal impulse, James takes Marie from America to Shanghai and rents the legendary haunted house to cover his crime. Before he murders his wife, he feels torn inside:

97  98  99 

Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 198. Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 204–205. Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 219.

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From Marie’s innocent sleeping posture, I saw the demonic looks of my two previous women [i.e., the two wives whom he had killed previously]. Therefore, a bullfighter’s blood coursed through every vein of my body…. When I came to again, I totally regretted [what I had done]. Marie truly loved me, and I … I too loved her; why could I not stop myself from doing evil?100 Republican-era detective writers were usually concerned with the moral influence of literature. As a result, few of them depicted the criminal instinct from the perspective of the criminal.101 Shi Zhecun’s “The Haunted House” is an exception and explicitly touches on the issue of repressed sexual desire. Leo Lee has noted the intertextual relationships between Shi Zecun’s works and Western fiction. “Most of his experimental stories,” Lee states, “were not simply inspired by but literally constructed on the Western works he had read.”102 There are many indications of intertextuality with Western detective fiction in Shi’s “The Haunted House.” For example, the first sentence of this story invokes the creator of Sherlock Holmes: “Lord Conan Doyle’s spiritualism has been affirmed in Shanghai by the third sighting of ghosts in the haunted house of Gordon Road.”103 In his diary, Vladinckii notes that the Italian wife is reading detective stories by Arsène Lupin or Edgar Wallace.104 In part 2, Mr. Mohalini visits Leblanc’s law firm in Harbin. And the fact that the last victim’s name is Marie, as well as Shi’s use of newspaper 100  Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 234–225. 101  Some of the detective stories by Zhao Tiaokuang and Xu Zhuodai are narrated from the perspective of criminals. But Zhao adopts this practice to criticize the criminals; he includes no psychological descriptions of the criminal impulse. Xu Zhuodai’s works incorporate didactic messages. In a story called “Fanzui benneng” (Criminal instinct), a man suddenly hijacks an armored car on the road, then hijacks an airplane to escape. In the end, he finds himself in an asylum. It turns out that all of these incidents are hallucinations he experienced after an automobile accident. The doctor explains: “Xinquan was run over by a car on the road. At the time of the accident, Xinquan happened to see an armored car driving by, which thereby stimulated his criminal instinct—this is an instinct that everyone has—and as a result, he came up with the strange hallucinations. He wondered whether anyone could hijack the armored car in broad daylight. Because his desire was unleashed, he walked toward the center of the road. He was then suddenly knocked off his feet by a car coming from behind him. All that happened afterward came about because his logical reasoning had been interrupted. The idea hidden in his mind was then subconsciously guided to its logical conclusion. This is an excellent example of the workings of psychology.” Xu Zhuodai, “Fanzui benneng,” 17. 102  Lee, Shanghai Modern, 154. 103  Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 188. 104  Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 201.

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and criminal confessions in his narrative, remind us of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” and his gothic style. The “transnational” nature of “The Haunted House” is reflected not only in its intertextuality but also in its geographic settings. The location of the haunted house in the Shanghai International Settlement makes it a hub that connects different regions of the West and the East, including Hong Kong (the fake jewelry that the Russian sells is from Hong Kong), Damascus (the source of his fake agates), Harbin, Paris, and San Francisco. The Shanghai past thereby becomes a haunted memory of foreigners from different countries that has unfolded over the years. On the other hand, since Shi intended to write a Shanghai story from the perspective of Westerners, Shanghai in this story is represented as it appears in Western stereotypes: an isolated, degenerate, Oriental criminal paradise full of lies. Although the haunted house is located in the International Settlement, it stands in an isolated, barren place in the suburbs: “Gordon Road was still a road not yet paved with asphalt. It was very inconvenient to come in and out of that place…. On rainy days, this muddy road was hardly walkable.”105 In Shanghai, the health of the Russian’s wife worsens. The Italian Mr. Mohalini picks up bad habits, such as gambling. The American James uses a local superstition to cover up his murder and escape a trial.106 The Chinese characters in this story appear gullible. The Russian Vladinckii despises a Chinese female customer for looking like “a prostitute [who] brought along her lover and spent four hundred yuan on two small pieces of jade. She will never suspect that they are artificial.” James the American laughs at the superstition of his Chinese maid, which makes her his best witness: “She said that in China, the ghost of someone who hangs himself or herself will not find rest. It must find a substitute before it can be reincarnated.” These examples show that when “The Haunted House” imitates the minds of Western colonizers, it also unconsciously incorporates the imperial colonial ideology embedded in Western detective fiction. Ben Singer’s essay “Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism” suggests:

105  Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 192. 106  In “The Haunted House,” the American confesses, “In this way, I would every now and then tell a few supernatural things about this house to my colleagues in the newspaper office. They all knew about it and nobody suspected it was fabricated. Some even said that China is full of ghosts and all sorts of unimaginable mysterious things. If it hadn’t been for making a living, I would not have wanted to come to the dangerous East.” Shi Zhecun, “Xiongzhai,” 223–224.

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Modernity implied a phenomenal world—a specifically urban one— that was markedly quicker, more chaotic, fragmented, and disorienting than in previous phases of human culture. Amid the unprecedented turbulence of the big city’s traffic, noise, billboards, street signs, jostling crowds, window displays, and advertisements, the individual faced a new intensity of sensory stimulation. The metropolis subjected the individual to a barrage of impressions, shocks, and jolts. The tempo of life also became more frenzied, sped up by new forms of rapid transportation, the pressing schedules of modern capitalism, and the ever-accelerating pace of the assembly line.107 My analysis of the urban sensibility of Republican-era Chinese detective fiction confirms Singer’s observation of the metropolitan experience. Chinese writers shared similar views toward the spectacular cosmopolitan city with their Western counterparts. They turned Shanghai modern—represented as novel, mysterious, stimulating, and uncanny—into adventures in reading. The detectives and burglars engage in a battle of wits in a new urban space that can be defined by its architecture, its mass media, or even its transnational character. Through these depictions of cosmopolitan space, Chinese detective fiction writers established a dialogue with Western detective fiction and identified themselves as part of the imagined community of global detective fiction. Sometimes such identification also implies their obedience to the global order depicted in the classical detective fiction of the West. My discussions of Cheng Xiaoqing’s and Shi Zhecun’s works demonstrate how these two texts, which are intertextually linked with Western detective fiction, construct the imaginary of a material modernity or imitate Freudian psychology. Both of them use Westerners as protagonists to design transnational crimes. When they imitate Arthur Conan Doyle, they unconsciously incorporate his imperial mindset and imagine colonial Shanghai and the proper world order as it is canonized in the Holmes tradition. 107  Singer, “Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism,” 72–73.

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Domestic Crimes in Everyday Life While Shanghai has the reputation of having a diverse and rich cuisine, the standard breakfast fare for the people of Shanghai was, and remains, tasteless paofan (made by reheating leftover cooked rice) and pickles. In high fashion, the city led the nation (“the Paris of the East”), but ordinary people seldom purchased clothes off the rack at a fashionable shop. What most Shanghainese wore was made either by the handy housewife (as most of them were) or a Ningbo or Suzhou tailor, whose shop most likely sat right on the corner of the alley. It was also not unusual to see residents returning from a visit to the countryside carrying bundles of clothing with them. While automobiles were found in abundance on the streets of Shanghai, most people had never taken a taxi; for the majority, to ride in a sedan would have been considered a once-in-alifetime experience. Lu Hanchao, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century1

∵

Despite the evidence of intertextuality between Chinese and Western detective fiction in the works of Cheng Xiaoqing and Shi Zhecun, stories with international settings and Western protagonists are relatively few. Most Republican-era Chinese detective stories concern themselves with domestic crimes in which foreigners are not involved, even when they take place in the foreign concessions of Shanghai. Their realistic details of everyday life, however, demonstrate another way of domesticating detective fiction in early twentieth-century China. Through colorful local details including clothing and food, household items, the unique architecture of the residences, life in the Shanghai linong (alley or lane), and polygamous marriages, as well as the influence of the new code of civil law on family relationships, Chinese detective fiction presents a rich source for learning about the daily life and anxieties of Chinese—especially Shanghai urbanites—during the Republican era. 1  Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights, 13–14.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_008

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To be more specific, Chinese detective works of that period capture two particularly noteworthy aspects of everyday life. First, they are witnesses to the transition from traditional feudal practices to the innovations of the Westernized modern period, recording a moment when old and new values coexisted. As Wu Chenghui precisely points out, “At that time, Chinese society exhibited a unique structure of thought. It combined the sediments of the feudal tradition and imported elements of Western civilization, which are reflected in the Huo Sang detective series.”2 Second, Chinese writers were especially concerned with family relationships and domestic disputes. Their detective stories document the social problems caused by the complicated relationships that resulted from polygamous marriages, which were still practiced in those days. This chapter treats the discourse of everyday life in Republican detective fiction in three sections, with special attention to the rivalry between traditional and modern values and the complications of family life. The first section discusses local customs and the ordinary life of Chinese, which combines elements of the old and the new. The second section focuses on domestic crimes in Republican detective stories, including kidnapping, drug use, and cases involving superstition, as well as property disputes in large families practicing polygamy. In the third section, Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang detective stories are used to illustrate how unique features of the living spaces in Shanghai alleys, such as the shikumen (alleyway house) and laohuzao (hot water shop), are incorporated into local detective fiction, and their cultural significance is discussed. 1

Local Clues from Daily Life

Republican-era Chinese detective fiction adopts local details and background to distinguish itself from that of other countries. In order to create a realistic milieu in their narratives, Chinese novelists sought inspiration from the people, their living habits, ideas, and places of activity during the transition from the traditional to the modern period. Below, I will discuss four examples from texts by Yu Tianfen (1881–1937), Zhang Biwu, Zheng Dike,3 and 2  Wu Chenghui, “Cheng Xiaoqing he Huo Sang tan’an,” 19–20. 3  Zheng Dike was a popular fiction writer in Shanghai and served as the chief editor of the detective magazine The Blue Book. He often used the pseudonym Dike. Yung, “Cong zhentan zazhi dao wuda dianying—‘Huangqiu chubanshe’ yu ‘nü feizei Huang Ying’ (1946– 1962),” 324.

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Cheng Xiaoqing to illustrate how Chinese writers incorporated local cultural phenomena into their detective stories. 1.1 Life in Wartime Suzhou: “The White Kerchief Disaster” by Yu Tianfen Yu Tianfen’s status as one of the pioneers of Chinese detective fiction is assured for three reasons. He once claimed to be the first person to write Chinese detective fiction.4 Although this statement is debatable, Yu was certainly one of the earliest writers to delve into this Western genre.5 Second, Yu inserted illustrations into his detective stories to attract readers. After Yu wrote “Meigui nülang” (A girl called rose), he staged some scenes from the story using a few models and took photographs of them. Yu once said: “Western detective stories are seldom published with pictures. Even when they come with pictures, most of the illustrations are drawn based on thoughts of the writer combined with those of the artist. I am afraid that illustrating the story with a real scene is my invention.”6 Third, besides detective stories, Yu Tianfen wrote many stories that take a serious and critical look at social problems. Sometimes his stories are based on real social events in the news.7 Many of them reveal the threat of underground gangs. “Baijin huo” (The white kerchief disaster) was serialized in issues 29–31 of the pulp magazine Red Rose in 1926. It is set during a real historical event, the Anti-Fengtian War (Fan Feng zhanzheng), which lasted from October 1925 to April 1926.8 The war cut off access to Suzhou, a small city near Shanghai, and the only way to leave the city was by boat with the permission of the police. Inspired by the historical circumstances that confined Suzhou’s residents in the isolated city, Yu Tianfen wrote a story about a murder and a theft. To enhance the tale’s realism, Yu resorted to his usual practice of including photographs staged in genuine settings, such as local festivals and a hotel room. 4  Yu Tianfen, “Baijin huo,” in Liu Xiang’an, ed., Zhongguo zhentan xiaoshuo zongjiang, 226. 5  Yu started to publish detective stories in 1915. The magazine Saturday published two of his short stories, “Yanying” (Shadow of cigar smoke), in no. 68, 18–23, and “Liushaotou” (The tip of a willow tree branch), in no. 69, 22–25. 6  Yu Tianfen, “Baijin huo,” 227. 7  For example, in the story “Duzhi canbao” (The miserable revenge of the poisonous water), Yu states that it is based on a real event that took place at Wuxi in September 1918. Yu Tianfen, “Duzhi canbao,” 31. 8  The Anti-Fengtian War, also known as the Guominjun-Fengtian War (Guo-Feng zhanzheng), was the civil war between the Republic of China in southern China and the Beiyang government in northern China.

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As “The White Kerchief Disaster” begins, the first-person narrator happens to visit Detective Jin Diefei at his office one day and hears about a case of theft: Mr. Jia has come to seek Detective Jin’s help in finding a diamond wrapped in a white silk kerchief, which was stolen from him when he was visiting a big square in Suzhou on the day of the Chinese Lantern Festival and looking at the booths. Because of the war, the thief is unable to leave Suzhou. Nor can he sell the diamond, as nobody has the money to buy it. Detective Jin Diefei accepts Jia’s case. Later someone is found murdered in a hotel, with Jia’s missing white kerchief nearby. Jia therefore becomes a suspect. After investigating, Detective Jin learns that the victim was killed during a conflict within an underground gang. Jia’s diamond had been replaced with a fake one by his neighbors, which leads Detective Jin to solve another case that concerns fraudulent jewelry. The story attracts readers with its realistic depiction of everyday life in wartime Suzhou. Among the many facets of life touched upon in the story, there are descriptions of a peddler under a tree selling Chinese medicine made from pears, people playing poker and mahjong in a hotel, a patrolman carrying both a traditional broadsword and Western guns, women taking long treks into the mountains to pray at the temple during the Chinese New Year, and opium smokers who customarily drink tea before taking opium at nine in the morning. Telephones were already in use in those days but service was cut off by the war. In terms of larger issues, the story also refers to the call to boycott Japanese products, the disturbances caused by underground gangs, and the various kinds of folk entertainment seen during the Chinese Lantern Festival. Illustrated with photographs, these realistic depictions of customs, habits, and traditions exhibit a mixed urban-village lifestyle in Suzhou, a typical Chinese city in southern China that was gradually being integrated into Western modernity and yet still preserved the folk customs of the Chinese countryside. Modern Lifestyles and Outdated Customs: the “Domestic Detective” Tales of Zhang Biwu Zhang Biwu wrote over fifty cases in his “Song Wuqi, Domestic Detective” series. These short stories were published in magazines such as Banyue (The half moon), Hongzazhi (Red magazine), Kuaihuo (Happy), Zhentan shijie (Detective world), and Ziluolan (The violet). In “Lianju zhong de duzhen” (A poisoned needle in a vanity case), when the client asks why Song Wuqi’s business has recently improved, Song answers: “In the heartless and cruel world of today, the Chinese family system is caught in conflicts between old and new. Many strange cases naturally occur within the family.”9 Song Wuqi’s response 1.2

9  Zhang Biwu, “Lianju zhong de duzhen,” 1.

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sums up the main characteristics of this series. Employing relatively short and simple plots, the “Song Wuqi, Domestic Detective” series tells didactic stories of domestic crimes. Zhang Biwu intended to use these detective stories to introduce the modern lifestyle and criticize outdated customs. Typical outdated customs include foot binding, superstition, and the use of drugs. In the introduction, I discussed the practice of foot binding using the example of “Traces of Bound Feet.” In that story, Detective Song observes small footprints at the crime scene and concludes that they were left by a woman from northern Jiangsu, because only in those underdeveloped areas of China did women still practice foot binding. Following this clue, Song investigates the friends of the victim and captures the real criminal. Superstition is also frequently attacked in this series. Thieves often take advantage of their victims’ superstitious beliefs. For example, in “Huyi” (Suspicion of a fox), a wealthy family finds that ancient scrolls in its collection are often missing. Moreover, they receive short notes stating that “I have borrowed [the scroll that is missing] and will return it in a few days,” signed “The Fox.” The wife in this family is superstitious. She does not report the incidents to the police and decides to pay obeisance to the fox with food and candles. Detective Song Wuqi finds out later, however, that the family’s maid and driver are the thieves. Song Wuqi warns the wife that the capture of these thieves is only a temporary solution to her problem, and that she must give up her superstitious beliefs.10 Drug use is another common social vice. Before Zhang Biwu, many Chinese writers had noted the ubiquity of this problem. For example, in “Morphine— Sherlock Holmes’s Third Case in China,”11 Bao Tianxiao mentions that in 1906, many Shanghainese commonly treated morphine not as a medicine, but as a substitute for opium. Zhang Biwu’s “Song Wuqi, Domestic Detective” series shows that drug use became all the more serious in the 1930s. For example, in “Hongguiwan” (Red devil pill), a businessman suddenly dies in his house. After the investigation, Detective Song finds out that he died of an overdose. It turns out that this man had taken a powerful drug called “Red Devil Pill” with opium during a business trip. Zhang Biwu deliberately pointed out his source for this case to warn readers of the deadly effect of this new drug: “Recently I read of the red pills in a foreign newspaper published in Shanghai. Its English name is ‘Red Devil Pill.’ Translated into Chinese, it is ‘Hongguiwan.’ It is said to be made by mixing heroin, morphine, and cocaine. It is smoked in the same way as opium but is several times more powerful.”12 10  11  12 

Zhang Biwu, “Huyi,” 11. Bao Tianxiao, “Mafei’an—Xieluoke lai Hua di’san’an.” Zhang Biwu, “Hongguiwan,” 12.

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New lifestyles and ideas in Chinese families are also reflected in this series. For example, “Bai pixie” (White leather shoes) depicts the new hobbies that office workers pursue.13 Modern banking is a new profession in China. The husband in the story feels bored with his bank job and decides to look for a diversion. After he returns from a business trip to Suzhou, his wife finds in his luggage a new pair of white woman’s shoes and an intimate photo of her husband with another woman. She suspects that her husband is carrying on a love affair and asks the private detective Song Wuqi to confirm this so that she can file for divorce. The truth is that the husband is a fan of modern drama and has taken up acting as a hobby to dispel the boredom associated with his work in the bank. His wife objects, however, and so he has to go to Suzhou secretly in order to appear in a public performance. The pair of white shoes belongs to the costume of an actress, his partner in the play, whose picture the wife also finds in his luggage. This story not only indicates the popularity of modern drama among Shanghai urbanites, but it also impresses readers with the values of the new woman: the wife demands absolute loyalty from her husband and does not hesitate to seek a divorce when she finds her husband straying from their marriage. Made in China: Local Items in the Detective Stories of Zheng Dike and Cheng Xiaoqing The adoption of Western furniture bears witness to the transition of Chinese society from the traditional to the modern period. During the Republican era, Western furniture was regarded by Chinese as a symbol of modernity and safety while traditional furniture was condemned as hazardous. For example, in “Wuge shilianzhe” (Five lovelorn souls), the first story in the series “Datou zhentan xilie” (The big head detective cases) by Zheng Dike, an antique bed with a history of sixty-five years leads to the tragic death of a bride. “Five Lovelorn Souls” takes place in a big mansion. The groom’s parents insist on putting a rosewood bed, a family heirloom, in the bedroom of the newlyweds for auspicious reasons. But the bride is found murdered in bed on the night of her wedding. It turns out that a criminal hid under the bed. The narrator comments that such a misfortune could have been avoided if the room had been furnished in Western style: 1.3

13 

Zhang Biwu, “Bai pixie.”

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If a new Simmons mattress bed without a mosquito net had been used [in place of the ancient rosewood bed], perhaps such misery could have been avoided. Instead, this auspicious rosewood bed turned out not to be auspicious at all. It was used as a criminal’s hideout. Once he hid under the bed, he could safely escape from detection. Even if he were found out, he could easily say that he was there to take part in the game of “tease the newlyweds.”14 Furthermore, the design of the old-style house also provided hiding places for the criminal: The bed was placed against the west wall. It faces the south window, and was 50 cm away from the north wall, leaving a passageway. There was no bathroom or toilet facilities in a traditional house. The passageway was the most secret and ideal place to put the chamber pot. The murderer got under the bed from the passageway, where he lay in wait for his opportunity without being found out by anyone.15 Among all the Chinese detective fiction writers, Cheng Xiaoqing is recognized as the master in describing local details. Wu Chenghui praises his Huo Sang detective cases thus: “The characters, situations, and incidents are all ‘markers’ of things Chinese. They also bear the imprint of the aura of the foreign concessions of old Shanghai. Although his stories are fictional, they reflect to some extent the social reality at that time.”16 Fan Yanqiao also recognizes the Chineseness of Cheng’s tales: “Most of his Huo Sang detective series exposes the evils of capitalists and local gangs. The aggrieved parties in these cases are people of the lower classes, especially taxi dancers, singing girls, concubines, and day laborers. Their stories are set against the background of a Chinese city. All the items are Chinese. [Huo Sang] is a pure ‘local’ detective.”17 Cheng’s detective fiction has a strong nationalistic flavor. Chapter 4 of this book pointed out that in order to emphasize Huo Sang’s status as a homegrown Chinese detective, Cheng Xiaoqing portrayed him as a loyal consumer of local products. The contrast between local and foreign products serves an ideological purpose. In contrast with the patriotic Huo Sang, the characters targeted by 14  15  16  17 

Zheng Dike, “Datou zhentan tan’an zhiyi: Wuge shilianzhe,” 45. Zheng Dike, “Datou zhentan tan’an zhiyi: Wuge shilianzhe,” 45. Wu Chenghui, “Cheng Xiaoqing he Huo Sang tan’an,” 18. Fan Yanqiao, “Zhentan xiaoshuo,” 243.

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Cheng Xiaoqing’s satire often worship foreign products and have Westernized lifestyles. For example, in “The Purple Letter,” when Huo Sang inspects the murder victim Fu Xianglin at the crime scene, he records the victim’s dress as follows: “His double-layered gown was made of a kind of shimmering blue-gray and purple foreign silk. He wore a pair of foreign brocade shoes of the latest style with a pair of rubber slip-ons outside. His pair of brown-rice-colored silk socks was imported and expensive. Judging from his dress, he was a so-called shaoye (young man) who is an avid consumer.”18 Huo Sang finds out that the murder is the result of a triangular love relationship and feels sad that the victim, who was used to indulging in materialistic consumption, had no bigger ambition than to treat love as his only purpose in life. In another story, “A Ghost in White,” Cheng Xiaoqing describes the capitalist Qiu Risheng as follows: No doubt, the wrinkles on his white, thin face had been covered by a layer of facial cream…. He had come to the stage of life when his hair was beginning to fall out, but he used hair wax so that his thin hair was still able to cover up his head. He wore a well-ironed white Indian silk gown. However, his back was somewhat deformed. On his feet was a pair of silk shoes which had the fashionable shallow round opening…. [On his head was] an expensive Panama hat.19 In these two excerpts, cosmetics, clothing, and accessories are treated negatively as symbols of luxury and consumerism. In addition to promoting local products and attacking materialism, as the “Grand Master of Chinese Detective Fiction” Cheng Xiaoqing pays close attention to the daily life of Shanghai urbanites, subjecting it to cross-cultural comparison. In the story “Swallow of the South,” Huo Sang reminds his assistant Bao Lang: The cultures of the East and the West are different. Their academic systems are also different. They have each their own strengths and weaknesses. When we delve into Western learning, we should incorporate its strengths while discarding its shortcomings. We should not follow it blindly. In “Swallow of the South,” Huo Sang criticizes Bao Lang for imitating Western detective fiction by treating footprints and handprints as the only valid forms 18  19 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Zi xinjian,” 6:146. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:157.

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of evidence. Taking the footprint as an example, Huo Sang argues that Chinese shoes and the places that Chinese people live in are different from those of Westerners. Therefore, footprints can only serve as a supplementary clue: “In the residences of Westerners, because their floor is polished or waxed, the footprint is easily seen. Our Chinese houses are different. Moreover, the shoes we wear have soft soles. Unlike Westerner’s shoes, we don’t have strict measurements of shoe size.”20 Fan Yanqiao expresses his admiration for Cheng Xiaoqing’s careful observations in his detective story Xiangshi (The corpse in a suitcase). In this story, when Bao Lang asks Detective Huo Sang whether they can trace the owner’s address based on the clothes that they found in a suitcase, Huo Sang replies: Ai! Bao Lang, don’t be mistaken! We are Chinese! If we were Western detectives, once we obtained these clothes, of course we could trace their ownership from the tags of the tailor or the laundry marks. We wouldn’t be in trouble as we are now. But you know that Chinese clothes do not have the name of the tailor attached to them.21 Huo Sang finds a clue not in the clothing but in the lock of the suitcase: Most Chinese locks are made of copper. Because of the different qualities of the locks, their prices may vary. All the expensive and well-made locks are marked with the name of the locksmith … after I opened the lock, I checked it carefully. On the top of the lock spring, there is not only the mark of the store, but also the name of a place. The words “Jiading Yuanchang” are engraved on it. “Yuanchang” is the name of the lock store. The two tiny characters of “Jiading” above it of course mean that the copperware store is located in Jiading.22 In these two passages, the words “Chinese” and “Western” are repeated many times, reflecting Cheng’s conscious comparison of the use of clues in Western and Chinese detective fiction. Both clothing and locks are common objects in daily life. Instead of adopting the Western way of finding clues in clothes tags, Cheng pays attention to the details of Chinese locks. With these minor local clues, Cheng successfully enhances the “Chineseness” of his detective stories.

20  21  22 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiangnanyan,” 2:2. Fan Yanqiao, “Zuijin shiwunian zhi xiaoshuo,” 133. Fan Yanqiao, “Zuijin shiwunian zhi xiaoshuo,” 133.

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Family Crimes during the Transitional Period

During the Republican period, critics had different opinions about the fact that most Chinese detective stories were concerned with domestic crimes. For example, Yu Mugu considered such narrowness in subject matter a limitation of Chinese detective fiction: Foreign detective writers have a wide vision…. They seldom write about trivial and boring cases, because the more serious the crime, the more extraordinary the case. Then the detective has to use the utmost of his intelligence and his wisdom to compete with the criminal, creating suspense that goes up and down like waves or hills. Startled, the readers are uncertain as to what will happen next, and their reading interest is thus heightened…. Our detective writers perhaps have not considered this in their writing. Therefore their criminals are petty thieves who play only little tricks. They might call their heroes detectives, but they are really just a different kind of yamen runner.23 I agree with Yu’s observations on the tendency of Republican-era Chinese detective fiction to focus on domestic crimes. Instead of treating it as a disadvantage, however, I argue that the uniqueness of Chinese detective fiction lies precisely in its close relationship with the historical background of a society in transition. 2.1 Everyday Dangers: Worries of the Ordinary Chinese Family In the world of Republican-era Chinese detective stories, kidnappings, threats against the lives of women who travel outside the home, and elopements in the name of free love (as opposed to love relationships initiated and arranged by the parents of the lovers) are the most common types of crime that an ordinary family may face. Most kidnapping cases are related to the wrongdoings of the family member in trouble, which indicates that the threat actually comes from within the family. For example, in “Baoche zhong” (Inside the rickshaw), the son of a wealthy family is kidnapped on the road. Detective Song Wuqi finds out that the son has worked together with the rogues to stage his 23 

Yu Mugu, “Zhentan yigao he chuangzuo de liangmianguan,” 79. The position of yamen runner is lower than that of clerk. As Bradly Reed points out, yamen runners were viewed “simply as menial laborers,” responsible for “carrying out the bulk of all non-clerical tasks associated with county administration as well as serving as one of the primary mechanisms for the enforcement of state authority at the local level.” Reed, Talons and Teeth, 122–123.

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own kidnapping so as to extort a ransom from his father. In “Neiwai jiaogong” (Fighting in and out), a husband disappears one day. His wife suspects that he has been kidnapped. Detective Huo Sang confirms that the husband killed himself because he lost money on the stock market and his wife lost all the family property through gambling. The husband grew desperate and was driven to suicide. Through their detective stories, Chinese writers seem to warn readers of the risks to which women are particularly exposed now that they have gained the freedom to travel outside the home. For example, in “Xiangzhong nüshi” (A female corpse in a box) by Zhang Biwu, the body of an unknown woman is found in a big wooden box in a suburb of Shanghai. After reading about the accident in a newspaper, a man comes to the police, claiming that the victim is his missing wife. Detective Song Wuqi proves that this woman died in a case of mistaken identity.24 According to her husband, the victim was a traditional woman who usually stayed at home. Occasionally, she might accompany him to the cinema or go shopping in the evening. On the day she died, she went out shopping with her husband but had to come home alone. The criminal mistook her for another woman, and he kidnapped and then killed her. In the Huo Sang story “A Case within a Case” by Cheng Xiaoqing, a female doctor is found to have hanged herself at home. Detective Huo Sang concludes that her suicide was motivated by the humiliation of being raped when she went out to see a patient at night. This female doctor is a widow. The records of her house calls in both the daytime and the evening indicate her hectic daily schedule. Although she only made house calls on female patients, because the appointments were made by telephone it was easy for a man to find a woman to place a call for him and deceive the doctor. During the Republican era, free love (i.e., the freedom to choose one’s spouse) gradually became a fashion among young people. There were many discussions in society on the mishaps of free love. For example, in the women’s magazine Linglong, an article called “Misunderstanding Free Love” recounted a real case of a fifteen-year-old girl who eloped with her lover. They were caught and sent to the police station. The author criticizes the rushed decision taken by this young couple: they had no plan for their future and did not know at all what free love really means.25 Chinese detective stories do not object to free love. Bao Lang in Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang series, for example, is married to the woman he chose. But Chinese writers also point out the problems brought about by this new trend. For example, in “Sound of a Parrot” the couple who 24  25 

Zhang Biwu, “Xiangzhong nüshi.” Hu Yulan, “Wujie ziyou lian’ai.”

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marry out of their belief in free love do not actually know each other very well. Growing up, the wife was spoiled by her family. Since her husband cannot satisfy her economic needs after marriage, she files for divorce and her husband commits suicide out of despair. The Huo Sang story “Jiuhou” (After getting drunk) points out that some rogues often take advantage of young women by making use of their naïve fantasies about free love. In a Huo Sang story, a girl of about seventeen is seduced by a ruffian into eloping with him. The girl excuses her action on the basis of free love, but Bao Lang refutes her argument, saying: “Yes, we should support free love. But are there not other elements mixed in with your love? Since you sacrifice everything for love, why are you carrying this bag with you? There are some very valuable things in the bag, aren’t there?”26 “Shi” (Flea) depicts a hypocritical intellectual who uses free love as an excuse to toy with women’s affections. In this story, a lawyer marries a woman of his choosing. But after he goes abroad, he falls in love with the daughter of a banker. His wife succumbs to depression and dies, leaving a letter complaining that there is no provision in the law that will punish her husband for his irresponsible conduct. After reading her letter, Bao Lang questions the results of modern education: “There are many selfish men who treat women as toys. Is it in their nature? Can education and intelligence steer their nature to the right path? Or would they make it even worse? If the nature of these men cannot be set right, does that mean that those weak women with little knowledge would always be in danger? Doesn’t that also mean that so-called true and pure love should give us reason for second thoughts after all?”27 2.2 Domestic Tragedies: Disputes in Big Families Republican detective fiction often features large Chinese families. As Wu Chenghui has pointed out, [In the Huo Sang Detective Series] it is frequent that a case has been under investigation for a long time, many clues have been examined, and more than one criminal has been identified. But after much ado, it comes to pass that a family member is behind it all. Cheng Xiaoqing writes many stories like this. There are similar cases in Sherlock Holmes stories, but most of them are tragedies caused by complicated social relationships. Perhaps Cheng Xiaoqing has his own views of Chinese family structure 26  27 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiuhou,” 13:202–203. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Shi,” 12:190–191.

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and he exposes its real face through detective fiction. With the so-called big families, especially with their many family members, conflicts easily happen and lead to tragedies.28 Among the various types of conflicts that may arise in big families, disputes over property are one of the most common plot devices used in Chinese detective fiction. Many tragedies are caused by a struggle over the legitimate inheritance of an estate, an issue that is often complicated by tensions between traditional Chinese kinship practices and the new civil law instituted during the Republican period. At the same time, these scandals in Chinese feudal families provide indirect testimony to the superiority of the nuclear family unit of modern China. Changchuan’s detective couple Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang, on whom I will elaborate in this section, is a direct demonstration of the ideal marriage relationship, where both parties are encouraged to pursue personal independence and individual freedom. Finally, in Chinese detective fiction, servants often play a crucial role as witnesses to the private affairs of large Chinese families because their position requires that they attend closely to the details of their masters’ lives. This section thus closes with a discussion of three types of servants found in Republican-era Chinese detective fiction and their respective functions in the detection of the crime. 2.2.1 The New Civil Law and Traditional Systems of Adoption In the late Qing period, the traditional family system saw a gradual decline. From 1919 to 1930, the government promulgated the complete Civil Law of the Republic of China. This new law recognized equality between men and women and set out to reform the traditional Chinese family system, especially on the question of kinship and inheritance. Because of this, all women, including those who were not yet married, were now entitled to inherit their parents’ property. As for concubinage, the new law did not tolerate this practice anymore, but there was no provision for punishing those who continued the practice. Therefore, it was still popular to take concubines. Bigamy was very common in all social classes. To avoid social chaos, the new civil law still acknowledged the legal status of concubines who married before the promulgation of the new law.29 Patriarchal power was also weakened by the new law, which stated that the head of the family could be a man or a woman and could assume that position either by election or by virtue of being the eldest person 28  29 

Wu Chenghui, “Cheng Xiaoqing he Huo Sang tan’an,” 19. Zhang Renshan, “Xunqiu falü yu shehui de pinghen,” 133.

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in the family. As a result, the traditional rule that the family leader had to be a male and that birth order determined eligibility was eliminated.30 Chinese detective fiction played a special role in exposing the financial disputes that arose over inheritance in the traditional family and popularizing the new law. For example, in traditional patriarchal society, if a family had no direct male successor, it would adopt a son from a branch of the family as its legal heir. Although this practice was disallowed by the new civil law, it still existed in many families. In Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang story “Sound of a Parrot,” the male heir Cheng Xiaoguang suddenly dies. It is unclear whether it is a case of murder or suicide. One of the suspects is his cousin, as, in accordance with traditional practice, he will become the next heir of the family if Xiaoguang dies. Cheng Xiaoqing writes, There were three members in Xiaoguang’s father’s generation. The eldest was Chen Mengfu, who was now sick; Xiaoguang’s father Zhonglu was the second. The third brother was called Jishou and had already passed away. Zhonglu and Jishou each had a son. Zhoulu’s son Xiaoguang was the elder of the two. Jishou’s son was called Yulin, and he married Ms. Jiang. Mengfu had a family fortune in the hundreds and thousands but he had no son. Therefore, according to tradition, Xiaoguang became his son. Xiaoguang was thus called “Jiantaozi” [i.e., adopted son], and was entitled to inherit Mengfu’s wealth.31 After hearing this, Bao Lang comments: “This is a messy state of affairs left by patriarchal society. Now, although the new law has abolished the concept of ‘zongtao’ (lineage heir), the old practice of adopting a son from another branch of the family as the successor remains with us and produces many other complicated issues.”32 This story shows that during the Republican period, traditional patriarchal practices were still powerful and people did not necessarily abide by the new law. On the other hand, since the new law denied the legal right of the adopted son as heir, certain people with new ideas used this law to protect their own rights, which made the succession issue even more complicated. For example, in Cheng Xiaoqing’s “Flower in the Fog,” a woman called Gu Lingling is murdered in her bed. Someone has smashed her head in with a rock. In his 30  31  32 

Zhang Renshan, “Xunqiu falü yu shehui de pinghen,” 135. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Yingwu sheng,” 10:124. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Yingwu sheng,” 10:124.

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investigation, Huo Sang is struck by the complexities of her family relationships. The victim’s father, Mr. Gu Xianglin, is a successful stock investor but suddenly dies of a stroke, leaving behind a substantial fortune. Gu Lingling was the daughter of Gu’s first wife, Ms. Wang. Mr. Gu had a concubine who gave birth to another daughter, Gu Lili. Both the concubine and Ms. Wang are now deceased. Hoping to produce a son, Mr. Gu marries Ms. Wu. The marriage is sterile and Ms. Wu is now sick in bed. After Mr. Gu dies, Gu’s cousin follows the traditional practice and names his own son, Gu Darong, as Mr. Gu’s adopted son. Gu Darong wants to divide Gu’s assets, but Mr. Gu’s daughter Lingling objects. She cites the new law, which states that even a woman has the right of inheritance and thus it is not necessary to adopt a son into the family. Moreover, because Darong was adopted after the death of her father, according to the new law, his legal identity as the adopted son is invalid.33 “Flower in the Fog” was published after the Sino-Japanese War. It shows that ten years after the promulgation of the law, Chinese had begun to accept it. Although the traditional system was still in place, the new law could effectively protect the rights of young people, especially women. The new law also weakened the power of the traditional family head. In the Huo Sang story “Cuiming fu” (A deadly charm), the victim Gan Dongping has only a daughter, and he adopts Gan Tingxun as his son. Tingxun ruins Gan Dongping’s arranged marriage for his daughter. Moreover, he threatens Gan Dongping, insisting that his adoptive father divide his assets when he finds out about Gan Dongping’s secret affair. In resentment, Gan Dongping kills Tingxun. Huo Sang interviews different witnesses and collects enough evidence to prove Dongping guilty. “After a few hearings, [Dongping] was sentenced to life imprisonment. The old man still felt that he had been done an injustice by the court. After three days in prison, he suddenly felt overcome by a sense of weariness. Early one snowy morning, he hanged himself behind the workshop of the No. 5 prison.”34 The suicide of Gan Dongping is a perfect example of poetic justice. In the story, Gan Dongping is portrayed as a hypocritical, lustful, and corrupt patriarch. The traditional justice system usually would not punish this type of person. But in his detective story Cheng Xiaoqing emphasizes that nobody is exempt from the ruling of the modern legal system, including the powerful patriarchal authority.

33  34 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Wuzhong hua,” Zhongmei zhoubao 247 (1947): 36. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuiming fu,” 4:151.

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2.2.2 The Superiority of the Modern Household If the old family system is portrayed as a place full of conspiracies and disputes, Chinese detective stories show that the modern small family unit is superior to the old feudal model. Below, we will look at the example of the “Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang, Detective Couple” series by Changchuan. The series, consisting of seven stories, was published in the detective magazine Great Detective. The police detective, Mr. Ye Zhixiong, is about twenty-five years old. After the Sino-Japanese War, Ye moves from Chongqing to Shanghai where he befriends the female private detective Huang Xuewei, a twenty-one-yearold woman from a wealthy family. She leads a Westernized lifestyle, wearing permed hair, drinking coffee, and listening to radio broadcasts.35 Ye and Huang get married in the third story, “Yiwan xifan songming” (Murdered by a bowl of porridge). During their honeymoon in the Hangzhou countryside, the couple comes across a murder case. One-third of the story is devoted to their wedding ceremony, setting up a contrast between their marriage and a big evil family in the Hangzhou countryside. Compared with the complicated marriage rituals in a large family, Ye and Huang’s wedding appears simple, economical, and Westernized. They are equal in social status. Ms. Huang gives Mr. Ye a gold watch as a love token. They have a date at a café and Mr. Ye proposes. After a simple engagement, they both wear diamond rings. The story emphasizes the equality in their relationship and their rejection of traditional wedding practices. Instead, they do what is considered to be practical: since Mr. Ye’s parents live far away, they do not come to attend the wedding. Rather than setting up their own home, the newlyweds live in Mr. Ye’s police dormitory. On the second day 35 

According to the stories in this series, after the Japanese occupied Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War, Miss Huang dropped out of school and learned the art of detection by reading Sherlock Holmes stories at home. The partnership of Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang follows the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson model. Since Mr. Ye is a police officer, he has immediate access to the crime scene. As Ye’s girlfriend and later his wife, Miss Huang is thereby able to collect evidence with his assistance. In this series, Mr. Ye’s role is similar to that of Dr. Watson. Most of the time, he solves the case based on the correct deductions of Ms. Huang. Beside her intelligence, Ms. Huang uses her female intuition and powers of observation to solve cases. As a woman, she is good at observing carefully the subtle emotions of the women around her. She also understands the concerns of her female clients, which enables her to quickly win their trust. For example, in the first story of this series, “Yiba caidao” (A kitchen knife), Ms. Huang correctly guesses who the maid’s lover is by observing her reactions toward the different men around her. In “Hong pixie” (Red leather shoes), Ms. Huang finds out that the victim has not borne any children after being married for many years. Worried, the woman goes to a doctor for help, which in the end causes her great misery. In “Weisui de ren” (The tails), a beautiful actress asks Ms. Huang to investigate the identity of her stalker.

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of their marriage, the couple returns to Ms. Huang’s home to spend the night with her mother, and on the third day they take the train to Hangzhou to celebrate their honeymoon. Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang are both intelligent and have their own specialties. Meanwhile, they share a common hobby in crime detection. They are economically independent, love each other out of their own free will, and decide to get married without any parental interference. In the author Changchuan’s view, this is the ideal family unit. By contrast, life in a traditional big family is full of conspiracies. During their honeymoon, Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang live in a house owned by the Yang family. The family head has passed away, leaving four wives. Their living quarters reflect their status: the first and second wives occupy the upper floor, and the third and fourth reside downstairs. They do not eat together nor do they get along in other ways. According to the fourth wife, the Yangs used to be a big family. But now, most of the family members have gone away to take up official appointments, join the army, or go to school, leaving only women and young children in the house. Their income comes from the family’s farmlands and a drugstore. When the third wife suddenly dies of poison, leaving three children, Mr. Ye and Ms. Huang investigate. Eventually, they determine that the murderer is the daughter-in-law of the victim’s eldest son, who wants to obtain ownership of the family land before the victim’s second and third sons get married. This murder case reveals an ugly battle over money and power in a big family. 2.2.3 Servants and the Chinese Family The occupation of servant is closely related to the traditional Chinese family system, and in detective fiction of the Republican era servants often play a crucial role in the detection of crime. During the late Qing period, the traditional master-servant relationship was gradually replaced by the new employeremployee relationship that characterized the hiring of servants. In Republican China, even middle-income families could afford a few servants. Detective Huo Sang, for example, has a butler and a maid. Chinese detective stories show that in many Shanghai families, some servants followed their master from northern China, while others were hired locally. A rich family often hired four to five servants, including a doorman, driver, chef, gardener, and maid. Sometimes these servants lived in the rooms outside the family quarters, such as in a gate room or kitchen. Sometimes they live next to the master’s bedroom, or they lived together with their elderly masters in order to take care of them. There are three types of servants in Republican-era Chinese detective fiction. One is the sly thief. Cunning servants often take advantage of their familiarity with the house to steal the master’s property. Servants seem to be

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stereotyped according to their origins, as servants from northern China are often regarded as bad and dishonest. For example, in “Swallow of the South,” Huo Sang finds out that the thief is a male servant and warns his client: “I have heard from my friends that it is not easy to master the servants from places around Beijing and Tianjin. They seem docile but are in fact vicious. They often do all they can to win the trust of their master first, and then they do all sorts of outrageous things.”36 The second type is the loyal servant whose behavior is guided by a sense of poetic justice. For example, in Cheng Xiaoqing’s “A Case within a Case,” the servant Lu Quanzhong is loyal to his old master. After the master dies, his adopted son Mr. Sun squanders all his wealth and often visits brothels, showing no respect for women. The servant plans to murder Sun in the name of justice. The third type of servant is the informant. Because servants often live close to the door of the house or right next to the master’s bedroom, they know all about their master’s habits and his visitors. As a result, they often serve as an important channel of information for detectives seeking information about the complicated relationships among different family members. In Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang series, the characterization of these servant informants varies. Some are talkative, some are greedy, some are shy, and some are so cunning that they would mislead the detective on behalf of their master. In the Huo Sang detective stories, the maid Gendi in “Maodun quan” (Coils of contradictions) leaves a deep impression on the reader with her distinct character. She is fifteen or sixteen years old. Bao Lang questions her about a missing maid. According to Bao Lang, although Gendi is still young, she has learned the mannerisms of a modern urban woman. For example, when she talks, “she suddenly bit the tip of the little finger of her right hand and blinked, assuming the look of the new woman deep in thought.”37 Gendi is good at manipulating people. She is about to tell Bao Lang an important clue, but interrupts herself: she “smiled suddenly, covered her mouth with the back of her hand, and walked away with her head lowered.”38 Gendi gets a glimpse of the secret of the next-door neighbors, the Wang family, when she takes the garbage out of the house. When Bao Lang asks whether she has seen a man in a suit, Gendi replies: “One day, I accompanied my master to buy oranges at the back door. I suddenly saw this gentleman in a Western suit come running out of the back door of Wang’s house…. After a while,

36  37  38 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Jiangnanyan,” 2:60. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Maodun quan,” 11:97. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Maodun quan,” 11:99.

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we heard the wife of our neighbor … bang on the table and shout loudly.”39 All these details show that the narrow living space of a Shanghai alleyway made it easy for neighbors to pry into other people’s privacy and gossip about them, a characteristic on which the following section will elaborate. 3

Shanghai Alleyways in Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang Detective Stories

Tang Zhesheng has praised Republican-era detective fiction writers for being good at manipulating a limited geographical space: “In a relatively narrow space, they are able to devise a story with several leads that capture complicated human relationships.”40 The Shanghai alleyway is a representative living space, and Cheng Xiaoqing is particularly adept in making use of it to develop his stories. Cheng’s Huo Sang detective series provides examples that illustrate how the different spaces of Shanghai alleyways can be incorporated into detective plots. First, I will examine “A Ghost in White” to analyze how Cheng makes use of the architectural structure of the shikumen house to establish a correspondence between space and complicated family relationships. Then I will focus on “A Deadly Charm” and “Coils of Contradictions” to discuss how food vendors and laohuzao, or hot water stores, are presented by Cheng Xiaoqing as channels of information among lower-class people. 3.1 The Cultural Codes in shikumen Alleyways appear frequently in the Huo Sang detective series. In the story “Guai dianhua” (A strange phone call), an actress has gone missing. Huo Sang comments that the intersecting alleyways create numerous exits allowing criminals to escape: “Jiqingli has eight alleys. Besides the main alley in the middle, there are side-alleys on the two sides, which lead in all directions.”41 A shikumen is a Shanghai alleyway house. The design, which first appeared in the foreign concessions of Shanghai around 1870, combines Western and traditional Chinese architectural elements. Because its main entrance is made up of a wooden door with two planks painted black and framed with stones, Shanghailanders call it shikumen, literally “stone warehouse gate.” Two or three stories high, a shikumen house can accommodate many residents. Although this style of architecture frequently appears in modern Chinese literature that 39  40  41 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Maodun quan,” 11:100. Fan Boqun, ed., Zhongguo jinxiandai tongsu wenxueshi, 124. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Guai dianhua,” 2:182.

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deals with Shanghai culture, there are few works that truly incorporate the design of a shikumen house into their plots. In this respect, Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang series makes a unique contribution.42 Cheng Xiaoqing was very familiar with the historical changes in the shikumen design. In “A Case within a Case,” Sun Zhonghe lives at Songbaili, which “is located in the middle of Haiguan Road. In the third alley, there are five new rows of two-story structures (liangshang liangxia).”43 “A Deadly Charm” compares the old and new styles of shikumen house: “That is an oldstyle shikumen house with three stories and two wings (sanshang sanxia lian liangxiang). There is a door in front with two rooms for the servants on either side. Between these two rooms there is a small courtyard about 15 chi (about 4.5 m) long and 3 zhang (about 9 m) wide. The new-style shikumen houses do not have such a spacious courtyard.”44 Some shikumen accommodate one family, while in others the main tenant might sublet a few rooms to other people. For example, in “Huqiu nü” (Woman in a fur coat), the victim lives in a “twostory shikumen house facing the south…. Mr. Xie who lived upstairs sublets the house to others.”45 “Guai fangke” (An odd tenant) informs readers of the cost of rent. Ms. Ma rents a shikumen house and she sublets it to four families. Ma suspects that a tenant is conducting illegal business, but due to the terms of their tenancy contract she cannot ask him to move out: “He has paid a whole month’s rent in advance—that is five dollars. If I were to ask him to move out, not only would I have to return the whole amount to him, I would have to pay him another month’s rent according to the agreement.”46 The cost of living in a shikumen house differs from location to location. Usually rich families lived in Western-style houses. Families of middle income lived in the shikumen houses. The central courtyard was the place where servants rested and people parked their rickshaws. In poor neighborhoods as well, people lived in shikumen houses. In the neighborhood described in “An Odd Tenant,” “there was dirty water all over the ground. It was almost impossible to find a clean

42 

43  44  45  46 

Besides the shikumen house, the Western mansion is also a setting in Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang series. But Cheng’s writings about the shikumen house are more representative and unique. For a study of the portrayal of Western houses in Cheng’s works, see Lai Yi-lun, “Cheng Xiaoqing zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de Shanghai wenhua tujing,” 36–38. Cheng Xiaoqing, “An zhong an,” 8:53–54. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuiming fu,” 4:40. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Huqiu nü,” 9:10. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Guai fangke,” 6:234.

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spot to put down one’s feet. Over the walls of shikumen were hung dripping laundry. The residents were very noisy too.”47 The structure of a shikumen house is indeed an ideal setting for detective fiction. It is an independent house with many rooms that allow a big family to live together comfortably. Family members occupy various rooms according to their social status. The décor of a room can also reveal the personality of the inhabitant. The back door provides a convenient exit allowing people to slip in or out secretly. The gap space in the stairs makes for a convenient hiding place. Through the numerous windows upstairs and downstairs, family members can spy on each other. In “A Ghost in White,” Cheng Xiaoqing divines the decline in a big family’s finances from their changes in residence. The Qiu family in this story represents rich people who moved from northern China to Shanghai. When they came to Shanghai, they bought a shikumen compound in the International Settlement. This compound is a spacious one with three rows of houses. “The entrance is at Qiaojiabang and the exit leads to a small alley of Qiaojiashan.”48 But because the Qiu family’s finances worsen after one year, they have to rent two rows of houses to others and live in the third one. For this reason, they block the front entrance and only enter their house from the back door that opens into the Qiaojiashan alley. The rooms in the house occupied by members of the Qiu family reflect their social status. A kitchen (zaofang) connects directly to the back door, which opens on a small alley. Off of the kitchen are a side room (pifang) used by the old male servant and a room to store firewood (chaifang). Across the backyard is the living room, which has two wings (xiangfang) with side rooms (cijian) on each side. The eastern wing is a study and its side room serves as a guest room. Female members of the Qiu family (i.e., the mother-in-law of Mr. Qiu and his adopted daughter) live in the western wing. There is no partition between the western wing and its side room, which indicates the low status of the adopted daughter—she does not have a private space of her own. The most important family members live upstairs. There is also a living room in the center of the second floor, where the Qiu brothers receive important guests. There are two wings with side rooms upstairs as well, which are occupied by the two brothers of the Qiu family. Next to the stairs on the second floor is a small bed for the maid.

47  48 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Guai fangke,” 6:240. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:198.

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Room decorations indicate the personalities of the dwellers. The victim’s bedroom on the second floor is decorated luxuriously: In this room there were three windows, all draped with delicate imported curtains…. In front of the window facing to the west, there was a small rosewood desk. A sofa with a white cover sat next to the desk and across from it was a long Western-style rattan chair on the east side. In front of the desk, there was another rosewood revolving chair…. A Western-style vanity made of delicately engraved rosewood with a mirror was placed there. At a right angle to the vanity was a big wide brass bed facing south. But between the vanity and the brass bed there was a gap of about one or two chi (between thirty and sixty cm) wide, which was taken up by a cushioned sofa. Across the vanity, there was a closet with a glass door; it was next to the entrance to the room. On one side of the wall hung a colored print of a Western nude.49 Besides the cosmetics on the vanity, on the rosewood desk “there was a clock with a golden casing, a brass desk lamp with a decorative figurine of a naked woman, and a silver vase in which there were two artificial flowers made of red silk.”50 Under the embroidered pillow “there was a book bound in the Western style about sex. Wang Yinlin looked it over. There were a few pictures of naked women inserted between the pages of the book.”51 Downstairs, “the chair and table in the living room were quite ordinary. Although there were some scrolls of painting and calligraphy on the wall, all of them looked very vulgar.”52 The study on the left side “had the usual items such as the desk table, bookcase, and sofa, but all were very cheap.”53 All these details reveal that the victim is a hypocritical and vulgar man with repressed sexual desires. In “A Ghost in White,” the security of the shikumen house is poor due to the numerous exits. Unlike doors with modern locks, the back door of the Qiu family compound can be pushed open from outside so that a stranger can easily slip in. One can even enter the two wings downstairs through the windows facing onto the courtyard. Upstairs, the living room in the center is connected with the side rooms by two doors. Moreover, there are two small doors next to

49  50  51  52  53 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:199. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:200. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:202. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:212. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Baiyi guai,” 4:213.

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the stairs that also lead into the two wings.54 Family members can peer into others’ private space through different windows. The two wings of both floors each have three windows, two of them facing onto the street while the third one faces onto the courtyard. As a result, the victim upstairs often spies on the room of the adopted daughter through his window because he secretly desires her. One day, his adopted daughter looks up through her window and sees a shadow in the victim’s room upstairs. In short, the shikumen house in “A Ghost in White” demonstrates how Cheng Xiaoqing dramatized the mundane Shanghai linong as a maze-like space full of dark secrets, turning his detective stories into a guide that prompts readers to reexamine their pedestrian community space and to discover many deeper family problems and the uneasiness of Shanghai urbanites as they walk into the alleyway. Street Peddlers and the laohuzao as Channels of Information Exchange Besides the shikumen, street peddlers and laohuzao shops are aspects of everyday life that allow Cheng Xiaoqing to evoke for readers the feeling of old Shanghai. Street-food vendors usually carried a movable kitchen on a single bamboo shoulder pole. “This stand [of a food seller] was ingeniously designed, with a boiler on top of a wood stove at the front and a cupboard at the back. The cupboard drawers were filled with noodles, dumpling skins, a plate of ground pork or shrimp, and various herbs and spices. In a matter of minutes the peddler could offer his customers a steaming bowl of fresh noodle soup or wonton dumplings.”55 There are many street vendors in Cheng’s stories, such as the fruit peddlers in “A Strange Phone Call,” a green-bean soup seller in “Di’er dan” (The second shot), and a vendor who cries out in a loud voice to attract customers in “Xue shouyin” (A Bloody Handprint). In “A Deadly Charm,” the street peddler who sells bean curd has such a beautiful voice that even Huo Sang praises his Wuxi accent as “sounding rather like music.”56 The name laohuzao (literally “tiger stove”) refers to a store that sells hot water to the public. These businesses appeared in the Jiaqing period (1795–1820) of 3.2

54  55  56 

In some other Huo Sang stories, such as “A Deadly Charm,” some side rooms are separated by windows instead of walls or doors. Therefore, family members can peer into other rooms through the windows. Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights, 201. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuiming fu,” 4:76. Lai Yi-lun argues that through these stories “a spectacle of street peddlers walking through different alleyways is established” and that they mark “the irremovable cultural memory of the dynamics of the space of the Shanghai alleyway.” Lai Yi-lun, “Cheng Xiaoqing zhentan xiaoshuo zhong de Shanghai wenhua tujing,” 48–49.

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the Qing dynasty. Because the stove used to boil water is very big and looks like a tiger crouching on the ground, it is called a tiger stove. Most Shanghai alleyway houses did not have hot water facilities. The laohuzao was therefore a convenient and cheap way for local residents to procure hot water.57 As a small store facing the street or an alleyway, the laohuzao also served as a teahouse and bathhouse for local residents. Usually only servants or commoners would go to the laohuzao to buy water or drink tea. Through the food vendors and the laohuzao, Cheng Xiaoqing captures vividly the quotidian life of Shanghai urbanites. These elements of local color are not merely decorative, however. In Cheng’s Huo Sang detective series, they are nodes in a system that distributed information among the lower classes. In “A Deadly Charm,” a bean-curd seller wanders through the alleys as he hawks his wares, but his cries reveal his location. Because of his mobility, a young girl in the story asks him to deliver personal letters to her lover, who lives far away. As a result, Cheng Xiaoqing calls this food vendor “Qingniao shi” (Blue bird messenger). Huo Sang is suspicious of the bean-curd seller because only members of the lower classes would buy such street food themselves. People of higher social status who had a taste for it would send a servant to purchase it. Huo Sang is therefore surprised when he is told that every evening when the bean-curd seller comes, the daughter of this prestigious family comes out to buy the food herself. By following this clue, Huo Sang learns the girl’s secret. The laohuzao is another venue where the lower classes can exchange information. In “A Deadly Charm,” it is said that a bowl of bean-curd pudding costs five tongzi, while a cup of tea at a laohuzao only costs “three tongzi; it’s so cheap.”58 Because the laohuzao is a place where lower-class people congregate and spend money, it is inappropriate to go there in formal dress. Even Huo Sang changes into his ordinary gown when he goes there to investigate. “Coils of Contradictions” indicates that the workers at a laohuzao can be summoned to the police department at any time because of their low social status.59 In the same story, Wang Baosheng, a son of a wealthy family, becomes suspicious of his sister because she goes to the laohuzao in person. Baosheng follows his sister and notices that she is on familiar terms with the folks at the laohuzao. Baosheng’s judgment of his sister betrays his stereotypical assumption about the class background and gender of those who patronize laohuzao: 57  58  59 

The laohuzao was a common type of store in the alleyway neighborhoods of Shanghai. Lu points out that “in 1912, there were 159 hot water stores in Shanghai; by 1928 there were 1,123; and by 1936, well over 2,000.” Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights, 263. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuiming fu,” 4:84. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Maodun quan,” 11:118–119.

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male customers such as Baosheng can go there to buy water while respectable girls should avoid the place. Based on Baosheng’s report, Huo Sang questions the worker at the laohuzao and he admits that Baosheng’s sister asks him to deliver letters. Like the street peddler, a worker hanging out at a laohuzao is such a common sight that his presence does not arouse suspicion. Moreover, because they earn so little, such people are easily persuaded to run errands for money. All these examples demonstrate Cheng Xiaoqing’s familiarity with the intersecting lives of people from various social classes in Shanghai alleyways. Because Cheng is adept in investigating the cultural codes that govern the local practices of everyday life and working them into his detective narrative in a clever yet natural way, it is no wonder that he was regarded as the “Grand Master of Chinese Detective Fiction.”

…

In “A Deadly Charm,” Huo Sang and Bao Lang have an interesting conversation. When Huo Sang asks Bao Lang about his morning routine after he gets up, Bao Lang answers, “Naturally I comb my hair and wash up, eat porridge, and then read a few morning newspapers.” Huo Sang is dissatisfied. Shaking his head, he says, “Comb and wash, eat porridge, read the newspaper! What you have said is too general! There are quite a number of smaller steps in the process. You must follow the scientific method and give me a clear description step by step.” Bao Lang elaborates: After I wake up, I sit up slowly in bed and look at the clock on the table. I put on my robe and slip on my slippers…. After I get up, I stand in front of the window for a while, take a few deep breaths, and call out to the maid Ms. Wang to prepare water for me to wash my face. Then I wash my face, brush my teeth, and rinse my mouth. By that time my [wife] Peiqin has sent the milk upstairs. After I drink the milk, I walk to the front of the mirror to comb my hair. Then I light a cigarette and change out of my bathrobe.60 Bao Lang believes that he is simply being asked to narrate his everyday routine, but the investigator Huo Sang is listening intently, trying to detect an inconsistency in the account of a witness, a servant in the Wang household. Usually people wash their face before they comb their hair, Bao Lang explains, “because if a person combs his hair and then washes his face, he would unavoidably 60 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuiming fu,” 4:122–123.

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mess up his hair again.”61 But the servant says that when she delivered a basin of water to her master so he could wash his face, “he was standing in front of the closet, putting on pomade.”62 Such behavior does not match the normal morning sequence that Bao Lang described. Huo Sang is therefore able to deduce that the servant is lying. The conversation between Huo Sang and Bao Lang is a fitting end to this chapter on the discourse of everyday life in Republican-era Chinese detective fiction. The best writers of detective tales, such as Cheng Xiaoqing, attracted readers because they closely observed everyday life among the common people and drew inspiration from it. By following their fictional detectives as they visit big families or travel around the shikumen, readers could experience the hidden concerns and fears that shaped the lives of ordinary Republicanperiod Chinese.

61  62 

Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuiming fu,” 4:124. Cheng Xiaoqing, “Cuiming fu,” 4:56.

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Conclusion: the Legacies of the Late Qing Mode and the Republican Mode: Echoes and Variations after 1949 So far, this book has assessed the rise and development of detective fiction in the first half of the twentieth century in China. During the late Qing period, this Western genre was introduced into China as a symbol of rationality, and Chinese writers started to create a Chinese form of detective fiction by mixing the investigative procedures and suspenseful narratives of the canon of Western detective fiction with traditional Chinese traditional narrative forms, judicial customs, and epistemology. This hybrid attempt to localize the new genre—to put old wine into a new bottle, so to speak—was, however, mostly discarded during the Republican period when China began to follow the Western model of modernization. On the one hand, Chinese writers clearly embraced Western detective fiction, as demonstrated by their imitations of the detective figure and intertextual references to Western stories and novels, yet on the other hand they also succeeded in localizing Western-style detectives as Chinese heroes by incorporating aspects of everyday life and cultural phenomena into their adventures. Filled with local references, these Westernized detective stories vividly depict the cultural anxieties and social changes experienced by the Chinese, especially Shanghai urbanites, during the transitional decades between the traditional era and the modern. This book has argued that the distinct domestification strategies adopted during the late Qing and the Republican periods illustrate that the development of Chinese detective fiction in the earlier twentieth century did not follow a smooth evolutionary path but was a process marked by rupture and change. Furthermore, through numerous case studies and examples, this book has shown that such rupture was caused by the radical cultural, political, and legal changes in Chinese society during the first half of the twentieth century, including the displacement by Western science of the traditional Chinese epistemology that informed zhiguai literature, the nationwide adoption of a legal system based on Western models to replace the traditional system that provided a realistic context for gong’an stories, and the flowering of a new urban culture in Shanghai that enabled detective fiction to become both a guidebook for urban adventures and a reminder of the traps that lurk in metropolitan life. By treating the appropriation of detective fiction in modern China as a manifestation of its reception of Western modernity and the development of native forms of modernity, my discussions of the discontinuities between the two stages of the development of Chinese detective fiction confirm the multiplicity of Chinese modernity. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_009

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Second, despite the rupture in formulaic patterns and epistemological structures that transformed Chinese detective fiction between the late Qing and the Republican periods, this book has also argued that these two periods in the domestication of detective fiction were also connected by shared emotions. Both periods expressed ambivalent and sometimes contradictory views regarding Chinese tradition and Western modernity. On the one hand, they felt it necessary to eradicate superstitious thinking from Chinese society on the model of Western rationality, and they agreed that the evidentiary procedures in Western legal practices fostered objective and fair judgements. On the other hand, however, both periods also prized certain traditional values, such as Confucian teachings on the importance of self-cultivation in morality. Because of this, Chinese writers often questioned or condemned the influence of Western materialism. In their detective works, poetic justice often serves as a superior alternative to legal justice. The sympathy toward the chivalric hero in Chinese detective fiction is both a result of writers’ dissatisfaction with a lawless and corrupt social reality, and an expression of their nostalgia for the traditional chivalric spirit. Finally, my studies of the different methods of representation and appropriation in Chinese detective fiction challenge us to rethink the ontology of detective fiction. Indeed, this genre crystalized in the nineteenth-century West around distinctive narrative patterns, styles, and interests. But as it spread globally, its original Western look was diluted by local literary and cultural traditions. The hybrid sensibilities of contemporary detective fiction, shaped by cross-cultural encounters throughout the world, in turn contribute to its dynamics and enable this genre to continuously renew itself by incorporating new narrative elements and materials from other cultures. Variations in the globalized production of detective fiction have enlarged the connotations of this genre beyond a singular and static definition based on classical Western detective works to include the dynamic and diversified convergences of Western influence and local expressions.

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Let’s come back to the two modes of appropriating Western detective fiction that this book has detailed and ask whether they are useful for evaluating developments in Chinese detective fiction or indeed world detective fiction after 1949. This chapter concludes the book by making a preliminary attempt to place the two modes of localizing detective fiction in China before 1949 in dialogue with detective works written afterward. I argue that each mode has its echoes and variations in the postwar detective literature. The Republican mode, which was set in contemporary society and generated Westernized 78B

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detective stories rich with local detail, finds its heirs in detective fiction such as the Female Burglar Huang Ying series and the Mulan Hua series published in Hong Kong during the 1950s and 1960s. The plots of these tales, however, are no longer focused on the life and culture of China during its transition from the traditional to the modern, as is often the case in Republican detective stories; rather, the two series explore transnationalization and recent changes in gender roles. Meanwhile, in a striking and unexpected development, the Late Qing mode—namely, the mixture of traditional gong’an literary conventions with narrative elements and investigation skills from Western detective fiction—was revived in Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee detective series, although this combination served a different purpose for van Gulik than it did for late Qing writers: Van Gulik’s tales are preoccupied with designing intricate puzzles rather than achieving social justice. Chinese detective fiction of the late Qing period, on the contrary, aims to reveal malpractice in the traditional Chinese judicial system, as well as the universal corruption affecting different social classes. The echoes and variations between the two modes of Chinese detective fiction of the earlier twentieth century and their realization in postwar detective literature confirm the pattern of “rupture and continuity” that I consider to be a clue to understanding the development of detective fiction in modern China. 1

The Republican Mode and the Detective Fiction of Postwar Hong Kong

After 1949, detective fiction took separate paths in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. During the 1950s and 1960s, the publication of Westernized detective fiction ceased in the People’s Republic of China, where it was labeled “bourgeois crime fiction,” and espionage fiction became the most popular type of reading material. The genre of fante xiaoshuo (anti-spy novels) incorporates certain investigative techniques from detective fiction into plots in which the masses help Chinese communist policemen unmask Kuomintang spies hidden in the new China and expose their counterrevolutionary conspiracies.1 1  Publication of these anti-spy novels peaked between 1955 and 1956. After that, the relationship between the PRC and Soviet governments deteriorated and China stopped importing Soviet anti-spy works. During the Cultural Revolution, anti-spy novels began to circulate in manuscript form. Some of the most famous titles are Lüse shiti (The green corpse), Meihua dang’an (The archives of the plum blossom), and Yishuang xiuhuaxie (A pair of embroidered shoes), all written by Zhang Baorui (1952–). For a study of the reception of Soviet spy fiction in the People’s Republic of China during the 1950s and 1960s, see Ji Xing, “Zai yule yu zhengzhi zhijian.” 78B

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Even Cheng Xiaoqing, who remained in Mainland China after 1949, wrote a few fante novels.2 The fante novels are different from the detective fiction of the Republican era in three ways. First, they do not center on personally motivated crimes against individuals, the typical subject of Westernized whodunits; instead, the criminals are portrayed as stereotypical class enemies, complete with evil appearances. Second, the key figure of the private detective is missing. His powers of ratiocination are replaced by the ubiquitous power of surveillance exercised by the masses. As the story “Tianluo diwang” (An inescapable dragnet) says, “We [i.e., the PRC police officers] are very powerful. However, there is not much of a secret to it except that we are good at mobilizing people and relying on them. With their political consciousness awakened, the sixty millions of Chinese form an inescapable dragnet.”3 Third, due to this emphasis on the importance of the masses, the Chinese fante novels bypass the scientific methods of detection that are the special province of the detective.4 After the KMT government lost the civil war against the CCP in 1949, it retreated to Taiwan, where it adopted strict censorship policies and banned the use of Japanese. These policies sharply limited the local production of detective fiction, which had been influenced greatly by Japanese detective literature. Fei Meng, a writer and caricaturist who was born in Hong Kong but grew up on the Chinese mainland and came to Taiwan after 1949, became the most productive detective writer. Known for their focus on international political conspiracies, most of Fei’s stories blend the genres of detective fiction and spy fiction. They 2  Some of Cheng’s anti-spy novels are Ta weishenme bei sha? (Why was she killed?, 1956), Dashucun xue’an (The bloody case at Big Tree Village, 1956), and Shengsi guantou (At the moment of life or death, 1957). The plot of Why Was She Killed? is representative of these works: it describes how the Chinese police of the 1950s identify counterrevolutionaries as the murderers of a woman found dead on a beach. After the police discover that the victim was killed because she wanted to relinquish her role as a spy, they apprehend the criminals, who are referred to as “class enemies” hidden among the people, and prevent them from carrying out their counterrevolutionary plot. Kinkley suggests that these novels could be read as examples of the socialist transformation of Cheng’s art. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction, 255. 3  Shi Su, “Tianluo diwang,” 4:82. 4  In an article published in 1950, Yue Feng pointed out that in China it would not be possible to demonstrate the invincible power of the PRC’s police force if the cooperation of the people themselves was ignored. The essential difference between the PRC police and the KMT police is whether they rely on the people. Therefore, Yue Feng concluded that the problem with the 1949 movie Wuxing de zhanxian (Invisible war) is that it placed undue emphasis on the technological dimension of detection in the PRC. See Yue Feng, “Dui Wuxing de zhanxian zhuti de yidian yijian,” 32, quoted in Ji Xing, “Zai yule yu zhengzhi zhijian,” 86–87.

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are often set in colonial Hong Kong, a unique space in which various ideological voices and political conspiracies coexisted. For example, in Fei’s novel The Strange Cases of Luo Tuo, communist spies open an antique store in Hong Kong where they sell precious Chinese antiques excavated from royal tombs to foreigners in order to alleviate the economic crisis on the Chinese mainland. The sixty-year-old Luo Tuo is the leader of the KMT spy organization in Hong Kong. Under his leadership, the KMT spies not only defeat the PRC spies but also foil a plot devised by international communists. The tradition of Butterfly literature, which had flourished in Republican Shanghai, took on a second life in the postwar popular market of Hong Kong. New immigrants from the Chinese mainland provided a big market for Chinese popular literature. The British colonial government of Hong Kong also took a relatively lackadaisical attitude toward Chinese-language publications. As a result, Hong Kong became a unique haven of cultural freedom, unrivaled by mainland China and Taiwan alike. It was also home to a few pulp magazines devoted to the publication of translated and native detective fiction. The Blue Book, for example, a detective magazine founded in Shanghai in 1946, continued in Hong Kong in the 1950s after its publisher, Huanqiu chubanshe (The Universal Press), relocated to the colony. Native Chinese detective stories were often serialized in pulp magazines and then reissued as a book series by the same publisher. The most popular of these series chronicled the adventures of the Female Burglar Huang Ying. Some of the early stories in the series were written by Xiao Ping, who remained in Shanghai after 1949, but later they were produced by anonymous local writers in Hong Kong. First serialized in The Blue Book, then republished as pulp fiction in the “Universal Fiction” series, these stories proved so popular that many of them were reprinted over ten times. The Huang Ying stories resemble the urban adventure stories of Lu Ping written by Sun Liaohong, but the burglar-detective Huang Ying is not as cynical as Sun’s protagonist. One likely reason for their popularity is that the detailed evocation of Republican Shanghai in these stories aroused the cultural nostalgia of immigrants who came to Hong Kong after 1949. The author demonstrated his familiarity with Shanghai and its neighborhood by inserting real street names and landmarks of old Shanghai into his tales. These realistic geographical details, as Yung Sai-ching describes, enabled immigrants from Shanghai to “revisit their homeland in the fictional world.”5 Moreover, many sensational plots in Huang Ying stories make use of traditional clothing or traditional 5  Yung, “Cong zhentan zazhi dao wuda dianying,” 323–344.

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Chinese religious practices. For example, in the novel Fenmu zhong de fulu (Prisoner in a tomb), witnesses observe that in the woods next to a haunted mansion, “a tall man with a queue on his back, who wears a red hat with a peacock tail feather on it and is dressed in the coat of an official of the Qing Dynasty, is carrying a woman dressed in a Westernized white shirt and pants.”6 The combination of a ghost from imperial times and a modern female victim immediately seizes the readers’ attention. In another novel, Chengxian gang (A jar that can make people become immortal), a Taoist takes advantage of people’s superstitions to cheat them of their money. He sets up a Taoist worship space that contains a square platform on which five big lotus-shaped water jars stand. Once the followers donate their money, they are instructed to jump into the jars one by one. The Taoist tells them that only the chosen one will disappear and become immortal. When Huang Ying investigates, she finds out that there is a secret passage under the fifth jar and reveals the Taoist’s deception. The text is accompanied by an illustration that reveals the design of this trick device. These two examples demonstrate how Huang Ying stories, although they were produced in colonial Hong Kong, attracted readers who emigrated from the Chinese mainland by showcasing traditional history and beliefs as well as traps and tricks that were familiar to them. The local details in these stories provided the new immigrants with opportunities to revisit their memories of the old China. Eventually the Huang Ying stories were made into films. Shot in Hong Kong with Cantonese dialogue, the Huang Ying films attracted many female viewers who appreciated the bravery and wit of the heroine.7 Following the success of the Huang Ying stories, the figure of the fighting female detective flourished in books and films, and some of the new stories were set in postwar Hong Kong. Take the “Mulan Hua, Female Knight” series created by the local writer Ni Kuang (or Ngai Hong), for example. Unlike the Huang Ying stories rooted in Republican Shanghai, the Mulan Hua series was set in 1960s Hong Kong. Not only is the heroine Mulan Hua familiar with traditional Chinese martial arts, like Huang Ying, but she has also mastered Western high-tech weapons. In order to save a hostage or solve a case, Mulan Hua travels all over the world by modern forms of transportation, including airplane and submarine. Both 6   Xiao Ping, Fenmu zhong de fulu, 4th printing (Hong Kong: Huanqiu zazhi chubanshe, 1955), 15. 7   The initiation of the series of Huang Ying films was also influenced by the popularity of James Bond films. The film critic Sam Ho identifies these Huang Ying films and their imitators as “Jane Bond films.” He considers them as a unique Hong Kong film genre in which “women were the primary dispensers of violence, and the violence was readily embraced by a predominantly female audience.” See Sam Ho, “Zhenjiebang: fengzhi da nanren de nüren,” 41.

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the degree of the heroine’s mobility and the level of internationalization in Ni Kuang’s Mulan Hua series far exceed those in the Huang Ying stories. Some crimes, for example, are related to the oil business in the Middle East. There are many Cold War elements in the Mulan Hua stories as well, including allusions to nuclear weapons and the Cultural Revolution. In short, the Female Burglar Huang Ying series maintains the tradition of Republican detective fiction while translating it to the new setting of postwar Hong Kong. The continuing localization of detective fiction in Hong Kong during the 1950s and 1960s, as demonstrated in the transition from the Huang Ying stories to the Mulan Hua series, echoes the Republican mode’s combination of a Westernized formula and local expressions. The departures of the Mulan Hua series from the Huang Ying stories prove detective fiction’s continuous flexibility to adapt to local concerns, political contexts, and changes in generational tastes in postwar Hong Kong. 2

The Late Qing Mode and Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee Series

During the Republican era, the late Qing mode of localizing detective fiction— the combination of traditional gong’an formula with narrative elements or investigative methods from Western detective fiction—was discontinued, as few Chinese writers preferred to set their detective stories in traditional China. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, the late Qing mode was revived by a Dutchman who was fascinated with traditional Chinese culture. In 1949, Robert van Gulik, a diplomat and sinologist, translated a late Qing gong’an novel, Wuzetian sida qi’an (Four strange cases under Empress Wu), into English under the title Dee Goong An (Cases by Judge Dee). At first, van Gulik hoped to use the success of this translation to persuade Chinese or Japanese writers to create their own judge-as-detective stories. But none of them responded to his call because the “subject was not sufficiently ‘exotic’ to them.”8 Thereupon, van Gulik decided to take on the task of reviving the judge figure of traditional Chinese crime literature. As an experiment, he wrote his first Judge Dee novel, The Chinese Bell Murders, which he published in 1950. Adhering to the setting of Dee Goong An, van Gulik placed Judge Dee’s early career in the reign of Emperor Gaozong (649–683) of the Tang Dynasty.9 8  Barkman and de Vries-van der Hoeven, Dutch Mandarin, 158. 9   Because of his interest in the culture of the Ming Dynasty, van Gulik anachronistically inserts details of daily life from that period, including clothing, customs, and culture, into the Judge Dee stories, which are set in the Tang Dynasty.

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Van Gulik’s Judge Dee series may be divided into two periods. In the first phase, from 1949 to 1958, van Gulik completed five Judge Dee books with titles in the form of The Chinese X Murders.10 During this stage, he employed the conventions of Western detective fiction but imitated the formal style of traditional Chinese novels, including writing chapter headings in parallel couplets, prefacing the novel with a brief introductory tale, and ending the story with detailed descriptions of the punishments parceled out to the criminals. As in van Gulik’s translation of Dee Goong An, the judge solves three different cases at the same time in each of the five novels. The favorable reception of the first five Judge Dee books resulted in a second wave of writing that lasted from 1958 to 1967. In this phase, van Gulik wrote nine novels and eight short stories. The novels all have twenty chapters each. They generally narrate cases that were solved between the events recorded in the five novels of the first phase. In the later novels and stories, however, van Gulik was less concerned with accurately imitating Chinese style. Judge Dee usually works with only one assistant, and the span of time between the murders and their solution is usually limited to a few days. The three cases in each novel are closely connected and are often committed by the same criminal.11 Instead of borrowing sources from traditional Chinese crime literature as he did in the earlier period, van Gulik created most of the new cases himself and made a special effort to blend the narrative structure of traditional Chinese gong’an stories with the formal elements of Western detective fiction. Traditional Chinese gong’an stories often begin with the revelation of the criminal’s identity and details of his or her crime, followed by the judge’s investigation of the case and the capture and punishment of the criminals. By contrast, Western detective fiction typically begins with the client’s report of a case, followed by the detective’s investigation and a final expository scene. The later Judge Dee novels strike a balance between this two conventions: the first chapter usually presents the words and actions of the criminal but without revealing his or her identity, thereby eliminating the transparency of traditional gong’an stories 10   11 

The five novels of the first period are The Chinese Bell Murders (1950), The Chinese Maze Murders (1950), The Chinese Lake Murders (1952), The Chinese Gold Murders (1956), and The Chinese Nail Murders (1958). Van Gulik explained that he reduced the cast of characters in his later novels because readers complained that in his first five Judge Dee novels, the proliferation of names led to confusion, as did the chapter headings composed in traditional Chinese style. Therefore, he decided to let Judge Dee “be accompanied by only one of his lieutenants and kept the figure for the dramatis personae as low as possible.” Barkman and de Vries-van der Hoeven, Dutch Mandarin, 226.

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in order to generate suspense. Judge Dee and his assistants start their investigation in the second chapter. A closing chapter that describes how criminals receive their punishment—a recurring feature in the five novels of the first period—is not to be found in those of the second period, which often end with a confrontation between Judge Dee and the criminal. After the criminal’s motive is revealed, the culprit frequently dies from disease or commits suicide. Like the writers who produced the hybrid forms of late Qing detective fiction, van Gulik adapts a large body of material from traditional Chinese crime literature but rationalizes the supernatural elements with convincing explanations. For example, in The Chinese Gold Murders, van Gulik reworks the original dream plot from Four Strange Cases under Empress Wu. In traditional Chinese gong’an stories, the judge often receives clues to the criminal’s identity in a dream when he prays and sleeps in a temple. But in this novel, Van Gulik replaces such a deus ex machina solution with a chance event: Judge Dee is inspired by a play he happens to watch at a temple. The plot of this drama is also drawn from a traditional Chinese gong’an story. In The Chinese Gold Murders, Judge Dee draws a parallel between the judge’s solution in the play and the specific puzzle he himself faces. Through this natural and reasonable arrangement, van Gulik both makes use of traditional Chinese crime literature and satisfies the requirement of fair play in Western detective fiction. Yet, van Gulik’s Judge Dee stories do not strictly observe the rational criteria of Western detective fiction either.12 Arguing that “since we of the present know little more about supernatural phenomena than did Judge Dee twelve hundred years ago,” van Gulik does not completely deny the supernatural. As a result, van Gulik’s approach to dealing with supernatural elements in the Judge Dee series is flexible: if they are related to the solution of a case, van Gulik adopts the rational attitude of Western detective fiction and explains any mysterious events in terms of human actions. On the other hand, he is willing to add an air of mystery to the fate of his characters by embellishing his stories with supernatural occurrences, as long as they do not intrude on the investigation.13 12 

13 

Van Dover also points out that even in Western detective fiction, there are exceptions to the rule of rational explanation. For example, in Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), the legend of the hound “could enhance a narrative that celebrated the detective’s ‘Science of Deduction.’” Supernatural elements are also present in John Dickson Carr’s works and “not every paranormal event could be rationally explained in the end.” Van Dover, Judge Dee Novels of R. H. van Gulik, 15. Pan Chien-hua notes that not all supernatural events can be explained rationally in the Judge Dee series. For example, at the end of The Chinese Gold Murders, Judge Dee encounters the ghost of Magistrate Wang. The narrators of both The Chinese Bell Murders and

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Like the late Qing writers who set out to localize detective fiction, van Gulik tried to borrow elements from both traditional Chinese gong’an literature and Western detective fiction. However, his purpose for doing so differed from that of his predecessors: the late Qing writers used the Western investigative process to reflect on the problems of traditional Chinese legal practice, while van Gulik chose a hybrid form because of his intellectual and aesthetic interests in traditional Chinese culture. Claiming that he himself was Judge Dee,14 van Gulik crafted a chinoiserie style of detective fiction that projected an ideal Oriental world he had pursued throughout his life.15 Well received in the West,16 van Gulik’s Judge Dee series was translated into Chinese in the 1980s. Contemporary Chinese readers often mistake these

14  15 

16  

The Chinese Nail Murders live in the Ming Dynasty but travel back to the Tang Dynasty in which Judge Dee lived. In Necklace and Calabash, Judge Dee dreams of the disheveled victim walking toward him. Pan argues that these supernatural elements have no bearing on the solution of the cases, but are used for entertainment only. Pan Chien-hua, “Zhongguo tuili xiaoshuo xinchangshi: Gao Luopei (Xin) Digong’an xilun,” 56. Barkman, van Gulik’s biographer, points out that van Gulik respected fortunetellers and thinks that van Gulik himself was sometimes superstitious: “His thought processes were a curious mixture of the mystical and level-headed logic, a product of both East and West…. He always seemed enveloped in an air of mystery. He did nothing to dispel this; in fact it seems that he went out of his way to encourage it. Occasionally the van Guliks would consult a clairvoyant, and now it appears likely that [an] omen relating to Thomas’s [i.e., van Gulik’s son] future perhaps prompted such a visit.” Barkman and de Vries-van der Hoeven, Dutch Mandarin, 194. The Dutch crime author Ab Visser remembered that van Gulik told him, “Judge Dee is me.” Van de Wetering, Robert van Gulik, His Life, His Work, 27. It is instructive to compare the key objects in traditional Chinese gong’an literature with those in van Gulik’s Judge Dee stories. In gong’an literature, ordinary objects such as basins and boots often turn out to be of crucial significance to the development of the story. The objects featured in van Gulik’s Judge Dee series, however, reflect the refined tastes of traditional literati. They include painted scrolls, a lute, an antique ebony box, an incense burner, the design of Chinese characters, and so forth. Van Gulik drew inspiration directly from his collection of antiques and transformed his erudition in Chinese art history into clues for his detective stories. For more detailed studies on van Gulik’s Judge Dee series, see Shi Ye, “Gao Luopei xiaoshuo zhutiwu de Han wenhua yuanyuan”; Chen Jue, “Gao Luopei yu ‘wuzhiwenhua’—Cong ‘xinwenhuashi’ shiye zhi bijiao yanjiu.” Agatha Christie, for example, enjoyed The Chinese Maze Murders and considered it to have “a rare charm and freshness.” Barkman and de Vries-van der Hoeven, Dutch Mandarin, 159. In addition to inspiring a host of TV drama and film adaptations, Judge Dee is also the subject of many websites and works of fan fiction. Examples of Western media adaptations are the TV drama Judge Dee (starring Michael Goodliffe), produced by Granada Television (UK) in 1969, and the film Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders (based on van Gulik’s novel The Haunted Monastery; Khigh Dhiegh played Judge Dee), produced by ABC Circle Films (USA) in 1974. For detailed information, see Van Dover, Judge Dee Novels of R. H. van Gulik, 22–23.

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translations for traditional gong’an stories because the Chinese translators imitate the style of late Ming/early Qing vernacular novels. Encouraged by the reception of the original Judge Dee tales in China, more writers began to create new Judge Dee narratives, including the English novel Tales of Judge Dee by the Chinese-American writer Zhu Xiao Di (1958–), the Judge Dee TV dramas by the mainland China director Qian Yanqiu (1968–), and the Judge Dee films by the Hong Kong film director Tsui Hark (1950–).17 Although these works may not be comparable to van Gulik’s Judge Dee series in breadth and depth, especially given van Gulik’s mastery of traditional Chinese material culture, they have their own distinctions and merits. Zhu Xiao Di’s novel faithfully follows van Gulik’s example in reusing materials from traditional Chinese gong’an literature, while Qian Yanqiu’s TV series is set in the reign of Empress Wu, a period that van Gulik skipped over. Integrating elements from espionage novels, Qian Yanqiu’s TV series attracts an audience with stories of complicated political conspiracies. Finally, Tsui Hark blends the detective formula with fantasy elements in bringing to the screen splendid and mysterious spectacles of the legendary Tang Dynasty. While continuing the late Qing practice of combining traditional gong’an narratives with Western processes of detection and reasoning, contemporary Judge Dee stories also incorporate elements of espionage, kung fu, and the traditional Chinese chivalric spirit. The Judge Dee tradition originated by van Gulik has acquired a new, even more conspicuous hybridity and enjoys an enduring vitality in the global networks of popular culture transfer.

…

The cases of postwar Hong Kong detective fiction and van Gulik’s Judge Dee detective series demonstrate that the Republican and late Qing modes of appropriating detective fiction in China during the earlier twentieth century survived in the postwar era and continued to influence detective fiction both in the East as well as the West. These two modes enhance our understanding of both local and global detective fiction because they represent not only 17  

There are also numerous examples of fan fiction, TV shows, and films related to Judge Dee whose creators have no family ties to China. These include Deception: A Novel of Mystery and Madness in Ancient China (later retitled Iron Empress: A Novel of Murder and Madness in T’ang China) by Eleanor Cooney and Daniel Altieri (Avon Books, 1994), in which Judge Dee solves cases during the reign of Empress Wu. In France, Sven Roussel wrote La Dernière Enquête du Juge Ti (2008), a novel about Judge Dee and his various lieutenants set in Lan-fang. From 2004 to 2011, Frédéric Lenormand, the most prolific Judge Dee fan-fiction writer, created eighteen volumes titled Les Nouvelle Enquêtes du Juge Ti.

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two historical stages of native Chinese detective fiction during the first half of the twentieth century, but also two strategies for fusing the conventions of Western detective fiction with Chinese history and tradition in the PRC and beyond in the second half of the twentieth century. With these two modes as reference points, we can identify and compare the connections, variations, and even deviations that define various strands of postwar detective fiction in terms of its Chinese precursors. On a larger scale, we can use these modes to gather more clues for understanding the dynamics and complexity of the cultural identities that are continuously developed during the tug-of-war between globalization and localization, between the traditional and the modern, and finally between cultural hybridity and cultural authenticity in the evolution of detective fiction.

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Character List Entries are alphabetized according to the standard Pinyin alphabetization system, in which compound words are sorted according to the spelling of their first character. Thus, for example, Bali chahuanü yishi precedes “Baijin huo.” aili 愛力 “An zhong an” 案中案 Bali chahuanü yishi 巴黎茶花女遺事 “Baijin huo” 白巾禍 bailu shuifu 白鷺水凫 “Bai pixie” 白皮鞋 “Bai shajin” 白紗巾 baixing 百姓 “Baiyi guai” 白衣怪 Banyue 半月 “Baoche zhong” 包車中 bao dating 包打聽 baotan 包探 baotan’an 包探案 Bao Tianxiao 包天笑 Beike zhentan tan 貝克偵探談 biji 筆記 Bianzhou 汴州 binghun 兵魂 chaifang 柴房 Changchuan 長川 changhuang 惝怳 Chen Diexian 陳蝶仙 Chen Haozi 陳淏子 Chen Jialin 陳家麟 Chen Jinghan 陳景涵 Chen Shousong 陳壽嵩 Chen Xiji 陳熙績 Chen Xu 陳栩 Cheng Xiaoqing 程小青

Cheng Yi 程頤 “Chuang” 窗 ci 慈 cibei 慈悲 cijian 次間 “Cuiming fu” 催命符 “Cuimian shu” 催眠術 dafu 大夫 Da fuchou 大復仇 Dashijie bao 大世界報 Da shuyuan 大書院 Datongshu 大同書 “Datou zhentan xilie” 大頭偵探系列 Daxue 大學 Da zhentan 大偵探 daoxue 道學 Dao Zhi 盜拓 “Di’er dan” 第二彈 “Di’er zhang zhaopian” 第二張照片 Di Renjie 狄仁傑 Di Renjie qi’an 狄仁傑奇案 Dianying loutai 電影樓臺 diedie 爹爹 Ding Zuyin 丁祖蔭 Dushe quan 毒蛇圈 dushi liumang 都市流氓 Dushou 毒手 “Duanzhi tuan” 斷指團 Enchou xue 恩仇血 er 兒

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431287_010

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246 Ershinian mudu zhi guaixianzhuang 二十 年目睹之怪現狀 Eryi 爾誼

fazhi wenxue 法制文學 fanbin 番兵 Fan Feng zhanzheng 反奉戰爭 Fanhun xiang 返魂香 fante xiaoshuo 反特小說 Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 Fei Meng 費蒙 Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 fengtu 風土 fu 福 Fu Jian 符堅 Fu’ermosi zhentan’an quanji 福爾摩斯偵 探案全集

Fu’ermosi zhi jindi 福爾摩斯之勁敵 gezhi 格致 gezhixue 格致學 Gengzi 庚子 gong’an 公案 Gou Jian 勾踐 gubing 蠱病 gupu 古樸 guwen 古文 “Guai dianhua” 怪電話 “Guai fangke” 怪房客 Guan Zhong 管仲 guicai 鬼才 Guishan langxia zhuan 鬼山狼俠傳 “Guishou” 鬼手 guocui 國粹 Guo-Feng zhanzheng 國奉戰爭 Guohua 國華 “Guomin xinlinghun” 國民新靈魂 Haishang shushisheng 海上漱石生 He Puzhai 何樸斋

Character List Heitaizi nanzhenglu 黑太子南征錄 Heiyi dao 黑衣盜 Henqi chouluo ji 恨綺愁羅記 Hongdu bailiansheng 洪都百煉生 “Hongguiwan” 紅鬼丸 Hongmeigui 紅玫瑰 “Hong pixie” 紅皮鞋 Hong shoutao 紅手套 Hongzazhi 紅雜誌 Houbian 後編 hutou 虎頭 Hu Xian 胡閒 “Huyi” 狐疑 huaben 話本 Huasheng baotan’an 華生包探案 “Huanshujia de anshi” 幻術家的暗示 Huang Jinrong 黃金榮 Huang Xuewei 黃雪薇 “Huishen xinlong zuchuan quan’an” 會審 信隆租船全案 huiwei 回味 Huo Sang 霍桑 Huo Sen 霍森 “Huo shi” 活屍

“Jifu kuangnü qi’an” 繼父誑女奇案 Jilian huikan 機聯會刊 Jia 賈 Jiading yuanchang 嘉定源昌 Jiajing 嘉靖 jiating changshi 家庭常識 Jiating gongyeshe 家庭工業社 jiating geming 家庭革命 jian’an 兼愛 jiantaozi 兼桃子 “Jianwei yuanfu’an” 犍為冤婦案 Jiangnan shuishi xuetang 江南水師學堂 “Jiangnanyan” 江南燕 “Jiexin ji” 劫心記 jin 金

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Character List jinchong 金蟲 Jinfeng tieyu lu 金風鐵雨錄 Jingshi tongyan 警世通言 “Jiuhou” 酒後 “Juezhi ji” 角智記 Kang Youwei 康有為 kaoju 考據 kaozheng 考證 Katsumizu Junkō 勝水淳行 Kexue huayu gongtongti 科學話語共同體 kexue xiaopin 科學小品 Kong Jihan 孔繼涵 Kuaihuo 快活 kuangmo 旷漠 “Kuileiju” 傀儡劇 Kuroiwa Ruikō 黑岩淚香 Laba jie 臘八街 Lanpishu 藍皮書 “Langman yuyun” 浪漫餘韻 Lao Can youji 老殘遊記 Laohu dang 老虎黨 laohuzao 老虎灶 laorenjia 老人家 lao Shaonian 老少年 Lengxue 冷血 lihun bing 離魂病 Liji 禮記 linong 里弄 Li Sheng 里乘 Li Shizhen 李時珍 “Lianban zhi hen” 蓮瓣之痕 “Lianju zhong de duzhen” 奩具中的毒針 Liang Qichao 梁啟超 liangshang liangxia 两上两下 Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異 Lin Shu 林紓 Lin Weilu 林畏廬

linghun 靈魂 Linglong 玲瓏 Liu Bannong 劉半儂 Liu E 劉鶚 Liu Na’ou 劉吶鷗 “Longhu dou: Fu’ermosi yu Yasenluoping de bodou” 龍虎鬥:福爾摩斯與亞森羅 萍的搏鬥 Longtu erlu 龍圖耳錄 Lu Dan’an 陸譫安 Lu Ji 陸璣 Lu Ping 魯平 “Lunxia xue” 輪下血 Luo Bin 羅斌 Lü Simian 呂思勉 Lüshun 旅順

Mai Jia 麥家 “Maodun quan” 矛盾圈 maosheng 茂盛 Maoshi caomu niaoshou chongyu shu 毛 詩草木鳥獸蟲魚疏 Maoshi pinwu tukao 毛詩品物圖考 “Mao shizi” 毛獅子 “Meigui nülang” 玫瑰女郎 meijie 媒介 Menjiao li de Fu’ermosi 門角裡的福爾摩 斯 Minzhong zazhi 民眾雜誌 mingqi 名器 mogui hun 魔鬼魂 Mozi 墨子 Mu Shiying 穆時英 Mu Yecha 母夜叉

Nanshi 南市 “Neiwai jiaogong” 內外交攻 “Nigong Chunyang” 倪公春陽 nihuaben 擬話本

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248 Ni Kuang (or Ngai Hong) 倪匡 Ningzhou 寧州 nucai 奴才 Nü feizei Huang Ying 女飛賊黃鶯 Nüzhentan 女偵探 Nüzi shijie 女子世界 Nyoyasha 如夜叉 Peili 裴禮 Penggong’an 彭公案 pifang 披房 pingdi mu 平地木 pingdian 評點 pingshu 評書 pu 樸 qi 氣 Qian Yanqiu 錢雁秋 Qianbian 前編 Qianri zui 千日醉 “Qianting tu” 潛艇圖 “qiedai xiawen fenshuo” 且待下文分說 Qin Shou’ou 秦瘦鷗 qingbang 青幫 Qingfeng zha 清風閘 qinglang 清朗 qingniao shi 青鳥使 qingshe 青社 “Qiechi ji” 竊齒記 quwei 趣味 “queshuo” 卻說 Rancike zhuan 髯刺客傳 ren de wenxue 人的文學 Renmin ribao 人民日報 ruzhe zhi xue 儒者之學 sanshang sanxia lian liangxiang 三上三下 連兩廂

“Sanshisan hao wu” 三十三號屋 Sanxia wuyi 三俠五義

Character List “Sanxianshen Baolongtu duanyuan” 三獻 身包龍圖斷冤 Sanxin pai 三心牌 se 澀 shanhaihun 山海魂 Shanhai jing 山海經 “Shanyang tu” 山羊圖 Shanghai wenhua 上海文化 Shang Yang 商鞅 shaoye 少爺 shehui xinwen 社會新聞 Shenüshi zhuan 蛇女士傳 Shenbao 申報 Shenshu guicang lu 神樞鬼藏錄 Shen Ziming 沈子明 “Shi” 蝨 Shibao 時報 Shi ji 史記 Shigong’an 施公案 shihun bing 失魂病 shikumen 石庫門 shijia 世家 shijiao 世交 Shiwubao 時務報 shiyan 實驗 Shi Zhecun 施蟄存 “shizijietou de lianhuanhua” 十字街頭的 連環畫 “The Shouzhen” 守貞 “Shuangren bixue” 霜刃碧血 Shuangxiong douzhi ji 雙雄鬥智記 “Shuangxun” 雙殉 Shui hu zhuan 水滸傳 Simalu 四馬路 Sima Qian 司馬遷 Sin Hok Gong Luen 仙鶴港聯 Song Ci 宋慈 songshi 訟師 Song Wuqi jiating zhentan 宋悟奇家庭偵 探 Song Ying 松鷹 78B

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Character List Sun Liaohong 孫了紅 Sun Shi 孫湜 Sun Yongxue 孫詠雪 Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 tantei shōsetsu 探偵小說 Tangyin bishi 棠陰比事 Tianjin riri xinwen 天津日日新聞 Tianxuwosheng 天虛我生 Tie 鐵 Tie Ruifu鐵瑞福 “tingting nülang” 亭亭女郎 Tokuromo Roka 德富蘆花 tongda 通達 Tsui Hark 徐克 tuqi 土氣 tuili xiaoshuo 推理小說 “Tuike gui” 蛻殼龜 Wang Fansheng 王芃生 Wang Junxi 王俊熙 Wang Yangming 王陽明 wei 味 Weilai jiaoyushi 未來教育史 Weilu 畏盧 “Weisui de ren” 尾隨的人 Wei Yi 魏易 weizhi 微旨 wenming jingjie 文明世界 wenzhang zhi xue 文章之學 Wudipai 無敵牌 “Wufu dang” 五福黨 “Wuge shilianzhe” 五個失戀者 “Wugong moying” 舞宮魔影 “Wuhou de guisu” 舞後的歸宿 Wu Jianren 吴趼人 Wuzetian sida qi’an 武則天四大奇案 “Wuzhong hua” 霧中花 Wu Zixu 伍子胥 “Wuzui zhi xiongshou” 無罪之兇手

Xiyuan lu 洗冤錄 “Xiadao Lu Ping xilie” 俠盜魯平系列 Xia Hua tan’an 夏華探案 “Xia nünu” 俠女奴 xianling 縣令 xianzhi 賢姪 xiangfang 廂房 Xiangshi 箱屍 “Xiangzhong nüshi” 箱中女屍 xiao 孝 “Xiaoshuo conghua” 小說叢話 Xiaoshuo daguan 小說大觀 Xiaoshuo shibao 小說時報 Xiaoshuo yuebao 小說月報 Xiaohou 小猴 xiaopinwen 小品文 Xiao Ping 小平 Xiao Qian 萧乾 xieduliya 歇笃里亚 “Xieluoke chudao Shanghai di’er’an” 歇洛 克初到上海第二案

“Xieluoke laiyou Shanghai diyi’an” 歇洛克 來遊上海第一案

Xieluoke qi’an kaichang 歇洛克奇案開場 xili 吸力 xinganjue pai 新感覺派 Xin Digong’an 新狄公案 Xin xiaoshuo 新小說 Xinyi baotan’an 新譯包探案 xing 興 xing 性 xinghai 性海 Xingshe 星社 “Xiongzhai” 凶宅 Xiuxiang xiaoshuo 繡像小說 Xu Changyun tan’an 徐常雲探案 Xu Feng’en 許奉恩 Xu Zhuodai 徐卓呆 Xu Zongyu 徐宗玉 xuanxue 玄學

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250 “Xue bishou” 血匕首 “Xuezhiren” 血紙人 xunbu 巡捕 xungu 訓詁 ya 雅 Yasenluoping’an quanji 亞森‧羅萍案全集 Yan’an zhidu 晏安之毒 “Yanjing hui” 眼鏡會 Yang Xinyi 楊心一 Yanghu lüxia 陽湖呂俠 yangqian 洋錢 yanqiang 煙槍 “Yanweixu” 燕尾鬚 Ye Huang fufu tan’an 葉黃夫婦探案 Yeshishi 野史氏 Ye Zhixiong 葉志雄 “Yiba caidao” 一把菜刀 “Yidai yuanhun” 衣帶冤魂 yili 義理 “Yiwan xifan songming” 一碗稀飯送命 yinyuan 銀元 “Yingguo baotan fang kedie yisheng qi’an” 英國包探訪喀迭醫生奇案 Yingwen Hubao 英文滬報 “Yingwu sheng” 鸚鵡聲 Yingxi xiaoshuo 影戲小說 yitai 以太 yiwang kuangmo wuji 一望旷漠无际 youbieze 有別擇 youxia 遊俠 “Yuchong yuan” 玉蟲緣 Yu Tianfen 俞天憤 Yu Weitang 余尉堂 yuyan 寓言 yuan 元 Yuanhai lingguang 冤海靈光 yuanyang hudie pai 鴛鴦蝴蝶派 yue 曰

Character List Zaishi fuchou ji 再世復仇記 zaofang 灶房 Zhang Baorui 張寶瑞 Zhang Biwu 張碧梧 Zhang Dekun 張德坤 Zhang Ji 張籍 Zhang Shichuan 張石川 Zhang Tianyi 張天翼 Zhang Wuzheng 張無諍 Zhang Yihan 張毅漢 Zhao Tiaokuang 趙苕狂 Zhentan shijie 偵探世界 zhentan xiaoshuo 偵探小說 Zheng Dike 鄭狄克 “Zhongguohun anzaihu?” 中國魂安在乎 Zhongguo nüzhentan 中國女偵探 Zhongguo zhentan’an 中國偵探案 zhonghou 重厚 Zhonghua xiaoshuo jie 中華小說界 zhongxie 中邪 zhongyong 中庸 Zhou Er 周耳 Zhou Guisheng 周桂笙 Zhou Taigu 周太谷 Zhou Zuoren 周作人 Zhu Xi 朱熹 Zhuang You 壯遊 Zhuangzi 莊子 zhuo 拙 Ziluolan 紫羅蘭 Zi mianju 紫面具 “Zise youyongyi” 紫色游泳衣 “Zi xinjian” 紫信箋 Ziyoutan 自由談 zongtao 宗桃 Zou Lang 鄒郎 “Zuanshi xiangquan” 鑽石項圈 Zuozhuan 左傳

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Works Cited Abbreviations CXQWJ

HSTAJ WJRQJ

XDLP XDWG

ZXTXX

ZZXLZ

Cheng Xiaoqing 程小青. Cheng Xiaoqing wenji: Huo Sang tan’an xuan 程小 青文集:霍桑探案選 (Works of Cheng Xiaoqing: Selections from the cases of Huo Sang). 4 vols. Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chuban gongsi, 1986. Cheng Xiaoqing 程小青. Huo Sang tan’anji 霍桑探案集 (Collected cases of Huo Sang). 13 vols. Beijing: Qunzhong chubanshe, 1986–1988. Wu Jianren 吳趼人. Wu Jianren quanji 吳趼人全集 (The complete collection of Wu Jianren’s works). 10 vols. Harbin: Beifang wenyi chubanshe, 1998. Sun Liaohong 孫了紅. Xiadao Lu Ping qi’an 俠盜魯平奇案 (Strange cases of the chivalric burglar Lu Ping). Shanghai: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1989. Sun Liaohong 孫了紅. Xiadao wenguai: Sun Liaohong daibiaozuo 俠盜文怪: 孫了紅代表作 (The literary marvel of the chivalrous thief: Representative works by Sun Liaohong). Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996. Xiao Jinlin 蕭金林, ed. Zhongguo xiandai tongsu xiaoshuo xuanping: Zhentan juan 中國現代通俗小說選評:偵探卷 (Selection of popular fiction in modern China: Detective stories). Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1992. Ren Xiang 任翔 and Gao Yuan 高媛, eds. Zhongguo zhentan xiaoshuo lilun ziliao, 1902–2011 中國偵探小說理論資料 (Critical materials on the study of Chinese detective fiction). Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe, 2013.

Western-Language Sources Barkman, C. D., and H. de Vries-van der Hoeven. Dutch Mandarin: The Life and Work of Robert Hans van Gulik. Translated by Rosemary Robson. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2018. Benjamin, Elman. “From Pre-modern Chinese Natural Studies to Modern Science in China.” In Lackner and Vittinghoff, Mapping Meanings, 25–74. Bloch, Ernst. The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. Boisgobey, Fortuné du. The Serpents’ Coils. London: Vizetelly and Co., 1885. English translation of Margot la balafrée. Bosi, Deborah. “A Crane among Chickens: The Search for Place in William Marshall’s Yellowthread Street Novels.” In Christian, The Post-colonial Detective, 73–83.

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Zhang Biwu 張碧梧. Shuangxiong douzhi ji 雙雄鬥智記 (The rivalry of two masters). Banyue 1, nos. 6–24. Zhang Biwu 張碧梧. “Xiangzhong nüshi” 箱中女屍 (A female corpse in a box). Kuaihuo, nos. 23–24 (1922). Zhang Biwu 張碧梧. “Zhentan changpian zhi shibai” 偵探長篇之失敗 (The failure of detective serials). Zhentan shijie, no. 15 (1923): 5–6. Zhang Jingren 張鏡人. “Tianxuwosheng Chen Xuyuan xiansheng zhi chenggong shi” 天虛我生陳栩園先生之成功史 (The successful story of Tianxuwosheng, or Mr. Cheng Xuyuan). Zixiu, no. 124 (1940): 7–8. Zhang Renshan 張仁善. “Xunqiu falü yu shehui de pinghen—Lun Minguo shiqi qinshufa, jichengfa dui jiazu zhidu de biange” 尋求法律與社會的平衡—論民國時期 親屬法，繼承法對家族制度的變革 (Seeking a balance between the law and society—A discussion of how the reform of the laws of kinship and inheritance changed the family system of the Republican period). Zhongguo faxue, no. 3 (2009): 128–141. Zhang Yihan 張毅漢. “Xu” 序 (Preface). October 1930. In Cheng Xiaoqing, Huo Sang tan’an huikan 1. Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu yinshua gongsi, 1930. ZZXLZ, 142–143. Zhao Yiheng 趙毅衡. “Kuaizhirenkou de xiyang Digong’an” 膾炙人口的西洋狄公案 (The widely known Western Judge Dee series). Renmin ribao, January 5, 1981. Zheng Dike 鄭狄克. “Datou zhentan xilie zhiyi: Wuge shilianzhe” 大頭偵探系列之一: 五個失戀者 (The big head detective cases, 1: Five lovelorn souls). Lanpishu, no. 9 (1947): 40–53. Zhentan shijie 偵探世界 (Detective world). Nos. 1–24, June 1923–May 1924. Shanghai: Shijie shuju. Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑. “Libailiu yiyu” 禮拜六囈語 (Random words of Saturday). Libailiu, no. 502 (1933): 28–29. Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑. “Shuo zhentan yingpian” 說偵探影片 (On detective films). Dianying zazhi, no. 1 (1924). Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑. “Xu” (Preface). Yasenluoping’an quanji, June 1924. ZZXLZ, 111. Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑. “Ziluolan’an zabi” 紫羅蘭庵雜筆 (Miscellaneous writings at Ziluolan house). Banyue 1, no. 7 (Dec. 1921). ZZXLZ, 46–47. Zhou Zuoren 周作人. “Fabu’er Kunchong ji” 法布耳《昆蟲記》(Fabre’s The Records about Insects). Chenbao fuxie, Jan 26, 1923. In Zhou Zuoren wenleibian, 4:121–123. Zhou Zuoren 周作人. “Hua jing” 花鏡 (Flower mirror). Huabei ribao, April 2, 1934. In Zhou Zuoren, Zhou Zuoren wenleibian, 4:27–31. Zhou Zuoren 周作人. “Kexue xiaopin” 科學小品 (Short essays on science). Wenfan xiaopin, no. 4 (May 1935). In Zhou Zuoren, Zhou Zuoren wenleibian, 4:35–39. Zhou Zuoren 周作人. Kuzhu zaji 苦竹雜記 (Bitter bamboo miscellanies). Shanghai: Liangyou tushu yinshua gongsi, 1936.

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Index Ace of Spades, The (film) 189 aesthetics. See quwei affective experience 1, 6, 10, 13–15, 21–22, 24, 26 “Aggrieved Ghost of the Sash Murder, The” (“Yidai yuanhun”) 122–123, 135 airplane 18, 138, 173, 198, 204n101, 238 allegory 22, 60, 76–77, 97–99, 108–109. See also yuyan alternative modernities 6, 11, 12n33 Anhui Province 118–119 automobiles 176, 182, 204n101, 207. See also cars Banyue. See The Half Moon Bao Fu 48 Bao, Judge 4, 87 Bao Lang 15, 121, 127, 130, 139–141, 144, 148, 152–153, 155–157, 178–180, 186, 191, 214–215, 217–218, 220, 224, 231–232 Bao Tianxiao 150, 163, 211 “Hidden Guns—Sherlock Holmes’s Fourth Case in China” (“Cangqiang’an—Xieluoke lai Hua disi’an”) 150nn1–2  “Morphine—Sherlock Holmes’s Third Case in China” (“Mafei’an—Xieluoke lai Hua di’san’an”) 150n1, 211 Beeton’s Christmas Annual 38 Beijing 49, 119n23, 128, 137, 184n40, 224 Beike zhentan tan. See Capture of Paul Beck, The belated modernity 12 Berman, Marshall 13 Biggers, Earl Derr 113, 113n5, 120n24 Bloch, Ernst 2n1 Blue Book, The 5n14, 160, 208n3, 237 Boisgobey, Fortuné du 2n3, 22, 27, 36, 46–49, 54, 56, 90 Boxer Rebellion 42, 73, 80n23 Buddhism 72n, 78, 193 burglars 25, 135, 161, 178n20, 206 chivalric 45, 152, 166–168, 170, 173. See also xiayi gong’an xiaoshuo; xiayi xiaoshuo

detective 5, 28–29, 151–152, 159–160, 171, 187, 237 female 5, 28, 235, 237, 239 gentleman- 36, 152, 161–162 philosophy of 165–171 Butterfly fiction. See Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School Calinescu, Matei 24 Camélias, La Dame aux 35n1, 38 Capture of Paul Beck, The 38 Carr, John Dickson 113, 241n12 cars 131, 137, 165, 172, 177–179, 182, 188, 198, 204n101 Carter, Nick 36 Cases of Judge Peng (Penggong’an) 16 Cases of Judge Shi (Shigong’an) 16 castration anxiety 99 Chan, Charlie (detective) 113n5, 120n24, 174 Chang, Eileen 174 Changchuan 219, 222–223 “Murdered by a Bowl of Porridge” (“Yiwan xifan songming”) 222–223 Changzhou 106 Charteris, Leslie 120n24, 157n25 chastity 96, 99–100. See also “Shouzhen, The” Chen Cao (detective) 1 Chen Diexian 122 Chen Dieyi 60n68, 173 Chen Haozi 64 Chen Jialin 38 Chen Jinghan 150 Chen Shousong 122 Chen Xiji 39–40 Chen Xu. See Tianxuwosheng Cheng Xiaoqing 4, 8–10, 15, 20, 28, 113–114, 116, 118–121, 125–135, 139–142, 144–145, 147–148, 151–153, 157–160, 169, 173, 175–176, 178–183, 186, 195–198, 200, 206–209, 212–215, 217–218, 220–221, 224–227, 229–232, 236 “After Getting Drunk” (“Jiuhou”) 218 “Aftermath of a Romance, The” (“Langman yuyun”) 156

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274 “Blood on the Knife” (“Biren shuangxue”)  128, 130 “Blood under the Wheels” (“Lunxia xue”)  157n27 “Case within a Case, A” (“An zhong an”)  158, 217, 224, 226 “Coils of Contradictions” (“Maodun quan”) 224–225, 230 Corpse in a Suitcase, The (Xiangshi) 215 “Deadly Charm, A” (“Cuiming fu”) 221, 225–226, 229–231 “Diamond Necklace, The” (“Zuanshi xiangquan”) 195, 196n “Double Suicide” (“Shuangxun”) 187 “End of a Dancing Queen, The” (“Wuhou de guisu”) 177, 180 “Evil Shadow in a Dance Hall” (“Wugong moying”) 180 “Fighting In and Out” (“Neiwai jiaogong”)  217 “Finger-cutters Gang, The” (“Duanzhi tuan”) 157–158 “Five Blessings Gang, The” (“Fufu dang”)  130, 131n56, 140 “Flea” (“Shi”) 218 “Flower in the Fog” (“Wuzhong hua”)  141–142, 220–221 “Ghost in White, A” (“Baiyi guai”)  148–149, 158, 214, 225, 227–229 “Hints of an Illusionist” (“Huanshujia de anshi”) 141 “Hypnosis Technique” (“Cuimian shu”)  140 “Innocent Killer, The” (“Wuzui zhi xiongshou”) 153 “Odd Tenant, An” (“Guai fangke”) 226 “Second Shot, The” (“Di’erzhang zhaopian”) 229 “Sound of a Parrot” (“Yingwu sheng”)  126–127, 217–218, 220 “Strange Phone Call, A” (“Guai dianhua”)  225, 229 “Submarine Design, A” (“Qianting tu”)  28, 175, 195–200 “Swallow of the South” (“Jiangnanyan”)  144, 151, 153n9, 156, 214–215, 224 “White Kerchief, The” (“Bai Shajin”) 155 “Window” (“Chuang”) 121

Index “Woman in a Fur Coat” (“Huqiu nü”)  226 Cheng Yi 144, 145 Chi Limin 143 Chiang Kai-shek 136 China: late Qing crisis in 43, 76, 79, 109 Chinese Arsène Lupin. See Lu Ping Chinese female Sherlock Holmeses. See Chinese Female Detectives Chinese language: classical 4, 18, 92, 95, 113, 118–119, 125, 153n9, 161, 195–196. See also guwen vernacular 4, 37, 113, 119, 121n30, 163, 196, 243. See also huaben Chinese Progress, The (Shiwubao) 2, 35 Chinese Sherlock Holmes 4, 8. See also Huo Sang Chow, Rey 100n, 101 Chow, William Cheong-loong 57–59, 64 Christie, Agatha 21n49, 113, 120n24, 242n16 Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, The 38, 82 Chu Yi (detective) 106–109 cinema: Western detective series and thrillers 188–195 Westernized entertainment spaces 5, 12, 28, 119, 173, 175–176, 182, 185, 189, 191, 217 See also yingxi xiaoshuo Classic of Mountains and Seas, The (Shanhai jing) 98 Clear Wind Sluice (Qingfeng zha) 87 clocks. See timekeeping  coffeehouse 12, 28, 173, 175, 182–183 Cold War 239 commentaries (pingdian) 22, 37, 52–55, 70 community of scientific discourse (kexue huayu gongtongti) 19, 28, 116–118, 125, 149 Complete Collection of Arsène Lupin, The (Yasenluoping’an quanji) 163 Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes Detective Stories, The (Fu’ermosi zhentanan quanji) 113, 118 Complete Sherlock Holmes Detective Stories in Vernacular with Punctuation, The (Biaodian baihua Fu’ermosi tanan daquanji) 113 Confucianism 20, 72n, 78, 126, 142, 143n89, 145–146, 149

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Index morality of 1, 9n29, 13, 22–23, 58, 100, 117, 132, 143, 147, 151, 179, 234 philosophy of 72n, 115, 126, 143–146, 153 Cooper, Nina 47 cosmopolitanism 10, 174. See also Shanghai cosmopolitanism cryptography 59, 61, 70 cultural negotiations 9, 37, 70 Cuvier, George 97–98 Da zhentan. See Great Detective Dao Zhi 152, 166–167 Daoism 78, 166n52 Daoxue 20 Daruvala, Susan 57–58, 65 Dashijie bao. See Great World Daily Daxue (The great learning) 143, 144n95 Dee, Judge 29, 235, 239–243 Detective Cases of Xia Hua (Xia Hua tan’an)  134 Detective World 139, 159, 210 detectives, female 23, 27, 71, 101–106, 108, 110, 222, 237–239 Dickens, Charles 81, 115 didacticism 15, 49, 88, 120, 148–149, 159, 204n101, 211 Ding Zuyin 61 “disguised textbooks for science” 6, 27, 114–116, 120 Donovan, Dick (detective) 36 double voice 8 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan 6n19, 9, 14–15, 17n41, 25, 27, 36, 38–39, 42–44, 113, 115, 120n24, 150, 153n10, 195–197, 199–200, 204, 206, 241n12 “Adventure of the Dancing Men, The”  60 “Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual, The”  59–60 Beyond the City 43n21, 44 “Case of Identity, A” 35, 36 “Crooked Man, The” 35, 36 “Final Problem, The” 35 Hound of the Baskervilles, The 241n12 Micah Clarke 43, 44 “Naval Treaty, The” 35–36, 196, 200 Refugees, The 43

Study in Scarlet 25, 27, 36, 38–43, 46, 63, 153 Uncle Bernac 43, 44 White Company, The 43, 44 Dumas, Alexandre, fils 35n1, 38 Dupin, Auguste (detective) 97–98, 115, 186 Dushe quan. See The Serpents’ Coils Eastern Times (Shibao) 150 emasculation 89. See also castration anxiety empiricism 98, 122–123, 125, 146. See also moral scientism entomology 60, 64n81 epistemology 11n32, 13, 18, 20, 27, 110, 233 negotiations of 10, 13, 17–21 structure of 19–20, 57, 90, 95, 234 of zhiguai 71–72, 98, 100 See also gezhi; gezhixue everyday life  practices of 6, 14, 20, 114, 125, 147, 208, 231–232 in Republican China 1, 12, 21, 28, 114, 150, 207–208, 210, 229 extraterritoriality 136 Fabre, Jean-Henri 65 families: nuclear structure of in modern China 219  polygamy in 208 servants and 223–225 traditional adoption and inheritance in  219–223 See also patriarchal hegemony (order, society) Fan Yanqiao 119n22, 213, 215 Fang Ying 191 fante xiaoshuo (anti-spy novels) 235–236 fazhi wenxue (legal system literature) 8 Fei Meng 236 Strange Cases of Luo Tuo, The (Luo Tuo qi’an) 237 femininity 45, 101–102, 105 Feng Jinniu 169 fengtu 57, 59 Fiction Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao) 80 Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao) 163 Fiction World (Xiaoshuo shijie) 118

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276 filial piety 22, 52–55, 100n, 102–104 fingerprints 7n22, 18, 115, 126–129, 137, 170 first-person narrator 36, 38, 59, 67, 91, 163, 196, 210 Fong, Gilbert 90 foot binding 21, 211 forensic science. See under science Foucault, Michel 7n22, 74 Four Strange Cases under Empress Wu 239, 241 Frankenstein (film) 191 Free Talk (Ziyou tan) 123 Freeman, Austin 113, 120n24 Freud, Sigmund 141–142 psychology of 126, 139, 200, 202, 206 See also psychoanalysis Fujian Province 81 Fujii Tikuhiro 103, 109 Furth, Charlotte 96, 146 Gaozong Emperor 239 gaze (theory) 185, 188, 194 Gengzi War 42 Genpō Oka 64 Gerfaut, Tiburce 47–55 gezhi (inquring into and extending knowledge) 20, 126, 143–145 gezhixue (gezhi studies) 20, 145 glocalism 11n31 Goboriau, Émile 2n3 Goldhurst, William 60, 68–69 gong’an: development of term 4n12 as genre 11, 26, 89, 114, 239, 243 literature 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15–19, 24, 27, 36, 71–72, 80–82, 84–87, 89–90, 92, 100, 103, 130, 233, 235, 240–243 Gou Jian 40, 42–43 Grand Magazine, The (Xiaoshuo daguan)  195 Great Detective (Da zhentan) 5n14, 128, 160, 222 Great World Daily 190 Green, Katharine 113 Green Gang (qingbang) 136 Green Society (qingshe) 125 Gross, Hans 130, 130n52 Guan Kean-fung 79 Guangzhou 183–184 Guishan langxia zhuan. See Nada the Lily

Index Gunning, Tom 21 guwen 37, 61, 67–69. See also Chinese language, classical Haggard, H. Rider 45 Haishang shushisheng 190 Half Moon, The 117n18, 178n20, 210 hallucinations 139, 141, 182, 204n101 Hammett, Dashiell 113 Hanan, Patrick 52, 56, 91, 100n Hangzhou 122, 222–223 Hao Ruijuan 9, 17n41 Happy (Kuaihuo) 210 hard-boiled fiction 7n23, 159 Hassell, J. Woodrow Jr. 60 He Puzhai 160 Heitaizi nanzhenglu. See White Company, The under Doyle, Arthur Conan Henan Province 102 Henry, Edward 128 Herschel, Sir William 128 Hewitt, Martin (detective) 36 Holmes, Sherlock (detective) 4, 23–24, 38, 40–41, 46, 72–74, 77, 80, 106–107, 110, 115, 138–139, 145, 147, 149–154, 156, 162–163, 170, 174, 175, 186, 191, 195–198, 200, 204 reception of in China 2, 3n9, 6, 9n29, 16, 17n, 23, 35–36, 39, 61, 106, 113, 118, 197, 222n. See also Doyle, Arthur Conan, and the stories listed there; Watson, John Holmes, Sherlock, in the Corner (menjiao li de Fu’ermosi) 5 “Holmes’s Great Rival” (“Fu’ermosi zhi jindi”) 163 Hong Kong 11n32, 29, 205, 235–239, 243 Hongdu bailian sheng 73 Hongmeigui. See Red Rose Hongzazhi. See Red Magazine Hood, Robin 25, 157n25 Hope, Jefferson 25, 38–43, 46, 70 huaben (vernacular stories) 4, 152. See also Chinese language, vernacular Hu Shi (Hu Shih) 58 Hu Xian (detective) 5 Huang Jinrong 136 Huang Ying (detective) 5, 29, 235, 237–239 Hung, Eva 8, 36, 115

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Index Huo Sang (detective) 4, 8–9, 9n29, 15, 20, 28, 118–121, 126–127, 129–131, 133–134, 139–142, 144–149, 151–161, 164, 169–170, 173–174, 177–182, 186–187, 191–192, 208, 213–215, 217–221, 223–226, 229–232 hutou (tiger’s head) 40 hypnosis 18, 105, 139–140 hysteria 139–142, 193 ideology 14–15, 115, 117, 127, 131, 142, 160, 196, 199–200, 205 Illustrated Fiction (Xiuxiang xiaoshuo) 73 indigenous modernity 12 individualism 27, 37, 57–59, 61–63 “Inescapable Dragnet, An” (“Tianluo diwang”) 236 intertextuality 195, 204–205, 207 Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 141 jian’ai (universal love) 147, 151–152, 154–155 Jiang Weifeng 10n30, 151 Jiangnanyan 156 Jiangsu Province 102, 211 jiantaozi (adopted son) 220 “Jifu kuangnü qi’an.” See “Case of Identity, A” under Doyle, Arthur Conan Jin Diefei (detective) 210 Jinfeng tieyu lu. See Micah Clarke under Doyle, Arthur Conan Johnston, Ian 154 Joly, Henri 131 Journal of the Associations of Factories of Machine-made Local Products in Shanghai (Jilian huikan) 123–124 justice 4, 24, 39n10, 40, 81, 85n47, 116, 169 agencies of 10, 28, 151–171 discourse of 6, 24–25, 28, 114, 150–152, 171 evidentiary procedure and 2n1, 33, 72, 96–97, 234 legal, institutional 24–25, 74, 82–83, 89, 171 poetic 1, 9, 13, 16, 24–25, 28, 46, 151, 151n4, 155–159, 171, 221, 224, 234 See also legal culture; legal institutions; legal system

kagaku (science) 143 Kaifeng 102 Kang Youwei 20, 143, 147 Kao Hsin Yang 19 Kao, Karl S. Y. 95–96 Karloff, Boris 192–193 Katsumizu Junkō 130 Kawana, Sari 7 kexue huayu gongtongti. See community of scientific discourse kexue xiaopin (short essays on science) 65 Kigi Takatarou 3n4 Kinkley, Jeffery 6, 8–9, 120, 153, 157n27, 185n44, 196n, 236n2 Kong Jihan 99 Kuroiwa Ruikō 2n3, 36, 47 Lacassagne, Alexandre 130–132 Lai Yi-lun 176, 186–187, 229n56 Lanpishu. See Blue Book, The Lao Can 3–4, 16–18, 72–78, 80, 109 laohuzao (hot water shop) 208, 225, 229–231 Le règne animal 97 Lean, Eugenia 123–124 Leblanc, Maurice 36, 113, 152, 161–162, 164, 185n44, 195–197, 201, 204 “Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes”  164 Lee, Ou-fan Leo 11, 28, 45, 148, 174, 180, 182, 197, 204 legal culture 82n34 legal institutions 71, 82–84, 140, 159 legal system 71, 82–84, 110, 137, 155, 221, 233. See also justice; police legalism (traditional Chinese philosophy)  93n68 Legrand, William 59, 61–64, 67–69 Lengxue 150 “Sherlock Holmes’s First Case at Shanghai” (“Xieluoke laiyou Shanghai di’yi’an) 150 “Sherlock Holmes’s Second Case at Shanghai” (“Xieluoke chudao Shanghai di’er’an) 150n1 Li Bai. See Tianxuwosheng Li Fei (detective) 191

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278 Li Li 187 Li Sheng 18, 92–95 Li Shizhen 96 Liang Qichao 17n, 35, 52n41, 58, 60, 79, 101n93 Lin Shu 17, 17n41, 27, 35n1, 36–40, 43–46, 60, 67, 70–71, 80–87, 89–90, 109 Shining Light in the Sea of Aggrieved Cases, The (Yuanhai lingguang) 17, 27, 71, 80–89, 109 First Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes, The (Xieluoke qi’an kaichang) 38–46 Lin Wei 81 Lin Weilu. See Lin Shu Linglong 217 linong. See Shanghai alleyways Liu Bannong 23, 92, 113n3 Liu E. 3, 4n11, 27, 71–80, 82, 84, 109 Travels of Lao Can (Lao Can youji) 3–4, 16–19, 27, 71–80, 84–85, 107–109 Liu Na’ou 174n11, 180 Liu Xiaji 166 Liu Yuan-ju 98 Lloyd, Harold 191 localism/locality 57, 59, 66 locked room mystery 90, 97 Lombroso, Cesare 130–132 London 35, 38–40, 46, 128, 153, 163, 174–175, 196–199 Lu Dan’an 4, 190–191 Poison Hand, The (Dushou) 190 Lu Hanchao 11, 207 Lu Ji 64 Lu, Judge 17, 80–81, 83–89 Lu Ping (detective) 4, 28, 151–152, 159–161, 164–171, 174, 181–183, 186–188, 191–193, 237 Lu Shengping 128 Lü Simian 22, 27, 72, 100–102, 107–109. See also Yanghu lüxia “Bloody Handkerchief” (“Xue shoupa”)  102–103, 105 Chinese Female Detectives (Zhongguo nüzhentan) 22–23, 27, 72, 100–109 “Rocks in a Dry Well” (“Kujin shi”)  102–104, 106 “White Jade Bracelet” (“Baiyu zhuo”)  102–106

Index Lu Xun 17n41, 64, 69, 95, 100 Luo Ping (detective) 160n33, 178–179, 191 See also Lu Ping Luo Tuo (detective) 237 Lupin, Arsène 6, 28, 36, 113n5, 151–152, 160–165, 173–175, 195–200, 204 Ma Jun 179 Mai Jia 1 Man They Could Not Hang, The (Zaishi fuchou ji) (film) 193 Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School (yuanyang hudie pai) 5–6, 9n29, 116–118, 122, 125–126, 142, 147, 149, 158, 176, 237 Maoshi caomu niaoshou chongyu shu (Mao’s edition of The Book of Songs, with commentary on the flora and fauna) 64 Maoshi pinwu tukao (Illustrations and flora and fauna of Mao’s edition of The Books of Songs) 64 Margot la balafrée 22, 27, 36–37, 46–47, 90 materialism 1, 9, 132, 147, 155, 175, 179, 214, 234 Matsumoto Seicho 7n23 May Fourth (New Culture, New Literature) movement and literature 6, 8, 9n29, 11–13, 15, 17n, 37, 57, 100, 113–115, 119, 143n89, 146, 160 intellectuals, writers, and reformers associated with 5, 8, 20, 23, 57–58, 79, 116, 126, 142, 143n89, 146, 149 See also New Fiction McDonnell Bodkin, Matthias 38 Mencius 99, 154 metaphysics (xuanxue) 115 metatext 81, 86 Ming Dynasty 4, 21, 80n24, 87n51, 143, 168, 239n9, 241n13 Mirror of Flowers (Hua Jing) 64 Mo Di. See Mozi modernity 1, 12n33, 13, 21–22, 24, 44, 57, 102, 107, 182, 205–206, 212, 233 Chinese 11–13, 17, 19, 26, 101, 174, 233 everyday practice and 12n35. See also everyday life Shanghai 12n35, 175, 176–195 urban/cosmopolitan 6, 12n35, 175–176

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Index Western 2, 9, 12n33, 22, 49, 70, 74, 147, 174, 182, 210, 233–234 See also modernization modernization 9n29, 11, 14, 20, 147, 233. See also modernity Mohism 154 Monmouth Rebellion 43–44 moral scientism 10, 20, 23, 28, 116, 126, 142–143, 146–149, 153 morality 23, 58, 100, 117, 132, 154–155, 167 traditional (Confucian) 1, 9n29, 13, 22–23, 100n, 143, 147, 151, 234 See also moral scientism Moretti, Franco 14, 24, 26 Morrison, Arthur 36, 38, 82, 120n24 Mozi 151–152, 154–155 Mu Shiying 174n11, 180 Mu Yecha 47 Muddock, James Edward Preston 36 Mulan Hua (detective) 235, 238–239 Mummy, The (film) 192 Mummy’s Hand, The (film) 192

ontology 26, 234 Orczy, Baroness Emuska 3n7, 5n13 Outlaws of the Marsh (Shui hu zhuan)  168 Outline of Science, The 65

Nada the Lily 45–46 Nakamura Tadayuki 35 Nanjing 60, 158 Napoleon Bonaparte 43–44, 162 nationalism 46 natural history 57–58, 61, 63–66, 69 neurasthenia 193 neurosis 192–193 New Fiction (xin xiaoshuo) 17, 52, 56, 100–102, 104 New Fiction (journal) 46, 52n41 New Sensation School (xinganjue pai)  174–176, 180 New Translations of Sherlock Holmes (Xinyi baotan’an) 35 Ni Kuang (Ngai Hong) 238–239 nihuaben 168 Northern Song Dynasty 4, 145 Nussbaum, Martha C. 151n4, 171 Nüzi shijie. See World of Women, The  Nyoyasha 47

Pan Yihua 189 Panorama (Wanxiang) 173 patriarchal hegemony (order, society) 23, 89, 100–102, 105, 109, 142, 219–221 patriotism 44, 46, 175 Phantom Bandit, The (film) 190 Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper 59 Poe, Edgar Allan 14, 37, 120n24, 201 “Gold-Bug, The” (“Yuchong yuan”) 27, 36–37, 56–69 “Man of the Crowd” 163 “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The” 27, 72, 90, 96–98 “Mystery of Marie Rogêt, The” 186, 201, 205 “Purloined Letter, The” 7n20 police: detectives 3, 138, 190 images of in Chinese detective stories 139–140, 156–157, 159, 168, 172, 177, 188, 193, 196n, 209, 211, 217, 222, 235–236 images of in Western detective stories 47, 53, 162 as a legal force 3, 25, 47, 53, 136–138, 151, 165, 230, 236n4 modern 2, 2n3, 114, 115, 126, 128 Pollard, David E. 57, 59n62, 69 popular fiction 6, 9, 65, 116, 118n19, 208n3 positivism 101, 131 print culture 5, 12, 28, 114, 117, 175 psychoanalysis 116, 121, 126, 139–142, 149. See also psychology psychology 64, 130, 139, 141–142, 144–145, 147, 149, 153, 191, 202, 204n101. See also Freud, Sigmund; hallucinations; hypnosis; hysteria; psychoanalysis public space 181–183, 186 Purple Mask, The (Zi mianju) (film) 189

Old Dark House, The (film) 192 Omori, Kyoto 3

Qian Yanqiu 243 Qianlong period 145

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280 Qiu Xiaolong 1 Quan Zenggu 138 Queen, Ellery 113, 120n24 Quests of Paul Beck, The 38 “Quickening Incense” (“Fanhun xiang”)  72–73, 78–79 quwei (delight) 37, 56–59, 61, 63, 65–66, 69 Rancike zhuan. See Uncle Bernac under Doyle, Arthur Conan Rathbone, Basil 191 Records about Insects, The 65 Records for Washing Away of Wrong Cases (Xiyuan lu) 94, 126–127 Records of Rites (Liji) 20, 143 Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji) 40, 42, 70, 154n14, 168 Red Magazine 210 Red Rose 183, 209 Ricci, Matteo 143 Rymer, Thomas 24 science 1, 3, 6, 13, 17n, 19–20, 60, 63, 65–66, 69, 71, 72n, 78, 95–96, 100, 105, 108, 114, 120–125, 139–141, 233. See also natural history; psychology forensic 7n22, 75, 98, 116, 121, 126–139, 148–149. See also fingerprint Reception of in China 18, 20, 23–24, 28, 115–118, 120, 143–149. See also scientism science fiction 37, 115–116, 143 scientism 15, 114–116, 143n89, 149. See also moral scientism Seaman, Amanda 7 Secrets of Animal Life 65 Shang, Mr. (detective) 19, 93–94, 96, 98 Shanghai alleyways 12, 207–208, 225–231 Shanghai Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan) 3n9, 43n21, 80, 100 Shanghai cosmopolitanism 28, 173, 175 Shanghai Culture (Shanghai wenhua) 137 Shanghai Gazette (Yingwen Hubao) 201 Shanghai Mercury 35 “Shanyang tu” (A parchment map) 61. See also “The Gold-bug” under Poe, Edgar Allan Shaoxing 60 She nüshi zhuan. See Beyond the City

Index Shenbao 123 Shenshu guicanglu. See Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, The Shi Zhecun 5n15, 28, 174n11, 175, 195, 200, 204, 206–207 “Haunted House, The” (Xiongzhai) 5n15, 28, 175, 195, 200–205 shikumen (alleyway house) 208, 225–229, 232 Shiyan (hands-on testing) 122–123 Shklovsky, Viktor 6n19 shouzhen (animal) 22, 93, 95, 98–100 “Shouzhen, The” 18–19, 22, 27, 72, 90, 92, 94n72, 95–96, 98–100, 103, 109 Silver, Mark Hastings 7 Sima Qian 41–42 Singer, Ben 205–206 Sino-Japanese War 42n17, 119, 160n34, 221–222 Six Dynasties 90, 95, 98 Smyth, Ellison A. 60, 66 Song Ci 94n73, 126 Song Dynasty 4n12, 144 Song Wuqi (detective) 5, 210–212, 216–217 Song Ying 1 songshi (litigation master) 82, 84, 192 Southern Song Dynasty 20, 94n73 Spring and Autumn Period 166 Star Society (Xingshe) 125 Strand Magazine, The 38 “Strange Case of a British Detective Visting Dr. Kerdie, A” (“Yingguo baotan fang kedie yisheng qi’an”) 35 Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island  59 Suiri shōsetsu 3n4 Sun Liaohong 4, 8, 28, 151–152, 159–161, 163–165, 168–170, 173, 175, 178, 181–184, 187, 191–195, 237 “Bloody Paper Man, The” (“Xuezhiren”) 164, 169–170, 193 “Blue Rattlesnake, A” (“Lanse xiangweishe”) 160n34, 167 “Ghost’s Hand, The” (“Gui shou”) 164, 192–193 “Handlebar Mustache, The” (“Yanweixu”) 183 

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281

Index “Hoarder of Cod Liver Oil, The” (“Tun yuganyou zhe”) 164, 168, 178, 182–183 “Purple Swimsuit, A” (“Zise youyongyi”)  169, 183–188 “Sunglass Society, The” (“Yanjing hui”)  168 “Tale of Stealing a Heart, A” (“Jiexinji”)  183 “Tale of Stealing a Tooth, A” (“Qiechi ji”)  170, 181, 183 “Wooden Mannequin Play, A” (“Kuileiju”) 159–161, 164 Sun Yongxue. See Sun Liaohong superstition 92, 100, 120–121, 126, 139, 149, 205, 208, 211, 238 suspense 15, 26, 46, 81–82, 89, 94, 103, 149, 159, 162, 216, 233, 241 Suzhou 119, 125, 196, 207, 209–212 swimming pools 28, 173, 175, 183–186 Symons, Julian 5n15, 162 Taigu school 72n, 78 Taiwan 8n24, 235–237 Tam King-fai 8–9, 154–155 Tan Sitong 20, 146–147 Tang Dynasty 68n102, 128, 166n52, 168, 239, 241n13, 243 Tang Zhesheng 225 tantei shōsetsu (Japanese detective fiction)  3 Tarde, Gabriel 131 Taylor, Charles 12 Thomas, Ronald 7n22, 40, 75, 97, 115, 127, 128n47, 131, 185 Thompson, Jon 13, 22, 199–200 Thomson, John Arthur 65 Thousand Days’ Sleep (Qianri zui) 73, 77–78 Three Knights-errant and Five Sworn Brothers (Sanxia wuyi) 16, 24, 168 Tianjin 184, 224 Tianjin Daily News (Tianjin riri xinwen) 73 Tianxuwosheng 113n3, 116, 118, 122–125, 135 timekeeping 18, 74–76, 80, 107, 177, 188, 198, 231 Tokuromo Roka 36 Tongzhi Emperor 80

torture 2n1, 4, 17, 27, 71–75, 80, 82–88, 90, 138 transculturation 7n23, 10, 70, 175, 202 Tsui Hark 243 tuili xiaoshuo (detective fiction) 3n4 Universal Press (Huanqiu chubanshe) 237 Utah 38–40 Van Dine, S. S. 113, 120n24, 139 van Gulik, Robert Hans 29, 235, 239–243 Chinese Bell Murders, The 239, 240n10, 241n13 Chinese Gold Murders, The 240n10, 241 Dee Goong An 239–240 van Renssellaer Dey, Frederic 36 Vidocq, Eugène François 162 Violet, The (Ziluolan) 196, 210 Wakeman, Frederic Jr. 136, 155n20 Wallace, Edgar 113, 204 Wang, Der-wei David 11–12, 20, 24, 73–74, 116, 143, 147, 151n4 Wang Hui 19, 28, 116–118, 143n89, 145, 149 Wang Yangming 20 Watson, Burton 166 Watson, John (fictional character) 3n9, 6n19, 23, 36, 38, 39n10, 153, 164, 196–198, 222n Wei Yi 38, 43n21 Wei Yu 134–135, 138 Weisl, Annabella 9 White, Gilbert 65 Williams, Michael 60 women. See detectives, female; femininity; women’s magazines women’s magazines 61, 117n18, 121n30, 217 World of Chinese Fiction (Zhonghua xiaoshuo jie) 163 World of Women, The 61 Wright, David 146 Wu Chenghui 149, 208, 213, 218 Wu Jianren 18, 20, 22, 27, 37, 46, 48–49, 52–56, 70, 72, 79, 90, 92, 94–95, 99–100, 107n106, 109, 147

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282 Chinese Detective Cases (Zhongguo zhentan’an) 18, 27, 72, 90–92, 95, 100, 109 New Story of the Stone, The (Xin shitouji)  79, 147 Strange Case of Nine Murders, The (Jiuming qiyuan) 48n32, 90 Strange Things Observed over the Past Twenty Years (Ershinian mudu zhi guaixianzhuang) 90–91 Wu Zixu 40–43 Wusong 160 Wuxi 102, 209n7, 229 wuxia xiaoshuo (novels of knights-errant)  24 wuxing (the five elements) 108 Xia Hua (detective) 134 Xia Quanyin 128 Xiao Ping 237 Jar That Can Make People Become Immortal, A (Chengxian gang) 238 Prisoner in a Tomb (Fenmu zhong de fulu) 238 Xiao Qian 137 xiaopinwen (short essay) 59 xiayi gong’an xiaoshuo (chivalric and court-case novels) 16, 24, 151n4. See also burglars, chivalric xiayi xiaoshuo (chivalric fiction) 16, 24. See also burglars, chivalric Xu Feng’en 92 Xu Guangqi 143 Xu Shuping 94 Xu Zhuodai 163, 175, 204n101 xungu (explication) 20, 144–146 Yan Fu 57, 60, 143 Yang Lianfen 81 Yang Liulang 137–138 Yang Mu 59 Yang Xianyi 72n, 76 Yang Xinyi 163 Yanghu lüxia 100, 104n98 Yeshishi 92, 94, 96 yili (reasoning) 20, 144–145. See also epistemology

Index yingxi xiaoshuo (fiction adapted from film)  190–191 Yu Mugu 216 Yu Tianfen 4, 208–209 “Girl Called Rose, A” (“Meigui nülang”)  209 “White Kerchief Disaster, The” (“Baijin huo”) 209–210 Yu Yingshi 145 Yung Sai-ching 237 yuyan (allegory) 94–95, 98–99 Zeitlin, Judith 99 Zeng Zonggong 43n21 Zhang Biwu 4, 21, 160, 178, 188–189, 191, 208, 210–211, 217 “Female Corpse in a Box, A” (“Xiangzhong nüshi) 217 “Inside the Rickshaw” (“Baoche zhong”)  216 “Poisoned Needle in a Vanity Case, A” (“Lianju zhongde duzhen”) 210 “Red Devil Pill” (“Hongguiwan”) 211 Rivalry of Two Masters, The (Shuangxiong douzhiji) 160n33, 178, 191 “Suspicion of a Fox” (“Huyi”) 211 “Traces of Bound Feet” (“Lianban zhi hen”) 21, 211 “White Leather Shoes” (“Bai pixie”)  212 Zhang Dekun 35 Zhang Ping 8 Zhang Tianyi: Xu Changyun tan’an (Detective cases of Xu Changyun) 5n15 Zhang Yihan 144 Zhao Tiaokuang 4, 204n101 Zheng Dan (detective) 134 Zheng Dike (detective) 208, 212 “Five Lovelorn Souls” (“Wuge shilianzhe”) 212–213 Zhentan shijie. See Detective World zhentan xiaoshuo (detective fiction) 2–3 zhiguai (records of anomalies) 18–19, 26–27, 71–72, 90, 92, 95–96, 98–100, 233 Zhonghua Press 113, 118 Zhou Guisheng 22, 27, 37, 46, 48–50, 52, 54, 56, 70, 90

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Index Zhou Shoujuan 80, 81n27, 113n3, 119n22, 123, 163, 165, 189–190 Zhou Taigu 78 Zhou Zuoren (Chou Tso-jen) 27, 37, 56–70 Zhu Guangqian 142 Zhu Xi 20

Zhu Xiao Di 243 Tales of Judge Dee 243 Zhuang You 79 Zhuangzi 25, 152, 159, 161, 165–168 Zhuangzi 122, 167

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