Qiu Xiaolong, Inspector Chen, and a re-discovery of China

The rediscovery of China of the title is basically just my problem. I imagine better informed people have known about life under Mao, the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent steps to state promoted capitalism. I knew as much as the line above, which is as good as nothing. And it took reading the mysteries of Qiu Xialong to make me realize the extent of my ignorance. Suffice it to say that when I first followed inspector Chen through the streets of Shanghai in search of the murderer of the Red Heroine of the first book, I thought I'd stepped into science fiction. Or Dickens' London. I cringed at the size of the rooms where people live huddled, full families into a closet. I could not believe that people have to fight for the use of charcoal stoves on the stairs, outside these tiny rooms. No one cares to clean the unkempt communal bathrooms, since they don't belong to anyone. All this is the source of continued strains in the relationships of people who live this closely to each other. There are neighborhood guards who know everything. There is the party that has the power to decide on every moment of a person's life, from where you will live to the job you will have. The are the callous nouveau riche and their outrageous luxuries. And all of that is bathed in the enduring effects of the terrible dark years of the Cultural Revolution and the scars they've left in so many. This is fascinating historical reading at its best. And, to top it off, murders happen. I am now an addict.

Chief Inspector Chen is 30 something, tall and handsome (something one intuits because of the effect he has on women, not because we are told). He is also, like any good mystery book protagonist worth the job, honest, hard working, unaware of his allure, and incapable of taking advantage of a woman, no matter how obviously she throws herself at him. Mind you, I would if I could. In the love side of his life, he could use some help. There is an old girlfriend in Beijing whom he doesn't see much, a lovely American FBI agent who dances a little tango around him, but they keep it chaste, and a "little secretary" provided to him by a rich and questionable businessman friend who would be able to provide more services than typing. But, as Marlow before him, Chen tries to choose his dames well.

Chen has friends and contacts in high and low places. From the HCC (High Cadre Children, powerful and now rich sons and daughters of high political figures) to poor retired cops, to new entrepreneurs who deal in the abundant karaoke and dance halls, with their eating, singing and dancing girls, and their private room pleasures. Chen will always know whom to go to for the next clue. But he can't do it all alone, and the cast of characters that follows him from novel to novel is as interesting as he is. There is Yu, his direct subordinate at the police force who at first suspects his flamboyant new boss, but who grows to like and respect a man who doesn't take bribes. There is Yu's wife, Peiqin, who between providing accounting work for a restaurant and taking care of her family, does her own amateur sleuthing, mostly just because they all like Chen. Yu and Peiqin's story also provides more Cultural Revolution background. There is Old Hunter, Yu's father, a retired old policeman who has also discovered in the educated and successful Chen a kindred, if younger, spirit. All of them do their part in catching the bad guys. And it's a pleasure to see them do it together.

Chen, like his creator Mr. Xiaolong, is a published poet and scholar. His university studies centered on traditional Chinese poets, which Chen in the books (and Mr. Xiaolong in real life) have translated into English. Chen is also a devotee of T. S. Eliot, and has translated the poet into Chinese. Translations usually provide him with extra income. He quotes poetry regularly, sometimes to Yu's chagrin. But the reader enjoys a glimpse into a type of poetry that relies on the unsaid, on the ideas behind the words, to deliver its message. I welcomed every interruption. Chen's father was also a follower of Confucius, with gives the opportunity to also quote the great old master occasionally. The one quote that has stuck with me, perhaps from repetition, is simple, yet perfect: there are things a man will do, and there are things a man will not do. Now, deal with that.

During the years of the Cultural Revolution, educated youths were forcefully removed from the cities and sent to the country side to be reeducated. The cruelty of the uprooting and the new conditions destroyed many lives. Many of the plots stem from old hurts, from children separated from parents, from people condemned because of loving someone, love being a bourgeois sin, or from not forgotten cold blooded killings, often times at the hands of super zealous party people, others directly ordered by Mao or his terrifying wife. This was an eye opener to me. Chen is not pointing an accusing finger at everything from the past. He shows respect for the Maoist China he grew up in. He approaches every situation with a healthy dose of impartiality. Which makes the judgment passed on these years the more relevant.

The one thing we all probably believe we know about China is its food. After all, Chinese restaurants, high and low, abound and we can all easily prepare our own home chow mein. Or, we can easliy reheat it. Let's rethink that. This is a quick sampler of what people eat, from memory, and only a tiny percent of the many baffling dishes that pepper (pun intended) the books: chicken feet, fish heads, ginger steamed fish lips, stewed ox eyes, dogs, cats, sparrows' tongues (hundreds must be killed for just one dish), crab and shrimp ovaries, rats (white rat is particularly delicious, I hear), snake blood, or the snake's gall bladder in a cup of spirits (fyi, from a live snake just sliced open in front of your eyes), monkey's brains (from a live monkey whose top skull has been removed). Live turtles boil in broth. Shrimp are better if you see them drawn in a pot of water made hot by trowing in it a layer of hot pebbles. The slow death increases the flavor. And, of course, better if you watch the panicked animals try to jump out. I must admit, it requires a strong stomach to read some passages.

In the end, you will come away educated, entertained, and probably a vegetarian. It will be time well spent. I can't wait for my next read.

The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes

In this wonderfully literary book, Richard Holmes recreates the lives of the British men, and some women, who, lacking the basics of a formal education, revolutionized the world of science in the years that stride the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. It is a book about the Romantic age of scientific discovery as lived in Great Britain, with only glimpses of the continent or America.

My only reading about men of science happened in school text books, where science takes center stage, and the discoverer gets introduced in a couple paragraphs, if at all. Here, Richard Holmes stays with his subjects, from their rich, humble, obscure, adventurous, hard working beginnings, to the often disillusioned end. Their achievements are further enhanced when seen in the context of their time and the hurdles they had to overcome in order to succeed.

William Hershell (born in Germany, who lived and made his discoveries in England, with English patrons’ support) built himself, by hand, the forty foot telescope, including its magnificent mirror, that allowed him to discover Uranus and, with his sister Caroline, thousands of comets and an equally large number of galaxies, expanding our solar system and our universe beyond anyone’s imagination.

A couple paper makers (these two were French) decided to blow hot air into an enormous paper bag, and men (and women) flew for the first time.

Humphrey Davy discovered laughing gas, chlorine, iodine and the safety lamp. Mungo Park explored Africa, boldly going where no white man had gone before.

Some of them wrote poetry, some of it quite good. They saw no distinction between science and art. Coleridge, Shelley and Shelley’s wife, Mary, lived among them, and it’s only in understanding this generation of people that one can truly comprehend how she came up with the enduring tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his monstrous creation.

Presiding over all of them was Sir Joseph Banks, who in his youth traveled to the South Seas with Captain Cook in the Endeavor, enjoying a jolly good time cavorting with the welcoming Tahiti natives, and collecting botanical samples. Upon return to England, Banks became president of the Royal Academy and a life long patron to them all.

The term “scientist” had yet to be invented. These astronomers, physicists, Chemists, poets, writers, botanists called themselves philosophers. They had the power to astonish admiring audiences. They welcomed a world of fact, experimentation, progress, and understanding of the workings of nature. They did not find God in it. In creating the word “scientist,” someone compared it to “atheist,” to the chagrin of the most conservative members of society. But the word took.

As science progressed (Darwin was part of the next generation) it eventually split from art and literature. A loss to everyone, I’m sure. When Mr. Holmes takes us to the end of Hershell’s, Banks’s and Davy’s lives, the reader (me) had to take a minute to grieve. Richard Holmes manages, successfully, what Dr. Frankenstein could not – to bring the dead back to life.

I couldn’t think of a better book for a young scientist mind with literary tastes. I hope you like it half as much as I do.