Prologue: Dee Goong An
In his opening note to Dee Goong An, van Gulik identifies his translation as the “product of the Pacific War years, 1941–1945.” Van Gulik had spent the war years in Chongqing, the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government that was resisting the invading Japanese. As he reports in his note to Dee Goong An, his war duties “made other more complicated Sinological research impossible,” and he confined himself to translating two Chinese texts. In 1944, he had the Commercial Press in Chungking print the first of these: his translation of Tung-kao-ch’an-shih-chi-k’an (The Ch’an Master Tung-Kao: A Loyal Monk of the End of the Ming Period). He also completed his translation of Dee Goong An. Following the surrender of the Japanese, van Gulik was recalled to Hague. He was then briefly assigned as a counselor in the Dutch embassy in Washington, D.C., where he composed the preface, postscript and notes that were added to Dee Goong An. In 1948, he returned to Japan as an advisor to the Netherlands Military Mission in Kyoto. And in 1949, he had the Toppan Printing Company in Tokyo print 1,200 copies of Dee Goong An: Three Murder Cases Solved by Judge Dee; An Old Chinese Detective Novel Translated from the Original Chinese. When, “slightly corrected,” Dover Publications reissued it in 1976 as Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An), it finally received wide dissemination in its original English version.
Van Gulik’s first Chungking translation deserves brief consideration. Tung-kao was a Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhist monk who travelled to Japan in 1677 and brought with him “the lore of the lute.” Van Gulik, who had already published two monographs on the lute in Tokyo in 1940 and 1941, was pursuing traces of Tung-kao in Japan when the war forced his evacuation to Chungking. His Chungking volume collected the poems that Tung-kao composed “to express his longings for the Ming Dynasty,” which had, by the time Tung-kao emigrated to Japan, fallen to the Manchu invaders. The volume included a “biography written by Dr. van Gulik… in classical Chinese” (Chen, “Sinologue Extraordinaire”). At a time when eastern China was suffering under the wartime domination of Japan, and Chungking was being bombed regularly by the Japanese air force, van Gulik chose look backward several centuries to the last time China had been invaded by outsiders and to memorialize a monk who, in addition to being a master of van Gulik’s beloved Chinese lute, was also a poet who (ironically, in Japan) recalled the glory of the last Chinese dynasty to rule China.
Dee Goong An in its full form as discovered by van Gulik has something of the same quality. The original text, Wu-tse t’ien ssu-ta ch’i-an (Four Great Strange Cases of Empress Wu’s Reign), consists of 64 chapters, which naturally divide into two sections: the first 30 chapters, which give an account of Judge Dee’s investigation into three murder cases while serving as a Magistrate of Chang-ping, in Shandong province, and the final 34 chapters, which deal with Judge Dee’s later career as Metropolitan Prefect in the imperial court of the Empress Wu. In the first half—the first three of the “Four Great Strange Cases” of the title—the Judge acts as a detective serving the empire by administering justice; in the second half—the fourth great strange case—he acts as a Machiavellian politician, trying to restore the legitimate line of Tang emperors against the will of the dissolute Empress, who intends to initiate her own dynasty. Van Gulik finds the second half to be “prolix and repetitious” with a “clumsy” plot and “badly drawn” characters (Dee Goong An 226); he describes it as descending at times into “plain pornography,” and concludes that the final 34 chapters must be “a later addition, by an inferior hand (Dee Goong An v).
This view is not universally accepted. W.L. Idema rejects the two-author theory. Adopting a phrase from Andrew Plaks analysis of the great 18th century Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, Idema sees the contrast between the upright judge of the first 30 chapters and the crafty politician of the second 34 chapters as a “complementary bipolarity” (“The Mystery” 165). The first identity enables the second: “Ti Jen-chieh (i.e., Judge Dee) has become a brazen manipulator of facts, evidence and popular opinion, utilizing his reputation as an incorruptible judge to achieve his ends” (Idema, “The Mystery” 162). To succeed against a wily and wicked autocrat who threatens to upset the political and moral order of the empire, Dee is driven to deceit. In order to vindicate the integrity of an apparent “brazen manipulator of facts,” the author of the novel was obliged to demonstrate that, in a small world where his was the voice of authority, Dee’s behavior was exemplary. With intelligence and dedication, he achieves justice in three concurrent criminal cases; the Judge risks his reputation (and, in the case of the murder of Bee Hsun, his life) to assert moral order in Chang-ping. With Dee’s bona fides thus established, the reader can assume that only necessity drives him to underhanded methods when, in the capital, surrounded by the minions of the evil empress, he is compelled to employ the means at hand to frustrate Wu Zetian’s usurpations. Chapters 1–30 thus provide a pre-emptive defense of Dee against a charge of amoral Machiavellianism. (It might be noted that Idema also disputes the date of the composition of Wu-tse t’ien ssu-ta ch’i-an, preferring the 19th century to van Gulik’s proposed 18th century, “The Mystery” 159.)
Judge Dee, then, like Tung-kao, was a stalwart of the old order. The monk professed his loyalty to the Ming; the judge to the Tang. But where the monk could only mourn the extinction of the Ming dynasty, the judge could first, as a detective, exemplify the virtue of the Tang and then, as an imperial counselor, could work in devious but effective ways to restore the Tang. In besieged Chungking in the 1940s, these recollections of the temporary eclipse of Chinese tradition in the seventh and the seventeenth centuries may have provided some sense of consolation. And when, in 1949 a much different repudiation of key elements of the continuity of Chinese culture occurred, the consolation may have a renewed relevance.
Moreover, by amputating the celebrated but unscrupulous Tang loyalist from the courageous and sharp-witted Tang magistrate, van Gulik produced a detective of the sort readily recognized by Western readers. The politic Dee who maneuvered in the Empress’s court may be a hero; Lin Yutang’s novel, Lady Wu, makes the argument that he is. But it is not an easy argument, especially to an audience not already disposed recognize “Empress Wu” as a bugbear on the scale of Richard III or Benedict Arnold. The detective Dee is in all respects an admirable figure; indeed, he wants even the harmless idiosyncrasies that genre writers usually sketched into their heroes to render them more individual—Holmes’s seven percent solution, Poirot’s vanity, Wimsey’s (or Vance’s) flippancy, Wolfe’s immobility, even Spade’s womanizing or Marlowe’s chess-playing.
Van Gulik will sustain Judge Dee’s impeccability throughout his series; the Judge will betray no frailties. But van Gulik will individualize him in one significant way. In his Preface to the translation, van Gulik observes that the novel offers “Not one word about his home, his children, his hobbies” (xiii). Van Gulik will not provide the Judge with a textured life on the scale that detective story writers will begin to supply in the decades after his death, but he does give his detective three wives and several children, and he does make Dee a master of the lute.
Dee Goong An was not intended to inaugurate a career as a novelist. Van Gulik wrote, “My English text … was meant only as a basis for a printed Chinese and/or Japanese version, my aim being to show modern Chinese and Japanese writers that their own ancient crime literature has plenty of source material for detective and mystery stories” (qtd. in Wessells 455–56). Only when his gesture was received with distinct disregard did he begin to draft The Chinese Bell Murders and The Chinese Maze Murders. In fact, the publication that directly followed Dee Goong An was another translation, this time of a Ming dynasty erotic novel, Ch’un-Meng-So-Yen (A Trifling Tale of a Spring Dream,1950).
Dee Goong An
(= Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee [Dee Goong An]) (30 Chapters)
Scene: Judge Dee is Magistrate of Chang-ping, in the province of Shantung (Shandong); “The Double Murder at Dawn” takes
place in nearby Six Mile Village, and “The Strange Corpse” takes place in nearby Huang-hua village.
The Magistrate’s Lieutenants: Sergeant Hoong, Ma Joong, Chiao Tai, Tao Gan
The Cast:
Liu Guang-chi, a young travelling silk merchant from Kiangsu
Shao Lee-huai, another silk merchant
Wang, a carter initially mistaken for Shao Lee-huai
Pang Deh, warden of Six Mile Village, precipitate in making accusations
Koong Wan-deh, hostel owner, object of Pang’s unwise accusation
Djao Wan-chun, another silk merchant
Djiang Djung, former brother of the green wood
Bee Hsun, a shopkeeper
Mrs. Bee, nee Djou, attractive and willful widow of Bee Hsun
Mrs. Bee, the “stupid” mother of Bee Hsun
Tang Deh-djung, an eminent Doctor of Literature
Hsu Deh-tai, a young man studying with Dr. Tang.
Lee-goo, a new bride
Mrs. Lee, mother of the bride
Hua Wen-djun, the groom, and son of the prefect
Hua Guo-hsiang, a former prefect of high standing
Hoo Dso-bin, candidate of literature
“The Double Murder at Dawn”
Victims: Liu Guang-chi, stabbed; Wang, stabbed
Villain’s motive: greed
“The Double Murder at Dawn” opens the novel; it is resolved in Chapter Nineteen (and is immediately followed by the opening of the third case, “The Poisoned Bride”). The principal twist in the case comes early, when it is reported that the second of the two corpses discovered outside an inn is not, as initially assumed, a second silk merchant, but rather a poor carter who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The murderer’s identity is clear by Chapter Three; the remainder of the problem involves locating him and bringing him back to trial in Chang-ping. Judge Dee’s dream in Chapter 11 helps; but it is the trip to Turn-up Pass undertaken by Ma Joong and Chaio Tai (accompanied by a local merchant and a constable) that comprises the central episode. They employ clever tactics and brute strength.
“The Strange Corpse”
Victim: Bee Hsun, cause of death not discovered until a third autopsy
Villain’s motive: sexual passion
The case opens in Chapter Four, as Judge Dee, disguised as a physician and pursuing clues in “The Double Murder at Dawn,” notices anomalies in Mrs. Bee’s account of the unexpected death of her son, Bee Hsun. Judge Dee soon suspects Bee Hsun’s wife; he interrogates her in court in Chapter Eight, but lacking evidence of how the murder was committed, he cannot break her defiant attitude. Eventually, acting under Judge Dee’s specific directions, Ma Joong, Sergeant Hoong, and Tao Gan engage in surveillance and eventually search the suspect’s residence, finding evidence of the motive for the murder. Through torture and a contrived spectacle in which the villain is confronted with images of the Black Judge of the Inferno and his Ox-headed and Horse-headed assistants, Judge Dee obtains a confession.
“The Poisoned Bride”
Victim: Lee-goo, poisoned
Villain’s motive: none [a non-human agent]
The case begins when, immediately after Judge Dee has resolved “The Double Murder at Dawn” in Chapter Nineteen, the angry and imperious Hua Guo-hsing and the distraught Mrs. Lee rush into the tribunal, accusing Hoo Dso-bin of having murdered Miss Lee. The next four chapters focus entirely upon Judge Dee’s successful investigation into the young bride’s death.
Plot
The structure of Dee Goong An provides the prototype for the structure of the first twelve original Dee novels; as van Gulik writes in his Preface, “In one respect this novel introduces a new literary device that, as far as I know, has not yet been utilized in our popular crime literature, viz. that the detective is engaged simultaneously on three different cases, entirely independent of each other, each with its own background and dramatis personae” (v). In eleven of his first twelve Judge Dee books (the exception is the two-novella The Monkey and the Tiger), van Gulik maintained this “three-case” formula, beginning each book with a Dramatis Personae that divides the characters into their separate “Cases” (the peculiar exception is the first novel, The Chinese Bell Murders, which omits “The Case of…”). As the series developed, he began to experiment with establishing significant connections—plot and character connections, but also thematic connections—between the “independent cases.” Beginning with The Phantom of the Temple, he abandoned the convention of the tripartite Dramatis Personae.
In Dee Goong An, the first and second cases are technically not concurrent. The first case (the murder of the silk merchants) is solved and the criminal arraigned immediately before the opening of the third case (the death of the young bride); the second case (the death of the husband) begins after the first and is finally solved after the third. The first investigation requires some problem-solving by Judge Dee (e.g., the riddle of Turnip/Turn-Up Pass), but its main development lies the extended search for the identified murderer, a search which takes Ma Joong and Chaio Tai (plus two local characters) on a journey into wild territory and compels them to use their muscles and their wits to apprehend the criminal.
The third investigation is principally a cerebral, problem-solving case: how was the young bride poisoned. Judge Dee solves it without assistance, entirely relying upon his own analytic skills.
It is the second case, which turns on the puzzle of how Mrs. Djou murdered her husband, that keeps the novel from falling into discreet short stories. It begins when Judge Dee discovers a clue during his inquiry into the deaths of the silk merchants in the first case; it concludes after he has demonstrated the source of the poison in the third case. And its solution requires the physical abilities of Ma Joong as well as the ratiocinative abilities of the Judge: it thus combines the detective skills emphasized in both the first and third cases. It is the case which threatens Judge Dee’s own security. If, having subjected Mrs. Djou to torture, he cannot prove her guilty, he will himself be subject to the penalties to which, had she confessed, Mrs. Djou would have been subjected.
Van Gulik reuses two of the murder methods in Dee Goong An in later novels. “The Case of the Murdered Magistrate” in The Chinese Gold Murders plays a variation on “The Poisoned Bride,” and “The Case of the Murdered Merchant” in The Chinese Nail Murders even more closely echoes “The Strange Corpse.”
Judge Dee
Judge Dee himself will change very little. In his own novels, van Gulik deliberately gives him a domestic side completely absent in Dee Goong An: Dee’s three wives rarely play a major role in his investigations, but they frequently appear as significant elements of Judge Dee’s private life. In Dee Goong An, the Judge is somewhat more receptive to supernatural interventions (spirits, dreams, responsive corpses) than van Gulik will allow his own novels, though van Gulik’s Dee does show some openness to the possibility of otherworldly interventions. In most respects, however, the Judge of Dee Goong An is the Judge of van Gulik’s original series. Both Judges are, of course, models of uprightness; Judge Dee is always free of eccentricity. He is not just a representative of the state—of the Emperor—he is a dedicated servant of the state. Even when Western detectives are state officials—Inspector French, Inspector Alleyn, Inspector Maigret—their visible allegiance is to an institution of the state—a police department—that explicitly serves a universal, not a nationalist, code of justice. Their loyalty is not to a particular government, a particular prime minister or president; it is to transnational ideal of justice. Judge Dee is, of course, no less devoted to that high ideal, but in Dee Goong An as in the succeeding novels, that ideal is embodied the Emperor, who enjoys the Mandate of Heaven.
Judge Dee is physically active. Not an armchair detective, he fearlessly ventures out from the safety of the tribunal. Van Gulik will perhaps attribute to him a somewhat more virile competence in sword-play and boxing than he displays in Dee Goong An, but this is merely an extension of the Judge’s inherently ac
tive character.
The Magistrate’s Lieutenants
The four lieutenants—referred to several times by the Judge as “my braves”—are all present in Dee Goong An, and though van Gulik will individualize each of them as he develops his series, their basic characters are set in the translation. Sergeant Hoong, “an old servant in the Dee paternal mansion,” plays the largest role: he is the intimate advisor, the ear into which Judge Dee can speak his thoughts. The Judge shares the contents of his dream first with the Sergeant (11. 85), who asks clarifying questions, then with the others, who merely “show joy” at the dream’s relevant content (13.95). Sergeant Hoong is the lieutenant who receives the least further development in the series.
Ma Joong and Chiao Tai are the former “brothers of the green woods” who supply the muscle needed in the various investigations. Ma Joong is somewhat more forward than Chaio Tai in Dee Goong An. Ma is the one who leaps from roof tops, explores secret tunnels, and, in physical combat, parries his opponent’s “tiger clawing at a sheep” with a quick “enticing the tiger out of his forest” and securing victory with “the Phoenix bird spreading his wings” (14. 104). Though Judge Dee is himself physically active, leaving the tribunal to impersonate first a doctor and then a silk merchant, and boldly entering a graveyard to question the dark spirit of a murdered man, Ma Joong vigorously executes the actions inappropriate to the dignity of a magistrate. Chiao Tai functions initially as Ma Joong’s equally vigorous “brother.” Van Gulik will employ them in the same roles in his original novels, but he will begin to develop distinctions between them, making Ma Joong the greater libido and giving the somewhat more reflective Chiao Tai a special fate in Murder in Canton.
The Judge Dee Novels of R.H. van Gulik Page 7
