Building on the Confucian view of the nation as a family, magistrates like Judge Dee were called the “father-and-mother official” (“Postscript” 216). When Sergeant Hoong reports that the people are disappointed that Judge Dee did immediately use torture to extract a confession from Candidate Wang, Dee responds, “Our August Sovereign has appointed me to dispense justice, not to please the crowd” (4.43). As the Emperor serves Heaven by administering justice in his empire, so the magistrate serves the Emperor by administering justice in his district. And so it is fitting that when Judge Dee’s actions result in justice for the victims of crime in the present and in the past, his reward should be the four-character Imperial Inscription, “written in the Emperor’s faultless calligraphy”: “Justice outweighs human life” (25.215). This is the ideal of the conservative Confucian ethos that dominated Chinese culture until the revolutions of the 20th century.
The demotion of Confucianism from its central position occurred in the context of the republican revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1911 and sought to revive China as a modern nation. The New Culture Movement that arose in the second decade of the century argued that, faced with apparent European and, by 1919, Japanese superiority, what China needed was Mr. Science and Democracy, not Mr. Confucius. A principal objection voiced by the anti–Confucians was to Confucius’s patriarchal subordination of women; the double standard was rejected, and the new men “ridiculed the neo–Confucian values of chastity and obedience” (Hayford 566). The critique developed by New Culture was absorbed by later movements. Mao Zedong dismissed the entire Confucian ethos as feudalistic, and during the Cultural Revolution, the charge of Confucianist sympathies became a lethal weapon against Mao’s opponents. Since Mao’s death in 1976, however, the Chinese government has encouraged a renewal of interest in Confucian thought.
Proposing a Confucian magistrate hero in the 1950s might be an affront to the new Communist regime, but—as though to verify Mao’s charge of Confucian feudalism—the one time van Gulik has Judge Dee actually quote “our peerless Sage Confucius” in The Chinese Bell Murders, it is to cite the Sage’s views of women, views that all 20th-century Chinese were rejecting: “it is not without reason indeed that in his Annals of Spring and Summer our Master Confucius on occasion refers to woman as ‘that fey creature’” (8.69). The provocation may derive in part from van Gulik’s long-time interest in erotic art and literature, which would naturally make what Confucius said about the relative natures of male and female noteworthy to him. And it is possible that, by citing only a sexist observation, van Gulik is intimating an awareness that Confucius’s time has indeed passed. The Chinese women he depicts, even in The Chinese Bell Murders, are far from “fey.” Mrs. Liang willfully perpetuates a decades-long vendetta; Apricot and Blue Jade are strong peasant girls who endure forced servitude and prostitution and then risk themselves to help the Judge convict the corrupt Buddhists; and the girl who provoked Judge Dee to quote Confucius on women, Pure Jade, was a strong and committed lover. The Confucian worldview may make sexist generalizations, but the Confucian magistrate knows that he must attend to concrete behaviors of the real women who appear before him.
Finally, Judge Dee’s embrace of Confucianism’s essentially secular approach to human affairs establishes him both as a typical Chinese—typical, that is, of the intellectual and ruling classes of Chinese society from the Han Dynasty (c. 200 BC) to the Qing (c. 1900 AD). And it qualifies him as a detective. Buddhist detectives are imaginable (as, for example, John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitpleecheep), but they must, like Chesterton’s Catholic detective or Kemelman’s Jewish detective, demonstrate that whatever spiritual authority their faith provides, their detection is fundamentally justified by empirical reasoning. As Sherlock Holmes declares in “The Adventure of Sussex Vampire,” “This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. This world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.” Judge Dee’s Confucianism keeps him grounded; indeed, because flat-footedness seems built into his worldview, van Gulik is licensed to insert those occasional “numinous” moments when the Judge senses some larger power operating in the way of the world.
In the Postscript to The Chinese Nail Murders, van Gulik posits “Judge Dee’s ultra–Confucianist mental attitude, including narrow-minded view of poetry and painting, his unshakeable conviction that everything Chinese is ipso facto superior, and his consequent disdain for the “foreign barbarians”; his prejudice against Buddhism and Taoim” (188). Where Lach saw van Gulik underplaying Dee’s Confucianism, van Gulik seems here to overplay it. It is a tactical overplay: Judge Dee does, like an ultra–Confucianist, routinely disparage untraditional calligraphy and painting, foreign barbarians, Buddhists and Taoists, but having established this conservative view, Judge Dee’s not infrequent openness—in specific contexts— to innovations in art and culture generally as well as to the evidence of things not seen allows van Gulik to broaden his portrait of a Chinese detective hero.
Reviews
Anthony Boucher renewed his advocacy when, in 1959, The Chinese Bell Murders was published in America by Harper’s. The Judge Dee books were “unique entertainment,” “excellent as somewhat picaresque detection,” with the bonus of portraying an “an alien culture, at once more subtle and more barbaric than our own.” They are, he declared, “one of the most fascinating tasks ever attempted in the history of crime fiction” (New York Times, “Criminals at Large,” 5 April 1959: BR 32). The Times also allowed Orville Prescott to review the book briefly in its main pages. Prescott makes a point of its relevance at time when China was widely seen as America’s most dangerous enemy: “No matter how deplorable the regime now in power in China may be, the Chinese are unquestionably a wonderful people.” As a detective story, the novel itself seems “nothing special,” but he grants the interest inherent in the “quantities of Chinese lore” that van Gulik provides as a supplemental reward (New York Times, “Books of the Times,” 10 April 1959: 27).
James Sandoe, another well-known critic of mystery and detective fiction, was less enthusiastic. He found “odd charms” in The Chinese Bell Murders, but could only muster “diffident concurrence” with judges such as Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr who reported “having found these Oriental confections tasty.” He declared that the novel seemed derived from Chinatown than China, and then used that incomprehensible premise to conclude that it was therefore, “probably a dish for more readers than might venture tooth to something distinctly exotic” (New York Herald Tribune Book Review, “Mystery and Suspense,” 12 April 1959: 11).
Other reviewers were either simply positive—“High-voltage entertainment” (Sergeant Cuff, “Criminal Record,) Saturday Review 9 May 1959: 39)—or emphasized the appeal to a limited audience: “For the specialized audience Robert van Gulik’s ‘The Chinese Bell Murders’ should be a delight, but don’t try it if you prefer stereotyped mystery” (San Francisco Chronicle, 19 April 1959: 26); “Something decidedly different in mystery stories” (Springfield Republican, 5 April 1959: 4 D); “There is originality and freshness in the method of weaving into one tale a number of thinly connected mysteries which seems to deny their early 18th century Chinese source, though the setting of the Chinese district of Kiangsu Province, and the characters, have a note of authority” (Bulletin from Virginia Kirkus’ Service, 15 January 1959: 70). In England, Philip John Stead also noted the novelty of Judge Dee series: “A rich new vein of detective fiction is worked by Mr. van Gulik” (“Making Crime Pay,” Times Literary Supplement 21 March 1958: 157).
2. The Chinese Maze Murders 25 Chapters
Prologue: a Ming dynasty (Yoong Lo [Yongle] emperor, 1402–1424) member of the literati with an interest in “the study of crime and detection” encounters a white-bearded gentleman who claims to be a descendent of the great Judge Dee. Over dinner, the gentleman tells three stories about his ancestor to the half-asleep scholar. The next day, he writes down the stories.
Scene: Lan-fang, a frontie
r town. Judge Dee’s 4th posting. It is at the eastern end of an old, now-abandoned southern course of the famous Silk Road. All three cases take place inside the city; “The Case of the Hidden Testament” also includes an important scene just outside the city walls.
The Magistrate’s Lieutenants: Hoong Liang, Ma Joong, Chaio Tai, Tao Gan
The Cast:
Ding Hoo-gwo, a retired general
Ding Yee, the general’s son, a Junior Candidate of Literature
Woo Feng, son of Commander Woo, also a Junior Candidate of Literature, and a painter
Mrs. Yoo, second wife of the deceased Governor Yoo;
Yoo Shan, young son of Governor Yoo and Mrs. Yoo;
Yoo Kee, the Governor’s son by his first wife
Mrs. Lee, a friend of Mrs. Yoo
Fang, blacksmith turned highwayman, redeemed and appointed Head man by Judge Dee
White Orchid, daughter of the blacksmith, Fang
Dark Orchid, Fang’s second daughter
Fang’s son
Chien Mow, the wealthy and ruthless boss of Lan-fang
Liu Wan-fang, counselor to Chien Mow
Corporal Ling, army deserter reinstated by Judge Dee
Orolakchee, a Uiger chieftan (real name: Prince Ooljin)
The Hunter, Orolakchee’s accomplice
Tulbee, a Uiger prostitute who attracts Ma Joong’s interest
Master Crane Robe, an old Taoist recluse
Judge Pan, a magistrate who was killed four years before Judge Dee’s arrival
Frame story: In Chapter One, Judge Dee, his assistants, his wives, his children, and his servants arrive in the frontier town to discover two major threats to law and order. Chien Mow, with a gang of one hundred ruffians, has for more than eight years controlled the town of Lan-fang, oppressing the citizens. Using tactical deceptions, Judge Dee successfully arrests the tyrant in Chapter Five. A second, related threat is posed by armed Uiger (“barbarian”) forces gathering outside Lan-fang, abetted (and perhaps directed) by Chinese allies within the city. Not until Chapter Twenty-four is the city’s status within the Chinese empire secured from the threat. In preserving the city, Judge Dee incidentally discovers the cause of the death of his predecessor, Judge Pan.
“The Case of the Murder in the Sealed Room”
Victim: Ding Hoo-gwo, stabbed in the throat
Villain’s motive: revenge
Having predicted that Woo Feng would kill his father in Chapter Three, Ding Yee discovers his father’s body inside his locked library in Chapter Seven. The murder weapon is a small knife with a wooden hilt one-half inch long. A box of poisoned plums is also discovered on the library table. Judge Dee tries to elicit a confession from the painter Woo by having him whipped. In the end, the Judge realizes that there were two would-be assassins; the successful one is beyond the reach of the law; the unsuccessful one is prompted to commit suicide.
“The Case of the Hidden Testament”
Victims: Mrs. Yoo and Yoo Shan, deprived of a legacy
Villain’s motive: greed
Yoo Shou-chien, a wise statesman, had retired to Lan-fang and married a second time. When he died nine years prior to Judge Dee’s arrival, he apparently left his entire estate to his first son, bequeathing only a hand-painted scroll to his young second wife and their child. Following the governor’s instructions, Mrs. Yoo has brought the scroll to each new magistrate with the hope that eventually a wise judge would correctly read the painting’s significance. Judge Dee reads the scroll correctly.
“The Case of the Girl with the Severed Head”
Victim: White Orchid, stabbed and beheaded
Villain’s motive: lesbian lust, sadism
The blacksmith Fang turned highwayman in part because he believed that Chien Mow had abducted his eldest daughter, White Orchid. When, following the capture of Chien Mow, Fang discovers that White Orchid is still unaccounted for, Judge Dee undertakes a search. Eventually, he happens upon the girl’s body in a place connected with another case; he then realizes who the murderer must be. Lesbian desire is a factor.
The Magistrate’s Lieutenants
Chaio Tai was the least defined of the lieutenants in The Chinese Bell Murders. He seemed merely a muscular back-up to Ma Joong, essentially the role he had played in Dee Goong An. In The Chinese Maze Murders, van Gulik begins the process of adding a degree of depth to the character of Dee’s lieutenants. He reveals a back story to Chiao Tai, explaining why he became a “Brother of the Green Wood.” Chaio Tai, it emerges, was involved in the battle which Ding Hoo-gwo performed the action for which he is killed in “The Case of the Murder in the Sealed Room.” By assigning Chiao Tai a connection with the military and a commitment to honor, van Gulik begins to prepare him for his special relationship with Judge Dee and his sword, “Rain Dragon.”
Scene
Twice van Gulik will assign Judge Dee to postings in the Chinese heartland (Poo-yang and Han-yuan); three times he sends him to the periphery. The Chinese Maze Murders is set in Lan-fang, is the first of these frontier assignments to be reported. It is actually Judge Dee’s fourth posting, and is evidently on the northwestern frontier of the empire. The Buddhist Kingdom of Khotan (300 BC–1006 AD) was located on the border of Tibet in the south of what is today the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Lan-fang is located at the limit of imperial control on the Silk Road that ran from the Chinese capital of Chang-an westward to Damascus, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome. The frontier assignments provide an opportunity to van Gulik to set the Confucian Dee and the Chinese empire against a sequence of threatening outsiders: Uyghurs (The Chinese Maze Murders), Tatars (The Chinese Nail Murders), and Koreans (The Chinese Gold Murders).
Lan-fang will also be Judge Dee’s base for The Phantom of the Temple and for two short stories, “The Coffins of the Emperor” and “Murder on New Year’s Eve.”
Plot
The frame story which requires the newly arrived Judge to assert his authority against the usurpation of Chien Mow significantly alters the paradigm of three “independent” investigations that van Gulik had found in Dee Goong An. He will continue to identify three different cases until he reaches the 13th novel in the series (The Phantom of the Temple), but increasingly there will be direct connections between the characters and the actions of the different cases. In The Chinese Maze Murders, Chien Mow’s abusive rule over Lan-fang is linked to the Uiger threat and to Yoo Kee, a central figure in “The Case of the Hidden Testament.” The murder of Ding Hoo-gwo in “The Case of the Murder in the Sealed Room” is linked to You Kee’s father (“The Case of the Hidden Testament”). And White Orchid, the victim in “The Case of the Girl with the Severed Head,” is linked to the Chien Mow frame story through her father’s suspicion that Chien Mow is responsible for her disappearance. White Orchid’s sister, Dark Orchid, also linked to the frame story, plays a role in the investigation of “The Case of the Murder in the Sealed Room.” Van Gulik is moving toward tightening the relationship between the plots, producing a more unified (and presumably a more Western, less Chinese) effect.
As its title suggests, “The Case of the Murder in the Sealed Room” employs a detective story formula—the locked room—that dates at least to Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Van Gulik’s clever use of a specifically Chinese method of delivering a poisoned missile into the throat of an old man in a sealed room provides a nice twist. In his Postscript, van Gulik again supplies the Chinese sources for all three plots. In “The Old Man’s Will,” the first story in Zhu Xiao Di’s 2006 volume of Judge Dee sequels, Zhu offers his own refiguring of the source story that van Gulik adapted for “The Case of the Hidden Testament.” As van Gulik admitted in his Postscript to The Chinese Maze Murders, he altered a key clue found in his sources: where the 13th century “The Taking apart of the Scroll Picture” and the 17th century “Magistrate T’eng’s Marvelous Solution of the Inheritance Suit” had fixed the solution in a testament hidden in the frame of a picture, van Gulik fixed it in
the image depicted in the picture itself. Zhu restores the original location, creating an ambiguous written testament that Judge Dee must decipher in order to reward the genuine heir.
Barbarians
One dimension of Confucianism that Donald Lach sees van Gulik underplaying in the Judge Dee novels is “an unshakable faith in the superiority of everything Chinese and a disdain for all foreigners” (10). But there are, in fact, signs of this unshakable faith in several of the novels. In The Chinese Bell Murders, Judge Dee’s disdain was expressed toward the Buddhists—“the black-robed foreigners from India.” The Chinese Maze Murders are set in Lan-fang, a Chinese outpost on the Silk Road located in the western frontier of the empire, and the objects of disdain are the Uigers. The Uyghurs (the preferred modern spelling) are a Turkic people who still in the 21st century occupy an uneasy status in China, where the large western province of the People’s Republic is officially known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and is the site of ongoing tension and conflict between the Uyghurs and the Han Chinese.
The Uigers of Lan-fang are clustered in a ghetto in the northeast of the town, and Ma Joong notices their “queer foreign attire” and their “raucous, strange languages” (16.229). Judge Dee repeatedly refers to them as “barbarians,” and in court taunts a Uiger prince: “of course a Chinese is much too clever for you stupid barbarians” (20.263). To be sure, the Judge is engaged in a bit of theatre, using a pose of omniscience to provoke admissions from the criminal. But it is clear that Judge Dee is comfortable in the assumption that the boundaries of the Middle Kingdom mark the boundaries between civilization and its undeveloped alternatives. The historical Di Renjie expressed exactly this view: “I have heard that when Heaven gave birth to the barbarians [yi], they were all outside the enfeoffed territories of the former sage-kings.” The eastern sea, the western “flowing sands,” the northern “great desert,” and the southern “Five Peaks” established the natural boundaries. “These were the means by which Heaven delineated the barbarians and separated inner from outer” (qtd. in Lewis 27).
The Judge Dee Novels of R.H. van Gulik Page 10
