Despite the fact that he is a master of disguise, Fu Manchu has a very striking appearance. Sax Rohmer describes him thus: ‘Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.’ The evil doctor also embodies all the most evil aspects of Chinese culture and government: ‘Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will of a wealthy government – which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.’
Spiders, pythons and poisonous mushrooms
Fu Manchu’s plots to take over the world are characterised by an array of horrific devices such as using animals, insects and biological weapons to murder his opponents. Among his arsenal of weapons are spiders, pythons, poisonous mushrooms and bacteria, used by an army of Eastern bad guys such as dacoits (armed robbers) and Thuggees (members of a secret society dating from the seventeeth century, who robbed and murdered travellers). He is also not above using beautiful women to lure his victims to their doom. One such is Karamaneh, a ‘seductively lovely’ double agent who works for him and is rumoured to be his lover.
The origins of Fu Manchu are shrouded in mystery, but it is thought that he was once a member of the Imperial family, who fell from power in the Boxer Rebellion, a Chinese rebellion at the turn of the century. During this period, many Chinese people, including Christians, rebelled against the Qing Dynasty’s policy of allowing foreign influence to prevail in China in areas such as trade, politics, religion and technology. In his early books, Rohmer portrays Fu Manchu as a mere hired assassin who is sent out on missions by the Si-Fan terror organisation. Later, Fu Manchu rises to power, and he becomes head of the organisation, thus attempting to wreak his revenge on the forces of civilisation.
The ‘yellow peril’
Commissioner Sir Denis Nayland Smith and his sidekick Dr Petrie from Scotland Yard are Fu Manchu’s sworn enemies. They are very much in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson from the Arthur Conan Doyle series. However, instead of Holmes’ intellectual brilliance, Nayland Smith tends to carry the day by force of sheer dogged perseverance. In Rohmer’s work, the stories are narrated by Dr Petrie and describe Nayland Smith’s battle to combat the forces of evil, as epitomised by Fu Manchu. Rohmer describes Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu as having a grudging respect for each other, and each of them believe that a man’s word is his bond, even when dealing with an arch enemy.
To some readers, Rohmer’s stories are harmless enough, using the tried and tested clichés of adventure stories to entertain the readers. However, others note the racist language of Rohmer’s descriptions, in particular his use of the term ‘yellow peril’, which harked back to anti-Chinese sentiment of the late nineteenth century and was still prevalent in the early twentieth. The ‘yellow peril’, also known as the ‘yellow terror’, was a phrase thought to have been coined by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1895, when he referred to ‘gelbe Gefahr’.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, thousands of Chinese labourers, often referred to as ‘coolies’, had travelled all over the world, particularly to the USA, to work as labourers. This mass immigration prompted a wave of anxiety on the part of people already living in the USA, which was encouraged by the press, particularly in William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, which often referred directly to the new arrivals as the ‘yellow peril’. The ‘yellow’ referred to the skin colour of the Chinese, and the ‘peril’ to the imagined danger that these immigrants would not only take labouring jobs from white people, but would also import a different, and supposedly sinister, way of life and culture into Western civilisation. In Europe, where immigration from China was less of a problem, the fear of the east centred on Japan’s rise as a major world power rather than on the Chinese immigrant population.
The Fu Manchu moustache
Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the character of Fu Manchu was in many ways a racist stereotype, the stories became extremely popular. Several films were made featuring the evil genius, and on screen he was played by Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. There were also many send-ups of the character, most notably by Peter Sellers. As time went on, he became a comedy villain and appeared in many comic strips such as Marvel comics Master of Kung-Fu. His trademark facial hair, a long, thin moustache extending either side of the face and hanging past the jawline, was worn by many Eastern characters in Western films, associated as it was with Chinese wise men, kung fu teachers and Mongol warriors. It also became a fashionable style of moustache for men in the USA during the 1970s, sported by all kinds of stars, from baseball players and heavy metal singers to wrestlers and television actors. (However, Rohmer himself never described his villain as having such a moustache!)
Fu Manchu also inspired many other evil Eastern masterminds in fiction. These include characters such as Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon comic strip of the 1930s, the Pao Tcheou series of novels written by Edward Brookner in the 1940s and 1950s, Yellow Claw from Marvel Comics in the 1950s, and Dr No in the 1960s James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. Today, although to some extent a figure of fun, Fu Manchu has undoubtedly taken his place in the pantheon of fictional criminal masterminds and remains the archetypal evil genius of the East.
Copyright
© 2010 Omnipress Limited
www.omnipress.co.uk
This 2010 edition published by Canary Press,
an imprint of Omnipress Limited, UK
www.canarypress.co.uk
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The views expressed in this book are those of the author but they are general views only, and readers are urged to consult a relevant and qualified specialist for individual advice in particular situations. Anne Williams, Vivian Head, Sebastian C. Prooth and Omnipress Limited hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law for any errors or omissions in this book or for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by the third party relying on any information contained in this book.
ISBN: 978-1-907795-37-4
Cover & internal design
Anthony Prudente on behalf of Omnipress Limited
Criminal Masterminds Page 38
