What Chinese crime novels can tell us about contemporary China

Jeffrey C. Kinkley is professor emeritus of Chinese History at St. John’s University, New York, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He is also a biographer (The Odyssey of Shen Congwen) and a translator of Chinese fiction. Kinkley has published several academic books, including Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China; Corruption and Realism in Late Socialist China: The Return of the Political Novel; and Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels.

But in his spare time, Jeff Kinkley likes to read detective fiction set in China; indeed he’s read pretty much every China-related detective novel written in English (and invariably outside of China to circumvent any censorship), and he reckons they tell us a lot about contemporary China that doesn’t make either the news or the more academic tomes out there. So he’s brought together his thoughts in China Mysteries: Crime Novels From China’s Others (University of Hawaii Press). Paul French caught up with Kinkley to talk China, crime and which novels can usefully tell us about the society we operate in…. and also ask Jeff for a definitive reading list of China-set crime novels.

I’m going to assume that China Mysteries is a book that originated with your leisure reading, but you thought there was something serious to say about all these “China mysteries not made in China” that began to be published around the turn of the century?

I caught the crime fiction bug during a research project on crime-and-law stories that suddenly appeared in China itself around 1980. Crime themes had been banned there for 30 years. I looked into these works’ Chinese literary past and present in my book Chinese Justice, the Fiction (2000). Novels with devilishly complicated murder plots are now published in China, and a few are translated into English. Crime genres published in the PRC have to overcome political taboos, widespread disdain for the local police, and stiff competition from translated Japanese whodunits and diverse online fantasy genres. China mysteries not produced in China have their own limitations (publishers want them to suit Western tastes), but most of the authors view China from a global perspective and personal experience. When novels similar in genre but written under a different flag are placed side by side, similarities and differences stand out. The idea of “world literature” appears in a new light, and so do foreign relations.

Why do you think this sub-genre has flourished?

Few of the authors were professional fiction writers before they published their first China mystery, though several were noted journalists. Even so, their mystery writing craft — pacing, plotting, style, wit — seems up to snuff to me. What might attract readers looking for insights into China is the authors’ attention to detail: local colour, urban customs, and factoids inserted for their own sake. Paradoxically, local colour gives offshore China mysteries an edge over domestic productions. When China’s own fiction depicts crime in a particular place, local officials can object.

Having surveyed all these books and authors, which sub-genres of crime do you see as most popular, and why do certain sub-genres succeed over others?

Mystery aficionados, I think, binge on books by a favourite author, then search for cognate themes and styles. Series heroes are an attraction. Half the mysteries here feature a sympathetic recurring PRC police, ex-police, or judicial investigating protagonist, maybe female. Other works star a civilian, often a foreigner, perhaps a single woman, but not a self-defined sleuth. Even native investigators must eschew the label of P. I. The inquisitor could be a journalist or someone who has a rendezvous with trouble. I call this the China mystery sub-sub-genre with a “beset citizen” hero. The hero might be foreign and outside the law.

How realistic do you think the books are in general, and who, among the authors you’ve noted, from Lisa See to Qiu Xiaolong, do you think have written the strongest books that really capture the essence of China? Are there any with a particular UK angle?

It’s the good storytellers who make me forget that their plots are all made up. Besides the king, Qiu Xiaolong, I’d recommend Lisa Brackmann, Diane Wei Liang, Dinah Lee Küng, Lisa See, Catherine Sampson, Jan-Philipp Sendker, Michel Imbert, Adam Brookes, and John Gapper. Ian Hamilton’s and Peter May’s mysteries are hard to put down, however improbable their storylines. Some Sinophone critics consider Chan Ho-Kei the best classic whodunit author writing in Chinese (not all his works are available in the PRC).

“Realism” with a focus on society’s underbelly, migrant workers and the rural poor, for instance, is typically overshadowed by fascination with China’s rapid development. A sense of adventure and discovery prevails over noir atmospherics. You happily suspend disbelief in a good crime novel, particularly when murders pile up in a low-crime area like China — or a British country estate. The satirists — Alban Yung, Nuri Vittachi, Paul Mason, Zhang Xinxin — are in a class by themselves. That said, most locations depicted in the novels come straight out of life. I checked. The menus of already bulldozed restaurants are often archived online!

UK birth, education, and/or residence runs through the biographies of many of the authors; Sino-British relations appear particularly in the novels by Sampson and Brookes. I nearly dropped my chopsticks on hearing Qiu Xiaolong’s Shanghai characters speak with British accents in the BBC Radio 4 adaptations based on Qiu’s novels! (those are available on YouTube).

Qiu Xiaolong and his Inspector Chen series have been massively popular and run to over a dozen books. I always thought Chen was a good way to understand the dynamics of the 1990s and turn of the century Shanghai, but now they seem to be helpful in explaining zero-Covid, mass surveillance and many other aspects of contemporary Chinese life. Is this a new, perhaps more political, turn for the sub-genre of “China mysteries not made in China”?

Part of Qiu Xiaolong’s global appeal is indeed the space he allows for politics in domestic policing. This is also true of Michel Imbert, who writes in French. Most of Qiu’s mysteries start with a big news item: the Golden Venture shipwreck off New York, the murder of writer Dai Houying, blood peddling, the mega-corruption of Lai Changxing, Bo Xilai’s neo-Maoism, Chinese netizens’ image searches for clues to corruption, the pollution of Lake Tai. Those events already sound historical, but the novelists use crimes like these as launchpads to depict broader social issues. I only knew the forthcoming title of Love and Murder in the Time of Covid (2023) when I wrote my book, but the plot is in good Qiu Xiaolong form. Even during a pandemic, “the murder’s the thing”, the very thing driving up the death rate. Qiu’s later novels do dramatise new authoritarian trends, particularly in the Chinese legal system. I wonder if Chen Cao someday will have to go into hiding?

Where do you see the narrative thrusts of forthcoming “China mysteries not made in China” going in the future? Or where would like to see it go?

Most of the early practitioners have turned to other subjects and genres. At least mystery fiction’s loss of Lisa See has been historical fiction’s gain. Alas, Eliot Pattison’s series about Inspector Shan Tao Yun in Tibet appears to have concluded. Then again, readers thought Sherlock Holmes met his end at the Reichenbach Falls until he returned a few years later!

Lately, Daniel Nieh has sent Victor Li to investigate Chinese conspiracies in Mexico (Take No Names) and Brian Klingborg’s Inspector Lu Fei (Wild Prey) has gone undercover to Myanmar. There’s lots more crime in China to explore: fraud, domestic violence, local tyrannies. I just hope that Chinese and foreign heroes are not all forced into plots of espionage, sabotage, and preparing for armed conflict.

Jeff Kinkley’s Top 5 China Mysteries

Qiu Xiaolong, Red Mandarin Dress (2007)

Chan Ho-Kei, The Borrowed (2016)

Catherine Sampson, The Pool of Unease (2007)

Lisa Brackmann, Hour of the Rat (2013)

Adam Brookes, Night Heron (2014)