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Writer taps China’s appetite for mystery
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SINCE its debut late last month, the comedy/mystery film “Detective Chinatown” has earned critical praise as well as commercial success within China.
The movie, which focuses on a mis-matched Chinese duo who solve a locked-room murder in Bangkok, is also exceptional in that it is among only a handful of recent Chinese productions to embrace the whodunit genre.
Like many other established genres, detective fiction is relatively underdeveloped in China.
The country missed the great mystery-fiction booms that happened in the 1940s and later in the 1960s. Yet, the number and quality of Chinese mystery stories have been on the upswing over recent years.
Several new Chinese mystery novels are being adapted into movies and television shows, while some have even been translated into English and other foreign languages. This group includes titles from Lei Mi’s “Profiler” series, which centers on a young criminal profiler Fang Mu.
According to mystery writer and publisher Cheng Jiake, the popularity of these recent works could lead to more local experimentation with the detective genre. Cheng, who worked as a writing consultant on “Detective Chinatown,” sat down with Shanghai Daily to discuss the film as well as the country’s nascent crime fiction scene.
Q: How did you get involved in the film?
A: My father loves mystery novels and I grew up reading them. You can say I learned how to read from these novels. In 2007, I went to Beijing and became executive editor-in-chief for “Mystery Magazine” for two years, and later went to a publishing house specializing in imported foreign detective novels.
The director (Chen Sicheng) looked for a specialist in detective novels when he had the idea to blend comedy with mystery, and he was referred to me by the current editor-in-chief of the magazine.
Q: What kinds of novels do Chinese mystery readers prefer? Has there been a change in tastes over the past years?
A: Chinese readers really didn’t have much access to contemporary detective stories until the 1990s and early 2000s. Most of the books translated and published in Chinese before that were from writers before World War II. This included books from Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Maurice Leblanc.
Now, of course, more writers are being translated in Chinese — especially writers from contemporary times.
I helped introduce, import and later publish the works of Edward D. Hoch, who wrote nearly 1,000 short stories; John Dickson Carr, a great writer from the “Golden Age” of mystery writing; and French detective novelist Paul Halter, one of the few Western writers still using classic detective-story tricks like locked room mysteries.
Q: You also employed the locked room device in “Detective Chinatown.” What was your reason for this?
A: Right, it’s a classic trick. I can give you 10 examples of this device right away. We thought about other more imaginative or inventive ideas, but we also had to consider the visual representation on the silver screen, which I found to be the biggest difference between writing for film and writing a novel.
We are already developing ideas for a sequel. In the sequel, we will definitely try something brand new that you have never seen in any other book or film.
Q: Who are your favorite detective novelists?
A: I still prefer classic detective stories where the focus is the trick and the case, as opposed to works in the so-called “social school” where the focus is on human nature and the ills of society.
I’m a big fan of writers from the “Golden Ages,” especially Agatha Christie. She’s always been praised for her natural writing style. But her tricks are excellent too. She invented many tricks that had never been seen before. Some other writers can also do that, but they make their cases so complicated and difficult for readers to follow. Agatha Christie could always find a great balance by leading you easily into a story but without being able to guess the end.
Another favorite of mine is Japanese detective novelist Soji Shimada. He is not only a great writer, but very influential when it came to Japan’s classic detective style vibe.
Honkaku, or the classic detective stories, almost died out in the 1960s in Japan. They were substituted by works in the social school. Soji Shimada re-invented it, not only with his refreshingly imaginative new tricks but also by founding student clubs at universities to nurture the next generation of classic detective novelists.
Q: How about Chinese detective writers?
A: Young Chinese readers are heavily influenced by Japanese manga and animation titles like “Detective Conan, Case Closed” or “Kindaichi Case Files.”
And for writers, we never really formed a big circle of mystery novelists like in the West or Japan. Many Chinese crime story writers have a background in actual policing... and often times their works read like reportage.
Now, with TV and film, maybe we can experiment more with the genre.
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