7grizzly

I met Robert van Gulik in Simon Winchester's book "The Man Who Loved China" and

was delighted to find his mysteries in the library. Over the past week, I read

the Dutch sinologist's "Murder in Canton" and "The Monkey and The Tiger" (the

Canton, Monkey, and Tiger) and was most impressed with the first.

It tells of Judge Dee's investigation of the missing of the Imperial Censor in

Canton against the backdrop where in the Imperial Court Empress Wu was vying for

power as the Emperor lay on his death bed. The plot is driven by love and lust,

mainly the affairs of the exotic Arab-Tanka dancer to whose beauty the Censor,

Captain Mansur the Arab, the merchant Liang Foo from an illustrious family, and

even Colonel Chiao, one of Dee's lieutenants, fell prey. Other love stories,

e.g., that of the judge's other lieutenent and the blind girl, that between the

governor and a Persian girl, and that of captain Nee and Prefect's wife, also

helped moving the plot along, leading to a classic culmination where the judge

and the villian dueled out over a chess game. Cherchez la femme indeed.

More than a dozen characters from various backgrounds stand out: the judge, his

two lieutenants, two lead merchants, the governor, the prefect, an Arab captain,

a Persian-Chinese captain, an intriguing blind girl, twin girls, a prostitute,

an Arab-Tanka dancer. I prefer his lively entertaining Chinese characters to

those in the more modern novels by James Clavell (Taipan and Noble House, e.g.)

set in Canton's neighbor Hongkong.

The details of the setting were fascinating: the 7th century Canton, the

struggles at Tang's imperial court, the rise of the Caliphates in the west, the

Arab quarters in the city and their mosques, curved knives, and javelins, the

praiah waterfolk and their love philter and method of strangulation, the haunted

Literary Examination halls, etc. Southern Chinese people have always struck me

as distinct, and I have never suspected the existence of the Tanka and the trade

between the Tang China and the Arabs. I am very happy to learn a bit about

Cantonese culture and history and even learned about two Arab favorites, the

arak and the houri.

Both the "Monkey" and the "Tiger", told in "The Monkey and The Tiger," are

interesting in their own right but perhaps more useful to me from a

story-telling angle. In the Monkey, a ring dropped by a gibbon leads to a body

discovered in a hut and the love story between a retired wealthy man and a wench

in a crime gang. In the Tiger, the judge is marooned in a local landlord's

residence where the femme fatale obsessed with her own ill health executed a

heinous scheme for love and money.

In each, aside from the setup, their appearance, and their language, the author

plants a tragic psychological seed in the villian and makes them real. In

"Canton," Mr. Liang Foo, the only son of a great general, the Subduer of The

South Sea, was not fit for military service. In "Monkey," the son of Mr. Wang,

the pharmacist, was mentally challenged. In "Tiger," Miss Min was insecure both

in her health and her inheritance. Maybe for Gulik, "weakness is a crime" is

literally true.