Sherlock in Shanghai: Stories of Crime and Detection: Stories of Crime and Detection by Cheng Xiaoqing by Xiaoqing Cheng

by Cheng Xiaoqing

Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s - "the Paris of the Orient" - was both a glittering metropolis and a shadowy world of crime and social injustice. It was also home to Huo Sang and Bao Lang, fictional Chinese counterparts to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The duo lived in a spacious apartment on Aiwen Road, where Huo Sang played the violin (badly) and smoked Golden Dragon cigarettes as he mulled over his cases. Cheng Xiaoqing (1893-1976), "The Grand Master" of twentieth-century Chinese detective fiction, had first encountered Conan Doyle's highly popular stories as an adolescent. In the ensuing years he played a major role in rendering them first into classical and later into vernacular Chinese. In the late 1910s, Cheng began writing detective fiction very much in Conan Doyle's style, with Bao as the Watson-like-I narrator - a still rare instance of so direct an appropriation from foreign fiction. Cheng Xiaoqing wrote detective stories to introduce the advantages of critical thinking to his readers, to encourage them to be skeptical and think deeply, because truth often lies beneath surface appearances. His attraction to the detective fiction genre can be traced to its reconciliation of the traditional and the modern. In "The Shoe," Huo Sang solves the case with careful reasoning, while "The Other Photograph" and "On the Huangpu" blend this reasoning with a sensationalism reminiscent of traditional Chinese fiction. "The Odd Tenant" and "The Examination Paper" also demonstrate the folly of first impressions. "At the Ball" and "Cat's-Eye" feature the South-China Swallow, a master thief who, like other outlaws in traditional tales, steals only from the rich and powerful. "A Summer Night's Tragedy" clearly shows Cheng's strategy of captivating his Chinese readers with recognizably native elements even as he espouses more globalized views of truth and justice.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, China, Short Stories, Fiction

Hardcover

First published November 1, 2006

Reviews

[Alessia :) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5⭐️

[Lizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty entertaining!

[Flex and Herds from Death of the Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over on Death of the Reader, we're taking a world tour of the influences and inspirations of Detective Fiction. In fourteenth place on our recommendations for 2020, this novel marked our entry into Eastern Detective Fiction proper and represents a milestone both for ourselves and for the murder mystery scene in China. Xiaoqing wrote this series after years of translating foreign crime fiction stories and his passion for the genre drove him to attempt to localise these stories using his own characters and scenarios, with the Sherlockian Huo Sang and the Watsonian Bao Lang leading the charge. The stories themselves follow the tenants of a Sherlock murder mystery almost to a T with the Watson narrating, disguises galore and even the thrilling chase scenes we would expect from the greatest detective of all time. This novel is taking the 14th place for our 2020 ranking and I ask you to hear its merits and its woes in equal measure.

Sherlock in Shanghai is delivered in anthology form, with eight classically styled stories ranging from petty burglary, to kidnapping, to ghost stories, this book is all over the place in terms of tone and substance. Reflective of the experimental approach of the author. As we dance from story to story, tackling both the mundane and the extraordinary, Xiaoqing always has something he’s trying to tell us, and this is the greatest strength of these short stories. When writing these mysteries they are every one of them designed to teach the reader a lesson. These lessons include“a second opinion can see the obvious solution that you’ve missed” which is presented to us in “The Examination Paper” a story of Bao Lang losing his own exam paper and spending the short story trying to puzzle out exactly who has taken it, through this we use the traditional mystery criteria of who how and why to show off Hou Sang’s detective skills and to teach us how to approach a simple problem in Xiaoqing’s stories. Another lesson is simply “we shouldn’t judge someone based on appearances”. Which is taught to us through The Odd Tenant, a story of an odd tenant who seems to have their life upside down until Huo Sang systemically debunks all misgivings about him. As you can tell these lessons truly were not complicated but they were penned at a time where Xiaoqing was worried that China’s mistrust of the outside world was reaching a peak. Truthfully these stories are an attempt at teaching an entire society to rethink their most basic instincts and to challenge their cultural heritage. These lessons really are the heart of the stories and it would be remiss to judge this book without acknowledging their immense cultural and historical value.

In our murder mysery tour around the world we always try to highlight texts of value like this, however when reading Chenq Xiaoqing’s Sherlock in Shanghai I felt as though there was something missing, the texts are by all accounts derivative texts, intentionally pulling stories beat by beat and character by character from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings. As such it is difficult to recommend someone in the 21st century to read them wholesale, unless they are, like us, looking for specific moments of inspiration across culture. As an artifact of its time I enjoyed analysing it but from another standpoint the stories simply aren’t that original or entertaining as their British counterparts. I felt that the works of Akechi Kogoro were a better example of cross-cultural pollination in the detective fiction sphere. Another nitpick lies in the titles of the stories, when you pick up a short story called ‘The Other Photograph’ you have to bet that there will in fact be, another photograph, and that it will prove instrumental to the solution of the case. In terms of mystery construction Cheng Xiaoqing falls behind the works he’s attempting to reproduce, using tropes from other authors and solutions that don’t fit quite as well with his own culture.

Overall I would recommend giving Sherlock in Shanghai a quick read if you’re following our world tour, or if you’re simply interested in how cultures can cross pollinate from across the world. The stories are entertaining and Huo Sang is certainly an admirable character, but the stories by the end lack an individual character that would otherwise elevate them. Xiaoqing should be admired for using the medium of murder mystery (which is a genre designed for the reader to question what they’re being told and to uncover their own truths) as a way of questioning the core values and worldviews of his own readers.

If you want to hear our full in-depth discussion of Sherlock in Shanghai, you can catch all three parts up on the Death of the Reader Podcast.

[Chris Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find Sherlock Holmes to be an acquired taste. Cheng Xiaoqing was a translator of Doyle and
picked up a deft hand in detecting and characterization. His duo of Huo Sang and Bao Lang are well done. One of the reasons I picked this book is that I was hoping for some scenes of Shanghai (perhaps similar to London in the Bryant and May), and it wasn't there. In translation it could have been anywhere. The names and clothing did the work of the setting. The mysteries (it is a collection of short stories) were acceptable and comparable to Doyle.

[Jackson Cyril · Rating 3 out of 5]

These have little artistic merit, but Cheng's project of writing Sherlock Holmes stories with two Chinese dudes (the Watson et Sherlock of Shanghai) and introducing western ideas to China certainly makes for interesting reading from a historical point of view.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and interesting.

[Genevieve Marie]

Very old fashioned sense of propriety, but interesting enough

[Angel 一匹狼 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This compilation of short stories by Xiaoqing Cheng is supposed to show one of the most famous mystery writers from China, but the only thing that offers are not very interesting stories, poorly conceived and developed mysteries, and some acceptable characters and ideas, with a side of some strangely worrisome morals.

The compilation contains 8 stories by the author, 6 of them with his most famous creation, the private detective from Shanghai, Huo Sang. That the book constantly compares him, even in the title, with Sherlock Holmes, does a disservice to everyone. Firstly, because Huo Sang is not even a third-rate Sherlock, but second because Cheng's mysteries can't even offer a little bit of shadow to Conan Doyle's. There is no mystery, no character development, nothing. The stories develop in a very simple manner: someone goes to see Sang (in his six stories), and he goes and moves around and thwarts the criminal's intentions. No mysterious messages or deaths or anything. The dialogues are plain and simple, the plot development really poor, and the characters not particularly engaging. Sang's sidekick and narrator Bao and his penchant for killing people just because and horrible ideas (if a child of a criminal is killed it's ok, because he's the child of a criminal) don't help either. On the other hand, Cheng puts out some ideas about taking from the rich to give to the poor and similar that make all a little bit of a muddle in the ideology department, even if in general it keeps to the worrisome side. The other two stories are quite short and don't offer anything new or interesting either.

This compilation is not worth anyone's time. Maybe for completists or curious readers.

1.5/10

[Baylee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Puoi trovare questa recensione anche sul mio blog, La siepe di more

Amando molto Sherlock Holmes ero molto curiosa di leggere come il personaggio fosse stato declinato nella sua versione cinese: appassionato parimenti del detective di Baker Street, Xiaoqing pensò, infatti, di introdurre il genere in Cina, scrivendo le avventure di Huo Sang e del suo amico e assistente Bao Lang.

Il primo impatto non è stato dei migliori: mi sembrava quasi di leggere una fanfiction su Internet, il primo racconto – La scarpa – è molto lontano dalla complessità delle storie di Arthur Conan Doyle, che mi fanno scervellare sulla soluzione del mistero anche se alcune le ho lette parecchie volte.

Poi ho smesso di fare paragoni tra ACD e Xiaoqing e allora ho iniziato a godermi la lettura: Sherlock a Shanghai può essere un giallo carino, ambientato in un contesto storico e geografico che non siamo abituatə a esplorare con questo genere e con una breve prefazione di Timothy Wong, volta a dare un contesto storico-culturale al libro che si sta per leggere.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delightful collection of translations of popular Chinese detective stories from the 1920s and 1930s. The author - Cheng Xiaoqing - had translated Sherlock Holmes stories into Chinese and then created a Chinese detective and his loyal companion based in Shanghai along the same model as Holmes and Watson. Once used to the slightly awkward and dialogue the characters of Huo Sang and Bao Lang will entertain you with their similarities to the relationship and adventures of Holmes and Watson. Thee are even scenes where Bao Lang (Watson) moons over a beautiful and refined girl and has to remind himself that he's been taken in before by a pretty face! The mysteries are less compelling and the explanations less unusual than the Conan Doyle stories but they're still intriguing if only for encapsulating the way people lived in pre-Communist Shanghai.

[Sem · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Because I have been writing about my friend Huo Sang’s cases for so long, many of you readers, perceiving the depth of our mutually supportive relationship, have expressed the desire to know how it all began. In looking through my old bamboo chest recently, I came upon my diary from college days, which contains an abbreviated record of a bewildering and disheartening case, one that involved me personally and that Huo Sang solved. Up to that point, even though we were both students at Zhonghua University, Huo Sang and I had yet to become close friends. Only later did our friendship grow deeper by the day, to the point where we can now be considered soulmates."

[John Armstrong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly of historical interest but not very exciting. All but one of the eight stories in the collection feature Cheng's rather unimaginative Holmes and Watson-inspired combo, master detective Huo Sang and faithful sidekick and chronicler Bao Lang. The one "standalone" story, "One Summer Night", was, for me, by far the best.

[Lilyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huo Sang e Bao Lang come Sherlock Holmes e il dottor Watson.
Racconti carini ma non mi hanno coinvolto più di tanto. Bao Lang è la voce narrante in tutti i racconti e Huo Sang l'indiscusso protagonista.