Author: Xiaoqing Cheng
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824830997
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
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. "One Summer Night" 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.
Author: Xiaoqing Cheng
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082486428X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
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. "One Summer Night" 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.
Author: Vasudev Murthy
Publisher: Missing Years
ISBN: 9781464203633
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"It's 1893. King Kamehameha III of Hawaii declares Sovereignty Restoration Day... Tension grows between China and Japan over Korea... The Bengal Famine worsens... A brilliant scientist in Calcutta challenges the system... The senior priest at Kyoto's Kinkaku-ji temple is found dead in mysterious circumstances. Dr John H. Watson receives a strange letter from Yokohama. Then the quiet, distinguished Mr. Hashimoto is murdered inside a closed room on a voyage from Liverpool to Bombay. In the opium dens of Shanghai and in the back alleys of Tokyo, sinister men hatch evil plots. Professor Moriarty stalks the world, drawing up a map for worldwide dominion. Only one man can outwit the diabolical Professor Moriarty. Only one man can save the world. Has Sherlock Holmes survived the Reichenbach Falls? In a seriocomic novel that radically ups the ante, Sherlock Holmes and Watson find their match in more than one man (or indeed, woman) as a clock inexorably ticks. History, mystery, romance, conspiracies, knife-edge tension; a train in Russia, roadside crime in Alexandria, an upset stomach in Bombay, careening through Cambodia, nasty people in China, monks in Japan--here's a thrilling global chase that will leave you breathless (occasionally with laughter) as the Sherlock Holmes: the missing years series begins"--Jacket flap.
Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 125002580X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
The eighth novel in Qiu Xiaolong's acclaimed Chinese crime series sees Inspector Chen confronted by a terrible choice between Party politics or his principles - with his career at stake
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375412654
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 481
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Book Description
From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition—and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.
Author: M J Lee
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 1474035590
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
Shanghai, 1928. The body of a blonde is washed up on the Beach of Dead Babies, in the heart of the smog-filled city. Seemingly a suicide, a closer inspection reveals a darker motive: the corpse has been weighed down, it’s lower half mutilated...and the Chinese character for ‘justice’ carved into the chest.
Author: Paul French
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 1250170583
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
"In the 1930s, Shanghai was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, fortunes made--and lost. 'Lucky' Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison in the States, spotted a craze for gambling and rose to become the Slot King of Shanghai. 'Dapper' Joe Farren--a Jewish boy who fled Vienna's ghetto with a dream of dance halls--ruled the nightclubs. His chorus lines rivaled Ziegfeld's. In 1940 they bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation and genocide. They thought they ruled Shanghai; but the city had other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction they left in their wake."--Jacket
Author: Jiang Rong
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0143109316
Category : Mongolia
Languages : en
Pages : 545
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Book Description
Chen Zhen volunteers to live in a remote settlement on the border of Inner and Outer Mongolia. There, he discovers life of apparent idyllic simplicity based on an eternal struggle between the wolves and the humans in their fight to survive. Chen learns about the spiritual relationship which exists between these adversaries.
Author: Annabella Weisl
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640500164
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 117
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Book Description
Thesis (M.A.) from the year 1998 in the subject Orientalism / Sinology - Chinese / China, grade: 1, University of Hamburg, language: English, abstract: Cheng Xiaoqing, the author of the Huo Sang cases, was one of the most prolific and successful Chinese detective fiction authors of the so-called Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School." In China, Western detective fiction was introduced at the turn of the 19th century. Cheng Xiaoqing was among the first Chinese authors to not only translate, but also create original works in the genre. The author adopted the main framework of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes case - the very standard of the classical Western detective story - and created the "Eastern Sherlock Holmes," Huo Sang, and his secretary Bao Lang, the "Dr. Watson of the East." The figure of Huo Sang shows several superficial similarities derivative of the classical Western detective a la Sherlock Holmes. In addition, the character also incorporates fundamental elements of Chinese literature draw from traditional figures such as the famous Judge Bao in classical court-case fiction and from the traditional chivalric heroes within the knight-errant tradition. Thus, Cheng did not merely create another British detective implanted into Shanghai. Instead, he fabricated a Chinese detective who is a synthesis of Western and Eastern influences and who reflects the contradictions and tensions of the environment he operates in. The story of China's meeting with modern detective fiction can, thus, be seen as a microcosm of China's encounter with the West. Cheng's import of the detective novel into a different cultural and political context required the employment of figures, settings and situations that offered relevant and compelling meanings for the contemporary reader. By merging different genres and thereby creating detective stories that were not just imitating the Western model, but also interweaving it with traditional elements of Chinese literary tradition. Cheng's inn
Author: Leonard S. Goldberg
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250101042
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
"Joanna Blalock's keen mind and incredible insight lead her to become a highly-skilled nurse ... When she and her ten-year-old son witness a man fall to his death, apparently by suicide, they are visited by the elderly Dr. John Watson and his charming, handsome son, Dr. John Watson Jr. Impressed by her forensic and deductive skills, they invite her to become the third member of their deductive team. Caught up in a Holmesian mystery that spans from hidden treasure to the Second Afghan War of 1878-1880, Joanna and her companions must devise an ingenious plan to catch a murderer in the act while dodging familiar culprits, Scotland Yard, and members of the British aristocracy"--
