tim's experiment

I have been reading a lot lately, possible as a form of escape from the frustrations of Hong Kong politics, which seem to revolve endlessly round the same unanswerable question – how can you ensure freedom in a region of an unfree country.

So to books: this involved the pleasant task of revisiting Qiu Xiaolong. I first discovered Mr Qiu quite by accident in the Baptist University bookshop. Seeing a paperback with a colourful cover lurking amid all the solemn academic stuff I picked it up to ask what a nice girl like you was doing in a place like this. It turned out to be a mystery novel, Mr Qiu’s first. Now I am a bit picky about mysteries. When I was a kid I learned to read very early (my mother taught me, as was customary in respectable working class households in those days) and I developed a ferocious appetite for books. My parents desperately bombarded me with paperbacks in an effort to keep up and being pretty indiscriminate I read most of them. So at various times I read Sherlock Holmes, of course, Agatha Christie, who I thought over-rated, Chandler, Ellery Queen, whoever wrote the Saint books, Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, and so on and on. Generally this did not survive adulthood, though I will read a Dalziell and Pascoe instalment any time I find one, And Mr Larsson’s trilogy is wonderful. Anyway I was interested enough to rescue Mr Qiu from academic exile and take him home.

The test of success for a mystery novel is whether, besides the mystery, it works as a novel. Are there interesting characters, are you drawn into an imagined world? Mr Qiu passes this test with flying colours. His novels (there are now six – I have them all) all concern a Shanghai cop, Chief Inspector Chen. He has a sidekick, of course, one Detective Yu, whose wife – a resourceful lady – is the only consistent female character. Inspector Chen has various romances but something always comes along to preserve his bachelor status. Generally in each book there is a murder, sometimes more than one. Inspector Chen has to navigate between police work and politics. Surprisingly often he is helped by his hobby – he is a poet and a serious student of Chinese literature. Mr Qiu lectures in this subject at an American university. He left China in 1989, which may or may not be significant, but he is clearly allowed to return because Shanghai is updated as the books go by. The books are highly recommended. They remind me of the work of H. H. Kirst, a German author who seems to have dropped out of favour lately, but whose books, at their best, explore the problems of a good man living in bad times — in his case Nazi Germany — and how to reconcile the desire to serve, the desire to see justice, and the desire to do the right thing in a politically poisonous environment.

One of the curious things about Mr Qiu’s books is the fixation with food. Meals are described with care and in detail. Frequently we are told about the preparation and the ingredients. This is not a plot device, except for one memorable scene in which Inspector Chen tries to get a serial killer to confess by bombarding him with “cruel dishes” in which animals are boiled alive, or otherwise abused. Generally though, this food thing is a part of the background. People are preoccupied with food. Every man his own Michelin guide. Meals, even street snacks, are described and relished in exquisite detail. I thought this was just a personal quirk – an attempt, perhaps. to achieve credibility by bombarding the reader with details.

Well perhaps not. This summer my wife and I are planning a cruise down the Danube. This is a luxurious and leisurely affair suitable to elderly retirees (thank you Alex) with the emphasis on culture and history. In preparation for this one of our friends loaned me a copy of Danube, a highly praised though now somewhat dated book by Claudio Magris (translated from the original Italian) recording a journey down the river and exploring the “tumult of history, literature and mythology” to be encountered on the way. Actually this is not the same as our trip – Magris is a land traveller and we will be on a boat. Also some of his descriptions are now hopelessly out of date because the book was written in the early 80s when many of the Danube countries were still in the Warsaw Pact, or if you prefer the Russian empire. This gives the book a poignant feel, because the author constantly comes across traces of that vibrant Middle European community through which the Iron Curtain had plonked itself.

Now, when we get to Bulgaria Magris wonders why his guide, a young lady called Kitanka, is so cheerful dspite the distressing circumstances of her country. And he considers a theory advanced by Vasov (I have no idea who Vasov is but apparently he wrote about life in Bulgaria when it was ruled by the Turks). “Oppression, he writes in his novel-epic of Bulgaria, has the privilege of making people’s happy; for when the political arena is closed, society seeks consolation in the immediate good things of life, in wine drunk under the trees, in love …”  I suppose good food would come into this category. So perhaps Mr Qiu is being observant rather then creative when he gives intelligent and moderately prosperous Shanghainese people an inordinate interest in the good things of the table.

And perhaps I shouldn’t be so rude about Hong Kong politics. At least we still have politics. And we have good food as well.