He Jiahong and His "Detective" Hong Jun--Contemporary Chinese Detective Fiction

After long silence...Happy Year of the Rooster!

This article on He Jiahong and his fictional "detective" character, Hong Jun, will be appearing later in 2017 in Sleuths, Private Eyes, and Policemen: An International Compendium of the 100 Greatest Literary Detectives edited by Eric Sandberg and published by Rowman and Littlefield. Sandberg teaches at Oulu University in Finland.

Hong Jun

He Jiahong, 1953-

“China is different, Mr. Zheng. The rule of law is still young and we have to tread carefully.”[1]

Crime writing in China has an ancient history preserved in gong’an, or crime-case tales, dating back to the 11^th century. Until recently, though, when asked about detective fiction, many Chinese readers would reply ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ Through the efforts of He Jiahong, however, contemporary China now has a home-grown investigator, attorney Hong Jun.[2] Unlike ex-patriate authors like Qiu Xiaolong (USA) and Diane Wei Liang (UK), He Jiahong lives and works in China. He has taught university in Beijing, and practiced law since completing his doctorate in America, an accomplishment he shares with his creation. The Hong Jun series is set in the late 20^th century, a period of accelerated change in China. This temporal context is a significant choice, because rapid social and economic change stresses legal systems; the law changes more slowly than the culture surrounding it. Few characters in the novels are interested in the past, but, ironically, the causes of current problems often lie in that neglected history.

In the 1990s, Hong Jun returned to China from America and set up a private legal practice, instead of following the more common route of becoming a prosecutor and employee of the state. Educated in both Chinese and American law and experienced in both cultures, he is an effective guide to how their legal and cultural practices and expectations differ.  Mature and handsome, with a fondness for American blues music, Hong is only thirty when his career begins in Hanging Devils (2015). In this and the next novel, Black Holes (2014), his character—calm, fair-minded, and moral but not priggish––is consistent. He brings fresh ideas to the practice of law in China, but he is not above flirting with his competent, attractive secretary, Song Jia. When offered a men’s night out, though, including a massage with ‘extras,’ Hong declines because the situation is morally and ethically questionable. His pursuit of justice stems from this moral and ethical sense and, with some difficulty, he holds himself to the standards he hopes will come to characterize the Chinese legal profession.

Much of the excitement of the books comes from the readers’ discovery of a very different system of law, one in which assumptions taken for granted in many nations are simply not applicable. As part of a changing system, Hong must often explain his role to his clients; they express surprise that he is independent of the state and earns his living from clients’ fees. As Hong explains, “the law requires the police, prosecutors and the courts to scrutinize each other, and provide checks and balances,” but attorneys as defenders of the accused or of victims of legal errors are cautiously being introduced into a Chinese tradition that is ‘inquisitorial’ rather than adversarial.[3] Take for example, the question every case involves in some form: “Did the police beat you?”[4]  While the answer is always no, the question signals underlying assumptions in the system. Before accepting any case, Hong investigates whether it is legitimate, because lawyers are expected to argue based on truth, not on allegiance to their clients, and it is this process that aligns him with the detective tradition. He questions witnesses, examines records of prior interrogations, and accepts no physical evidence at face value. In Hanging Devils, he investigates a ten-year-old rape and murder conviction that may have been a miscarriage of justice. In Black Holes, he is hired to defend a young stock trader who is accused of fraud. In the process of investigating both cases, Hong is drawn back to the period of the Cultural Revolution and the Educated Youth movement that sent young people from urban areas into rural districts.

The resentments and crimes of the past may be the initial motives, but when joined with blind ambition or unthinking greed, they fuel present misdeeds. In each case, Hong takes the extra investigative steps that the police skipped, or examines evidence that, when approached with an open mind, yields contradictions and new interpretations. Given his modern education, he is also aware of new forensic techniques such as the analysis of blood types and DNA. He is cautious and sensitive to the implications of his findings, but generally he discovers human weakness––such as greed, ruthless ambition, sexual indiscretion, or errors based on emotion or immaturity––behind the crimes he investigates. He believes that any system based on human action will involve mistakes; for instance, he frequently finds civil servants asleep at their desks or otherwise inattentive to their duties. Then there is the legal system itself, which Hong sometimes compares to American practices “where it was normal to challenge verdicts, and where procedural justice and the protection of individual rights were so revered [. . .]. Hong Jun knew that, under the prevailing Chinese legal system, it was far easier for the courts to allow a wrongful verdict to stand than to get it overturned. Righting past wrongs was a propaganda slogan, pretense being cheaper than practice.”[5] Hong consciously tries to lead by example and model the ethical behavior and concern for justice that he believes eventually will be part of the Chinese legal system at all levels.

Hong Jun allows readers to look into the Chinese legal system, which may seem mysterious and remote to most of them. He too, must navigate the system and, in order to do his job well, he must consider its basis in tradition and the pressure it is under in ‘new China.’ Hong’s cases provide much-needed context for understanding the challenges faced by China in both the past and the present.

Selected Bibliography

Hanging Devils (2015)

Black Holes (2014)

Rebecca Martin

Pace University

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[1] He Jiahong, Hanging Devils, (Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2015), 10.

[2] Jiahong’s Hong Jun series includes five novels, with the first two currently available in English.

[3] He, Hanging Devils, 76; Elisa Nesossi, “He Jiahong: Working Between Law and Literature,” The China Story, September 28, 2012, accessed April 15, 2016, https://www.thechinastory.org/2012/09/he-jiahong-%E4%BD%95%E5%AE%B6%E5%BC%98-working-between-law-and-literature/.

[4] He, Black Holes, (Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2014), 258; Hanging Devils, 91.

[5] Hanging Devils, 97-8.

Peter May's Chinese Whispers

Chinese Whispers by Peter May

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Inadvertently, I'm doing this series in random chronological order. I read one other novel and I thought I'd give the series another chance, hoping it would get better, but it really doesn't. I criticized the portrayal of Margaret in the first novel I read (The Killing Room) in the series because she was a b***h on wheels and I couldn't figure out how she and Li had ever gotten together. Well, in this one, she whines constantly. Sorry, but it does not entertain me listening to women indulging in self-pity because they have children and have to slight their careers. C'mon. We've got an app for that and have had it since the 1960s. Anyway, this "Beijing Ripper" case was pretty interesting but when the solution finally comes it's quite mundane. Do I want to continue back in time to read the earlier book(s) in the series? Oh, I suppose I will, but I will probably be finished with this series at that point, unless I find out that Li has ditched Margaret and turned his attention elsewhere. Overall, I find this series run-of-the-mill except for its Chinese locale.

Qiu Xiaolong's series is far better with more complex characterizations, more complex political situations and insights, and much more layered cases. And poetry. If you like that in detective fiction!



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Peter May's The Killing Room

The Killing Room by Peter May

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I plan to read more in the series, because I've started with one of the later books, but I am not impressed. The environment (geographical, cultural, political, social) in which the investigation takes place is a draw, but I find Margaret Campbell to be a totally unpleasant character, one about whom I don't care at all. I should go back and read an earlier book in the series so I can figure out what ever made her attractive to Li. I sure don't get it at this point. I think Mei-Ling is a much more attractive character and hope she appears elsewhere in later books.



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Li Er at "The Crime Scene"

According to the novel’s prologue, “this novel is based on the author’s first-hand interview with a group of bank robbers. The heroes and the heroine are not born ruthless or evil, nor do they have any particular hatred for society.  However, they take a juvenile approach to life and recklessly commit crimes.  What drives their destructive behavior?” (7)

To say that the three criminals in Li Er’s short crime story “take a juvenile approach to life” tells us only the most obvious quality of their decision-making; the novel itself gives a much more nuanced picture of how each, individually, comes to the disastrous decision to rob the truck that picks up money at several branches of a major Chinese bank. That it is a disastrous decision is probably what you could guess for yourself.  Things will not turn out well.  But I will try to write about the book without spoilers that give away major features of the drama. I also wish to acknowledge upfront that my interpretation may be on shaky ground because though I read the book in a bilingual Chinese-English Readers series (Better Link Press, NY and Shanghai, 2009) my limited command of Mandarin left me to rely solely on the English translation. I could do no comparison or analysis of how the translation rendered the original language.

The three robbers are the major characters: Ma En, the leader of this band of outsiders; Yang Hong, his girlfriend; and Erqing, Ma En’s not-very-bright side-kick. There are two minor though important characters:  Chen Shuanbao, a corrupt policeman who has done some deals with Ma En, and the retired principal of Ma En’s Jizhou high school, Cheng Pu (“Mr. Cheng”), a teacher and mentor who encouraged Ma En to be more ambitious and to continue his studies.

Ma En is a man of contradictions.  He is smart and could have gone to college, but he ends up repairing motorcycles. He took the exam but failed because he helped a friend cheat. He’s not ambitious enough to re-take the exam, which we are assured he would have passed. Of course, that friend’s father shows his gratitude by helping Ma En get a business license.

Ma En is tender and loving with his girlfriend; the novel opens with a scene of him waking up early next to Yang Hong with the melancholy feeling that he might not see her again after the day’s deeds.  We also learn that though Yang Hong has had a morally questionable life since leaving the country for the city, she and Ma En met when he gallantly interceded to save her from a brutish client. On the other hand, we find later that in their time together, Ma En has “given” Yang Hong in various business transactions in which her love for him has made her an apparently willing participant. By recognizing the main chance, using Yang Hong as a commodity, and applying bribes in all the right places, Ma En has become a fairly successful businessman, a “rich boss with two graduates from the Transportation Vocational School working for him” (35).

What brings Ma En to plan a robbery? Here is the place where some of Li Er’s discrete social criticism slips in.  While Chen Shuanbao has managed to get Ma En the motorcycle repair business generated by the local police, the government has not been good about paying its bills, so Ma En’s business has failed (113). When it comes to the motivations for the criminal life that Li Er means to explore, the push given to Ma En by this harsh realism, cannot be ignored.

Other possibly influential factors that are revealed by the robbers include their wide familiarity with American and Hong Kong crime movies and television and, at least in Yang Hong’s case, a fondness for the jokey infantile violence of American and Japanese cartoons. Indeed, the callousness with which the trio plan murders or discuss whether their cab driver should be killed, convey a sense of unreality, as if they are not talking about human beings but about cartoon characters, who may leap back to life after being penetrated by bullets or flattened by a big rock (99, 103).

Though the style is terse and direct, almost without affect, there are some comic moments in the treatment of Erqing who, having finally lost his virginity, in a pre-heist spending spree is convinced he is now married, and who allows himself to be so distracted by women and sex that he can hardly think about the robbery and his part in it.  There are also moments of comedy that convey a kind of hard-edged cynicism, as when the widespread questioning by police after the robbery uncovers the fact that there are a lot of citizens out there who are planning robberies (133). Or when the local police can only be motivated to actually take an interest in solving the crime by being offered a cash incentive (131). And, finally, there is Ma En’s inability to keep his mouth shut.  It turns out that he has talked about robbery to almost everyone he knows and encounters, so the question of premeditation does not have to be explored.

Ma En and Yang Hong can be added to the long list of gun crazy, criminal lovers on the run that includes Michel and Patricia in Breathless and our own Bonnie and Clyde.  In fact, can it be that Bonnie’s vision that she and Clyde would “go down together” is echoed in the romantic and a little naïve Yang Hong’s immediately regretted wish that “We must die together” (11)?

Wang Shuo's "Playing for Thrills"--Did Fang Yan Murder Someone Ten Years Ago? Was There a Murder at All?

Once I figured out HOW to read the book and WHAT it was going to expect of me as a reader, I surrendered myself to it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one of those works of mystery that poses a question to be answered or a goal to be met, and once the main character gets there, the question/goal opens up to more questions and other goals that must be pursued. It's a crazy race of a book with fantasy, dreams, characters with multiple identities, etc. I liked it. It reminded me of Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase but with MORE of everything including confusion and a constantly-digging-deeper narrative. Unlike Oedipus, who learns to his grief that he IS the murderer whom he seeks, Fang Yan is told at the outset that he is a murderer and he feels he must accept this, since he can't remember what happened. To save himself, he must find out who was murdered and why he does not remember doing it. If you enjoy the paranoid, surreal journeys of Murakami or Pynchon, this is a book for you.

Chinese detective fiction

Tomorrow's the big day--our group is departing Newark Liberty Airport at 12:05 pm.  Beijing, here we come...after a 13.5 hour flight. I can watch at least six movies in that time or I can use my time more wisely by doing some reading and working on some ideas I have for my time in China. And I think Dr. Poe is going to make me do some brainstorming about our fall class, though my tendency (Kids, don't try this at home!) is to do that in, say, late August.  Dr. Poe...now...don't make me change my seat.

Since classes finished a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been able to devote more time to considering precisely what area of contemporary Chinese writing fits my interests and overlaps with my academic preparation.  One of the subjects I teach at Pace is American Detective Fiction, but for about three years I have been contemplating putting together a course that would explore detective fiction in the rest of the world, including, of course, East Asia.  I have been able to do only a small amount of research (all online, alas) in the time I have had to devote to this subject about which I am nearly completely ignorant, but it does seem like a worthwhile area of inquiry and one in which not much work has been done yet. Not to mention that it will give me even more reasons to read crime fiction, as if I needed any more. I looked through several years' worth of Clues, the journal of detective fiction, and found no articles at all about Chinese fiction and only one about Japanese. I have come across references to some printed works that will provide some information and I have found bits and pieces online (such as this from a Dartmouth professor, G.J. Demko: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gjdemko/china.htm). 

I contacted Dr. Eva Shan Chou, of Baruch College (CUNY), who spoke to our faculty seminar a couple of months ago about twentieth-century Chinese literature. She suggested a book that looks like a perfect introduction to the subject of Chinese "crime fiction."  Through the good graces of Xiaohong Hu I have a copy of this book (Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China by Jeffrey C. Kinkley) in my hot hands and plan to read it on the plane. It's a library book, so please God don't let my hands wander near a highlighter. In China, we're going to be meeting with a lot of academics at several universities and I hope to be able to meet at least one professor in China who knows something about the field. I also hope he or she speaks English, because I think I failed my Mandarin final.

I understand that little contemporary crime fiction has been translated into English. In fact, my only direct knowledge of the subject comes from writers such as Qiu Xiaolong and Diane Wei Liang, "overseas Chinese" who are writing in English.  I also understand that the “private eye” holds a tenuous place in contemporary China.  However, detective fiction as a genre also encompasses fiction that describes the work of police officers or the investigation of crimes by others out of professional interest or mere curiosity.  The detective figure does not have to be a private investigator.

And what exactly does this have to do with 18th-c British literature, Rebecca?

I've come a long way from my dissertation topic--The 18th-c English Gothic Novel--but many of my current interests can be traced back to the Gothic. The horror film, detective fiction, Victorian sensation fiction, contemporary Gothic, literature of the supernatural...all are traceable to the Gothic. Of course, I know next to nothing about Chinese film or fiction, and I look forward at least to clawing my way to a beginner's level of learning in these subjects. I'm especially interested, though, in finding out whether China's contemporary genre writing includes detective fiction of any kind.  My only experience is with the very fine Inspector Chen novels written by Qiu Xiaolong, who now lives and teaches in the US.

Detective fiction isn't just crime and punishment (and the accompanying gore and violence). It's also social commentary on the culture that produces it and it's a gauge of the fears, obsessions, tensions and contradictions of the culture. It's a production of popular culture, not high culture.  Does this genre exist in China?  For whom is it written?  In what ways does it differ from American detective fiction in its production, audience or characteristics? I have wanted for quite some time to add to my detective fiction teaching repertoire by creating a course on global detective fiction.  I've done quite a bit of reading in European and Latin American detective fiction and some (random and unsatisfying) reading of Indian detective fiction, so investigating detective fiction in China will make an important contribution to my course work and my understanding of the practice and place of this genre in a wide range of cultures. 

This is just one of the subjects I hope to be researching in the coming months.