{"id":13646,"date":"2024-02-14T06:30:48","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T06:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=13646"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:02:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:02:26","slug":"what-chinese-crime-novels-can-tell-us-about-contemporary-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/what-chinese-crime-novels-can-tell-us-about-contemporary-china\/","title":{"rendered":"What Chinese crime novels can tell us about contemporary China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey C. Kinkley is professor emeritus of Chinese History at St. John\u2019s University, New York, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He is also a biographer (The Odyssey of Shen Congwen<\/em>) and a translator of Chinese fiction. Kinkley has published several academic books, including Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China<\/em>; Corruption and Realism in Late Socialist China<\/em>: The Return of the Political Novel<\/em>; and Visions of Dystopia in China\u2019s New Historical Novels<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But in his spare time, Jeff Kinkley likes to read detective fiction set in China; indeed he\u2019s read pretty much every China-related detective novel written in English (and invariably outside of China to circumvent any censorship), and he reckons they tell us a lot about contemporary China that doesn\u2019t make either the news or the more academic tomes out there. So he\u2019s brought together his thoughts in China Mysteries: Crime Novels From China\u2019s Others <\/em>(University of Hawaii Press). Paul French caught up with Kinkley to talk China, crime and which novels can usefully tell us about the society we operate in\u2026. and also ask Jeff for a definitive reading list of China-set crime novels.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m going to assume that China Mysteries<\/em> is a book that originated with your leisure reading, but you thought there was something serious to say about all these \u201cChina mysteries not made in China\u201d that began to be published around the turn of the century?<\/h4>\n

I caught the crime fiction bug during a research project on crime-and-law stories that suddenly appeared in China itself around 1980. Crime themes had been banned there for 30 years. I looked into these works\u2019 Chinese literary past and present in my book Chinese Justice, the Fiction <\/em>(2000). Novels with devilishly complicated murder plots are now published in China, and a few are translated into English. Crime genres published in the PRC have to overcome political taboos, widespread disdain for the local police, and stiff competition from translated Japanese whodunits and diverse online fantasy genres. China mysteries not<\/em> produced in China have their own limitations (publishers want them to suit Western tastes), but most of the authors view China from a global perspective and personal experience. When novels similar in genre but written under a different flag are placed side by side, similarities and differences stand out. The idea of \u201cworld literature\u201d appears in a new light, and so do foreign relations.<\/p>\n