At the time of the historical Judge Di, the Uyghurs were one of nine tribes that survived the dissolution of the East Türk Empire in the early seventh century (a dissolution promoted by the newly established Tang dynasty in China). Forty-four years after Di’s death in 700, the Khagan (Kagan, Khan) Qutlugh Bilge Kol established a Uyghur empire that lasted until 848. The Uyghurs never actually invaded Tang China (though an invasion was planned in 779), and in fact, the Khagan sent Uyghur troops to assist the Tang emperor Daizong when he faced a rebellion within China (as a reward, the Uyghers were twice permitted to plunder recaptured cities). And the Uyghurs did enforce a trade in which they exchanged horses, which the Chinese did not want, for silk, which the Uyghurs did want. But the sort of invasion that van Gulik’s Uigers propose in The Chinese Maze Murders is not historical. The actual Uygher threat appears to have been more a useful fiction for the expansionist Tang empire than a reality. “The carefully crafted stories about supposed Türk invasions are ultimately disinformation intended to justify the subsequent massive aggression by the T’ang against the Türk and everyone else on the existing frontiers of China” (Beckwith 125).
Judge Dee’s Uigers are presented as three tribes headed by Prince Ooljin. Hoping to exploit the fact that the Silk Road has shifted southward and that Lan-fang’s importance to the empire has therefore diminished, Ooljin plots to have a small number of Chinese traitors open the walled city to his bowmen and thus enable him to make it the capital of his own Uiger kingdom. Judge Dee’s frustration of his plans leads to the “Khan of the Uigers” being compelled to send his eldest son to the Chinese emperor as a hostage, securing the peace and, as Ma Joong remarks, to Ooljin being returned to the Khan to be flayed, boiled, and cut into pieces (25.313). Judge Dee has preserved the integrity of the empire.
The Uigers are to Judge Dee what the barbarians were to the Greeks: “barbarian” means “non-Greek-speaking,” and thus not a participant in the culture of Greece. But whereas the Greeks could apply “barbarian” to the opulent court of the sophisticated Persians, Judge Dee’s usage is perhaps closer to Tacitus’s view of the savage Germanic tribes that did not participate in the culture of Rome. When Ma Joong first enters the Uiger quarter of Lan-fang, he encounters “The Hunter,” who speaks “atrocious Chinese” and who boasts, “we are a fine race. Much more virile than you Chinese. Some day we shall swoop down on you from north and west and conquer your entire country!” (16.234). The contrast between the virile barbarian and the effete, over-civilized Chinese (or Roman) has long been a staple of primitivist thinking. Van Gulik gives to Prince Ooljin a plea that recalls the complaint of American Indians: “Did not you Chinese encroach on our pastures, your peasants ploughing our good grasslands and transforming them into rice fields? Have we not been driven away farther and farther into the desert where our horses and cattle die on our hands?” (20.262). The plea is stillborn; there is no Chinese response to this expression of Uiger resentment. Or rather, no articulate response. The headman offers to respond by hitting the bound and wounded prince, and Judge Dee directs the painful blows against the prince’s good knee and shin. There is no sympathy for the barbarian in The Chinese Maze Murders. Judge Dee certainly out-thinks the barbarians, and Ma Joong proves that the Chinese superior in physical virility as well. He single-handedly overcomes Prince Ooljin in their violent fight in the Drum Tower.
The Uigers are granted but a single barbarian merit. Ma Joong is taken with the Uiger girl Tulbee, despite her “sooty” appearance (233) and her “slight smell of lambsfat” (248), and she is apparently so infatuated with Ma Joong after a single brief encounter (in which his only action is to pull her skirt loose) that she is willing to risk herself to warn him of a trap that the Uigers are setting for him. At the end of the novel, Ma Joong decides to buy Tulbee, because she is “a fine sturdy young woman” and because “she can’t speak a word of Chinese” (25.319). Their inability to do more than babble—to “bar bar bar”—makes barbarian women, at least, attractive partners. (We later learn that Ma Joong soon grew tired of Tulbee, and specifically of her “incurable fondness for rancid tea-butter” and her “equally incurable aversion to washing herself properly” (The Phantom of the Temple 5.38). When she reappears in the later novel, she is happily married to a Mongolian camel driver, but she welcomes an opportunity to sport with Ma Joong again.)
Master Crane
In his Postscript, van Gulik justifies the Master Crane Robe episode in Chapter Nineteen as “a much-chastened version of the deus ex machina found in many old Chinese detective novels” (327). Instead of having a supernatural King of the Netherworld appear to counsel the Judge, van Gulik uses the enigmatic sayings of a Taoist recluse as stimuli to Judge Dee’s thinking. But, as van Gulik adds, Master Crane Robe’s unworldly Taoist perspective that embraces “a life of non-action jenseits vom Guten und Bösen, in complete harmony with the primordial forces of nature” (328) can be neatly contrasted with Judge Dee’s “orthodox Confucianist scholar-official” worldview (327). The contrast is expressed in a couplet that Master Crane Robe has pasted to the wall of his small thatched retreat, overgrown with vines:
There are but two roads that lead to the gate of
Eternal life:
Either one bores his head in the mud like a worm
or like a dragon flies up high into the sky [19.255].
The couplet is quoted again in Chapter Twenty-five, as Judge Dee realizes that although he is powerfully drawn to Master Crane Robe’s simple and direct—dragon-like, Taoist—path, his own Confucian path, however worm-like, is the one he must travel. He must suppress his impulse to resign his station and continue to serve as magistrate.
But the contrast is more complicated than that of the Confucian Dee vs. the Taoist Crane Robe. The couplet, for example, is in the calligraphy of Crane Robe’s old friend, Governor Yoo Shou-chien. As young men, the two had studied together. Then one—dragon-like Crane Robe—set out to “roam” the empire, while worm-like Yoo set out on an official career (“He was going to eradicate all evil, he was going to reform the Empire…” 19.256). Fifty years later, they reconnected in Lan-fang. Yoo still tried to convert Crane Robe, sending him a cartload of Confucianist Classics. Crane Robe used the books as kindling for his kitchen stove.
Crane Robe observes that Judge Dee is much like Governor Yoo, and later Judge Dee confesses to his lieutenants that when he was studying for his examinations, it was Governor Yoo who inspired him. “I made it my ambition to learn his brilliant deductive methods. Later I carefully studied his inspired memorials to the throne and tried to absorb his burning passion for justice and his deep devotion to the state and the people” (20.268). And yet Judge Dee discovers that the murderer he is seeking in the “The Case of the Murder in the Sealed Room” is, in fact, Governor Yoo. When Yoo finds it impossible to secure punishment of the traitor, General Ding Hoo-gwo, through official means, he resorts to a clever device to insure that the general is killed after Yoo himself has died. The Confucian passion for justice leads to a dying man’s clever murder plot, a plot that, were it not detected by a clever Confucian magistrate with a comparable passion for justice, might have resulted in the conviction of the innocent artist, Woo.
The Confucian Dee is clearly the direct heir of the Confucian Yoo. His ability, after the failure of several prior magistrates, to solve the puzzle of the topographical painting that the Governor bestowed as his only legacy to his second wife and their son again marks Dee as true heir of the admirable Yoo. And it was Yoo, not Master Crane Robe, who composed the couplet that represented the Daoist way as that of the dragon and the Confucian way as that of the worm. If it is odd to have a Confucianist compose a couplet favoring Daoism, it is also odd to have the Daoist cite a Confucian sage to reprove a Confucian magistrate. When Judge Dee interrupts Master Crane Robe’s diatribe against Confucius to ask if he might pose a question, Crane Robe replies, “One question … only leads to another. You are like a fisherman who turns hi
s back on his river and his nets and climbs a tree in the forest to catch fish!” (19.259). The folly of seeking fish in a tree is proverbial in China, but the proverb derives not from Taoist Lao-zi or his disciple Chuang-zi, but from Confucius’s most influential follower, Mencius. King Hsüan of Ch’I was questioning Mencius about expanding his kingdom and “bringing peace to the barbarian tribes on the four borders.” Mencius says, “If you look for fish by climbing a tree, though you will not find it, there is no danger of this bringing disasters in its train. But if you seek the fulfillment of an ambition like yours by such a means as you employ … you are certain to reap disaster in the end” (Mencius 58).
Struck by the simplicity of Master Crane Robe’s way, Judge Dee seriously considers abandoning his official career and retiring to a small farm. But in a final reflection upon Governor Yoo’s couplet, he, like the Governor, decides that his way must be that of the worm: “Well, I belong very much to this world of ours! I shall continue boring my head into the mud!” (25.321). Embracing this un-heroic image, Judge Dee dedicates himself to a career as a scholar-statesman that will enroll him in history first as a model of the just magistrate and then as model of an imperial minister.
Judge Dee’s speech when first opens his tribunal in Chapter 4 has already presented the heroic side of Confucian worm. Addressing a populace that has been oppressed for a decade by the tyranny of Chien Mow, Dee proclaims: “Look up at your magistrate! Observe carefully these insignia of the power that has been vested in me. Know that on this very day, this very hour, all over the Empire thousands of me wearing these same insignia are dispensing justice in the name of the state and the people. Since time immemorial they have stood as a symbol of the social order decided upon in the wise counsels of your ancestors, and perpetuated by the mandate of Heaven and the free will of the uncounted millions of our black-haired people” (4.144). But his deep response to the Daoist alternative embodied in Master Crane Robe adds a significant dimension to his character.
There is one last aspect to the twinning of General Yoo and Judge Dee. Chiao Tai proves to be a second shadow of the Governor. At the end of Chapter Twenty-one, after Judge Dee has revealed Governor Yoo’s successful execution of General Ding, Chaio Tai reveals that prior to his joining Ma Joong in the Green Woods, he had been a captain in the army, and was the only survivor of the massacre that General Ding had arranged in order to conceal his own cowardice and treachery. Chiao Tai had then sworn to find General Ding and kill him. This parallel between Governor Yoo and Chaio Tai implies a parallel between Chiao Tai and Judge Dee. And as the series develops, Chaio Tai’s life becomes significantly intertwined with that of the Judge.
A final note: if wanting to kill General Ding establishes a parallel between Chiao Tai and Governor Yoo, it must also raise another parallel: General Ding’s son, Ding Yee, also wants to kill his father, and it is only the General’s chance employment of Governor Yoo’s poisoned pen that prevents Ding Yee’s poisoned plums from being the murder weapon. Ding Yee’s motive is lust for his father’s fourth wife, and his willingness to commit patricide (and deliberately to implicate Woo Feng) is despicable. Still, the contrast between the utterly detestable man who would murder the general and the two utterly admirable men who would murder the general, one of whom actually did, may raise questions.
Betrayal
Betrayal is a principal theme in The Chinese Maze Murders. It appears in several forms, above all in betrayal of the nation: The frame plot of the novel, only tangentially related to any of the three murder cases, concerns the conspiracy in which Yoo Kee hopes to use Chien Mow, the Lan-fang strongman, and Prince Ooljin, a cousin of the Uiger khan, to make Lan-fang the capital of a secessionist Chinese-Uiger kingdom. Unable to match his father’s noble service to the Tang Empire, Yoo seeks to dismember that empire. Yoo’s high treason merits the penalty of the death of a thousand cuts. General Ding Hoo-gwo also betrayed the nation, sacrificing a battalion of 800 men to secure a safe retreat for himself. There is also betrayal of the family. Ding Yee seduces his father’s fourth wife, and attempts to murder his father. Ding’s ultimate suicide means that his line of the family is extinguished. Yoo Kee betrays his father’s will by disinheriting his father’s second wife and her son.
Buddhism
In Chapter Seven, van Gulik inserts a brief episode unrelated to any of the three investigations. Three Buddhist monks fraudulently attempt to claim reparations for a golden statue that Chien Mow stole from their temple. The claim provides Judge Dee with an opportunity to demonstrate his detective prowess: he compels the monks to engage in an experiment that clearly discredits their claim. The interlude resembles those exercises of Sherlockholmitos in which Conan Doyle arranged occasions for Sherlock Holmes to deploy his powers of inference on random objects (a hat, a pipe, a walking-stick), with his conclusions always immediately verified, though they contribute little of relevance to the solution of the case at hand.
Buddhism also enters The Chinese Maze Murders as the inspiration for the painter, Woo. Woo seems to be obsessively painting images of the goddess Kwan Yin. Judge Dee, however, perceives that the obsession is not religious in origin, but sexual: the face of the goddess is always that of White Orchid. Woo, who emerges as an admirable character, is besotted with a woman, not a goddess.
In a reference back to The Chinese Bell Murders, Judge Dee explains that his being sent to the frontier district of Lan-fang after having been so successful in Poo-yang is the result of the machinations of “the Buddhist clique” in the capital (1.121). Although his exposure of the Temple of Boundless Mercy in the earlier novel had led to the degrading of the Buddhists surrounding the emperor, a sufficient “remnant” retained sufficient influence to secure his early transfer to a distant district. (The Buddhist remnant was assisted by influential Cantonese merchants, offended by the Judge’s perspicacious prosecution of one of their wealthy colleagues, Lin Fan.)
Reviews
The Chinese Maze Murders, in the form of copies of the 1956 English edition printed by W. van Hoeve in The Hague and distributed in the U.S. by Gregory Lounz, was the first original Judge Dee novel to reach the American market,. Anthony Boucher, responsible for the New York Times Book Review’s “Criminals At Large” column from 1951 until his death in 1968, was the first to notice it: “It occasionally seems a reviewer’s duty (and pleasure) to recommend urgently a book which may entertain only a few of his readers—but which will delight those readers inordinately. Such a caviar-to-the-general item is Robert van Gulik’s THE CHINESE MAZE MURDERS.” Boucher found that van Gulik wrote English “agreeably, if sometimes oddly,” and commented on the line drawings that became a standard feature of the series. Boucher clearly made an effort to comprehend what van Gulik was attempting to do—he notes that in addition to The Chinese Maze Murders, van Gulik had also translated Dee Goong An and had produced two other “pastiches,” which Boucher hoped to see soon available. Boucher would remain a consistent advocate of van Gulik’s “caviar” (28 July 1957: 186).
Ralph Partridge, in the English New Statesman, dispraised precisely those features that Boucher complemented: he advised van Gulik to abandon his “feeble” illustrations, and to “cut down on the chinoiseries” in future volumes (29 March 1958: 412).
3. The Chinese Lake Murders
(25 Chapters)
Prologue: A Ming dynasty official approaching his fortieth birthday recalls his recent visit to Han-Yuan. Suffering a bad conscience he considers suicide by the lakeside, but encounters a beautiful girl who tells him a story about Judge Dee.
Scene: Han-yuan, Judge Dee’s 2nd posting. A small, unwalled city on a lake, sixty miles northwest of the imperial capital.
The Magistrate’s Lieutenants: Hoong Liang, Ma Joong, Chaio Tai, Tao Gan
The Cast:
Almond Blossom (Fan Ho-i), a much admired courtesan
Han Yung-han, a wealthy Han-yuan landowner
Willow Down, his daughter
Liu Fei-po, a wealthy merchant
from the capital
Wang, master of the Goldsmith’s Guild
Peng, master of the Silversmith’s Guild
Soo, master of the Jadeworker’s Guild
Kang Po, a wealthy silk merchant
Kang Choong, his brother
Anemone & Peach Blossom, courtesans
Djang Wen-djang, a Doctor of Literature
Djang Hoo-piao, his son, a Candidate of Literature, husband of Moon Fairy
Liu Fei-po, a wealthy merchant from the capital
Moon Fairy, daughter of Liu, new bride of Djang Hoo-piao
Koong, a tea merchant and neighbor of Dr. Djang
Mao Yuan, a carpenter
Mao Loo, his cousin
Monk, a ruffian
Liang Meng-kwang, nonagenarian Imperial Councilor;
Liang Fen, his nephew, who acts as his secretary
Wan I-fan, a promoter
Meng Kee, Grand Inquisitor
“The Case of the Drowned Courtesan”
Victim: Almond Blossom, drowned
Villain’s motive: frustrated love (linked to incestuous love), fear of betrayal
After performing a sensual dance at a banquet for Judge Dee that is held on a flower boat on the lake, Almond Blossom whispers a warning about a conspiracy. Before he can question her, she is drowned. The suspects are limited to the eminent citizens who sponsored the banquet. Judge Dee discovers the dimensions of the conspiracy and identifies the chief conspirator as the murderer.
The Judge Dee Novels of R.H. van Gulik Page 11