Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History

by Huang, Yunte

  “Officer Chang Apana,” said the curator, wasting little time before turning to the subject of my interest, “joined the sheriff’s office in 1898, just when the city was incorporated, a very exciting moment for Honolulu.” While providing a brief summary of Apana’s career, Officer Croom led us to a glass cabinet tucked discreetly in a corner of the room. Displayed inside were copies of vintage Charlie Chan books, old videotapes, and DVD films that had just been released by Twentieth Century-Fox—a sign that the museum had been following closely any new career moves of the character inspired by Apana. I saw photos and portraits of Apana as well as newspaper clippings I was anxious to read, but what particularly caught my attention was a brown-skin whip coiled like a snake ready to strike, a whip that the former paniolo had actually used to wage his historic, crime-fighting battle.

  “When he retired in 1932,” Officer Croom continued, “Apana was the longest-serving officer in the department. When he died a year later due to complications from leg amputation, his funeral procession rivaled the greatest royal processions of the era. In 2005, he was named one of the 100 most influential persons in the history of Hawaii.”

  Despite his familiarity with Apana’s legend, the curator could not answer the question I had come there to ask: “Where is Apana buried now?” He told me that it was perhaps in the Chinese Cemetery in Manoa. He didn’t know for sure.

  Then I remembered Earl Biggers’s description, in The Black Camel, of the Chinese Cemetery, “with its odd headstones scattered down the sloping hillside.” Charlie Chan drives past this place in his battered Ford flivver on his way to work every day. Whether or not it is the right cemetery, Biggers obviously knew the significance of the final resting place to an immigrant like Apana and, by extension, Chan. In the novel, Chan has buried his mother in that cemetery, close to his Punchbowl Hill home, and his filial piety is an important part of his veracity as a fictional character of Chinese descent.

  Saying our heartfelt thanks, we left the museum.

  After a brief lunch at a local sandwich shop, Susan and I started driving toward the cemetery in the Upper Manoa Valley. Hailing from Virginia, Susan had lived and taught in Hawaii for almost two decades. Her red Dodge Neon seemed to know the local roads as well as a seasoned paniolo’s horse would know well-trodden trails.

  Riding in the soft drizzle up and down the winding slopes of the Manoa Valley, we talked about the circuitous route by which I had arrived here in Honolulu. I told Susan how, at the age of eleven, I had secretly learned English by adjusting the dial of my grandfather’s battered transistor radio just so, and then memorizing the exotic language of the Voice of America. I had to keep my discovery a secret because listening to those politically subversive foreign radio stations was illegal in those days. For some reason, looking for Chang Apana’s traces made me remember those sweltering summers in Alabama and my bumbling restaurant efforts. I also recalled the immense challenges of getting a Ph.D. in a language that was, at least not yet, my own, and finally, the serendipity of stumbling upon my first Charlie Chan books at a Buffalo estate sale. In the doctoral dissertation I had finished at SUNY Buffalo, I devoted a chapter to Charlie Chan, comparing his pidgin speech to the kind of racial ventriloquism found in the works of Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and T. S. Eliot. My fascination with Charlie Chan didn’t stop there. A few years later, I published a book of poetry called CRIBS. In it, I adopted a poetic diction that imitates Charlie Chan’s pidgin, such as in this poem:

  THINK HAIKU, ACT LOCU: AN EXPERIMENT IN BACK-TRANSLATION

  take it

  with a grain of MSG

  what’s the memory size

  of your abacus?

  speak

  in a chopsticked tongue

  another day

  another yen

  the yin-yang

  of base and superstructure

  the great

  Great Wall

  be careful

  not to get shanghaied

  the Peking-duck congress

  is just a bunch of lame mandarins

  the two stick together

  like ping and pong

  he sold his birthright

  for a bowl of hot & sour soup?

  a writer is a man

  of characters

  a man is known

  by his breast-strokes

  sell haiku

  buy locu

  The rain had just stopped when we arrived at the cemetery. The entrance was a Chinese-style stone arcade, reminiscent of a paifang, the gate to a typical Chinese village. For many years, there was a tradition among overseas Chinese of shipping the bodies of their countrymen back to China for burial. As an old Chinese saying goes, “When a leaf falls to the ground, it returns to its roots.” Those Chinese wishing to be buried in America would still prefer a resting place resembling the one in their home village. Hence the stone arcade, to create a sense of familiarity and homecoming.

  It was, however, Sunday, and the cemetery office was closed. There was no map or directory to help us locate Apana’s grave. We drove around in circles, passing thousands of tombstones standing mutely under a gray sky. Maybe because of the weather, but more likely the passage of time, most of the marble monuments had turned black, looking to me like a flock of black birds settled on a green meadow. Built on a slope, the cemetery faced a valley flecked with white bungalows that were almost as numerous as the graves. Under the shadows of a giant mountain, the worlds of the living and the dead now appeared in a quiet clash of black and white, as if trying to outmatch the other in number and anonymity.

  Just as we were about to turn back, luck smiled on us; or, as Charlie Chan once put it, “One grain of luck sometimes worth more than whole rice field of wisdom.” A sharp turn in the road, which we had not yet explored, led us right to a sign that read:

  8. DETECTIVE CHARLIE CHAN (CHAN APANA).

  A red arrow pointed toward a lot at the bottom of the hill. It seemed ironic that the sign misspelled Apana’s name as “Chan Apana,” as if reality was literally falling under the “spell” of fiction.

  Our discovery was in the older section of the cemetery. We saw graves dating back to the late nineteenth century, making them the resting places for some of the earliest first-generation Chinese immigrants to come across the Pacific. The lot, no more than a single acre, contained several hundred stones but had no numbering system. The mysterious “8” then became even more of a mystery, like a broken 8-ball that could tell no fortune. We ran up and down the slope, trying different ways of counting to eight—the eighth grave in the direction of the arrow, the eighth row from the bottom of the slope, the eighth row from the top—all to no avail. The elusive “8,” the luckiest number in Chinese numerology, suddenly felt like a trick to entice us, a Möbius strip that would lead us nowhere. It seemed that we needed the assistance of a sleuth like Charlie Chan.

  THE GRAVESTONE OF CHANG APANA (Photo by Susan M. Schultz)

  The rain, which had sensibly paused for a while, now came down heavily. Running out of time, we decided to split up to canvass the area faster. Many of the stone inscriptions were in Chinese, and thus offered no clue to Susan, but it was she who found the grave. As I was circling around at the bottom of the slope, with raindrops trickling down my face and blurring my glasses, I heard Susan, from a few rows away, shout: “I found it!”

  I quickly ran over, and there he was. It was a solitary grave, with two marble steps that had turned dark with age and moisture. The tombstone bore the English name “Chang Apana” at the top, while the Chinese characters were etched below. A small bed of blooming lilies covered the back of the grave. The Chinese inscriptions provided information on Apana’s hometown in southern China, even though he had been born in Hawaii. “Oo Sack Village, Gudu County, Chungshan District,” read the inscription. His date of death was given as “December, 1934,” though he had, in fact, died in December, 1933.

  Despite the apparent death-date error, the gravestone yielded an important clue t
hat I had thus far been unable to ascertain from other sources: his name in Chinese, (Zheng Ping in Mandarin, or Chang Pung in the Cantonese pronunciation). For a long time, I had wondered what kind of name “Apana” was. Now I can be certain that “Apana” is a Polynesian variation of the Cantonese “Pung.” The first A derives from the Chinese custom of adding “Ah” to a given name as a casual way of addressing someone, such as “Ah Sin” and “Ah Pung” (I’m called Ah Te in my family). The last A is a Polynesian addition, because in that language, as Herman Melville reminded us in his first book, Typee, all words end with a vowel.

  In Chinese, (Ping) means “peace, equilibrium,” but it occurred to me, as I stood before his grave, that the man who bore the name of peace had not enjoyed much of it. On the contrary, violence—be it physical, emotional, or racial—had accompanied his journey through life. And yet, the man I would research turned out to be self-effacing and curiously taciturn; perhaps, then, the name fits the character after all.

  The story of Chang Apana, as this book affirms, is much more than just one man’s biography. Not only did his rough-and-tumble exploits inspire the creation of a memorable cultural icon, but the very creators of the Charlie Chan persona also led lives that were the stuff of legends. The stories of Earl Biggers, Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Anna May Wong, among others, were all part of the cultural mélange that Gertrude Stein called “The Making of Americans.”

  On our way back to the car, we saw a rainbow hanging in the sky. I observed that one iridescent end dipped into the emerald ocean while the other tumbled into the lush foliage of a remote Hawaiian mountain that had been washed as clean as it had been on the first day of the world.

  Recalling what Earl Biggers once said, that “most people who have been to Hawaii long to return,” I would now, “more ardently than most,” want to return and explore further the legend of Charlie Chan.

  APPENDIX I

  A List of Charlie Chanisms

  Action speak louder than French.

  Advice after mistake is like medicine after dead man’s funeral.

  Always harder to keep murder secret than for egg to bounce on sidewalk.

  At night all cats are black.

  Biggest mistakes in history made by people who didn’t think.

  Big head is only a good place for very large headache.

  Caution very good life insurance.

  Dollars going into a gambling house are like criminals led to execution.

  Door of opportunity swing both ways.

  Even bagpipe will not speak when stomach is empty.

  Even wise fly sometimes mistake spider web for old man’s whiskers.

  Every maybe has a wife called Maybe-Not.

  Facts like photographic film—must be exposed before developing.

  Falling hurts least those who fly low.

  Favorite pastime of man is fooling himself.

  A fool and his money never become old acquaintances.

  The fool questions others, the wise man questions himself.

  Front seldom tell truth. To know occupants of house, always look in back yard.

  Guessing is cheap, but wrong guess expensive.

  Hasty deduction, like ancient egg, look good from outside.

  Hens sit often, but lay eggs.

  He who rides on tiger cannot dismount.

  An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.

  If befriend donkey, expect to be kicked.

  If no one had praised the donkey’s song, he would not still be singing.

  Learn from hen—never boast about egg until after egg’s birthday.

  Man seldom scratches where he does not itch.

  Man who flirt with dynamite sometime fly with angels.

  Mind, like parachute, only function when open.

  Murder like potato chip—cannot stop at just one.

  No poison more deadly than ink.

  Nut easy to crack often empty.

  Optimist only sees doughnut, pessimist sees hole.

  People who listen at keyholes rarely hear good of themselves.

  Perfect case, like perfect doughnut, has hole.

  Police do not read Emily Post.

  Public opinion is often an envious dog barking at the heels of greatness.

  Race not always won by man who start first.

  The secret is to talk much, but say nothing.

  Slippery man sometimes slip in own oil.

  Smart fly keep out of gravy.

  Some heads, like hard nuts, much better if well cracked.

  Talk cannot cook rice.

  Theory like mist on eyeglasses—obscures facts.

  Time only wasted when sprinkling perfume on goat farm.

  To know forgery, one must have original.

  Tongue often hang man quicker than rope.

  Too late to dig well when honorable house is on fire.

  Trouble, like first love, teach many lessons.

  Truth, like football—receive many kicks before reaching goal.

  Very few after-dinner speeches are equipped with self-stoppers.

  Way to find rabbit’s residence is to turn rabbit loose and watch.

  When money talk, few are deaf.

  When searching for needle in haystack, haystack only sensible location.

  The wise elephant does not seek to ape the butterfly.

  Wrong pew, perhaps, but maybe correct church.

  APPENDIX II

  A List of Charlie Chan Films

  Early Films

  1. The House Without a Key (starring George Kuwa, 1926)

  2. The Chinese Parrot (starring Kamiyama Sojin, 1927)

  3. Behind That Curtain (starring E. L. Park, 1929)

  Starring Warner Oland

  4. Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)

  5. The Black Camel (1931)

  6. Charlie Chan’s Chance (1932)

  7. Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case (1933)

  8. Charlie Chan’s Courage (1934)

  9. Charlie Chan in London (1934)

  10. Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)

  11. Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)

  12. Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)

  13. Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)

  14. Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)

  15. Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)

  16. Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)

  17. Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)

  18. Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)

  19. Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937)

  Starring Sidney Toler

  20. Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)

  21. Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)

  22. Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)

  23. Charlie Chan in City in Darkness (1939)

  24. Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)

  25. Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)

  26. Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)

  27. Murder Over New York (1940)

  28. Dead Men Tell (1941)

  29. Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)

  30. Castle in the Desert (1942)

  31. Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)

  32. Charlie Chan in the Chinese Cat (1944)

  33. Charlie Chan in Meeting at Midnight (1944)

  34. The Jade Mask (1945)

  35. The Scarlet Clue (1945)

  36. The Shanghai Cobra (1945)

  37. The Red Dragon (1945)

  38. Dark Alibi (1946)

  39. Shadows Over Chinatown (1946)

  40. Dangerous Money (1946)

  41. The Trap (1946)

  Starring Roland Winters

  42. The Chinese Ring (1947)

  43. Docks of New Orleans (1948)

  44. Shanghai Chest (1948)

  45. The Golden Eye (1948)

  46. The Feathered Serpent (1948)

  47. The Sky Dragon (1949)

  Acknowledgments

  Within the limited space of an acknowledgments page, I wish to express my enormous gratitude to Glenn Mot
t and Bob Weil, whose guidance and support were vital to this book. Ever since we first met on a muggy afternoon in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in the summer of 1992, Glenn has been a friend in the truest sense of the word. An accomplished writer himself, Glenn has also been a guardian angel in my literary life, someone I can trust for honest opinions, editorial advice, and moral support. Without him, this book would not exist.

  Having Bob Weil as my editor at Norton makes me feel like a fledgling actor working in a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. Bob is a maestro who has a vision for books, a sharp eye for details, and an incredible devotion to his authors. His superb line-editing, unique in the publishing world today, possesses the touch of magic. He is simply the Maxwell Perkins of our time.

  I also wish to thank Lucas Wittmann and Philip Marino at Norton for their excellent editorial guidance; Susan M. Schultz for that memorable drive in Honolulu, searching for the traces of Chang Apana; Officer Eddie Croom, curator of the Honolulu Police Department Museum, for his kind assistance with research; Nanette Napoleon, a devoted Hawaiian historian, for her generosity in sharing the fruits of her labor with me; and Gilbert Martines for his pioneering research on Chang Apana.

  My friend Hank Lazer lent a helpful hand at a critical stage of my writing and offered some valuable advice. Katy Olson provided excellent editorial assistance. Mark Johnson generously read the manuscript with care and offered insightful remarks. Others who also helped in various ways include Mia You, Dave Roh, Rucker Alex, Michael Basinski, and Deborah Aaronson.