Chapter IV. The Dragon Boat Festival is held all over China on the fifth day of the fifth moon, in commemoration of a virtuous statesman of the fifth century B.C., who drowned himself in despair because his sovereign would not listen to his wise counsels. The Dragon Boats are long and narrow craft, the prow showing the shape of a dragon’s head, and the stern its tail. They are rowed by fifty to one hundred people, the rhythm being indicated by a large gong suspended in the middle of the boat. The winner gets a nominal prize, and all crews are entertained after the race by the wealthier members of the community.
Chapter VI. Cf. Chinese Penal Code, Section CCLXXVI: “All persons guilty of digging in, and breaking up another man’s burying ground, until at length one of the coffins which had been deposited therein, is laid bare and becomes visible, shall be punished with 100 blows, and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3000 miles. Any person who, after having been guilty as aforesaid, proceeds to open the coffin, and uncover the corpse laid therein, shall be punished with death, by being strangled, after undergoing the usual confinement.”
Cf. the judge’s speech to the coroner in Chapter VIII, and his warning to the undertaker, in Chapter IX.
Chapters VII-VIII. The judge took great risks in arresting the widow and questioning her under torture, without definite proof; if she had proved to be innocent, he would have offended against the law in more than one respect. I quote the following provisions of the Penal Code:
Section CCCCXX. “Female offenders shall not be committed to prison except in capital cases, or cases of adultery. In all other cases, they shall, if married, remain in the charge and custody of their husbands, and if single, in that of their relations or next neighbors, who shall, upon every such occasion, be held responsible for their appearance at the tribunal of justice when required.”
Section CCCXXXVI. “When any person is falsely accused of a capital offense, and upon such accusation has been condemned and executed, the false accuser shall be either strangled or beheaded, according to the manner in which the innocent person had been executed, and half his property shall be forfeited. If the execution of the sentence of death against the innocent person has been prevented by a timely discovery of the falsehood of the accusation, the false accuser shall be punished with 100 blows and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3000 miles, and moreover be subjected to extra-service during three years.”
Section CCCXCVI. “All officers of government, and their official attendants, who, instigated by private malice or revenge, designedly commit to prison an unaccused and unimplicated individual, shall be punished with 80 blows. All officers of government, and their official attendants, who, instigated by private malice or revenge, designedly examine with judicial severities, any unaccused and unimplicated person, shall, although they should not by so doing actually wound such person, be punished with 80 blows; if guilty of inflicting, by such procedure, any cutting or severe wounds, they shall be punished according to the law against cutting and wounding in an affray in ordinary cases; lastly, if death ensues, the superintending magistrate shall be beheaded. The assessors, and other officers of justice concerned in the transaction, shall, if aware of the illegality of their act, suffer punishment according to the same rule, except in capital cases, upon which they shall be allowed a reduction of one degree in the punishment.”
The last paragraph of this section explains the misgivings of the headman of the constables, in Chapter VIII.
Chapter XIII. “Divine Village”: the Chinese original has Shuang-t'u. chai “Double Earth Village.” The judge connects this name with the character for “divination,” kua, in the verse, which contains two characters t'u: “earth.” I have changed this name to “divine,” in order to spare the reader a long explanation of the Chinese art of dissecting characters.
Chapter X1V. The art of physiognomy is a special science in China, about which extensive literature exists. It teaches not only how to judge the character of a person by the form of his eyes, eyebrows, ears, mouth etc., but also how to conclude from these data his past life, and his future.
Chapter XV. “Turn-up Pass”: the Chinese original has ch'i-t'uan, “green vegetables.”' The old constable mistakes this for p'u-ch'i, which means “chestnuts.” Since I could not find in English two words of these meanings which sufficiently resembled each other in sound, I changed them into “Turn-up” and “turnip.”
Interlude. The three actors play the roles of tun “young maiden,” shêng, “young lover,” and mo, “elderly man.” The Chinese stage has no side-scenes etc., the spectators are expected to imagine all stage-decoration for themselves. In the original the tunes to which the songs should be sung are indicated.
The festival of viewing the blossoms was formerly an occasion for much license, the strict rules regarding the separation of the sexes being temporarily suspended. The plum-blossom especially has a number of sexual connotations; cf. my book “The Lore of the Chinese Lute” (Tokyo 1940), page 143.
The red candles mentioned in the maiden’s song refer to large red candles, lighted during the wedding ceremony.
For a further interpretation of this interlude, see the notes to Chapters XXVII and XXVIII below.
Chapter XIX. .Cf. Alabaster, op. cit. page 103: “Chinese law regarding the continuance of the succession of a family as infinitely important, in general allows an offender to escape the consequences of his offense — usually in the end by commuting the penalty to a fine — if he is the sole dependence of his family. The leniency extends to most classes of offenses it would seem even to cases of homicide. The leniency does not apparently strictly extend to cases of intentional homicide, and certainly does not to the gravest offenses, such as treason; but as regards the former, it is open to question whether so strong a plea would not prevail in every instance.” In this case, however, the judge decides that no leniency shall be extended.
The case of the warden is more complicated. Although he did say that the hostel keeper had committed the double murder, he did so the first time in order to extract money from him, and the second time in order to defend his conduct before the judge. He did not file an accusation against the hostel keeper, and if the latter had not protested, the warden would doubtless have reported the murder to the tribunal as having been committed by an unknown person. It is probably for this reason that the judge lets him off with the 100 blows mentioned in the Code, Section CCCXXXVI (see above), without the perpetual banishment and the three year extra-service; but the judge added a second beating, since the warden had also handed in a wrong report, and had tampered with the corpses.
Chapter XXIII. Vincent Starrett, op. cit. page 20, has pointed out the resemblance of this solution to that described in a tale of the Sherlock Holmes cycle, entitled “The Speckled Band.” On comparing Mr. Starrett’s résumé of the “Case of the Strange Corpse” and of the “Poisoned Bride,” with the complete story as given in the present translation, it will be noticed that the former contains some inaccuracies. In the first case, it is not the judge who makes a search under the bed, but one of his lieutenants; and it is not the lover who did the killing, but the widow Chou. In the second case, only the bride dies, and not “a number of persons.” These, however, are minor points, which do not affect Mr. Starrett’s argument.
Chapters XXVIII-XX1X. The nail murder motif occurs in several other ancient Chinese detective stories; I mention, for instance, the Shih-kung-an, “Criminal Cases solved by Judge Shih.” This judge was the famous Ch'ing scholar-official Shih Shih-lun (1659-1722); a brief account of his solving a murder similar to that of Pi Hsün is given by Rev. Macgowan, in his book “Chinese Folklore Tales” (London 1910), under the title “The Widow Ho.” In the China Review of 1881 (volume X, pp. 41-43), G. C. Stent gave an English abstract of another nail murder story, without, however, indicating his original Chinese source. This abstract bears the title “The double nail murders,” and gives an interesting variant of the same motif. When the coroner fails to discover any trace of v
iolence on a man’s corpse, his own wife suggests to him to look for a nail. When the judge has convicted the murdered man’s widow on this evidence, he has also the coroner’s wife brought before him, since her knowledge of such a subtle way of committing a murder seems to him suspicious. It then transpires that the coroner is her second husband. The corpse of her first husband is exhumed, and a nail discovered inside the empty skull. Both women are executed.
Hsü Tê-t'ai’s sentence may seem to the reader disproportionally severe. Chinese law, however, takes a very grave view of adultery with a married woman, and of being accessory to a murder. Further, strangulation, although in fact more painful than decapitation, in China is considered as the mildest form of the death penalty, since the body of the victim is not mutilated; according to a very ancient Chinese belief, a dead man’s soul can only enjoy a happy existence in the Hereafter if his body is buried complete. The regular process of strangulation implies san-fang-san-chin, “three times loosening and three times tightening,” that is to say that the executioner makes the victim nearly suffocate two times, and really strangles him only the third time that he tightens the noose. Hsü Tê-t'ai’s sentence was mitigated by the ruling that death should ensue after the noose had been tightened the first time.
Execution by the process of “lingering death,” ling-ch'ih, is the severest form of the death penalty known to Chinese law. It is the punishment for high treason, parricide, and a wife killing her husband. The executioner kills the victim by gradually slicing and cutting his body to pieces, a horrible process, that is said to last for several hours. For the Chinese, however, the fact that the body is so thoroughly mutilated counts as heavily as the terrible pain inflicted; for thus all the victim’s hopes for a life in the Hereafter are destroyed. Instances of this punishment being executed in its full severity seem to have been comparatively rare; usually it is, as in the case of the widow Chou, mitigated in such a way that the victim is first killed, and subsequently cut to pieces.
As regards the guilt of Dr. T'ang and Mrs. Pi, both could have been heavily punished, since Chinese law holds the head of the household responsible for crimes committed by its members, while a tutor stands in loco parentis. Neither of them, however, is further prosecuted, because the judge finds that both had been completely ignorant of the crimes committed in their respective houses; moreover, Dr. T'ang had a high literary degree, which in itself is a legal reason for leniency, while Mrs. Pi was an extremely stupid woman.
The above shows clearly how wide a margin the Penal Code leaves to the discretion of the judge.
After the two confessions related in Chapters XXVIII and XXIX, we can understand better the import of the “Interlude.” The “maiden” is of course the widow Chou, and the “young man” is her lover Hsü Tê-t'ai. Their conversation shows that Hsü is not as deeply attached to his lady-love as she to him, and that she realises this in her innermost thoughts; she mentions her troubles with the judge, the “cruel, cruel man at home,” but Hsü does not react on these complaints. This eery play, full of double entendre, is entirely divorced from the notions of place and time. I think, therefore, that the third actor, the “elderly man,” represents Pi Hsün, the murdered husband. This “interlude” is the only passage in the novel where we are given a hint as to his relations to his wife; evidently he loved her very much, it is he who reacts on her complaints, and not Hsü. And are we to assume from his willingness “to go there all three of us” that Pi Hsün when still alive suspected his wife’s intrigue with Hsü, but would have condoned it in order to retain her? This question I leave to experts in psycho-analysis to decide.
R.H.v.G.
[Note 1]. Modern Chinese writers realise that there may come a time when a demand for detective stories of another type will develop among the general Chinese reading public. Some modern authors have tried their hand at re-writing Chinese detective novels of former centuries in a form that is closer to our Western pattern. The best known example of such an attempt is the Djiu-ming-chi-yuan, “The Strange Feud of the Nine Murders,” written by the famous novelist Woo Wo-yao (1867-1910). He took as his basis an 18th century crime story, entitled Djing-foo-hsin-shoo, which describes a notorious nine-fold murder that actually occurred in Canton in about 1725. Woo Wo-yao’s attempt is rather interesting and its literary qualities are highly praised by so eminent a modern critic as Dr. Hoo Shih. Thereafter, however, a number of entirely original modern Chinese detective stories were published in China, which presented plots that were much more interesting than that worked out by Woo Wo-yao. It cannot be denied that the writers, just as Woo Wo-yao, were strongly influenced by Western detective stories; they were eager students of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin, which have appeared in more than one Chinese translation. Yet their efforts deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. Although it may take many years before the detectives celebrated in these new stories will replace Judge Bao, Judge Dee, Judge Peng, and the other ancient heroes of detection in the affection of the Chinese people at large, these young writers are paving the way for a new genre of purely Chinese literature.
[Note 2]. It is a curious fact that “Judge Dee” already was introduced to Western readers more than 150 years ago. The fifth volume of the monumental work Mémoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts etc. des Chinois, published in Paris in 1780, and one of the first Western source books with reliable information on China, gives in the section “Portraits des célébres Chinois” a brief biography of our “Judge Dee,” which bears the title “Ty-Jin-Kie, Ministre.”
[Note 3] (Translator’s note) According to a very old Chinese belief, the entire universe is maintained and regulated by the unceasing interaction of two primordial forces, one negative, and the other positive. Localities where these two forces are deemed to meet in a harmonious manner, are favourable for human beings to dwell, and when a dead body is buried in such a place, the soul of the deceased shall enjoy great bliss in the Hereafter. In a country like China, where filial piety and ancestor-worship play such a paramount role, the latter fact especially is of supreme importance. Moreover, if the dead are buried in an auspicious place, they will use their influence in the Nether World to benefit their descendants. Geomancy, therefore, is a science in itself, which boasts of an extensive special literature. If a grave is disturbed, this harmonious interaction of the two primordial forces loses its balance, and the peace of the dead is menaced. The ancient Chinese Penal Code therefore mentions the desecration of a grave as a heinous crime, punishable by death. Hence Chinese magistrates are extremely reluctant to order an exhumation. For should it turn out to have been unnecessary, the official who issued the exhumation order risks dismissal from his post, or even heavier punishment. The reader will have to bear these facts in mind while following the further developments of this case.
[Note 4] (Translator’s note) There exist various forms of divination in China. The one here alluded to is a very popular one, practised in most temples. About fifty numbered bamboo slips of about 1½ foot long, are placed in a vase of about one foot high. The person who wishes to consult fate, first burns incense, and then in a silent prayer states the question he seeks an answer for. Thereafter he takes the vase with the bamboo slips, and raising it before the altar in both hands, he shakes it till one of the slips drops out of the vase. Then the entry indicated by the number of the slip is looked up in the book with answers, and this entry, usually some cryptic verse, is studied to find some indication of the answer to the question which the consultant had in his mind. As in most Chinese poems of four lines, also in oracle verses the last line usually contains the climax.
[Note 5] (Translator’s note) Chinese boxing is a very ancient art dating from the beginning of our era. In the 4th century when Northern Buddhism entered China, Chinese boxers borrowed much from the corporal and mental discipline of the Indian Yoga school, also making use of Taoist mysticism. It was developed into a highly efficient artof attack and self-defense wit
hout weapons, which reached its greatest perfection towards the end of the Ming period in the 17th century.
When the Manchus conquered China, most of the martial arts languished. A few Ming refugees, however, had fled to Japan, and taught this art to the Japanese, who used it as the basis of what is now widely known as judo or jiujutsu, viz. Japanese wrestling. In order to prevent this art being practised by unworthy persons, its finer points were always kept as a deep secret that was only transmitted orally by the teacher to his favourite pupils. For the same reason the few books that were published on the subject are written in a special technical language, ununderstandable to the outsider; the names of the tricks and stances quoted here are an example of this jargon. In recent years interest in this art has revived in China, and nowadays it finds many eager students among the younger generation.
[Note 6] (Translator’s note) For the legal points involved, consult the note to this chapter ha Translator’s Postscript.
[Note 7] (Translator’s note) See the notes to this chapter in Translator’s Postscript.
[Note 8] (Translator’s note) This is an old Chinese wedding-custom, that is still observed to-day. A number of young men — and at present also girls, friends of the bride and groom, accompany them to the bridal chamber, and there engage for a couple of hours in all sorts of horseplay, trying to make the bride blush, and compelling the groom to drink an unlimited number of toasts.
[Note 9] (Translator’s note) For the legal points involved in these sentences, the reader is referred to the notes to this chapter in the Translator’s Postscript.
The Poisoned Bride and Other Judge Dee Stories Page 25