The Chinese Bell Murders

Robert Van Gulik The Chinese Bell Murders

Judge Dee

Collection of the National Palace Museum

Taiwan , Republic of China

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

It should be noted that in China the surname – here printed in capitals – precedes the personal name

Main Characters

DEE Jen-djieh, newly appointed magistrate of Poo-yang, a town district in Kiangsu Province. Referred to as 'Judge Dee' or 'the judge.'

HOONG Liang, Judge Dee's trusted adviser and Sergeant of the tribunal. Referred to as 'Sergeant Hoong' or 'the sergeant.'

MA Joong '|

CHIAO Tai › the three lieutenants of Judge Dee.

TAO Gan J

Persons connected with ' The Rape Murder in Half Moon Street '

HSIAO Foo-han, a butcher, father of the murdered girl. Referred to as 'Butcher Hsiao.'

PURE JADE, his daughter, victim of the rape murder.

LOONG, a tailor living opposite Butcher Hsiao.

WANG Hsien-djoong, a Candidate of Literature.

YANG Poo, his friend.

GAO, warden of the quarter where the murder occurred.

HWANG San, a vagabond.

Persons connected with ' The Secret of the Buddhist Temple '

'Spiritual Virtue,' abbot of the Temple of Boundless Mercy.

'Complete Enlightenment,' former abbot of the same temple.

BAO, a retired General.

WAN, a retired judge of the Provincial Court.

LING, master of the Guild of Goldsmiths.

WEN, master of the Guild of Carpenters.

Persons connected with ' The Mysterious Skeleton

Mrs LIANG, nee OU-YANG, widow of a wealthy Cantonese merchant.

LIANG Hoong, her son, killed by brigands.

LIANG Ko-fa, her grandson.

LIN Fan, a wealthy merchant from Canton.

Others

SHENG Pa, counsellor of the Beggars' Guild.

PAN, magistrate of the districtWoo-yee. LO, magistrate of the district Chin-hwa.

APRICOT, a prostitute of Chin-hwa.

BLUE JADE, her sister.

INTRODUCTION

Years ago when looking for English materials on life in traditional China, I found the novels, commentaries, and reflections of Lin Yu-tang, Pearl Buck, and Alice Tisdale Hobart very enlightening. Their perceptions, written in charming prose, gently-introduced the readers of the 1930s to Chinese society, with its gentry, peasants, and businessmen of the port cities. These writers also translated sensitively certain pieces of popular Chinese literature. Materials of such caliber and character became exceedingly difficult to find in the years following the Second World War, since most Western observers of China, as well as the Chinese themselves, had become obsessed with efforts to explain the decline and fall of the Nationalist government and the rise of the Communists to power. So it was with a sense of relief and satisfaction that readers of the 1950s welcomed the appearance of Robert Hans van Gulik's Judge Dee detective novels, in which imperial China is depicted as a living, identifiable culture rather than as a characterless pawn in the international power game. Because it is no longer possible to recapture the old China by visiting the new, the Dee stories continue to be one of the best available means of recovering a bit of the everyday life of the past.

The career of Van Gulik was a varicolored tapestry woven of threads from the skeins of scholarship, diplomacy, and art. The son of a medical officer of the Netherlands army of Indonesia, he was born in 1910 in Zutphen in Holland 's province of Gelderland. Between the ages of three to twelve he lived as a colonial in Indonesia. Upon his family's return to Holland in 1922, young Robert was enrolled in the classical gymnasium (secondary school) at Nijmegen, where his considerable talents for language were quickly recognized. Through C. C. Uhlenbeck, a linguist of Amsterdam University, he was introduced at this early age to the study of Sanskrit and to the language of the Blackfoot Indians of America. In his spare time, he took private lessons in Chinese, his first tutor being a Chinese student of agriculture in Wageningen.

In 1934 Van Gulik attended the University of Leyden, one of Europe 's major centers for East Asian studies. Here he worked at Chinese and Japanese systematically but without relinquishing his earlier interest in other Asian languages and literatures. For example, in 1932 he published a Dutch translation of an ancient Indian play written by Kalidasa (ca. a.d. 400). His doctoral dissertation on the horse cult of China, Japan, India, and Tibet, defended at Utrecht in 1934, was published in 1935 by Brill, the publisher of Leyden who specializes in Asian materials. In the meantime Van Gulik also wrote articles for Dutch periodicals on Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian topics; in these articles he first displayed his love for the ancient ways of Asia and his resigned acceptance of the changes taking place.

With his university studies behind him, Van Gulik entered the foreign service of the Netherlands in 1935. His