The Chinese Gold Murders

In the Special Collections department of the Leiden University Libraries is a Van Gulik Room. This room contains the library of the Dutch scholar of Chinese, Robert van Gulik (1910–1967): a unique collection of rare Chinese books, the oldest dating from the fifteenth century. The collection makes a very valuable contribution to Sinological research in the Netherlands and also in the rest of the world.

After his studies of Chinese in Leiden and Utrecht and the conferral of his doctorate degree in Utrecht, Robert van Gulik entered the service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague. As he had learned to speak and write Eastern languages fluently, he was usually posted to countries in the Far East in his diplomatic career. He died in 1967 en post as Dutch ambassador in Tokyo. During his diplomatic life he continued his academic work as a Chinese scholar and published various books on extremely diverse topics related to Chinese art and culture. After his death his extensive library was bequeathed to Leiden University Libraries.

The collection contains a very rare, rather flimsy Chinese book by an eighteenth-century author about the legendary magistrate, Judge Dee (Ti Renjie). This collection of stories describes how the master detective, who lived in the Tang dynasty (681–908), solved three complicated murder cases, with the help of his assistants who aided him in the investigations. Robert van Gulik, himself a real devotee of detective novels, translated the original crime novel into English (Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee). His translation was a medium through which he wanted to show the West that China had its own detective genre and its own Maigret or Sherlock Holmes, complemented by his own Watson character. The historical Judge Dee was a district magistrate, head of the smallest unit in the ancient Chinese administrative system. Besides being a judge, he was also mayor and police chief, in charge of carrying out criminal investigations.

Encouraged by the many enthusiastic reactions which greeted his translation, Robert van Gulik brought the master detective of the Tang dynasty back to life in the Judge Dee crime novels which were his own creations. He set these stories in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) because it was the period in which the cultural and artistic life of China enjoyed a great golden age. This choice also gave Van Gulik more possibilities to create the background to his stories. In his Judge Dee mysteries, he combines his extensive knowledge of ancient Chinese culture and society with an ingenious plot in an authentic Chinese atmosphere.

Judge Dee was thirty-three when the metropolitan court (the high court) in the capital Beijing appointed him district magistrate in Fu-lai (Peng-lai), a port city on the north-east coast of China. Although The Chinese Gold Murders was the fourth Judge Dee book to appear, it is chronologically the first in the series of stories. It begins with Judge Dee on his way to his first posting in Fu-lai, and we are also introduced to two of his assistants: Ma Joong and Chiao Tai to whom he was able to offer employment in his capacity of district magistrate. Sergeant Hoong, his trusted counsellor, was also one of the circle which supported Judge Dee. Finally, in The Chinese Lake Murders, Tao Gan makes his appearance and this group of assistants remains loyal to Judge Dee as he is transferred from one provincial city to another is the series of novels. Judge Dee is the exemplary high-ranking Chinese official: a refined man of letters and art connoisseur who is a talented performer on the seven-stringed Chinese lute. Naturally, he is an adherent of Confucianism, the state religion of China based on moral principles, and he is extremely averse to mystical Taoism and to Buddhism, an import from India. He left the rough work to his assistants. The plain-spoken Ma Joong is a fighter, a rough diamond, trustworthy but a bit uncouth, who enjoys a glass or two of wine and has a number of love affairs in the novels. The enigmatic Chiao Tai had been a soldier, but had left the imperial army after an incident for which he swore he would take revenge. The cynical Tao Gan is a reformed swindler who knows the underworld and can open any lock with a piece of wire. With the assistance of this team, Judge Dee could be assured that he would have all the help and experience he would need in finding his criminals.

Judge Dee was Robert van Gulik’s alter ego; he once said: Judge Dee, I am he. Both men had many traits in common: they were both high-ranking officials, scholarly and well-versed in literature. However, some of Robert van Gulik’s traits can also be found in the judge’s assistants — the sense of adventure and an interest in the fair sex in Ma Joong and Chiao Tai.

Between 1950 and 1967 Robert van Gulik published sixteen Judge Dee mysteries, which have appeared all over the world in twenty-nine languages. He wrote The Chinese Gold Murders in Beirut where he was Dutch ambassador from 1956 to 1959. In 1965 Prince Bernhard, the husband of at that time Queen Juliana, translated the novel into Spanish (Fantasma en Fu-lai at Aguilar in Madrid). In a letter to Van Gulik, the Prince said that in his translation his Spanish professor had censored some of Ma Joong’s remarks, because these words would be unworthy of a prince. Recently the whole series has been published in Chinese, so that people in China can enjoy new stories about their world famous Judge Dee.

The Chinese Gold Murders is one of the first series of five Judge Dee novels. These books were originally written in English and were later published in Dutch. In the first series, Robert van Gulik retained the style of traditional Chinese detective stories in which there are a large number of principal and secondary characters. Despite the summary of the dramatis personae at the front of the book, it is sometimes difficult for a Western reader to remember who is who. In The Chinese Gold Murders there are twenty-two characters in all, but this is five fewer than the earlier novel The Chinese Bell Murders. In the Judge Dee novels which appeared after this first series, he simplified the format to make the story livelier, introducing a smaller number of characters acting in a shorter span of time.

The library, which was also the study in which my father wrote his Judge Dee stories, was full of books, Chinese furniture and antiques. Everything moved from post to post over the whole world and the library was set up anew in every ambassadorial residence. Among the permanent objects was an antique Chinese sword, straight-bladed with a very sharp cutting edge, protected by a beautiful wooden scabbard. The steel of the sword had a dark green lustre. Although he never referred to the sword as such, I think that this was Judge Dee’s famous Rain Dragon, forged by Three Fingers, the greatest sword-smith who ever lived in China. In The Chinese Gold Murders you can read how Judge Dee had his Rain Dragon to thank for his life.