Lifting the veil on lurid murder
By Zhou Yubin |
April 14, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A British girl was murdered in Beijing in 1937. Shocking, lurid and rare. This was my first thought when I heard about the well-known "Midnight in Peking" (2012) by British author Paul French, a resident of Shanghai. The book must be filled with twisted, scary and even bloody scenes of the dark and chaotic years of pre-war Beijing.
The beginning of the book proved me right. The mutilated body of 19-year-old Pamela Werner, the daughter of former British consul Edward Werner, was found on a cold winter morning in January 1937. Her chest was opened, the ribs broken and her heart removed. Her blood had been drained.
Was the murder related to some kind of political scandal considering her father's position? Or was it due to family wealth? Was it a case of the supernatural, of sexual ritual? Fox spirits (狐狸精), seducer of humans, are mentioned frequently.
The officially unsolved murder - finally figured out by French - makes for compulsive reading and will be made into a British TV miniseries.
Compelling questions keep arising in the first pages, creating the mysterious vibe of detective fiction. However, the author has a different approach. Through the investigation led by a British policeman and his Chinese counterparts - but mostly by the girl's father - French lifts the veil on a seedy foreigners' community rarely touched by other writers: the "Badlands."
"There are a lot of books about foreigners who lived in China before the war - both in Beijing, Shanghai as well as Tianjin and elsewhere. But they mostly talk about the diplomats, journalists, missionaries, business people … I wanted to know about those foreigners who's lives and stories have been forgotten - the criminals, the prostitutes, the drug dealers and addicts," French told Shanghai Daily in an e-mail interview.
The investigation went from one dead end to another - which was predictable under the circumstances of the time - but the readers are given the chance to peek at the different sides of the Badlands. It's described by French as "bad, it was home to criminals and transients, army deserters and people wanted at home for crimes."
Reading the book was like a time-travel journey into the dark and forgotten part of the capital city, meeting people that nobody remembers today. The story is told in a straightforward factual way, examining the various characters involved. In the Badlands, you could hear the dogs barking at night in front of a brothel, watch White Russians fighting each other, and even smell the blood. What was as nice girl like Pamela doing near or in the Badlands?
French, a widely published analyst and commentator on China, has dug into the old files of the case that were recorded in English and eventually sent to the UK National Archives in Kew in London. He finally managed to give Pamela justice, which the investigators failed to do. The efforts of Pamela's father were thwarted due to the situation in China and corruption on all sides at the time.
French has also written another book about old Beijing, "The Badlands," filled with vivid portraits of its denizens: pimps, girls, dancers, opium dealers, thieves, murderers for hire. He managed to contact some of their children, making the portraits and stories gritty and detailed.
French has now focused on the underside of Shanghai in 1940 and 41, known as the "solitary island" period. "I always meant to write about old Shanghai," he said. And I'm curious to read his Shanghai tale.
The beginning of the book proved me right. The mutilated body of 19-year-old Pamela Werner, the daughter of former British consul Edward Werner, was found on a cold winter morning in January 1937. Her chest was opened, the ribs broken and her heart removed. Her blood had been drained.
Was the murder related to some kind of political scandal considering her father's position? Or was it due to family wealth? Was it a case of the supernatural, of sexual ritual? Fox spirits (狐狸精), seducer of humans, are mentioned frequently.
The officially unsolved murder - finally figured out by French - makes for compulsive reading and will be made into a British TV miniseries.
Compelling questions keep arising in the first pages, creating the mysterious vibe of detective fiction. However, the author has a different approach. Through the investigation led by a British policeman and his Chinese counterparts - but mostly by the girl's father - French lifts the veil on a seedy foreigners' community rarely touched by other writers: the "Badlands."
"There are a lot of books about foreigners who lived in China before the war - both in Beijing, Shanghai as well as Tianjin and elsewhere. But they mostly talk about the diplomats, journalists, missionaries, business people … I wanted to know about those foreigners who's lives and stories have been forgotten - the criminals, the prostitutes, the drug dealers and addicts," French told Shanghai Daily in an e-mail interview.
The investigation went from one dead end to another - which was predictable under the circumstances of the time - but the readers are given the chance to peek at the different sides of the Badlands. It's described by French as "bad, it was home to criminals and transients, army deserters and people wanted at home for crimes."
Reading the book was like a time-travel journey into the dark and forgotten part of the capital city, meeting people that nobody remembers today. The story is told in a straightforward factual way, examining the various characters involved. In the Badlands, you could hear the dogs barking at night in front of a brothel, watch White Russians fighting each other, and even smell the blood. What was as nice girl like Pamela doing near or in the Badlands?
French, a widely published analyst and commentator on China, has dug into the old files of the case that were recorded in English and eventually sent to the UK National Archives in Kew in London. He finally managed to give Pamela justice, which the investigators failed to do. The efforts of Pamela's father were thwarted due to the situation in China and corruption on all sides at the time.
French has also written another book about old Beijing, "The Badlands," filled with vivid portraits of its denizens: pimps, girls, dancers, opium dealers, thieves, murderers for hire. He managed to contact some of their children, making the portraits and stories gritty and detailed.
French has now focused on the underside of Shanghai in 1940 and 41, known as the "solitary island" period. "I always meant to write about old Shanghai," he said. And I'm curious to read his Shanghai tale.
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