1. Introduction: displacement matters in world crime fiction

By the turn of the 21^st century, the macro-genre of crime fiction had achieved global proportions in terms of critical attention, mainstream popularity, and geographic articulations. Especially in the last two decades, crime fiction has crossed national borders and evolved into a transnational literary form, thus becoming “a significant participant in the international sphere of world literature” (Nilsson, Damrosch and D’haen 2017: 2). The translatability of the genre is a key factor in this process: crime fiction “travels well in translation” (Seago and Lei 2014: 315), in that its well-established narrative strategies and plot treatment are supposedly characterized by an inherent “outward internationality” (Erdmann 2009: 16) that facilitates its reception by global audiences. By exploiting its own thematic porousness and stylistic flexibility, crime fiction has increasingly established itself as a literary contact zone that can be fruitfully exploited for the depiction, problematization, construction and deconstruction of such concepts as identity and alterity (Erdmann 2009: 19). From a global angle, crime fiction proves particularly suitable to the representation of the experience of displacement – understood here as any instance of recontextualization and problematization that involves processes of identity construction, encompassing all the spatial, linguistic, cultural, and psychological implications of such a construction. The productivity of this in-between literary space becomes even more manifest in those writers who, because of their intellectual background and life experience, emphasize cultural dialectics and processes of identity-making as the core – or at least one of the main strands – of their artistic output.

2. Narrative strategies at play in Qiu Xiaolong’s detective fiction

Qiu Xiaolong has been labeled an “accidental mystery writer” (Luo 2012: 48). His initial project as a writer was to describe the all-round transformation of China in the 1990s. He thus resorted to the ready-made framework offered by the crime fiction genre to push the boundaries of the whodunit, which he infused with substantial doses of social commentary (Luo 2012: 48-49). Relying on his own hybrid background and self-proclaimed authoritativeness as both an outsider and an insider, in his fiction Qiu introduces the far-reaching changes undergone by the metropolis of Shanghai in particular – and by China in general – in the post-Mao era to an Anglophone audience, by focusing on the time span from the early 1990s to the present day. He does so through the eyes of his protagonist Chen Cao: far from being an ordinary police officer, Chen is also someone well-versed in Anglo-American modernism and classical Chinese literature, a food enthusiast, an amateur poet, and a translator in his spare time. Most importantly, he is a critical observer of the society that surrounds him. The investigations and musings of the growingly disillusioned Chief Inspector – an alter ego “who walks a fine line between fictional fantasy and literary self-fashioning” (Luo 2012: 48) – offer the non-Chinese reader an insight into the dramatic social, economic, and political shifts at work in the country. The device of fiction allows the author to tackle virtually all the hottest issues in today’s China: corruption, environmental pollution, cybersecurity, the excesses of economic liberalism and consumerism, urban development, the relationship between politics and economics, the extravagant life of Communist Party cadres, the scars left by the Mao era, and so on. Unsurprisingly, Qiu’s novels are generally praised for their documentary value, and are even listed as required reading in the syllabi of courses focusing on contemporary China offered by some American universities (Qiu and Ying 2005: 79-80).

Qiu’s use of the murder mystery template is unconventional, by Western standards, in terms of setting, character portrayal, and suspense-building techniques. One of the most striking strategies at play in Qiu’s detective fiction is the conscious use of exoticism, as witnessed by the ubiquitous allusions to the mythology of cosmopolitan Shanghai, descriptions of food culture, and allusions to Chinese popular wisdom, philosophy, language, and literature (with a strong penchant for classical poetry). Another prominent narrative technique is the massive use of contrast, a rhetorical device that enables the author to highlight the substantial changes in the lifestyle, language, customs, and value systems of the Chinese (Qiu and Ying 2005: 81). The contrast technique proves equally useful in Qiu’s depiction of the delicate interactions of the political sphere with the personal one, as in the “language game” whereby Chinese citizens cope with the schizophrenic bifurcation between “what really happens” and “the official version of things” dictated by politics (Link 2013: 278 ff). The method of contrast is sometimes pushed to its extreme consequences, which leads to deliberate anachronisms, a certain degree of cultural stereotyping, and a profusion of glossed cultural references. More generally, an overstatement of the writer’s native role can be discerned in Qiu’s novels, along with an inclination to providing somewhat simplistic interpretive keys for the decoding of contemporary China, and a restricted perspective that appears to cater heavily to his – primarily Anglophone – model reader (Qiu and Ying 2005: 82).

3. Fictions of displacement in A Case of Two Cities

Narratives of displacement and identity-making, pervasive as they are in Qiu’s detective series as a whole, are even more of an essential element in A Case of Two Cities, starting from the plot itself. In the novel, set in the late 1990s, the investigation on a murdered anchorwoman and a high-ranking Party cadre who is suspected of corruption and has fled China brings Chief Inspector Chen to the US. Following a direct appointment by the Party Discipline Committee –corresponding to the actual Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the body in charge of internal control within the Communist Party of China – Chen flies to Los Angeles, as the undercover head of a delegation of Chinese writers taking part in a Sino-American literary symposium, and then moves to St. Louis following a lead. References to various aspects of the Chinese language and culture, which constitute markers of linguistic and cultural alterity engaging the non-Chinese reader, are repeatedly found throughout the novel. The same applies to other strategies described above, which employ contrast as a device to incorporate social, political, and cultural critiques into the narrative. These elements are the object of several studies, and a few have already been briefly addressed above.

However, prompted by the change of geographical setting, the narrative of A Case of Two Cities turns to further forms of displacement and identity-making that bring the overlapping of fictional and biographical elements to the fore. Such narrative strategies play a vital role in the novel, as they drive plot and character development; moreover, their implications are particularly revealing in the light of Qiu’s intellectual and artistic project. My focus, therefore, will be specifically on these levels: I will take into account issues of fictional intercultural negotiation, the detached gaze on native culture, and the encoding of native knowledge.

3.1 A mediator’s dilemma

From the beginning of his trip to the US as the head of a delegation of Chinese authors, in his capacity as a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association, the protagonist Chen Cao finds himself constantly engaging in operations of linguistic and cultural mediation. At the most immediate level, this is the case when Chen is repeatedly called to act as an interpreter thanks to his singular proficiency in the English language – manifestly much higher than that displayed by Little Huang, the official translator. Chen’s interpreting duties become even more exacting after Huang is murdered under mysterious circumstances in St. Louis. This puts Chen at the center of a constant tension that eventually takes its toll on his mental balance, when the unrelenting coming-and-going between the two languages and mindsets causes him such mental fatigue that “English seem[s] to be jarring against his Chinese subconscious” (Qiu 2006: 143). Moreover, at a certain point, the detective-turned-interpreter unexpectedly crosses paths with his American acquaintance Catherine Rohn, the US Marshal who had already appeared in the book A Loyal Character Dancer (2002) as the Chief Inspector’s collaborator and platonic partner. Rohn is now assigned to investigate Huang’s murder – a duty she fittingly performs as an undercover Chinese-English interpreter. The appearance of Chen’s counterpart, a mirror double of sorts, amplifies the intercultural tensions at play in the plot: these notably include issues of mutual (mis)trust between the various agents involved in the interactions – the two “interpreters”, the Chinese delegates, and the US police. In this sense, besides driving the development of the plot, the role of the fictional interpreter introduces a factor of linguistic and cultural displacement.

The dimension of intercultural mediation and negotiation depicted in the book also deserves to be taken into account. Given the plot features, references to the image of the US – or the “West” in general – from a Chinese perspective are frequently found in A Case of Two Cities. This emerges in the words of certain Chinese characters, especially those moving in political circles, who often voice the underlying distrust and ambiguous stance shown by the Chinese officialdom vis-à-vis US politics. This is the case with Comrade Zhao, a senior Party cadre who worries that the suspect might blow a whistle on the conduct of certain corrupt officials, and that “some Americans will use what he says against China” (Qiu 2006: 62). However, the role of the protagonist Chen Cao is far more interesting in this respect. The Chief Inspector is forced to directly engage in mediation since the arrival of the delegation in Los Angeles, when he finds himself dealing with the culture shock experienced by the Chinese and the straightforward, blunt attitude of the Americans. Let us take a look at the following excerpt:

“I am going to address an important issue—the imbalance in the Chinese-American literature exchange. If you ask a college student in Beijing—not necessarily even one majoring in Western literature—he or she will reel off a list of American writers. […] But what have our American colleagues done about modern Chinese literature? Little, I have to say. Very little.” […]

Bonnie Grant, a sinologist who had translated Misty poets, commented with a hardcover in her hand, “There are Chinese writers writing in English here, and their books sell well. Perhaps there’s something wrong with the translation of your work.”

[…] Bao cut in. “I cannot find my book even in the university library. I have asked Pearl to do a search for me during the lunch break. You have a Chinese department here, haven’t you? That’s a matter of cultural hegemony.”

The conference atmosphere became tense. Bao might have been used to those political phrases, but the Americans were not. The discussion appeared to be going out of control. Chen had been aware of an anti-American undercurrent among his group but he wasn’t prepared for this sudden shift. (Qiu 2006: 137-138)

“No thermos bottle in the hotel room,” Bao started the angry chorus on a small note. “I cannot even have a cup of hot tea.”

“Nonsmoking area,” Zhong joined in. “Is this a free country? Nothing but hypocrisy. The Americans dump their cigarettes in China. They rip us off in a big way. Now we are not allowed to smoke the cigarettes bought with American dollars.”

“It’s not just us. Everyone in the hotel has to obey the rule,” Chen said, though he felt constrained too.

“It’s like the Opium War,” Zhong went on. “They knew opium was a drug, but they dumped it on China on the grounds of free trade.”

“I talked to an American student today,” Little Huang said. “They believe that Hong Kong belongs to Britain, and that we do not even have the right to take it back. They know nothing about the Opium War. There is nothing in their textbooks.”

“You know what?” Shasha said. […] “Pearl told me that Pizza Hut is a cheap fast-food restaurant here. In Beijing, it is a high-end place. A pizza costs more than an ordinary Chinese worker’s daily income. That is capitalism.”

In the end, the Chinese writers were aggravated by the Americans’ ignorance of their works. They had checked again in the late afternoon. Not a single translation of their works was available either in the bookstore or in the library.

“We are guests here,” Chen said. “They have done a good job arranging this conference.”

“We did a far better job in China,” Bao cut in again. […] “The best hotel in Beijing. Their delegation head got the presidential suite.” (Qiu 2006: 139-140)

At first taken aback, Chen strives to muffle the “angry chorus” and to keep tempers in check, reassuring his travel mates of their hosts’ good intentions. Chen is repeatedly forced to carry out similar peacekeeping operations throughout the novel, notably to avert the danger of a “diplomatic incident” in the hours following Little Huang’s murder (Qiu 2006: 224).

Conversely, far from wholeheartedly siding with the hosts, Chen is ready to provide a native perspective whenever they seem to fall into the trap of misunderstanding, hegemonic arrogance, and cultural prejudice. This is the case, for instance, when he is personally attacked by one of the conference speakers and responds by criticizing her biased, overtly political reading of Misty poetry (Menglongshi 朦胧诗), a literary school born at the turn of the 1970s. At the same time, Chen does not refrain from keeping an insider’s critical eye on the artistic value and intellectual honesty of said school of poetry:

One particular topic that came up upset the Chinese. In the contemporary Chinese literature sessions, the Americans kept talking about a handful of dissident writers, making it seem as if they were the only worthy ones. Bonnie Grant, a senior sinologist with an exclusive translation contract with Gong Ku, a leading Misty poet […], praised him at the expense of other Chinese poets.

“Those Misty may not be bad,” Chen responded, “but that does not mean they are the only good poets. Their introduction to the Western world could have been done in a more objective way.”

Bonnie hastened to defend her choice, concluding with a sarcastic note, “Gong wrote under a lot of political pressure. […] As a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association, you were probably not aware of any political pressure.”

That rattled Chen. It was so ironically untrue. […] Chen had intended to argue that the Misty poets had courted Western attention through their political gestures. Instead, he checked the notes and counterargued by pointing out her erroneous rendition […].

Chen’s speech nettled Bonnie, but she was at a disadvantage. Chen was far more familiar with the background of the lines she had quoted. (Qiu 2006: 169-170)

However, later into the novel, the two parties, the Chinese and the Americans, seem to find at least some scholarly – if not personal – common ground, and “[t]he initial culture shock turn[s] into culture critique” (Qiu 2006: 203), mostly thanks to Chen’s painstaking negotiation work. These few examples show how the trope of intercultural mediation can become a fictional device that brings the constant tension between cultural poles into the narrative. The portrayal of the problematic handling of cultural conflict is extremely useful in the fictional project envisaged by Qiu: indeed, it plays a key role in the unfolding of the plot and in the author’s representation of China for a foreign audience, thus introducing a major element of displacement. Moreover, it reveals strong autobiographical tinges: it is hard not to wonder how many of these details actually originate from Qiu’s own life experience as an expatriate intellectual, relentlessly mediating between his own two worlds.

3.2 A pragmatist’s gaze on China

This fictional device sometimes takes the shape of critical – and often ironic – remarks on the political atmosphere of China, mostly by the omniscient narrator. In one passage, an American poet praises the Chinese Writers’ Association, enthusiastically proclaiming that he “would love to go to Beijing and become a professional writer too” (Qiu 2006: 136). The Chief Inspector does not respond, but silently reflects on the fact that the poet “would have to live in China for years […] before learning what a ‘professional writer’ was like”, while another member of the delegation humors the American “with a sarcastic note discernable perhaps only in Chinese” (Qiu 2006: 136). The implied reference points to the crushing political pressure on state-funded writers – among other categories – by the Chinese authorities, which the naive host seems to ignore. Indeed, criticism aimed at China’s ideological and political control system is frequently found in Qiu’s novels, to various degrees of overtness, and is undoubtedly one of the key factors in their success with an international readership.

However, the protagonist’s ironic attitude with regard to Chinese culture is much more significant from the viewpoint of the detachment and displacement it conveys. A first example is offered by Chen’s improvised reciting of a stanza from a Tang dynasty poem:

I left the city of the White King

in the morning, in the midst

of the colorful clouds,

sailing thousands of miles

to Jiangling, all in a day’s trip,

the monkeys crying on

along both the banks,

and the light boat

speeding through mountains.

 

Chen quoted the Tang dynasty lines as the airplane was beginning to land at the Los Angeles airport. He added in a hurry, “Of course, ours is a Boeing, not a boat.”

Perhaps he should have chosen another poem, more appropriate for the occasion, in the company of these established writers. The flight had been delayed for ten hours in Tokyo. Nor had any monkey been heard or seen throughout the journey. It was not like in his bureau, where, whatever the chief inspector chose to cite, his colleagues would raise no question. (Qiu 2006: 134)

The quotation is from Li Bai’s 李白 (701-762) famous poem “Zaofa Baidicheng” 早发白帝城 (Departing Early from White Emperor City). In Qiu’s detective novels, poetic discourse – in the form of ubiquitous classical quotations – is typically employed, by means of thematic or conceptual juxtaposition, as a bridge between the past and the present, the culture-specific and the global, or the inner and the outer world (Pirazzoli forthcoming; Wei 2009). However, Chen’s poetic musings are often permeated with self-irony (Luo 2012: 52-53). In this specific example, the poetic linkage between the poet’s and the reciter’s journey is quickly perceived as awkward and embarrassing by the Chief Inspector, given the situation. The amusing reference to the missing monkeys further undermines the pretentious parallel. More importantly, the self-deprecatory tone of the passage is emphasized by the omniscient narrator’s observation with regard to the colleagues’ utter indifference to “whatever the chief inspector chose to cite”, an observation that is equally unflattering for the image which the detective-poet has so carefully fashioned for himself and for the discursive function of poetry.

Just like his use of poetic heritage, “Chen’s application of Chinese traditions – whether Confucian, Daoist or Buddhist – is pragmatic and tinged with a note of irreverence” (Luo 2012: 53). For example, in this passage where the Chief Inspector talks with his beloved mother, she quotes a Confucian adage by way of advice:

“I don’t know what advice to give you, son, but I remember what your father used to say. There are things a man will do, and things a man will not do.”

“Yes, I always remember that.”

Another Confucian quote, but he did not know how to apply it in the present case. Such a truism could be applied to anything, depending on the perspective a person took.” (Qiu 2006: 65)

Here, the narrator articulates the protagonist’s momentary frustration at a pointless cliché that cannot possibly provide any moral guidance in times of predicament. However, Chen’s utilitarian approach becomes clear in his ability to exploit such an abstract ethical rule “to ‘get the job done’ by breaking the guidelines, including those of Confucianism itself” (Luo 2012: 53). His unorthodox, often cynical stance on the discursive power of native wisdom is also reminiscent of some Western (mis)appropriations of Chinese thought, whereby classical philosophy – the example of The Art of War (Sunzi bingfa 孙子兵法) is particularly notorious – is applied to such diverse fields as company management and dating. In this sense, Chen also displays a global, modern – even postmodern – sensibility which further complicates the representation of his identity.

In another key scene, not without some amusing moments, the Chief Inspector manages to briefly take the place of a Buddhist fortune-telling monk at a Los Angeles temple. By exploiting his previous knowledge of bits of information and disguising this as divination, he creates a ruse to gather useful details from the suspect and his pious mother (Qiu 2006: 173-182). Therefore, besides the fictional representation of the subterfuge, displacement is also at work in the way in which Chen, by carefully conjuring a mixture of arcane notions and folk beliefs, makes utilitarian, practical use of the Chinese tradition – or even of an Orientalist version of it – in order to further his investigation, emerging as an extremely self-aware pragmatist. The protagonist’s complex psychology is thus enriched by his ability to consciously distance himself from his own culture, by exploiting its concrete potential, and to reflect on his own identity. In this sense, Chen’s approach reflects a form of self-representation that has aptly been labeled “inverted Orientalism” (Luo 2012: 54, 58). Revealingly, Chen takes leave of the flabbergasted temple monk by bringing up the issue of his own identity with one last barrage of cheap, self-parodic Eastern wisdom:

“I don’t know who I am. As the scriptures say, identity is an illusion too,” Chen said. “At this moment, I am your apprentice. Now I have to go, like a tumbleweed turning and turning around the distraction of humdrum vanities.” (Qiu 2006: 182)

3.3 Encoding the Chinese intellectual landscape

Another level of displacement and identity-making is associated with the references to the Chinese intellectual world that permeate A Case of Two Cities, and it affects the author in his relationship both with the protagonist and with his intended readership. For a start, more unequivocally so than in any other book in the series, Chen Cao emerges as the product of the writer’s fictional self-fashioning. The intellectual background of the erudite Chief Inspector blatantly shares a number of features with his creator’s: both are modernist poets, members of the Chinese Writers’ Association active in literary circles in the 1980s, and prolific translators. Interestingly enough, as if to further stress these intersections, Chen is credited in the novel as the Chinese translator of several American mysteries and of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (Qiu 2006: 185) – Qiu being a mystery writer and an Eliot expert who published his own Chinese translation of said poem, among others. Chen also remembers being criticized as a “modernist decadent” poet (Qiu 2006: 170), echoing the attacks which Qiu himself endured in the 1980s. The fact that the story is partly set in the American city of St. Louis, Eliot’s hometown and Qiu’s current residence of choice, adds weight to the overlap of biographical elements.

The disguised representation of real-life characters and phenomena associated with Chinese intellectual life is not limited to the characterization of Qiu’s fictional alter ego. More or less explicitly concealed behind certain members of the delegation led by Chen are a few leading figures of the Chinese literary landscape of the late 1990s. To cite only one obvious example, the figure of the young female writer “Shasha” is reminiscent – not least in her easily recognizable redoubled pen name – of Mian Mian 绵绵, a prominent representative of the school of “Beauty Writers” (Meinü zuojia 美女作家) or, to quote Qiu’s translation, “beauty authors” (Qiu 2006: 110). Other literary figures also undergo a similar treatment: the name “Gong Ku”, mentioned above, is a blatant allusion to the poète maudit Gu Cheng 顾城, one of the most prominent Misty poets (Qiu 2006: 169).

Most of these allusions remain obscure for readers who have no knowledge of the heated intellectual debates and complex literary landscape of post-Mao China – and, I would argue, a few of them are likely to elude even the specialist. It could be reasonably suggested that most of these details can only be decoded and construed by a readership that fits a fairly specific profile, namely: English-speaking Chinese born approximately in the 1950s or later, and who either are residents of an Anglophone country or have pursued an advanced education in such a country – a readership, that is, whose background largely overlaps with the author’s. In this case, the fictional device – although not exclusive to the text at hand or to its author – adds an element of displacement by playing havoc with the reader’s identity, further complicating the processes of identity-making at stake both within and outside the textual boundaries of A Case of Two Cities.

4. Closing remarks