Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s—"the Paris of the Orient"—was both a glittering metropolis and a shadowy world of crime and social injustice. It was also home to Huo Sang and Bao Lang, fictional Chinese counterparts to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The duo lived in a spacious apartment on Aiwen Road, where Huo Sang played the violin (badly) and smoked Golden Dragon cigarettes as he mulled over his cases. Cheng Xiaoqing (1893–1976), "The Grand Master" of twentieth-century Chinese detective fiction, had first encountered Conan Doyle’s highly popular stories as an adolescent. In the ensuing years he played a major role in rendering them first into classical and later into vernacular Chinese. In the late 1910s, Cheng began writing detective fiction very much in Conan Doyle’s style, with Bao as the Watson-like-I narrator—a still rare instance of so direct an appropriation from foreign fiction. Cheng Xiaoqing wrote detective stories to introduce the advantages of critical thinking to his readers, to encourage them to be skeptical and think deeply, because truth often lies beneath surface appearances. His attraction to the detective fiction genre can be traced to its reconciliation of the traditional and the modern. In "The Shoe," Huo Sang solves the case with careful reasoning, while "The Other Photograph" and "On the Huangpu" blend this reasoning with a sensationalism reminiscent of traditional Chinese fiction. "The Odd Tenant" and "The Examination Paper" also demonstrate the folly of first impressions. "At the Ball" and "Cat’s-Eye" feature the South-China Swallow, a master thief who, like other outlaws in traditional tales, steals only from the rich and powerful. "One Summer Night" clearly shows Cheng’s strategy of captivating his Chinese readers with recognizably native elements even as he espouses more globalized views of truth and justice.

In Detecting Chinese Modernities: Rupture and Continuity in Modern Chinese Detective Fiction (1896–1949), Yan Wei historicizes the two stages in the development of Chinese detective fiction and discusses the rupture and continuity in the cultural transactions, mediation, and appropriation that occurred when the genre of detective fiction traveled to China during the first half of the twentieth century. Wei identifies two divergent, or even opposite strategies for appropriating Western detective fiction during the late Qing and the Republican periods. She further argues that these two periods in the domestication of detective fiction were also connected by shared emotions. Both periods expressed ambivalent and sometimes contradictory views regarding Chinese tradition and Western modernity.

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 1998 in the subject Orientalism / Sinology - Chinese / China, grade: 1, University of Hamburg, language: English, abstract: Cheng Xiaoqing, the author of the Huo Sang cases, was one of the most prolific and successful Chinese detective fiction authors of the so-called Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School." In China, Western detective fiction was introduced at the turn of the 19th century. Cheng Xiaoqing was among the first Chinese authors to not only translate, but also create original works in the genre. The author adopted the main framework of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes case - the very standard of the classical Western detective story - and created the "Eastern Sherlock Holmes," Huo Sang, and his secretary Bao Lang, the "Dr. Watson of the East." The figure of Huo Sang shows several superficial similarities derivative of the classical Western detective a la Sherlock Holmes. In addition, the character also incorporates fundamental elements of Chinese literature draw from traditional figures such as the famous Judge Bao in classical court-case fiction and from the traditional chivalric heroes within the knight-errant tradition. Thus, Cheng did not merely create another British detective implanted into Shanghai. Instead, he fabricated a Chinese detective who is a synthesis of Western and Eastern influences and who reflects the contradictions and tensions of the environment he operates in. The story of China's meeting with modern detective fiction can, thus, be seen as a microcosm of China's encounter with the West. Cheng's import of the detective novel into a different cultural and political context required the employment of figures, settings and situations that offered relevant and compelling meanings for the contemporary reader. By merging different genres and thereby creating detective stories that were not just imitating the Western model, but also interweaving it with traditional elements of Chinese literary tradition. Cheng's inn

From 1949 to 1968 author Robert van Gulick wrote 15 novels, two novellas and eight short stories featuring Judge Dee, a Chinese magistrate and detective from the Tang dynasty. In addition to providing the setting for riveting mysteries, Dee's world highlighted aspects of traditional Chinese culture through his personal relationships with his wives, his lieutenants and the citizens he served with dedication on the emperor's behalf. This book gives a synopsis of each Judge Dee story, along with commentary on plots, characters, themes and historical details. Exploring van Gulik's influence on Chinese and Western detective fiction and on the image of China in popular 20th century American literature, this study brings to light a significant contributor to the development of detective fiction.

The quintessential international genre, detective fiction often works under the guise of popular entertainment to expose its extensive readership to complex moral questions and timely ethical dilemmas. The first book-length study of Japan’s detective fiction, Murder Most Modern considers the important role of detective fiction in defining the country’s emergence as a modern nation-state. Kawana explores the interactions between the popular genre and broader discourses of modernity, nation, and ethics that circulated at this pivotal moment in Japanese history. The author contrasts Japanese works by Edogawa Ranpo, Unno Juza, Oguri Mushitaro, and others with English-language works by Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha Christie to show how Japanese writers of detective fiction used the genre to disseminate their ideas on some of the most startling aspects of modern life: the growth of urbanization, the protection and violation of privacy, the criminalization of abnormal sexuality, the dehumanization of scientific research, and the horrors of total war. Kawana’s comparative approach reveals how Japanese authors of the genre emphasized the vital social issues that captured the attention of thrill-seeking readers-while eluding the eyes of government censors. Sari Kawana is assistant professor of Japanese at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s—"the Paris of the Orient"—was both a glittering metropolis and a shadowy world of crime and social injustice. It was also home to Huo Sang and Bao Lang, fictional Chinese counterparts to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The duo lived in a spacious apartment on Aiwen Road, where Huo Sang played the violin (badly) and smoked Golden Dragon cigarettes as he mulled over his cases. Cheng Xiaoqing (1893–1976), "The Grand Master" of twentieth-century Chinese detective fiction, had first encountered Conan Doyle’s highly popular stories as an adolescent. In the ensuing years he played a major role in rendering them first into classical and later into vernacular Chinese. In the late 1910s, Cheng began writing detective fiction very much in Conan Doyle’s style, with Bao as the Watson-like-I narrator—a still rare instance of so direct an appropriation from foreign fiction. Cheng Xiaoqing wrote detective stories to introduce the advantages of critical thinking to his readers, to encourage them to be skeptical and think deeply, because truth often lies beneath surface appearances. His attraction to the detective fiction genre can be traced to its reconciliation of the traditional and the modern. In "The Shoe," Huo Sang solves the case with careful reasoning, while "The Other Photograph" and "On the Huangpu" blend this reasoning with a sensationalism reminiscent of traditional Chinese fiction. "The Odd Tenant" and "The Examination Paper" also demonstrate the folly of first impressions. "At the Ball" and "Cat’s-Eye" feature the South-China Swallow, a master thief who, like other outlaws in traditional tales, steals only from the rich and powerful. "One Summer Night" clearly shows Cheng’s strategy of captivating his Chinese readers with recognizably native elements even as he espouses more globalized views of truth and justice.

Tells of a celebrated seventh-century Chinese magistrate's investigation of a double murder among traveling merchants, the fatal poisoning of a bride on her wedding night, and a murder in a small town