Publication Date: 29th December 2020
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Page Length: 196 Pages
Genre: #HistoricalFiction #Crime
China, 1990.
A nation struggles to reconcile its ancient traditions, the strident rhetoric of the Party, and the economic and social upheavals of change. Memories of the events on Tiananmen Square, from one year before, also haunt the city.
Inspector Bao Zheng is a middle-ranking Beijing detective caught in these conflicting currents.
For some relaxation, the inspector attends an evening of traditional opera – but the night proves far from relaxing. A murder is committed in the auditorium, and he has to investigate.
Bao soon finds himself involved with the renascent Triads, a young woman that his superiors would like to frame and the possibility of corruption at a high level.
He must also deal with the political consequences of Tiananmen.
Enemies are keen to expose Bao as sympathetic to the protestors, which would endanger his career and possibly his life.
The Inspector realizes that to solve the case and to save himself he must put himself in peril. But will this judgement prove fatal?
Originally published as Death of a Blue Lantern, The Beijing Opera Murder is the first in a series of crime novels set in China during the decade it changed from an inward-looking ‘sleeping giant’ to a global economic superpower.
Pick up your copy for only 0.99 on #Kindle for a Limited Time
Read for #Free with #KindleUnlimited subscription.
Mary Anne: A huge congratulations on the publication of the first book in The Inspector Bao Zheng series, The Beijing Opera Murder. Could you tell us a little about your books and how you came to write them?
Chris West: Thank you!
I’ve always been fascinated by China. When growing up, it seemed the most ‘different’ place I could imagine, with its strange writing, its mysterious politics (I grew up in the 1960s) and its cultural and artistic traditions totally disconnected from mine. My dad sometimes took the family out to the ‘Hong Kong’ restaurant in Stevenage – it was new, then, and seemed extraordinarily exotic.
I also loved detective stories, and these two interests converged in the wonderful Judge Dee series by Robert van Gulik.
The titles of my own books are a nod to van Gulik. His books are set in the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD). I wanted to write about a more recent era.
I went to China as soon as I could, in the 1980s, when it first opened up to solo Western backpackers. It was not your standard Asian backpacking adventure – no hippie hang-outs and hardly anyone who spoke English -- but all the more fascinating for that. The country was still rather grey, with most people in blue Mao suits and riding bicycles. But there was a great energy there. I met some young Chinese people who were determined to create a brighter future. The first result of this adventure was a travel book, The first result of this adventure was a travel book, Journey to the Middle Kingdom, which was published in 1991.
During the 1990s, I wrote four books set in what was then ‘contemporary’ China. I researched each one with a visit, and was completely bowled over by the pace of change that happened as I did so. Sadly this was not all for the best: many of Beijing’s beautiful old ‘hutongs’ were bulldozed to make new office blocks, and the city’s streets became ever more clogged with polluting cars. But such was progress…
The books then lay forgotten, but last year I decided to revisit them. They had, I found, become historical pieces, summoning an era that was now as distant as the Tang in many ways. China’s economic progress in the first two decades of this century had been phenomenal, and much of the old China had been buried.
Mary Anne: The 1990s saw rapid economic development, social change and political anxieties in China. What drew you to this era and why did you think it would make such a good backdrop for your story?
Chris West: The 1990s are the decade when China really ‘took off’ and turned into an economic superpower. It was also a time when people were confused: the old Communist slogans didn’t work any more, but people still clung to them. Such eras create good stories, I feel.
The 1990s saw China opening up to the world. Bao Zheng’s wife, Rosina, wants to travel and see the world – an ambition that would have been impossible for any ordinary Chinese citizen in the 1980s.
The decade also saw China appearing to come to terms with the events of Tiananmen Square – more on this in the next question! Here, the arc of change is different. China seemed to tolerate more and more dissent (within boundaries) in the middle of the decade, but the 1990s ended with a harsh crackdown on the Falun Gong movement.
China has moved on a long way since 2000. Sadly, many of these ways are unattractive to us in the West – though not all. History is rarely totally good vs bad.
Mary Anne: The protagonist of your story is Inspector Bao Zheng who not only has to deal with a murder but also the political consequences of what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989. What were the challenges you faced in researching this period of history and were there any unexpected surprises?
Chris West: I was lucky enough to be able to visit China in the 1990s and find people more open to conversation than they might be now. I met members of the Chinese police force and spent some time with them. Somewhere I’ve still got a cap badge I was given by one of them. What struck me then was the similarity of their work to that of police in the West, namely dealing with crime. They resented political interference in their work.
Yes, this was partially what they wanted me to see, but even that is significant. I think a similar author now would be shown a much more united front, with political interference accepted and even welcome as ‘guidance’.
As regards Tiananmen Square, there is plenty of material on the massacre – for Western researchers.
Mary Anne: What do you think is the most challenging aspect of writing modern day Historical Fiction?
Chris West: There is a huge clash between modern attitudes and those of bygone eras. I’m 66, and some of the conversations I heard as a boy would be totally unacceptable nowadays, but were held between fundamentally decent people.
This is also true when writing about very different cultures.
So there’s a tension between making a character sympathetic to modern readers but at the same time sufficiently realistic to belong to their culture and era.
The bridge between any past era / culture and our own is, of course, the big, timeless, shared human themes such as love, loyalty, ambition, deception (and so on). So it’s not the case that past eras are totally ‘other countries’. But they are very different to ours, and every writer has to work out their own balance.
In the case of my own fiction, most people in China still think that the Tiananmen massacre was necessary (they also don’t believe as many people died as we do). Their argument is that a country of 1.4 billion people needs firm government, and that the Tiananmen protests threatened to undermine that. Older people remember the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution (a topic I visit in the second book in the series). My challenge was to create a realistic, sympathetic character in the context of that. I ended up making Bao Zheng a secret critic of Tiananmen, but one with mixed feelings.
Mary Anne: What advice do you have for aspiring Historical Fiction authors?
Chris West: Above all, it has to be, ‘Love the era and the geographical setting you are writing about’. That way you’ll enjoy the research and do lots of it – and readers will pick up on your passion.
A second piece of advice relates to the previous question: find a balance that you are happy with between modern sensibilities and historical accuracy.
I’d also say be proud of writing Historical Fiction. When I started writing, Historical Fiction was rather frowned on. One was supposed to be contemporary. This attitude has now largely disappeared, but it might come back again – fashions come and go in literature. If it does, ignore it and do what you love.
During the 1990s he wrote four books set in the China of that time. He then branched out into writing business, history and psychology books. The business titles include Myths about Doing Business in China, co-authored with Harold Chee.
Recently, he has reworked the four 1990s China novels, and these are now published, in their new form, by Sharpe books.
Married, with one daughter, he lives in Hertfordshire.
Connect with Chris:
No comments:
Post a Comment
See you on your next coffee break!
Take Care,
Mary Anne xxx