The Lacquer Screen

POSTSCRIPT

Judge Dee was a historical person who lived from 630 to 700 A.D. In addition to earning fame as a detector of crimes, he was also a brilliant statesman who, in the second half of his career, when he was serving as a Minister at Court, greatly influenced the internal and foreign policies of the Tang Empire. The adventures related here, however, are entirely fictitious, although many features were suggested to me by original old Chinese sources. The puzzling suicide I borrowed from a case recorded in the Chinese collection by Hsu Mu-hsi, Ku-chin-chi-an-wei-pien (Strange Cases of Old and Modern Times), published in Shanghai in 1920; it is the fourth case of the third section. Judge Dee's method of making Kun-shan confess was practised in China as early as the third century A.D. When a thief called Shih-ming stub­bornly refused to confess even under severe torture, a judge of that time 'had the chains taken off the prisoner, gave him food and drink and had him take a bath, so as to bring him in a happy mood. Then Shih-ming confessed and denounced all his accomplices' (see R. H. van Gulik, ' Tang-yin-pi-shih, a thirteenth-century manual of Jurisprudence and Detec­tion', Sнnica Leidensia, vol. X, Leiden 1956, page 181).

Note that in Judge Dee's time the Chinese did not wear pigtails; that custom was imposed on them after 1644 A.D., when the Manchus had conquered China. Before 1644 they let their hair grow long, and did it up in a top-knot. They wore caps both inside and outside the house. Tobacco and opium were introduced into China only many centuries later.

30-xii-1961 Robert van Gulik