Murder in Canton

POSTSCRIPT

In the seventh century A.D. the two leading world powers were the vast Chinese T'ang Empire in the east, and in the west the Islamic realm of the Arab Khalifs, who had conquered the entire Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe. Curiously enough, though, these two cultural and military giants barely knew of each other's existence; the points of contact of their spheres of influence were limited to a few scattered trade-centres. In the latter hardy Chinese and Arab sea captains met, but in their re­spective home-countries their accounts of the marvels they had seen were dismissed as so many sailors' yarns. Since for this Judge Dee novel I wanted to place the judge in an entirely new milieu, I laid the scene of my story in Canton, the port-city which was one of the focal points of contact between the Chinese and Arab worlds.

The events related in this novel are entirely fictitious, but they loosely link up with historical fact in so far as the redoubtable Empress Wu was indeed scheming to seize the reins of govern­ment at that time. She actually succeeded in doing so a few years later, after she had become Empress Dowager. Then she clashed directly with Judge Dee, and his prevention of her from ousting the legal Heir was the crowning success of his career. For that phase of Judge Dee's life the reader is referred to Lin Yutang's historical novel, Lady Wu, a True Story (London: 1959; Judge Dee's name is there transcribed Di Jenjiay).

The faked proclamation mentioned in Chapter XIX of the pres­ent novel I borrowed from one of the oldest Chinese crime-stories.

The said ruse was employed by the Chinese Machiavelli, the semi-legendary statesman Su Chin, in the fourth century B.c., in order to avenge himself on his political enemies who had unsuccessfully tried to murder him. When he was on his deathbed, Su Chin told the King to have his dead body quartered in the market, announc­ing that he had been a traitor. Then Su Chin's enemies came for­ward to claim a reward for their previous assassination attempt, and were duly executed (sec T'ang-yin-pi-shih, Parallel Cases from under the Tear Tree, a Thirteenth Century Manual of Jurisprud­ence and Detection, by R. van Gulik, Leyden, 1956).

The poison used by Zumurrud is described in the Chinese his­torical work Nan-chao-yeh-shih, in the chapter about the Ti-yang-kuei mountain tribe in south-west China (Histoire Particuliиre du Nan-tchao, French translation by Camille Sainson, Paris, 1904; sec p. 172).

I may again draw attention to the fact 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. The men did their hair up in a top-knot, and they wore caps both inside and outside the house. They did not smoke; tobacco and opium were introduced into China long after Judge Dee's time.

ROBERT VAN GULIK