Sherlock Holmes and The Nine-Dragon Sigil

Glossary

The snarling dragon on the front cover can be seen on the Nine-Dragon Wall at the Forbidden City, Peking. It was built in 1771 and is located in front of the Palace of Tranquil Longevity. Such walls were typically found in Imperial Chinese palaces and gardens as a way to block outsiders’ view.

A friend, Mike Lacey, owns a beautiful Chinese bowl. He writes: ‘The label says ‘The bowl is decorated with phoenixes (fung-hwang) and with paeonies upon a yellow ground. The mark on the bowl is Kwang-shiu. This bowl is reputed to have been removed from a royal palace in Pekin at the time of the Boxer Rising. In China the fung-hwang is the symbol of the Empress and the paeony is called kwa-wang, King of Flowers’.’

Chinese people’s names. Modern Chinese names consist of a surname (known as xing) which comes first, followed by a personal name (míng). Therefore Yuán is the General’s family name, and Shì-kai his first name. Prior to the 20th century, educated Chinese also utilized a ‘courtesy name’ or ‘style name’ (zì) by which they were known among those outside of family and closest friends.

The Forbidden City. The common English usage ‘the Forbidden City’ is a translation of the Chinese name Zijin Cheng, literally ‘Purple Forbidden City’. By law all mortar used in building had to be dyed purple. Zi, meaning purple, refers to the North Star which in ancient China was called the Ziwei Star, and in traditional Chinese astrology was the heavenly abode of the Celestial Emperor.

The City was a mirror image of the celestial realm of the Jade Emperor or Heavenly Ancestor and his court, said to rule over the universe. Through the use of numerology, divination and geomancy the city’s architecture aimed at harmonising the forces of Heaven, Man and Earth to guarantee dynastic stability and the prosperity of the realm.

Mandarin. This is an exceptionally tricky language for Europeans, especially because it and many closely-related Chinese languages have contour tone systems (that is, not just relative pitch between syllables, but also pitch contours - like a little melody within the syllable). Only given Sherlock Holmes’s extraordinary ability to learn new languages is it conceivable he learnt a good deal with an initial 6 weeks’ formal instruction at the London School of Practical Chinese and continued instruction aboard the ship to India, plus the weeks tracking down Watson to that railway stop.

The Mutoscope was an early motion picture device, patented in 1894. Like Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, it did not project on a screen and provided viewing to only one person at a time. The popular ‘What The Butler Saw’ was a short sequence portraying a woman partially undressing in her bedroom, as if some voyeuristic servant was watching through a keyhole.

The Japanese Threat. General Yuán and the Empress Dowager were right to fear their predatory neighbour Japan. 30 years later, in 1937, Japan invaded China. Widely known as the Pacific War, infamous for its cruelties, the Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. Between 10 and 25 million Chinese civilians and over 4 million Chinese and Japanese military personnel died from war-related violence and famine.

Jingoism. Patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy - e.g. Britain expressing a pugnacious attitude toward the Russian ‘bear’ in the 1870s. The term originated in Britain’s music-halls as a verse:

Savoy opera. A style of comic operetta which developed in England in the late 19th century. W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan (‘The Mikado’ etc) were the original and most successful practitioners. The name derives from London’s Savoy Theatre which impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte built to house the Gilbert and Sullivan pieces.

Maxim Gun. A terrifyingly effective recoil-operated machine gun invented by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1883. ‘The weapon most associated with the British imperial conquest.’

The ‘sing-song’ trade. Often the word for prostitution though in China used for young women serving the customers at table during theatre performances.

Dr. Watson’s Army pension. His ‘wound pension’ from being invalided out of the army after the Battle of Maiwand was 11/6d (Eleven shillings and sixpence) per month. In modern terms the income value of that sum would be about GBP£350 or US$400, probably a subsistence amount at best.

The Ch’ing hairstyle. The men wore a long pigtail and the front of the scalp was shaven. The style was originally enforced in 1645 on all citizens of the Empire as a test of loyalty to the conquering Dynasty by the Manchu Regent Dorgo. Tens of thousands of people who did resist were massacred. This started the hairstyle seen in motion pictures on the Ch’ing Empire. This style was humiliating to the conquered Han but helped the new Ch’ing Dynasty to identify resisters. It was advised, ‘To keep the hair, you lose the head; to keep your head, you cut the hair’.

The Mandate of Heaven. Great natural disasters in the last 50 years of the Ch’ing dynasty contributed to weakening its authority. The pattern was interpreted as a sign the Dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven. One of the world’s biggest natural disasters in history occurred in 1887 when the Yellow River flooded. It is thought that between 1 to 2 million people died. The River flooded again in 1898. The Yangtze River flooded in 1911, and about 100,000 died. In 1879 a magnitude 8 Gansu Earthquake killed about 22,000 people. The Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 killed about 10% of the population (equal to about 10 million people) of several northern provinces. Despite Peking being sited in Chihli, the Capital Province, the little aid provided by the Ch’ing government made the people even more discontented with the Dynasty.

The Yellow Peril (also Yellow Terror and Yellow Spectre). In 1895, after a dream in which he saw the Buddha riding a dragon and threatening to invade Europe, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II invented the phrase Yellow Peril in an effort to interest the other European empires in the perils they faced in their invasions of China.

Full-blown paranoia was whipped up by the London Daily Express newspaper. Articles screamed in large headlines: ‘Yellow Peril in London’, ‘Vast Syndicate of Vice with its Criminal Master’, and ‘A Chinese syndicate, backed by millions of money and powerful, if mysterious, influences, is at work in the East End of London.’

Dr. Fu-Manchu. With the fear of the Yellow Peril, a new fictional supervillain appeared. By 1911 a novelist using the pseudonym Sax Rohmer cashed in with ‘The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu’. Fu-Manchu disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, thuggees, and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with knives, or using “pythons and cobras ... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli ... my black spiders” and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons.

Old China Hands. At some point historians may return to a question that has never been fully examined - the riddle of why China never became another British India, one more jigsaw piece in Britain’s already-immense Empire. The answer may lie in the already gigantic extent of Empire in 1900 and because the great Trading Houses of Jardine, Matheson & Company and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and the Old China Hands never convinced British Governments or the people of Britain that the national importance of suzerainty over China was a crucial aim, not just for straight-forward commercial advantage and avarice.

If British Prime Ministers of the period - the Marquess of Salisbury and Arthur Balfour - had determined a take-over of China, there rises one of the great ‘Ifs’ of history - would the Communist Revolution ever have taken place?

‘The Great Game’: the phrase describing the strategic rivalry and conflict between London and St. Petersburg for supremacy in Central Asia. The term is usually attributed to Captain Arthur Conolly (1807–1842), an intelligence officer of the British East India Company’s 6th Bengal Light Cavalry. It was introduced to a wider public by Rudyard Kipling in ‘Kim’ which first appeared in serial form in 1900.

The Russian Empire’s expansion into Central Asia threatened to over-run the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire - India. Surprising to recall now, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century it was a common assumption in Europe that the next great war - the ‘inevitable war’ - was going to be the final showdown between Britain and Russia. Relations between the two powers continued to be strained until they allied against the Central Powers in World War I.

Mexican Army Cipher Wheel. The device credited to Holmes was in real life invented by the Mexican Army and remained in use up to the end of World War One.

Cryptography. The earliest known text containing components of cryptography was found on the tomb of an Egyptian nobleman. Around 1900 BCE Khnumhotep’s scribe drew his master’s life in his tomb, using a number of unusual symbols to obscure the meaning of the inscriptions. This method of encryption is an example of a substitution cipher, any system which substitutes one symbol or character for another, in Khnumhotep’s case probably used to preserve the sacred nature of religious rituals from the common people.

George Macartney. The real-life Macartney was the son of a Scottish father and Chinese mother. British Agent, then Consul-General in Kashgar for 28 years - his entire career as a diplomat - officially he lived in this backwater to look after the needs of a small British Indian community, mainly traders and money-lenders.

In reality he had a quite incredibly important task, intelligence-gathering, to keep watch on Tsarist machinations on the front lines of the two rival Empires and safeguard British India from Russian predation. He was knighted in 1913. In 1931 his wife Lady Catherine Macartney published ‘An English Lady In Chinese Turkestan’, a good read.

The Silk Roads. Today’s China for both commercial and geopolitical reasons is opening up the ancient Silk Roads once more. An article titled ‘The Silk Roads Rise Again’ appeared in the New Statesman 23-29 October 2015 by Peter Frankopan, including some interesting background: ‘The term ‘Silk Roads’, or Seidenstraße, was coined in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. It denoted the mesh of cities, oases and routes criss-crossing Asia, linking the Pacific with the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean with Russia, Scandinavia and Europe. Along these networks the world’s great religions rose and spread.’

Crows and the Chinese. In Chinese mythology, the world originally had 10 suns either spiritually embodied as 10 crows and/or carried by 10 crows; when all 10 decided to rise at once, the effect was devastating to crops, so the gods sent their greatest archer Houyi to shoot down nine crows and spare only one.

Crows are almost universally maligned and for no good reason. They are now believed to be as intelligent as a seven-year-old human, the only non-primate species known to make tools such as prodding sticks and hooks which they use to pick out grubs from awkward places. A recent study showed crows worked out how to obtain floating food rewards by dropping heavy objects into water-filled tubes. They must have watched Archimedes of Syracuse at work.

Although the Empress-Dowager may not have carried out her threat to eliminate the crow from her Empire, fifty years later Mao Zedong ordered the Great Sparrow Campaign known officially as the Four Pests Campaign. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and a bird, the sparrow. The masses of China were mobilized. Citizens took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the birds from landing, forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky in exhaustion. Sparrow nests were torn down, eggs were broken, and nestlings killed. Other birds were also shot down from the sky, resulting in the near-extinction of birds in China.

As can happen when humankind engages in a great assault on Nature, things didn’t work out well. By April 1960, Chinese leaders realized sparrows eat a large amount of insects, as well as grains. Instead of increasing rice yields, crops were substantially lower. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with a different enemy, bed bugs, in the ongoing campaign against the Four Pests. It was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.

in articulo mortis: at the point of death. Used naturally by Dr. Watson from his medical experience.

Basenji. Breed of hunting dog from stock originating in central Africa. The Basenji produces an unusual yodel-like sound due to the shape of its larynx. This trait gives the Basenji the nickname ‘soundless dog’.

Life-preserver. Chiefly British usage. A hand-weapon such as a cosh or blackjack.

100 Days of Reform. In 1898, the young Kuang-hsü Emperor suddenly initiated an all-out attempt at renovating the Chinese state and social system. He issued more than 40 edicts in quick succession which would have transformed every aspect of Chinese society. The old civil service examination system based on the Chinese Classics was ordered abolished. A new system of national schools and colleges was established. Western industry, medicine, science, commerce, and patent systems were promoted and adopted. Government administration was revamped. The law code was changed, the military was reformed, and corruption attacked. The attack on corruption, the army, and the traditional educational system threatened long-entrenched and privileged classes.

As a result the attempted reforms were short-lived. Conservative forces forcefully rallied behind the Empress Dowager. With the army on her side, she carried out a successful coup d’état and for several years kept the Emperor imprisoned in his lake palace.

Royal Army Medical Corps. As Watson would have known, it was in 1898 that a single Army Medical Corps was created. In the Boer wars and WW1 and WW2, the Corps dealt with 14 million casualties, and was awarded many medals, including 14 Victoria Crosses (two with Bars).

Field Service Pocket Book. Watson’s references are based on a later edition lent to me by Major General John Moore-Bick. The 1914 edition is especially interesting because it summarises the state of the British Army at the outbreak of the Great War. On Watson’s long journey to Kashgar and Peking he would have read a contemporary copy, on war establishments, system of command in the field, and summaries covering ciphers, construction of trenches, setting up firing positions, even the construction of emergency railway stations.

Hippocratic Oath. Historically taken by physicians, one of the most widely known of Greek medical texts. In its original form, it required a new physician to swear, by a number of healing gods, to uphold specific ethical standards.

Aeroscope film camera. Patented in England in 1910 by the Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński, the Aeroscope was the first successful hand-held operated film camera. It was powered by compressed air pumped into the camera with a simple hand pump, similar to the one used for bicycle tyres. This made it possible to film hand-held in most difficult circumstances, notably from early airplanes.

The camera came into its own on the battlefield during the Great War. Several cameramen died filming from the front lines and because of this the innocent Aeroscope got the nickname ‘camera of death’.

British Empire. Where I speak of the time the British Empire comes to its end was from a piece in the New Statesman, 18 March 2016, by Jeremy Seabrook, titled ‘The World Of Yesterday’.

Boxers. The violent anti-foreign, anti-Christian uprising in China towards the end of the Ch’ing dynasty between 1899 and 1901. Although women were not allowed to join the Boxer units, they formed their own groups, the Red Lanterns. Popular local lore reported that the women were able to fly, walk on water, set Christians’ homes on fire, and stop foreign guns, powers which even the Boxer men themselves did not claim.

North China Daily News. Founded as the weekly North-China Herald in 1850. A daily edition commenced publication in 1864 as the North China Daily News. The newspaper was an influential force in Shanghai and throughout China until 1951.

Seismographs. In 132 AD, Zhang Heng, a scientist in the Eastern Han Dynasty, invented the seismograph to detect the cardinal direction of earthquakes that struck hundreds of miles away - the earliest instrument in the world for forecasting and reporting the movement of an earthquake. Zhang’s seismoscope was a giant bronze vessel, resembling a samovar almost 6 feet in diameter.

Sigil. An inscribed or painted symbol or occult sign considered to have magical power. The ‘g’ is pronounced like a ‘j’. In Chinese feng shui, the most famous sigil is the Sigil of Zuan Kong which holds within it the movement of the Flying Stars.

Mumbo Jumbo (sometimes mumbo-jumbo). English term for confusing or meaningless language. Nowadays often used to express humorous criticism of middle-management and civil-service doublespeak. It may also refer to practices based on superstition, rituals intended to cause confusion, or languages the speaker does not understand.

Jordan. A chamber pot. Popular slang for a chamber-pot used to urinate in at night without having to resort to a trip to the outside toilet (or worse). Origin obscure but possibly from the similarity of urine flasks to the little containers of sacred Jordan water brought back from the Holy Land by mediaeval pilgrims.

China gunboats. Shallow-draught gunboats designed to patrol rivers.

Il faut être le plus malin. One must be the more cunning.

Orbis alius. In Celtic mythology, the Otherworld is the realm of the dead and the home of the deities and other powerful spirits.

Amen. ‘So be it’. Originally from Hebrew ‘āmēn’: truth.

Dyed-in-the-wool. Thoroughgoing. Unchanging in a particular belief or opinion.

Committee of Imperial Defence. Watson reported to this Committee. Although there’s evidence of British intelligence organisations collecting foreign intelligence and intercepting messages as far back as the 15th Century, Britain’s modern history of espionage really began in 1909.

With the growth of Germany’s naval and military strength and the Kaiser’s expanding colonisation, particularly in Africa and the Pacific, the British government was increasingly concerned about the threat to its own Empire. In July 1909 they established a Secret Service Bureau, split into Home and Foreign Sections.

Criminalistics. When Holmes coined the word ‘criminalistics’ circa 1904 he was well ahead of his time. It only came into widespread use around 1945 to describe the science dealing with the detection of crime and the apprehension of criminals.

Railway glasses. Their use by train passengers stemmed from the fact that the early railway carriages were open to the sky. By the mid Victorian period this was no longer the case, but railway spectacles continued to be used by rail workers, either for travelling on the locomotive or when working on the track. Even then the Edwardian period would be a bit late though Holmes might have discovered an old pair in a drawer somewhere.

Suffragists. Members or supporters of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies campaigning for women’s right to vote. Different from the suffragettes, they eschewed violence in favour of advocacy. For example, in February 1907 Millicent Fawcett co-led what became known as the Mud March. Over 3,000 women marched in a public procession through the muddy streets of London, peacefully demonstrating their support for women’s suffrage.

Dawn Redwood. Taxodiaceae (Redwood family). Watson was well aware of the search for exotic plants for the Edwardian garden. One of the most exciting discoveries in the plant world in the mid-20th Century was the deciduous conifer, the Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, in China. The trees were hitherto only known from fossil evidence dating back 100 million years, and thought to have been extinct for 5 million years.

Taels. A unit of weight and by extension a currency. In general the silver tael weighed around 40 grams. General Yuán paid Watson a fee of nine thousand taels. At the time this would have equalled around 900 British pounds. In today’s purchasing power that would be about £100,000 British pounds or roughly US$135,000. Plenty to bet with at the Gatwick Races.

Orbate. Every Emperor of China feared dying ‘orbate’ - i.e. childless, without heir or descendant to perform the vital ceremonies at the deceased ruler’s shrine.

Bastinado. A beating. The instrument employed was a thick cane, cloven in two, and several feet long, made of bamboo, a hard, strong, and heavy wood. The lower part is as broad as a hand, the upper smooth and small for ease of handling.

Limehouse is a once-poverty-stricken district in east London located 3.9 miles (6.3 km) east of Charing Cross. A large Chinese community developed there, established by the crews of merchantmen in the opium and tea trades, particularly Han Chinese. The area achieved notoriety for opium dens in the late 19th century, often featured in pulp fiction works by such authors as Sax Rohmer.

Meurtres à l’anglaise. Murders English-style. Watson is being witty. Although the terrible late-Victorian Jack the Ripper murders have never been solved (nor, surprisingly, investigated by Sherlock Holmes), Victorian Britain was no more inclined to shooting, stabbing, throttling, poisoning and serial killers than any other society.

‘Nine Springs.’ Holmes had learnt about Chinese beliefs well. ‘Nine Springs’ (also ‘Yellow Springs’) is the Chinese poetical term for the abode of the dead beneath the earth.

Shishaquita. The name of the Emperor’s steam-launch came from one built in 1906 at my favourite old (now defunct) boat-building yards Abdela & Mitchell in Gloucestershire where some speculate the famous ‘African Queen’ of the Hollywood movie was constructed around 1912. For cognoscenti of such bits of Britain’s history I gave Shishaquita the power source used in real life in the Abdela & Mitchell boat Angela, namely a high pressure single cylinder engine.