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"Having her own detective agency would give her
the independence she had always longed for. It
would also give her the chance to show those people
who shunned her that she could be successful. People
were getting rich. They owned property, money,
business, and cars. With new freedom and opportunities
came new crimes. There would be much that
she could do."
Present day, Beijing. Mei Wang is a modern, independent woman. She has her own apartment. She owns a car. She has her own business with that most modern of commodities -- a male secretary. Her short career with China's prestigious Ministry for Public Security has given her intimate insight into the complicated and arbitrary world of Beijing's law enforcement. But it is her intuition, curiosity, and her uncanny knack for listening to things said -- and unsaid -- that make Mei Beijing's first successful female private investigator.
Mei is no stranger to the dark side of China. She was six years old when she last saw her father behind the wire fence of one of Mao's remote labor camps. Perhaps as a result, Mei eschews the power plays and cultural mores -- guanxi -- her sister and mother live by...for better and for worse.
Mei's family friend "Uncle" Chen hires her to find a Han dynasty jade of great value: he believes the piece was looted from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution -- when the Red Guards swarmed the streets, destroying so many traces of the past -- and that it's currently for sale on the black market. The hunt for the eye of jade leads Mei through banquet halls and back alleys, seedy gambling dens and cheap noodle bars near the Forbidden City. Given the jade's provenance and its journey, Mei knows to treat the investigation as a most delicate matter; she cannot know, however, that this case will force her to delve not only into China's brutal history, but also into her family's dark secrets and into her own tragic separation from the man she loved in equal parts.
The first novel in an exhilarating new detective series, The Eye of Jade is both a thrilling mystery and a sensual and fascinating journey through modern China.
- Sales Rank: #1749510 in Books
- Brand: Simon & Schuster
- Published on: 2009-04-07
- Released on: 2009-04-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x .80" w x 5.50" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
- Great product!
From Publishers Weekly
Chinese exile Liang, who fled her country after participating in the Tiananmen Square protests, makes an impressive debut with this understated mystery set in the late 1990s, the first in a prospective series. After resigning from the ministry of public security, Mei Wang launches a private investigative agency, a technically illegal business in China, much to her family's dismay. After an old family friend, Uncle Chen Jitian, hires Mei to track down a jade seal from the Han dynasty, previously believed to be destroyed, Mei and her assistant, Gupin, follow slim leads to a shady dealer who might have connections to the same museum collection supposedly incinerated by the Red Guard. Readers familiar with Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs will find many parallels between that independent and unconventional PI and Mei. Mei's challenging family life nicely complements the puzzle of the missing jade and the shifting Chinese political climate. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
" We've all heard of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith's bestselling novels about a female private detective from Botswana. Now it's China's turn. On the surface The Eye of Jade is a classic detective fiction with lots of underworld contacts and hushed conversations in noodle bars, but underneath, Liang, who fled China after her involvement in the student protests in Tiananmen Square, is doing something much more than an examination of China old and new. There's an incredible tension between old Communist China and a new capitalist future; this tension is at the heart of the novel. This novel takes on subjects that in the past would have been censored." -- Mark Coles, BBC
"This may start out as a straightforward mystery but it expands to encompass a meditation on the nature of love and justice in extraordinary circumstances." -- Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
"An exquisitely written book, with the added bonus of a great plot and an engaging leading lady." -- The Sun-Herald (Sydney, Australia)
Review
" We've all heard of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith's bestselling novels about a female private detective from Botswana. Now it's China's turn. On the surface The Eye of Jade is a classic detective fiction with lots of underworld contacts and hushed conversations in noodle bars, but underneath, Liang, who fled China after her involvement in the student protests in Tiananmen Square, is doing something much more than an examination of China old and new. There's an incredible tension between old Communist China and a new capitalist future; this tension is at the heart of the novel. This novel takes on subjects that in the past would have been censored." -- Mark Coles, BBC
"This may start out as a straightforward mystery but it expands to encompass a meditation on the nature of love and justice in extraordinary circumstances." -- Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
"An exquisitely written book, with the added bonus of a great plot and an engaging leading lady." -- The Sun-Herald (Sydney, Australia)
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Unusual and fascinating
By L. J. Roberts
First Sentence: In the corner of an office in an old-fashioned building in Beijing's Chongyang District, the fan was humming loudly, like an elderly man angry at his own impotence.
Mei Wang had been dismissed from the Ministry for Public Security and has opened an office as a private investigator. "Uncle" Chen, a family friend, hires her to find an ancient, and extremely valuable, piece of jade looted from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution. The case takes her into the back streets of Beijing, and into secrets of her family's past.
This was an unusual mystery and a fascinating book. It is a PI story, but very different from the typical American PI. The story focuses on people, interactions and relationships, yet still has some suspense.
I realized how little I know about China, past or present. There are vast differences between our cultures but enough similarities that the story really worked.
The sense of place is wonderful and the dialogue has just the right voice to it. I am interested to see where Mei Wang's story goes. You might want to give this a try.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
A wonderfully depicted novel on modern China, but not a detective novel
By Vivian Wu
I gave this book three stars, because I found it has some wonderful elements and equal amount of flaws.
The Positives:
1. The author has a very natural way of weaving the daily scenes of Beijing into the story. It adds a layer of richness and gives the reader a true sense of the lives of the modern day China. There are other such novels on the market right now, but this particular one is written nicely about the details without being overly "educational" in tone. One such example will be in the book when Mei was meeting with her friend from the department of the motor vehicle. They chose to meet at a place where they could see all the people dancing on the street. (I am not being exact here. I don't want to ruin the appetite of those yet to read this book.) The author very skillfully devoted some time describing this street dancing/parading phenomenon without being overbearing.
2. The depiction of the characters are quite real. The author goes into great length describing the main characters in this novel. Some of the emotional scenes appear to be real to me and felt by me as I was reading. She does a particularly nice job on the conflicting dynamics between Mei and her mother. The love and hate mix is so authentic in my eyes.
The Negatives:
1. This is not a detective story in the strictest sense. The plot thins as it progresses. The detective uses rather evasive skills to find clues. Often times, she just jumps from point A to point B without strong evidence, just using a sense of hunch.
2. Some of the situations are not as convincing. If Mei has been working in the police department, how could she not stomach a dead body (not even brutally murdered, just dead). How Mei came to grasp the whole truth of the missing gem was very sudden, it's like, she got information A, B, C. And then suddenly, she can tell that this whole thing happened including A, B, C, D, E. There is a lot of assumption which almost made me feel that the author was rushing into a conclusion at the end to finish off the book.
3. How to use Chinese proper names in English is often an author's personal choice. This results in some hilarious ones such as stir fry stocks (that's indeed clever), but to translate Xiao Long Bao as "Little Dragon Buns" was a misunderstanding of the Chinese character "long". The correct character "Long" is referring to the steamer. It is meaning buns coming from a little steamer. The dragon "long" is a character without the bamboo radical, therefore, it is altogether a different character. Not sure why the author needed to translate something that's already very well known in the west into something that's wrong. But on the other hand XLB was never a Beijing thing.
In conclusion, if you just want to read an entertaining novel which can show you the ins of Beijing in modern day times, this is a very good book for you to get a sense of it. It is a disappointing detective novel to me, because of the lacking of the reasoning and development in plot. 1/3 of the book is about the actual jade. Another 1/3 is the description about Beijing. Sometimes, it is quite overwhelming. Initially, I thought it was very interesting, but after a while, I suddenly realized that these descriptions of the surrounding, the people, are not going to add anything to the plot. The last 1/3 is about the family dynamics and the family history.
27 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
"Cornerstone" of a mystery
By Xujun Eberlein
1.
Diane Wei Liang's female detective protagonist, Mei Wang, is a character built up of conflicts between her mindset and reality. She is aloof, "an outsider who never wanted to be in" while in college, but her college friends turn out to be the only ones who truly care about her. Her longing for her mother's love manifests as resentment, and her mother suddenly has a stroke before there is a chance to reconcile. She desperately wants to cure her mother, but she has no money or connections, and those things can only come from the sister she looks down on. She detests "guanxi" (connecting with purpose) and people who are good at it, yet whatever clues she obtains for her investigation are through "guanxi." Wherever she exhausts her network of relations, her means of investigation also dry up. For the most part the novel leaves the reader wondering if the only way for Mei Wang to make progress in Chinese society is to embrace the opposite of what she values.
Yet this is a quite realistic depiction of the late 1990s' Chinese society, post Cultural Revolution, in the midst of the Reform-and-Open era. And Diane Wei Liang is at her best depicting it using multi-voice dialogue. A conversation at Mei's class reunion is so real, I can almost see those people's lips moving and hear their voices, as if they spoke in Chinese, as if I were among them.
The intimate reflection on everyday life of contemporary China is a great quality of this novel. For a reader who knows about China, this quality is engaging. Too often I can't finish a novel set in China written by non-Chinese, because it turns me off when the author gets obvious things wrong.
For readers who are less familiar with China, The Eye of Jade provides a real lens into Chinese society. The author picked a good starting time for the story. Between 1980 and 1997 there were amazing changes that took place, almost as amazing as the changes between 1997 and now. The central case that Mei is investigating takes us back in time: to the origin of the relics she is trying to locate, nearly 2,000 years ago; to the circumstances of its disappearance 30 years ago; and to Mei's youth 10 years ago. Thus, without a complete recount of history we are given insights into it. One can reasonably predict that, as future cases come for Mei Wang, we will get a chance to see China develops more, and hopefully also to explore more of its past.
That said, there are some holes in the work. For one thing, the Ministry of State Security (analog of the FBI) did not exist until 1983, so some of the retrospective actions during the Cultural Revolution in late 1960s are not completely plausible. Still, compared with some other English fiction on China, the lapses are small.
2.
Ultimately, Mei Wang does not give in to the Chinese societal trap. Toward the end of the novel, Mei's true self, aloof and courageous as she is, does triumph. When her "guanxi" ends, she singular-handedly confronts each hypothesized suspect one by one, alone and determined. And sure enough, each confrontation takes her closer to the entire truth, until the case is solved.
At this point, however, this triumph should be read as the author's fictionalized ideal ending, rather than a depiction of the reality. After all, it is unlikely in reality that any private detective, not to mention a young woman apparently with no training in self-defense and no backup - would go to each (dangerous) suspect and point a finger at him, "You are the murderer, aren't you?" simply to see if he'll admit to it. A detective who relies on this approach wouldn't be the smartest one anyway.
So why does Diane Wei Liang make Mei Wang do this? One can find a partial answer from the author interview by her publisher, in which she views "guanxi" as "a cornerstone of Chinese culture, as the society is operated according to it".
Except guanxi is more like extra oil for an age-old societal machine than a cornerstone of Chinese culture. In any case "guanxi" is an external factor; the concept might assist a novelist to move forward a plot, but it can't enhance characterization, nor excite the reader. If Mei's entire investigation "operates according to it," the intricate behavior and actions would be absent. The final confrontations carried out by Mei Wang, therefore, are a last-ditch resolution for both the author and the central character.
3.
This raises a key question: is this novel really a detective story? The answer is both yes and no. It is what the author sets out to make; it is not quite accepted as such by readers.
For detective genre readers, the fun of reading is solving a puzzle with the author. It is the chase of logical inference that is thrilling. In The Eye of Jade, however, this element is largely missing. Sure, Mei Wang confronts the suspects with her hypotheses, but when we see this, the hypotheses are already made. We read the conclusions without being letting in the process of reasoning, and we don't know how she gets there. This thrill is not quite there.
Apparently, the author has a different idea about what this book should be. The Eye of Jade is the first in a series of "Mei Wang Mystery" novels, for which the author has a very interesting and intriguing concept. In the interview mentioned above, she says she found crime fiction "an ideal format to examine the social and economical changes that are at the center of modern life in China. I also wanted to paint an honest and authentic picture of life in Beijing."
That is exactly what she does in The Eye of Jade, and quite successfully. The social and economic aspects of life in Beijing are given equal, if not greater, emphasis than Mei Wang's case investigation. A reader who is not looking for a particular genre story could enjoy both threads. To a mystery/crime genre reader, however, the author's stated goals, however admirable and ambitious, do not provide the same thrill as logical inference.
On the other hand, would a romance novel bother its readers for its lack of logic? No. One would have to be bothered by something else. This is to say, the genre label pre-sets reader expectations. It is a double-edged sword. It helps us find the right category for reading pleasure; it can also stop us from being entertained.
Therefore, the author has options. The smart idea of conveying modern China's societal change to English readers through genre fiction (which has a much greater readership than literary fiction) might actually work, if she finds the right genre and executes in it well. If she (or her publisher) chooses to stick with the current label, then she will need to enhance the genre's "cornerstone": logical inference.
(Note: a more complete version of the review can be found on my blog.)
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