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Q

Qiu, Xiaolong (1953– )
Born in Shanghai, Qiu entered college in 1977
shortly after the Cultural Revolution and took up
graduate work in Western literature at the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences. In 1988 Qiu started
his Ph.D. program in comparative literature at
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and
obtained his Ph.D. in 1995. He is currently an
adjunct professor of Chinese literature at Wash-
ington University. In China Qiu had many publi-
cations in Chinese, including poetry, translations
of modernist poets such as Ezra Pound and T. S.
Eliot, and literary criticism. He was also a member
of the Chinese Writers’ Association. Best known
for his detective series, The DEATH OF A RED HERO-
INE (2000), A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), and
When Red Is Black (2004), Qiu also translated and
edited two collections of Chinese poetry, Lines
around China (2003) and Treasury of Chinese Love
Poems: In Chinese and English (2003).
Written in the Western tradition of detective
stories, Qiu’s three novels all feature Chen Cao,
chief inspector of the Shanghai Police Bureau,
who investigates politically sensitive murder cases
with his assistant, Detective Yu Guangming. Qiu’s
novels engage the reader with their revelation of
the rapidly changing society of modern China in
the 1990s. Despite historically and culturally in-
accurate details, the stories draw a vivid portrait
of Shanghai in the pleasure and pain of its dras-

tic changes deeply entangled with its past. Chen,

like the author, is well versed in Chinese and Eng-

lish poetry, and is himself a published poet and

translator of crime fiction in English. Qiu por-

trays Chen as a contemporary Chinese intellectual

deeply rooted in traditional Chinese sensibilities

but influenced by Western culture and literature.

The frequent poetic allusions and creations in his

novels, Qiu claims, are traditional conventions

of Chinese novels. The complexity of the charac-

terization also lies in the tension between Chen’s

status as a romantic individual and his delicate

maneuvring to rise in the political system.

The second in the series, A Loyal Character

Dancer (2002), examines human smuggling from

China to the United States and police cooperation

between the two countries. Chief Inspector Chen

Cao works with Inspector Catherine Rohn of the

U.S. Marshals Service to find a missing woman,

Wen Liping. Wen’s husband agrees to testify in a

criminal trial against the Triad with which he him-

self is involved, but only on one condition: that his

pregnant wife be allowed to join him in the United

States. The tracing of Wen is also the tracing of

her personal history. An enthusiastic “character

dancer” who held the Chinese character for “loyal”

in a performance dedicated to Chairman Mao dur-

ing the Cultural Revolution, Wen was sent to the

countryside in the later stage of the Cultural Revo-

lution and suffered brutal abuse by her husband.