Tang-era detective finds cases elementary

A new TV series, Judge Dee's Mystery, featuring China's Sherlock Holmes, Di Renjie, a famous statesman and county magistrate in the Tang (618-907) court, has been showing on Youku's domestic and international livestreaming platforms since last month.

Youku has confirmed that Netflix has purchased the broadcasting rights to the drama, which is one of the platform's most eagerly anticipated shows. It is adapted from the Judge Dee Mysteries, a series of books written by Dutch Sinologist Robert Hans van Gulik, and will reach audiences in more than 190 countries and regions around the world.

In this adaptation, as Di solves criminal cases in the early stages of his career, he also gradually uncovers the mystery of his birth. Overseas audiences can watch the show with subtitles in 10 languages, including English, Thai and Portuguese, via Youku's international channel.

Inspired by Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, a novel by an anonymous writer from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Van Gulik spent about 17 years writing the Judge Dee books from the 1950s onward. The English-language series includes 14 novels and two novellas that feature Di cracking a series of mysterious criminal cases during the reign of Tang Dynasty Emperor Gaozong (628-683).

Based on his archives of real and fictional ancient Chinese crime cases, Van Gulik re-created the cases and depicted Di as a Western-style detective, who emphasized facts and investigated crime scenes through rigorous reasoning, while serving as an impartial county magistrate of integrity who cared for the people.

It was not until the 1980s that the books were translated into Chinese.

Chen Laiyuan, one of the first translators, writes in a preface to the new edition of the set that each of Van Gulik's books are independent but are also connected with each other, in the storytelling style of the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties, which made Van Gulik's novels unique compared to works created by other Sinologists.

The writing style is unique also because Van Gulik ingeniously combines his extensive Chinese historical and cultural knowledge with the techniques of Western mystery fiction to cover every aspect of Tang society, including its judiciary, working style and achievements of government officials, diplomacy, industry and commerce, education, culture, religion, customs and lives of common people, according to Chen.

In recent years, as the books have entered the public domain, more translations have come out. So far, the Judge Dee Mysteries have been translated into 29 languages and have been published in 38 countries and regions. They have also inspired film and TV play adaptations.

The first Chinese TV adaptation appeared in 1987 and starred Sun Chengzheng as Di, who was applauded for "walking directly out of Van Gulik's fiction".

Another TV adaptation in 2004, Shentan Di Renjie (Super Detective Di Renjie), was a hit during the prelivestreaming era. This adaptation, consisting of four seasons, created the extremely popular duo of Di Renjie and his head guard Li Yuanfang, the Chinese counterparts of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson, and coined the buzz phrase "Yuanfang, what do you think?".

Apart from the TV series, Hong Kong director Hark Tsui made three blockbuster movies based on Di in the 2010s, starring famous actors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, including Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Tony Leung, Wing Yeung, Li Bingbing and Ma Sichun.

The new adaptation recounts stories spanning Di's career in the different places he served as a county magistrate. The first season consists of nine cases, including The Chinese Gold Murders, The Lacquer Screen, and The Red Pavilion.

The adaptation does not strictly follow the original stories. Instead, scriptwriters have pieced stories from different books into a single case, says Jing Yu, chief scriptwriter of the drama.

In the new series, Di is presented as fearless and strong-minded, an idealist who is not afraid of power, ghosts or even fate, Jing says.

Another prominent change is the characterization of his wife, Cao An. In Van Gulik's books, Cao was not involved in solving the mysteries, but in the new drama her character is imbued with modern ideas like women's independence in finance and thinking, Jing says.

"The entire adaptation is based on eight characters: renshi wuchang, yili yongcun, meaning 'nothing is permanent, but justice and righteousness remain', which is the essence of both the books and the TV drama," Jing says.

To better capture the social landscape, conditions and customs of the Tang Dynasty, chief designer Zhao Hai says that his team did a lot of research, taking inspiration from paintings from the period, such as the murals at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province, and cultural relics unearthed at the Famen Temple, which was first built during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) and later became the royal temple of the Tang, in what is now Baoji in Shaanxi province.

Zhao and his team use red as the primary tone. Clothes and props like screens are also brightly colored and elaborately designed to capture the greatness of the Tang, he says.

"Audiences can see scenes of the different classes during the Tang era," Zhao says.

The series includes re-creations of the Tang capital Chang'an, and other cities like Luoyang and Penglai, royal palaces, the bedroom of Empress Wu Zetian, and the houses of senior officials and ordinary people, and the audience is treated images of China's diverse climates, from the desert in the arid northwest to bamboo and streams in the warm, humid south.