An introduction to Magistrate Zhu of The Balance of Heaven and Earth and Philip Ye of The Willow Woman.   In 1976, BBC TV showed a Japanese series dubbed into English entitled The Water Margin. The series was loosely based on one of the four great novels of Chinese literature, Outlaws of the Marsh, set […]

In April 1920, suffering from overwork, the author, playwright and former journalist Earl Derr Biggars obeyed his doctor’s orders and arrived in Waikiki, Hawaii for an extended holiday. When checking in to the beachfront cottage, he asked for the key, only to be told, “What key?” He had just discovered that in 1920s Waikiki no […]

In 1949, while Political Advisor to his country’s Military Mission in Japan, the Dutch diplomat and scholar Robert van Gulik independently published a translation of an 18th Century Chinese detective novel by an anonymous author entitled ‘Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee’ (Di Gong’an). Unable to conduct his usual scholarly researches due to the pressures of […]