This week: A Visit to Asian Mystery First Visit Edited by: Sleigh Bells Adore ♥  
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This newsletter is taking a very different turn than the last issue I released to you dear readers. For this issue, I thought we could take a journey into the Orient and explore Asian mystery writers and the master detective stories from various countries in each issue. For this issue, we will take a look at China. I am not a literate as I should be but please bear with me on this spotty trek.
The author from China that we are looking at for this issue is the great master mystery and detective writer, Cheng Xiaoqing who created Huo Sang "the Eastern Sherlock Holmes. He is called "The Grand Master" of twentieth-century Chinese detective fiction and he lived and thrived in his craft during the glory days of this genre. As we moved forward into this issue, I hope we embark on an intriguing exploration of mystery and murder.
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For this newsletter, I wanted to do something, well, not as lame as the last attempt. I think that you will enjoy the respite from looking at the mysterious places in the world to visiting through literature, mystery writing from Asia and more specifically, from Shanghai, China. The author we are reviewing is none other than the great "The Grand Master" of twentieth-century Chinese detective fiction, Cheng Xiaoqing, who created the famous detective, Huo Sang, who was called "the Eastern Sherlock Holmes", and was known for the Huo Sang series. Let's see more about this prolific writer of Chinese detective work.
Cheng Xiaoqing was born in a poverty-stricken family in Shanghai, China on August 2, 1893. Cheng was the eldest of three siblings, a brother and a sister younger than him. Cheng’s father initially worked in a textile store which closed later, forcing him to sell newspapers in order to feed his family. By 1903, Cheng's father had died, leaving the family without his presence and in great poverty. His mother, a seamstress, continued on she had to lean on her eldest son to help provide for the family when he was just 15 years old. By 1915, Cheng was married and had a new bride . He moved his new bride and the rest of the family to Suzhou, where he accepted a teaching position to teach Wu, which is the Shanghaianese dialect. While there teaching, he met a teacher who taught him to speak English.
By the age of 16, he became an apprentice in a watchmaker shop called Hope Brothers and Co. in Shanghai, where he borrowed books influential books and being taught horror and romance fictions from a friend in writing. This helped to influence him greatly in his writing. Cheng took night classes to learn English, which allowed him to read foreign novels by writers like Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas. He later he came across Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Shi Wu Bao Newspaper. This inspired him to write detective stories of his own. Cheng Xiaoqing published his first detective story titled "The Shadow in the Lamplight" in The Merry Magazine in 1914. He later entered this piece in a Shanghai newspaper contest and won.
Cheng became the editor of a magazine in 1946 called the The New Detective but shut down due to lack of story sources. He died of a stomach illness in 1976 after being denounced in his country. This is a sad ending to such a prolific life but this does not take away from his body of work. His first story "The Shadow in the Lamplight" was published by Shanghai Newspaper when he was twenty-one years old and it was well received by its readership.
Later, he started to publish more famous detective stories such as "Cat's Eye"; "The Shoe"; "The Other Paragraph"; "The Odd Tenant" among others, which were all collected in the Huo Sang Series. In addition, Cheng Xiaoqing also wrote detective novels such as The South-China Swallow (Jiang Nanyan) and Blood Fingerprint.
So, we learned that he created the first Asian detective in his mystery stories and his name was Huo Sang. His work is not as well known as it could be but if you find interest in Asian detective stories, you might find a whole new world of intrigue to excite and incite your reading. |
For this month's Editor's Picks, we've got a few good submissions for this issue...so without further adieu, let's view some of the selections from some authors in this category for your reading enjoyment.
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#2275978 by Not Available. |
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#2273913 by Not Available. |
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From something good, something bad will come. But from a tragedy, something good did come.
#2274238 by Dr Gonzo  |
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
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For this month's Ask and Answer section, I don't think that I received any questions a bout the content I presented in the issue.  but I deserved that one.
So, I am hoping that with this issue and the interesting ideas and facts that were presented are enough to get a few responses back this time. 
The question was what was the name of the character that author Cheng Xiaoqing made famous in his Hao Sang series?
The first five people who answer will receive a MB of their choice in the next issue.
Thank you for reading this month's issue...till next time! |
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Mystery: July 20, 2022 Issue [#11467]
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