Murder in the Maloo: A Tale of Old Shanghai
Dr Paul Bevan
Tuesday 12 November 2024, 17:00
Synopsis
Sensational adventure stories were all the rage in Shanghai in the early 20th century and Murder in the Maloo:
A Tale of Old Shanghai represents an excellent example of this most popular of popular fiction categories. The
book was written in the early 1920s by two authors, Qi Fanniu and Zhu Dagong and is set in the years 1878
and 1879. Translated into English and published here for the first time, this historical novel tells of the exploits
of Ma Yongzhen, a martial artist and gangster who was ruthlessly murdered by rival gangs. The story takes the
reader into the world of the Shanghai gangster and the opium dens, courtesan houses and teashops they
frequented. It is very loosely based on a true story, as Ma Yongzhen was in fact an historical figure, who rode
the horses of his native Shandong province and walked the streets of Shanghai in late Qing dyansty China. The
book follows Ma’s rivalry with local gangland bosses, the unscrupulous Scrofulous Bai and the ruthless opium
fiend and murderous mastermind, Cheng Zimin. For much of the story, Ma Yongzhen appears to be
unstoppable in his quest to dominate the Shanghai underworld, until a dastardly plan is laid to attack him
unawares. In addition to translating the novel, Paul Bevan has written an illuminating introduction and an
essay that vividly describes the city of Shanghai as Ma Yongzhen would have known it.
Speaker Bio
Dr Paul Bevan is a Sinologist, historian, researcher and literary translator. From 2020 to 2023 he worked as
Departmental Lecturer in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford. Before that, from
2018 to 2020, he was Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His research
focuses equally on the visual arts and literature, and concerns the impact of Western art and literature on
China during the Republican Era and the late Qing dynasty, particularly with regard to periodicals and
magazines. Paul’s first book, A Modern Miscellany – Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the
Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938, Leiden: Brill, 2015, was hailed as 'a major contribution to modern Chinese
studies’; his second, ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’: Modern Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during
Shanghai’s Jazz Age was published by Brill in 2020. John A. Crespi’s review calls attention to the translations
imbedded in the book: ‘Featured within the book’s densely informative analyses are translations of four
modernist short stories. [These] in themselves contribute significantly to modern Chinese literary studies…’.
