‘All the appearances of causalities in this world, therefore, are to be seen like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, or a flash of lightning.’

POSTSCRIPT

The Shadow of the Empire is conceived as being written by Inspector Chen during Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder, which was also published by Severn House.

This novel is based on a real Tang Dynasty murder case, which involved a beautiful, talented, and luscious poetess Yu Xuanji (844–871). Because of the sensational, salacious details of the murder case, it has later been made into stories, movies, and TV series in China with a variety of interpretations and reinterpretations. The case was recorded only in a none too reliable, tabloid-style book titled Little Tablets from the Three Rivers, with scant details.

Inspired by the real historical case, Robert van Gulik wrote a gong’an detective novel titled Poets and Murder in the well-known Judge Dee series, and when the novel was published in the United States, it came out with a different title: The Fox Magic Murder.

In the postscript of the novel, van Gulik wrote, ‘Judge Dee (Dee Renjie) was a historical person; he lived from 610 to 700 AD, and was a brilliant detective and famous statesman of the Tang dynasty. The adventures related in the present novel are entirely fictitious, however, and the other characters introduced imaginary, with the exception of the poetess Yoolan. For her I took as model the famous poetess Yu Hsuanchi [Yu Xuanji], who lived from ca. 844 to ca. 871. She was indeed a courtesan, who after a checkered career ended her life on the scaffold, accused of having beaten a maidservant to death; but the question of whether she was guilty or not has never been solved. For more details about her career and her work, the reader is referred to my book Sexual Life in Ancient China (E. J. Brill, Leyden, 1961), pp. 172–175. The poem quoted in the present novel was actually written by her.’

A couple of interesting points about Robert van Gulik’s rendition in his Poets and Murder first.

Judge Dee and Empress Wu were active around the same historical period, but Xuanji wasn’t until quite a number of years later. Van Gulik might not have been able to resist the temptation of putting the most well-known ‘judge’ and the most celebrated poetess/murderer together in one of the most sensational murder cases in the history of the Tang Dynasty.

Nor can I resist the temptation.

Also, ‘Judge’ and ‘Magistrate’ are the conventional mistranslations or misrepresentations in English regarding the Chinese official positions. In China’s governmental system, there was no separation of the executive and the judicial powers. Dee Renjie, for instance, actually served in a number of high-ranking governmental positions in his prolonged official career, such as prime minister or provincial governor, exercising executive power most of the time, though from time to time he also held trials like a judge in the judicial capacity.