Books: When Red Is Black By Qiu Xiaolong

(Drivebycuriosity) - Mao`s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s harmed many lives. The wounds - and the conflicts between the Red Guards and their victims - have been felt for decades. The novel "When Red is Black" by Qiu Xiaolong, set in Shanghai in the early 1990, tells a lot about that ( amazon).

The plot follows 2 detective inspectors who investigate the murder of a woman, who has once been a member of the Red Guards. The victim was seen later as a dissident for publishing a biographical novel, which makes the case very political.

The  whodunit plot is slow and not really important. But I enjoyed the novel anyway and I learned a lot about China & Shanghai in the 1990s. 

The metropolis had been the "Pearl of the East" in the swinging 1920s & 1930 and started to return to her former glamour. The flood of peasants - emigrating to the again prosperous city - created a challenging housing situation. Xiaolong described lively how people lived in the very crammed building complexes, how they communicated with their neighbors and how they got surveilled by the authorities.

The detectives had to deal with the complex & very dense neighborhood systems, where the victim had lived, but also with their political superiors, which made their work even more challenging.

Xiaolong describes the peculiar mixture between socialism & fledgling capitalism, the expanding gab between social climbers and those left behind and the conflict of Mao believers and Western minded. The author covers the housing situation, medical care, salon dancers, wjo turned into "little secretaries", struggling small businesses, Shanghai`s unique traditional architecture, Confucius`wisdom and much more. This all is served with a dry humor & some poetry and spiced with frequent descriptions of popular Shanghai meals.

The book is the third of a series and the most political so far. Qiu Xiaolong was born and raised in Shanghai but he left China in 1988 and went to the US where he lives now (wikipedia). According to Wikipedia his decision not to come back to China was influenced by the  Tiananmen Square event from 1989. He couldn`t have published a political critical novel like this in his home country. I plan to read more books of this fascinating series.