Qiu Xiaolong

Qiu Xiaolong’s work has been criticized by Chinese critics and readers who claim that his depiction of China is not real as his target audience is primarily Western readers. Some Chinese critics have complained that Qiu's content plays to orientalism that appeals to Western perceptions of China, utilizing cultural elements like folklore, ancient poetry, and cuisine. Critics also argue that Qiu's novels lack deductive reasoning and suspenseful enough plot to be considered a worthy detective story.

Qiu‘s themes often revolve around corruption in China. He has claimed that since the Communist party has taken over control of the media, the internet has become an important and effective way for people to speak out for justice in spite of constant censorship. He has argued that political reform in China would be impossible despite dramatic economic changes. His detective novels’ protagonist Inspector Chen often uncovers corruption while investigating case, which turns his idealism toward pessimism about the Chinese political system. He also has commented that his love of incorporating authentic regional Chinese food into his fiction is related to feelings of nostalgia, such as Marcel Proust famously does in Remembrance of Things Past; and that traditional food in present China still exists because of the food-safety scandals.

Qiu's first Inspector Chen novel, Death of a Red Heroine, garnered him the 2001 Anthony Award for Best First Novel by a mystery writer. and The Wall Street Journal ranked it as the third best political novel of all time. It was based in part on an actual sex and drug scandal from the early 1990s. Up to 2019, Qiu has written eleven Inspector Chen novels. The early novels are often occupied with legacies of the Cultural Revolution. The series has tried to keep up with the continuing changes in China. Qiu goes back regularly to visit, watches Chinese TV via satellite, and reads Chinese newspapers over the internet. The seventh novel, Don't Cry, Tai Lake touches on environmental contamination in modern China. Discussions and revelations on Chinese microblogs (Weibo) inspired some of the eighth novel, The Enigma of China. The scandals and downfall of the high Chinese official Bo Xilai formed a basis for the ninth novel, Shanghai Redemption.

Qiu enrolled as student at Washington University, and earned an M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. (1995) in Comparative Literature. From 1996-2005 he was an adjunct professor there. He and his family continue to live in St. Louis.

He has published nine crime-thriller/mystery novels set in Shanghai in the 1990s at the point when the People's Republic of China is making momentous changes. These include Death of a Red Heroine, which won the Anthony Award for best first novel in 2001, and A Loyal Character Dancer. All books feature Chief Inspector Chen Cao, a poetry-writing cop with integrity, and his sidekick Detective Yu. Alongside the plot, a major concern in the books is modern China itself. Each book features quotes from ancient and modern poets, Confucius, insights into Chinese cuisine, architecture, history, politics, herbology and philosophy as well as criminal procedure.

But in 1989, Qiu and fellow Chinese academics were stunned to watch TV reports of the severe government crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests. On July 4, Qiu was volunteering at a St. Louis fair, selling egg rolls as a fundraiser for Chinese student protesters, when he overheard a Voice of America broadcast describing him as "a published poet who supported the democratic movement in China." Subsequent signs suggested Qiu might have trouble if he returned to China: his sister was visited by the Shanghai police who told her "to tell me to behave myself"; and he learned that his latest poetry book, already at the galley stage, would not be published. So Qiu made the momentous choice to stay in the United States, and arranged for his wife to come a month later. The next year, his daughter Julia was born in St. Louis.

With Qiu's 1989 decision to stay in the United States for political reasons, publishing in China became difficult and he began writing mostly in English. After Qiu finished his Ph.D. in 1995, he visited China again after a long absence. He was impressed by the astounding social changes in the country, with newly-minted capitalists becoming darlings and old socialist norms fading. He tried to express some of this in a long poem “Don Quixote in China,” but was not very satisfied with the result. So he decided that a novel was better for describing "this type of dramatic change -- you can call it 'best of times, worst of times'". Never having written a novel before, and writing it in his second language of English, he latched onto the "detective story as a ready-made framework". Thus was born his protagonist Inspector Chen Cao, like Qiu a Chinese poet and translator from Shanghai who studied English literature, but also a policeman. Qiu says, "A cop needs to walk around, knock on people's doors and talk to various people. This particular cop is very helpful because he's an intellectual. He's not only going to catch a murderer; he also tries to think what's wrong historically, socially, culturally — in what kind of a context did this tragedy occur?"

In 1988, prior to a fellowship in the United States, he married his wife Wang Lijun.

In 1988, Qiu went on a Ford Foundation grant to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, to work on a book about T.S. Eliot. Eliot was born in St. Louis, and his grandfather founded the university.

At age 16, Qiu would have been sent to the countryside to be "re-educated", but was allowed to stay in Shanghai because he suffered from bronchitis. With schools closed, Qiu spent his time practicing Tai Chi in the park on the Bund; one day, he noticed people studying English on a park bench and decided to join them. This interest in English grew into his academic specialty: he got a B.A. in English from East China Normal University (1978), an M.A. in English Literature from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (1981), and was an Assistant and Associate Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (1986 – 1988).

Qiu began writing poems in Chinese in 1978, studying under the poet Bian Zhilin (卞之琳). While an academic in China, Qiu wrote poetry and scholarly articles, and translated work by the modernist poet T.S. Eliot into Chinese, including The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot has been a major influence on Qiu, both in his poetry and, more obliquely, in his detective novels. Eliot's "impersonal theory", as opposed to the romantic tradition, holds that the poet should not identify himself with the persona of the poem. Likewise, Inspector Chen of his novels has some of Qiu's traits but is not him, "embracing the tension between the impersonal and personal."

The Cultural Revolution began in 1966, and the family was branded as "black", part of the counter-revolutionary class. The Red Guard searched their home for two days, taking away anything regarded as decadent (jewelry, books, even electric fans); Qiu's mother had a nervous breakdown, from which she never really recovered. Qiu's father came home at times with bruises from being attacked at work. Then his father suffered an acute retinal detachment and was hospitalized. In order to be eligible for eye surgery, his father had to write a confession of guilt for his capitalist bourgeois sins; but it was not deemed sufficiently repentant. So the teenage Qiu re-wrote it, using melodramatic language and framing his father's capitalist sins as no accident. It seemed to work, as soon after his father received his surgery. Ironically, Qiu says, "The Red Guard’s approval of my father’s confession gave me some confidence in my writing".

Qiu Xiaolong (Chinese: 裘小龙 , Chinese pronunciation /tɕʰjoʊː ˌɕjɑʊˈlʊŋ/, American English pronunciation /ˈ tʃ uː ˌ ʃ aʊ ˈ l ɒ ŋ / ; born Shanghai, China, 1953) is an English-language poet, literary translator, crime novelist, critic, and academic, who has lived for many years in St. Louis, Missouri. He originally visited the United States in 1988 to write a book about T. S. Eliot, but following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he remained in America to avoid persecution by the Communist Party of China.

Qiu says his father was an "accidental capitalist": in the late 1940s the trading company his father worked for went bankrupt and as severance received a case of unsold perfume essence. His father taught himself how to make perfume and started a small perfume factory in Shanghai. The factory was transferred to the state in the mid-1950s, following the communist takeover of China, and thereafter his father was a manual laborer in a state-run factory.