We know that scholars in the past tend to write from daily life, and some of them want to reveal a certain social phenomenon. There is no doubt that every writer has his own writing purpose. “Midnight Beijing” tells the true story of the murder of a young British woman in Beijing in January 1937. For a long time thereafter, such murders have actually lingered in the last days of old China. . Therefore, this article wants to explore how Paul French’s “Midnight Beijing” reveals the influence of Chinese history and life background on that era.
“Midnight Beijing” reveals Beijing’s dark past in the 1930s. Paul’s work in The French at Midnight in Beijing, a non-fiction crime job, a fascinating murder was provided in China 75 years ago. This situation has yet to be resolved for a long time, indicating that there may be many other unresolved situations . Incredibly, this case has not been resolved for more than 70 years. Or it can be explained in another way. This case may not be resolved in the end, and it will not be resolved in the end. In an era filled with a series of unsolved cases, there are bound to be many dark sides that cannot be disclosed to the public. Take the details of the scandal of Bo Xilai, a former senior official of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee. It has actually turned from a political conspiracy into something evil.
The more concrete condition is that Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife, plots to have killed a British businessman named Neil Heywood, implying the severity of this murder. According to this, it is not hard to find that the Chinese authorities tend to protect themselves and a lot of dark issues about the Chinese authorities have not been known to the wide public. Also, the setting of this murder can be regarded as the mixture of elite lifestyle, high politics and murder, all of which seems to have influenced China to a large extent. At the same time, the context of this book is set at the Old City Wall area where Pamela Werner lived with her father, the Legation Quarter, as well as Beijing’s Dongbianmen watchtower where her body was found (Liu Zhongyin. 2019).
In this sense, it can be readily detected that the context of this book as well plays a key role in revealing the dark past of Beijing to some extent. What cannot be neglected is that Pamela Werner died on a frozen night in Peking, the weather of which is so terrible, adding a certain degree of horror and terror for the audience. On most occasions, the extreme weather appears to relate quite close to the occurrence of a lot of bad things. From the perspective of Paul French, the context of the world in the book attracts him to write the story, where one murder happens before all the other things going on.
Chinese people tend to have a lower status when compared with people from other foreign countries. Through describing the glitzy lives of foreigners living in Beijing 1937, Midnight in Peking appears to have presented a true story in a fun way. For instance, the author has written a scene in which both a British detective and a Chinese detective smoke together, but the photograph of that scene tends to only show the Chinese detective smoking. According to this, it is not hard to find that the global status of the British detective and the Chinese detective is different as a whole.
Or maybe it can be put in another way that the status of the Chinese detective seems to be a little lower than that of the British detective, which is right why only the Chinese detective smoking has been photographed rather than the British detective smoking. Another aspect that can help show the lower status of Chinese people is that when the police are hard to detect the details for the unsolved cases, they may directly propose that the crazed Chinese ritual killers are believed to be responsible for those cases. Apparently, the ones that should be blamed for those killings are the white community and they are right the ones that should be provided with the spotlight of blame. Concerning this, it is not hard to find that Chinese people are wronged to take the responsibility that should be taken by the white community.
Apart from that, Midnight in Peking shows that China in the 1930s is one that lacks of justice. The fact that the killer of Pamela Warner escaped from the spot and disappeared into the chaos of Japanese invasion and World War II can well show that the legal system of China at that time is not healthy and comprehensive enough to guarantee the public welfare. What’s worse, the killer of Pamela Warner has not been found upon this point as well. In this case, there is no doubt that the personal interests of Pamela Warner have not been protected and it is quite unjust for her to die in that way without being clearly investigated. As a result of a legal system that is not healthy and comprehensive, the wide public tend to be the victims of that system.
Another disappointing fact is that Pamela Warner’s mother, the wife of ETC Werner, as well died in a suspicious way. In fact, ETC Werner was a former British diplomat with a reputation as a difficult and moody man (Jeffrey Wasserstrom. 2012), which may lead the audience to wonder whether the death of the wife of ETC Werner died because of ETC Werner had offended someone while serving as a diplomat. After all, the position of being a diplomat has to interact with a lot of people both at home and abroad, during which he may offend some people in an unexpected or even unknown way. Due to the higher incidence of murder, fear and rumor spread through a close-knit international community already made nervous by Japanese troops, poised to invade. According to this, the personal interests of the wide public will as well ruin out of the increasing incidence of uninvestigated cases.
In addition, the life of the wide public is hard to be protected in China in the 1930s. The death of Pamela Werner can well suggest that the life of ordinary people