GoodReads meta-data is 560 pages rated 4.22 by 1,303 litizens.
Genre: krimi
Verdict: Incomprehensible. (OK with me.)
Contemporary Beijing detective Chopsticks has been exiled to remote Tibet for prying too deeply into corruption in the northern capital. He rather likes the sparse vastness on the roof of the world after the polluted morass of Beijing. By the invisible and mystical communication (is it those singing bowls?) he is summoned somehow by someone to an even more isolated area where orphan children have been murdered. After a while it diverts into Indiana Jones country without either the wit or humour of that adventurer, and becomes the quest for the jade basket. NBA?
The book begins on the quest and makes few concessions to the reader. If you don’t know what a ‘knob’ is, or a ‘boot squad,’ you’ll get no help from the author. The author’s hand is leaden in describing the havoc wrecked on this ancient land and people by the Chinese. Bad Chinese! They have dug wells, paved roads, installed generators! What’s worse is that they sleep on beds! The Buddhist lamas who sleep on the ground know that the earth does like this interference. Reveal! The lamas are greener than thou; they are Super-Duper Greenies!
Because of that, wherever he goes the locals — Tibetans, Kazakhs, Uyghurs — recoil from him – he is Chopsticks after all. China pays little lip service to multiculturalism, and these people are largely non-people to quote the Great Helmsman. The rapine, murder, and disappearances are many, but cloaked in a care-speak mimicked from the McKinsey-speak of the West. Children are enrolled in residential schools, not stolen from their parents. They are taught life-skills, not forbidden to speak their ethnic language. Shepherds become shareholders in a company, not have their sheep confiscated. Nomadic herdsmen are given houses, not denied the right of movement to follow the seasons with their herds. As to their herds, see the preceding example of sheep. It is ageless tyranny cloaked in managementese.
While wandering around for hundreds of pages with no apparent effect, Chopsticks encounters a screenwriter’s collection of oddbods, a couple of Americans who say ‘Howdy’ on cue, a Kazakh warrior, a comely native woman who is part Tibetan, a mad man, a smuggler, a monk in disguise, some secret archeologists, a mystic, some rogue Chinese soldiers, assorted outlaws, a camel with more personality than some of the aforementioned characters, and so on, and on without ever quite getting to the point while collecting this cast from a Fellini movie. Pitted against the characters are the Public Security Forces of the PRC, the PLA of the PRC, and the local contractors with their managementese. Go on, figure that out, because I cannot.
I kept flipping the pages with less and less interest and enthusiasm, but having sunk costs, continued to the (welcome) end. It felt good when I quit. Conclusion: Chinese bad, very bad, and then worse. Tibetans victims. But then so is everyone else.
I chose it for the exotic locale and it has that aplenty. Disappointed that there are no monks chanting. We heard some of that in Darwin a decade ago and I found it quite…. Well, I found time passed without me being aware of it.