[PREV - CHINATOWN_HONOLULU]    [TOP]

CHANG_APANA

                                                    July 22, 2015
                                               Rev: October  8, 2016

                                             A version of this was
                                             published here:

                                               http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/07/26/1405780/-Chinatown-Tour

There's a recent book about the Charlie Chan phenomena,
"Charlie Chan" by Yunte Huang, published in 2010,

The Charlie Chan character was apparently based on an
*actual* Chinese police detective in Hawaii, a man named
Chang Apana.  The story goes that Earl der Biggers had
read about Chang Apana in a Hawaiian newspaper, and
decided to include a Chinese detective in the Hawaiian
novel he'd been working on--

Trying to verify the details of this story, Huang
found that he could not locate the newspaper article
der Biggers referred to, so there's a minor mystery
about how der Biggers had actually heard of Apana.

           The first theory that occured to me:
                                                         
           Maybe Biggers read about Apana somewhere that        
           wasn't that respectable, e.g. a "True Detective"     
           pulp                                                 
                                                                
           A friend suggests it might've been someone          
           else's idea, like an agent of publicist-- that     
           seems reasonable: an author might be reluctant     
           to say "uh... my agent told me to".                
                                                              
           It could be some simple mistake, of course:       
           Biggers was in the library one day,
           flipped through a few different newspapers,
           and later imagined that the Hawaiian story
           must've been from the Hawaiian paper,
           when really it was from somewhere else. 


The actual Chang Apana, turns out to be nothing like a
Charlie Chan: Apana was a much less cerebral figure,
known for doing things like raiding illegal gambling
parlours, storming in the doorway and cracking a
bull-whip to control the room.


--------
[NEXT - MOVING_CHAN]