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SAX_ROHMER

                                             July 22, 2015

                                             A version of this was
                                             published here:

                                               http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/07/26/1405780/-Chinatown-Tour
                                                
And in 1913, five years after the novel "Blindfolded",     
there was the publication of the first of Sax              
Rohmer's books about the super-villain Fu Manchu:          
                                                           
    " [...] Why was Sir Crichton Davey murdered?  Because,
    had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the light it
    would have shown him to be the only living Englishman who
    understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.
    [...]  And this is only one phase of the devilish
    campaign.  The others I can merely surmise."

    "But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted
    genius controls this awful secret movement?"

    "Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline,
    high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face
    like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes
    of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel
    cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one
    giant intellect, with all the resources of science past
    and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a
    wealthy government--which, however, already has denied
    all knowledge of his existence.  Imagine that awful
    being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
    the yellow peril incarnate in one man."


Sax Rohmer dined-out on this Yellow Peril for many years,
and of course, and did not neglect Chinatown as a setting,
though in his case it was the the British variety,
Limehouse.  His "Tales of Chinatown" were published circa 1916:


    "Unlike its sister colony in New York, there are no show
    places in Limehouse. The visitor sees nothing but mean streets
    and dark doorways.  The superficial inquirer comes away
    convinced that the romance of the Asiatic district has no
    existence outside the imaginations of writers of fiction. Yet
    here lies a secret quarter, as secret and as strange, in its
    smaller way, as its parent in China which is called the Purple
    Forbidden City."

Sax Rohmer gives some advice for anyone in the audience
interested in setting up shop as a Western imperialist:


    "One Chinaman more or less does not make any very great
    difference to the authorities responsible for maintaining law
    and order in Limehouse.  Asiatic settlers are at liberty to
    follow their national propensities, and to knife one another
    within reason. This is wisdom. Such recreations are allowed,
    if not encouraged, by all wise rulers of Eastern peoples."


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