Mr Moto Goes to the Movies

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Cinema, Creative Writing, Inter-ethnic relations, Literary & Linguistics, Popular Culture

The popularity of Earl Derr Biggers’ Chinese detective creation Charlie Chan triggered a demand for this kind of Asian–American mystery crime fiction, paving the way for a spinoff into a profitable movie series. Biggers’ early death in 1933 after publishing just five Chan books left a void in fiction that other writers were not slow to try to fill. Encouraged by the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, which had serialised the Charlie Chan books, author John P Marquand created his notion of an Asian “detective” hero who triumphs in white society, Mr Moto. Mr Moto is Japanese, quiet, small and seemingly meek of nature, like Charlie Chan he roams the globe solving crimes and exposing murderers. Unlike Chan he uses ju-jitsu as well as brains to overcome and apprehend the bad guys.

Marquand eventually completed six novels centring around the Japanese secret agent/sleuth – Your Turn, Mr. Moto, Thank You, Mr. Moto, Think Fast, Mr. Moto, Mr. Moto is So Sorry, Last Laugh, Mr. Moto (all in the 1930s) and Right You Are, Mr. Moto (1957). 20th Century Fox bought the films rights (as they had with the Charlie Chan novels), and casting Hungarian-American actor Peter Lorre as the Japanese spy Moto🅐, rapidly made eight publicly well-received B-features in two years – Think Fast, Mr. Moto, Thank You, Mr. Moto, Mr. Motor’s Gamble, Mr. Moto Takes a Chance, Mysterious Mr. Moto, Mr. Moto’s Last Warning, Mr. Moto in Danger Island and Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (the series was variously set in Hawaii, Mongolia, Peking, Cambodia/Siam, Egypt, Devil’s Island, Puerto Rico, at sea, San Francisco and other locations in the US).

Your Turn, Mr. Moto: Book and movie The film is only loosely based on the original novel, retaining only some of the key characters like American Tom Nelson and Prince Tung, introduces new characters and makes the quest for the ancient Chinese scrolls a more central element than in the novel where it is subordinated to the question of Japo–Chinese relations🅑.

Apart from some overlap of titles there are big differences between the books and the movies. One of the most conspicuous is Mr Moto’s presence in the stories. In Marquand’s novels, the character of Mr Moto goes missing for large parts of the books (though he’s always actively working towards his objectives “off-stage”)…meanwhile attention switches to the male (American) protagonist who finds himself in trouble of some kind or other🅒. Moto returns to intervene at a crucial moment, the American is saved and finds redemption (which is the key to the plot). In the films by contrast, Mr Moto tends to “fill the screen and animate the whole series”. In the books Moto is “I.A. Moto”, a secret agent working for the imperial Japanese government, but in the films he is presented as “Kentaro Moto” (as his printed business card states), an Interpol agent. Moreover the two mediums craft quite different types of crime stories, the novels were international espionage adventures which Hollywood turned into formulaic detective stories on the screen, [Schneider, Michael A. “Mr. Moto: Improbable International Man of Mystery.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 22, no. 1, 2015, pp. 7–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43898402. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024].

Marquand’s No Hero (1935)

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Mr Moto’s talents don’t stop at crime solving. He’s also a polymath, polyglot, art connoisseur, a graduate of Stanford University, amateur archaeologist and importer–exporter on the side. In some of these roles he demonstrates his special flair for effecting disguise, a ploy he uses to deflect suspicion from himself, blending in to exotic locales while undertaking dangerous spying assignments [‘Observations on Film Art: Charlie, Meet Kentaro’, Kristin Thompson & David Bordwell; David Bordwell’s website on cinema, 16-Mar-2007, www.davidbordwell.net; “‘Asian Detectives’. An Overview’, Philippa Gates, Crime Culture, www.crimeculture.com].

Mr Moto in clownface (“Mr. Moto’s Last Warning”)

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The Charlie Chan nexus: With two highly bankable screen detectives at its disposal Fox recognised the value of cross-promotion when the opportunity arose. The 1938 Moto movie Mr. Moto’s Gamble was originally meant to be a Warner Oland-starring Charlie Chan feature, however Oland’s ill-health and untimely death squashed those plans. Fox substituted Mr. Moto’s Gamble for the canned Chan movie and the producers kept Oland’s co-star Keye Luke in his No. 1 son role opposition Lorre this time, even allowing Mr Moto to politely inquire with Lee Chan (Luke) as to his honourable father’s health.

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Moto, genial but ruthless: Irrespective of the connexions and references between Charlie Chan and Kentaro Moto, Lorre’s off-centre sense of humour ensures that on screen Moto is “no Chan clone”. Although Moto, like Chan, employs logic and deduction in his policing methods and is quiet, meek exceedingly polite in public dealings (and a milk drinker no less!), he is also very much a man of action, disposing of physical threats to him with his uncompromising ju-jitsu prowess…in the case of the story’s murderer, once revealed, Moto customarily dispenses with the need for trial, having no qualms about liquidating him with 007-like utter ruthlessness, something Chan with his high moral code would never contemplate (Gates).

Moto’s alpha side (“Think Fast, Mr. Moto”)

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Mr Moto‘s personal side is as shadowy as his profession, to the audience it’s a blank slate. He has no family and no love life and his only companion is his cat. The only hint of a possible romance is his liaison with Lela (or Lotus) Liu (Lotus Long) in Think Fast, Mr. Moto and Mysterious Mr. Moto, but she turns out to be an agent like him and their attachment seems to be more a matter of working together to solve the case. Moto is a “lone wolf” when investigating cases, working solo without assistants. Occasionally he does ally with a self-appointed sidekick—usually a naive or gormless American or English idiot—who sometimes inadvertently unearths crucial evidence but as always it’s Mr Moto who unravels the mystery.

”Them Nipponese sure are peculiar birds”: Mr Moto, a Japanese man in 1930s America, is inevitably exposed in the stories to the casual racism of various people he meets, but the prejudice he cops seems more overt than the more subtle racist slurs DI Chan is subjected to. Possibly, this was a reflection of growing pro-Chinese feelings in America then in the wake of unremitting Japanese aggression against China in Manchuria. Moto, unfazed by the jibes, manages to turn the racism back on the perpetrators without their realising it…though he speaks perfectly fluent English he sometimes pretends to indulge their expectations of the stereotypical Asian: “Ah, so!!! Suiting you?”, he mocks in his singsong repartee manner 🅓 (Thompson & Bordwell).

Versatile Mr Moto turns his hand (and voice) to ventriloquism (Mr. Moto’s Last Warning)

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What makes Lorre’s star turn as the mysterious Japanese secret agent so good is that he plays the role absolutely tongue-in-cheek and with considerable charm [‘A Guide to the Mr Moto Films’, Charles P. Mitchell, Classic Images, www.webarchive.org]. Although I wonder if Moto’s ever-smiling, ultra-polite, insufferable smugness with gleaming teeth while correcting lesser mortals as to the error of the misconceptions didn’t start to grate with some movie-watchers after a while?

“Mr Moto…the foxiest detective of them all!!!“

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As the series continued the film storylines and situations predictably became more formulaic. After eight features Peter Lorre called it quits, seeking a release from his Mr Moto contract. The Moto sub-genre was still very popular at the box office but it’s probable that Lorre’s concern was that he was being typecast again as Moto (having previously been stereotyped as a psycho killer), which he felt was limiting his choices of different parts (Gates).

Footnote: Where did Marquand get his inspiration for the character of Mr Moto? Marquand undertook a research tour of the Orient in 1934 to gather material for his Asian detective project. While in Japan he aroused the suspicions of a short, exceedingly polite police detective who started shadowing the American author on his journeys. Eventually the Japanese detective, realising that Marquand was no threat to the country, stopped tailing him. This chance encounter provided Marquand with the spark for the character of Moto.

Pearl Harbour effectively killed off novels for the American market about Japanese spies but Marquand did write a final “Mr Moto” after a lapse of nearly 20 years: a Cold War espionage thriller “Right You Are” with American agents hunting down communist infiltrators in Tokyo 
🅐  leaving the series and Lorre open to retrospective criticism for engaging in “Yellowface”, although Moto hasn’t attracted the ire of modern critics to the same extent as the Charlie Chan series has for the steady stream of white actors who have portrayed the Chinese super-detective up until as recently as 1981 – see previous post ‘Charlie Chan, Murder Mystery-Buster Extraordinaire: A Positive Asian Stereotype or an Oriental “Uncle Tom”?’, (29 October 2024) 
 
🅑 Marquand’s focus in the books is on the clash of cultures, European/American vs Oriental (Japanese/Chinese), to a much greater degree that the films   

🅒 the first book, Your Turn, Mr. Moto, was originally titled No Hero, a reference to another character, not Moto

🅓 Mr. Moto Takes a Chance

Charlie Chan, Murder Mystery-Buster Extraordinaire: A Positive Asian Stereotype or an Oriental “Uncle Tom”?

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Cinema, Inter-ethnic relations, Memorabilia, Popular Culture

One of the favourite characters of the American moviegoing public in the 1930s and 1940s was the affable but inscrutable Chinese detective from Honolulu, Charlie Chan. Some 44 black and white (mostly B) movies were made by Fox Film Corp (20th Century Fox) and later Monogram Pictures spanning the years 1931 and 1949. Budgeted at $200,000 to $250,000 per film Chan pictures regularly returned a million dollars in profit for Fox (‘China and the Chinese in Popular Film: From Fu Manchu to Charlie Chan: 9781350985681, 9781786730640’, (2017), www.dokumen.pub). Bargain-basement Monogram made their Chans for much less than this.

Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935): Warner Oland with a very young Rita Hayworth (billed under her original name, Rita Cansino)

The producers used three non-Chinese actors to fill the eponymous role over the course of the series – a Swede, Warner Oland and two Americans, Sidney Toler and Roland Winters. This recourse to non-Asian white actors presuming to play Asians fuelled vitriolic criticism much later (and rightly so), but back around circa 1940 this was what Hollywood got away with without discernible objection or diminution of the character’s popularity🅐. Before the Fox series started up in 1931 there had been three earlier (1920s) representations of Charlie Chan on screen, two of which were played by Japanese actors.

The House Without a Key ~ the first Charlie Chan novel

It all starts in Honolulu: The life of the literary “Charlie Chan” begins with a midwestern United States writer on holiday in 1920. Earl Derr Biggers, who had already had a measure of success as an author, was relaxing on a beach in Hawaii when he concocted the bare bones of a murder mystery. As for the character of “Chan” himself, Biggers stitched together composite attributes based on what he learned about a brace of real-life Chinese-Hawaiian detectives𖣓. The end-product was Biggers’ novel The House Without a Key, the first Charlie Chan detective fiction, published in 1925. The author explained how he envisaged the character of the brilliant fictional oriental master-sleuth: “I had seen movies depicting and read stories about Chinatown and wicked Chinese villains, and it struck me that a Chinese hero, trustworthy, benevolent, and philosophical, would come nearer to presenting a correct portrayal of the race” (Barbara Gregorich, ‘Earl Derr Biggers’, Harvard Magazine, 03-Jan-2000). Biggers’ intention was an anti-racist creation, an antidote to the villainous yellow peril persona commonly constructed for the screen (as typified by the archetypal Dr Fu Manchu).

Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936): Oland with Boris Karloff

The first four films of the Charlie Chan series including the first in the Fox franchise featuring Warner Oland, Charlie Chan Carries On, are all lost (destroyed in a vault fire), so of the remaining films in the sub-genre, critics generally rate these among the best: Charlie Chan at the Opera, Charlie Chan in London, Charlie Chan at the Circus,Charlie Chan in Shanghai, Charlie Chan at the Olympics, (all Oland); Charlie Chan in Honolulu, Castle in the Desert, Charlie Chan at Treasure Island, Dead Men Tell (all Toler). The quality dropped off alarmingly the longer the series went, especially after Monogram, the “Poverty Row” studio, with its low-budget approach and inferior production values, took charge of the films🅑.

Sidney Toler as DI Chan in his trademark cream suit and matching Panama hat

Pseudo-Confucian wisdom: One of the standard tropes of the CC films is Charlie’s habitual indulgence in oriental fortune cookie-style aphorisms, intoned deadpan in his characteristically truncated syntax. Some of the more memorable ones include “Accidents can happen, if planned that way”; “A soft word does not scratch the tongue”; “Caution sometime mother of suspicion”; “Tongue often hang man quicker than rope”; “Mind, like parachute, only function when open”; “Fish in sea like flea on dog – always present, but difficult to catch”; “Grain of sand in eye may hide mountain”; “If you want wild bird to sing, do not put him in cage”; “Innocent act without thinking, guilty always make plans”; “Motive like string, tied in many knots, end may be in sight but hard to unravel”; “Opinion like tea leaf in hot water – both need time for brewing”; “Optimist only see only doughnut, pessimist see hole”; ”Person who ask riddle should know answer”; “Talk cannot cook rice”; “Waiting for tomorrow is waste of today”; “When money talk, few are deaf”; “Bad alibi like dead fish – cannot stand test of time”. Another stock phrase of Chan’s, oft-repeated in every film, is “Contradiction, please!” Followed by observations such as “Case still open like swinging gate”.

Roland Winters, Keye Luke & Victor Sen Yung together in The Feathered Serpent (1948)

Sons No. 1, 2 and 3: The honourable Inspector Chan is a family man with multiple offspring (the Chan clan numbering 14 at the last count!), but it is his three eldest sons, #1, #2 and #3, that mostly get to share the spotlight with their father, and even play a role (sometimes inadvertently) in the solving of the particular case in question, whilst irritating the bejesus out of Chan. In most of the Warner Oland films Charlie is paired with Son #1, Lee Chan (played by Keye Luke). In the Sidney Toler films Chan is joined by Son #2, Jimmy (portrayed by Victor Sen Yung). By Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944) Son #3, Tommy (Benson Fong) is on board, opposite Toler in several of the Chan movies. After the CC baton is passed to Roland Winters in the late Forties, Keye Luke🅒 returns as Son #1 for the last few entries in the sequence. The favourite sons act as foils to Charlie, emphasising the generation gap between themselves and their “Pop” by demonstrating how thoroughly as Chinese-Americans they have assimilated into the dominant white culture (Tino Balio, “Balio on Charlie Chan ‘Grand Design’”, Some critical perspectives on Charlie Chan, (University of Missouri – St Louis) www.umsl.edu). African-American actor Mantan Moreland injected moments of comedy relief (usually working in unison with one of the numbered sons), appearing in 15 of the later mystery whodunnits in the 1940s as Chan’s jittery chauffeur Birmingham Brown.

The Chinese Cat (1944): Charlie Chan team # 2 – Toler, Fong and Moreland together

What made Charlie Chan so popular with Waspish America?🅓 Chan’s portrayal in a positive light (as intended by Biggers) made him something of a novelty for white audiences accustomed to negative depictions of Asians on the screen. Chan was different, it seemed incongruous, here was a rotund, humorous Chinese man who held the senior position of police inspector and the obvious respect of his peers. Endowed with Sherlock Holmes-like acute powers of observation, he solves baffling crimes that no one else can (Elaine Kim ‘Images of Asians in Anglo-American Literature’, Some critical perspectives on Charlie Chan, (University of Missouri – St Louis) www.umsl.edu). Another appealing factor was the movies’ variety of settings…though based in Honolulu, the usual format sees globe-trotting Charlie Chan following the murder trail to a host of exotic international locations—London, Paris, Monte Carlo, Río, Egypt, Shànghâi, Panama, Mexico, Berlin, etc—for a spot of outreach sleuth work. The regular changes of locale/scenery helped to maintain the interest of moviegoers.

Charlie Chan follows the crime trail everywhere, even to the Berlin Olympic Games

Is Chan a transitional figure bridging the divide in cultures?: The Charlie Chan persona has certainly polarised critics in America. Some see the character as having been a positive for changing the perception of Asian and specifically Chinese people. Hitherto American audiences were exposed to the notion of Orientals as “heathen Chinee”, denizens of the squalid opium den or as nondescript types who worked solely in damp, dingy laundries. Det. Inspector Chan is a very different Oriental, his attributes, intelligence, diligence, good humour and loyalty, are qualities much valued in the American cultural ethos. In this context the Chinese-Hawaiian shamus is seen as a good stereotype, countering the bad Oriental stereotype so long ingrained in US cinema. (Sandra Hawley, ‘The Importance of Being Charlie Chan’, www.enotes.com).

Still from Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) (photo: 20th Century Fox/Photofest)

Charlie Chan as “showcase” representative of a “model minority”: Other critics take a more trenchant view of why Americans of the day so readily accepted Charlie Chan. They see Chan as one-dimensional, subservient, kowtowing to white authority, merely a subject for satire. Even when he is demonstrating his superior intellectual powers, meek of demeanour Chan is self-effacing and apologetic (“so sorry to disagree”), he never challenges the power imbalance in the Caucasians’ favour🅔. Culturally assimilated, Chan knows his place in white American society as the “benevolent Other”…always stoical, he cheerfully accepts his assigned status (Shilpa Dave et al, East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture, and Jeffrey Crean, Fear of Chinese Power: An International History, (both cited in Wikipedia); Kim, ‘Images of Asians’). Some critiques see the Chan character as an emasculated figure, a pernicious racial stereotype blocking the articulation of “more credible, self-determined enunciations of Asian American identity” (‘The Hardboiled and the Haunted: Race, Masculinity and the Asian American Detective’, Calvin McMillin, (2012), www.academia.edu). Philippa Gates sees Chan as “existing in a liminal space between Chinese and American culture symbolized by his home: the mid-Pacific territory of Hawaii” (Philippa Gates, “‘Asian’ Detectives. An Overview”, Crime Culture, www.crimeculture.com).

Sky Dragon (1949): the final film in the Charlie Chan series

Resuscitating “Yellowface“ in a more racial diverse and inclusive era: The Charlie Chan films worked for their time and cultural context. Attempts to revive the Charlie Chan mystique in remakes a generation later with The Return of Charlie Chan (1973), and the lame Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981), still committing the sin of casting Caucasian actors in the title role, misfired badly and were called out for their cultural insensitivity and political incorrectness🅕. The Curse of the Dragon Queen provoked a vociferous backlash from Asian-Americans who labelled Chan “a yellow Uncle Tom” and organised protests against the film, beginning even before it into production (‘Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen’ (1981), AFI Catalog, www.catalog.afi.com).

Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938): Sidney Toler’s debut as the No 1 detective

Sceptical police inspector: Aren’t you jumping to conclusions? Chan: No, conclusions are jumping at me.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Charlie Chan in London)

𖣓 for more on this see ‘Chan and Chang: The Origin and Cultural Vicissitudes of the Most Famous Chinese-American Literary and Screen Detective’, posted July 2020 on this site

🅐 from the Forties right through to the Sixties Hollywood westerns dished up to the public Italians, Hungarians, Russian actors with three-day growths, passing them all off as American “Indians”, anyone it seemed was used other than actual native Americans

🅑 relating to the films in the later phase of Toler and his successor Winter

🅒 the popular Luke scored a solo turn in the Chinese-American detective whodunnit caper in Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

🅓 intriguingly Chan was also very popular in China during the 1930s, even seen as a Chinese hero. Warner Oland was feted like royalty when he visited the country. Homegrown versions of the Charlie Chan movies were made in Shànghâi and Hong Kong

🅔 although as Fletcher Chan notes, Charlie doesn’t always passively accept the doormat position. In The Chinese Parrot, confronted with egregious racism he reacts with discernible anger and displeasure towards the offending white person (Fletcher Chan, ‘Charlie Chan: A Hero of Sorts’, California Literary Review, 26-Mar-2007, www.calitreview.com)

🅕 Hollywood’s casting of a “yellowface” Charlie continued into television, a 1957 series, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, saw fit to feature an American of Irish heritage in the lead role

Liqian, China: Settlement Site of Rome’s Lost Legion? Theory, History and Myth

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Ancient history, Geography, International Relations, Military history, Regional History

Chinese accounts of antiquity from The Book of the Later Han record the first contact between the Chinese and Roman empires as taking place in AD 166 (an event corroborated by the Roman historian Publius Annius Florus). This initial diplomatic contact of the two empires resulted from a visit of a Roman emissary—authorised by Emperor Marcus Aurelius—to Emperor Huang and the Chinese Western Han Dynasty court. Trade links were subsequently established, Chinese silk for upper class Romans and Roman glassware and high-quality cloth for the Chinese.

Book of the Later Han

Communications blocked by Parthian rivalry: This initial encounter was an initiative on the part of the Romans but earlier than this the Han Chinese had tried, unsuccessfully, to make direct contact with Rome. In AD 97 the Han Chinese general, Ban Chao, despatched ambassador Kan (or Gan) Ying on a journey to Rome(α)…upon reaching Mesopotamia from where he intended to travel by sea to his ultimate destination, Kan Ying was dissuaded from continuing by the Parthians’ exaggerated advice that the sea voyage could take up to two years to complete. Parthia had a vested interest in thwarting the forging of a Sino-Roman mutually-beneficial nexus which might negatively impact Parthian profitability from the lucrative Silk Road [‘The First Contact Between Rome and China, www.silkroad.com].

The Silk Road: (source: MPI/Getty Images)

The Silk Road: The natural route for expansion, Rome eastward and China westward, was along the Silk Road…with Roman eyes obsessively coveting Chinese silk, the premier fabric of the ancient world, and China Han rulers also keen to exchange for Roman goods, the incentives were present, but direct contact between the two great ancient empires did not eventuate(Ⴆ). Standing in the way were a host of obstacles – the distance between them was vast and over inhospitable terrain; another hostile, competing empire, Parthia, occupied the middle space on the Silk Road. Roman-Chinese trade depended therefore on intermediaries, “the people of Central Asia—most notably the Sogdians, as well as the Parthians, and merchants from the Roman client states of Palmyra and Petra—act(ing) as the middlemen” [‘Ancient Rome and Ancient China: Did They Ignore Each Other?’, Vedran Bileta, The Collector, 08-Nov-2022, www.thecollector.com].

Romani indu Sinae? In the 1940s and 50s there emerged one dissenting voice to the scholarly consensus that Romans never made it to ancient China. An American Sinologist Homer H Dubs, lecturing in Chinese at Oxford University, wrote a series of articles on the subject of Roman and Chinese contacts in the Han period, culminating in his controversial 1957 book, A Roman City in Ancient China, which made the startling claim that legionnaires not only reached China but established a Roman settlement on the western fringes of the Han empire.

Battle of Carrhae (source: wikio.org)

Dubs’ “lost Roman legion”:hypothesis: In 53 BC a Roman army under the powerful Marcus Licinius Crassus was on the receiving end of a crushing defeat in the Battle of Carrhae at the hands of Parthian heavy cavalry and archers led by Spahbed (commander) Surena in southern Turkey. The Roman legions lost massive numbers of men, either killed (including its leader Crassus) or captured, in one of the Roman Empire’s worst-ever military disasters. The Roman prisoners-of-war, numbering, according to Plutarch, 10,000, were apparently carted off to Central Asia where reportedly they were married off to local women(ƈ).

Dragon Blade, (2015) 🎥 starring Jackie Chan, a fictionalised movie very loosely based on the Roman legion story

This is where Dubs and his outlier theory comes in…the Oxford professor proposed that 100–145 of the Romans ended up fighting for the Xiongnu(ԃ) against a Chinese Han army in another battle some 17 years later. The Battle of Zhizhi (36 BC), in modern-day Kazakhstan, resulted a victory for the Han Chinese, with the Xiongnu chieftain Zhizhi Chanyu among the dead. Dubs contended that these 100-odd Roman legionnaires fought in the battle, his evidence of this was a Chinese source for the battle, Ban Gu, who referred to 100 or so foot-soldiers of the enemy who employed a strange, fish-scale formation in fighting, interpreted by Dubs as a reference to the Romans’ famous phalanx defence, the testudo (tortoise) formation of interlocking shields. Dubs speculated that the captured Roman soldiers found themselves POWs once again, this time of the Chinese who transported the 100 Roman captives back to the Chinese Empire where they were resettled in Li-jien(ҽ) (later called “Liqian”), located on the edge of the Gobi Desert in modern-day Gansu Province.

Roman testudo formation

Descendants of Roman legionnaires in a Gansu village? Gene testing: Professor Dubs’ controversial theory has drawn the attention of historians, researchers, archeologists, anthropologists and even geneticists over the years, but not widespread support. Detractors have generally debunked the theory, stressing the lack of tangible archeological or historical evidence for a Roman settlement in Liqian, no findings of habitation found, eg, no Roman coins or weapons.

Some residents of contemporary Liqian village (Yongchang), noted for their green or blue eyes, fair-coloured hair and non-Chinese facial features, underwent genetic testing in 2005 which gave some credence to the Roman link theory…a DNA finding of 56% Caucasian. Further DNA testing in 2007 deflated those hopes however, showing that 77% of the villagers’ ‘Y’ chromosomes were limited to east Asia. Researchers from nearby Lanzhou University have pointed out that it was standard practice for the Roman military to employ foreign mercenaries (Europeans and Africans) for their campaigns Moreover, the demonstration that a significant block of the Liqian respondents have foreign origins doesn’t prove that they were necessarily Roman. Professor Yang Dongle (Beijing Normal University) concurred with this view, noting that inter-racial marriage along the Silk Road was far from uncommon. Yang added that research has confirmed that Liqian County was settled a good seventy years earlier than the Roman POWs are supposed to have got there [Matthew Bossons, ‘The Vanished Roman Legion of Ancient China’, That’s, (Nov. 2018), www.thatsmag.com; ‘Finding the lost Roman legion in NW China’, New China TV (video), 2015].

Villager Cai Junnian (aka “Cai Luoma”) with his green eyes and atypical Chinese complexion has become something of a poster boy for the Liqian Roman ancestry claims (photo: Natalie Behring)

Endnote: Constructing a “Roman world” to exploit the rural legend The dubiousness of the connexion aside, the media attention generated by the DNA tests and the distinctive look of the Liqian Rong has prompted proactive locals to exploit the tourist angle for what it’s worth. There’s been a concerted effort to try to capitalise on the alleged Roman ancestry in Yongchang County – in a kind of “Disneyfication” elements of neoclassical architecture have popped up in the village, a Romanesque pavilion with Doric-style columns, public statues of ancient Romans, etc. Zhelaizhai (or Lou Zhuangzi) village, as Liqian was renamed, is now marketed by Chinese tourist operators as “Liqian Ancient City”.

Statues of Roman legionnaires at the Jinshan Temple visitors’ centre

(α) or as the Chinese called Roman Empire, Da Chi’en, also rendered as Daqin (“Great Qin”)

(Ⴆ) ancient Latin writers regularly referred to Roman travellers journeying east to a country they called Serica (ser = silk)…its thought that by this that they meant the Central Asian lands, possibly including northwestern China. The name Serica, to some Romans may alternately have been a collective description for a bunch of south and east Asian countries including China and even India

(ƈ ) though, according to Pliny the Elder, the legionnaires were stationed at Margiana on the Silk Road to guard Parthia’s eastern frontier

(ԃ) a nomadic tribal confederation of Hunnic peoples

(ҽ) Dubs postulates that this was the most ancient Chinese name for Rome [H.H.Dubs, ‘A Roman City in Ancient China’, Greece and Rome, Vol. 4, Issue 2, Oct. 1957, pp.139-148]

The Trojan War Tale in the Epic Cyclic Poems: Homeric and Post-Homeric

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Ancient history, Cinema, Creative Writing, Gender wars, Regional History, Society & Culture

Movies based on the story of The Iliad as told by its traditionally reputed author Homer—such as the 2004 Troy, Helen of Troy (both the 1956 movie and the 2003 mini-series) and The Trojan Horse (1961)—automatically include scenes concerning the artifice of the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy, conveying an impression that these events were part of the Homeric epic poem on Troy. but in reality they do not feature in The Iliad at all, which concludes with the funeral of Troy’s champion warrior Hector. Homer in fact alludes to the Trojan Horse episode all up only thrice in the “follow-up” epic poem The Odyssey and then only briefly in passing.

‘Helen of Troy’ 1956 (It-US)


Epic Cycle ~ it was left to other ancient authors, some roughly contemporaneous with Homer and some later, to, as it were, fill in the gaps in the popular tale of the Trojan War between the end of Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. This collection of non-Homeric verse in dactylic hexameter acquired the name of Epic Cycle (Epikòs Kýklos), and exist today only in fragments and as later summaries made in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period.

‘The Iliad’ (image: etc.usf.edu)

Aethiopis ~ this lost epic poem (c.776BC), comprising five books, is attributed to Arctinus of Miletus. Arctinus spices up the Trojan conflict by introducing two new allies of the Trojans into the story. First Penthesilea and her band of fierce Amazon bellatrixes (women warriors) from Thrace enter the fray against the Achaeans (Greeks). The Amazonian Queen more than holds her own against the men, cutting a sway through many of the Greek warriors until Achilles bests her in hand-to-hand combat and kills her…creating something of a double-edged sword for himself as in the act of killing Penthesilea he makes the unsettling realisation that he is in love with her (real Freudian messing with your head stuff this!) Arctinus then brings in Memnon, king of Aethiopia➀ (Ethiopia) and his vast army to bolster the besieged Trojan side. Memnon is deemed almost equal in martial skills to Achilles and the two über-warriors and demigods square off in mortal combat. After a titanic struggle Achilles kills the Aethiopian warrior-king which causes his army to flee in terror. A fired-up Achilles launches an attack on the Trojans but gets too close to the city walls, giving the initiator of all the troubles, Paris (whose behaviour is consistently dishonourable and cowardly), a chance to take a pot shot. Paris’ arrow pierces Achilles’ heel, the only vulnerable spot on his otherwise immortal body, but Paris still gets no credit for it it is Apollo (god of archery) who guides the trajectory of the arrow truly to its target➁.

Amphora depicting Achilles & Penthesilea in combat (6th cent. BC), British Museum, London

Ilias Mikra (“Little Iliad”) ~ this lost epic, in 4 books, is mainly attributed to the semi-legendary Lesches➂ (of Lesbos(?), flourished 700–650BC). Lesches covers the conception and construction of Odysseus’ Trojan Horse➃ and the awarding of the dead Achilles’ arms to Odysseus over Ajax, prompting the latter to lose the plot altogether, attack a herd of oxen and commit suicide in shame. The rest of the Little Iliad follows various escapades mostly involving Odysseus who treks off around the Aegean in company with Diomedes, collecting sacred objects which the Achaean prophecies decree are the preconditions necessary for Troy to be conquered. One such adventure takes them in disguise behind the enemy’s walls to steal, with Helen’s help, the Palladium (an archaic cult image said to preserve the safety of Troy).

Odysseus & Diomedes purloining the Trojans’ Palladium (The Louvre, Paris)

Iliou persis➄ (“The Sack of Troy”) ~ the surviving fragments of this epic, comprising just two books, is usually attributed to Arctinus, giving it a comparable vintage to the Aethiopis. The verse opens with the Trojans discovering the “gift” of the Wooden Horse. After debating it the citizens fatefully ignore the warnings of the prophetess Cassandra and Laocoön and decide to dedicate the horse to Athena as a sacred object. After the Trojans drunkenly celebrate their supposed triumph through the night the Greek traitor Sinon signals to the Achaean fleet to return, Odysseus and the other warriors disembark from the wooden horse and wholesale carnage, destruction and slaughter spells the end for Troy and its citizens.

The sack of Troy (source: Heritage Images/ Getty Images)

The Aeneid ~ this part of the story is also covered in later surviving versions by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid and by Quintus Smyrnaeus (of Smyrna). Virgil’s Aeneid (12 books, written between 29 and 19BC) focuses on one of the minor participants of the Trojan War mentioned in the Iliad, a Trojan hero named Aeneas who escapes from Troy with his supporters (the Aeneads) before the Wooden Horse ruse is executed. Homer provides the template for Virgil’s epic poem which follows Aeneas and Co on their circuitous wanderings and adventures around the Aegean and Mediterranean seas (including an excursion to the Underworld) in Odysseyesque fashion, before settling in Italy and becoming progenitors of the Romans.

Aeneas’ wanderings after Troia (source: readthegreatbooks.wordpress.com)

Posthomerica ~ Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica (14 books, written 3rd–4th century AD) picks up the story from the end of the Iliad and continue the narration of the war. Quintus modelled his work on Homer’s and also drew heavily on material from the Cyclic poems of Arctinus and Lesches, revisiting the well-trawled landscape of the capture of Troy through the Wooden Horse, the eradication of Troy’s royal family, including the killing of King Priam by Neoptolemus (Achillles’ son) in a sacred temple and his bestial murder of Hector’s infant son, violations for which the gods punish the returning Greeks with a series of misadventures – eg, Menelaus is delayed from leaving the Troad and driven off-course by storms and winds, taking seven or eight years to get back to his kingdom in Sparta; his brother King Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Achaean expedition, is murdered immediately upon his return to Mycenae➅.

Ajax, Aeneas, Paris & others in combat (source: ancientworldmagazine.com)

➀ some sources refer to it as Scythiopia

➁ none of this gets a mention in the Homeric poems

➂ also attributed to other ancient writers like Cinaethon of Sparta and Thestorides of Phocaea

➃ or should we say Epeius’ Trojan Horse as it was he who built the gigantic equine decoy in rapid-quick time

➄ as in Ilion or Ilium, the Greeks’ name for Troy

➅ and of course there’s the curse of Odysseus’ decade-long tortuous trek trying to return to his home island Ithaca, as recounted in the Odyssey