Charlie Chan - Books

Books

It overwhelms me with sadness to admit it ... for he is of my own origin, my own race, as you know. But when I look into his eyes I discover that a gulf like the heaving Pacific lies between us. Why? Because he, though among Caucasians many more years than I, still remains Chinese. As Chinese to-day as in the first moon of his existence. While I – I bear the brand – the label – Americanized.... I traveled with the current.... I was ambitious. I sought success. For what I have won, I paid the price. Am I an American? No. Am I, then, a Chinese? Not in the eyes of Ah Sing.

Charlie Chan, speaking of a criminal, in Keeper of the Keys, by Earl Derr Biggers

The character of Charlie Chan was created by Earl Derr Biggers. In 1919, while on vacation in Hawaii, Biggers planned a detective novel to be called The House Without a Key. He did not begin to write the novel until four years later, however, when he was inspired to add a Chinese American police officer to the plot after reading in a newspaper of Chang Apana (鄭阿平) and Lee Fook, two Chinese-American detectives on the Honolulu police force. Biggers, who disliked the Yellow Peril stereotypes he found when he came to California, explicitly conceived of the character as an alternative to them: "Sinister and wicked Chinese are old stuff, but an amiable Chinese on the side of law and order has never been used."

The "amiable Chinese" made his first appearance in The House Without a Key (1925). The character was not central to the novel and was not mentioned by name on the dustjacket of the first edition. In the novel, Chan is described as walking with "the light dainty step of a woman" and as being "very fat indeed ... an undistinguished figure in his Western clothes." According to critic Sandra Hawley, this description of Chan allows Biggers to portray the character as non-threatening, the opposite of such evil Chinese characters as Fu Manchu, while simultaneously emphasizing supposedly Chinese characteristics such as impassivity and stoicism.