In the last years of the 19th century several of China's ancient secret societies enjoyed a major revival, notably in the north-east of the country. They traditionally combined skills in the martial arts with shamanistic doctrines attributing to themselves magical powers. The adherents of one of these, a branch of the Society of the White Lotus, practiced boxing to train themselves, and so were called "Boxers" by the many Westerners, who were by this time resident in China.
Their influence came to a head in 1900 when, believing foreigners were the cause of China's misfortunes, they stormed the foreign legations in Beijing. The Empress Dowager Cixi -- after much vacillation -- opted to side with the Boxers, and in the chaos that ensued many Westerners and Christian converts were beheaded. The foreign powers responded by attacking and then looting Beijing, and later imposed on China the notorious Boxer Indemnity, a promise to pay them the staggering sum of 450 million ounces of silver, almost twice the Chinese government's entire annual income. And, because this was to be paid over 40 years, it has been calculated to have in fact amounted to 982 million when the high interest payable on loans from banks, run by these self-same foreigners, is included.
This indemnity was only one in a long line of such payments demanded of China by Britain, France, Russia and Japan in the period, often for relatively trivial incidents such as the disappearance of a missionary at some remote frontier post. They constituted a coordinated and cynical attempt to bleed a vast but relatively powerless country dry. As the French historian Jacques Gernet wrote in his A History of Chinese Civilization (1972, English translation 1982), in a chapter entitled "China Crucified," "It became clearer and clearer that this country in which so many people lived in profound poverty ... could never rid herself of the enormous burden imposed on her by the richest and most prosperous countries of the world."
Against this background, it is disappointing to read a long novel set at the time of the Boxer uprising that for the most part ignores this wider picture. There are glancing references such as, "Is compensation not what you foreigners usually demand?" and "The Chinese government is working out how they are ever to pay the enormous indemnity that has been agreed." And it's true you don't get a roistering account of the heroic defense of the legations against hordes of murderous peasants. But you don't hear much about the terrible history of forced indemnities and reparations either, let alone the collapse of the Chinese economy that resulted.
That having been said, the historical background to what the author calls his "romance" has been very thoroughly researched. Moreover the story is told with good-natured openness, frankness and genial good-humor. While the focus remains on the British experience in China, a large cast of other characters play out their varied and well-imagined roles.
In addition, there is a great deal of familiarity with Chinese life displayed by the author, an employee of 18 years' standing in the Beijing offices of the archetypal Hong Kong trading company, Jardine Matheson. He was recently honored by the UK government for services to British trade, but this is apparently his first appearance in print as a novelist.
In the fictional city of Shishan north-east of Beijing, a Scottish doctor, Edward Airton, engages in learned dialogues about Christianity with the local Mandarin. "How can your religion emphasize love and turning the other cheek when you foreigners behave with such roughness and greed towards us Chinese," the latter asks. Meanwhile from up in the hills come rumors of secret societies of impoverished peasants who have been persuaded by shadowy political forces that it is the foreigner who is responsible for their nation's many ills.
In Shishan there lives also a family of down-at-heel American missionaries, plus a representative of a chemicals company anxious to expand in the area. The Germans are hard at work completing a local rail line, and a mysterious Japanese officer arrives, quietly assessing the lie of the land. Not far away the Russians are busy exploiting China's weakness in their own neck of the woods.
Into this scene arrives a young British woman engaged to marry a bluff and seemingly innocent fellow countryman she met on the boat. She soon, however, attracts the attention of an altogether more experienced expert in the sexual arts called Henry Manners. As they begin an affair, these two quickly become the novel's central characters, alongside Airton whose philosophic perspective provides a somber undertow from one end of the long narrative to the other.
This society is destined to be savaged by the Boxer uprising, though not before the missionaries' son runs away and is subsequently abducted to suffer unspeakable indignities in the "House of Heavenly Pleasure" of the book's title. There are many other sub-plots, all handled with great mastery by the author. Indeed, there are occasions when you could believe you were reading Middlemarch, George Eliot's great epic of 19th century English provincial life. But because the psychology of the characters other than Airton isn't developed in depth, the illusion doesn't generally last very long.
This is a novel, then, that depends for its success on the breadth of its scope and the variety rather than the profundity of its characters. As such it will give its readers a good deal of enjoyment. It also informs on many topics, including what went on in Chinese brothels (information derived from what the author describes as China's "extraordinary sex manuals that date back 2,000 years"). Public executions and erotic indulgence take place within yards of each other, and if this sounds sensationalist it shouldn't be taken as a measure of the book's general character. Adam Williams is a knowledgeable man who has striven hard and successfully to create a yarn that will please just about everybody. And for the wider perspective on the foreign presence in 19th century China, the reader can easily turn elsewhere.
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