When mystery writer Mou Yip (冒業) takes the stage at the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TiBE) on Saturday, it would be more than just a book talk to the 34-year-old Hong Konger.
His debut as an invited speaker at the largest book event in Taiwan would be an opportunity to highlight how Taiwan has helped keep the literary genre alive in Hong Kong and how mysteries help preserve the memories of a territory that are being erased.
In a recent interview, Mou Yip shared his views on the significance of mystery novels in a world where truth is hard to anchor, the relationship between Taiwan and Hong Kong in developing the subgenre, and his decision to stay and write in Hong Kong.
Photo courtesy of Mou Yip, via CNA
When it comes to mysteries, Hong Kong and Taiwan are intertwined, said Mou Yip, a software engineer by trade.
Taiwan has long been the primary engine for Hong Kong’s crime fiction authors, providing the awards and exposure that the territory’s home market lacks.
“It is difficult to sell mystery novels published in Hong Kong in Taiwan’s market, but most of the time, those published in Taiwan are readily available in Hong Kong’s bookstores,” he said.
This asymmetrical relationship was reinforced by the biennial Soji Shimada Mystery Award and the 2015 TiBE Book Prize won by Hong Kong’s Chen Ho-Kei (陳浩基), which drew unprecedented attention to Chinese-language mystery novels.
“In this sense, mystery novels in Taiwan and Hong Kong essentially thrive hand in hand,” Mou Yip said.
Yet, the two markets combined still cannot support full-time mystery writers, a phenomenon reflected in the two characters used in “Mou Yip,” his pen name, which mean “off chasing side hustles.”
Mou Yip sees at least one advantage to the genre’s “part-time” nature.
Since writers come from diverse professional backgrounds, they bring specialized expertise to their plots, creating a pluralistic landscape, he said.
“For example, since I work in software development, my writing naturally incorporates elements such as data mining, software systems, and information security,” he said, traits fully on display in his first and best-known book Five Nights of the Millennium (千禧黑夜).
Although markets for the works of Mou Yip and others are waning, the writer believes mystery novels are gaining newfound importance as vital tools in a media era when “truth” is under siege.
With information technology lowering the barrier to fabricating and disseminating falsehoods, constant media stimulation has numbed the public, making it increasingly difficult to muster the vigilance required to parse truth from fiction, he said, adding that Taiwan is not immune from this trend.
“Despite being the most successful democracy in the Chinese-speaking world, we are seeing a devaluation of ‘truth’ and ‘critical thinking’ here,” he said.
In such an environment, mystery novels, which by nature champion those exact values, come to the forefront.
“The characters’ pursuit of truth feels more vital than ever as the world drifts in the opposite direction,” he said.
In his own works, Mou Yip explores the relationship between humanity and technology, saying that “mystery fiction does have a way of subverting our habitual perceptions of technology.”
Mystery novels can cast new light on the tools that govern our daily lives through the “tricks” featured in the ingeniously planned murders they describe, he said.
The genre “forces us to look at the objects we take for granted and re-examine the hidden possibilities we usually ignore,” he said.
The imposition of Hong Kong’s National Security Law in 2020 triggered a wave of migration to Taiwan. For Mou Yip, who chose to stay, the choice between “actively leaving” and “passively staying” was a false one given the heavy burdens both paths carry.
Exiles face a stark cultural gap despite shared values of democracy, while those who stay are often forced into what he calls “necessary silence.”
This constraint makes the territory’s internal nuances far harder to grasp from the outside, said Mou Yip, who does not want his real name made public to keep his two identities separate.
“Sometimes we cannot even say: ‘I must remain silent on this,’” he said, adding that the climate of opacity has made Hong Kong expatriates anxious that their memories of their homeland are slowly drifting away from reality.
“As a result, we see many authors who have left continue to write fervently about Hong Kong, in an effort to preserve it before their imagined version loses currency,” he said.
In 2019, Mou contributed to a mystery collection titled Detective Cafe (偵探冰室), published by Hong Kong-based Starry Night Publications and believed to be the first of its kind to feature Hong Kong elements.
Since then, Detective Cafe has grown into a lively series, with each of its seven volumes exploring different aspects of the territory.
While mystery remains a niche genre, Mou Yip believes such writing helps cultivate a sense of “Hong Kongness” that is fluid and evolving over time.
“As a creator, I think ‘Hong Kongness’ does exist, but it is not something you arrive at through discovery or definition,” he said. “Rather, it is something that is practiced and realized through the act of creation.”
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
Taiwan’s Li Yu-hsiang performs in the men’s singles figure skating short program at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. Li finished 24th with a score of 72.41 to advance to Saturday’s free skate portion of the event. He is the first Taiwanese to qualify for the free skate of men’s singles figure skating at the Olympics since David Liu in 1992.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday held a ceremony marking the delivery of its 11th Anping-class offshore patrol vessel Lanyu (蘭嶼艦), saying it would boost Taiwan’s ability to respond to Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. Ocean Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Chung-Lung (張忠龍) presided over the CGA event in the Port of Kaoshiung. Representatives of the National Security Council also attended the event. Designed for long-range and protracted patrol operations at sea, the Lanyu is a 65.4m-long and 14.8m-wide ship with a top speed of 44 knots (81.5kph) and a cruising range of 2,000 nautical miles (3704km). The vessel is equipped with a
Two siblings in their 70s were injured yesterday when they opened a parcel and it exploded, police in Yilan said, adding the brother and sister were both in stable condition. The two siblings, surnamed Hung (洪), had received the parcel two days earlier but did not open it until yesterday, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan, police said. Chen Chin-cheng (陳金城), head of the Yilan County Government Police Bureau, said the package bore no postmark or names and was labeled only with the siblings’ address. Citing the findings of a
RSS