I stayed in Beijing before, after and in-between the Taian/Taiyuan trips, and therefore had a chance to have a series of meetings with academic, private-sector, NGO and Chinese governmental officials during this two-week visit. During that time I was reading a book entitled Midnight in Peking, a real-life murder mystery about the 1937 slaying of the daughter of a British diplomat/scholar in the city. Despite the rather gruesome topic, it’s a very entertaining read because the author skillfully weaves in details about the anarchy of conditions in the city at that time, the coming Japanese invasion, the Legation Quarter home of the foreign contingent in the city, and colorful characters interacting in both high and very, very lowbrow settings – all while trying to solve the murder case.

By happenstance, I was staying in the Chong Wen Men district on this trip instead of in my usual haunts in the northern part of the city – and that put me almost exactly in the middle of the author’s audio walking tour for the book. And so of course I did the whole tour, including a visit to Armour Factory Alley (now Kuijiachang Hutong), the place where she and her father lived, a few houses down from where Edgar Snow was writing Red Star Over China; Chuanpan Hutong, which the author describes as “the baddest and most depraved street in old Peking,” the heart of the ‘Badlands’ area where one could find low-life bars, gambling dens, nightclubs, brothels, and much else…. and where she was very likely murdered; and the Legation Quarter, which still has European-styled buildings and parks, and housed the French, American and British diplomatic corps. The British legation was the site where foreigners gathered for a last stand in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion — and it now houses China’s Ministry of Public Security.

Fox Tower

My hotel was only a few hundred meters from Fox Tower (now called Dongbianmen), which played a key role in the book since that was the site where her body was found. I went back the next day to climb the tower, and visit the Ming Dynasty City Wall Relics Park along the southern section of the old city wall. The tower was home to some powerful (and dangerous) animalistic spirits in the city’s legends, and many residents were not surprised about the role it played in the grisly tale. Although only remnants of the wall remain, one can still look down from the tower and begin to grasp the sheer scale and impact it must have had on the city’s life.