Writing wrongs in the name of justice

In the novels, Zhou explores subjects such as the gap between the rich and the poor, the corruption of policemen and the rise of villains as the city's true power players－those "seemingly unreasonable things but with a reasonable explanation".

Justice is one of the key words for the trilogy. "In reality, we Chinese judge whether a thing is right or not usually according to three standards: human feelings, rationality and legitimacy. Law has very clear lines, but it will be very subjective to define whether a thing is reasonable or not－right or not－considering human feelings," Zhou observes.

Death Notice tries to explore procedural justice and the veracity of the results, as well as the relationship between human feelings, rationality and legitimacy in the cases where law cannot solve certain social problems, Zhou explains.

"Everybody fancies the existence of a hero like Eumenides, who can uphold justice that's out of the reach of the law. However, such a figure must be morally perfect because he is under no restriction," Zhou notes. "He can but only make right decisions. However, such a lovely cavalier can only exist in fiction."

"If there is only one such character, it's ok, but what if there were two, or even ten? They would have different judgments, and you could not regulate them, so in the end you have to go through the legal procedure. Although it may not be perfect, it suits the interest of most people."

The extremely talented and capable Eumenides, only 18 years old when the trilogy opens, is just like those chivalric heroes in Jin Yong's Legends of Condor Heroes or superheroes such as Spiderman or Batman in US culture, he says, and everybody wants such a hero to exist in reality.

Zhou started writing his first novella Tao Zi Li De Ren (The Baited Man) in 2003, when Beijing was in the shadow of SARS so people were not allowed to roam freely. Having graduated from university, but not yet employed, Zhou had nothing to do but write his first story, which he posted on Tsinghua's Bulletin Board System. He was encouraged to find that many people liked it so he wrote more.

When he published his first short story Hei An Zhong De Nyv Hai (The Girl in Darkness), the payment, although low, gave him a taste for life as an author and cemented his resolve: he would make a living from writing.

After quitting his first company, he found a teaching position at a university in Beijing, a comparatively stable job with a definite timetable. From 2005 to 2012, Zhou was prolific, producing one novel after another－and the best ones so far－including Death Notice, the two sequels and a prequel called Punishment.

He began to feel that his reserves of knowledge had almost been exhausted from the seven-years of endless writing; the trilogy had been sold at a good price for a TV play adaptation in 2009, his daughter was born and, as a graduate of environmental engineering he noticed the worsening air quality in Beijing. He decided to quit the teaching position and returned to his hometown of Yangzhou.

Situated on the north of the Yangtze River, close to Nanjing and Shanghai, Yangzhou is a city famous for its cuisine, ancient literatus and beautiful scenery. In ancient times, Yangzhou was an important transportation hub along the Grand Canal. Praised by many great poets including Li Bai and Du Mu during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and Su Shi during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), it was also home to famous schools of calligraphers and painters during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), such as Zheng Banqiao and Huang Shen.

After retuning to Yangzhou, Zhou has turned his hand to scriptwriting and learned how to become a film director so that he could adapt not only his own works, but those by other writers. He also started a company with a classmate from university to create TV plays and films in the suspense genre.

Among all his works, Zhou likes his latest－Punishment－the most, because "it's close to social reality." As usual, he was inspired by a sad story.

In the news, an old man attacked a doctor who he wrongly believed to have misdiagnosed the severity of his disease and delayed treatment. The old man stabbed the doctor, leaving him with severe injuries and, although he broke the law, the old man was fearless, since he was going to die soon anyway.

"It's really sad," Zhou laments, "I couldn't help thinking what would happen to the doctor's relatives."

Spurred on by the story, Zhou used his writer's pen to plot revenge on the old man. In Punishment, the doctor dies and his sad wife, also a doctor, takes the law into her own hands using the latest developments in medical technology.

"It is very hard to be creative in designing the patterns of suspense fiction, which have been created and used by many writers for years," he says. "However, as time goes by, there are new discoveries and advancements in science and technology that we can use to create good stories.

"But the endless mine for a suspense writer is human feelings," Zhou concludes, "you can never use those up."