China Expat is a cultural and literary forum for expatriates interested in China and has been published by Asia Briefing Ltd since 2001. The sites resident China culture writers have included such expatriate luminaries as 
The Incredible (and Filmable) Di Renjie
by Ernie Diaz
Hollywood is now run by twelve- year- olds. Twelve- year- olds with underactive imaginations.Aside from guinea pigs solving international crimes, we’ve had the umpteenth installation of whiz-kid Harry Potter and a remake of GI Joe to get us through the summer. We haven’t had any notable historical semi-fiction since 300. So CEX hereby makes a broad pitch for the story of Di Renjie.
Di Renjie, equal parts Judge Roy Bean and Eliot Ness, roamed the Old East righting wrongs and tackling injustice at the highest levels. He never needed his family wiped out or partner murdered to pursue justice, the highest ideal of the Confucian scholar he was. The West could use a movie about a refined official who does even more good than a hard-boiled cop.
Di Renjie’s dad was a Prefect in what is now Chongqing. In a less rigorous government, this would have guaranteed Di Renjie a position of authority. But children of Tang officials were designated a lower rank, which they had to overcome through merit. Police Academy can be tough, what with all the target practice and cop jargon to learn. But Steve Gutenberg himself would have quailed at the Imperial Examinations, which Di Renjie passed with honors to become a prefectural secretary in Henan. A three-minute montage of Di Renjie pouring over scrolls and practicing martial arts would hardly do the accomplishment justice, but then today’s audience starts getting distracted by the second movie preview.
Also, the teenie-bopper demographic might not know what to do with the fact that Di Renjie’s adventures didn’t begin until he was in his mid-forties. At that point, he had worked his way up to secretary general of the Tang Supreme Court, a judge with a caseload of seventeen-thousand a year. Goodness knows how a director could convey the frantic pace of resolving over fifty disputes a day, short of resorting to speeded-up skits, Benny Hill style. Astoundingly, much as with Hill’s opus, no one ever found fault with one of Di Renjie’s decisions.
Despite the many safeguards of Confucian government, peace and prosperity are the ruin of character, and the Tang administration was as corrupt as a rain-soaked log on a termite nest. Gainsaying the wrong official could cost one’s life, but Di Renjie valued his principles over his hide. When a couple of rowdy generals chopped down a few of Emperor Gaozong’s prized cypress trees, their liege ordered them killed. Di Renjie interceded, at grave risk to his own safety, arguing for leniency as passionately as Pacino in And Justice for All. Gaozong relented, and out of respect for Di’s integrity made him a censor, an official who roamed the country making sure governors and magistrates were keeping it honest, or keeping the censors’ palms well-greased.
What do you do with a man who can’t be bought? The Tang Minister of Agriculture couldn’t dissuade Di Renjie from reporting his wastefulness and getting him sacked. Even Wang Benli, one of Emperor Gaozong’s closest buddies, was run over in Di Renjie’s ceaseless drive against malfeasance. Wang, understandably for an Imperial favorite, had been throwing his weight around, treating the law like the flexible courtesan it usually is. The Emperor dismissed Di Renjie’s charges against Wang Benli several times, relenting only in the face of superior will and integrity. Thirteen hundred years before The Untouchables, mind you.
Di Renjie led an army to battle and helped restore the Tang Dynasty from the depredations of Wuzetian, China’s only female emperor, too. But this was when Di Renjie was in his late sixties. Unless Morgan Freeman can be persuaded to put on yellow-face, no elderly Hollywood icon is able to lend Di Renjie the necessary gravitas.
In fact, biographies are notoriously clumsy for their refusal to adhere to a three-act plot. But anyone pshawing the idea of Di Renjie as popular entertainment is already in the wrong. The adventures of Di Renjie were laid out in a popular Ming Dynasty folk novel. Centuries later, China historian Robert van Gulik found a copy in a second-hand bookstore and translated it, calling the book The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee.
Following the story’s commercial success in 1949, van Gulik began turning out Judge Dee mysteries with regularity throughout the fifties and sixties. Traditional Chinese mysteries were misnomers, in that perps and their motives were usually laid out in the beginning of the story, and the action lay in seeing the malefactors brought to justice, usually with the aid of secret-telling ghosts.
Van Gulik employed the traditional western whodunit paradigm to an ancient world he was familiar enough with to bring to life for millions of readers. Each successive story after his first, from The Chinese Maze Murders to Necklace and Calabash, explore broad swaths of old Chinese society, with a healthy yet accurate depiction of sexuality. Concubines and court ladies alike are constantly throwing themselves at Judge Dee, who remains as unmoved by the fairer sex as did Bruce Lee. A Confucian hero is beyond earthly temptations.
Van Gulik’s work generated enough interest to be turned into a short-run TV series in Britain in 1969, and a TV movie in America in 1974. In China, Di Renjie has enjoyed many TV incarnations, his most recent still in syndication on CCTV 8. In fact, a Di Renjie movie is due out in 2010, starring – surprise – Andy Lau, and directed by Hark Tsui. So cancel that pitch. It’d be tough watching Hollywood turn a Confucian hero into a crime-solving panda.
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Andy Lau could ruin anything – even a Benny Hill chase. Even if he got crotched on a bicycle and the music changed to a 3 second snippet of “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah”, he would blow it. That being said, I liked Mo Gong (I think it was “A Battle of Wits” in English) for the first half an hour.
I read his work and was impressed not only with the stories but also with his flair for writing calligraphy. A true scholar.
I like the China the story as Di Renjie led an army to battle and helped restore the Tang Dynasty from the depredations of Wuzetian, China’s only female emperor.
I would rather be driving down the road at 60 KM/hour, open the car door, and scrape my face along the pavement than watch ANYTHING featuring Andy Lau.
When, dear Lord, when will mercy be allotted to us by a sealer mistaking Andy Lau for a baby seal and in doing so, put us all out of our misery?
C'mon, Beelz, that was a pretty entertaining riposte, wunnit?
"i almost would ask you to disgorge the under priced food you ate in my country"
- guy's got style.
Mr. Dierenjie is a very famouse man in China history. I like his story very much.
Di Ren Jie was born in Tang Dynasty Zhen Guan Period AD630 貞觀年間 (Emperor Li Shi Ming period).
Especially from the east. They actually have a plot to them that movies in the west just dont have, plus they are alot less tainted by sex and lust then American books and movies.
I am sick and tired of all these childish sci-fi movies as well. I like your idea and I think western audiences would love to see a movie like this with an actual good story to it.
what are they doing to the naked woman?? is it sexual torture?
they are hitting to women.
There there, currency rat, it's just a picture.
I think
In Renjie, tackling inequality in the highest level.
Traditional Chinese mystery misnomers on the perps and the motifs that are usually placed at the beginning of the story, and placed the action in view malefactors brought to court, usually with the help of a secret-telling ghosts.
Very good historian Van Gulik works well and is quite interesting that will be the film story TV serial.
Story about Di Renji has good content about the fightness, the heroic and good things that can be followed by next generation. Maybe for whom watched the 3000 movies, will be remained about the the fighting like that in this story, so if there are plans to make this story into movie i willsupport it.