"Sherlock" and the Chinatown Problem

After polishing off the first episode of BBC's new "Sherlock," I was revved up for the rest of the series. That anticipation was short-lived, however, when it became clear that the next installment was a Chinatown episode.

What's a Chinatown episode? The short answer is that it's an episode of a TV series that takes place in or around Chinatown, features Asian guest stars, and uses outdated cliches about Asian immigrants and culture. Occasionally you'll get a Japantown or Little Saigon episode, but the structure remains the same: a case brings the leads of a crime procedural or action show to Chinatown, which is teeming with recent immigrants, exotic rituals, and a barely concealed criminal element. There will be a local in distress, usually a young woman like Bai Ling, Kelly Hu, or Lucy Liu, who speaks with an affected accent and suffers under the tyranny of the Tongs, the Triad, or the yakuza. The story is thick with Oriental exoticism, from the music to the imagery to the behavior of the Asian characters. The Caucasian heroes, sometimes with the help of an Asian counterpart we will never see again, save the day and then beat a hasty retreat.

Often the portrayals of Asian communities in these episodes are woefully out of date, or riddled with mistakes, or belie such an ignorance of the actual culture that I'm left shaking my head in dismay. But what really grates is how prevalent and how exclusive these portrayals used to be in the media landscape. For years, the Chinatown episode was the only time we saw Asians on many popular programs. Throughout the 80s, action shows like "Miami Vice," "MacGyver," "The A-Team," and "Magnum PI" all had their Chinatown episodes, dabbling in Orientalism and playing up the imaginary, exoticized picture of Asian culture that many Westerners still have in their heads. Chinese-American actor James Hong appeared in a staggering number of them over the years - Google a picture of him and you're sure to recognize the man. Are you surprised to know he was born in Minnesota and doesn't speak with that exaggerated Chinese accent?

Criminal activity and ethnic gangs are associated with some ethnic neighborhoods, and you will find a greater concentration of immigrants there who don't speak English well. Pageantry is played up for the tourists in larger Chinatowns, and admittedly some Chinese decorating sensibilities really are gaudy as hell. But 99% of Asian Americans don't match the image of the characters who pop up in Chinatown episodes, including the people who actually do live there. So as one of the 99%, it was a relief when Chinatown episodes began to fade from American TV, more Asian-American actors began appearing in non-stereotypical roles, and the episodes that did focus on Asian culture became more subtle and sensitive. Occasionally shows like "Chuck" or "Pushing Daisies" will still roll out the old cliches, but nowadays it's usually with a healthy dollop of self-awareness and played-up kitsch, and sometimes even subversion of the old tropes.

I can't imagine that there's much difference between American Chinatowns and the British ones, so I was floored to discover that the second episode of "Sherlock" was not only a Chinatown episode, but one that followed the old, outdated pattern for one. Gemma Chan plays the Asian damsel in distress, Soo Lin Yao, who works for the British Museum restoring Chinese artifacts, including a set of ancient teapots. Her disappearance coincides with a series of unexplained murders that Holmes and Watson are investigating. Sure enough, a clue sends them off to Chinatown, where they prowl the tchotchke shops and dim sum restaurants. In the end it turns out that one of the shadowy criminal Tongs are responsible, which can't be too shadowy since they sent an circus acrobat assassin to London to take care of some business for them, and the big bad is revealed to be an adage-reciting elder who moonlights in the tchotchke business.

It's not a very well written episode, reliant on a lot of coincidences and unlikely events. The cultural mistakes weren't all that egregious individually, but I had to roll my eyes at their combined effect. I took special exception to the character of Soo Lin Yao, who doesn't act like any modern Chinese woman her age that I've ever encountered. Even her name is unlikely - most immigrants of our generation and everyone within shouting distance of Hong Kong adopts a Western name because Chinese names are difficult for Westerners to pronounce (Japanese and Vietnamese names tend to be easier). It was also obvious that the actress, Gemma Chan, didn't speak Chinese because her pronunciation of her brother's nickname, "Spider," was completely off. But I don't blame her, because at least she tried to make that ridiculous Tong-smuggler-turned-British-Museum-employee sob story come off credibly.

The little exotic touches were everywhere, of course. Black Lotuses, hanzi tattoos, circus acrobats, clay teapots, counting rod numerals (which gave the detectives a headache but are easily Googleable), origami flowers, and fortune cookie wisdom everywhere you looked. And apparently deadly Tong members prefer to perform executions with ancient spear-chucking mechanisms instead of shooting people in the head like any other self-respecting criminal. For better examples of what Tong members might actually look like, there are dozens of Hong Kong gangster films that could have provided easy references. Even Jackie Chan movies are a better reflection of reality.

This heavy use of bad Orientalism is the sort of thing I expect from old "Indiana Jones" and "James Bond" movies, not a twenty-first century crime procedural. The episode would not have passed without comment if it had aired in the US, and I'm puzzled as to why the British creators missed the problems here, but the answer may be in a line of dialogue from the episode itself - the Chinese in Britain are a very small community. Proportionally they're a much smaller population in the UK than Chinese Americans in the US. I'd estimate they're where we were about twenty or thirty years ago, so I guess it makes sense that the British media still isn't clued in.

But seriously "Sherlock" writers, go pick up the "Infernal Affairs" trilogy or some of the early John Woo films. You're better than this.