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(19) Les Tribulations d'un chinois en Chine (Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, 1879) (1 volume) 66K words


The nineteenth Extraordinary Voyage takes us to China. It's the second one taking place in Asia, after Michael Strogoff. It also abandons the more cautionary tone of the previous novel (The Begum's Millions), and presents us with a fun adventure story, with dramatism but also comedic elements.


First read or reread?: This is a first read for me, although it reminded me of movies that had taken the same premise.


What is it about?: A Chinese man, Kin-Fo, despite being young, wealthy and about to get married, is bored with life. When he receives news about the failure of his investments abroad, which leaves him in poverty, he decides to end his life. He signs up for an expensive life insurance policy that, in the event of his death within two months, will make his fiancée and his old mentor rich. Wanting to experience some emotions before dying, Kin-Fo asks his mentor, a former revolutionary assassin, to kill him before the policy expires. Unfortunately, when he changes his mind, the would-be killer proves impossible to locate.


Because of its plot, involving the travels of an eccentric millionaire and his comic-relief servant, this novel has been compared with Around the World in Eighty Days. I can see the similarities, but they are quite different in some ways.

Tribulations of a Chinaman in China is probably funnier. Not so much because of any jokes, but because of the situations and characters. We have the stolid millionaire who has arranged for his own murder but, now that he no longer wishes to die, is unable to cancel the arrangements and travels around China hoping to keep ahead of his murderer. We have the two agents of the American bank that sold him the insurance policy, who are determined to accompany him and keep him alive at any cost, at least until the policy expires. These two agents, of such identical appearance and temperament that they can be mistaken by twins, are an antecedent of Thompson and Thomson, the two bumbling detectives from the Tintin comics, except that Craig and Fry are much more competent. We have the lazy and incompetent servant, Soun, who after each of his gaffes gets a piece of his braid cut by his employer...

Verne, as always, is well documented in his descriptions of 19th century China, and I thought he did a good job when creating Chinese characters who, despite sharing the same universal human emotions, have a way of thinking different from his European characters. Without being in any way a deep philosophical novel, this one is more concerned than I would expect from Verne with questions about the meaning of life and the pursuit of happiness.

He is also critical of British imperialism here, decrying the pernicious effects of the opium trade.

Despite it being a simple adventure tale, Verne does not forget to include some cutting-edge technology, like phonographs and the Boyton apparatus (a kind of diver suit with some extra features).

So this is a fun, short adventure with a good premise (used later in several movies) and other interesting elements. It had everything to earn a place among Verne's best works. Unfortunately, for me at least, it did not always achieve that delicate balance between informative descriptions and action that I have seen in his best novels. Until we get to the last third of the novel there is not enough action, and because of that the story felt less dynamic than Around the World in Eighty Days.


Enjoyment factor: This was not a bad read. I enjoyed the premise and the characters, but it occasionally dragged a little. That improved by the end, but with this material Verne might have written one of his best novels if he had found a better balance between description and adventure.


Next up: The Steam House