Li Shoon
Li Shoon is a fictional villain of Chinese ethnicity created by H. Irving Hancock, first published in 1916.
As common in the pulp fiction of the times, the depiction of Li Shoon had considerable racial stereotypes. He was described as being "tall and stout" and having "a round, moonlike yellow face" topped by "bulging eyebrows" and "sunken eyes". He has "an amazing compound of evil" which makes him "a wonder at everything wicked" and "a marvel of satanic cunning."
Li Shoon is the absolute master of a secret society known as "Ui Kwoon Ah-How" whose membership numbers in the thousands or tens of thousands - not only Chinese like himself but also other Asian peoples including Filipinos as well as Malays, Indians, Japanese and various other "Oriental" ethnic groups. Members of the group kill unhesitatingly at his command, and he frequently gives such commands. Li Shoon is not a mere criminal, but a fanatic Chinese nationalist of a sort. He engages in numerous lucrative criminal activities, but these are not a goal in itself but a means to make the society under his control "the wealthiest and most powerful body on earth" and thereby "rousing China from her centuries of sleep" to "take over mastery of Asia". There is no explanation given why the other Asians involved (especially, the Japanese, whose own imperial ambitions were far more manifest at the time) would be so eager to achieve that goal.
Li Shoon has numerous ingenious weapons at his disposal, such as the "gas gun", which leaves no trace and keeps detectives puzzled, and the "lachesis venom" whose victims' bodies become monstrously bloated. He has two trusted helpers and lieutenants, the Chinese Weng-yu and the Mongolian Ming who deals with torture and executions.
Li Shoon's arch-enemy is an American "gentleman adventurer" named Donald Carrick, nicknamed "The Human Hound". Pulp fiction researcher Jess Nevins noted that Carrick is "vain, self-satisfied, supernaturally lucky and supernaturally aggravating.(...) Rarely has one 'good guy' been so capable of driving a reader into the arms of the story's putative 'bad guy'."[1] In the end, as was invariable in this subgenre, Carrick managed to kill Li Shoon after numerous daring adventures, chases by car and plane, explosions and acts of piracy on the open sea. However, Hancock brought Li Shoon back in a sequel and then killed him off once again. Altogether, it seems no accident that the series was named for Li Shoon and not for Carrick.
As Nevins notes, "Li Shoon was a chip from the Fu Manchu block". It should also be noted that the stories appeared shortly after the publication of Jack London's The Unparalleled Invasion, in which Chinese expansion over Asia was presented as "a major threat to the world" ultimately justifying a complete genocide.
Appearances
- "Under the Ban of Li Shoon", Detective Story Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 3, cover date August 5, 1916.
- "Li Shoon's Deadliest Mission", Detective Story Magazine, September 5, 1916
- Other Li Shoon stories were published in that magazine in 1917