You will never mistake Bridge as a novel written by anyone other than a Westerner thanks to his liberal use of faux poetic Chinese names which are usually found in satirical depictions of Chinese restaurant menus. Hughart, who was very much not Chinese, was reverent to the culture he was writing about but was simultaneously very willing to take liberties and-how do you say- “make shit up” whenever he felt like it. Genre-wise, it is an equal mix of a mystery, a folk story, and a farce set in “an ancient China that never was”. It is difficult to describe what sort of story Bridge of Birds is. What began as a parochial mystery would unfold across the entire Chinese empire spanning Heaven and Earth, and tying in events that happened hundreds and even thousands of years ago. Li Kao is like a hybrid between Sherlock Holmes, and Moriarty, with a smidge of Gandalf thrown in, and he tears through every problem with intelligent sociopathy (with the pure-hearted Lu Yu as his muscle slash Watson by his side).

The story began in earnest when Lu Yu alias Number Ten Ox traveled to Peking to hire a wise man to help his village deal with a strange plague that had stricken all the local children, but being impoverished, but he could only afford a cut-price one: Li Kao, who had a “slight flaw in his character”.

Yet, even having forgotten most of it, it remained one of the few books that I would recommend to anyone without reservation, confident that its charm is universal.Īnyway, I re-read Bridge of Birds because I have recently came into the possession of a rare signed and illustrated copy of The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox omnibus, which contains not only Bridge of Birds but also its two sequels: The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. I first read Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds when I was still in university, and I remember loving it-though I seemed to have completely forgotten its plot almost entirely beyond the two main characters, the mysterious plague that only struck children between the ages of 8 and 13, and that the title which references the Chinese folktale of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl (牛郎織女). Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei - which means ‘dry cup’- and drink to the dregs.” “Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. “O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!” he bawled.

Bridge of birds by barry hughart