Murder Mystery Tour: Go Back in Time With This Classic Audio Guide

Tom Arnstein | Jul 31, 2023 12:20 pm | 2 comments | 3475 reads

As we know, Beijing is a huge mish-mash of old and new, with the significance of the former often obscured by speed of development or easy to miss to the untrained eye. But one audio walking guide attempts to provide insight into a mystery that occurred back in 1937: the brutal killing of a 19-year-old British woman.

While it's not the lightest of topics, an open-air walking tour is something we can enjoy at any time, regardless of whether our favorite bars and restaurants are open or not. 

The guide (downloadable here) is narrated by the prominent Chinese historian Paul French and is based around his book Midnight in Peking, published in 2012, which researches and reproduces a semi-factual account of the circumstances surrounding Pamela Werner’s death, adopted daughter of a retired British diplomat. Werner was found lying with cuts to her face and without her heart at the base of the Fox Tower, just east of where the Beijing Railway Station now stands.

The unsolved murder, as The New York Times reports, was purportedly carried out by a prominent American expatriate mixed up in the wrong crowd and is framed by a volatile period in pre-communist China, whereby Chiang Kai-shek held power but was under constant threat from both the Communists, who were gaining a following under Mao, and the Japanese who continued to eye up Manchuria and Peking. All-in-all it was only the upper-class ex-pat contingent who kicked back and prospered during this period, enjoying lavish parties all in the name of unwieldy decadence.

In its 90 minutes, the tour takes listeners through Pamela’s stomping grounds, the old Legation Quarter (east of Tiananmen) and what were then known as the Badlands – her final resting place. What better way to interact with Beijing’s past than seeing it through the eyes of one of the 700 expats who lived during the time, even if it was a life cut short.

While you are in the 'hood, click here for a more in-depth exploration of the old Tartar Wall

Photos: zhangkaiyv (via Unsplash)

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Re: Murder Mystery Tour: Go Back in Time With This Classic...
Posted Jun 7, 2022 9:08pm by BauLuo
(Reply to a previous comment)

[/quote]

Is there any group like Mensa for folks who are obnoxiously proud of their EQ? You know, "I compassion so much more deeply than the commun run of humanity." "I am profoundly humanitarian." "The only way to be is to inter-be."

[/quote] There is indeed a way to measure one's EQ. It works like this. You take off all your clothes. You stick you left hand fore-finger on yer nose. ya take yer right hand fore-finger, stick it in you left side earhole.(this may take some dexterity) Ya stand on yer left foot and hop around, counter clockwise, shouting ` I love everyone'. Calculate the number of counter-cloctwise circum-hoppings completed, divide by your bodily mass index, how white your skin is (counted in nanojoules), and there you have it your EQ.

I am Doktor Aethelwise Snapdragoon.

Re: Murder Mystery Tour: Go Back in Time With This Classic...
Posted Jun 7, 2022 1:25pm by BauLuo

Apropos of nothing, I've got the same number of years as Heinz has varieties, I've had a toothache for the last three months, I suffer from periodic bouts of alcoholism, I have an IQ of 146 (according to Mensa), and I haven't had any respiratory illness for approximately 30 years, i.e. no cough, no cold, no sore throat, no chest congestion, no fever, nada, despite the fact occaisionaly I am a drunk and a chain smoker. ( But I does like eatin my broccoli and my garlic) Now speaking of Mensa, now that was a hoot. There I was, a just disfellowshiped Jehovah's Witness, toiling at a factory, trying to understand A.J Ayers `The Problem of Knowledge' because that was my problem, ( little did I know at the time, that is nothing writ by Ayers worth spending you mind on). Thus being a youngster in a precarious state, obviously I had to find someway to try and validate my existence, thus to a Mensa meeting I did go. Now a Mensa meeting consists primarily of folk standin around talkin bout how clever they are and how glad they are to be above the stupid rabble. That's about it. I didn't go back a second time. I actually like the stupid rabble. Someone once said, (me it was actually) ' mind trumps body, but heart trumps mind, but a heart and a mind require a body' . Sorta like rock, paper, scissors. Or maybe the trinity.

I am Doktor Aethelwise Snapdragoon.