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Fuermoshi. The Fuermoshi are Great Detectives. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were introduced into China by noted translator and activist Liang Qichao in Shiwubao (Aug. 1896). The stories were immediately popular, as Holmes had a number of similarities with figures from traditional Chinese folklore, such as Judge Bao, and over the next twenty years a large number of unauthorized stories featuring Holmes and Holmes pastiches (see: Huo Sang) appeared in a variety of Chinese magazines, plays, and operas. These Holmes pastiches were known as “Fuermoshi” (alternatively, “Fuermosi,” "Fu-er-mo-hsi,” “Fu-er-mo-ssu,” or “Fu-erh-mo-sze”), the Mandarin name (by way of a Fujianese translator) by which Holmes is still known in China. (So influential was Holmes that a prominent Shanghai tabloid was entitled Fuermosi). The Fuermoshi are Holmes pastiches, but rather than apprehending criminals they take on ghosts, fox women, tiger-men, fairies, and other creatures from traditional Chinese mythology.

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