Charlie Chan is a fictional Honolulu police detective created by author Earl Derr Biggers for a series of mystery novels. Biggers loosely based Chan on Hawaiian detective Chang Apana. The benevolent and heroic Chan was conceived as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes and villains like Fu Manchu.
Many stories feature Chan traveling the world beyond Hawaii as he investigates mysteries and solves crimes. Chan first appeared in Biggers' novels and then was featured in a number of media. Over four dozen films featuring Charlie Chan were made, beginning in The character, featured only as a supporting character, was first portrayed by East Asian actors, and the films met with little success.
After Toler's death, six films were made, starring Roland Winters. Readers and moviegoers of America greeted Chan warmly. Chan was seen as an attractive Språk och översättning, portrayed as intelligent, heroic, benevolent, and honorable; this contrasted the common depiction of Asians as evil or conniving which dominated Hollywood and national media in the early 20th century.
However, in later decades critics increasingly took a more ambivalent view of the character. Despite his good qualities, Chan was also perceived as reinforcing condescending Asian stereotypes such as an alleged incapacity to speak idiomatic English and a tradition-bound and subservient nature.
No Charlie Chan film has been produced since The character has also been featured in several radio programstwo television showsand comics. He did not begin to write that novel until four years later, however, when he was inspired to add a Chinese-American police officer to the plot after reading in a newspaper of Chang Apana and Lee Fook, two detectives on the Honolulu police force.
It overwhelms me with sadness to admit it … for he is of my own origin, my own race, as you know. But when I look into his eyes I discover that a gulf like the heaving Pacific lies between us. Because he, though among Caucasians many more years than I, still remains Chinese.
As Chinese to-day as in the first moon of his existence. While I — I bear the brand — the label — Americanized I traveled with the current I was ambitious. I sought success. For what I have won, I paid the price. Am I an American?
Am I, then, a Chinese? Not in the eyes of Ah Sing. The character was not central to the novel and was not mentioned by name on the dust jacket of the first edition.