Jade City

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-12

Chapters 13-26

Chapters 27-36

Chapters 37-46

Chapter 47-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Authorial Context: Organized Crime and the Gangster Genre

Fonda Lee describes herself as a fan of action movies and gangster sagas; in preparation for the novel, she revisited both historical depictions of crime syndicates and other fiction drawing on these organizations:

For Jade City, I read nonfiction and watched documentaries about the Sicilian and Italian-American mafia and the Chinese triads and the Japanese yakuza. I watched American gangster movies and Hong Kong crime dramas and yakuza films and kung fu flicks and karambit knife-fighting tutorials on YouTube. I read nearly everything written by Mario Puzo (506).

The influence of films is apparent in Jade City, which features extensive action scenes that replicate the cinematography and choreography of on-screen street combat, and dramatic face-offs between powerful heads of families that draw on similar tense exchanges in fiction about real-world organized crime. Some reviewers compare Jade City to director Francis Ford Coppola’s film trilogy adaptation of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Aspects of Kekon like the strict division of responsibility within clan leadership, the honor culture that drives the tradition of the death of consequence and the exile of Anden, and the supernatural powers jade bestows clearly draw on similar conceits in the wuxia martial arts genre.

At the same time, Lee’s careful worldbuilding and the sociopolitical complexities of Kekon reflect her interest in the way organized crime has actually worked in different cultures and times in the real world. The novel depicts shifting power dynamics between powerful criminal organizations and a weakened national government, drawing on real-world examples of post-colonial power vacuums and conflicts between Indigenous and colonizer populations. The structure of the clans and the flow of power across them stem from comparable organizations in history; their connection to jade echoes the way many real-life criminal organizations are connected to the black market trade of lucrative products, such as drugs or diamonds.

Cultural Context: Mind and Body in Martial Arts

An essential aspect of Jade City is its inclusion of martial arts—in particular, the martial arts styles developed in East Asia—in the culture of the Green Bones and their clans. Jade gives the characters of the novel their enhanced capabilities, but they only realize their full power after rigorous training in martial arts disciplines. Fonda Lee draws on her expertise in various forms of martial arts for her portrayal of both the physical combat and the underlying philosophies of honor and mind-body connection.

Martial arts include armed and unarmed fighting approaches; training includes hand-to-hand combat with weapons such as staffs, and ranged combat with bows and arrows. However, what separates those martial arts featured in the novel from martial arts developed in other cultures is the philosophy behind them:

The primary unifying aspect of the East Asian martial arts […] is the influence of Daoism and Zen Buddhism. This influence has resulted in a strong emphasis on the mental and spiritual state of the practitioner, a state in which the rationalizing and calculating functions of the mind are suspended so that the mind and body can react immediately as a unit (“Martial Art.” Encyclopaedia Britannica).

The emphasis on the connection between mind and body union is made literal in Jade City through the use of the magical version of jade. This gemstone can only be effectively wielded by those with proper physical and mental training. Without this governing influence, the power of the gem exacerbates the innate hunger for greed and violence, causing an imbalance that can lead to the deadly condition known as Itches. The honor code surrounding the practice of East Asian martial arts also plays a key role in the lives of Green Bones, as seen in the numerous codified duels that take place and the fate of Bero, whose disobedience results in exile despite the fact that it leads to the death of Lan.

Geological Context: Jade

In the world of Kekon, jade is a beautiful and powerful jewel that grants any wielder enhanced abilities.

In the real world, jade is also a valuable semiprecious stone and a sought-after commodity: The “translucent mass of sodium aluminum silicate known as jadeite is one of the world’s most coveted gems, chiefly among the Chinese, whose growing buying power has spurred record sales” (Beech, Hannah. et. al. “Battling for Blood Jade.” TIME, 2023). Jade also carries historical and cultural significance, particularly in China, where for centuries it has been carved into beautiful jewelry or figurines. In the novel, jade also confers status, as evidenced by the tension surrounding Shae’s refusal to wear the jade she has inherited as No Peak Clan royalty.

However, jade has a complicated and bloody past, especially in Myanmar, a country where jade is the most significant economic resource:

Global Witness, an international watchdog that monitors natural-resource exploitation, estimates that Myanmar’s jade trade was worth up to $31 billion in 2014, nearly half of the nation’s GDP that year. Yet the industry remains shrouded. The ethnic Kachin, though native to the jade hills, control few of the mines (Beech).

Not only is the actual extraction of the mineral dangerous—miners are often killed in landslides—but significant civil conflicts have been sparked over control of the mines. Similarly, in Jade City, clans fight over control of the resource, and Ayt Mada seeks to take total control of the jade market both domestically and abroad.