My main familiarity with the term lascars came from um… A Little Princess maybe? One of those turn of the century books is where it turns up.

And, true, Sherlock is smarter than the average man. Do bystanders continually compare his doings to an ordinary person? I guess Watson might…

This article on Wikipedia both supports and dis-supports the use of ‘lascar’ to refer to Chinese men. In one case, it says ‘Lascar, Chinese, and Japanese’ but then in another spot it says ‘Chinese sailors were employed as lascars’. So is it both a term of racial/ethnic identity _and_ a profession? Two different terms? Or what exactly?

As for male sleuths being claimed to be smarter than the average man, I don’t have too much experience, but it seems true to me. Sherlock Holmes (and House). Everyone goes on about how brilliant they are. Monk too, in a different sort of way. And, um, other examples I can’t think of.

This article seems to agree with me, so I remain rather puzzled. I’m assuming Lee did plenty of research on the subject (because frankly, whether her father was Chinese or Indian specifically has thus far had little import and would have required only very minor tweaking to change it one way or another) in order to come to her choice of Chinese.