Buddha's Birthday Giveaway and Kindle Special

17 May 2013 is officially Buddha's birthday this year, and all over the world, people have joined into the celebrations.

Did you know that the city of Brisbane, in Australia is home to the largest annual Buddhist Birth Day Festival in the world? For three days and nights, Brisbane's South Bank Park lands light up with traditional red lanterns to celebrate the Buddha Birth Day Festival. Admission is free and there is much to keep everyone in the family interested with birthday ceremonies, cultural dances, music and feasting.

It turns out that humble Brisbane is also the birthplace of the historical novel, The Ming Storytellers. Set in China, the novel was extensively researched and written over a period of five years...all from Brisbane!

As part of the Buddha birthday month celebrations, a lucky person will have the chance to win a FREE Paperback copy of The Ming Storytellers.

To be in the random draw, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post or on the The Ming Storytellers Facebook page.

Don't enjoy reading Paperbacks? No stress!

Buddha's happy energy is fostering much generosity this month.

The Amazon Kindle version of The Ming Storytellers, originally priced at $5.99 USD is now priced at only 0.99 USD for a limited time only. This massive discount is also available on all Amazon KDP territories  where The Ming Storytellers is sold, including Germany, France, Spain, Brasil, Italy, Japan and India.


Much peace.



A tale of mystery and intrigue, The Ming Storytellers tells the fated story of Min Li, a willful imperial concubine and the illustrious Admiral Zheng He. The novel is set in China, during the Early Ming Dynasty a time of expansion and drama both at the Beijing court and at sea. Reviewers at Historical Novel Review have written an excellent review of the novel, here. 
Further information about The Ming Storytellers is available from the author interview at Unusual Historicals.

The Ming Storytellers - Paperback Release

I am pleased to announce the Paperback release of The Ming Storytellers on 

January 2013.

To celebrate this occasion, one lucky person will WIN an advance paperback copy of The Ming Storytellers. Talk about a Christmas present... 

And wait! There's more...we are speaking about a dedicated and SIGNED copy of this absolutely gorgeous book set in China's Ming Dynasty. How can you not want this?  

But seriously, how can you not want to ditch your e-reader for a hefty 633 pages? This is, after all, a historical novel. It demands the traditional reading experience with the forearm cramps, paper cuts and all.

To be in the draw to win, please click here and follow the competition instructions.

The winner will be announced shortly after the Australian New Year's Eve countdown on 01/01/2013.  

The Ming Storytellers - Sexuality

Issues of sexuality, sexual frustration and sexual obsession are an important undercurrent of the historical novel, The Ming Storytellers.

At the very core we have a world, the Forbidden City, where the only male population consists of an impotent emperor, Zhu Di, and his hundreds of castrates. Both ironically feel their inadequacies and both look to other worldly ambitions to compensate.

Zhu Di knows that he is unable to perform and in an attempt to dupe the world that he is still a virile man, continues to supplement his harem with yet more beauties from as far as Korea. Zhu Di persists in rubbing himself with aphrodisiac ointments and consulting with his physicians to improve his condition. Finding himself unable to perform, he assuages his masculinity on the military field.

Meanwhile the eunuchs who have sacrificed their manhood in order to accede to an imperial position understand that they will never have other means to succeed in their life than to serve their emperor. Maimed, conscious of their differences, plagued by lifelong health problems and sexually frustrated, they direct their ambitions, finding self-esteem and meaning in ascending the echelons of eunuchism, competing for roles and or often driving themselves to complex and illicit affairs with concubines.

For the hundreds of bored and sexually unfulfilled concubines in Zhu Di's harem, relief is found in forbidden literature. The women secretly indulge in the printed tales of the Ming storytellers, renown for their dubious virtue. They devour lascivious erotic vignettes, a Ming equivalent for pornography which arose during this period with the development of the printing industry.
In much the same way, Kareem, an envoy from Zanzibar is himself not foreign to the use of literature to compensate for the lack of spice in his bed. While his highly obsessed partner, Shahrzad, whiles her journey aboard the Ming fleet compiling theories about her idol, Admiral Zheng He, Kareem plunges ever deeply into the classic Persian volumes of One Thousand Tales (Arabian Nights).

Back in the Inner Palaces of the Middle Kingdom, bored and unfulfilled imperial concubines like the main protagonist, Min Li, become trapped in a form of fantasy, where they pine for unrequited forms of love. They become obsessed with eunuchs, perhaps men who believe themselves to be so inadequate that they shut themselves in a protective shell, convinced that they are undeserving of any adoration.

One such eunuch, Zhijian, will have to bear the frustration brought upon by castration all his life. He fills his time with the senseless completion of routine chores, without so much of a career goal, having abandoned all motive for life. The only escape from his torment is the obsession that he will develop for Min Li. His only joy following the castration that has deprived him of all he wanted from this life, is to seek every rumour concerning this one woman that he knows he can never have and who belongs to the emperor.
Zhijian will project his anima onto Min Li believing her to be pure and faultless, convinced that she is like him, a victim about to be slaughtered. Unable to function sexually, Zhijian elevates Min Li to muse status. He places her on a pedestal, relishing his platonic devotion as a welcome refuge because if he were to see her as a woman and desire her, he would ultimately need to face the 'villainy' of his physical condition.

But returning to the women of the palace, we find in the Ming Storytellers, another brand of sexual frustration one which perhaps would not be so problematic today, at least in many parts of the world.
It is the frustration of women who love other women and who are either forbidden to publicly meet due to social constraints or who entertain a secret passion for a loved one, a passion they hide, for fear of rejection.
The Ming dynasty is not foreign to sapphism. Palace women were known for having affairs with each other and wooden dildos have been found in the ruins of ancient Han palaces.

At the other extreme, there is another complex character who embodies a man completely at peace with castration yet who nevertheless suffers the frustration of remaining a man. Ji Feng is a eunuch, criminal at that. My conception of this character can be read in many ways. At the simplistic level he is a sexual criminal. At a more twisted level he is a man who has not 'come out' with his homosexuality. He experiences every woman as a threat, seeing them as creatures he can never compete with and whose form he can never hope to achieve.
Yet Ji Feng remains completely unaware of his own sexuality and of his seething jealously, nor is he conscious of his motivations for wanting to hurt women and see them under his power. Ji Feng's criminal impulse and his voyeurism, compound to produce a perverse individual capable of the worse crimes towards a gender that he cannot attain.

One salient undercurrent of The Ming Storytellers is the common theme of frustrated sexuality and soul-consuming sexual obsessions. It depicts a contrived world with extreme social taboos and physically maiming traditions, a world where eunuchism and forced concubinage combine to produce frustrated human needs that more or less contribute to the characters' journey.

10 Things You Didn't Know about The Ming Storytellers

1. It has eunuch characters - The main male character is a Muslim eunuch with a turbulent childhood. He existed. Yet in contrast to what is known of his role in Ming diplomacy and naval history, little has been written about his personal life or for that matter, about the many eunuchs who suffered and whose lives were violently transformed.

Today in many parts of the world, notably the West, there is much outrage over female genital manipulation in African and Middle Eastern communities, and how this scars women physically and psychologically. Conversely, the maiming of countless men over the course of history and even today is not dwelt upon with the same psychological and human rights perspective. It seems we have become disensitized about the practice of castration.

Whether through literature or film, we have come to accept that say, Romans, Turkish Sultans and Chinese emperors enslaved eunuchs, without dwelling on what being a eunuch meant for the victims. There is no memorial to acknowledge the lot of these men as eunuchs. There is little empathic study or recognition of what they endured, relative to our recognition of what slaves, in general, endured.

There are exceptions in literature. For example, I recently read the graphic novel, Habibi, and found it a truly respectful, eye-opening story featuring a eunuch as central character. It is a wonderful work of art and literature.

2. It contains torture scenes and a castration scene and offers the rudimentary outline on Chinese footbinding - history has its realities, however grim. I do not like to overlook the truth no matter how hard this truth. 

3. It presents a realistic portrayal of the life of Ming imperial concubines - What do bored women get up to, do you think? Yes, there is much plotting and scheming in secret, just as there are broken rules, bitchiness and much brooding. At the very least, readers can discover what it takes to be selected for the emperor's Royal Chamber and how to become a fashionable imperial courtesan. You can read more about this in my previous post, The Secret Life of Ming Concubines.

4. One of the great joys in writing historical fiction is that of giving a voice to those who have been overlooked or forgotten and offering a re-balance of perceptions through storytelling. And this is what The Ming Storytellers sets out to do. 

There is a magic realism element and as such, the novel slightly advances the cause of Shamanism. Long before the feudal Buddhist system headed by Tibetan priests, the old Tibet religions were rooted in shamanism. There was a deep reverence for animals and nature, and the belief in female seers or shamans. This root religion is explored and lends a magic realism aspect to the story.

The Ming Storytellers invites further contemplation into the history of Chinese minorities, notably those of Yunnan province, and the complex power systems that existed between China, Tibet and Mongolia in the 15th century.

5. It references Hazar Afsanah (One Thousand Nights, now known as 1001 Nights) - The Ming Dynasty is after all, the period where volumes of One Thousand Nights were being published in both Arabic and Persian editions.

6. It is set in a period where Arab and Chinese trade dominated the Indian Ocean, a time preceding the arrival of the Portuguese navigator, Alfonso d'Alburquerque, and his systematic takeover of Arab, Indian, South East Asian and East African trading ports. The Ming Storytellers is actually set just prior to a pivotal point in global trade history. The years following the novel's period mark a major historical shift from Chinese and Arab-dominated naval trade to European-dominated naval trade.
Today we find ourselves in a similar period of change but in the favor of China. From a political and economic perspective, the idea underpinning The Ming Storytellers is that empires, economies and military/trade supremacies rise and fall, and are also fraught by the same prejudices, fears, paranoia and delusions time and time again.

7. It is set in various places around the world including Nanjing, Lijiang in Yunnan, Beijing, Baidu in Sichuan, Deqin in Yunnan, Zanzibar in Tanzania, Calicut in Southern India, with general references to Mongolia, Tibet, Venice, Melacca, Oman, Mecca, Persia, Siam, Vietnam, Korea and of course, there are many passages set aboard the Ming fleet.
During the 15th century, these latter foreign places were all known by the Chinese. China was engaged in global trade with representatives from these parts of the world. It also received tributes from them as a form of allegiance and in exchange for naval protection and trade benefits. There was also a complex relationship between Tibet and China for both political and trade purposes.

8. The Ming Storytellers is transcultural - it embraces all religions and beliefs, and is divorced from all of them - There are references to Taoism, Buddhism, Tibetan Shamanism and Islam. There are references to several superstitions, together with the rejection of these.

Mazu, Celestial Goddess of the Seas guiding sailors

There are references to the Goddess Mazu - the Celestial Goddess of the sea for the Southern Chinese - together with references to the Nakhi ethnic group's frog worship.
The historical figure, Admiral Zheng He, on which the main male character is based, is believed by some historians to follow a harmonious integration between religions. The Ming Storytellers tries to be faithful to this notion and presents Zheng He as highly tolerant, with his attitude remaining quite fluid to integrate belief systems.

9. It deliberately features no White characters - In the story, when white foreigners are mentioned, they are commonly misjudged or treated as backward barbarians- this may be misconstrued to mean that Asian-centrism was the norm across all Ming Dynasty subjects (or that the novel endorses any existing Ming Dynasty racism). This is not the case. A couple of years ago, I wrote that this novel is an experiment in social psychology. It is a paradigm shift and nothing else. It is an exercise in human relations. It illustrates what often happens when an economically and politically powerful group of people, regardless of origin, looks upon the 'other'. 
I have always floated between East and West influences. It is my fluid background (Lebanese, Vietnamese and French) which allows me to setup this paradigm and remain...transcultural.

10. It contains both sexual references and sex scenes. Nothing coarse or pornographic, but I thought you might want to be aware of this. The Ming Storytellers features both homosexual and heterosexual sex scenes, including sex scenes between female and eunuch.

But in the words of my storyteller character, Jun: "Everything is important to the story."

The Secret Life of Ming Concubines

The alluring Gong Li in Tang Dynasty film,

 Curse of the Golden Flower

Nothing quite spells mystery like a glimpse into China’s forbidden palaces, centuries ago. Stepping back in time over 600 years ago, to the Ming Dynasty, one wonders about the women who dwelt in the palaces of Beijing and Nanjing. Unlike the daring women of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) who lived in Chang'an Palace opulence and shied not from revealing skin or cleavage, Ming court women were more demure. 

During the early Ming Dynasty the dragon throne, seat of the emperor, lay in the palace in Nanjing, a cosmopolitan city then known as Yingtian. 

Emperor Hongwu - Zhu Yuanzhang

Founder of the Ming Dynasty

Emperor Hongwu, the first Ming emperor had just driven out the Mongols from the Middle Kingdom. Like many Chinese emperors before him, and much like the former Mongol rulers who had ruled China from Dadu (modern day Beijing), Emperor Hongwu owned a Royal Chamber or harem where lived, or so he hoped anyway, the most gorgeous creatures in the country and beyond. 

Who were these women? Where did they come from? Standards of beauty vary enormously between historical periods and cultures. What were the primary physical attributes that rendered a woman attractive in Ming China? And were these women happy? 

To answer these questions, we travel back in time to the Yingtian Palace. Here, in the Inner Palace, only the emperor, his eunuchs and the court ladies or maids can usually enter. But today for this exclusive interview with a Ming concubine, we have been permitted entry by a corrupt eunuch. We will sit under a pavilion in the Imperial Gardens and we will ask the delicate Zhou Mai, a fifth-ranking concubine, to tell us a little bit about herself, her beauty routine and what her experience has been so far living in the palace.

Greetings Zhou Mai. Where do you come from?

I was born in Korea. My country pays tribute to the Hongwu Emperor. This is a demonstration of my people's loyalty as vassals to the Middle Kingdom. In exchange, Korea is offered protection from pirates. It can also trade with the people of the Middle Kingdom. 

Is it true that you were sent to the Middle Kingdom as a gift?

Yes. Last year, the Hongwu emperor asked that my country pay tribute by sending him one hundred virgins. I was one of the girls chosen to be his concubine.

How old are you?

I am thirteen.

Did you want to be selected?

It is an honour to serve in Emperor Hongwu's Royal Chamber. But...I miss my family. My parents were very upset to see me go. 

Where do you live now?

I live here, in Yingtian palace. We girls sleep in the Royal Chamber quarters. We cannot go outside the palace. 

What is your palace title?

Here, I am called Zhou Guiren. Guiren is an honorific title for fifth-ranking concubines like me. I want to be a Guifei. This is a first-ranking concubine. I have much to learn. I can only become Guifei if the emperor is pleased with me or if I bear him a son.

What were the reasons you think you were selected? 

I was told my skin was as pure as jade and white as glistening snow. In the Middle Kingdom and Korea, fair skin is very important. Also my breasts are not too big as I have bound them tight from an early age with strips of cloth. Having big breasts is seen as salacious. I think also, I have a lithe waist and have always been encouraged to shuffle graciously with tiny steps. I am well-spoken and have a good voice.

I noticed that you do not have bound feet. Do not the women of the Middle Kingdom bind their feet?

We Koreans do not bind our feet.   

Yes, footbinding is increasing in the Middle Kingdom today.  It is called "lotus feet". 

So some women in the Middle Kingdom have bound feet and some do not?

The Mongols tried to outlaw the custom. They have since been pushed out, back to the North. Emperor Hongwu, is against all Mongol practices. Now footbinding is becoming popular again all over The Middle Kingdom. 

But there are still exceptions. Even Emperor Hongwu's consort, Empress Ma does not have bound feet. She is from Mongol stock.  She even rides horses.

Why do you think men of the Middle Kingdom like bound feet?

Any man with a good reputation prefers his woman to stay in the home so she cannot invite illicit affairs. A woman with bound feet cannot easily walk. So she is less likely to leave her husband if she wanted to. 

Also only country women who work outside in the fields need use of their big feet. So for a man to be seen as wealthy, it is best that his woman has lotus feet. 

Do you wish you had bound feet?

(frowns) Yes...and also...no. 

Why?

Lotus feet are seen by some women as more precious than a beautiful face. They say men are excited by lotus feet. They play games with them in bed. But then I know that lotus feet cause a lot of pain. In the Royal Chamber, girls with bound feet need help to squat for toileting. They are dependent on their chamber maids. I often hear concubines complain about pain.

What do you do with your time, Zhou Guiren?

We do many things. We like to read books. They are not illicit tales from the streets, they are mostly virtuous books written by Empress Ma, Hongwu's consort. Also the educated ladies from Suzhou in the south come to visit us often. They are very talented. They teach us songs and music. They teach the younger girls to read.  I like to embroider animals on silk. I am getting better at silk embroidery. 

Do you go outside your chamber?

Yes, when it is not too hot. We ask the eunuchs to bring parasols for us and we play in the Inner Palace's gardens. We play behind the rocks and sing songs. But we cannot go outside the palace. On special occasions, some Guifeis will travel on sedan-chairs and accompany the emperor to visit the other palaces where the princesses and princes live. 

You mentioned illicit tales before. What are those?

They are road-side tales told by ambulant storytellers in the cities and the country. I am told they can be crude and not virtuous. Some tales have been made into bound books by the publishers of Fujian province in the south. But we are not permitted to read these. We are only allowed virtuous literature. Women should be modest, chaste and Tend to the Gentlemen. This is our highest calling.

Long silk pleated skirt, blue is usually a colour no commoner can wear

The ribbon tied coat is a little passe, Zhou Mai preferring buttons

What are you wearing Mai?

(stands) On my feet, I have slippers with peony pattern embroidery. I am wearing a long white silk pleated skirt. Pleated skirts are the latest fashion in the palace. On top of this, I have a silk peach waist coat with porcelain buttons. Buttons are very good to have. 
I like being a concubine because we have beautiful silk clothes. Country people can only afford cotton or hemp.

Did you do your hair yourself?

(smiles) My chamber maid helped me with this double bun. She picked blue flowers from the imperial garden and pinned them to the sides above my temples. One of the princesses gave me a gift of this cobalt tasseled pin and I have pushed it into my bun. This type of pin is only for girls who have reached menstruation. 

Ming Dynasty Hair ornaments 

Tasseled pins adorn double buns

Tell me more about your makeup and beauty routine, Mai.

It is important to keep the skin white and so we use powder from crushed shells. After covering my face in powder, I draw-in my eyebrows into black crescent shapes and spread a vermillion-tinged pomade on my cheeks to bring them to life. 
I use a vermilion lip balm to draw a cherry-shaped pout in the centre of my lips. It should not go out too much, only three quarters of the lip should be covered. 
On my nails, I have a red nail tint made of egg-whites, beeswax, balsamic dye and Arabic gum. Last month, my nails were tinted in black but I decided to change today. I wear a scented pouch around my waist to give off pleasant smells wherever I walk. (touches earrings) These jade earrings are a gift from the emperor. (smiles)
All this is what men find beautiful.

The cherry-shaped pout in latest vermilion

You mentioned eunuchs before, what are those?

They are men who have been castrated. They cannot have children. They are the only men we see in the palace aside from the emperor. 

What do you think of eunuchs?

Some are not to be trusted. But others are very helpful. It depends. They are from all over the country including the south in Yunnan province. Others come from as far as Annam, Korea and Manchuria. There are some eunuchs who never wanted to be eunuchs but they had no choice because they were made prisoner by the emperor's men and taken by force, like the Mongol eunuchs for example.

What is the role of eunuchs in the palace?

They work hard in the palace. They do everything for us. They bring toilet paper, empty chamber pots, call onto female physicians and they organise our foot warmers, parasols and sedan-chairs. They will bring us to the emperor's night chamber whenever we are selected to spend the night with him. They do everything in the palace but they cannot read.

Why can they not read?

(whispers) The Hongwu Emperor has forbidden that eunuchs learn how to read. He believes they should not be trusted with important documents. 

What about the Royal Chamber...do you girls trust the eunuchs?

(hesitates) Well...I will tell you something that the emperor does not know...yet. Some of the concubines have eunuch lovers. They meet them in secret... 

Why do you think the concubines seek a eunuch lover?

I don't know. Because...they are lonely maybe. They miss their family...but eunuchs are always here for them. Also some of the concubines can seek the attention of eunuchs when they are sad or lonely. You see, even if a concubine has children, these are taken away from them as soon as they are born and sent to the nursery in the Eastern side of the palace. 

Do you think you will ever return to your homeland?

Maybe. I think it is not likely. When concubines are old, around thirty years, they are sent to do laundry or become maids. They also cannot remarry with a man from the Middle Kingdom, only with a foreigner. Maybe I will die an old maid. But I am still lucky. I could be on a farm working hard on the land with not much food to eat. The emperor knows everything about famines. You see, when he was a young boy he lost most of his family in the Anhui famine. (smiles) So I am lucky living here in the palace.

Thank you, honourable Mai Guiren, for your time. It has been a pleasure. 

May the path you walk on be sprinkled with the most fragrant flower blossoms and may you live a long life.

An erotic embossment on a brick - Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)

Courtesy of the Chinese Sex Museum in Xi'an

Published in AvaxNews.com

Did you like this post? 
A new historical novel, The Ming Storytellers crafts a mysterious tale of imperial concubines and eunuchs set against the political intrigue and obsessions lurking in the palaces of Beijing and Nanjing. Set in the early Ming Dynasty, The Ming Storytellers brings to the fore the lives of imperial concubines during this period. It is available internationally from Amazon (Paperback and Kindle Editions), Barnes & Noble NOOK and Apple's iBookstore.

A World of Minorities

It always irks me a little when I hear the people of several countries within the African continent being designated under the broad term of “Africans”.

Human language abounds with stereotypical definitions that serve our laziness and relative refusal to inquire about the unknown “other”. We use what social psychologists term as heuristics or mental shortcuts to make judgments, precisely because they allow us to quickly map and speak of our environments. They allow us to define our environment based on our experiences, often not in an empirical way. These do not spring from malicious intent. They are used to save time, mental effort and to serve our already shaped attitudes with minimum impact to our identity.

The more unknown and dissimilar a group of people are to us, the more likely we will apply to them what is called the outgroup homogeneity effect. This is defined as the tendency to perceive outgroup members (people who differ from us through their gender, their status or their social and cultural background) as more similar to one another than are ingroup members. In simpler terms, this is best described as the "they all look the same" mentality that we apply, even subconsciously, to outgroup members.

I am not sure if it is because I was born in Senegal but I am aware of the difference between a Serer, a Toucouleur, a Dyula or a Wolof person. Already my perception of Senegal has been refined by my experience and I would be ashamed to call a Senegalese an “African” no matter how positive my attributions are towards a said “African”.

I really think the terminology we use reflects the knowledge and respect we have for people in the world. Obviously I would not expect that everyone starts to refer to a Western France person as a Breton or that we all list the different Aboriginal tribes that exist in Australia.

But ultimately it is true that the correct naming and identification of certain groups brings us closer to understanding who they are.

Surprisingly, one of the most stereotyped groups of people in our modern age is the Chinese. With China's growing presence in the global sphere and the advent of more Chinese related subjects in the media, we read a lot about China these days. But when we think of China and the Chinese, the image that comes to mind will be directly influenced by our experiences however limited. If we have never been to China, the only information we will have is from the media.

I cannot answer the question of what it means to be Chinese in such a short post, let alone attempt to do justice to its broad scope.

But at the simplest level, it is worth painting this Chinese face a little more sharply than is currently done by the media.

If you are a Uyghur from Xinjiang province, you might be Muslim and your heritage might encompass more Turkic rather than Sino influences. If you are a Hakka from Fujian province, your ancestors would have never suffered the painful tradition of footbinding. If you are a Nakhi from Lijiang, your heritage includes the world’s only still-in-use pictographic writing system which looks akin to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Nakhi Pictographs (center)

Chinese characters shown on each side

Source: blogger's own scroll, Lijiang

 If you are a Mosuo, a cousin of the Nakhi, your society is matrilineal and you are a descendant of Tibetan nomads. If you are a Manchu or Jurchen, your people once ruled China under the Qing dynasty and it was your imposed dress code which the colonial Europeans came to identify as “Chinese” even though this could not be further from the truth. If you are a Hue then your ancestors may come from Uzbekistan or you may yourself be mixed after many generations of intermarriage within China, whether this be a marriage with the ruling Mongols during the 13th century, or with people of the Han majority, or with other groups. But you are first and foremost a Hue because you follow Islamic teachings.

Finally if you are a Han then you are in the majority Chinese ethnic group and might possibly be the group most Westerners refer to when they lump the people of China into the one stereotype.

 As it stands, China has 55 recognised ethnic minorities. Many of them are in China's Yunnan province, the area bordering Vietnam, Burma, Laos and Tibet. The cultural heritage in Yunnan is outstanding. It is not a surprise that I chose to feature Yunnan and its people in my novel, The Ming Storytellers.

I was still a novice on China when I began writing but my approach was to recognise its cultural richness and depict a China where borders are elusive and where for centuries a flow of people has existed either from Uzbekistan, Mongolia, the Northern area known as Manchuria, Vietnam, Burma, Laos, Thailand or Tibet.

Of course, internally, the Chinese government aims to strengthen its country's nationalism and will encourage identification under one umbrella group: the Chinese. But this government also recognizes the 55 different ethnic groups because this dual identity is crucial to avoiding group conflict especially when there are so many different groups in one country. That is, some social psychologists have found that to avoid inter group conflict and to ensure individuals do not become dissatisfied, they must have a common group or goal to identify with as well as a means to differentiate themselves and derive cultural pride. Having said this, there is still much to be done (in many countries, not just China) to ensure that the voice of minorities is not extinguished in the favour of the majority.

One of the ways we can listen to and support minorities is by first knowing that they exist. Lumping a group of people into an umbrella term, for example, using the term, “Africans” is a sure way of forgetting that minorities exist.

No sooner does our vision of a country begin to encompass the richness and granularity of its people, the more these people cease to be unknown. They become familiar and understood. Our perception then no longer conjures fear, nor objectifies nor alienates this outgroup; suddenly these people acquire human qualities, each with their own culture, their own ways of seeing, their own story. I cannot stress the importance of this phenomenon. It is being able to see others as human which keeps us human.

A Historical Novel of Ming China

Publishing Perspectives presented an interesting article about the complexity of translating Chinese books into English, together with the cultural nuances that were lost on, or almost impossible to convey to English readers.

With the rise of China as the world's second largest economy and the growing exposure to Chinese film and Chinese-related media, there has also been an increasing interest in Chinese books.

The world is watching this Red Dragon unfurl; some with sinister apprehension, others with misinformed prejudice and still there are some, these ever avid sinophiles and sinologists, who embrace whatever they can learn about China's fascinating growth, its culture, its history and its people, and who march in the footsteps of pioneers like Marco Polo, Matteo Ricci, Sommerset Maugham and even our own Kevin Rudd.

Unfortunately for the non-Chinese speaking world where literary content is produced about China it has, according to the aforementioned article, often fallen into two camps. I quote from Publishing Perspectives:

“The two hoary old themes are the Cultural Revolution, and ‘sexy China.’  For a while it seemed like everything fell into those two camps, and then all at once publishers got tired of them.

Coincidentally (or perhaps since I flatter myself to be visionary) I voiced my contempt for the overdone Cultural Revolution and communist themes about six years ago when I began researching my historical novel, The Ming Storytellers. They say you should write what you want to read. I did just that.

What I sought to do then was write a book about China that combined all the genre elements I had personally loved in Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. At the non-narrative level, this novel, if I ever got around to finishing it, would speak of a different China, one that reflected its broad history, its global role several centuries ago, its complex multi-ethnic population and more importantly, a psyche predating the Colonial and Communist eras. Because my narrative was dark and contained many Gothic elements, I created the Ming Gothic genre.

Not surprisingly, I have been told by agents and publishers alike that my novel would be 'difficult to place'.
Hence the risk involved in endorsing this, a first time author's work.

Yet I stand fast by The Ming Storytellers and feel greatly satisfied with its to-date unique approach to writing about China. I am planning to translate it in French so that the many French sinophiles I know are out there can also enjoy it.

In the meantime, at least an English version of The Ming Storytellers will be released in August this year.

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