The Beginning--Rough Draft

Fast forward to 2001.

• Written in First Person Point of View. After I started writing the first rough draft about Robert Hart's love affair with a young Chinese concubine, Ayaou, Anchee suggested I use a title she was saving for a possible, future novel of her own. It was My Splendid Concubine. I accepted, and My Splendid Concubine was born.

• It wasn't that easy. First I had to read Entering China's Service and two volumes of The I.G. In Peking, published by Harvard University Press. By the time I started writing My Splendid Concubine, I had traveled to Shanghai, China with my bride to visit her parents and family. I had no idea what to expect. At the time, my images of Communist China were not flattering. I admit that I was worried. However, my worries were short lived. Shanghai did not turn out to be the Communist Chinese ant hill I thought it would be. It was a fashionable city filled with beautiful people. Stylist shops filled with the latest fashions lined the streets. Mao's dreaded Red Army was no where in sight. As a matter of fact, Mao's Red Army wasn't the same. Mao's China and the China I first visited were two different countries filled with the same people.

• After I finished the first, rough draft of My Splendid Concubine, Anchee edited it. I learned more about China's people and customs from her criticism. Harvard's scholars and Sterling Seagrave in Dragon Lady credits Hart's understanding of China to Ayaou, his concubine and live-in dictionary. My Chinese education started with my wife. It didn't take long to discover that Anchee was more than a dictionary. She was a dictionary and a set of encyclopedias and an endless list of historical nonfiction. After the critique I knew that I had to learn more about China and its people. The books and research mounted. There were more trips to China.

• After I polished that first version of My Splendid Concubine, it didn't take long to find a literary agency in New York to represent me. I was told that Random House expressed interest, but nothing came of it. The agent suggested some changes and I revised the manuscript. Still no publisher stepped up to buy the novel. I went back to the drawing board and added more depth to the novel. I met with other literary agents that expressed interest after reading my second revision. Suggestions were made. I started the third revision. By this time, Anchee was writing the Empress Orchid, which eventually would be a finalist for the British Book Awards and a huge best seller in Britain.

• I want to make something clear. Anchee writes her own books and novels. I've heard from Anchee and her friends that some Chinese PhDs in America and China have criticized her in public claiming that there is no way she could write her books. While giving lectures, Chinese men have challenged her in public. I can only shake my head at such arrogance. It's almost as if Chinese men still consider women as an inferior species like they were treated for thousands of years. Anchee does all of her own research and writes her novels first in Chinese and then translates everything into English. It is a difficult and arduous process. No one, including me, sees any of her work until she is ready to share it. If I enter her office while she is writing, she saves and minimizes the work on the screen so I can't even eavesdrop.

It all started in 1999

• Little did I know that in 1999 I would set foot on a path that would lead to Mainland China several times; edit several bestselling novels; write a historical novel and eventually end up being as a China expert on more than a dozen radio talk shows broadcasting from hundreds of radio stations across North America as a China expert. In 1999 I was far from being an expert on anything.

• In the summer of 1999, I met Anchee and we started dating. During that period of time while we were dating she suggested that I might be interested in Robert Hart. "Who is Robert Hart," I asked. "He was important to China," she replied. "There were streets named after him in Shanghai and Beijing. The Emperor had a statue erected on the Bund in Shanghai in his honor."

• I knew little to nothing about China at this time. While we were dating, I checked Anchee's books out of the library and read them. The first one I read was Red Azalea and the second Katherine.

• I knew nothing about the Cultural Revolution. To me China was Mao's army crossing into North Korea to enter the conflict there in the 1950s. My image of China saw everyone dressed the same and thinking the same. I was soon to learn how wrong and ignorant I was about China. That was 1999.

• My Introduction to China was reading Anchee's first two books. Red Azalea is her memoir about growing up during the Cultural Revolution. She was born in Shanghai. As a teenager, she joined the Little Red Guard. Later she would end up in the labor camps where she injured her back. If you want to know more, I recommend that you read Red Azalea. It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and earned the Carl Sandburg Award for Literature.

• It didn't take long before I was hooked and wanted to know more about the land Anchee came from. As we dated and fell in love, I looked into Robert Hart. I bought Entering China's Service, Robert hart's journals, 1854-1863; The I.G. In Peking (both volumes), Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritmie Customs 1868-1907. These books were published by the Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard Universeity Press. Hart's original letters and journals are archived at the Universitiy of Belfast in Ireland.