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.