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Dad
My dad died a few days ago. He was 96 years old. He went quickly and quietly. No pain. Dad was asleep and then he stopped breathing. By the time I got on a plane to Los Angeles, he was already gone. I didn’t have a chance to tell him how much I love him.…
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Dead Men Walking
Immortal Xia was a corpse dresser. She used to ply her trade around the coal mines near Jincheng. Whenever a mining accident occurred, Immortal Xia would appear dressed in strange robes like a witch. Some locals called her Queen Mother Guanyin, after the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy and compassion. Immortal Xia didn’t mind caring for…
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The Smell of Memory
Last month, when I was home in Los Angeles, my mother gave me a set of place mats and napkins. She thought she had bought them, though she couldn’t remember when. I thought they would look nice with my table runner. So I took the set home, washed them and laid them out for ironing.…
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Numbers Game
When I was a lawyer, people thought I was some sort of mathematical genius because I could read a profit and loss statement. And while I would never trust myself to calculate a discounted cash flow, I could act like I understood investment banker talk. Out here in the real world, however, most everyone is…
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Family Photos
This week, my mother sent me a poem. She didn’t write it herself and I don’t know who did. Like most of Mom’s emails to me, she forwarded something a friend had sent to her. Usually Mom sends photos, recipes, cleaning tips and YouTube films about China. Last weekend, I was looking at old family…
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Socialism Is Great!
When I started work on my novel Peace Court, I looked for sources to feed my imagination. I found plenty of history books but almost no fiction that dwelt on Shanghai in the early 1950s. Certainly none that originated from inside China. I wondered why that was the case. This is what I learned. revolutionary…
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Ghost Month
Throughout Asia, Ghost Month is the moment to commemorate the dead. A good reason to think about ghosts and why they appear in my novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. Ancestor worship My novel takes place in Shanghai 1937. Think big band and the foxtrot, opium dens and ballroom dancing. All that jazz as China…
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Fujianhua
When I dream about Shanghai, I see the Bund, the Pudong skyline, the plane trees of the old French Concession. People from every nation once strolled under those trees. Japanese, Brits, Russians, Americans, Portuguese, German, French, and more. In my dreams, I hear their strange speech. I can taste their odd foodstuffs: pretzels from Germany,…
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McTyeire School for Girls
The tricky thing about writing historical fiction is getting the details right. Were there ballpoint pens in Shanghai in 1937? (Yes.) Or plastic chopsticks in 1954? (No.) The average reader might not care but mine would. They already know something about China or they want to delve deeper. My readers want a story that feels…
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Grandma
This photo of my paternal grandmother was made long after she and my grandfather had fled China. Her life was long and rich. She had witnessed the fall of the Qing dynasty, the rise of Communist China and the landing of the first man on the moon. 15 children Wong Su-ying was born in 1892…