00:06:07.600And, you know, whereas like, you know, academic historians, they don't have that luxury.
00:06:11.040They actually need to try to make this, you know, their words as accurate as possible.
00:06:14.700But for me, I think I actually, because so much of the stories about her are orally transmitted,
00:06:23.720they're not, you know, official in the sense like it's not a part of some Qing dynasty document somewhere.
00:06:30.040Although there are some official documents I'd love to talk about later.
00:06:32.460But mostly I was reading a lot about the society at the time because there are records of what it was like to be, like there are entire books written on the pirating culture of the South China area in the 1800s.
00:06:46.860There are entire books written about all of the rebellions that were going on all over the country during this particular Chinese emperor's reign.
00:06:56.120And so in a way, I was kind of narrowing or kind of zooming in or narrowing down. I'm not sure what analogy I want here based on the larger historical records. Right. So if all the records are saying, hey, this was a really bad period for peasants because there were all of these famines happening and, you know, one month's worth of rice cost, you know, many months worth of wages.
00:07:19.080then you kind of think okay well how how might this have interfaced with pirate fleets you know
00:07:26.140and and why people chose to quote unquote choose or chose to become pirates because for many of
00:07:31.860them it wasn't a choice yeah i for for me it was a lot of academic sources about the larger
00:07:38.480environment and then weaving that in with the oral storytelling of around this particular
00:07:45.900historical figure. And I think you just alluded to this, but what, so what specific sources did
00:07:51.860you find for the oral storytelling? Just written records somewhere? So I think a lot of it is just
00:07:58.360like in, uh, in the Chinese language, there are some kind of like, you know, like here are some
00:08:03.180orals, you know, the tales that have been passed down by people from, about this particular
00:08:08.780historical figure. And so I, and I speak, I mean, you know, my, my parents would complain that I
00:08:13.860don't speak well enough, but I do speak and read some in Chinese. And on top of that, there was
00:08:20.180this really, I mean, I mentioned this earlier, I found this really fascinating document that was
00:08:25.720written by, I believe it was an English merchant who was petitioning the English government
00:08:31.100to take a more active stance in terms of eradicating the pirates of the South China Sea,
00:08:38.280because at the time the pirates were basically so successful that they were cutting into the
00:08:45.000profit margins of all the European traders who were coming in. I found this really fascinating
00:08:51.060document written by this guy who had lived in the region around the time, had talked to a bunch of
00:08:56.520the pirates. And actually there were, he talks about how in one of the fleets with the red
00:09:00.920banner, there was this pirate queen and her husband and how actually, you know, he was like,
00:09:06.660actually they treated the prisoners, they treat the European prisoners okay. And they, you know,
00:09:13.700were far meaner to their fellow Chinese prisoners. And then this document also talked a lot about
00:09:20.100things like how did they do, how they did ransom exchanges. So it's like if they kidnap somebody
00:09:26.180and the other party is able to pay, like, you know, he like laid out in detail all these things
00:09:32.540about how like they would send out a boat with the money on it and all that. So a lot of that
00:09:36.720information is really stuff that, I mean, I probably could have made it up, but the fact
00:09:40.920that I was able to find this in the records, I think, I hope made the novel feel, felt made
00:09:47.360novel's world felt more, feel more lived in, if that makes any sense. No, absolutely. And just
00:09:53.400like having read your novel, which I really, really enjoyed the, you really, it's a, I don't
00:09:58.640know you know there's so many novels that are written about like regency england or like
00:10:02.420victorian london where i think authors writing about those have a sort of shorthand and expectation
00:10:06.700that the audience like the readers would know that but you were setting up a scene of a world
00:10:10.960that most of the readers i think are going to be like where is this time and place i like that
00:10:15.800there is very early in the book you have a very like i love this a very dismissive comment about
00:10:20.900napoleon bonaparte just which also just really set the scene for me as a reminder like okay this is
00:10:27.080a time period like okay napoleon is often doing this and then all this is happening with those
00:10:32.000trying to see like the portuguese are there the dutch are there like so yeah what was that like
00:10:36.700to just have to to write like you do all this research you're setting the time and place you
00:10:41.260didn't want your book to be a thousand pages long explaining exactly what was going on and i think
00:10:46.360you do you do a great job of really explaining what's going on but in a in a way where it's
00:10:51.960still always that young story so it's all from her point of view like was there a lot of research
00:10:56.740that you had to, I'm sure you read a lot more than what you put in the book. So how did you
00:11:01.520decide kind of which parts to include? Yeah. And thank you so much, by the way,
00:11:06.340for pointing out that little section at the beginning, because that was absolutely the
00:11:10.840intent, right? I was trying to stay in seconds, but like from the perspective of somebody like
00:11:15.320her, like she might be aware that someone named Napoleon is like doing some stuff over there in
00:11:20.580Europe, but like, this is not a part of her day-to-day life, right? The same way, like,
00:11:24.140You know, folks who are living in the U.S. might not really think a lot about the day-to-day lives of people who are, like, all the way, you know, across the world.
00:11:31.200But it was meant to situate a reader who might not be as familiar with Chinese history.
00:11:38.040Like, oh, okay, this is, like, we're talking, like, that early 1800s, you know, period.
00:11:42.700So thank you so much for picking up on that.
00:11:45.000And, you know, so I think the first thing is that I did have to leave a lot of research out.
00:11:50.780And I'm not going to pretend like all of that was an easy decision.
00:11:54.720A lot of it was, you know, decided in conjunction with my editor, who, you know, we went back
00:12:00.320and forth a few times to say, is this absolutely essential information for people to know,
00:12:20.060Because ultimately, I think some people will think that I made the right calls and some people will think that I made the incorrect calls and that's fine. That's usually how fiction works. But the thing that I really tried to keep in mind the whole time that I was going through this editing process was trust your reader. That was the thing that I kept thinking, trust your reader.
00:12:43.740I choose to believe that the people who would pick up my book and read my book are, you know, intelligent readers who can infer from context, who can figure things out as they go along and who are willing to figure things out.
00:13:00.520Right. Like there's some some people who really prefer to have everything explained to them and that's OK.
00:13:05.240But like I don't you know, like I think I am targeting a very specific group of readers, like people who are willing to immerse themselves in a world and kind of figure things out as they go along.
00:13:14.780So that I think that for me was a useful guiding principle.
00:13:19.160And you also, in this book, you incorporate, there's a goddess who is mentioned who is a kind of a supporting character in the story. Can you talk about your research about, I don't know what that would be, like the religious beliefs or the, I don't know, folktales? Where did you get that information from or the idea to include that in the story?
00:13:42.700So the goddess that we're talking about for listeners is a goddess named Mazu, who is a sea goddess worshipped in many parts of East Asia.
00:13:52.320Well, not just East Asia. I think she's also worshipped in Southeast Asia and some other places.
00:13:56.640But the idea is that when I was doing research for the novel, I came across this little bit of information, which I love, which is that pirates actually were, you know, we don't typically think of pirates as spiritual people.
00:14:11.860or, you know, or kind of people of faith, but they, because so many of them were fisher folk
00:14:18.560before they moved over to piracy, right? Usually it was desperation and starvation that drove them
00:14:24.180over to piracy. They brought with them the spiritual beliefs that they have as fisher folk.
00:14:30.520And one of those spiritual beliefs is a belief in the sea goddess Mosul, which makes, I think,
00:14:37.280perfect sense if you, if you see all your, all your, I met you, you're like, please don't, you
00:14:41.480know, please no freak storms that like are going to kill me and everybody else I love. So when I
00:14:47.560found out that piece of information that the pirates were actually, you know, quite religious
00:14:52.460slash superstitious, depending on how you think about it. And that they actually used to sail
00:14:56.800around with temple boats. So again, like imagine like a temple on land and then plop it on top of
00:15:04.160a junk ship. And they would sail around with that thing in their fleet so that they could
00:15:08.480worship while they were farther from land. I thought this is just such, again, I think this
00:15:15.320is information that makes the world feel more lived in. And I decided to add that in. And the
00:15:21.600other part, sorry, that I haven't said yet, is that Masu is actually still a very beloved goddess
00:15:28.520in Taiwan, where I grew up. So if you go to Taiwan, there are temples to her everywhere.
00:15:35.000You know, there are like stores sell items with her image on, I mean, her sort of, you know,
00:15:42.880we don't know what it looks like because she's a mythical figure, but with her imagined image on
00:15:48.200like store packaging and things like that. And so I grew up around a lot of that culture of
00:15:54.600mazu worship and um in many ways this writing about her in the book was a little bit like my
00:16:00.680love letter to my the place where i grew up right where where this thing is such a i mean like there
00:16:07.140are so i i don't think uh people who are unfamiliar with it can fathom how many festivals and
00:16:12.740celebrations there are every year in taiwan around this one well and i also i like the
00:16:19.180the fact that it's a female deity like it's a goddess of the sea and then you're telling the
00:16:25.660story about a woman who becomes a leader like and how how Sakyong might have turned to her as
00:16:33.060I don't know in in that sort of like woman to woman sort of way I find that interesting as well
00:16:37.880and now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors
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00:21:33.220Yeah. And that becomes sort of her, not role model, but just like that sort of guiding
00:21:37.660principle. It's like, what did Maju do? How did she? Yeah. Exactly. And you just mentioned also
00:21:43.260the flower boats. And I really want to talk about that aspect of it because in just in my research,
00:21:49.060when I was doing the episode, like I really focused mostly on just what we know about the
00:21:53.080pirating career, but you really sit there and like, what does it mean to be a young person,
00:21:57.780like in sexual slavery and then what does it mean to then be taken by a man to become his wife which
00:22:06.980is really another transactional form of sexual slavery it's not like oh yeah she's a rescue
00:22:13.220from it's like no now she's just here in this different way yeah how did you how did you decide
00:22:17.960to approach that like you really you don't shy away from the fact of like what was this like
00:22:21.820what was this yeah just talk about that that aspect of the story how did you are the records
00:22:27.240about what the flower boats were like and so you could imagine what it was like to be living there
00:22:31.560yeah so uh the the flower boat scenes were actually the hardest for me to write because
00:22:37.780i was trying to walk a tightrope you know i i'm i'm not a believer in you know making things
00:22:45.320traumatic for trauma's sake do you know what i mean like i think there are many of us with trauma
00:22:49.240histories and that to kind of glorify in it and to be like look how you know to kind of like get
00:22:56.020into every gory detail. I don't personally, I mean, you know, I know there are people who've
00:23:00.640done it, but I don't personally see the point in that. But at the same time, in some of the
00:23:07.880records that I found, these were Chinese records, that she herself was abducted by pirates and
00:23:14.180sold into sexual slavery. So I felt like it would be, in a way, dishonoring her history
00:23:21.520If we didn't, if we pretended that that part of her life never happened, even though it's an incredibly unpleasant part of her life.
00:23:31.080So I decided to write this thing with the intent of not focusing on the trauma of it, although there definitely is trauma there, but focusing on the social cultural role that these flower boats played in the quote unquote underworld at the time and the role that these women who worked or were forced to work on these boats played in the quote unquote underworld at the time.
00:24:00.140Because these boats were de facto information hubs. People say all sorts of things. You know, people share all sorts of things when they're at these establishments. And one of the things that the history is pretty clear on about Sek Young is that she was an excellent power broker or information broker, I should say, that she was really good at kind of listening to everybody's stories and then figuring out how to connect the dots.
00:24:28.860And, you know, to kind of like make the necessary inferences and conclusions and that this was the reason or the main reason, maybe there were other reasons, but this was one of the main reasons why the pirate commander saying, yeah, we'll say decided to marry her.
00:24:43.640It was really more of a decision on his part than on her part.
00:24:47.900But, you know, like I know that sometimes people have tried to recast this as like a love story, like, oh, you fell in love with her because she was so beautiful.
00:24:56.860And I was like, no, let's kind of stick to what we actually know, which was that she was incredibly shrewd and she was an incredible information broker and that this was, he decided that this would be incredibly beneficial to his fleet to have somebody like her.
00:25:13.980And can you just describe, you don't say exactly what's in the book, but you're talking about like flower boats.
00:25:18.740She's like, it's neither a boat nor flowers are not involved.
00:25:24.180so you explain them in a much better way than i had when i was researching this as well i
00:25:30.080had pictured i don't know some sort of you know like a riverboat in like new orleans or something
00:25:35.820just kind of like a big ship that just like floats lunging stuff but you really explain it's
00:25:39.540like no it's a bunch of shitty boats that don't actually go to sea they're just it's just floating
00:25:44.900beds on little things yeah yeah back then there were these entire again usually these were you
00:25:52.240know uh people who didn't you know who were poor who didn't have money and instead of living in
00:25:57.380homes that you know it's like there were these entire villages that would spring spring up along
00:26:01.700the coast of crappy little boats like these are not like majestic ships these are like little
00:26:07.780you know like crappy little boats that are um tied together and then like moored to the to the
00:26:15.400dock and people people live their you know entire lives in these in these spaces and so
00:26:22.240Some of these boats were used for flower boat purposes, which is to say that they were used as establishments for, you know, sex, alcohol, all of those kinds of gambling, all of those types of things.
00:26:36.900Sorry, does that answer your question?
00:26:41.320And so there's like you had in your research, you just came across descriptions of how these sorts of like floating cities would kind of work, I guess.
00:26:50.600And then you also talked very early on just about how you're drawn to complicated, messy characters. So in getting, and that's, I think, such an interesting, that's what I'm drawn to as well as a reader, to read about people who are not, it's not a straightforward narrative.
00:27:08.080How did you balance that, writing a character who is messy, who is complicated, who does,
00:27:14.120who is, to be a successful pirate, like you have scenes of her like chopping people's
00:27:17.900heads off, like she's leaning into that, but also making her be sympathetic.
00:27:22.780Like, how did you balance that out as a writer?
00:29:22.500and actually i just wanted to talk about so she's captured married to this pirate king
00:29:30.000and this is all very early line of the books i don't think this counts as spoilers so she
00:29:35.220she dies on like page one right basically or he's stabbed and so then she's kind of left in this
00:29:40.900decision point because the people who are left to maybe take over the fleet are her and then also
00:29:45.440this young man who had also been captured by the same pirate and then so in their relationship and
00:29:52.480And that was also, I really like, it's just so interesting to read your book, having read the history before, because the history, like just that I read, English translations of things, which is kind of like, well, she was on a flower boat, and then she left with him, and then he died, and then she married this other guy, and off they go.
00:30:07.800But you just like sat to be like, what does that mean?
00:30:10.140And I was like, oh my gosh, what does that mean, to just be there?
00:30:14.860And I like the way that you portray her relationship with the other young man.
00:30:22.480chung poe right um and how they were both had been captured how they both had been used by
00:30:30.040the pirate king and then they're left behind it as just the two of them and that's such an
00:30:33.640interesting like the the trauma that they share but then having to move on together without him
00:30:38.780i thought that was how do you approach his character thinking about what it was like for
00:30:42.940a young boy to have been in a sort of parallel situation to her yeah thank you for asking that
00:30:48.680question people tend to ask about her and not about him and he obviously he's one of the main
00:30:52.460characters so thank you for bringing him up i yeah so again the historical records actually
00:30:56.920indicate that he he too was abducted by saying yeah so right this this isn't a he willingly
00:31:01.500joined the fleet situation this is a one day he was living at home and the next day he wasn't
00:31:06.920kind of kind of deal and so from the early from early on i i i think there's a line in a movie
00:31:14.380from like the 90s i'm trying to remember exactly my but it's like two porcupines trying to get
00:31:18.580to know each other or like to work like like they're both people who've been through a lot of
00:31:23.280hurt and who have you know who didn't start unlike Zeng Yat who was born into this and again this is0.73
00:31:31.160a fact he was born into this very wealthy pirating family that's been pirating for centuries everybody0.87
00:31:37.460knew that they were pirates nobody did anything about it and so whereas he and Chung Po and
00:31:43.220Sakyong, they both come from, you know, normal, humble origins and were press ganged into this
00:31:51.880kind of a lifestyle, essentially. And so I saw him as a kind of a distorted mirror of Sakyong.1.00
00:32:00.440So they're not exactly the same, but they share this fundamental, they share in a way the same1.00
00:32:05.860origins. And so I was, in talking about their relationship with each other, I was trying to
00:32:12.560play with how two people like this can or can't learn to trust each other and to kind of see
00:32:21.520themselves in each other. Because I do think the sort of discomfort between them or the tension
00:32:28.380between them is a huge part of this. That even after they decide, maybe this is a spoiler,
00:32:34.900I don't know. I'll just say it. That even after they decide we're going to run the fleet together,
00:32:40.140that it's not just a done deal right like that there are continued tensions between them just
00:32:46.200simply because they are I think they they won't I don't know if they would ever be able to trust
00:32:53.200each other completely because of the past all right that was a little bit unclear sorry rambly
00:33:00.220no it was it was an excellent answer to a rambly question and it just made me think because I don't
00:33:07.820just again like it was so interesting to read your book having researched this last year myself and
00:33:13.340I was just like oh yeah I know what's gonna happen it's like I know that he's gonna die I know they're
00:33:17.340gonna get married blah blah but it's like oh no but what does that mean and it's just like to
00:33:21.780really think what does it mean for these people I was thinking about you know you hear about stories
00:33:25.740I think it was like in Cleveland where the guy kidnapped a couple women five women or something
00:33:31.620and they all had his children it's like well what if that man died and those women had to work
00:33:36.720together and they were on a pirate ship and it's just like the the like they're i don't want to be
00:33:46.620like simplistic about it but like the man who kidnapped them like sakyang and chungpo who was
00:33:52.500their abuser in many ways he dies and then they're left behind but it's not just like okay let's just
00:33:57.480like sit with our trauma it's like no like we have to take over a pirate fleet now yeah exactly
00:34:02.660and but also I don't know I just thought it was so interesting to think about like what the trauma
00:34:07.360was like for that for them to have to live on I don't know it's just like when you read the stories
00:34:12.800like this happened this happened this happened I'm like okay those are historical facts but in
00:34:16.060your book I'm just like no like but what was it like for a person to go through that yeah and
00:34:21.580again thank you so much for saying that because I think that's the beauty of historical fiction
00:34:25.920right I mean history this is something I've said before but like I I think history gives us the
00:34:31.940the bones the skeleton do you know what i mean like it kind of tells us like this battle happened
00:34:36.180here um this person died you know this year etc but like ultimately the the beauty of fiction is
00:34:43.340i think it can you know literally kind of like it can flesh out the rest of the body it can you know
00:34:48.300provide the organs it can provide the blood it can provide the heart like all of these things
00:34:52.720that the historical facts are kind of a scaffolding for um uh fiction provides the the the rest of
00:35:30.100So you started thinking about her and this project around the wake of like the 2016 election, I think you said. And now the book is coming out and it's 2023. So how do you see this book sort of in interacting with our current, the current state of affairs?
00:35:45.080I honestly don't know. I mean, I think that the I think that the people who doubt the ability of women to lead us, you know, I think they're still there.
00:35:55.740You know, I think where this isn't this isn't going to I unfortunately, that's not that's a problem that's not going to go away anytime soon.
00:36:04.240I I actually think from some of the early feedback I've received, a lot of what people resonated with were the issues around class and wealth disparity.
00:36:13.820So, you know, like when I started writing this, I was thinking a lot about women in
00:36:40.400So people all of a sudden became food insecure, they became housing insecure, like, you know, people lost their jobs and couldn't kind of find new jobs to kind of replace their income. And so I do think, I mean, you know, this is, I'm not the first to say this, but history tends to repeat itself. And so I think there is a way in which, even though this is a very different world that I'm writing about, that there are some aspects of it that are still very true today.
00:37:08.340yeah absolutely and so you're actively on like your book we're talking a bit before this podcast
00:37:17.260actually gets published but i was checking the dates and you're still going to be on book tour
00:37:20.540when this episode comes out so where where can people um see you where find out what you're up
00:37:27.580to and where they can see you doing one of these talks you have a website right yeah so uh people
00:37:32.840can find me on uh so r-c-h-e so like archetypes um so basically archetypes without the a that's
00:37:39.800the easiest way to do it dot com and my tour dates are listed there as our additional bits
00:37:46.240of information about the book well thank you so much for taking the time out of your book tour
00:37:50.640era to talk to me about this book it was i just want to tell you when i first came across the
00:37:56.100description of the book like several months ago i thought oh a chinese female pirate i'm like oh
00:38:00.720what if that's that person who I read about?
00:38:02.400And I was like, oh, no, it's a different name.
00:38:04.080I was like, oh, no, that's the same person.
00:38:06.840So it was really exciting and cool for me to read this book
00:38:10.580with some knowledge of what the story was
00:38:14.900and then just to see how you developed that
00:38:17.060and everything was really interesting for me.
00:38:18.700And I think it'll be equally good for people
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