Ghosts of Shaolin Production Notes
Ghosts of Shaolin, the next Galvanic Century novel is set largely in China between the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the short lived Empire of China established in 1915.
James Wainwright always considered himself a working-class engineer playing at detective, never taking the vocation for more than an idle hobby and opportunity to test some of his steampunk inventions. His investigations have always been more of a means of humoring his business partner, idle toff Alton Bartleby.
That was before his adopted daughter Xin Yan was taken.
Never comfortable in social situations, James finds himself tracking his daughter’s kidnappers from London’s Limehouse to the gritty streets of Hong Kong, down paths where his mechanical know-how won’t serve him. Searching a foreign land, he’ll find that his greatest challenges aren’t those who have taken from him what is most dear, but letting go of his most treasured preconceptions about the world.
Interesting Times
The early 20th century is full of struggle and conflict, in few places moreso than China. For almost a century she’d been at the mercy of the foreign powers, slowly coming to terms with the fact that in clinging to the belief that nothing outside her borders mattered had turned the Middle Kingdom into an obsolete backwater.
There were many attempts within the Qing dynasty itself to modernize China and refresh her culture, but these efforts were hampered by the Imperial tendency to look to the past for greatness. They underestimated the foreigners both culturally and militarily, partially due to how isolated the Manchu leadership had made itself.
Truth and Fiction
While the story behind Ghosts of Shaolin is fictional, the elements it incorporates come from real history. The Triad gangs (so named by the Hong Kong Police) really did grow out of pro-Ming nationalist secret societies. The Empress Dowager Cixi really did rule China from behind the scenes for decades. Chinese living abroad really did abandon their traditional dress after the revolution. It really was sparked by an accidental explosion of a rebel armory.
The hardest part was choosing which elements of Chinese history to include and which I didn’t have room for. In the end I cut almost 80 pages of material that, while interesting, didn’t add enough to the plot. Even so, Ghosts of Shaolin manages to be the longest book in the series at almost twice the length of March of the Cogsmen or Dreams of the Damned.
LIES
Some elements are, of course, entirely fictional. Kowloon was a real walled city of refugees and anarchists, but certainly not as I’ve presented it in the book and not in 1912. The specific Triad gangs I use are pure invention and probably owe more to Hong Kong action films than historical organized crime. Yuan Shikai was real, and really the President of China, and he does eventually try to set himself up as Emperor, but the books other antagonists are either fully fictional or heavily fictionalized.
Research
The biggest boon in researching this book came from the China History Podcast, specifically the Qing dynasty episodes (035-41), the episode on Robert Hart (058), the episode on the Triads (072), and the Hong Kong history series (101-110).
I highly recommend the podcast to anyone interested in Chinese history.
I also watched a lot of Kung Fu movies. I can recommend Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China series, as well as the more recent films Tai Chi Zero and Tai Chi Hero.
Ghosts of Shaolin is due out on January 16th. Sign up for my mailing list for a notification of its release.
Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.
The post Ghosts of Shaolin Production Notes appeared first on Michael Coorlim.
