Alice Poon asked Alice Poon:

What message do you want Tales of Ming Courtesans to send?

Alice Poon I hope that my novel will send this message, which cannot be repeated often enough: that the world needs to make greater efforts to celebrate women’s contributions and to heed their voices.

I wrote Tales of Ming Courtesans not only to tell the poignant stories of three ill-fated courtesans who showed incredible moral grit and integrity in their struggle against abuse, but, more importantly, to highlight the fact that each of these three women left a lasting legacy on Chinese literature and operatic music respectively.

Liu Rushi was a poetry prodigy and was published by the age of 17. She left behind a significant body of poetic works and epistolary writings, which, since the publication of her biography in 1980, have drawn the serious attention of academicians. Some of her paintings can be found today at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Both Chen Yuanyuan and Li Xiangjun were virtuoso kunqu opera singers and their skills impacted on the development of China’s operatic art. Kunqu opera was the most popular form of entertainment in those times. It had originated in Kunshan in the Suzhou Prefecture and later spread to the whole of Jiangnan. It was in fact the precursor to the more well-known Peking opera. In 2001, UNESCO named kunqu opera as a masterpiece of intangible cultural heritage.

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