Gabriela Avelino asked Shelley Parker-Chan:

I absolutely LOVED She Who Became the Sun! I was wondering, what was your research process like for this novel? Are there any books, documentaries, or online sources that you found particularly helpful for your worldbuilding? I’m just interested in learning more about this time period and Asian history in general. Thanks in advance 💙

Shelley Parker-Chan I'm such a scattered researcher that I'm a bad person to ask this to! I just read a lot of random things over many years, from academic accounts to cdramas to webnovels, and let it all jumble together. But I do like Jonathan D. Spence's historical biographies: they're interesting, accessible and very humanising accounts. I think he has a new one out, too, about Chinese food. Jin Yong's super famous wuxia series Legends of the Condor Heroes is set in about the same time period (the first book in English is called A Hero Born). There's the kdrama Empress Ki, the Korean film A Frozen Flower, the international film Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan, and the Netflix series Marco Polo. The Chinese classic novel Jin Ping Mei was a big influence. And of course I just read a ton of Chinese webnovels, and you can find those translations all over—but also now from publishers like Seven Seas.

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