Lisa See - The Interior

In 1996, while in search of bear farms for Flower Net, I found myself in a small and extremely remote village in Sichuan Province. The village had no telephone service and had running water for only two hours a day, but in the cafe where I took my meals was a television tuned to CNN. That slice of Chinese life-so far removed not only from what most people think of as contemporary China, but also from what most tourists visiting the Forbidden City or the terra-cotta warriors ever see-has stayed with me. So too did a 1996 article written by Kathy Chen in the Wall Street Journal about the misadventures of a young Chinese migrant worker laboring in a factory in Shenzhen. Sometime in that same year we had a barbecue at our house for Pamela Rymer (a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals), Brad Brian (a former assistant U.S. attorney), and Claire Spiegel (a writer with the Los Angeles Times). As a writer, you will get no better advice than from people who defend, prosecute, adjudicate, or report on criminals. Our charming dinner quartet certainly set my mind to racing with the ways in which Americans could commit crimes abroad and how they might get away with them. With my imagination captivated, my own adventures began.

I was blessed with innumerable kindnesses from relative strangers, as well as by the generous acts of friends. In China, my guides, translators, and drivers were indefatigable and amazingly open. On this side of the Pacific, Paul Moore of Crown Travel got me to ever more isolated villages, David Li contributed to my aphorism collection, and Xuesheng Li patiently drilled me in Mandarin and assisted with other matters of translation, as did Sophia Lo and Suellen Cheng (and her siblings in Taiwan). William Krisel shared some extraordinary tales about China during the war, imparted some great recommendations and warnings about places to see, and lent me his complete collection of the Ex-CBI Round-up. Rick Drooyan, former chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney's Office, offered his insights on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other matters. Dede Lebovits, a wonderful friend who knows the world about private jets, managed to get me on a short hop and answered questions about fuel, runways, landing rights, and the like that ultimately did not end up in these pages. I also interviewed several people who do business or manufacture in China. For obvious reasons, they prefer to remain nameless. However, I must single out Poppy-a childhood nickname-for his great details, particularly in regards to the fiber-shredding machine.

I hate to see death or illness either romanticized or glorified. To keep that from happening in my own work, I have relied on expert advice from Dr. Xiuling Ma, Dr. Pamela Malony, and Dr. Toni Long. I am beholden as well to the librarians at the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library at UCLA for their assistance.

I am continually inspired by those writers who've written memoirs or chronicled China 's turmoil of the last century. For readers who'd like to pursue the subject, I highly recommend He Liyi's Mr. China's Son, Peter J. Seybolt's Throwing the Emperor from the Horse: Portrait of a Village Leader in China, 1923-1995, Huang Shu-min's The Spiral Road, and Chihua Wen's The Red Mirror: Children of China's Cultural Revolution. An afternoon spent in a Hong Kong bookstore uncovered Ungrounded Empires, which featured an eye-opening essay by Ching Kawn Lee, a sociologist who, I believe, is one of the few outsiders to work in and report on factories in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Jim Mann's Beijing Jeep, G. Wayne Miller's Toy Wars, and Du Xichuan and Zhang Lingyuan's China 's Legal System also informed my work.

The nasty Pearl Jenner aside, Chinese culture, U.S.-Sino relations, and the sometimes arcane world of toy manufacturing and marketing, would remain mostly inaccessible and incomprehensible if not for the professionalism of many honest, forthright, and dedicated journalists. These include: Rone Tempest, Maggie Parley, Seth Faison, William Hoi-stein, George White, Stephen Gregory, Sara Fritz, Henry Chu, Jonathan Peterson, Scott Craven, lan Buruma, Farced Zakaria, Craig Smith, James Flanigan, George Wehrfritz, and the aforementioned Kathy Chen.

A book like this can't be written without help and guidance. My agent, Sandra Dijkstra, and her wonderful staff have given me encouragement, astute criticism, and, most important, great peace of mind. I'm thankful as well to the wonderful work of Carolyn Marino, my American editor at HarperCollins, and Kate Parkin, my English editor at Century. Although Eamon Dolan has moved to another house, I continue to be grateful for his imprint on this story. I have been fortunate to receive further assistance from Arlene Gharabeigie, Alicia Diaz, Jessica Saltsman, and Sasha Stone, all of whom have been unstinting with their energy, hard work, and good humor.

Last but not least, I want to thank my family: Ariana, Baby Dash, John, Leslee, Anne, and my parents, Richard and Carolyn See. During the writing of the proposal my sister, Clara Sturak, helped me focus on the real purpose of The Interior; my brother-in-law, Chris Chandler, rescued me more times than I'd like to admit from computer hell. My husband, Richard Kendall, has shared in every aspect of this endeavor, while my children, Alexander and Christopher, are my bright lights. None of this would be fun or would matter without them.

Lisa See, author of the critically-acclaimed international bestseller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), has always been intrigued by stories that have been lost, forgotten, or deliberately covered up, whether in the past or happening right now in the world today. For Snow Flower, she traveled to a remote area of China – where she was told she was only the second foreigner ever to visit – to research the secret writing invented, used, and kept a secret by women for over a thousand years. Amy Tan called the novel “achingly beautiful, a marvel of imagination.” Others agreed, and foreign-language rights for Snow Flower were sold to 36 countries. The novel also became a New York Times bestseller, a Booksense Number One Pick, and has won numerous awards domestically and internationally.

Ms. See’s new novel once again delves into forgotten history. Peony in Love takes place in 17th-century China in the Yangzi River delta. It's based on the true story of three "lovesick maidens," who were married to the same man – one right after the other, not one reaching age twenty. Together they wrote the first book of its kind to have been written and published anywhere in the world by women. (The lovesick maidens were part of a much larger phenomenon. In the 17th century, there were more women writers in China who were being published than altogether in the rest of the world at that time.) Ultimately, Peony in Love about the bonds of female friendship, the power of words, the desire that all women have to be heard, and finally those emotions that are so strong that they transcend time, place, and perhaps even death.

Ms. See was born in Paris but grew up in Los Angeles, spending much of her time in Chinatown. Her first book, On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995), was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book. The book traces the journey of Lisa’s great-grandfather, Fong See, who overcame obstacles at every step to become the 100-year-old godfather of Los Angeles ’s Chinatown and the patriarch of a sprawling family.

While collecting the details for On Gold Mountain , she developed the idea for her first novel, Flower Net (1997), which was a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and on the Los Angeles Times Best Books List for 1997. Flower Net was also nominated for an Edgar award for best first novel. This was followed by two more mystery-thrillers, The Interior (2000) and Dragon Bones (2003), which once again featured the characters of Liu Hulan and David Stark. This series inspired critics to compare Ms. See to Upton Sinclair, Dashiell Hammett, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.