Interview with Janie Chang

I’ve read a number of Janie Chang’s books, most recently The Phoenix Crown, which she co-wrote with Kate Quinn, another favorite author of mine. You can hear the two of them discussing that book with me during our interview on the New Books Network. I also spoke with Janie one on one about The Library of Legends several years ago. And since I couldn’t resist the pitch for a Gothic novel set in Shanghai at the very end of the Qing empire, I was delighted when she agreed to this blog Q&A. Read on to find out more.

We’ve spoken several times about what led you into writing, but what inspired this latest novel?

I’ve always loved Gothic novels. Most of the time they’re set in Europe or the UK and feature bleak weather, crumbling mansions, and unfriendly locals. It was the challenge, I suppose, of seeing whether I could transplant those Gothic tropes to an Asian setting—an opportunity to bring in characters and situations that would be possible only in this specific place and time. To make full use of a different setting while staying within the parameters of the genre.

Introduce us, please, to Liu Lisan, your main character. Where is she in her life at the beginning of The Fourth Princess?

When we meet Lisan, she’s a young woman recently graduated from one of the best high schools in Shanghai, a school run by foreigners to educate daughters of rich Chinese families. Except that she isn’t rich. Her guardian, who picked her up off the streets of Shanghai when she was a child, is rich, part of a very wealthy and powerful Chinese family. She remembers nothing of her life before her guardian rescued her, and she suffers from nightmares that hint at childhood trauma. She has always understood how precarious her situation is, since her scholarly and rather absent-minded guardian hasn’t formally adopted her into his family and she is totally dependent on his goodwill. She is keen to make her own way in life and hopes to find a job.

Caroline Stanton comes from a very different background. What should we know about her, including what brings her to Shanghai?

Fairly early in the book we learn that Caroline is an heiress, but under tragic circumstances. First her parents died and she had to go live with her aunt and uncle in New York. Then on a train journey from New York to Seattle, their train is swept off the rails by an avalanche. There really was such a disaster by the way, in 1910. Ninety-six people were killed. Caroline’s aunt and uncle and their two servants die in this avalanche, and Caroline inherits two fortunes, her parents’ and her aunt and uncle’s. She marries the man who rescued her from the snow, Thomas Stanton. Thomas’ uncle Mason offers to bring him into his business in Shanghai, and Caroline is excited and happy at the prospect. She wants to put tragic events behind her.

Tell us a bit, too, about Caroline’s husband, Thomas, as we meet him early on.

He’s very likeable. He’s older than Caroline by at least ten years, a millionaire who owns silver mines, and one of the reasons Caroline marries him is because he isn’t a fortune hunter, he doesn’t need her money. He was part of the rescue team after the avalanche and he pulled her out from the snow, so for Thomas there’s a big component of damsel in distress. He’s very loyal to family, and since his mother died, Mason is his only living relative, and he’s determined to make their business a success.

Mason Burnett is also part of their family. What should readers know about him and his troubled history at Lennox House?

Caroline soon figures out that Mason isn’t being completely open about his situation. He doesn’t tell them much about the recent past, and he was estranged from Thomas’ mother for years. But through gossip, she learns that Mason’s son, who they know died a few years ago, committed suicide after going bankrupt and his wife leaving him. Lennox Manor, which Mason says he’s leaving to Thomas, is actually in pretty poor shape when she takes a closer look. All in all, Uncle Mason is not as successful as he makes out. He’s hiding too much from them.

The house itself is a character in the novel—as happens in many Gothic tales. How did it take shape in your mind?

I need to have images in my head of the places where the characters are living and moving around. The most important place in this novel is the mansion where dangers lie and secrets are buried. It’s the mandatory mysterious mansion. And it was really when I found a photograph of a huge mansion called Dennartt, built on the outskirts of Shanghai in 1898, that the story began unreeling in my head.

Dennartt was built by an English barrister called William Vern Drummond. It was huge—there were stables for his polo ponies and housing for his servants. There was a manmade lake on the estate, rose gardens and kitchen gardens, tennis courts, a hothouse attached to the mansion. I made it rather uglier and more sinister for the story, a mish mash of Chinese and Western architecture, kind of like Shanghai at the time, a mix of Chinese and Western society.

And what should we know about China itself, especially Shanghai, at the time when this story takes place? In particular, how does the political environment affect your characters—or does it?

1911 was a very deliberate choice of timeline for the novel because a year later, in 1912, the last emperor of China abdicated and the country became a republic. But in the months and years before then, different influences pulled China in many directions. There were the nationalists, powerful warlords with their own armies, some of which were bigger and better-equipped than the Imperial Army, there were the royalists who didn’t want their autocratic rule of China to fade away. And there was money behind it all, foreign interests as well as local businesses and even gangsters, trying to influence things to go their way. It was a time when no one knew how things would play out.

Socially, there were changes because the past half century had also been really tough for China. Western powers had forced China to make concessions, creating port cities such as Shanghai that were essentially under foreign law rather than Chinese law, so the Chinese population, especially the younger generation, felt that they’d fallen behind and wanted China to modernize—and part of that was education for women, such as Lisan.

It was at time of transition, upheaval even. Which allows me to bring political intrigue into the story, characters motivated by political belief, greed, or both!

Are you already working on something new?

I’m doing research right now for a story, which I haven’t yet decided on, a solo book. I feel I need to say ‘solo’ because this summer Kate Quinn and I will start writing our second co-authored novel, The Jade Mirror, an adventure on the high seas. The Jade Mirror is the only committed project on my horizon right now.

Born in Taiwan, Janie has lived in the Philippines, Iran, Thailand, and New Zealand. She now lives on the beautiful Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada, with her husband and Minnie, a rescue cat who thinks the staff could do better. The Fourth Princess is her latest novel. Find out more about her and her books at https://www.janiechang.com.