Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of The Island of Sea Women, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, Shanghai Girls, China Dolls, and Dreams of Joy, which debuted at #1. She is also the author of On Gold Mountain, which tells the story of her Chinese American family’s settlement in Los Angeles. See was the recipient of the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Association of Southern California and the Historymaker’s Award from the Chinese American Museum. She was also named National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese American Women. With Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, she returns with another captivating historical novel. 

According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine.

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.

But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions, go on to treat women and girls from every level of society, and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a triumphant reimagining of the life of a woman who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.

When did you discover Tan Yunxian and how did you decide to write about her? 

I thought I knew what the next novel was going to be. It was going to require a research trip deep into the interior of China, which I was really looking forward to.  But when the pandemic started, that trip—and by extension the book—was no longer a possibility. I moped around the house for several months. One day as I was walking by the shelves filled with my research books, the spine of one of them popped out at me.  I pulled it down. It was about pregnancy and childbirth in the Ming dynasty. I’d had the book for ten years and had never opened it!  I thought, Well, here we are in the middle of a pandemic. Now’s the time. On page nineteen, I found a mention of Tan Yunxian, a woman doctor in the Ming dynasty, who, when she turned 51 in 1511, published a book of her medical cases—all of them about women and girls.  Curious, I looked her up on the Internet.  Her book was not only still in print, but it was also available English. I ordered a copy and had it the next day. With that, my imagination began to soar.

You do an extensive amount of research on many of your books to the extent that you compile some of this research on your website under the fantastic "Step Inside the World of..." series. Has your research process evolved over the years, and if so, how?

Honestly, it hasn’t evolved all that much.  The research is my absolute favorite part of the writing process.  It’s like a treasure hunt. I never know what I’m going to find.  For Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, I asked myself what kind of makeup, hairstyles, and clothing did women in the Ming dynasty wear?  I wondered if there was a postal service, how long it would take to travel from Wuxi to Beijing on the Grand Canal in the late 1400s, what did a compound home look like and how did the people live in it?  I love sharing all that I find with readers, which is why I have a “Step Inside the World” for each book on my website.  Those pages are great resources for book clubs, but they also give individual readers a way to do their own exploring.

On the flip side: how do you decide when to take historical liberties? 

I haven’t taken much in the way of historical liberties with my previous books, but with Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, I was writing about a real woman.  Very little is known about her life—and I used every one of those details, even those that might seem fantastical today—so I had to take other facts from the historical record and put my imagination to work. Scholars believe that Tan Yunxian’s patients were female members of her husband’s family and the female servants who took care of them, but she also had some unique cases: a woman tilemaker, a woman who held the tiller on a ship. How did Tan Yunxian meet those women if she was never allowed to leave her husband’s home or have visitors?  I created my story based on the known facts, which allowed me to explore a larger theme about women’s lives—from servants all the way up to the empress, the most privileged woman in China. Interestingly, this pushed me to think about a unique characteristic of traditional Chinese medicine, which is the difference between the concept of Blood and the blood we see when we get a cut.  A doctor couldn’t touch blood, but a midwife could.  This placed midwives in the category of the Three Aunties and Six Grannies—women to be avoided at all costs.  Since I write about women and women’s friendship, how could I not let the young Tan Yunxian meet and befriend another little girl, Meiling, who would be a midwife in training?

So often, trailblazing women are portrayed as isolated, but you inverted that through Yunxian's friendship with Meiling, and obviously, the title of this novel inherently implies community. Why did you decide to make these relationships a priority?

My heart and my writing are very connected to what I feel as a woman about women.  One thing that ties all women—in the past or today, no matter their social or economic status, or where they live on the planet—is our unique reproductive physiology.  Beyond that, I’ve thought a lot about what we do to our bodies—or have done to our bodies without our choice—in an effort make us more beautiful, marriageable, vulnerable, or controllable. To me, what links women across time and cultures is our longing for love, our ability to persevere in the direst of circumstances, and our need for friendship. 

Tell us about what you’re writing next! 

The new novel is structured around the Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre of 1871, when the city had a population of just 5,000 people, 190 of whom were Chinese and only 34 of those were Chinese women.  (Only 34 Chinese women! Wow! Just think about that!) At that time, Los Angeles was the wildest of the Wild West towns. I’ve created three characters based on real people: the beautiful girl whose kidnapping sparked the massacre, the wife of a well-respected Chinese doctor, and a young woman who was sold by her parents in China and brought here against her will. Each woman has her own weaknesses to overcome. They must rely on each other even though they are of different backgrounds, class, and status. Daughters of the Sun and Moon will tell the story of how these three women use their bravery, endurance, and ability to “eat bitterness” to discover their voices, find their freedom, and change their destinies. 

For more info about Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, click here.
Download an early copy of Lady Tan’s Circle of Women on NetGalley or Edelweiss.
 

 

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