482. A Fantastic New Year Gift

I’m going on a book tour in southern California soon. Invited by the Flying Tigers WWII Veterans Association, I’ll be one of the two guest speakers at their 78^th Anniversary Reunion in San Diego. Also, I’ll give three presentations in the area and two more around Palm Springs. For more info, please check

My third novel has been accepted for publication! Legacy of the Tigers is the third of the Tiger Saga trilogy—in China’s political chaos, a woman’s struggle to survive and to search for her family and the American pilot she loves. It’ll be published this summer by the same publisher, Open Books.

Two years ago, I was struggling to find a publisher. It was a tedious process. Frustrating. And painful. Looking at all the book covers, I longed to be a published author and see my own book cover among them. Whenever I received a rejection letter, I gave myself permission to eat an ice cream bar. Luckily, I didn’t have to sabotage my weight loss effort for too long.

At the end of January 2018, I received four offers and signed a contract with Open Books for both of my novels at the same time. Wings of a Flying Tiger was published in June 2018, and Will of a Tiger was released last January. Both books have received excellent reviews and touched many people, including a son of a Flying Tiger who gave his father’s flight jacket to me. I was thrilled to be interviewed on National Public Radio and honored to be a guest speaker at the Flying Tigers WWII Veterans Reunion.

It’s so hard to believe that in two years I have two books published and the third one is on its way. Dreams do come true if one works hard enough. I’m so glad I didn’t give up when the time was hard, the noise was strong, and the odds were against me—a scientist born and raised in China to be a fiction writer.

www.irisyang-author.com

By the way, I’m going to travel to Iceland in August and September. Stay tuned for pictures.

479. Heartwarming story—I’m part of a Flying Tiger’s family!

“In the summer of 1942, Danny Hardy bails out of his fighter plane into a remote region of south-western China. With multiple injuries, malaria, and Japanese troops searching for him, this American pilot’s odds of survival are slim.” This is how the synopsis of Wings of a Flying Tiger begins. The novel is a heroic tale about the rescue of a wounded American pilot (one of the Flying Tigers) in WWII in China.

On June 29, a gentleman attended my talk at Sedona Public Library, bringing in a flight jacket. It belonged to his father, a Flying Tiger, who fought the Japanese in WWII in China as a pilot, just like my hero, Danny Hardy.

After the talk, Mr. Greg Alexander allowed me to wear the flight jacket.

“It fits you,” he said, “and on another level, it really fits you.”

We started to communicate. He told me he was “holding a lump” in his throat when he heard my talk. “You possess a rare level of courage to speak for those who can’t, who are silenced, who have passed…” He thanked me for writing books about the American heroes.

Two days later he finished reading Wings of a Flying Tiger. “My eyes blurred with tears… You reached me, touched me in a way I haven’t felt for ages…”

He continued, “Before sleep, I asked my father’s permission to share his flight jacket with you…” He asked his father, who passed away many years ago, to give him some sign, and he woke up next day by the tapping of a pure yellow bird he’d never seen before on his window. “A bird with wings spoke to me, and I listened.”

He had been offered $5K for the jacket; he had been asked to donate it to a WWII museum; his son was hoping to have it.

Yet, he would give it to me, a person he’s met once in his life.

Greg told me the reason:

The similarity between Danny Hardy and his father is striking: Both were courageous American pilots who were shot down in southern China, and both lost their friends during the mission. They had leg injuries and malaria. Both were rescued by Chinese villagers, who treated them with herbal medicines and sheltered them for several months. In both cases, the Japanese soldiers desperately searched for them…

And the flight jacket played an important role—a Blood Chit was sewed to the back of the jacket. In Chinese, it reads: “This foreigner has come to China to help in the war effort. Soldiers and civilians, one and all, should protect him.” Jasmine Bai, the heroine, recognized Danny as an American pilot because of the Blood Chit.

But giving the precious jacket to me wasn’t the end of the story.

“I will ask you to become my sister. In this way, I can honor my Mother’s wishes and keep Dad’s flight jacket in the family with you!”

He asked me to consider this unusual request.

I didn’t need time to consider. Tears ran down my cheeks. “I’ll be honored to be your sister!” In my second book, Danny Hardy and Birch Bai, a Chinese pilot who participated in the rescue, became sworn brothers. Will of a Tiger is about friendship and brotherhood.

I wrote the books because the Flying Tigers’ stories touched me. I wanted to thank them for their bravery and sacrifice. How could I ever imagine that one day a Flying Tiger and his son would walk into my life and touch me in such a profound way?

On July 4^th, I became the little sister of a Flying Tiger’s son. I’m part of a Flying Tiger’s family. How cool is that?

Official Book Trailer of WINGS OF A FLYING TIGER on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jYXq0LATrWM

Official Book Trailer of WILL OF A TIGER on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5dxAouGQups

http://www.irisyang-author.com

455. Following my grandma’s footsteps

In 1916, my grandma came to study at the University of Edinburgh and became the first Chinese woman to receive a master’s degree in the UK. One hundred years later, I followed her footsteps, not only became a published author, but also traveled to Edinburgh.

Isn’t it incredible that a girl traveled to a foreign country so far away by herself to study English literature more than one hundred years ago, when most Chinese women had bound feet and didn’t even know how to write their names?

I walked through the university campus, wondering where she’d studied and if she’d walked the same path. I did go to several offices, asking where the literature department used to be. Unfortunately, no one knows. I took a few pictures of the old buildings of the campus. Even if these may not be the exact building she’d studies, I’m sure she’d passed by the area at one time or another.

Here’s an article I received from the university about her (http://uncover-ed.org/yuan-changying/). They’re going to order my books for the university library. What an honor to have my books collected at the same library my grandma had used!

 

Yuan Changying

By Dingjian Xie

Yuan Changying (袁昌英, 11 October 1894–28 April 1973), a playwright, novelist, scholar of literature and feminist in China, was the first Chinese female graduate in Edinburgh University’s history, as well as the first Chinese female Masters student in British history. Yuan was once known as “a peacock flying out of Edinburgh” because of her later influence in literature and feminist movement in China and, in particular, one of her famous dramas, “Southeast Flies the Peacock” (Changhua, 2009). She studied at the University of Edinburgh from 1917 to 1921, earning a Master of Arts with a thesis on Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet. Let us get close to the life, thought and courage of Yuan Changying and the influence Edinburgh had on her.

Yuan’s early life

Yuan Changying was born in Liling, Hunan Province in China, on 11 October 1894, when China was going through a period of national turmoil. Her father, Yuan Jiapu, studied at Waseda University in Japan, and Yuan was brought up in a relatively well-off family. Unusually for a girl, she enrolled in an old-style private school in her hometown of Liling, and later travelled a lot, learning as she moved from one place to another. In Jiangxi, Changsha, Shanghai, Beijing, Yunnan, she was fortunate enough to receive education of different kinds. Yuan started to learn English in 1912, when she was 18, which paved the way of her coming to Edinburgh.

In 1916, Yuan was admitted to Black Health High School in London. She entered Edinburgh University the next year. Yuan spent four years at the university, studying drama in the Faculty of Arts. In Edinburgh, she indulged in the world of performing arts. More than that, she was deeply concerned about social reality in China, especially education, women rights and broadly social reform in the Chinese context. Yuan first met her future husband, Yang Duanliu (杨端六), during one of her visits to London, and her study of drama at Edinburgh exerted considerable influence on her career as a scholar and playwright, when she returned to China after 1921.

Reflecting on her time in Edinburgh

During her time in Edinburgh, Yuan Changying wrote two essays which were both sent back to Shanghai and published in The Pacific, a journal launched by a group of Chinese graduates. They told of her experiences studying overseas – the cost of living in Edinburgh, the challenges of reconciling Chinese and Western lifestyles, the practicalities of balancing academic and social life, the importance of holding on to a “reasonable” kind of nationalism – and outlined her early thoughts on gender equality. The first essay, written in 1920, was a letter sent to a friend in Shanghai titled “On Co-education in Higher Education” (Changying, 1920a). In it, Yuan described the relative equality between men and women in Europe and North America, and stressed that China should be aware of, and follow, this trend. She argued that women should have the equal right to receive education like men, which would be the first step towards gender equality: “Knowledge is Power,” she wrote, invoking Francis Bacon’s famous axiom. Yuan contended that, although there was a women’s college in Nanjing, women’s access to higher education in China was still severely limited. Refuting the traditional view that a virtuous woman was a woman who had no knowledge or literary talent, she saw co-education (in other words letting women attend colleges occupied by men) as a solution to the problem. A reformist and a moderniser, she argued that men and women should directly communicate with one another, and learn together. Relating to the national turmoil during that period, Yuan claimed that to achieve an integrated nation, the female is the half.

Yuan made further arguments for gender equality in a second article, which was titled “On the Necessity of Women Studying Abroad” (Changying 1920b). After reflecting on the four-year overseas study at Edinburgh University, Yuan shared the major reasons why women students should study abroad. Chinese women students were able to recognise the words “liberty,” “equality” and “independence”, Yuan wrote, but to truly understand the spirit embedded in these three words you had to see them with your own eyes rather than rely on printed discussions. Although “book knowledge” of Western politics, industry, social life, literature, fine arts was important, Yuan emphasised that first-hand knowledge was invaluable. Stressing that women should have equal right to study abroad, Yuan contended that Chinese women could access and learn about aspects of Western culture in different ways to their male counterparts and, as such, could help attain a fuller picture of the West. Believing that men and women had different roles to play in the society (with different advantages and disadvantages in terms of their physical condition, personality traits and so forth), Yuan argued that Chinese women could contribute to social progress in China by introducing domestic reform into China. Believing that women could play a complementary role in developing China, Yuan asked that “we [women], like men, have hands and feet, inspiration and will. Why do our fellow countrymen not give us an opportunity to develop our talents?”

Arguing for equality in society

After graduating from Edinburgh, Yuan became a scholar, writer, and social activist back in China. She is remembered mainly as the author of “Southeast Flies the Peacock”, a dramatic adaptation of an old Han ballad of the same name. The original story tells of the tragic life of a young woman who fails to satisfy her mother-in-law, is separated sent back home, refuses to remarry and finally commits suicide with her husband. The emphasis of critiques before was put on the mother-in-law who was feted by the ethics in Chinese traditional family shaped by Confucianism. Drawing the attention from the victimised daughter-in-law to the mother-in-law in the story, Yuan’s drama claims the mother-in-law was “herself a victim of the system which prohibits remarriage for women and disregards the sexual and emotional needs widows” (McDougal & Louie 1997). Yuan felt there was a systemic problem in Chinese society in which Chinese women were oppressed. She believed they had been oppressed for centuries. She condemned this, arguing for the equality between men and women. Her efforts exerted a considerable influence in changing the lives of thousands of Chinese women in the coming generations.

Upon the recommendations of the politicians and intellectuals Wang Shijie and Zhou Gengsheng (who was also a graduate of Edinburgh University), Yuan started to teach in Beijing Normal Women’s college in 1922. She returned to the Europe again to study in the Higher Research Institute based in Paris University in 1926. Later, she held the position of professor of Western Literature at Wuhan University. With two other female writers, Su Xuelin and Ling Shuhua, Yuan Changying was named as one of “Three Heroines of Luojia.” (Luojia hill is located in the campus of Wuhan University). After 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was founded, Yuan became a member of Chinese Democratic League. Unfortunately, during the Anti-right movement since the 1950s, she was persecuted as being labelled as the rightist, a member of the right-wing. In the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, Chinese communist oppression of intellectuals still continued and she was expelled from Wuhan back to her hometown. Yuan’s life ended in her birth place of Liling in 1973.

References

Changhua, Z, 2009, The Scenery of the Republic of China, Dongdang Press

Changyin, Y, 1920a, ‘On Coeducation in Higher Education’ [Daxue nanu tongxiao shuo] The Pacific, 5, 1-2.

Changyin, Y, 1920b, ‘On the Necessity of Women Studying abroad’ Lun nuzi liuxue de biyao] The Pacific, 8, 1-8.

McDougal, B.S. & Louie, K, 1997, The Literature of China in Twentieth Century, Hurst & Company, London, pp.174-175.

452. An easy, but not so smooth trip—going to Scotland

Having traveled to Chile and Argentina on my own last year, I decided to take an easy way to Scotland and Ireland—I’ll travel two weeks in each country with a tour company. After booking the tours a few months ago, I didn’t do anything else. What can go wrong when there is a tour guide?

Well, three things went wrong on my way to Glasgow, Scotland, and I had no one to blame but myself.

First, I left my laptop after security check! Ten minutes later I realized it and raced back to the checkpoint. A security guard stopped me and asked what I was looking for. Panting, I told him I left my laptop.

“What kind?” he asked.

“This big,” I signaled. “Grey…” I couldn’t think straight, worried out of my mind about losing one of the most important things in my life.

“They’re all grey,” he interrupted me, smiling.

“I…I know the password. I can sign in.”

“Okay, if you fail, it’s ours.” He turned around to fetch something, still smiling.

Thank god he came back with my laptop!

Second, I left my jacket on the back of a seat. Half an hour later I found it back. It’s no big deal, even if I couldn’t find it. But the implication isn’t too great—I’d never lost anything like this.

Third, I almost missed my connection at Frankfurt airport. There was a 5-hour layover. I walked, used my computer, and walked around more. Then I waited at the terminal indicated on the boarding pass I received at the beginning of my trip. Being so tired (got up 3:30am to catch a shuttle and didn’t sleep much on the flight), I dozed off. Half an hour before the departure, I checked the bulletin board since no one was at the counter. It was at a different terminal!

I ran, took a skyway, passed another security check, and ran again. I made it just in time. I was so out of breath that I coughed for more than half an hour.

Well, perhaps the rest of my trip will be smooth sailing. I’ve already used my “quota” for making mistake.

Pictures were taken near Glasgow.

 

 

450. I was on NPR!

I was interviewed on WUNC’s The State of Things on Monday, March 11. I talked with Mr. Frank Stasio for an hour about my historical novels (Wings of a Flying Tiger and its sequel, Will of a Tiger), my family experiences related to the books, my writing journey, and how writing changed my life. You can listen to it: http://www.wunc.org/post/dutiful-daughter-finds-her-passion-meet-iris-yang-0

This is from The State of Things:

Iris Yang grew up in China with two parents who were high-achieving educators. They wanted her to be a good student and successful woman, and their passion was biology. She aimed to please them and followed their suggested path.

Yang was one of a few students accepted to the China-United States Biochemistry Examination and Application program, and at 23, she was sent to America with a borrowed $500 and poor English. She went on to study molecular biology and worked with researchers at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She made her parents proud, but she could not let go of a deep-seated desire to pursue one of her first loves: literature.

Meet scientist and author Iris Yang.

As a young kid, Yang spent hot summers sitting next to her dad with his handheld fan reading stories from both China and the West. It was during the Cultural Revolution when literature was dangerous, and China’s Communist leader Mao Zedong had shut down libraries and ordered books to be burned and people to be “re-educated.” One of Yang’s aunts had been sent to a labor camp, so the idea of writing was nothing Yang would even consider until much later in life. After more than a decade in the US, she started to write, and last year she released her debut novel, “Wings of a Flying Tiger.” It tells the story of a World War II pilot who ends up injured and alone in a remote region of China. She infuses real-life events with her personal family history stories from a very dark period in China’s history.

Iris Yang joins host Frank Stasio to talk about her writing and her newest book “Will of a Tiger,” which came out earlier this year. Yang will host several readings in the Triangle. On Saturday, March 16, she will be at the Durham County Library at 10 a.m. and the Chatham Community Library in Pittsboro at 2 p.m. On Sunday, March 17, she will host a reading at the Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough. On Saturday, March 23, she will be at the Wake County Public Library in Cary at 3 p.m. For more info: http://www.irisyang-author.com

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

Growing up in Wuhan, China during the cultural revolution:

Even though we grew up in a family of professors, we were relatively poor. At the time everybody was poor in China. We grew up without much of anything like even food … Most of the intelligent people were in trouble during that period of time. They were sent to the countryside to get re-educated. Lots of universities were shut down, libraries were closed, bookstores had nothing except political stuff.

On adapting to life in America:

To go from a place without much to a place with so much, that’s easier. If you go the other way around, then it would be difficult. It is a culture shock … The first time I went to a supermarket, I was blown away to see all of that good stuff around, and it looked so fake to me.

On her journey from fear to happiness:

I started writing because I needed help … I read tons of self-help books. Luckily, we have a lot in this country. This particular one said if you write down five positive things a day in 21 days you will be able to switch your mindset from negative to positive … It takes 21 days to change a habit, but it didn’t take 21 days. It took much much longer. I started by jotting down words or simple phrases … But in time, words changed into sentences and then sentences grew to paragraphs and then paragraphs grew to pages.

On the strength her mother showed after a stroke:

After her stroke, she couldn’t use her right hand or right leg. She started to write with her left hand. If you look at her original writing, it was like [a] little kid. But she did it day after day, month after month, year after year. She published four children’s books in China that way.

On the massacre that inspired her debut novel:

The story starts in December 1937 when Japan invaded Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China. In six weeks they killed 300,000 Chinese and raped over 20,000 women, also called the rape of Nanjing. On the verge of this true life massacre, my main character Jasmine Bai returned to Nanking trying to save her parents, but she was too late to save her parents. It was in time for her to witness the horrors. She survived this massacre thanks to a group of Westerners and mostly Americans.

For more info, check: https://www.irisyang-author.com/

 

 

237. My Very First Fiction Book Is Coming Out!

Oh my God! I don’t know how to express myself at this moment other than those simple words. I could use “blissfully happy”, “elated, or “on cloud nine”. But it is more than just being happy. It is exciting. It is fulfilling. It is knowing that dream do come true, if you dream hard enough—my first fiction book, “Greater than the Sky”, is coming out next week (https://www.coolbeanspe.com/).

Finally, I am a fiction writer! 🙂

No, I wasn’t a writer, at least I wasn’t trained as one. My education is in science. I have a Ph.D. in molecular biology.

However, writing is in my gene and fiction writing is in my blood. Almost everyone in my family is a writer, fiction or non-fiction. My grandfather was an economist; his book was still in print, more than forty years after he passed away. My grandmother was the first Chinese woman ever received a degree in France; she was one of the eighteen female writers featured in “Writing Women in Modern China”. Both my parents were professors and they had published countless academic articles and books. My mother was also an award-winning author of four children’s books. My aunt translated “Gone with the Wind” and “Peter Pan” into Chinese. My sister had a lengthy portfolio of scientific publications as well and now she is a professional editor.

As for me, I do have a number of scientific articles, magazine articles, and even two non-fiction book in China.

But I didn’t start fiction writing until 10 years ago. “Greater than the Sky” is my very first fiction (I have several short stories published before). For that matter, it is always special to me. It is my “first love”. And it is part one of a book series I am working on. I just finished part two of “Dreaming of Danny” and I am working on part three. Life is wonderful, when you can do the things you love to do. Even though I wasn’t trained in the field. And even though it is not easy (English isn’t my native tongue). Well, now you know I don’t just hike and have fun. I do spend a lot of time doing hard work. 🙂 This is also part of my adventure.

Thank you, Cool Beans Publishing Company for making my dream come true!

PS. You will find the book cover and an excerpt of “Greater than the Sky” in my next post.

PSS. For those of you who have read “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, you might like Greater than the Sky. It is a courageous tale of a group of American POWs in Fareast Asian, with a twist of a heartbreaking love story between one of the brave soldiers and a compassionate Japanese young woman.

205. Sedona (13): Friends Come from Strangers

Boynton Canyon in the late afternoon was the second event I set up (Post #204). Since no one signed up, I had to cancel it. Yet, on that day, I went hiking on my own when I got up. Half an hour or so later, I met a couple from Seattle on the trail (I learned the second day that they are just friends). We walked and talked, all the way to the end of the trail. I felt so comfortable that I invited them to park (they had a camper van) at my place (the pictures here were taken outside of my place) and use my bathroom as they needed to that day and night.

The next morning, they cooked a delicious brunch. We sat in the backyard, by the side of the creek, under the shade, facing Cathedral Rock, talking until 2 in the afternoon! I was so surprised that we had so much in common—Dustin is a talented nature photographer and Loan loves writing! By the time they left, I felt I missed two good friends! (BTW, Dustin is such a brave young man that he actually saved two teenage swimmers’ life in the creek that afternoon).

This is what I have learned, again and again—friends come from strangers; all we need to do is to be open, and to take life event coming in our way as positive as possible—the unexpected cancellation of my hiking (Post #204) turned out to be a blessing in disguise. You never know whom you are going to run into on a trail or in life. If someone signed up the event, I would go hiking in the afternoon, but then I wouldn’t meet Dustin and Loan.

It is hard to believe that I used to have so much trouble meeting people. Nowadays, making friend is second nature to me. 🙂  Yet it is certainly not every day that we will find someone in common to talk to.

185. Unbelievable Full Moon Hike at Wet Beaver Wilderness!

Wow! What a wonderful night I had! A friend I just made in Sedona took me on a full Moon hike in Wet Beaver Wilderness area. Oh my God. What an experience I had!

Web Beaver is a wilderness area located in Coconino National Forest not far from Sedona. It is beautiful in the day time—crystal clear creek, red rocks, black volcanic cliffs, open valley. But at night, under the Full Moon, the place turned into something even more magic! Too bad it was too hard to capture it on camera. I tried, many times, but nothing turned out decent enough to share.

I have done Full Moon hikes a number of times in my life. But here, in the total wilderness, without any man-made light in sight, the light was so much stronger. I couldn’t believe my eyes how bright it was and kept on saying “Oh my God”, like a fool! 🙂 But I don’t care being such a “fool”. It’s simply too beautiful to keep quiet. And I am sure Gary understood my silliness. He is an avid hiker and award winning writer. Understanding another outdoor lover’s excitement is his “job”. 🙂

We started hiking shortly after 5 and didn’t finish until close to 10! I am so grateful, to be able to witness such wonder of nature. Even though I have been hiking so much on my own, I wouldn’t hike in the middle of the night, in total wilderness, all by myself (no one was there except us).

After I came back home, I watched yet another wonder of nature—the Lunar Eclipse, right in my back yard! Tonight, I am going to join Full Moon Drum Circle (post#177) again with other friends. Life is great!

PS. my photo website: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/qing-yang.html