“The Moon in the Palace” by Weina Dai Randel – An Interview

The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randel

I have a confession — I adore “Cinderella stories”.

Nonfiction or fiction, it doesn’t matter. As long as the story features a strong, intelligent woman who rises from unlikely circumstances and has to fight her way up, I’m all in. Especially if she ends up saving herself and the guy too.

That’s why I’m a huge fan of The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randel.

The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai RandelIt’s about the rise of the young Empress Wu – before she became the Empress – and truly reads like a Tang Dynasty era Cinderella story, with everything you’d expect. A smart, powerful young woman who has struggled with extreme poverty and loss in her childhood. Conniving foes and lots of intrigue. A dashing prince that she helps save. A gorgeous palace setting.

Of course, we all know going into this story that the young Mei Wu will indeed ascend to the throne. Yet that reality doesn’t detract in any way from the pleasure of reading this novel. In fact, The Moon in the Palace is a real page-turner. This is book you’ll be flipping through late into the evening, complete with lots of plot twists and surprises. Yes, it’s that compelling.

If you’re a fan of historical fiction about China or curious about the life of Empress Wu, you must read The Moon in the Palace.

Weina Dai Randel
Weina Dai Randel

I’m thrilled to introduce you to The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randel through this interview.

Here’s Weina’s bio from Goodreads:

Weina is the author of The Moon in the Palace and The Empress of Bright Moon, historical novels of Empress Wu of China.

From Weina: “I love to see how words form an image that transcends the banal reality or how words join together to create a morsel of wisdom that tickles your mind.”

Born and raised in China, Weina has worked as a journalist, a magazine editor, and an adjunct professor.

She received an M.A. in English from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, where she was inspired to write about Empress Wu of China when she took a class in Asian American literature.

She lives in Flower Mound, Texas, with her loving husband and two children.

You can learn more about Weina Dai Randel at her website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook. The Moon in the Palace is available at Amazon.com, where your purchase helps support this site.

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Tell us about the inspiration for writing this novel.

I was inspired to write this novel after I read Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior in graduate school. I did a presentation about the pregnant woman who drowned herself because she was not married and her pregnancy was considered a disgrace to her family and village. I didn’t like that piece that much, and I wanted to show my classmates that China had strong women who were able to control their destinies, and the first woman who came into my mind was Empress Wu.

While I researched, I found out there were not many novels about Empress Wu during recent years. Well, there were a few novels written in 1950s and 1960s, but those novels depicted her in a rather harsh light and criticized her because she didn’t follow Confucian rule that women should serve men. Today, the world has changed so much, and I believe we need a book about her that should look at her in a positive light, as a woman, a daring, intellectual woman as she must have been. And I seriously believed that a woman should write her story. (There was another novel by San Sa, called Empress, but it was initially written in French, and I had not read it so I can’t comment on it.)

So I decided to write a book about Empress Wu from her point of view, showing her rich and complicated life as how she lived through it.

But I didn’t want to write her as an empress. I wanted to write her entire life, from when she was young to when she was old, so readers would know what she was like when she was a nobody, how she survived, how she outwitted the others, how she changed in the palace, and why she changed. And most importantly, I wanted to show readers what she was like when she was young, and how her romantic relationship with Emperor Gaozong changed her life. That was where The Moon in the Palace was started.

Your story paints a captivating portrait of life within the Emperor’s palace with astounding detail. What research did you do to help you recreate what it would have been like for Empress Wu to live in the palace?

Oh, the research I had done! Looking back, I can tell you it was an education that lasted for almost ten years.

For the palace, I first studied the layout of Daming Palace and the original palace in Chang’an, which don’t exist anymore, and the map of the current Forbidden Palace in Beijing, which was said to be inspired by the palace in Chang’an. I also visited the Forbidden Palace in person and walked through the entire palace from the front entrance to the garden in the back. Oh boy, it was cold then when I visited Beijing, and I was freezing even with six layers on. I also visited the Summer Palace twice and the city of Xi’an, which was Chang’an in Tang Dynasty to obtain a feel of the city and the life inside the walled city. I was even tempted to visit Kyoto in Japan, which I heard was designed after Chang’an and still preserved many features of Chang’an very well.

It was not enough to simply know the palace’s layout, of course, so I also studied the architecture; the gardens – the vital features of a Chinese garden, Japanese garden and their features, the vegetations, flowers, types of trees thrived in the northern China; birds; silk – types of silk, designs of silk gowns etc.; silkworms – their life cycles, silkworm farming; food – the preparations of food, types of food and the use of food as medicine, and yes, medicine too.

I also spent a lot of time studying the paintings in Tang Dynasty and ancient China. It was very helpful to see the nature’s landscape, the garden of private scholars, and the clothes they wore. I also learned a lot about the ancient world through the lenses of poets, whose descriptions of nature were another vibrant paintings of lyrics.

What I really dug into was women’s life in the palace. I researched the fragrance they used, the types of sachets they carried, the incense stick they held, and fashion, especially, which was another topic I was fascinated about. We all know how important appearance determined a woman’s status in the palace, and I think this still works in the society today. So from silk, I also looked into the hairstyle that distinguished women, the jewelry that emphasized their rank, and even their shoes that made them stand out. Yes. I’m also fascinated with shoes!

But you know none of the research would work if the character’s “mindset” is missing – to borrow the word from Elizabeth Chadwick. So in a way, the setting and all the research I had completed was like the gown the character wears, and once she dons it, she is transformed into that world, where she would try to reach her goal, where she would find temptations, and most importantly, where she would face animosity and even danger, which would wind around her waist and tighten around her neck like a sash if she’s not careful.

Could you talk about how you developed the young Empress Wu as a character for your story? What research, clues or inspiration guided you?

The real young Empress Wu was, and still is, a myth to many of us. Many records described what she was like and what she had done the year before she became the Empress and during the time when she was a ruler, but few stories gave insight to what she was like as a young girl. So creating her was a freedom for me.

My first imagination of the young Empress Wu was she had to be smart, very smart, and I worked really hard to transmit that idea to readers. But it really was a challenge to show a girl’s wit when she was confined within walls and unable to meet the Emperor. So for a long time after I completed writing the whole manuscript, I couldn’t figure out how Mei would use her wit to see the Emperor and what she would give the Emperor as a gift. I read many books that told stories of ancient women who were very smart but still couldn’t relate to Mei’s situation. Then one day I was doing dishes and the book I had read when I was a kid appeared in my head and it dawned on me – The Arabian Nights: Tales of One Thousand and One Nights.

And I realized the gift must not be something physical. It had to be something else. That’s how Mei found a birthday gift for the Emperor.

I was tempted to make Mei not beautiful – beauty is kind of trite to me, and I didn’t like it that all female protagonists had to be beautiful! I also had another reason when I was writing. If she was too beautiful then Emperor Taizong would have deflowered her, especially since she was around him all the time. But the plot just didn’t work very well if she was ugly, or plain, and the setup was hard to do – how would she be summoned if she wasn’t beautiful?

So in the end, I decided Mei had to be beautiful too, otherwise she wouldn’t be summoned to the palace to serve Emperor Taizong. With that detail down, all the other questions were solved. Of course the Emperor wanted to deflower her, if he could!

Those two characteristics of Mei were the clues that helped me from the very beginning, and from there, I set the foot down and began her transformation, the process of surviving in the court, learning the women’s art of backstabbing, and then making mistakes, and then being punished as she tried to win the Emperor’s affection.

Mei’s other traits, her bond to her father and her devotion to her mother and family, were purely invented by me, although we, and many Chinese people, can easily imagine this is plausible. Filial piety is still one of the important traits that will determine if you’re a good person in China.

Your story includes people plotting against each other to gain more prominence and power within the court. One of the most fascinating individuals in your story is the conniving Jewel. Could you talk about how you conceived of this character and whether she was based on anyone from history?

(**Spoiler alert**)

Oh, I’m so glad you asked this question! Jewel is my favorite character from the very beginning, but she was so hard to write, which I will get to later. But no, she was not based on anyone from history or the research I had done, nor was she inspired by anyone I know. But we all know of conniving people littered across history and they usually did not end up very well.

When I started the story, Jewel was supposed to be a friend to Mei, I mean, a real friend like the Noble Lady, and she didn’t die in the middle of the book, and her death would happen later, near the end, which would make her a real victim. But as I plotted the story, I just didn’t feel the tension, the dynamics that was needed to move the rivalry forward. So I wrote the betrayal scene, and then, instantly, everything gained flavor and the subtext of deceit and rivalry just jumped out.

I liked the re-branding of Jewel, but then Jewel demanded me to give her more depth since she was more complex and enigmatic. I had to rewrite the bath scene during which she talked about her past – she would tell Mei a bit of herself and be very frank about it, but she would also word everything differently since she had a hidden motive. I rewrote that scene five times. Three times during developmental editing, and then twice during copyediting. It drove me absolutely nuts!

I also found the complexity of Jewel’s character made it difficult to plot the interactions between her and Mei. Mei knew now what Jewel truly was and she would not tell her what she wanted, but Mei was smart too and she learned that quickly so she tried to detect Jewel’s motives. So each time when they saw each other, a silent duel of eyes began. There were several scenes during which neither of them spoke the truth and both tried to pry some secret from each other.

It was very stressful and exhausting to write like that at the beginning, but then I grew used to it and had fun playing with each other. The hardest part, however, was to write them in a way that would transfer the idea of animosity but still keep the prose beautiful and appealing.

Throughout the novel, the young Empress Wu recalls passages from The Art of War for direction in the face of the great challenges of life in the palace. What links between Empress Wu and The Art of War did you uncover in your research?

I didn’t find any links between Empress Wu and The Art of War, to be honest. The connection between the ancient book and Empress Wu was purely invented by me.

But I imagine the real Empress Wu would be familiar with the strategies and deftly use them when she reigned the country – it was often mentioned that she had impeccable skills for managing the ministers with big egos and she also won some important battles against Korea and some northern tribes during her reign. And also, since The Art of War predates Tang Dynasty by almost one thousand years, it is also easy to imagine Empress Wu, who was well read and familiar with all classics, would employ master Sun Tzu’s advice as needed.

But of course, no one would know whether she really relied on The Art of War when she was young.

There, you may wonder, why would I connect her with The Art of War?

It has to do with the immense influence The Art of War had on people in America and Europe. The Art of War is an icon of Chinese wisdom, a book often quoted by many businessmen, leaders, and politicians. It showcases the enduring wisdom of ancient Chinese and carries this connotation that whoever studies it is smart, if not calculative.

I am aware that this book mainly had male readership, not woman, but Empress Wu was not a common woman, and the female gender should not limit her and dictate her behavior. The Art of War, after all, was about the making of a leader, about protecting yourself, and about winning with ease and with grace, and I think Empress Wu had accomplished them all.

What do you hope people will gain from reading your novel?

Even today, Empress Wu remains to be a controversial figure in China. People admire her because she was the only female who ruled China, but on the other hand, people inherit many colorful views of her due to some biased comments made by Confucian scholars who attacked her because of her gender.

I wanted to change that perception with these two novels. I would like to provide another view of Empress Wu; I would like to show readers that she was not the vile, calculative, murderous woman some opinionated male Confucian scholars have painted.

I would also like people to understand Empress Wu was not just a sex symbol as described by many books, movies, and TV shows. She was intellectual, she was strong, she made her own destiny when few women were even allowed to do so. And if you read the second book, The Empress of Bright Moon, you’ll understand her appeal came from her wisdom, her persistence, her ability to lead, and also her extraordinary resilience.

I hope when people visit her tomb in Xi’an, they would have my novels in their mind when they read the brochure handed to them. They would read the biased paragraphs and they would understand this might not be true. And they would look at the Empress with sympathy, and maybe, with awe as well.

It’s also my greatest ambition to introduce classical Chinese literature to people in America and Europe. I don’t know if you noticed, the novel has many references to poems, stories popular in the Chinese culture, and I did that on purpose. I adore classical Chinese literature, the condensed prose so polished but vivid, with images so pure that they were paintings themselves, and in mentioning them, writing them, I hope people outside China will be intrigued to study them as well.

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Thanks so much to Weina for this interview! You can learn more about Weina Dai Randel at her website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook. The Moon in the Palace is available at Amazon.com, where your purchase helps support this site.

P.S.: Be sure to check out these other posts about The Moon in the Palace by my fellow bloggers Amanda at Two Americans in China, Nicki Chen at Behind the Story, Mary Halloran at The Ruby Ronin and Autumn Ashbough at When West Dates East.