So Folks, how are y'all doin'? Did you find Shang-hai to your liking and are you ready for Bei-jing (and in the snow yet).
BTW, my experiences stuck in China in an airport because of a snowstorm in Bei-jing was a little transposed. I was stuck in a smaller airport in Southwestern China at Gui-lin, but since my characters worked their way around China in the opposite direction that I had, the near riot at the airport was transposed to Shang-hai in the novel.
Here's some thoughts for Part V.
1 - Did Bei-jing in the storm change your image of the Chinese capital?
2 - What significance do you think the brief scene before the Chinese prison have, the so-called Lao Yang (Old Sheep) Detention Center?
(hint for discussion: There are many characters in the next book -
The Third Peregrination who are important to the series who only show their face in the first book. In Shang-hai there's the little man behind the screen at Lung-hua temple.
In fact, with one major exception, all the key players of Book 2 are scattered in hidden positions throughout Book One, and that exception was also there until the last revision. Some things needed cutting).
3 - What are your impressions of the bell temple scene? I suggest you review this scene again and note the many hidden elements there (where's Waldo). Did it give you goose bumps?
(BTW: This scene was written a few times because I just couldn't get my ghosts to be "ghostly" enough, until my brother, who was in a haunted house in Gettysburg took a photograph of an empty room and captured a ghost's ectoplasm in the picture by chance. I studied that photo to learn just how ghosts form and transform. If you didn't have goose bumps before, you should have them now). TRIVIA: The word goosebumps or gooseflesh is more properly expressed with the word
horripilation. - a $5.00 word you can cash in during scrabble.
4 - The Red Chamber scene is important and should be noted, especially the
bas-reliefs, which actually contain a complete picture of The Jade Owl legacy. It is also a doppelganger and will appear many times throughout the series.
5 - Did you like the tale of Mao Sheng's parrot? Did you believe it? Well, don't.
Them thar feathers are at the "horcrux" of things.
6 - Before the lights went on over the Ch'ang-an rutter, what did you expect? Were you surprised? Did you recognize the doppelganger with Whiskey Han's brother. BTW, their father is the Han in Han's antique shop (but more on that in Book 3). Also, the word rutter should be rutter and not rudder (like a boat's rudder), as the word is direved for the Protuguese word for a map. I may misuse pass/past
often enough, but when it comes to the minutia, I'm pretty solid.
7 - Griffen's vision quest shows the Jade Owl at its worst, and also prefigures happenings at the book's conclusion. As a matter of fact, the two bloody ministers that form the tree are based on two brothers (the Ch'ang - you heard Wewoka cry out for them to help her in her waking dream) whom the Empress Wu took to her bed when she was in her dotage. They controlled the court, and when she was overthrown, they became chopped liver (literally). She was in her seventies. They were in their twenties - talk about May to December.
The vision quest was another difficult thing to bring off, and I hope I did. I was sick of fantasy writers that depended on dream sequences or projections. I have both, but they are too stock in trade for this sequence, so I developed the idea of having two time period overlap in different realities, the overlay effect better suiting IMHO a vision quest. I turned to Stephen King and the last book of
The Dark Tower for technical help here — to Jake and Oy escaping through the projection tunnel.
Hope this has been interesting. The Bei-jing section was the most cut in the last revision. There was a great deal of material set in the Forbidden City and the Bei-jing Zoo, including a little tete-a-tete between Rowden and Audrey in the Chinese Opera museum and a long sequence for Thomas Ch'en regarding the Madness of the Ming Emperor Chang-chun. There was also a confrontation scene between Nick and Win-t'o at the Temple of Heaven (very Richard Strauss and Elektra, complete with a menacing shadow) which was over the top and thus went under the knife. The material was interesting, but it turned Bei-jing into a tour guidebook. Not for my readers. That's why we have Frommer.
Enjoy and let me know your thoughts. I have a feeling that some have already reached the end.
Edward C. Patterson
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