Tears Of Kai Yuan

Q&A

Hello?!

I've decided to post this here just for the sake of it and for any reader's curiosity. So here we go!

1.) Why Ancient China?

Well, it all began with my father's obsession with Kung-Fu movies....I'm really not joking. As a kid, I was raised with my father constantly pulling out VCRs and going on Youtube to find movies from the Shaw Brothers, Golden Dragon, etc, just to satisfy his Kung-Fu appetite. So when people claimed to know Kung Fu just because of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, I'd laugh. Why? Because if I were to ever mention movies starring Alexander Fu Sheng, Philip Kwok and Wang Lung-Wei (the face of Chinese Bad guys), they wouldn't know what I was talking about. 

So love of Kung-Fu movies turned into love of History, love of history turned to obsession with Historical  Dramas, and watching too many dramas made me do more research until I decided to write my own drama. So yup....it all began with Kung Fu (there's no Kung Fu in this story by the way, so no.)

2.) Inspiration?

Let's just say K-dramas (Goong, Dong Yi) and C-dramas/Wuxia (The Virtuous Queen of Han, The Four, The Palace, Cuo Dian, etc) watching all of those made me get the jist for writing TOK.

3.) Are you Chinese/Asian?

If by Asian you mean East Asian, then somewhere far into my lineage you may find some traces of it. But to my knowledge the only Asian I am absolutely sure of being partially is Indian and Arab...don't look like it though, I'm black. So no, which makes this story even more of a lovely challenge that I enjoy!

4.) Won't the names get complicated?

Okay, so here's the deal with that. My mother read the story and loved it, except for the names. My cousin read the story and loves it, except for the names. My friend at school read some of the story and loved it.........except for the names.

Listen guys, I'm sorry. But when you're doing a Historical Drama, in order for it to be historical I can't just give Ancient Chinese characters names like Rebecca and Andrew. It's gonna get complicated, I know. But once in a while I'll post a reminder on who's who, and hopefully the reader's will in the comments as well. 

5.) Do you speak Chinese?

I speak Korean better than I speak Mandarin..and no, I know nothing in Cantonese, NOTHING. Still in the learning process for Mandarin though.

6.) Why not Japan or Korea?

One, Japan doesn't really interest me as much for writing...or maybe it does. But it didn't when I first started writing TOK. Secodnly, I wanted to involve some characters who were foreigners or at least not fully East Asian/ Han Chinese, and to be honest, China has the best track record in History when it came to curturally blending with foreign countries. Maybe it's the fact that Japan was an isolated island and Korea a budding kingdom on a peninsula, but yeah...that's why I chose China.

7. Will you keep writing this story?

I'm a student with high-school, technical, and college classes. I have little to no time for myself, and when I do, it's fulfilling my friend's demands for fanfictions of Kpop stars. But trust me, I will keep writing this story. It's too much of my baby for me to just abandon it.

There we go, Enjoy the story!