The one who saw a dragon, met immortals, and then walked through a doorway to the land of immortals. Woven in with the story of Hu Lian, Chang’s main character, her classmates Liu Shaoming, Meirong, and Wang Jenmei, and their leader Professor Kang, is a mysterious woman called Sparrow who lives between the spirit world and the real world.Įach of Chang’s novels has a supernatural element, which she says is “probably because of all the stories my father used to tell about our ancestors. It felt like I’d found the missing link that would support all the themes I wanted to include.”Ĭhang goes on to say that her father was “one of those refugee students who followed his campus to safety, walking a thousand miles.” Think about that for a moment: a thousand miles and the bravery, determination, and stamina required to walk that far. And there it was: an account of how they carried with them one of China’s greatest library treasures: 36,000 volumes of an antique encyclopedia. What really clinched it though was when I read memoirs compiled by alumni of Zhejiang University, one of the schools that made the trek. The evacuation of Chinese universities was absolutely unique, yet virtually unknown to Westerners. When asked why she chose to write this particular story, Chang replied, “Because historical novelists always like to bring forward an unknown or unfamiliar chapter in history.
She also relied on family stories about World War II, on academic journals and historic archives, and on memoirs and non-fiction accounts. Lee, the director of student services, is modelled on bureaucrats of the time “who were appointed by the government to keep an eye out for Communist influences on campus.” Chang drew from real incidents facing similar students of that time, and actual routes taken by a school that left Nanking. “Both Nationalists and Communists were keen to protect university students, since they recognized the value of educated young people as the foundation of rebuilding China once the war was over,” Chang explains. In 1937, China was in the midst of a civil war between Nationalists and Communists while also fighting the Japanese. When Japanese bombs began falling on the city of Nanking, students at Minghua University are ordered to flee and to take with them a priceless treasure: a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends. Her latest novel, The Library of Legends (William Morrow, May 2020), enhances that reputation with a story set in 1937 as Japan invaded China. With her two earlier novels, Dragon Springs Road and Three Souls, Janie Chang established a reputation for successfully combining historical fiction with magical realism. A Collection of Myths and Folklore: The Library of Legends by Janie Chang
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