The Courtesan
Page 30
To Phillip, who graciously hosted me in his apartment in Suzhou as I walked in Jinhua’s footsteps; who as a linguist gave honest opinions.
To my mother, Mrs. D. I. Ottilie Gambrill, for her invaluable assistance with the Palais Kinsky chapters, for her proofreading efforts, and for her company as I searched for the old Vienna.
To Emma, who is my constant companion, and who joined me in walking thousands of miles while I thought about words and sentences.
To Genevieve and Virginia Barber, for reading, advising, and ushering my manuscript onto Dorian Karchmar’s desk.
To my agent, Dorian, who read so carefully and helped me find the story I had written but couldn’t see; to Simone Blazer, who will make a fine doctor; and to Jamie Carr, who is so ably following in Simone’s footsteps.
To my editors, Denise Roy and Adrienne Kerr, for helping me write a much better book, for the insights and advice that I am still savoring as I write this.
To James Harmon, who listened and encouraged for so many years, and who forwarded the fateful tweet that forced me to finish what would otherwise still be a work in progress.
To Carole Lee Lorenzo, who taught me, among many other things, to look for the patterns in life and in stories.
To Marene Emanuel, Jon Marcus, and Nora Nunn—for being the best critique group ever, and for generously sharing your own work with me.
To Patrick Arneodo, Kim Green, Kay Kephart, Elizabeth Knowlton, Linda Leclop, Connie Malko, Jim Pettit, Gillian Royes, Elizabeth Severence, Susie Sherrill, Brent Taylor, Mark White, Anne Webster, and Susannah M. Wilson, whose wisdom I see on every page.
To Alice Yen, for inspiration she never knew she provided, for proofreading my Chinese, and for searching tirelessly for the best word, name, or expression.
To my learned neighbor, Jim Abbot, for keeping me honest with Sir Edmund Backhouse’s use of Latin.
To Dr. Elizabeth Pittschieler and Dr. Balász Schäfer, for assistance with the Hungarian language.
To Eddie Kim, for the gift of wedding ducks and for showing me the beautiful Korean koutou.
To the many writers, poets, historians, and sinologues who have provided in their writings a wealth of information, insight, and inspiration. In particular—Sterling Seagrave, Gail Hershatter, Hu Ying, David Der-wei Wang, Diana Preston, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Sue Gronewold, Maria Jaschok, J. D. Frodsham, Kuo Sung-tao, and Helen H. Chien for her translation of the diaries of her great-grandfather, Hsieh Fucheng.
And lastly, I am eternally grateful to Sai Jinhua, for lending me her story.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Backhouse, Edmund Trelawny. Decadence Mandchoue: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse. Edited by Derek Sandhaus. Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2011.
Blofeld, John. City of Lingering Splendour: A Frank Account of Old Peking’s Exotic Pleasures. Boston: Shambala Publications, 1989.
Chang Hsin-hai. The Fabulous Concubine. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Chien, Helen H., trans. The European Diary of Hsieh Fucheng. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.
Chou, Eric. The Dragon and the Phoenix: Love, Sex and the Chinese. New York: Arbor House, 1971.
Frodsham, J. D., ed. and trans. The First Chinese Embassy to the West: The Journals of Kuo Sung-tao, Liu Hsi-hung and Chang Te-yi. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
Garrett, Valery. Chinese Dress from the Qing Dynasty to the Present. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2007.
Gronewold, Sue. Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China 1860–1936. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc., 1982.
Hamann, Brigitte. Elisabeth, Kaiserin wider Willen. München: Piper Verlag, 1989.
Headland, Isaac Taylor. Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1900.
Hershatter, Gail. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Hewson, Elisabeth, and Heinz Jankowsky. Prater G’schicht’n: Von Verliebten, Verrückten, Verbrechern und Vergnügten. Wien: Pichler Verlag, 2008.
Hummel, Arthur W., ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1644–1912). Folkestone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental, 2010.
Jaschok, Maria. Concubines and Bondservants: The Social History of a Chinese Custom. London: Zed Books, 1988.
Kates, George N. The Years That Were Fat: Peking, 1933–1940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1952.
McAleavy, Henry, trans. That Chinese Woman: The Life of Sai-Chin-Hua, 1874–1936. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1959.
Morrison, Hedda. A Photographer in Old Peking. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Ping, Wang. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Preston, Diana. The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China’s War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900. New York: Walker, 2000.
Pruitt, Ida. Old Madam Yin: A Memoir of Peking Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1979.
Seagrave, Sterling. Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China. New York: Knopf, 1992.
Teng, Ssu-yü, and John Fairbank. China’s Response to the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse. New York: Knopf, 1977.
Tsao Hsueh-Chin. Dream of the Red Chamber. Translated by Chi-Chen Wang. New York: Anchor, 1958.
Wang, David Der-wei. Fin de Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Wile, Douglas. Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics Including Women’s Solo Meditation Texts. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Ying, Hu. Tales of Translation: Composing the New Woman in China, 1898–1918. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
PERMISSION
The author is grateful to Witter Bynner as well as The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry for granting permission to reprint Mr. Bynner’s translation, as adapted by the author, of Zhang Ji’s poem, “A Night-Mooring Near Maple Bridge.” The translation appears in The Chinese Translations: The Works of Witter Bynner (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexandra Gambrill Curry, Canadian-born of Austrian and British parentage, has spent happy years living in Asia, Europe, Canada, and the United States. A graduate of Wellesley College, she now lives in Atlanta. The Courtesan is her first novel.
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