Fictionalising Historical Figures in Chinese culture

I don’t think Chinese is the only culture that fictionalises historical figures. I mean, this is a practice that is still ongoing when we think about historical fiction as a genre whenever it leverages a well known historical figure. But this is the focus of this post given the nature of this blog. 

I’m not going to discuss why this practice arises or the implications but rather focus on describing notable Chinese historical figures that have been heavily fictionalised. And I will start with part of our creation myths. So there is a saying that Chinese are all ‘’descendants of Yan and Huang (Flame and Yellow)”. Who are Yan and Huang exactly? They are basically the leaders of separate tribes that modern Chinese were said to be descended from. 

How have they been fictionalised? According to Wikipedia, Just Emperor Huang alone had two extraordinary birth stories: one where he was conceived due to his father being aroused by a lightning bolt from the Big Dipper and another where he was part of the human earthen statues placed at the cardinal points of the world due to energies that created the world merging with each other. As for Yan, there was debate on whether he was the same person as Shennong but I think recent Chinese scholars agree that they were either the same person of Yan was a title that passed on within the tribe and Shennong was one of the Yans. Then, there was also disagreement on the relationship between Yan/Shennong and Huang, regarding Shennong being Huang’s father or just a kinsman. Mythology also featured a major struggle between Yan and Huang before the two reconciled and effectively the Yan tribe was merged into that of Huang, creating the collective Yanhuang tribe from which modern Chinese descend from. 

In addition to his, a bunch of historical figures had been ‘immortalised’ into deities such as Guan Yu of the Three Kingdoms period. This apparently began as early as the Sui dynasty and he was seen as a symbol of loyalty (to his sworn brother Liu Bei) and great military prowess. As far as I know, coming from Hong Kong, he is worshipped heavily by police and mafia (at least in movies) alike for the concept of loyal brotherhood. The other notable person was Bi Gan of the Shang Dynasty, who was said to have become the God of Wealth. It’s less clear to me what’s the linkage between this assigned deity position and the real person who was said to be a loyal retained slain by his Emperor. 

GM attempt for Spelljammer, Gaming and Travel

I did mention GMing previously but the truth was that I basically just managed to run two single session games of the episodic nature before one of the players (the same person every time) had to quit for real life reasons. But now due to what I’ve come to call the Fiasco due to the aforementioned person that resulted in an end to 10 years of Internet friendship (it did lead to the creation of a new Discord channel reuniting us with long lost connections off a website we all used to frequent and subsequently broke away from) and a Spelljammer inspired campaign that is not done, I am now officially taking over as the GM for that particular Spelljammer campaign to run in FATE core. 

We invited a new player into the group since we initially thought that we are now minus one PC character now that I have become GM but actually now I have decided to become a PC-GM i.e I am both player and GM (I don’t think how that’s going to run in practice and I will report in on a future date if that has particular interesting issues but in theory it shouldn’t be a problem in the FATE environment). Current progress is that we have concluded many session -1s to talk through FATE rules (because we are a bunch of FATE newbies) and are wrapping up character creation. The actual game is only starting after I come back from my upcoming May trip to Spain&Portugal (For those curious, we have 6 bases, 3 each across the two countries: Barcelona, Madrid and Seville for Spain and Faro, Porto and Lisbon for Portugal. I concluded the last EU trip was a little too ambitious in scope so trimmed down on the number of bases to make the trip more leisurely in pace). 

However, I got myself into a play by post AD&D game in Discord. I also dived into the deep end in this game by declaring that I would determine my character class by the first dice roll and not buy myself into any particular one which our GM allowed us to. The result is that I am now a bard since my dice rolls came out to be quite well balanced. Somewhere along the way during our character creation, I was also handed an electronic copy of Central Casting and I ran wild with dice rolling. So now, my character who is currently a jaw-dropping beauty in AD&D terms has 4 romances, all with once intense rivals until she/they realised suddenly that the rivalry stemmed from mutual love. I decided that two romances were actually with the same guy whose family forbade our love. She also has 4 siblings: 3 elder brothers and 1 young sister. The eldest brother was killed as a child and the two remaining brothers all got kidnapped by interplanar humanoids and came back washed of all their memories. The young sister got adopted by a wealthy family (I decided before I rolled the dices for Central Casting that I was an orphan so my 4 siblings must have been in the orphanage with me). But the following was the best part of the dice rolls for me: my second brother tattooed a word on his face while my young sister tattooed a claw on her face in their adolescence because that was the fashion trend in Qin, the AD&D equivalent of ancient China. 

Finally, not sure if I’m taking May off in terms of blogging or scheduling ahead to cover for it.  We will see- it depends on whether or not I am inspired enough in terms of writing up blog posts for designated headings. 

Leveraging Gaming in Fiction Writing

In a bid to rejuvenate my WIP, I have started to leverage gaming into fiction by turning all of the main characters in the novel into character sheets under FATE Core (more on this in the post next week), a particular system for text based roleplaying. 

So far, my protagonists went without hitch and I can feel my level of energy being heightened substantially in that previously I kept leaving working on the WIP to the afternoon before this but now I always get to this task before lunch. To be honest, there is no word count difference from working in the morning versus the afternoon or evening as far as I can determine from real evidence but I just feel like I’m more of a morning person.  

The other thing that I’m importing from gaming but has not put into use yet for fiction is the Central Casting book which allows you to create whole character backgrounds from dice rolls (again, details of what I did with it will be shared in next week’s post so stay tuned). 

That’s it for this mini update on writing. Stay tuned for next week’s post where I talk about gaming and more.

Oriental Fantasy 2025

I am now eyeing Song of Silver, Flame Like Night by Amélie Wen Zhao and Strike the Zither by Joan He. The former is apparently more romantic fantasy/historical fiction/mystery whereas the latter is more reimagined Romance of the Three Kingdoms with female characters. I’m actually leaning towards the latter right now. 

Since I am going to Europe on an upcoming May trip I will do this reading sometime between June to the end of this year. I don’t feel like doing another search on this topic so gut feeling is that I’m going with Strike the Zither. 

Let’s take an inventory of obsessions:

Not sure where the jumping off line (let’s take an inventory of obsessions) is from but it says all about this piece. 

Let’s take an inventory of obsessions:

Chinese lore, I know that’s too broad but hard to refine this. I mean, I’m interested in an assortment of stuff that I group in under it: sometimes it’s the language, sometimes it’s like a story, a different world that you get to gaze upon

Fantasy, I keep coming back to it as my main staple. It used to be mostly epic and some sword & sorcery mixed up but I think I’m branching out slightly

Writers, this something recent after I decided to take writing seriously. I started to take an interest in author bios, forewords, that kind of stuff. Before that, I felt like those things just flew by and I wouldn’t really glance at them. 

Social customs, I don’t know, not everything but what inspires me, surprises me, I guess. Probably acting as fodder for my imagination to gobble up and mangle and use for my fiction

Personality and identity, probably because I have a philosophical streak in me, I tend to reflect on things. So of course I would contemplate on myself and what happens to me and what I experience foremost

Speculative biology, no idea where that came from, I didn’t even do biology but I rather like coming up with made-up plants and trace out all the cultural significance of a given plant

Constellations because it dovetails so well into myths and opens a window into a particular culture’s view of life and how things are perceived and ought to be, all those kinds of things 

Language and how they carry imageries. I am an appreciator of prose and that’s the sum of its attraction for me. Strangely, not poetry so much, which I didn’t feel attached to that much. I prefer works of length that gives me a certain degree of immersion. It’s not until recently that I understood poetry was meant to be imagery based. 

Writing Updates- March 2025

From about mid-January this year, I have had to pick up the itinerary planning for our upcoming European trip to Spain and Portugal. I was originally going to start on that much later given the original plan of going in October. But given my study plans and how my supervisor wants to work with me at the first half of the year, I ended up shifting the European trip up to May and going for a mid-year intake on the graduate certificate. As a result, I have had to devote a large block of my attention towards travel. That plus summer lethargy means that I am slowly going through my draft but that is really the norm for several years now. 

On more specific progress, I’m now on Chapter 42 out of 80 Chapters. I will probably want to do a structural round some time this year and then advance the current decimal draft to draft 0.84 after making some concrete decisions during the structural round. 

That’s it for now. Until June. 

Moonlake’s Book Discoveries- March 2025

Mystery

8 by James Phelan

We are seeing a widening of the story that is set up nicely all along this series. Still with this series and reading on to find out what happens next. 

7 by James Phelan 

Here we see a major game changer in this series and I find that refreshing. Still got me and I’m reading on. 

6 by James Phelan 

The stake has been ramped up again for Sam. Good work. 

5 by James Phelan 

Stakes are still going up and now not just for Sam himself. A new element being introduced as well but I like it not as well as 6. But still with the race. 

4 by James Phelan 

By now the books have seamlessly merged together for me and I am thinking this is probably the effect that the author is angling for all along. This is also the book where I feel like the author has managed to shake it entirely loose from the template that I felt was what held together the earlier books in the series. Good work. 

3 by James Phelan 

This book still takes me along the ride very well and there is a bit of foreshadowing that presents a hook to give me that little extra push to see the series to its conclusion. 

2 by James Phelan 

Again, this book carries you smoothly on with Sam’s journey. It also neatly sets up for the grand finale by making it more unpredictable. 

1 by James Phelan 

Everything comes together in this grand finale and I was surprised when the big twist was revealed (a positive for me in a mystery). I am satisfied. Overall, I think this series is interesting. I can’t say I loved it but it’s solid work and enjoyable, perfect for those who appreciate a fast paced adventure story with thriller elements and a bit of technological speculative/urban fantasy twist to it. I think this was packaged under fantasy for my local library but it felt more like mystery to me and not bad for a mystery. 

Fantasy

A Duel of Evils by Anthony Ryan

I actually have the Raven’s shadow trilogy down on my reading list but I couldn’t find it on my local library’s catalogue so I read what’s available from the author. This is a short story and I anticipated that I wouldn’t like it as much as a novel but I had even more difficulty with this than usual when this was presented as the historical record of an event as written by one historian to his Emperor. Basically, the whole story was just written in too dry a tone for me and the quick unloading of big chunks of information necessitated by this chosen narrative voice basically dragged my attention towards logically processing these information as opposed to experiencing the story. 

The Lord’s Collector by Anthony Ryan

I like this novella overall and the ¾ mark has me interested in the trilogy potentially. Except my local library doesn’t have an electronic copy and I’m not that enticed by it to actually look up an alternative method to read the trilogy. Still a good novella if you want tight quick-paced adventure and a potentially interesting fantasy world to partake of. 

Science Fiction 

Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray 

I am still reading this book. It has high stakes and quite amusing dialogue. Liking it so far.

23 days Italy, Switzerland and France trip on trains- France part 3

We had the hotel arrange a taxi to Lyon Part-Dieu (we were living at a hotel near Lyon Perrache, the other train station) at 5am but we got out early because the room was stuffy so we ended up leaving the hotel at 4:30am and when we arrived, Lyon Part-Dieu was actually not open yet and we had to stand in the rain for about 10 or 15 minutes. But other than that, nothing amiss about the trip to Paris. Once we arrived there, we grabbed brunch at a cafe where we were both not impressed with the too sweet pastry croissants that we had ordered- mine was Nutella with bananas (I didn’t know Nutella was a brand of chocolate sauce, I thought that it was something akin to peanut butter, my mistake) and Mum’s was pistachio cream with raspberries. We went to Versailles (I already bought the Musical Garden show tickets online) on that first day but we did not get to stay until the show due to a thunderstorm but we did take enough signature photos to justify the trip. Originally, we had planned to do all the signature landmarks on this day too (Notre Drame, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower etc.) but we did not feel like going out in the rain so we called it a day. Dinner was at a place nearby.  I ordered half a dozen snails for Mum and the rice with fish for myself. The snails were horrible- Mum thought they were from lunch and reheated but it could as well just be that these were big snails and they really tasted so tough. We ended up not having any of the snails (well, I tried one and spat it back out). The fish was surprisingly good and I was nicely surprised by the rice being normal by Asian standards (I have no idea why but all the non-Asian rice I’ve consumed outside before were either half-cooked or soggy-to-the-extent-of-disgusting, this one isn’t.) It’s a bit soggy but still edible for me. 

Day 2 at Paris was supposed to be a trip to the Monet mansion and gardens but I started to feel sick. So we gave it a miss and decided to move the signature landmark trips to this day instead. We started with Notre Dame which was quite close to our hotel (in actual fact, we accidentally came across it the day before when we lost our way when we got back from Versailles). Then we shot some photos at a place overlooking the Seine River, used the metro to get to Hotel de Ville where we took some pictures of the place they were fixing up for the 2024 Olympics as well as Hotel de Ville (we got lost half way and had to catch a bus there, I got the Navigo easy card for us both and preloaded it with 10 trips each. And it was only one stop but I didn’t know, Mum was quite sick and felt really tired and I never liked walking in the first place). The highlight of today was really the Louvre even though we were just doing the front and not visiting the inside and we even snapped a photo of the Eiffel Tower from some garden at the back of the Louvre. We also mistakenly thought the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was the Arc de Triomphe until I Googled it. And then voila, rain came and back to the hotel. Mum was firmly sick by now and had no appetite so this time only I ate. Not sure what I had. 

Day 3 was basically just Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysses. Mum had high hopes of getting me a short jacket at Champs Elysses but we almost could not find it after finishing our shot of Arc de Triomphe and we could not even find the metro station. When rain descended, we hid out on the bus stop. I braved the rain after an extended wait and found Champs Elysses. There was a department store (we felt it was a shopping centre at first) so we went inside for lunch. We ordered the smoked eggplant and caviar with sour cream and pita bread appetiser (we could have ordered 30g caviar at 110 Euro but we were not sure we would like caviar that much so opted to go with the appetiser) and the fried calamari tentacles and the vegetable that looks like asparagus with a way bigger head. The calamari was okay but Mum did not like the caviar appetizer at all and it was too sour for my taste. We did walk along Champs Elysses after lunch but we did not really get to the clothing brands bit, we just stopped after LV and could not be bothered walking further and headed back. Bought something from the supermarket for dinner again. We both broke the fever that night. 

On our final day, we had a night flight so we went to Montmartre in the morning (we got off at Abbesses and landed right in the midst of a flea market type of place). I ordered a Parisian breakfast for myself (croissant and hot chocolate/coffee plus orange juice) and an apple pie plus coffee for Mum. The apple pie turned out to be too sweet with the syrup so I told Mum to try it with just the apple fillings which was slightly sour but acceptable to me. We did not actually walk around much and just took a photo of some church because we were wary of heading deeper into the neighbourhood where we had to go through a steep incline first. So we actually missed the Moulin Rouge and the other known attractions in the neighbourhood. Ah well. We skipped lunch as we visited the Pantheon. We got back to the hotel around 2 or 3pm. Technically, we could have visited the Luxembourg garden over at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood but I could not be bothered because every time I walked outside, I just got a headache. So we just waited around for our taxi to the airport. We shared a lemon and poppyseed cake for dinner there before we boarded our plane back to Melbourne. 

Chinese Lore- a selection of mythical fauna (26) 

This is the last post for this particular series.  

Lin

Physical Description:

A hound-like beast with tiger-like claws, scaled.

Special Properties:

It is good at jumping and pouncing. Consuming its meat can cure some health condition

Gui

Physical Description:

A turtle-like creature with a red head and a white body.

Special Properties:

It has fire resistance.

Zhi Tu

Physical Description:

A crow-like bird with red feet.

Special Properties:

It has fire resistance.

Mini Reading Challenge

To be honest, I am running out of things to say about reading on this blog other than my Book Discoveries. Also, I’m feeling like changing things a bit with reading other than just relying on my whims. To this end, I’ve set myself a mini reading challenge which is this: I would read 4 books this year that have elements that belong together in a theme irrespective of genre. Not 4 seasons because it’s too obvious and personally speaking, I don’t feel anything special for that theme. 

My current thought on theme is running the lines of getting outside the box of the number 4. For example, I could pick a random 4 of star signs or constellations or Tarot cards and Google books that have those elements. I am currently really liking Constellations and this is what caught my eyes through a Google search:

  • The Wide Starlight by Nicole Lesperance
  • Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray
  • Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  • Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
  • Murder in Scorpio by Martha C. Lawrence
  • Collecting the Constellations by Emily Steers

The other aspect that I am changing is that I am going to seek a bit of input with this mini reading challenge. So feel free to leave me comments on theme and book suggestions.