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I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.

I'm really interested in modern history, but to fulfill a History degree at Brown you have to do modern and pre-modern.

My process for determining which eras I'd write about was to just read history books that gave a really broad overview of Chinese history. And when I came across a historical figure or a historical incident that was especially interesting to me, ideas for characters and stories would surface.

Although there is a very large literature, still growing almost daily, on the Chinese calendar, its interest is, we suggest, much more archaeological and historical than scientific.

I have passed English medical examinations in Hong Kong... In my youth, I experienced overseas studies. The languages of the West, its literature, its political science, its customs, its mathematics, its geography, its physics and chemistry - all these I have had the chance to study.

In my junior year, I studied geology on Saturday mornings at the Museum of Natural History. Mineralogy has always been a major interest.

When I was growing up I spent a lot of time reading about ancient China and was really fascinated.

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

Qinghua was first established as a preparatory school in 1911. In 1928, it became a university. In 1929, my father joined Qinghua as a professor, so that was also the year that I moved to that campus because my father brought the whole family along.

My grandfather was originally from the south of China before he emigrated to Malaysia pre-World War II. And I wanted to learn more about the history of the country of my ancestors. I knew I wanted a narrative set in contemporary Beijing. I was really interested in the effect of the rapid social and economic change on ordinary citizens in China.