Lost in research
The tale behind the story #2
Researching for the story was fun, and I was lost in a good way. The shipping company was not my only source of inspiration.
Having set the story in the past, I wanted to add some historical elements. Thus, I spent many hours reading blogs on the internet or physical books I borrowed at the library to collect information and ideas. What was finally included in the book is just a tiny part, but the reading helped to shape the story. A couple of websites were particularly helpful and a pleasure to explore. One is about old Saigon (www.saigon-vietnam.fr) which inspired a couple of scenes when my main character’s family lived in Indochina.
The other one is about Hong Kong (www.gwulo.com), which also has great pictures and inspired a couple of details for the Hong Kong scenes and one of the character’s background story.
Another source of inspiration was the French movie Indochina, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indochine_(film)), a movie I particularly love, with great actors too.
My own experiences in China of course are scattered around in the book, not necessarily as a faithful transcript of things which happened to me, but rather as a spark to create a particular scene or atmophere.
One of the key aspects of the plot was inspired by Chinese arts. At university I had a great teacher for Chinese arts, who really planted the seed to understand and appreciate this topic. I have
several books on the topic, countless pictures (I used to go to museums to photograph artifacts) and internet also offers several options to view Chinese arts.