1. Why did you choose to fictionalise Pan Yuliang’s story rather than write a straight biography and what constraints did writing about a real person put on your approach?

I fictionalized mainly for two reasons. First off, my goal in writing the book, as a novelist, was to try to get not just a factually accurate sense of Pan Yuliang's life but to try to imagine that life from her perspective; to actually try to see the world as she may have seen it, come to decisions she may have come to, experience her art as she might have experienced it. Essentially, I wanted to get a kind of perspective that I don't think even the closest or most detailed of nonfictional biographies can approach - even when there is a plethora of factual information available, no source is ever going to tell you what a character thought at a certain moment, what her mood was at a certain time, what catches her eye at a given point. And yet in telling this story - of an artist's unique and (to me) highly unlikely evolution - these were the things that interested me the most. So there really was no other way to construct it, on that intimate a level, than through imagination. That said, there actually was also a problem in trying to source information for the book; even in Chinese there simply isn't very much known about Pan Yuliang's life. Even the date on her Paris gravestone is generally accepted as inaccurate,  and the information that is out there tends to -oddly enough - trace back to yet another fictionalized biography, albeit one that purports to be based on conversations its anonymous author had with Pan Yuliang's daughter-in-law. So in many ways, to tell any kind of a complete story of my own, I really had to rely on my own imagination.

In terms of constraints - I think one of my biggest tasks was freeing myself from them. It was tricky; as a former journalist working on a truth-based story, I found it harder in some ways to stay true - not to what little I knew about Pan Yuliang and China - but rather to the unfolding sense of her that my novel was creating for me. I did try to stay true to the broad strokes of her life as I knew it, and (of course) to Chinese history. But I also wanted to keep the storyline consistent with the character who was gradually developing as the story unrolled for me. Hence, at times I did diverge from the accepted guidelines of her "official" storyline as its generally known in China. For instance, I have her being much more self-determined and even defiant in my book than she is portrayed in the other sources I've read, arguing strongly with the male authority figures around her (her husband, her teachers, her curators) for the things that she believed in. Shaping herself against her environment, rather than being passively shaped by it. It wasn't easy, because I obviously don't want to be wildly wrong about anything. And yet any novel has to have its own, fictional truth (so to speak), and if you decide to write a novel that's what you need to seek out.

2. Jinling and Xing Xudun are key figures in Pan Yuliang’s life – are they based on real people or did you create these characters to help explain some of Yuliang’s attitudes/psychology?

Jinling is based very roughly on a character that seems to be agreed upon in the versions of the story I read: mainly, a top prostitute for whom Yuliang was a maid, who was later murdered. I essentially created the relationship between the two of them myself, though; it struck me that someone at the brothel must have inspired the delicate, tender and appreciative vision Pan Yuliang so clearly had for female beauty and for the body in particular, and so I tried to create a relationship that would encompass both that beauty and the intense pain that I also see in Pan's paintings.

Xing Xudun is actually a really interesting story. I created him pretty much out of whole cloth; I knew that I wanted her to have an affair in Paris that would unlock all the sensuality that we see in her images, and that would serve as both a foil for the somewhat loyalty-driven, teacher/student relationship she had (I imagined) with Pan Zanhua. Originally I wanted to have her have an affair with a Westerner - but the more I learned about Chinese students in France and their involvement in the radical movement that would latter become the victorious CCP the more I wanted to explore that theme in the book as well. So I created a character who would have been more of an equal, or even a student, for Yuliang; someone with connections to the radical movement who would create tension within her over Pan Zanhua's more conservative/Republican influences. The funny thing is, I apparently - and totally unwittingly - created in many ways the man she eventually ended up living with (and being buried with) in Paris; a man who was a former art student, a lifelong admirer and devotee of Yuliang's work and also a former member of the radical movement! When I found out about him I was really tickled - it made me think, "Well, in some ways I must have read her right!

3. How challenging was it to write a novel about someone who sees the world in visual terms?

I think I'm a pretty visual person myself, so it wasn't too difficult to try to imagine in some ways. Studying her paintings and imagining the way that they reflected where she was and what she was seeing when she painted them helped a lot. I also took some painting classes to try to get a sense of how artists in general actually translate what they see onto their canvases, which was really instructive - though I have to say the world is very lucky that I'm a writer and not a painter!

4. Do you want readers to like Pan Yuliang or respect her for single-mindedly pursuing her art?

While I certainly hope they have some sympathy for her, I have to say it's far more important to me that she be acknowledged and respected for her extraordinary accomplishments. In fact, from what I know she wasn't a particularly "likable" person - she was reserved, and (not surprisingly) wounded, and at times very stubborn. And truth be told, if she hadn't been these things she wouldn't have been able to do all that she did - and probably wouldn't have been particularly convincing as the firebrand Chinese painter I saw her as. I have had some comments that people don't like her very much (though they like her story) and I always feel that that's in some ways a compliment. It shows that you are forcing people to look beyond the immediate or superficial impressions of a character, and to understand them and appreciate them on a deeper level. The best example of this that I can think of is Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, an unapologetic paedophile for whom you somehow end up having enormous sympathy. 

5. We have seen there is a Chinese film about Pan Yuliang – A Soul haunted by painting. Did you see this film and did it inspire or influence you?

I knew about the film but held off watching it until I was well grounded in my own book and characters - I think I finally sat through it after I'd already finished with Shanghai in my book and was moving on to Paris. I certainly appreciated it for its beauty - it was very well-done, and I loved the intense aestheticism of it visually. But I did feel that by the time I saw it my book was very much its own thing, and the character I'd created was so different from the Pan Yuliang played by Gong Li that I don't think it influenced me - at least, not consciously!