Pulp romance in ancient China

IF you have friends who read romance novels, you may have heard of Jeannie Lin, an Asian-American high-school teacher who became a best-selling author penning love stories set in ancient China. If you don’t like romances, you would have ignored your friends’ recommendations for years – until, well, The New York Times listed Lin’s latest novel as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2022, alongside books by top-shelf writers such as Jennifer Egan and Olga Tokarczuk.

Lin’s novel, Red Blossom in Snow, is the fourth book in a series called The Lotus Palace Mysteries, though each entry can be read as standalone. Red Blossom’s book cover shows a typical image of a beautiful young woman (who is supposed to be the courtesan Song Yi) and a handsome man (respected magistrate Li Chen) dressed in Tang Dynasty robes. But the cover is misleading.

The opening paragraphs already signpost the novel’s uniqueness by declaring Song Yi to be not the most beautiful, musically gifted or captivating host of her time. In fact, she possesses “just enough ability to not slip into obscurity” and relies on “a few steady and dependable patrons who liked her enough” to stay in business. She does not, the book insists, need “dashing young men to fight for her or die for her”. She is an empowered woman from the 21st century who just happens to be a working girl in China circa 850 AD.