This year's China Literary Festivals may now be over, but they certainly went out with a bang; Australian author Linda Jaivin's appearance at the Shanghai International Literary Festival over the weekend was an undoubted highlight. To some, Jaivin is best known for her fruity novel Eat Me, but she's also a serious sinophile; she lived in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Beijing between 1977 and 1986, and her previous books include The Monkey and the Dragon, and New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices.

In her new book, A Most Immoral Woman, Jaivin takes readers back to turn-of-the-twentieth-century China, with a fictionalized retelling of the real-life relationship between a young American heiress, Mae Perkins, and the infamous Australian journalist and China explorer George Morrison (aka Morrison of Peking).

As the Lit Fests wound down, she spoke to Chinatravel.net about her research for the book, sex and the Orient, and her latest project, an opera based around Pan Jinlian, one of the most controversial female characters in the Classical Chinese novel, Outlaws of the Marsh.

When did you decide your tale of George Morrison ought to be a work of fiction?

I decided to write a novel about Morrison when I read the story of his affair with Mae Perkins in one of the biographies that has been written about him. The idea of doing something with Morrison has been at the back of my mind for some time. When I read about the affair, I knew that it would be a rich subject for fiction.

How did your impression of Morrison change while you were researching and writing the book?

By reading his diaries and letters closely, and examining sources I'd previously not seen, like the Australian poet Banjo Paterson's account in Happy Dispatches of a conversation with him and his friend Molyneux, I felt I got to know him more intimately. Whereas in the past I probably was more interested in his historical role, in writing A Most Immoral Woman I needed to think more deeply about the contradictions in his nature, his strengths and his vulnerabilities. Most of all, I needed to empathize with him, to enter his world. I became quite fond of him, despite -- or perhaps because of -- his flaws.

The book is as much about expats as it is about China. Do you think it was a more interesting time to be a foreigner in China than it is now?

The times we live in will always be the most interesting to us. But the late nineteenth, early twentieth century was an age when just getting to China was an adventure; travel within China even more so. Western and Chinese cultures were much stranger -- foreign -- to one another. The Chinese empire was still intact, with all its ritual and pomp and mystery (the Forbidden City was truly forbidden). I imagine that made for extremely interesting times.

Which of the misunderstandings about the country from back then do you think live on?

That China possesses a single unified culture that one can speak about in statements like "The Chinese believe...". That having a Chinese wife/boyfriend/husband/girlfriend makes you an expert on the place. One could go on. 

Eroticism and the Orient feature in one form or another across much of your work. What about the point at which they overlap – why do you think the idea persists that sex is somehow different in the East? Do you think it is?

I don't think sex is different in the East: it's as wild, or tame, or exciting or lame as anywhere else. I am a fan of the great Palestinian theorist Said's work on Orientalism in which he discusses the way in which poets, artists and others from imperialist/colonialist powers have historically imposed notions of 'otherness' and femininity/submission on cultures ranging from the Middle East to the Far East with the result that you mention - the notion of these places as somehow more erotic. I don't think that the 'East' is inherently erotic, but I do think that travel is erotic as is the whole idea of the exotic.

You visited quite a few places to research the book. Did you have a favorite? Somewhere that you might have written up wrongly if you hadn't visited?

I adored going to Shanhaiguan (the "Mountain Sea Pass") in February -- there were few visitors, there was much that remained from the time and the beach at dawn was beautiful. I put a whole scene in at Old Dragon's Head at dawn because of that visit. I also love Tianjin and am quite sure I wouldn't have got it right if I hadn't gone -- it's easy to forget what an important financial and political centre it was at the time. That said, the people from the municipal archives in Weihai were amazing. I would never have been able to write Weihaiwei up with so much detail and feeling had they not assisted me there with such enthusiasm and warmth. 

Do you miss anything about living in China? Are you ever tempted to come back and live here full-time?

I sometimes miss the renao [the hustle, bustle, heat and noise that's never too far away in China] -- but too much of that isn't good for a writer. I spend nearly half my time here anyway and enjoy it thoroughly.

The opera you've been working on won't premiere until later this year, so we won't ask you to reveal too much. Can you say anything about how the collaboration process worked, or what the project means to you?

Passion will premiere at the Mei Lanfang Grand Theatre on 10 September as part of the Year of Australian Culture in China. The collaboration process has been fantastic -- I worked directly with the recently retired president of the China National Peking Opera Company, Wu Jiang, on the libretto, and the Peking Opera composer Zhu Shaoyu is just finishing up the music now. It's been an extraordinary process and I'm thrilled and honored to bits to be the first non-Chinese to write a libretto to be produced by the China National Peking Opera Company. They are wonderful people to work with and the project is enthusiastically supported by both the Australian government and the Chinese Ministry of Culture. Tickets will be available from the Mei Lanfang closer to the time. Keep the date in your diary!

For more of Chinatravel.net's coverage of the 2010 Literary Festivals in China, click the links below:

Peter Hessler on Country Driving, revisiting River Town, and moving on
Writing a guidebook to China: An interview with Rough Guide author David Leffman
Queer Culture in China: An interview with Professor John Erni
Foreign memoirs of China: An interview with Amy Sommers
The History of Photography in China: An interview with Terry Bennett
Shanghai International Literary Festival Preview: Andrew Field
Junot Diaz on writing about China