INTERVIEW WITH KATE FURNIVALL about the history and family background of her novel

THE RUSSIAN CONCUBINE

Interview by Elke Kreil 

Kate Furnivall, you are English but your mother came from White Russia. When she was 2-years old she had to flee after the communist revolution in 1917. She escaped to China. When did the idea arise of writing a novel inspired by her childhood experiences?

It was when my mother died in 2000 that I wrote down the story of my mother’s life for the rest of my family. I have two sisters and a brother and we all remembered different tales she’d told about her childhood, so I wanted to gather them all together for the family to enjoy. It was such an incredible story that when I’d written it down, I just couldn’t walk away from it. Initially I intended to follow her path to India as well where she lived for five years, but I quickly realised that I would be cramming too much into one book and losing the tension. So I decided to keep the story in China. Though the setting is real, the story is complete fiction. The Lydia in the book is not my mother.

Did your mother like talking about her experiences in China?

My mother was much younger than the fictional Lydia when she lived in China (aged 2 – 8 years old), so her memories of the country were less clear than her later memories of India. But she used to talk with enthusiasm about the markets, the acrobats, the noise, the buddhist priests with their bells and especially about the wonderful songbirds everywhere in tiny bamboo cages. But even at that young age she was very aware of the segregation between the Western and Chinese peoples. They didn’t mix socially, never invited a Chinese person into a Western home or a Western person into a Chinese home. Any socialising that was required for trading or political purposes was done in clubs and bars, on neutral territory.

What did the country mean to her?

The main emotion my mother felt towards China was one of gratitude. It gave a safe haven to her mother and herself when they were refugees from Russia, homeless, stateless and penniless. And she never lost her great love of Chinese artefacts, their porcelain and the carved ivory.

Central to your book is the love story between between 16-year old Danish-Russian Lydia and 19-year old Chinese Chang An Lo. Are there any models in your mother’s life for the love story between Lydia and Chang?

No, because my mother was only aged 2 – 7yrs when in China. But I was always aware that she felt an outsider in Britain, not having grown up here, and so I saw at first-hand a person trying to bridge that gap, and the emotional cost of it. This underpins my portrayal of Lydia in the book.

Where exactly is Junchow the setting of your novel situated?

Junchow is a fictionalised version of Tientsin (now Tianjin) where my mother lived in northern China. Originally I tried to use Tientsin itself and did a lot of research on the city, but eventually I decided to create a town of my own. It would be safer – no one to dispute or object to the events that take place there in my book.

In Junchow there is an International Settlement where British, French, Russian and other foreigners live – separated into national districts. Could you tell us more about these International Settlements in China?

The International Settlements were a thorn in China’s side. They were forced on China by the Western powers. Early trade with China was so profitable to the Western powers that they wished to expand it, but China refused. Great Britain was determined to increase commerce, so provoked the First Opium War (1839-1842) which gave Britain the opportunity to enforce a punitive treaty on China, The Treaty of Nanjing, after their gunboats and army had subdued China’s resistance. This treaty opened up 5 Treaty Ports to Western trade, in which zones were established for foreign residence that enjoyed extraterritoriality – which was the right to be subject to the laws of their home nation rather than the laws of China. Also the Europeans demanded 21 million dollars in compensation!

But the Western powers were greedy and wanted more, so this led to the Second Opium War (1856-1860) which the West again won and again imposed a severe treaty, The Treaty of Tientsin and The Convention of Peking. These conceded 11 more ports and forced China to open up its country to greater Western access. All this began a long history of bitter Chinese resentment which led eventually to the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 that brought even more batallions of British and other foreign troops to Chinese soil.

The International Settlements varied in size, with Shanghai being the largest. They were quite small but had a large impact. They had their own consulates, offices of business, courts, police forces, fire-services, administration and military security. Larger Settlements like Tientsin had race courses, expensive clubs, public parks and well-kept streets, a sharp contrast to the Chinese cities where these things were rarely available. Settlements were run by Municipal Councils made up of numerous national representatives from countries such as Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, the United States, Russia and Japan.

But the ‘Foreign Devils’, as they were called, made up only a small percentage of the residents of an International Settlement. Shops, restaurants, businesses, servants and lowly officials in the administration and police force were all manned by Chinese who often also lived in the Settlement. But they were regarded very much as lower class citizens, not allowed in European clubs and parks, and could be evicted at any time. One of the reasons the Communists found followers to their cause so readily was that they swore to kick the hated foreigners out of China. And who can blame them?

Chinese people are masters at trading and their code of honour binds them to the bargain. How did the Europeans behave?

When it came to trading, the Europeans had strong conventions and expectations of behaviour, especially the British who possessed a very rigid moral outlook on what was ‘decent’ and what was not. A ‘decent’ person did not ‘welsh’ on a bet, his ‘word was his bond’. If he shook hands on a deal, it was as good as a written contract. If a man broke these conventions he was shunned by society.

But this did not apply when dealing with ‘natives’. The British regarded the Chinese as terrible liars who could not be trusted. But what the British didn’t understand was that lying to you was part of the Chinese way of helping you to save ‘face’. When you ordered something in a shop or arranged for a man to come to do a job for you, if you said, ‘I want it on Monday’, the tradesman would smile and say, ‘Yes,’ even though he knew it would be impossible until the following Friday. To say ‘No’ to you would be rude because it would make you lose face. So what the English saw as lying, the Chinese saw as politeness. This kind of misunderstanding was common in their dealings with each other.

Is Valentina a good mother?

No, Valentina is a terrible mother. She sets a bad example in behaviour and gives her daughter nothing to see her through the agonies of poverty and teenagehood and the bewildering sense of being an outsider. She does not attempt to initiate the girl into the correct nuances of behaviour in a rigid society. She handicaps her by refusing to teach her Russian and bans her from seeing the Russian family who could introduce her to her country’s past glories, which might give the pride in herself she so sorely lacks.

But at the same time she adores Lydia. She introduces her to the one thing she cares about – her music and piano-playing, letting the girl inside her own private world. Despite the poverty she tries to make their home a whirl of vibrancy and colour, so that Lydia will not find life dull and boring, the ultimate sin in Valentina’s eyes. To open up the future for Lydia, she destroys her own present. And when she finally marries Alfred, it is as much for her daughter as herself. So yes, she is a terrible mother in the conventional sense. But the love she gives her child is extraordinary. And it prepares Lydia’s young heart for an equally extraordinary love when she meets Chang An Lo.