readers asking just how and where Mr. Owen digs up so much on the "Celestial scene."
Here is that author's answer:
The manner in which I began to write Chinese stories had nothing whatever to do with China. I wanted to write a story in yellow with no other color mentioned therein. I called it The Yellow Pool. It took place in the Canal Zone during the time they were building the Panama Canal. I wanted a yellow girl to be the heroine. Tire story was published in "Brief Stories." The magazine received a number of letters praising it. A few of the letters were published. Later Weird Tales used it as a reprint. Still later it was reprinted again in "Tales of Magic and Mystery."
My next Chinese story was The Wind That Tramps the World, published in Weird Tales in 1924 and reprinted in 1929. In 1929 it was used as the title of a collection of Chinese stories published in book form. After that I began studying the lore of China in all its amazing aspects. So far I have only scratched the surface, but nevertheless I have read many hundreds of volumes. I like to use real Chinese material in writing my stories. The descriptions of the drug-shop, the drugs, and the philosophy of Doctor Shen Fu are accurate. So, too, is much of the incidental material in Quest of a Noble Tiger. There is an obscure legend that Red Haired People lived in a mountain. The remarks on amber were the result of research. I had the idea for writing a story of this sort for about three years before I began it. Then suddenly I decided to write it and finished it quickly.
The main reason that I write Chinese stories is that the Chinese is the oldest existing civilization in the world. They gave us an idea for almost everything we treasure today. More than fifteen hundred years ago they were trying to make flying machines; three hundred years before Galileo invented the telescope, telescopes were in use in China; the Chinese performed the first plastic surgery operation a thousand years before it was used in this country; they invented paper, ink, block printing and manufactured the first printed book
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