How closely are they based on the historic people and does the story follow their actual lives?
There isn’t much known about Ayaou, so I had help from my wife to create her character. I also contacted Lisa See, and she recommended some research material that helped. As for Robert Hart, I had most of his journals and many letters to get to know him. Unfortunately, Robert left a hole in that record. He burned the journals that covered the summer of 1855 to 1858, and he met Ayaou the summer of 1855. Later in life, close to death, Robert deliberately tried to erase Ayaou from the record by going through the surviving journals. However, he slipped up occasionally as he was inking out passages that mention her in the surviving journals. The historians did not notice the possibility that Ayaou was a boat girl. Yet, when she returns to Canton from Macao, he writes, “My boat girl is back.” He must have missed that line because it survived. In addition, in a letter he wrote in the 1870s to his agent in London, Robert mentioned that Ayaou was the most sensible person he had ever known and t
