Hello! Welcome to Unsolicited Writing Advice, a new feature on this graveyard of a blog where I crudely disguise a research paper as advice for writers, because I guess I’ve reached the point in my life where I give myself homework for fun. I plan to semi-regularly write about worldbuilding, characterization, plot, theme, and more, so please keep an eye out!
“Although Shadows on the Moon uses many Chinese and Japanese terms, the story is set in a fantasy realm called the Moonlit Land, or Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni. Most of the details of this country are pure invention, and this book is not intended to represent a historically accurate picture of any Asian country at any point in history.” – author’s note by Zoë Marriott for Shadows on the Moon.
This week’s topic is one that has earned me a good amount of flak on good ol’ Tumblr dot com, so of course I’m bringing it up again. Even if you aren’t sure what the East Asian Conflation Country is, if you’re a fantasy reader or have watched a scifi movie, like… ever… you’ve definitely seen it before. It goes by many different names: Shu Han, Yi Ti, or simply ‘the East,’ amongst others. If your fantasy novel of choice decides to explore the East Asian Conflation Country to any extent, expect lots of paper lanterns, golden-skinned people with coal black hair and ’tilted/narrow/cat-like’ eyes, cold-hearted emperors, and mute prostitutes adorned in red silk and jade. Alternatively, if a film touts itself as cyberpunk, prepare for neon signs in Chinese characters and a city uninspiringly reminiscent of the urban landscape of Tokyo, but no actual people of color! I guess they all took a vacation or something.
“Part of the problem is that many Americans of non-Asian descent insist on treating “Asian” itself as one big ethnicity.” [from this TvTropes page]
I find that many writers who haven’t had much exposure to east Asian cultures tend not to realize why, exactly, various iterations of the East Asian Conflation Country are problematic. To an extent, I understand where they’re coming from—pretty much every fantasy author does the same thing with Europe, right?
But do they really? George RR Martin’s Westeros is clearly medieval England. There are no shades of France, or Italy, or Russia—it’s England during the War of the Roses, full stop. Leigh Bardugo’s Ravka is a very blatant stand-in for Russia, and Kerch is Dutch, right down to the last crumb of stroopwafel. It’s common knowledge, however abstractly, that Russia and France are culturally distinct entities. And any American sixth grader could easily tell you what countries a Stefano and a Steven hailed from, respectively. So why doesn’t the same understanding seem to translate to east Asia, or really, the entire continent? Why is it that China, Korea, and Japan so often become one big, scary, foreign jumble, while west Asia, southeast Asia, and south Asia go completely forgotten?
For today’s purposes, I will be examining two works with varying flavors of the East Asian Conflation Country: Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012, Feiwel & Friends) and Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books (2012-present, Macmillan). I’m not focusing on these authors to ignite drama or call them out specifically; these are just the two YA fantasy worlds that I find most interestingly embody the monolithic approach to east Asia in SFF. They are also the most prominent and well-known YA works showcasing this trope, which I hope will make the topic more approachable to those who are not well-versed in the subject. Additionally, I will be examining a more positive iteration with the television show Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Book One: Cinder and Why the Future Looks Asian
“The neon kanji billboards. Neander Wallace’s yukata, and Joi’s cheongsam. The busy Chinatown. The interactive wall of anime apps. K’s rice-filled bento box. The dual Japanese-English text on everything. All signs that point to a vibrant, multicultural city, but somehow devoid of non-white characters.” -Sarah Emerson, “Cyberpunk Cities Fetishize Asian Culture but Have No Asians”
Orientalism and scifi have been bosom buddies since the beginning, by which I mean 1982. The image of East Asia as a neon cyberpunk tech paradise congested with sex androids and heartless, hyper-intelligent robots first budded in the Western consciousness largely thanks to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Virtually every sci-fi story to enter the Western canon since has borrowed from the imagery and themes of that one film to some extent, effectively making east Asian cultural dominance synonymous with the future. And in the future, everything is Asian—except for the people.
This concept stems directly from the Western fear of modernized east Asia and its perceived rapid rate of technological and scientific advancement. And even more so, it comes from the age-old Eurocentric idea that the ‘Occident’ is the norm, and the ‘Orient’ is deviancy. Our food is strange, or language and customs are confusing, our clothes are too colorful, our eyes, skin, hair, and bodies are exotic, and our people are heartless, with values that are difficult to understand. In Western science fiction, the distant alien other has always been Asian. Suddenly, the common scifi theme of fear of the unknown and the untraversable beyond becomes synonymous with yellow peril.
This brings us to Cinder. Marissa Meyer’s 2012 debut draws direct inspiration from the 90’s anime Sailor Moon. It’s a typical YA Cinderella retelling, but with a cyborg mechanic in Beijing and nefarious telepathic moon people, and yes, I loved these books in high school. Cinder was one of the first mainstream young adult novels I read with an Asian-coded heroine, and even though that assumption turned out to be tenuous at best, it made me feel seen, and the importance of that feeling cannot be understated. Unfortunately, revisiting the books a few years down the line ended up being a thoroughly disappointing experience.
The world of The Lunar Chronicles is an alternate future Earth. Instead of creating a messily realized stand-in for Asia, Meyer perhaps does something I consider more egregious: she unites the entirety of the real-life Asian continent into a singular politically and culturally unified entity. Meyer’s Eastern Commonwealth not only has an inexplicable common language and currency, but is also governed by a Japanese imperial family. Seeing as militant Japanese imperialism was less than a century ago and left wounds that resonate through generations to this day, this was an insensitive decision at best, made worse by the apparent blindness of the decision. Prince Kai, the emperor’s son and the Tuxedo Mask export, appears to be of Japanese descent solely because Meyer watched Sailor Moon.
Within the greater scope of the Lunar Chronicles canon, Meyer gives the same treatment to Africa and the Americas. The UK is detached from the European Federation, which I can only assume means the author is a prophet who foresaw Brexit. Additionally, Australia maintains its independence. Noticeably, while Europe is also merged into one conglomeration, what we see of France’s culture remains distinct and intact.
In the end, the city of New Beijing turns out to be a flavorless facsimile of the real thing. Outside of the messy, loud street market where Cinder works, the world doesn’t give a particularly strong impression, of its Chinese roots or otherwise. Meyer’s imagery is streamlined and rarely evocative, which means that the city itself rarely brings offense—it’s the representation of the culture that cuts the deepest. I have no issues with the idea of a futuristic city being diverse and playing host to a variety of people and cultures. But then you get to the combination of a Japanese imperial family and kimonos to balls. The utilization of Peony, Cinder, and Pearl as names alongside Kai, Iko, and Rikan. The bewildering misuse of honorifics. The muddied, illogical, and ill-conceived conflation with no historical explanation as to how a notoriously contentious group of countries managed to unite so quickly and painlessly after an apparent catastrophic event. In her FAQ, Meyer, when asked why she chose to set the book in a futuristic Asia, responded with a nod to the Cinderella story’s Chinese roots. Unfortunately, she concluded the statement with: “It also seemed more interesting than setting another book in America!”
Book Two: Shu Han and Alina Starkov
Originally, this section was going to discuss the world set in Jay Kristoff’s Stormdancer. (It was a good piece. I discussed the perils anime-inspired worldbuilding at length.) But sometimes, life takes an unexpected turn, and you just have to roll with it.
I was reluctant to delve too deeply into Bardugo’s depiction of Shu Han in her Grishaverse books specifically because there is so little content to dissertate—Shu Han, alongside pan-African stand-in Novyi Zem, is by far the most underdeveloped nation in the Grishaverse, and with only a handful of minor characters serving to represent the Shu, it hardly seemed worth discussing. Then yesterday Eric Heisserer, the showrunner for the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s books, announced the casting call for a half Shu (Asian) Alina.
Forgive me if this section is rushed. Truthfully, I have yet to fully develop my thoughts on the issue, and will doubtless follow up once the series is actually released. Now, to be perfectly clear: the choice to cast Alina as half Asian isn’t problematic in and of itself—television and YA fantasy are both sorely in need of more diverse leads, and I commend the show’s team and Leigh Bardugo for recognizing that 2012’s Shadow and Bone was never exactly the pinnacle of diversity and seeking to rectify that. There are mixed race writers on the staff, and as the show has yet to even choose its cast or release further details, it is still too early to tell how this will pan out. However, this casting decision will inevitably bring the fictional country of Shu Han into the spotlight, and based on how it is portrayed in the books, this strikes me as the basis for many problems to come.
Shu Han is, according to Leigh Bardugo, a combination of China and Mongolia. Based on the naming conventions and the fact that the country is explicitly named after one of China’s historical Three Kingdoms, this holds up. Within the text, Shu Han is rarely explored, so I cannot say for certain whether it hosts the same litany of issues that are typical to your standard East Asian Conflation Country. Honestly, it serves as filler for the pretty maps and little else. Kuwei, Tolya, and Tamar are all Shu supporting characters who are given little to do or say; Kuwei in particular faces the most egregious treatment, both being the sole character to really be given a language barrier and having a white-coded character, Wylan, essentially steal his identity by becoming Shu-passing himself, with the help of some magic. (I—okay.)
The only other definitive features of Shu Han are that it’s somewhat reclusive and has a significant level of technological advancement, because China and science, right? According to the Grishaverse official website, the Shu are also notorious for abducting Grisha in order to perform experiments on them. That’s where the information on Shu Han eventually ends, which makes the show team’s decision to basically start from scratch semi understandable.
What’s odd is that the casting call simply states that the show is searching for a ‘mixed race Asian.’ It seems par for course to assume that this would most likely mean an actress who is half Chinese and half white, but apparently, Southeast and South Asians of mixed heritage are also welcome to audition, with no word on West Asians. The showrunner has stated that the team intends to shape the country of Shu Han around the actress’ ethnicity—again, I am still, after a full day and a half of mulling this over in my head, unsure how that makes me feel. Despite my crunchy, cynical exterior crust, I am a mushy optimist on the inside, and I want this show to be good. But truthfully, this doesn’t bode well, in my opinion. It seems far too easy an answer to the diversity question, taking advantage of the perceived interchangeability of Asia and Asians. I want to see good biracial representation, and I want to see a better, cleaner take on an Asian-inspired fantasy country, no matter what culture they end up drawing from. But I am not sure if this is the right show to be reaching those milestones. And, unfortunately, I am not fully convinced that these decisions are being made with the right intentions at heart.
I will refrain from saying anything else at this time, largely due to the sheer lack of information. While I have my reservations and firmly believe that an open discussion should be held regarding the issue, my aim is not to wildly speculate or go more off topic than I already have.
Book Three: The Last Airbender and the Scope of Asian Culture
The world of The Last Airbender, Nickelodeon’s highly lauded 2005-2008 cartoon, is not our own. Regardless, it is recognizable. Each of the four nations has a clear real-life analogue: the Fire nation is Imperial Japan, the Air nomads are Tibetan monks, the Water tribes are Inuit/Yupik, and the Earth Kingdom is a beautiful, sprawling mess consisting of various Chinese and Korean influences, reflecting the real-life diversity of China that so often goes unacknowledged in the West. There are areas of crossover and details drawn from other cultures, but it feels more like regular fantasy overlap than blatant ignorance. DiMartino and Konietzko did a pretty good job, for a pair of white dudes.
Safe to say, this is not an East Asian Conflation Country. It helps that the showrunners specifically hired a diverse team to consult with in order to craft an authentic voice and feel to the series. They made sure to create distinction between the four nations, and even within them. But again, something vital is missing, and it has nothing to do with the mixing of cultures or the sometimes bizarre simplification of names, or the fact that everyone speaks the same language and dialect. It’s the vague, out of focus sense that the core story was not created by someone who shares my culture. Like a shark scenting blood, I swear you can just tell.
Even when I first watched and adored the show in my teenage years, The Last Airbender never felt like representation. The broad strokes of east Asian cultural nuance are there: the beautifully rendered family relationships, the pain felt by a history of imperialism and genocide. However, teen me never connected with any of the characters the way I eventually ended up connecting with Lara Jean and Rachel Chu, triumphing in our shared Asian-ness. Although I jumped a bit at the sight of a side character wearing a straight-up hanbok, that lack of something held me back. And I’m afraid I don’t know what it was, or how to explain it—The Last Airbender simply isn’t an Asian story to me.
Book Four: Conclusion, if There is One
The Asian continent is not a monolith, and marginalized writers deserve to have their voices heard first and foremost. It really is as simple as that.
I firmly believe that white authors should write diverse characters, and strive to write them well, but I also maintain that they should not center a marginalized character’s experiences or culture in their work. The divide of cultural understanding is too great; being is not something that can be learned, or even properly expressed.
As an Asian American, I am painfully aware that I am caught between two worlds, never truly belonging to either. My culture is all that anchors me, however tenuously, to the country my parents immigrated from. It’s a part of me in a way I will never be able to fully explain, and when I see it fundamentally misunderstood, or pulled out as a shiny prop for diversity brownie points, it hurts. So yes, I am protective, and I have little patience for pan-Asian fantasy worlds created by white people. I’ve spent two decades having to explain to the very same type of people that no, my Chinese friend isn’t my sister, and no, I don’t speak Vietnamese. But I’ve felt the same pull to draw inspiration from non-Korean elements for my own fantasy work.
And here’s where we get to the Point: mixing and matching certain cultural aspects for the sake of fantasy isn’t bad. Plenty of own voices authors do it. I do it. Like all fantasy authors, we are allowed to have fun with our worldbuilding and make stuff up, tossing disparate pieces together in a beautiful word salad—but we do it with an inherent, almost painful, self-awareness. I would never write a pan-Asian world with a Japanese-coded emperor without critique, because I grew up hearing stories about my great-grandparents suffering under Japanese regime. Part of this stems from the fact that inaccuracy, even for the sake of fantasy, feels like a disservice. Part of it stems from fear of facing criticism for not being enough yet again, for taking liberties with the culture like an American, instead of respecting it like a proper Asian.
Jeannette Ng sums it up better than I can:
“It adds to this feeling that this genre can only be written by people with multiple degrees and have done years of research. It’s an oppressive feeling that ends up silencing far, far more potential authors of colour than anyone else.”
If, after all this, you’re still set on writing a fantasy world with roots in any culture that is not your own, my best advice would be this: Ask yourself why. Are you the best person to tell this story? Are you potentially taking an opportunity away from someone else who might be better suited? Do you fully understand and accept that you are more than likely to face a certain degree of backlash, no matter how hard you try? If so, I can’t stop you. But please, tread carefully.
Recommended Own Voices Fantasy Books with Asian Settings
The Candle and the Flame, Nafiza Azad. Scholastic, 2019.
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. Ace, 2015.
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns, Julie C Dao. Philomel Books, 2017.
We Hunt the Flame, Hafsah Faizah. Farr, Straus, and Giroux, 2019.
Descendant of the Crane, Joan He. Albert Whitman Company, 2019.
Empress of all Seasons, Emiko Jean. HMH Books for Young Readers, 2018.
The Library of Fates, Aditi Khorana. Razorbill, 2017.
The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang. Harper Voyager, 2018.
Oracle Bones, Lydia Kwa. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017.
When Fox is a Thousand, Larissa Lai. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004.
Spin the Dawn, Elizabeth Lim. Knopf, 2019.
The Grave of Kings, Ken Liu. Saga Press, 2015.
Girls of Paper and Fire, Natasha Ngan. Jimmy Patterson Books, 2018.
Prophecy, Ellen Oh. HarperTeen, 2013.
Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon. Greenwillow Books, 2009.
Empire of Sand, Tasha Suri. Orbit, 2018.
The Tiger at Midnight, Swati Teerdhala. Katherine Tegen Books, 2019.
Works Cited
Bardugo, Leigh. Shadow and Bone. Macmillan Publishers, 2012. Print.
Bardugo, Leigh. Six of Crows. Macmillan Publishers, 2015. Print.
Emerson, Sarah. “Cyberpunk Cities Fetishize Asian Culture but Have No Asians.” Oct. 10, 2017. URL: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb7yqx/cyberpunk-cities-fetishize-asian-culture-but-have-no-asians-blade-runner
Meyer, Marissa. Cinder. Tor, 2012. Print.
Ng, Jeannette. “Critiquing Cultural Appropriation in Books That Are Kinda Meh.” Apr. 13, 2019. URL: https://medium.com/@nettlefish/cultural-appropriation-in-books-that-are-kinda-meh-44c3491a2906
https://no-award.net/2013/08/01/the-exotic-place-as-other-and-notes-on-cinder-by-marissa-meter/
http://reappropriate.co/2014/04/what-is-orientalism-and-how-is-it-also-racism/
lynn d. jung 
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