Business his day job and writing his weekend passion, Adam Williams uses his colorful life in China as inspiration. Photo: Courtesy of Williams

Adam William's complexion was ruddy with excitement at his recent book talk to a crowd of roughly 100 Chinese readers at One Way Street bookstore. His Chinese is fluent, although often a little off-tone. More importantly, he could turn to his wife, the well-known Chinese writer Hong Ying, who sat next to him to help when any Chinese words failed him.

The Chinese translation of Williams' novel The Emperor's Bones (2005) came out in May. The book is about the adventures of two Oxford students in 1920s China during the Warlord era of the Republic of China (1912-1949). It's the second book in a trilogy Williams set in China - the first being The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (2003), set during the Boxer movement in 1900, and The Dragon's Tail (2007), set in the late 20th century.

Many were curious about how Hong Ying, best known for her autobiographical book about her childhood in the slums of Chongqing during the great famine of the early 1960s, Daughter of the River, influences Williams and his writing. The promotional flap on the cover of The Emperor's Bones introduces Williams as "the husband of the well-known Chinese writer Hong Ying."

"This is just the promotion of the publishing house," Hong Ying said at the talk, in her typically blunt fashion. "When I met him, he had already finished writing the book. I was strongly against it [the mention of her]. But the books have already been published."

Roots in China

Williams, 60, told Metropolitan that his book actually draws from his own childhood memories.

"When I was a naughty little boy, my mother would always say, 'Behave yourself or Zhang Zuolin [the most powerful warlord in northeast China in the early 20th century] will come to catch you!' I didn't know who Zhang was, and imagined he was a demon with sharp teeth," he said.

In fact, Williams' mother learned about Zhang from her own mother. Williams' Scottish-English great-grandparents came to China in the 1890s, one as a medical missionary, the other to build the railway from Beijing to Shenyang, Liaoning Province. As the fourth generation of his family to be living and working in China, he heard lots of bedtime stories about 1920s China from his grandmother and mother.

Having a strong interest in history and a bachelor's degree in literature from Oxford, Williams later put his two loves together when recalling these once-frightening tales. He set about writing a historical novel that would become The Emperor's Bones.

"This era of warlords was a moral and political vacuum, so I thought it would be a perfect setting for a novel about people in an uncertain and changing world, making choices to survive," Williams said.

Staying true to his history buff self, Williams strives for period-appropriate accuracy in his books. So for this novel, he read anything relevant he could find - diaries, letters, the China Year Book.

In so doing, he discovered that his childhood monster Zhang was in fact a much more nuanced character who actually did many good deeds.

"So complicated was the historical period, with so much going on - warlords, nationalists, communists, imperialists, Japanese - all warring against each other, the problem was how to condense all the historical facts into a romance and adventure story that would thrill the reader," Williams said. Editors wound up cutting three large portions of drier history from Williams' original version to keep readers engaged.

"The trick in a good historical novel," he said, "is to make sure that the reader's desire to learn about a particular period is satisfied, but the priority is to tell a story about people: their fears, their loves and desires. In other words, to create an identification with the characters, and to entertain."

Seizing every moment

During the book talk, Hong Ying described her husband as a "chatterbox."

She recalled the first time they met at a friend's party in Beijing back in 2004, just as Williams' first novel of his China trilogy was hitting bookshelves. Although she had a distaste for Williams' full-time profession in business with trading house Jardine Matheson, Hong Ying was attracted by this "interesting and innocent" Englishman. After their meeting, Williams also started to appreciate Hong Ying's work, which he calls "strong, fantastic - a unique voice in Chinese literature." They married in 2009 after Williams' divorce from his first wife.

Williams said that the most difficult aspect of writing is finding time from his business schedule to devote to the books, so he seizes "every moment possible." He insists that his work actually helps his writing.

"I meet people through business - Chinese, foreigners, merchants and government officials - and through travel and negotiations, I get a feel for how the real world works, and this can help my plots, as well as being a pool from which to draw characters," Williams said.

His writing has also been enriched by his adventures. He organized a camel expedition with two other Englishmen in 1995 to the center of the Taklimakan Desert to find the cities which had been abandoned 1,700 years ago, such as Niya and Karadong.

The plan for publishing an adventure travel book on the expedition failed, but Williams' writing habit on weekends and holidays stuck with him.

"You've got to be lucky to publish a book," he said. "But writing is similar to doing anything - sports, cooking, bricklaying. The more you practice, the more experienced you are and the better you become."

Currently staying in his holiday house in Le Marche, Italy, to work on his next book (a novel set in medieval Egypt at the time of the First Crusade) Williams is caring for his daughter, including taking her to a riding school everyday. But he doesn't intend on passing on any bedtime story traditions to the 6-year-old.

"It's different. When I was young, I didn't live in China, so I was fascinated by my mother's stories. My daughter's home is China and she probably knows more about it than I do! So I read her English classical children's stories like The Chronicles of Narnia," Williams said.