About the Author

Alice Poon was born and educated in Hong Kong, and she grew up devouring Jin Yong’s martial arts and chivalry novels, all set in China’s distant past. That sparked her life-long interest in Chinese history. Writing historical novels set in Old China has been her long-cherished dream. She is the author of the bestselling Chinese edition of Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong, which won the 2011 Hong Kong Book Prize. Canadian Book Review Annual selected the original English Edition as Editor’s Choice (Scholarly) in 2007. She currently lives in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.

Reviews

"The Green Phoenix illuminates the complex, sweeping history of the Qing rise to power with captivating scenes of intimacy, conflict, loss, and triumph. Through the story of Mongolian-born Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, Alice Poon delivers a lush and deeply informed look at the multicultural origins of China's last dynasty." --Elsa Hart, author, Jade Dragon Mountain and The White Mirror

"Alice Poon has written a masterpiece of Chinese history little known in the West. It's a story of love, betrayal and loyalty, and shows how one woman inspired the reunification of China. For so long the West has fixated on the end of the Qing dynasty, but as Poon beautifully recreates in her book, the real heroine of the Qing is the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang. Never before has this story been told in English, and it's arguably the most important historical novel of early Qing Dynasty China." --Susan Blumberg-Kason, author, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong

"So much of imperial Chinese history is an enigma; a world we, as outsiders, are shut out off. Alice Poon's novelised life of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang fictionally pulls back the curtain on Manchu court life and lets us step into a forbidden world." --Paul French, author, Midnight in Peking