Summer's night tales gave birth to monsters

She started a series called Monsters in the Forbidden City in 2014, planning to write 12 books about the adventures of a girl named Li Xiaoyu. In the story, Li is a grade three primary school student. Her mother works in the palace, so she often plays alone there after school before her mother's work day ends.

The story begins with Li picking up a magical stone that gives her the ability to understand the languages of animals and the mythological monsters, which are nocturnal, like the toys in Pixar Animation's Toy Story movies.

Now the first six books have come out, and more than 1 million copies have sold in the Chinese mainland. They have become some of the most best-selling children's books in China, publishers from countries such as Thailand, Mongolia and South Korea have bought the copyright, and this summer there will be a stage musical adaptation. The remaining six books will come out next year.

Chang started writing another series of monster stories in 2016, titled Talks of Monsters in Forbidden City. The first three of these nine books have been published, and in one week more than 10,000 copies were sold.

In Monsters in the Forbidden City one monster is introduced in each chapter, but in the new series a whole story will be devoted to each of them, as in JK Rowling's Harry Potter books.

The new stories will focus on more monsters in the palace, which were invisible to people because "they lived in the city's underground".

"These are also stories I heard when I was young," Chang says. "Grandma Wang told a lot of very scary stories about those monsters underground. Not all of them were good. Actually many were very vicious."

Monsters in Monsters in the Forbidden City are mainly benevolent because "I don't know whether children can accept scary monsters, so it's a try in the market," Chang says.

That is to say, the new series of nine books will be darker and suit older children.

Below the layer of "gold bricks" under the palace were various vicious Chinese ancient mythological monsters, Chang says.

The bricks are not really made of gold, Chang says, but because it took two to three years to make them from a special clay in Suzhou, they were very expensive and sounded as though they were made of mental when knocked.

"And they were magical bricks," she says, suddenly sounding mysterious again.

"The Forbidden City used to contain arguably the best things in the world, the most precious jewelry, antiques, paintings, calligraphy, the most beautiful women and the most brilliant heads.

"Where there is light there is shadow. Since it is a most precious place it needs special security against the most vicious things.

The "gold bricks" were thus used by ancient architects to build a barrier that suppressed all the evil underground.

"Now, big villains will step on stage in the new books - evil spirits. I love them because they have very strong personalities."