Turning words into gold

Zhang Wei says his new book, The Secret Pharmacist, can stimulate many intercultural discussions. [Photo by He Zhiqin/CFP]

Author uses popular themes of alchemy and longevity to explore a historic culture clash, Mei Jia reports.

It's said that modern chemistry was partly founded by alchemists.

In China, there was similar "dark tradition" along history's path, but the Chinese alchemists were Taoist priests who produced medicines they claimed would make people live longer.

Legend says that Emperor Qinshihuang, who commissioned the making of the Terracotta Warriors, also dispatched large number of alchemists to create pellets of longevity, about 2,200 years ago.

Well-known writer Zhang Wei, who was born in Longkou city in Shandong province, says more than half of the emperor's alchemists were from the Jiaodong Peninsula, where his hometown is situated, and the tradition was thus carried on.

Five years after winning the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Prize with a 10-volume magnum opus You're On the Highland, Zhang has produced a dramatically shorter new novel, The Secret Pharmacist, focusing on the Taoist alchemists who worked from the turn of 19th century to the 20th in his hometown.

It's a "surprisingly strange, mysterious and fresh" combination of romance, traditional Chinese belief and the 1911 revolution, says Shi Zhanjun, veteran critic and editor-in-chief of People's Literature magazine.