Leading role for war volunteers
Story of Chinese WWI laborers inspire novel by British writer
The story of the Chinese volunteers who played a key role in the Allied effort during World War I forms the basis of a novel by a British writer.
Author and musician Clive Harvey wanted to bring the images and stories of the Chinese Labor Corps to life in his first work of fiction.
The result was Yang’s War grew out of his interest in the migration of people, after he heard about the Chinese Labor Corps at a meeting with war historian Andy Robertshaw and became fascinated by the story of the Chinese men who were recruited in 1916 by the British and the French armies to provide support to frontline soldiers during World War I.
He said their story had not been “covered properly” and lamented that the Corps was barely recognized by history.
Yang’s War tells the story of a well-educated Chinese man with skills in language and machinery who joined the Corps to pay off his father’s debts.
Two years
Harvey spent two years on the project and consulted Robertshaw along the way to check historical facts and see whether his story was believable to an expert.
“It’s not a normal novel, it’s a historical novel,” Harvey said. “So you have to try to keep things plausible, and when you suddenly find that what was written matches an experience, you know you’ve done quite well.
“So that encourages me. I had to make sure I wasn’t writing anything too over-the-top. I’m not a historian, I wanted to write a novel, but, at the same time, it had to be realistic.”
Harvey came across rare images of Corps workers and they gave him additional inspiration. He said he wanted to bring the pictures to life for his readers and came up with a backstory for the men in the photographs. The front cover of the novel is an archival image of a man and a bird, which gave him the idea for his main character, Yang.
“I’ve woven all these pictures into the story,” he said. “The character of Yang looked after little birds before he joined the Corps.”
Harvey wanted to write a novel that tracked the lives of the men who made the journey from China and then experienced the brutality of war, before showing how some of them settled in Europe.
“I’m not short of inspiration for the book,” Harvey said. “There are so many interesting twists to it and you have to allow yourself to use your imagination.”
He hopes the novel will help open people’s eyes to the sacrifices made by the volunteers and their role in helping rebuild Europe after the conflict.
He said he would love to see his story made into a film or series for the big screen or television and noted that a Chinese publisher in Beijing has shown interest in his novel.