BBC News: The Story Behind Chinese War Epic 'The Flowers of War'

[...] Based on a novel by Chinese-American author Geling Yan, it [The Flowers Of War] is set in the Chinese city of Nanjing at the time of the Japanese invasion.

In one of the most notorious episodes of Japan's occupation of China, tens of thousands of Chinese were killed and raped there by the invading army between December 1937 and March 1938.[...]

Author Geling Yan says she was inspired to write her novel after reading an account by Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary who ran a college in Nanjing.

The Ginling Girls college became a haven for students and other women in the city, including some prostitutes.

When Japanese soldiers arrived demanding "comfort women" - a euphemism for sex slaves - Ms Vautrin faced the dilemma of letting the so-called "good" women go or giving them the prostitutes.

"This moment is very crucial," Geling Yan told the BBC. "If those prostitutes don't step forward, the Japanese will take the civilian women."

The prostitutes did step forward and were taken away by the soldiers and never heard from again.

"Ms Vautrin spent her whole life thinking [about] and contemplating this event, and she regretted that she submitted these women to the Japanese," says Ms Yan.

"These few lines in her biography touched me... even though the prostitutes were seen as very base, not so pure... they stepped forward to protect these young women. I think it was an extraordinary action." [...]

"What I wanted to stress in this story is the young girls, the virgins are the most final conquest of the conquerors, especially for the Japanese - you cannot call it a complete conquest unless you can conquer the enemy country's women.

"So the young girls coming of age are the most vulnerable and most desirable of the conquest... by protecting them I wanted to make the story more tragic and more beautiful."

Critics say the film is nationalistic and anti-Japanese, but Geling Yan says that was not her aim. [...]

"We didn't want to demonise the soldiers, but we just wanted to emphasise [that] in wartime all human nature can transform in the blink of an eye. [...]

"It's a positive story... and it puts the Chinese in a good light. It's part of history and for understandable reasons, China wants the world to understand it."

In recent years there have been several films and television dramas about the Nanjing massacre - but Ms Yan says she found it much easier to find historical documents, pictures and film footage from the time outside China.

She did manage to get hold of the diary of her father's uncle, an army doctor in Nanjing, which provided her with more detail.

Despite her extensive research, Ms Yan says she does not want her fictional account to be seen as a historical record.

"The story is just fiction, a literary novel, and I hope it remains that way."[...]

The full article is here.