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China Pearl: Diaries of Paul Draken (Online Illustration Novel Edition)
Ⅰ, Son of China (1900-1924)
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Editor's Preface
On December 31, 1999, just before the world was welcoming the year 2000, we received a mysterious email from someone claiming to be Paul Draken. The email recounted his extraordinary and unbelievable life experiences and said that more information would be sent over the next period of time. Sure enough, we received a picture or text every few days, and so far we have accumulated a wealth of content. According to him, Paul Draken (whose Chinese name was even given to him by Zhang Zuolin!) was the son of Sir James Draken, a British diplomat stationed in China, and a princess from a small Western country, making him of mixed Chinese and British descent. The story is a reorganization based on an unpublished biography of Sir James Draken, Paul Lung's own diary, and accounts from his friends, recounting a series of mysterious adventures of the Draken family since 1900. The events are incredibly bizarre, even bordering on the eerie, involving many famous figures, unknown secrets, and numerous historical revisions, making it a fascinating read. However, as he states in his letter, all his friends except for Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling) and General Chang Hsueh-Liang are deceased (Editor's note: Chang Hsueh-Liang and Soong Mei-ling have both passed away). Therefore, if he doesn't quickly tell the story, they will all likely follow him to their graves soon, which would be a great pity. The original document was written in a mix of Chinese and English. We attempted to translate and organize it into Chinese, and then arranged and categorized it into chapters. For terms related to China, we tried to find the original Chinese translations to avoid errors caused by translating from Chinese to English and back to Chinese. We also included the original English text when the terms first appeared. We must admit that we cannot determine the authenticity of Paul Draken's diary, but setting aside historical research, it is indeed a highly dramatic and captivating story, worthy of being shared. Therefore, I wrote back to him seeking his permission to handle the distribution and merchandise licensing of the Chinese version entirely on our behalf. We have a confidentiality agreement with Mr. Paul Draken, and we absolutely cannot reveal his identity or address. In fact, we have always communicated via email and have not met in person. I suspect he may be living on a ship and sending messages via satellite. He still frequently sends us new content, but as he himself said, he is over ninety years old and doesn't know how much longer he can write. If we don't receive any new letters one day, it means he has left this world. So we look forward to his letters every day, and we all hope that the day he spoke of will never come, even though we know it will eventually arrive. Are you ready? Let's follow Paul Draken and their "China Pearl" on a journey "towards the East"!
Yao Kaiyang,
I come from an English aristocratic family, whose ancestors can be traced back to the Vikings who invaded from the north in the 8th century. My surname, "Draken," means "dragon" in Norse. The tradition of the men in the Draken family is to go on adventures abroad. In the 16th century, during the reign of Elizabeth I, several famous pirates emerged from our family; even the king referred to our family as "those madmen with the surname Draken."
My father was Sir James Draken, a British diplomat and scholar of Oriental history. He came to China in 1900 to serve at the British Legation in Peking, then in 1904 at the Japanese Consulate in Yokohama. In 1907, he returned to China as Consul General in Tiantsin. In 1912, he left China to serve as Ambassador Extraordinary to Russia until he witnessed the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917, after which he returned to Britain to serve as a Member of Parliament. Therefore, he was very familiar with the royal families of several empires, and I accompanied him to and from the palace from a young age, playing with princes and princesses.
My mother's background is a bit complicated. In fact, she was a princess from a small kingdom in the Western Regions, meaning I am of mixed Chinese and British descent. My father's original British wife was killed by the Boxers during the Boxer Rebellion when they first arrived in Peking in 1900. He met my mother in 1907 while on an archaeological expedition to Loulan, and they fell in love and had me. However, she mysteriously disappeared shortly after my birth. This is one of the reasons why I returned to the East to explore in 1927. I will tell you about this part of the story later.
Speaking of myself, when I was ten years old, I returned to England with my father and attended a prestigious private school. In that closed and conservative environment, my half-Eastern features were not well-received by my peers, so my adolescence was spent without friends and in extreme distress. Later, I attended flight school and obtained the rank of Ensign in the Royal Navy in 1927. Learning to fly was a crucial turning point in my life, because soaring solo through the skies gave me immense freedom and allowed me to temporarily escape the clamor of insincere and uninteresting faces. Flying also led me back to the East, and through a series of coincidences, I witnessed China's dramatic changes throughout the 20th century. In a sense, I myself am a living history.
To explain more clearly the relationship between our family and China across two generations, I have also included a notebook of my father, Sir Draken, that has never been published before. You will find that his story is even more fascinating than mine, and it is the origin of all these adventures. You will read about it in the future.
Paul Draken,
Capitan Academia , eMail |