Truth — Stranger Than Fiction

As I said in my last blog, I joined a group of  my former school friends for lunch on the weekend. We do it four times a year and it’s always a lovely catch-up. Our conversations are great, and we’re getting to know each other much better than we did at school.

For instance back then, apart from personality etc,  all I knew about one of my friends was that both her parents were doctors and that her mother was Chinese.  In recent times she has been delving into the family history of her Chinese side, which began in Australia in the early 1800s. And some years ago (in 2013) she told us this story.

Her great great (possibly more) grandmother was a young Chinese girl who had been taken on board an English ship —  for immoral purposes. When another ship’s captain learned of this, he stormed aboard and confiscated her. He then brought her back to Australia and gave her to his wife to raise and educate as a daughter, which she did. Eventually she married a Chinese man in Melbourne and they had a family.

Through many generations, their descendants continued to marry, mostly within the Chinese community, several with very distinguished careers. My friend’s mum was a doctor, and she met my friend’s dad, also a doctor but of Anglo background, and they married. 

When my friend told us this story at lunch one day,  I said “OMG! That’s so similar to the story I’ve just handed in.”  The Winter Bride is about Damaris, an English girl, a child of missionaries in China. She was orphaned and had to flee China with nothing.  She gets taken onto an English ship, having agreed to work her passage — and then , when it was too late, she discovered the Captain’s true purpose and how she was to pay for her journey. Then when they reached England he sold her into a brothel. Which, of course she escapes, along with two other heroines of that series (The Chance Sisters).

I thought I’d made up a slightly far-fetched story — but my friend’s GGG Grandmother’s actual story was so similar, and also with a happy ending.  I was also very relieved that she’d told us the story then, when my story was already written and with the editor. I would have hated her to think I’d stolen her ancestor’s story. But truth really is often stranger than fiction.