Author Grace Lin Spins the Old Into the New
Grace Lin, renowned children’s book author and illustrator, weaves Chinese tradition, myths, and tales into her works, remaking them for a younger generation.
This article is part of Mochi’s spring 2025 issue on Traditions, where we examine how cultural practices shape, challenge, and evolve within our lives today.
Grace Lin, acclaimed Taiwanese American author and illustrator, is a name you might recognize from the spines of many children’s books nestled on the shelf. From her prominent middle grade novels, “Where The Mountain Meets The Moon,” “When The Sea Turned to Silver,” and “Year of the Dog,” to her applauded picture books “Ling & Ting” and “Ugly Vegetables,” Lin notably advances Asian American representation and uses her writing to artistically share Asian culture with the world.
Lin’s fiction imagines magical worlds where Asian protagonists voyage with sassy dragons and mysterious companions, traverse through serene lakeside villages or soar across the starry skies, encounter bridges woven from kite lines, and use clear wits to save loved ones from difficult foes all in a race against time.
In her fantasy novels, Lin incorporates elements of Chinese folklore as well as her own retellings of these ancient tales passed down from her family and found on her own childhood bookshelf. Such is the case with “Where The Mountain Meets the Moon” (2009), a Newbery Honor award-winning novel about the spectacular adventures of Minli, a young girl from a poor village in an alternative ancient China, who seeks the Old Man of the Moon at the Never-Ending Mountain to bring fortune to her family. Here, Lin references ancient Chinese mythical figures like the Old Man of the Moon, sacred tigers, talking good-luck goldfish, and the red thread.
Yet, while Lin sets her novels in ancient China and draws from traditional folklore, she isn’t just retelling them. She adapts the tales, constructing her own whimsical, adventurous stories from Chinese culture, legend, and characters. After hearing Lin talk at Smith College about the importance of diverse books and bringing Asian cultural awareness, I had the pleasure of talking to her further about the Chinese fairy tales behind her fantasy works and her adaptations of such folktales for a young Asian American audience and the modern age.
Grace Lin on Modern Adaptations and Reconfigurations of Chinese Fairy Tales
There is a Chinese myth “Olive Lake” that features a man wondering why his lake is olive-colored. His journey, accompanied by a dragon and other mythical creatures, takes him to the great God of the West of whom he requests the solution. “Olive Lake” scaffolds the premise of “Where The Mountain Meets The Moon” in its entirety — but instead of a man who seeks to understand the sickly of his lake, Lin makes the hero of her story a young girl nobly trying to help her parents and bring prosperity to the Fruitless Valley.
“It’s the same story, but I’m adding another side, another layer to it,” Lin said on integrating and adapting Chinese fairy tales into her books.
Part of the way in which Lin makes Chinese fairy tales and morals accessible to an audience who may not have read the original tales stems from her selection of the tales to reconfigure within her works. She focuses on what would be fun for Asian American kids.
“Probably the biggest thing I do to adapt is to choose the stories that I think would be most interesting. What is interesting to me is usually going to be interesting to [kids] too,” she noted. Stories about concubines or second wives, for example, don’t appear in her books because as a child, she did not find those stories interesting and, today, she recognizes that those tales reinforced stereotypes for women or pigeonholed them into certain roles.
Lin’s approach is refreshing when the original myths often emphasize traditional Confucian values such as filial piety, obedience, and quiet and subservient woman; in too many of these tales, the women and female characters also have tragic stories and sorrowful endings.
The original Lady Meng’s tale, for instance, taught traditional gender norms and glorified faithful women who would rather kill herself than remarry. For those unfamiliar with the story, Lady Meng grieves over her husband, Fan Xiliang, who died from building the Great Wall of China. She weeps, and a section of the wall collapses, dissolved by her mournful tears. The Emperor, watching Lady Meng from his palace, becomes enamored with her beauty and sadness. But when he asks to marry her, Lady Meng refuses out of loyalty to her husband, and ultimately throws herself into the sea before the wedding day.
After hearing Lady Meng’s tale and being expected to find it beautiful, Lin recalled her indignant reaction. “Are you kidding me, that’s terrible!” she had yelled. Why did the story make Lady Meng a poor wife wallowing in her grief at the Great Wall? Why should a woman sacrifice herself for fidelity?
Lin commented, “While those were the types of heroines revered in Chinese culture, those were not the characters that I wanted to be as a kid. My books are making the characters that I wanted to be; I wanted to be somebody who was a heroine.”
Lin’s Lady Meng goes beyond the poor weeping woman at the Great Wall, and is transformed into a beautiful, badass female warrior who aids Pinmei and Yishan on their quest. Although Lady Meng still jumps into the sea after her husband’s coffin, her legs transform into a fish tail.
“When [Lady Meng] throws herself into the sea, she is not really killing herself, but she is returning home,” Lin told me about the fighter’s final moment. Rather than a message about female devotion from the original fairy tale, Lin gives Lady Meng the admirable, heartfelt, and symbolic ending she deserves while also maintaining the same strong independent character that she presented in the novel.
“The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon” and Contemporary Fairy Tales
Lin’s empowering adaptations extend to her current books, including in her new release, “The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon” which introduces a young stone lion named Jin, the star soccer player in the spirit realm (oh, and guardian of the Old City Gate and the Sacred Sphere, too). After accidentally kicking the sphere through the gate, Jin is thrown into the mortal world where he partners with a human girl and a “I swear I’m a dragon” worm on his perilous mission to find and return the Sacred Sphere.
Like with her previous fantasy books, Lin bases “The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon” on Chinese folklore. However, she takes a different approach when interlacing Chinese mythology and culture into the novel. Considering that it is 2025, Lin backdrops Chinese myth against modern day society and inserts more realism within the fantasy.
“[This one] is different from the other novels because the other novels were placed in this fantasy China, and this one is placed in a contemporary kind of fantasy Chinatown,” Lin revealed. Already, this book takes the audience into an urban American Chinatown, an environment more relatable to Asian Americans than ancient China. Factoring in the added references to phones and modern technology, the book highlights more of the current world as we know it.
There are a plethora of ancient Chinese legends, yet there are also ones born in the modern 19th and 20th century; traditions, superstitions, and legends continuously develop, and fairy tales are still emerging even in the 21st century. While her prior novels drew from old fairy tales, Lin added more contemporary and urban legends in “The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon.”
One such urban legend concerns the Yan’an Gaojia Shanghai expressway and its extraordinary “dragon pillar” that suddenly appears along the route. Lin explained the story: While building the highway in the ’90s, the construction workers could not drill into a certain area for unknown reasons. The company hired feng shui masters — men who practice the ancient Chinese art of summoning balance and fortune through the environment — and a monk for answers. The monk, revealing that the site was a resting space for an underground dragon, then performed a ceremony asking the dragon to leave. The construction company hereafter honored the dragon through an intricate, polished pillar engraved with nine bronze dragons which they placed on top of the site.
“The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon” also references the rituals and superstition behind the huge, hollow, square holes in many Hong Kong towers. These holes serve as portals for spirit dragons to openly fly from the mountains to the rivers since bad luck befalls any neighborhood that blocks the dragons’ flight path to the water.
“I love seeing how myths are integrated in our modern contemporary world,” Lin remarked about the references in her May publication. “I hope that this book shows that these stories are alive; like when kids pass by the stone lions, they can feel the magic around them.”
Making Asian Fairy Tales and Heritage “Cool” For Kids
Within her novels, Lin seeks not only to get Chinese kids interested in Chinese culture, tradition, and myth, but also to see themselves reflected in literature. She makes being Asian cool for the Asian American kids who may struggle to embrace their heritage. Through her books, kids can appreciate the Chinese fairy tales and also perhaps relate to their Asian heritage in a magical way — kids can connect with the stories that originate, and are adapted, from a region.
These are the types of characters that we would hope that Asian Americans kids want to become: kind, fierce, headstrong. Although the fairy tales were inspired from China, Lin delivers characters who embody modern Asian Americans and their personalities.
“These kinds of retellings of the [Chinese fairy tales] are with a very modern Asian American sensibility,” Lin noted. She also revealed her own relatability and connection to the characters she writes with empowerment. “Because I was reading all these Western fairy tales or watching Disney princess movies, I was always wondering how come I’m not in there, how come I can’t find anyone who looks like me?”
She questioned. “Where’s the princess I can be?” Being the only Asian American in her mainly white school and community, Lin felt like there was no one in the media who really represented Asian Americans. “[My books] are really written as a love letter to the girl that I was,” Lin reflected. “These were the kind of stories I wish I had when I was younger with these girl characters that could have adventures.”
Asian characters can have fun adventures, too. Lin also proves that female empowerment can happen in books set in ancient China.
“It encourages them to claim their own heritage like how these books helped me claim my own heritage,” Lin disclosed, also communicating her own complicated feelings and journey surrounding her Asian American identity. When she was a kid, she rejected her own Asian heritage but reconnected to it through her writing and by exploring Chinese fairy tales. “It took me a really long time to feel comfortable claiming the Asian part of my identity because I felt like an impostor,” Lin began. “It was only through writing all these books that integrate these Chinese folk tales and Asian culture over 20 years, that I can now feel like I can claim my identity.”
Moreover, Lin commented, “For Asian American kids, I hope that they enjoy the books, and that it makes them realize how cool and how precious their Asian heritage is.” Her novels and weaving of traditional folktales, both old and new, shows how many amazing stories can come from China.
“If we don’t tell these stories or share them, they are forgotten. That’s why I like sharing them, because then that means they are living.”
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Images courtesy of Grace Lin.
