The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao https://thechrisvossshow.com/the-chris-voss-show-podcast-zachary-ying-and-the-dragon-emperor-by-xiran-jay-zhao/ Subscribe to all of the top CEO's, newest authors and top journalists on The Chris Voss Show Podcast *SUBSCRIBE AT https://lnkd.in/gG34PtmJ Percy Jackson meets Tristan Strong in this hilarious, action-packed middle grade contemporary fantasy that follows a young boy as he journeys across China to seal the underworld shut and save the mortal realm. Zachary Ying never had many opportunities to learn about his Chinese heritage. His single mom was busy enough making sure they got by, and his schools never taught anything except Western history and myths. So Zack is woefully unprepared when he discovers he was born to host the spirit of the First Emperor of China for a vital mission: sealing the leaking portal to the Chinese underworld before the upcoming Ghost Month blows it wide open. The mission takes an immediate wrong turn when the First Emperor botches his attempt to possess Zack’s body and binds to Zack’s AR gaming headset instead, leading to a battle where Zack’s mom’s soul gets taken by demons. Now, with one of history’s most infamous tyrants yapping in his headset, Zack must journey across China to heist magical artifacts and defeat figures from history and myth, all while learning to wield the emperor’s incredible water dragon powers. And if Zack can’t finish the mission in time, the spirits of the underworld will flood into the mortal realm, and he could lose his mom forever. #podcast #podcastshow #podcasts #book #author #books #reading #booklover #bookworm #read #chrisvoss #thechrisvossshow #interview

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. The host? Is that what John's name is? The host? I'm supposed to be the host? Wait, I thought someone else was hosting. I thought I was just here to check out this really cool podcast.

I was telling my friends and neighbors, I'm like, you should subscribe to the Chris Voss Show podcast. I watch it every day and I was just sitting here watching it. It's like, wait, I have a job here? I thought I was just enjoying a beautiful, wonderful broadcast of the Chris Voss Show.

Anyway, guys, as you know, we always say, go refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. We, of course, do the YouTube thing. Go to youtube.com, 4ChessChrisVoss, hit the bell notification button,

that ding. Once you press that button, a special feeling washes over you. You feel like you're part of a family that loves you but doesn't judge you because we all know those are the best kind of families. It's not a cult, though. Just always remember that. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Foss.

See everything you're reading over there. And all our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, the big LinkedIn newsletter, and the big LinkedIn group. Go follow that thing. It's always fun to take and do. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences

in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership,

how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book where refined books are sold. We have another amazing author on the show. If I could tell you how many amazing authors we've found out today, it would blow your mind. There's been three of them, and they've been top-notch, hugely successful authors. So I'm just having a big three-author day here. Today we have Zirin J. Zhao on the show with us today.

They are the author of Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor, coming out May 10th, 2022. So, you can pre-order this book. We've got a couple copies of it, and it's beautiful in its design, and of course, beautiful in its writing and everything else. Let me pull up that there. There we go. There's our bio. Zirin is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Widow series, a first-gen. Hugh, is that correct? I should have checked that in the bio. Way Chinese immigrant from a small town in China to Vancouver, Canada, where they were raised by the internet and made the inexplicable decision to leave their biochem degree in the dust to write books and make educational content instead.

You can find them on Twitter for memes, Instagram for cosplays and fancy outfits, TikTok for short, fun videos, and YouTube for long videos about the Chinese history and culture. It's their first middle-grade novel and the first installment in the planned trilogy welcome the show how are you hello i'm doing well how about you there you go and did i get your first name right and punching that sort of energy oh yeah yeah absolutely sure it's it's pretty close sometimes i i just throw so much energy into the intro it's like when the brain goes right out the window. So thank you very much for coming on the show.

Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs. Oh, I think you already gave me and gave the people my plugs. So it's right there. Yeah, I am CNJZOW everywhere. And yeah, I'm on all those social platforms. There you go. Do you have a dot com? Yes, I do. It's also CNJZOW.com.

There you go. So what motivated you com yes i do it's also chan chan zhao dot com there you go so what motivated you to want to write this book well actually i was on the sky train which is like the subway which is but it's like in the air in vancouver and with my friend and then i was talking about chinese history there was a point where i was like really obsessed with chinese history and i just wouldn't shut up about it to my friend and then she was like how about you just put all this in a book instead because you know um history and myth stories are really good for middle grade and then at that point I hadn't like thought about writing middle grade yet but then it got me thinking what if I were to like write a middle grade novel um inspired Chinese history and myth. And then I also thought about Yu-Gi-Oh!, which is like the most formulative series, the show,

the most formulative show of my childhood. And I was like, what if I did a Chinese take on Yu-Gi-Oh! But instead of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, it's the first emperor of China who like starts haunting this gamer boy. And so this concept spiraled from then and then it became Zachary Yin and the Dragon Emperor there you go so what happens in the book give us an overview if you would from 30,000 feet yeah so Zach is this Chinese American boy who didn't really grow up connected to his heritage like he can't even speak mandarin or anything but then one day the spirit of the first emperor of china possesses his ar gaming headset so this is like

set in kind of the near future where like ar technology is super advanced and stuff so just imagine if google glass actually worked and everybody had it and so his gaming headset gets possessed by the first emperor of china and he gets compelled on a journey across China to defeat figures from history and myth in order to heist magical artifacts and seal this portal to the underworld to prevent the malevolent spirits there from just emerging into the mortal realm. So there is the story. There you go. I had the early Google Glass, a couple of them, and loved it.

I miss it, actually. What happened? Why aren't they developing it anymore? You know, there was a lot of things they did wrong. I mean, price and exclusivity. And it just wasn't, it just, I don't know, they couldn't price it for the mainstream. I don't know. It was a beautiful product, but now you're going to give me nightmares because I'm going to think of my times with Glass and all of a sudden they'll get possessed.

Oh, my God. you're going to give me nightmares because i'm going to think of my times with glass and all of a sudden they'll get possessed oh my god no imagine if like harry d.a's like possessed or google glass so that's that's like the vibe of this great that's my nightmare tonight i'll be like whoa i really do miss that i was thinking about him because snap just came out with that new copter thing the drone and uh snap had also the the glasses that were kind of like google glass but they weren't as good but yeah i definitely miss them so one age group does this book really appeal to uh when we say middle i think we said middle agers middle grade so middle grade is usually for 8 to 12 year olds but i wrote this book kind of like for an everyone sort of audience so um if you liked percy jackson and plenty of adults like percy jackson so if you like those then you'll probably enjoy the book just uh because i didn't really yeah i would say it's upper middle grade so aside from like no 18 plus

jokes i pretty much approached it i didn't really um write it with kids of mine. I was just like, everybody can read this. Yeah, there you go. So it's a book everybody can enjoy, especially. What genre would you say this falls into? I would say science fantasy. The kind of science fantasy that Marvel films are. So you know how Marvel films have both high tech, but there's also plenty of people doing magic in the background and in the foreground, I guess. So it's the

kind of like science fantasy that comic books and anime heavily utilize. That's what I was going to ask you. I know a lot of gamers are into anime and of course gaming has, you know, so many different versions of great, you know, like some of the artwork that's on here. I've seen some games that kind of have that sort of same sort of a Chinese sort of artwork. Is that something that would appeal to them as well, I guess? Oh, yeah, definitely. My cover is done by a really great artist, Valencia. And every time I see my cover, I just, oh my God, it's so good. So you've built quite a channel and platforms of, you you know teaching people about chinese history chinese everything about chinese lore you know everything about chinese and what motivates you want to do

that and share that and and how does that message kind of impact with people and and so i do it all for the diaspora the chinese diaspora because there are a lot of like second or third generation Chinese immigrants who they grew up without much of a connection to their heritage and they can't read Chinese because Chinese is a really difficult language. Just if I hadn't, if my immigration history hadn't been so complicated, then I would probably have lost my ability to like read it and speak it as well. So there is a lot of info that these chinese diaspora cannot access and especially like chinese history when you're in china you learn it from your curriculum you learn it at school but here you don't really get that chance and i make my content in english as a member of the chinese diaspora for others in the diaspora and i just it really touches me when people tell me that,

oh, like your videos really helped me feel more connected to my heritage. And so, yeah, that's the audience that I do it for. I think that's a great thing because it brings everybody, the internet kind of can, if it's used for good,

bring everybody together so that they understand each other more. You know, there's not like those people over there. We don't know who they are. They're strangers. So we don't, we're a little worried about them. But you know, Chinese culture is so amazing. Like Chinese movies I've always enjoyed. You know, there's, there's so much history of course of China and everything else. And so I think it's good that you bring it over and people can, can immerse themselves and understand it. You know, I know Mandarin. I mean, I've often thought, you know,

I should probably learn some Chinese in case I ever go there. I know Mandarin is like one of the hardest languages to learn, I think, isn't it? Well, to read, actually, spoken Mandarin is pretty easy because the grammar rules are really flexible. It's just like if you want to get into the reading and writing part, that's the difficult part because you have to, like, memorize several thousand characters or whatever. But, yeah, Mandarin as a spoken language is actually super easy. That's the difficult part because you have to memorize several thousand characters or whatever.

But yeah, Mandarin as a spoken language is actually super easy. Very flexible grammar, no gendered terms. And I think you don't have to even do conjugations for past and future tense. So it's a really simple language, grammar-wise. It's just the writing that gets you. Do you ever go over to China and do research for your books, or do you go back there at all and interact with? A few years, but then recently, because of the pandemic, I haven't been able to go back, which makes me sad,

just because I really wanted to go back, like, last year or this year, but no, their lockdown rules are so strict. Like, if I wanted to go back i would have to quarantine just alone for at least a month holy which is ridiculous yeah they're there i believe is it shanghai or beijing yeah the situation is happening in shanghai and that's usually the city that i go to when i'm flying into china so yeah i cannot go back yeah we have a lot of authors that they they pick places around the world to write books about so they have an excuse to go on their vacation yes and you can expense all of those like expenses as work expenses yeah and then you get to learn all the cultures and everything do you see this

as a series maybe uh yes it is there is at least going to be another book coming out and i know my publisher says it's a planned trilogy but i'm like you haven't picked me up for the third book yet let's not get ahead of ourselves oh yeah there will be at least another book and depending on how the first book will do we'll see about doing a third yeah as a large party do you do you connect with the base over there in china but i know they're behind a firewall so they may not have access to youtube and stuff like that and some of your works i think some of them do watch my videos because i do see some comments in simplified chinese and that's when you know it's like from someone who's chinese and if it's traditional chinese then you know they're from like hong kong or taiwan so nuance is here and but mostly they don't watch much youtube because like china has its own like all of their own social

media sites and they're super popular so if they're seeking out like content on YouTube then and yeah probably not a lot of them just because you know they have their own good content yeah it's it's I've I applied to some apps years ago that were over there I think about 10 years ago that I tried to get in on the apps and a couple of them I got in on. It was just extraordinary how much data and screen content there is and advertising. And you're just like, holy crap, there's a lot going on here. Yeah, the views are unimaginable for us. The video views, they get so many times more video views than um what we get over

here just because there's such a bigger population and then i i have lived through the period where like the great firewall of china was like slowly coming down and i lost access to all like all of my like youtube and those sites when i'm in china so i I lived through that. And recently, I still go on Chinese social media sites. But recently, I have seen that they're limiting access more and more because in recent years, I found that I need to like register with a phone number to in order to access the sites. And then I think recently, some of the sites changed it. So you can only log in with a mainland Chinese phone number. Soon, I won't be even be able only log in with a mainland Chinese phone number. Yeah. Soon I won't even be able to log in anymore, but we'll see.

I'm just holding on to what I can. That's what happened to me because I was like, I'd love to have the Chris Voss show be multi, you know, it is multinational for everybody or international so that, you know, everyone checks in. And so I was like hoping that, you know, maybe it would catch up some viewers over there. And yeah, they eventually, they were using my US phone for a while and then they eventually went to like, ah, you can have a local phone. I'm like, maybe it would catch up some viewers over there. And yeah, they eventually, they were using my US phone for a while. And then they eventually went to like, you can have a local phone. I'm like, damn it.

But you do cosplay as well. We have a huge tech audience. And so they're into the cosplay thing going down to San Diego for, what is it called? Comic-Con. Comic-Con. That's huge with our base. Oh my gosh. People love that.

And so you do that in some of your work as well. Yes, I do that. And then probably I'm going to go to Comic-Con this year for the first time as a panelist. So you've never been before? I've never been. I've never been one of those super hardcore cosplayers who legit take off their costumes

and go to cons across the country. And me, I've been pretty confined to Vancouver and it's always just been pretty confined to vancouver and it's always just been just like a small like side hobby for me it's amazing i've always wanted to go i've never been able to get tickets they sell out like you know like that but the work that people put in to their their stuff is just extraordinary sometimes yeah they take it really seriously like i don't even consider myself one of those people because they also take it super seriously but yeah there are people out there who like bring three costumes to a con or they're like okay Seriously. Like, I don't even consider myself one of those people. Cosplayers would take it super seriously.

But yeah, there are people out there who like bring three costumes to a con and they're like, okay, Friday, I'm going to be this. Saturday, I'm going to be this. Some of them are like, okay, Sunday morning, I'm going to be this. Sunday afternoon, I'm going to be like this. So there's super hardcore about it. I think it's even funnier when like Hollywood people, they dress up so that no one will know who they are.

And they walk around the whole thing and no one has any idea that, you know, they've been walking amongst them, if you will. So that should be fun. So this is really exciting. You had a great series before that sold well. Anything more you want to touch on in the book and tease people out on to order it up? Hey, Zachary here. And well, what do I want? Oh, my God god i am blanking out how do i pitch my book when you write a book man it's a lot of work and then editing and you're just like

i don't even i didn't barely survive the editing of my book i was like imagine imagine that like you act you find out that you have accidentally become a supervillain's henchboy. And that's the plot of this. When you wrote it, did you have any maybe Hollywood plans? Like if it got picked up by Hollywood, maybe who would play some of the characters in it? Not really, because it's middle grade and middle grade doesn't typically get adapted into movies. And I don't really see this as a live action movie. Like maybe you'll do well in animation. typically get adapted into movies and i i don't really see this as a live action movie like maybe

you'll do well in animation but i also think that it may be too critical of the chinese government for hollywood to like get their hands on it oh really like all the big studios are they may be scared off by the subject matters that was one of the other questions i was thinking of asking you do you broach some of the political criticism of the government, either in the book or in some of your online work? I do. And in my videos, like, even though that, you know, it's my parents tell me it's not smart to get political as a Chinese person, but I just I just can't help it. You know, I'm a very inherently political person. I have opinions.

Well, that's good. That's good. And you have a platform to, you know, and a voice for that. And there's some things going on there. We could certainly see the Uyghurs, you know, the stuff that's going on with that and everything else. And that is something that I do address in Zachary and the Dragon Emperor. I talk about like how differently Muslim ethnic minorities are treated across China because

it's like a little, it's more lenience on the east. But then once you get to the western regions that then it gets like really, they really start cracking down. And it's just really unfortunate because the Muslim people and Islamic culture has been a really heavy influence on Chinese culture as a whole. Even in the book, I talk about how like, you know, that typical like white and blue porcelain that comes out of China, that design was actually originally created for the Islamic market in the Middle East. And so, yeah, there is a very strong interconnection of Islamic cultures and Chinese cultures. Yeah, there's a lot of things going on with the war, China, and, of course, seeing Russia fail. And hopefully they keep failing. Knock on wood.

But, you know, is it Xi? President Xi is up for re-election, I think, later on this year. Oh, Xi Jinping? Oh, election. There are no elections. Well, okay. Technically, the party representatives elected, but it's not going to be like a contest or anything oh yeah all right well i don't know i was hoping that maybe maybe maybe though you know

i don't know it would be it would be really cool if like we get the whole world just to embrace capitalism and you open up that market where they could be on our internet and everybody could be all getting along and well china is on a capitalist model and it's not it's not even pretending to be communist anymore well actually it does pretend like when i go back to china they do have like actual socialist slogans everywhere on the streets but then that's not their actual economic model so they're like authoritarian capitalists there you go well we're heading that way so we'll just get along with China, I think, the way we're coming YouTube channel, Siren J Zao. And there I talk about, I make a lot of videos about Chinese history and culture.

And I do critiques of media in the West that portray Chinese culture. Like the Mulan live action 2020 movie. That one was the reason that my channel took off. I just made this 37 37 minute rant about it. And then suddenly it went viral. So yes, check my YouTube channel out if that interests you. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Thank you for coming. Thanks for tuning in. Go order up the book. You definitely want to get a hold of it. You can pre-order it today, May 10th, 2022. Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor.

Get it for your kids. Get it for yourself and enjoy it. Everybody loves stuff that's, you know, the news these days is kind of a little dark. So, you know, you can get a little escapism and enjoy learning some new culture and everything else. Thanks for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com. Forge has Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button.

Goodreads.com. Forge has Chris Voss. All our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places we are on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.