Sin in the Forbidden City
Morgan, born poor on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, learned to battle to survive among rats, killers, and thieves on the streets, masking her femininity to avoid beatings. She became a caulker in the Brooklyn shipyards and gained respect rapidly. Morgan joined the Union Navy at 14 to defend the Eastern Atlantic Coast and Gulf of Mexico against Confederates for four years, fighting several sea battles and seeing naval tactics transform. Morgan and his best friend checked on a small sinking ship while on patrol in the final months of the war and found something that transformed their lives.
Morgan bought a three-masted ship with a tiny boiler for propulsion and enlisted a skilled crew, most of whom had served together during the war and sailed the same waters as ancient explorers. Captain Morgan Ryan saved three survivors of the sunken Chinese ship from a Japanese Imperial Navy attack near southern China. A miscalculation and an unexpected typhoon in the Philippine Sea stranded them on a barren, undiscovered tropical island for a month. Captain Morgan and the three survivors blended Eastern and Western cultures with surprising results. Captain Morgan fell in love with the heir to the Chinese throne after the Emperor was slain.
Morgan journaled from the Civil War to her adulthood. After decades of prodding by her life partners, she gathered her diaries and family experiences into a book, which she released here.
Morgan was a remarkable, powerful, sensitive, and generous woman.
“I feel blessed and pleased to have spent so many rich and vivid years with the one person who can win our hearts and souls forever. We cried for hours after reading the first assembled book. So many joyful and terrible memories.” Empress Wang, Chan Juan, and PhD Zhang, Chao Xing Li.
Before the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), scribes often wrote about the magical and special relationships only shared between women.
