A hit with Western readers

Mai Jia's novel Decoded has been translated into more than 30 languages and published in different countries.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Mai Jia, the pen name of Jiang Benhu, was born in a village in Zhejiang province, not far from Hangzhou, in 1964.

When he was little, his father always told him that the family must leave the home they had lived for generations. The reason was that in front of their fine house, the family's old enemy had built a house at a higher level and had painted the outside red.

The enemy wanted to ruin the Jiang family's feng shui, and ruin their luck. Strangely, after the red house was completed, the fortunes of the Jiang family began to decline.

To fight the curse, Mai Jia's grandfather tried a lot of things, including turning to Christianity. Whatever the reason, the family's fortunes then began to improve, and more grandsons were born.

However, in the 1950s and 1960s, the practice of Christianity was frowned upon in China, and Mai Jia's father thus tried other methods to get the curse lifted, including raising dogs, putting stone lions in front of the gate and killing roosters.

For decades, the aim to get rid of the curse made the father work hard to revive the family's fortunes. In the end, in 1996, the father sold the house, going against the tradition that descendants should not sell houses built by ancestors.

Mai Jia's father's long battle with the red house opened a door for little Mai Jia, leading him into a world of mystery and secrets.