Through the keen eyes and curious mind of a young girl, Ying-tzu, we are given a glimpse into the adult world of Peking in the 1920s. The five sequential stories in this collection can be read as
Praise for the first edition:"... in the great tradition of Orwell and Solzhenitsyn; its true subject is the survival—and sometimes the defeat—of the human spirit in its lonely quest for integrity." —