This novel chronicles the life of an educated Chinese woman trying to navigate China’s rapidly changing social, economic, and political environment. Set in the reform period of the 1990s, the protagonist, Lin Jun, was a child during the Cultural Revolution and has vivid memories of its terrible consequences for her educated parents.
  However, she is still young enough to benefit from the changes in contemporary Chinese life. Torn between traditions that dictate self-sacrifice for one’s family and the allure of new freedoms, Lin Jun must decide how best to live her life in a world almost completely unrecognizable from that of her youth.
 

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“Maybe it’s impossible to explain being a Chinese to a foreigner,’ says Lin Jun, the 31-year-old Chinese schoolteacher who’s at the center of May-lee Chai’s plucky novel. Lin Jun is in charge of easing the wOriginal Artworkay for Cynthia, a visiting American instructor at her middle school in Nanjing. But Lin Jun is negotiating unfamiliar territory herself. Though she has been envied for her ‘lucky face,’ the good looks that her jealous co-workers think have won her unusual privileges and a handsome husband, Lin Jun doesn’t feel particularly fortunate. Her estrangement from her husband is so deep that she spends many cold nights alone, riding her Flying Pigeon (the brand name of the un-stylish but sturdy black bicycle that she calls her ‘stalwart ally’). Lin Jun also feels distant from her adored only son, who must live away from home at his nursery school during the week. The author was herself a student at Nanjing University and taught English at a middle school there, so she makes a sympathetic and knowledgeable chronicler of Lin Jun’s efforts to find a place and a voice for herself.”

- The New York Times Book Review
“For anyone interested in the changing face of China, or the Cultural Revolution as seen from the perspective of dissidents and their families, this book demands to be read.”

- Jerusalem Post
“The most fascinating thing about this compelling, deftly written story is the picture of Chinese society in transition and the widening gap between the martyrs of the Cultural Revolution and the young generation, with its new freedoms and expectation.”

- Booklist
“One woman’s triumph beautifully told.”

- San Diego Union-Tribune

 

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