What do normal people in China look forward to when they get up in the morning? What is the mentor of Lang Lang like? What about the personal friend of Chairman Mao and how does his granddaughter relate to him after the murderous Cultural Revolution? What do the numerous evangelical Americans really think of the Chinese? How does the One Country, Two Systems paradigm work for Hong Kong? For the last 73 years, American Book Award winner Alex Kuo has travelled back-and-forth between America and China. These letters and essays portray the private China, and provide indispensable cultural information for anyone interested in the Peoples Republic in the 21st century.

A political and environmental novel, bound to raise eyebrows on both sides of the Pacific. Two finite-numbers mathematicians - a Chinese woman and a Chinese American man - become disillusioned with teaching. She goes to work in China's Three Gorges Dam, he for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. Unknown to each other, they struggle to balance their personal values against the global corporate determinism of dam building. Playing China's boom against the story of the American West, this novel is energetic, lyrical, and funny.