I came across this book for want of something new to read. The synopsis was utterly intriguing as was the book itself from start to finish. I have to hand it to the author, she's got nerves of steel to pursue a career, live in a foreign country and at such a time! Honestly, I've never really bothered to look into China's history and culture. I've never even heard of that horrid massacre! Highly recommend this book for anyone who loves a good non fiction read and/or a book with a strong, female role model.

Many thanks to NetGalley and She Writes Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

this was a really unique memoir, I enjoyed the way the author wrote it and I enjoyed going on this journey with the author.

I had a lot of expectations with that book when I first started it. It seemed that the political aspects of that economical opening would be presented mixing Dori’s life in Hong Kong.

At the beginning, the book shows more of Dori’s job as journalist for Business Weekly, which was really interesting, her necessity of making conexions, building a name, interviewing remarkable people and so on. But it was quite frustrating how she built a tension around important meetings and wanting to interview people so that, when the moment came, the narrative would jump to an event of her life, without letting the reader know how that particular thing concerning her job went.

It was great that the book wants to show a China without all that prejudice western people tend to think about. Dori is concerned to say she already had an interest in China, that she studied Mandarin and there were a lot of times in which she clarified that her intention was not to demolish the barrier we creat when faced with a culture so different.

However, there were some comparisons between China and United States, and some comments about how the Bad Evil China™ made people so poor and miserable, as if capitalism hasn’t done the same, as if the United States were the best country in the world, without poor people, as if it is a country that does not promote wars, that did not encouraged dictatorships in all Latin America.

As a Latin American, it really bothers me to read those type of comments, to read that chineses souldiers were killing their own people as if the police in my country wasn’t militarized because of the US model of what a police corporation should be.

Somehow, I was still able to enjoy the book when reading about Dori’s life, the birth of her family and what a great journalist she was.

Yang writes an excellent personal memoir, but also a cultural history of China"s rapid transformation from a shuttered economy to a global powerhouse. I found the timeline exceedingly fascinating and Yang was on the cusp of it all as the foreign correspondent for Business Week. How the world and journalism has changed since typewriters and telex machines. Her personal history was equally interesting reading. The one drawback is the ARC did t have any of the pictures included. I would have loved to have seen those.