A fascinating oriental fresco set in China from 1927 to 2000. Strongly imbued with refined eroticism, in a climate of misunderstood traditions, through the eyes of YU-YU (a little girl sold at Nanjing station by a poor peasant couple to a former Russian noblewoman), the book covers much of China's history from the period of the Warlords, through the Japanese occupation to the civil war, from the rise of Maoism in 1950 to 2000.