Peony, the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, is betrothed to a suitor she has never met. These lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera. Peony attends the production, watching from behind a screen, but catches sight of a handsome man and begins a journey of love and sorrow.

In nineteenth century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two women exchange messages written on silk fans and handkerchieves using nu shu, a unique language that women created in order to communicate in secret, sharing their experiences, but when a misunderstanding arises, their friendship threatens to tear apart....

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer prize-winning novel of a China that was now in a contemporary classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In the Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when the...

"The mesmerizing story a Chinese emigre mother tells her daughter." --

Making a pact to stay together after the suicide of their mother, Junan and her sister, Yinan, find their vow challenged when Junan is separated from her husband by the Japanese invasion of China and decides to send Yinan after him to the wartime capital.

"According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian -- born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness -- is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations -- looking, listening, touching, and asking -- something a man can never do with a female...

"In her first collection of stories since the acclaimed Who's Irish?, the beloved author of The Resisters refracts the fifty years since the opening of China through the lives of ordinary people. Beginning with a cheery, kindly letter penned by a Chinese girl in heaven to "poor Mr. Nixon" in hell, Gish Jen embarks on an eleven-story journey through U.S.-Chinese relations, capturing not only the excitement of a world on the brink of tectonic change,...

"The story of Rooster, Shadow, and Mei Ju, who become fast friends while members of a girls' house, where young daughters are taught to become daughter-in-law. These girls, however, want neither to marry nor to become nuns (the only options open to them at the time). They choose instead to support themselves through their skills in embroidery and silk production. Though ostracized by their families, attacked, and barely able to find sustenance and...