This is a coming-of-age story based on true experience. One day by sheer chance, the protagonist came across an old box with her mother's belongings, which triggered her to search for her own past. Thereafter she collaborated with an American artist and travelled back and forth between China and America. Through stories of the residents in a traditional Chinese courtyard complex in Beijing in the 1960s, the book vividly depicts, in the eyes of an innocent child, her family of origin, her fun-filled childhood, the belief and enthusiasm of a newly established Republic, and the subsequent catastrophic events that affected every family and individual. It involves terrible violence in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, social turmoil, and the "send-down" of educated youth to rural areas for "re-education". (The author herself did hard labor in a state-owned farm located in China's Northeast Wilderness). With the author's first-hand experience, the novel brilliantly illustrates the unique political and social backdrop of her generation.
Perplexed and deeply disturbed, this group of young people huddled together, through reading, writing, thinking, discussing, as well as learning art, searched for values and meanings in the ruins, and completed self-education in the great chaos of that era. Using parallel montage techniques, the author also incorporated the American artist's interviews of her peers thus creating a wonderful contrast between the Chinese and Western cultures and effecting reflection and recollection of their youth.
