On Heaven's Lake

While tricycling peasants gossiped about the escaped hammer murderer, Mrs Ho had her home razed in exchange for a job and Mrs Ping's husband ran off with the noodle seller. Chang Wen plotted vainly to turn himself from a scholar to a businessman, while Lou Da preyed on spoiled youngsters from the countryside. Amongst hawkers, prostitutes, and signs bearing the futile request 'Visit politely, please', the material girls and boys of the one child generation - the author's students - searched to find their niche in this: Hangzhou, the city of heaven. In a year of China, from the Korean border to the Himalaya, the author met hawking police officers and nationalist tea planters; subversive abbots and pro-democracy communists; drunken sages, indestructible porters, terrorist tour guides. One thing was certain: Change would cease for none of them.