Scions of a once-great southern Chinese family that produced the tutor of the last emperor Jun
and Hong were each other's best friends until in their twenties they were separated by chance
at the end of the Chinese Civil War. For the next thirty years while one became a model
Communist the other a model capitalist they could not even communicate. On Taiwan Jun
married a Nationalist general established an important trading company and ultimately
emigrated to the United States. On the Communist mainland Hong built her medical career under
a cloud of suspicion about her family and survived two waves of re-education before she was
acclaimed for her achievements. Zhuqing Li recounts her aunts' experiences with extraordinary
sympathy and breathtaking storytelling. A microcosm of women's lives in a time of traumatic
change this is a fascinating evenhanded account of the recent history of separation between
mainland China and Taiwan.
