Readers will enjoy this memoir about conflicting Chinese and American values in the life of a plucky woman who was born in Hong Kong in 1929. She recalls memorizing Confucian works in her classical primary education, describes surviving front-line WWII in missionary high schools, and recounts the problems of achieving higher education in the U.S., where cultural shocks were mutual. Her late marriage to a Caucasian, delayed by cultural conflicts, is a love story with striking events. The most engaged readers will be those who want to understand the cultural basis of the generation gap between Chinese parents and Chinese-American children. This memoir, however, is also a thrilling and candid account of a traditional upbringing in Hong Kong of the 1930s, of wartime missionary education in Southern China during WWII, of immigration obstacles, of depression and of cross-cultural marriage. Historians, WWII buffs, psychologists and love story enthusiasts will snap up this book.

This memoir recounts life in southern China from the early 20th century through 1947 and then the author's experiences as a student, immigrant, and citizen in the U.S. It is an adventure, a drama, a history, and a love story. It reveals the effect of differing kinds of literary education, from Chinese classics to romances and then European and American literature, upon the author's view of life.