In the autumn of 1998, nine months before the Tiananmen Uprising, Sandra Hutchison traveled to Anhui Province, China, to teach English literature. Her students shared with her their dreams, their hopes, and their lives, and she, in turn, embraced their culture as fully as any outsider could. Chinese Brushstrokes tells of Hutchison's pilgrimage to the top of a holy Buddhist mountain, a sojourn in a village deep in the Chinese countryside, encounters with local peasants and famous artists, and the rise of the Democracy Movement in Beijing, Shanghai and Heifei.