This lyric, engrossing contemporary Chinese novel spans three generations' intertwined life experiences and their distinctive ideologies: Kazan, a girl born and raised in Tibet and her loyal, valiant mastiff Jinmei; Jiansheng and Xinhe, a couple of kindhearted, successful young artists living in Beijing; and Tong Suqing and Jian Weidong, two innocent intellectuals who endured the Educated Youth frenzy in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution era. With Qi Jinnian's masterful touch, the book describes how individuals' lives can be tragically affected by their particular historical backgrounds and geographical environments. It reflects diverse beliefs, customs and traditions as the narrative shifts from vast landscapes in Tibet to towering skyscrapers in Beijing, mainland China to Hong Kong, and St. Petersburg, Russia to Nepal. It reveals the contrast of wealth and poverty between city and country throughout northern and southern China and simultaneously shows the modern, plural and sophisticated society the Chinese economic transformation has produced over the past decades. Qi takes the pulse of three modern generations in China, exploring the deep implications of memory, change, nostalgia, loneliness, human attachment, fate, indecision, visual art and nature. An English translation of the popular Chinese novel that has sold more than 200,000 copies. The original book was published in China in 2007 by Changjiang Literature and Art Press. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Qi Jinnian. Born in October. She studied painting and the piano for nearly ten years, since childhood, and dabbled in the guitar, drums, and film in high school, from which she gained a path to the world of expression. The dreams that she cherished and is still cherishing include becoming an animation artist and filmmaker. Growing up with many treasonable moments, she was caught in the obsession to commemorate the people and stories she came across on the road. She found the most inexpensive mode of expression-writing-in a gestus not to capitulate herself to time and memory. She won the First Prize of the National New Concept Writing Contest. She exists towards death, her impetuous eyes wandering between memory and fantasy. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Moying Li emigrated from Beijing, China to New York City in 1999 and has been a Chinese-English and English-Chinese translator since 2000. She has translated books and documents for various industries and has a strong passion for fiction books. She is writing her first novel.