Among the many misimpressions westerners tend to have of China, sex as some kind of "taboo" topic here seems to be the most common, if not clichéd. Forgetting for a moment that, owing to a population of 1.3 billion, somebody must be doing it, what most of us don't seem to know is that, at several points throughout the millennia, China has been a society of extreme sexual openness.

And now, according to author Richard Burger's new book Behind the Red Door, the Chinese are once again on the verge of a sexual revolution.

Best know for his knives-out commentary on The Peking Duck, one of China's longest-running expat blogs, Burger takes a similar approach to surveying the subject of sex among the Sinae, leaving no explicit ivory carving unexamined, no raunchy ancient poetry unrecited, and *ahem* no miniskirt unturned.

Opening (metaphorically and literally) with an introduction about hymen restoration surgery, Burger delves dàndàn-deep into the olden days of Daoism, those prurient practitioners of free love who encouraged multiple sex partners as "the ultimate co-joining of Yin and Yang." Promiscuity, along with prostitution, flourished during the Tang Dynasty - recognized as China's cultural zenith - which Burger's research surmises is no mere coincidence.

Enter the Yuan Dynasty, and its conservative customs of Confucianism, whereby sex became regarded only "for the purpose of producing heirs." As much as we love to hate him, Mao Zedong is credited as single-handedly wiping out all those nasty neo-Confucius doctrines, including eliminating foot binding, forbidding spousal abuse, allowing divorce, banning prostitution (except, of course, for Party parties), and encouraging women to work. But in typical fashion, laws were taken too far; within 20 years, China under Mao became a wholly androgynous state.

We then transition from China's red past into the pink-lit present, whence "prostitution is just a karaoke bar away," yet possession of pornography is punishable by imprisonment - despite the fact that millions of single Chinese men (called "bare branches") will never have wives or even girlfriends due to gross gender imbalance. Burger laudably also tackles the sex trade from a female's perspective, including an interview with a housewife-turned-hair-salon hostess who, ironically, finds greater success with foreigners than with her own sex-starved albeit ageist countrymen.

Western dating practices among hip, urban Chinese are duly contrasted with traditional courtship conventions, though, when it comes down to settling down, Burger points out that the Chinese are still generally resistant to the idea that marriage can be based on love. This topic naturally segues into the all-but-acceptable custom of kept women ("little third"), as well as "homowives", those tens of millions of straight women trapped in passionless unions with closeted gay men out of filial piety.

Behind the Red Door concludes by stressing that while the Chinese remain a sexually open society at heart, contradictive policies (enforced by dubious statistics) designed to discard human desire are written into law yet seldom enforced, simply because "sexual contentment is seen as an important pacifier to keep society stable and harmonious."

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Graham Earnshaw is a true man of the People. His 30-year tenure in China as a journalist, businessman and, most recently, publishing magnate, have made him a permanent fixture in the Shanghai scene - which is exactly why Earnshaw makes it a point of de-fixing himself at least once a month to walk in the countryside and "speak to the Real China."

It is an ongoing journey that he has tasked himself with completing since 2004, and though not continuous, Earnshaw has thus far traversed over 3% of the earth's circumference between Shanghai and Tibet. ON FOOT!

The Great Walk of China, Earnshaw's published travelogue, is an account of just a fraction of his epic odyssey, covering the interior provinces of Anhui, Hubei, Chongqing and Sichuan. The walk is a straight line due west through some of China's most rural regions, which is exactly the serene backdrop Earnshaw, fluent in Putonghua (and at times more literate than the Chinese he meets), prefers in a concerted effort to talk to as many People as possible.

From the spontaneous hospitality of peasants whom have never before seen a foreigner in the flesh, to the paranoid reactions of low-level authorities who simply cannot grasp what he is doing venturing into the countryside, Earnshaw manages to interact with just about every class of citizen imaginable.

Earnshaw also brilliantly illustrates the ironies of modern China's identification crisis through villagers who exclaim "we are poor" out of habit despite clutching state-of-the-art mobile phones, and students, many the first in their family to be literate yet completely devoid of ambition, who vapidly waste their days away in front of televisions.

Often, the farmers he encounters hope Earnshaw is a reporter out to expose the rampant corruption of rural officials, while officials are worried that he is there to report on their corruption.

"Are you corrupt?" Earnshaw toyingly asks one cadre. "Me, corrupt? No...well...I'm not in a position to be..." A shopkeeper eavesdropping on their dialogue suddenly howls in delight: "So it's not that you don't want to be corrupt, ha-ha-ha!!!"

Englishman Earnshaw deftly manages some clever responses to his frequent confrontations with backwoods police, all the while maintaining a pleasant, non-judgmental (and at times romanticized and overly-optimistic) perspective which distinguishes The Great Walk from all the other China travelogues out there.

Our narrator is, unfortunately, reluctant to share much personal insight into Graham Earnshaw the person, and keeps his writings strictly about the Chinese. In between chatting with the proletariat, Earnshaw pauses to comment on old propaganda slogans still found on countryside walls, and muse on tiny animals crossing busy roads - a metaphor, perhaps, for the People of China's struggle to catch up with their nation's rapid progress.

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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People

What just might be the funniest if not first autobiography ever penned by a drug-addicted foreigner in China, Chris Thrall's "Eating Smoke" contains more spiritual pollution than all of the titles on the Communist Party's banned books list combined.

In a country whose history was irrevocably altered for the worst by the scourge of foreign-imported opium throughout the 19th century, it is no wonder that today's China has one of the world's least-tolerant anti-drug laws - including executions for traffickers. Basically, buying or selling drugs in China is a really stupid idea.

Enter Chris "I'm not a stupid guy, just an average guy who does stupid things" Thrall, a 25 year-old Royal Marine who hastily quits the service to pursue a business venture in 1990's-era Hong Kong, a city "where situations can only get worse," just to find himself broke, homeless and fulfilling his own ominous prophecy.

Recalling the commando's motto of "cheerfulness under adversity," Thrall tries to make the best of his lowly situation by spending his time dancing in discos or hanging out in the notorious Chungking Mansions, "the world's all-time greatest doshouse." The immigrant ghetto of Kowloon is not, however, the best influence on Thrall, who befriends all the wrong people, including a hebephile drug dealer from Ghana and a Filipina working girl, and soon succumbs to that favorite of Chungking pastimes - drugs.

To fund his new crystal meth habit, our detritivorous narrator forages the South China city-by-the-sea like a bottom-feeder for any job that will hire a white face. From cubicle fixture to phone-book scams, English teacher to nightclub DJ, businessman to bouncer, Thrall manages to get fired from every gig dumb enough to hire a spun-out "chi sun gweilo" (crazy foreigner in Cantonese) who doesn't sleep for 9 days at a time and tends to forget his own surname.

By the time Thrall reaches his last-resort of a job - as a doorman at a bar operated by the 14K, the largest Triad (Chinese crime family) in the world - he has been reduced to a hyper-paranoid shadow of his former self on the verge of drug psychosis. "I would listen to the radio phone-ins, suspicious of the Cantonese conversation and wondering if people were calling in to report my movements," he describes during one of his many speed-soaked conspiracy theories.

What ensues is a hilarious amphetamine-paced cautionary tale of what NOT to do when addicted to drugs in Wan Chai gangland, "where the Dai Lo's rule is law, pride is everything and life means nothing." Chris Thrall's true story evokes Gregory David Roberts' "Shantaram" and Alex Garland's "The Beach," both of which have been licensed to Hollywood, as Eating Smoke is sure to follow.

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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People

What just might be the funniest if not first autobiography ever penned by a drug-addicted foreigner in China, Chris Thrall's "Eating Smoke" contains more spiritual pollution than all of the titles on the Communist Party's banned books list combined.

In a country whose history was irrevocably altered for the worst by the scourge of foreign-imported opium throughout the 19th century, it is no wonder that today's China has one of the world's least-tolerant anti-drug laws - including executions for traffickers. Basically, buying or selling drugs in China is a really stupid idea.

Enter Chris "I'm not a stupid guy, just an average guy who does stupid things" Thrall, a 25 year-old Royal Marine who hastily quits the service to pursue a business venture in 1990's-era Hong Kong, a city "where situations can only get worse," just to find himself broke, homeless and fulfilling his own ominous prophecy.

Recalling the commando's motto of "cheerfulness under adversity," Thrall tries to make the best of his lowly situation by spending his time dancing in discos or hanging out in the notorious Chungking Mansions, "the world's all-time greatest doshouse." The immigrant ghetto of Kowloon is not, however, the best influence on Thrall, who befriends all the wrong people, including a hebephile drug dealer from Ghana and a Filipina working girl, and soon succumbs to that favorite of Chungking pastimes - drugs.

To fund his new crystal meth habit, our detritivorous narrator forages the South China city-by-the-sea like a bottom-feeder for any job that will hire a white face. From cubicle fixture to phone-book scams, English teacher to nightclub DJ, businessman to bouncer, Thrall manages to get fired from every gig dumb enough to hire a spun-out "chi sun gweilo" (crazy foreigner in Cantonese) who doesn't sleep for 9 days at a time and tends to forget his own surname.

By the time Thrall reaches his last-resort of a job - as a doorman at a bar operated by the 14K, the largest Triad (Chinese crime family) in the world - he has been reduced to a hyper-paranoid shadow of his former self on the verge of drug psychosis. "I would listen to the radio phone-ins, suspicious of the Cantonese conversation and wondering if people were calling in to report my movements," he describes during one of his many speed-soaked conspiracy theories.

What ensues is a hilarious amphetamine-paced cautionary tale of what NOT to do when addicted to drugs in Wan Chai gangland, "where the Dai Lo's rule is law, pride is everything and life means nothing." Chris Thrall's true story evokes Gregory David Roberts' "Shantaram" and Alex Garland's "The Beach," both of which have been licensed to Hollywood, as Eating Smoke is sure to follow.

###

Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People

Like most historical fiction novels which center on actual personalities and events, My Splendid Concubine traces the true-life exploits of Sir Robert Hart (1835-1911), the celebrated expatriate official credited for bringing China (kicking and screaming) out of the medieval ages and into the 20th century. So influential was this Irishman, scholars continue to debate over who is more deserving of the honorary title "Godfather of China's Modernism:" Sir Robert Hart or Deng Xiaoping, architect of China's new economic reform.

Lofthouse, thankfully, leaves the drier discourse to the academicians and instead beguilingly explores Robert Hart's riotous first years in the Orient, namely all the sex and violence that an expat living in mid-1800's China (what this reviewer calls the "Chaos Dynasty") would most likely encounter. Set to a tumultuous backdrop of the Taiping Rebellion, opium wars and foreign invasion, Concubine opens with an indelible portrait of besieged China emerging from its 5,000 year-old cocoon to realize that it just may no longer be the Center of the World it once thought itself as.

The days of nobles sipping tea by their lotus ponds are over; Shanghai and Hong Kong have become "foreign devil" enclaves of ill-mannered, lusty European merchants ("To gold and silver and the women it buys!") capitalizing on China's untapped treasures: opium, silk and spice by day...virgin teenage girls by night. Such prurience might be too much for some readers to handle, however, as Lofthouse quotes the sagacious governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring, advising a newly-arrived Hart, "Just because it is shocking, don't turn away from such lessons in life."

Not all of Concubine's literary cast are as erudite, and Lofthouse is obliged to painfully reveal many prejudiced discussions between Hart's compatriots which, sadly, to this day remain the general consensus of China by the intolerant west: "The Chinese can't manage things...Everyone in China is out to fill his purse with silver, and there is little or no concern about the smooth running of the government or the economy. These fools are penny wise and pound-foolish. Stealing and telling lies is a way of life here."

They are naïve statements against the Chinese heard all too often in the din of modern-day expat haunts around Beijing and Shanghai, but neither Lofthouse nor his 19th century protagonist buys into the stereotype; Hart diligently sets out to understand China's oft-misunderstood culture for himself despite the arrogance of his western counterparts who say of the Chinese, "It is their place to understand us. We don't have to understand them."

An unfortunate attitude many China expats (whom Hart refers to as "spoilers of the earth") share, yes, but if Hart's colleagues embody all of our fears and confusions about China, then we come to see Hart himself as our understanding and our empathy. He is the tourist most foreigners in China strive to be in spite of our own intolerances, and while Hart's keen observations of 1850's China may be strikingly similar to those witnessed even in 2008 ("People don't change as the dynasty does," writes the ever-profound Lofthouse), bigotry no longer has a welcome seat at the table of the new millennium.

My Splendid Concubine is a thought-provoking novel about attitudes and cultures, but Lloyd Lofthouse is a masterful yarn-spinner as well, weaving a well-balanced dose of suspense and page-turning action. Posted as a rookie customs official in coastal Zhejiang province's Ningbo along the Yangtze River Delta, 20 year-old Hart is suddenly forced out of his sheltered office gig and finds himself involved in a skirmish against Taiping rebels, a true-life 15-year uprising by Chinese peasants against the Qing Dynasty government resulting in over 30 million casualties.

Himself a Vietnam vet, Lofthouse paints battle as blood-red as it surely must be. Armed with western muzzles "spitting jagged orange flames of death," Hart takes his first life, but not without the same dumbfounding, bile-inducing reaction that may have come straight from the author's own memory: "He had just killed someone. The thought numbed him for a moment. It was good that his weapons were thinking for him."

It is during this scene of bedlam that our protagonist meets Ayaou, a teenage boat girl whom Hart rescues along with her family. In turn, Ayaou's father offers her and her sister for sale as concubines to their protectors.

Hart is at once disgusted and stirred by the thought of "taking bids on her virginity," but admits to himself that "it bothered him more that he found the idea tempting." Herein lays the genius of My Splendid Concubine, for Lofthouse portrays the legendary Sir Robert Hart not as an icon of righteousness that his future bronze statue in Shanghai Square would convey to the masses, but as a layman conflicted between the values of his faith and the temptations of an exotic country, summed up in one lucid sentence: "Though it appalled him, Robert still wanted to understand."

The thought of purchasing a woman "like a chair or a piece of art" may disturb 21st century readers as much as it did Robert Hart two centuries ago, but the fact is that concubinage was a socially accepted practice. Chinese emperors traditionally kept thousands of concubines to enhance the royal bloodline; in turn, European merchants residing in imperial China mimicked this form of quasi-matrimonial relationship on a smaller scale.

Lofthouse's Hart is not an idol; he is a flawed man, a real human being who is no stranger to vice or sin. In his dark past he has contracted syphilis from British college girls, he cheats with his new boss's girlfriend upon arriving in China, and now he is faced with temptation in the form of pubescent flesh that can be had for mere pocket change. It is a range of emotions any man traversing the forlorn roads of the word knows all to well: "He was a traveler on a lonely journey, who occasionally embraced human affections the same way that he took the sun and water."

Robert Hart recognizes that "he hadn't sailed halfway around the world to indulge in women," yet longs to escape the "stifling morality of England." In order to shake his Victorian guilt, Hart realizes he must separate himself with Victoria, and allows himself to fall for teenage Ayaou - not in the heartless manner of his foreign friends who see Chinese women merely as "bed warmers" until returning to their native countries ("Most of us leave China eventually, and the women stay behind. It isn't an appealing fate"), but as an honest person longing for true love: "He hoped that she was the woman he'd always dreamed of."

Theirs is a passionate relationship. Each initially doing their best to restrain themselves ("He twined his fingers together and locked his hands behind his back lest they escape and reach for her."), curiosity and rapture quickly overcomes Hart as much as it does the virgin Ayaou. Lofthouse voyeuristically pulls away the nine-paneled silk screen from their oft-used bed, but approaches their couplings with literary deftness, arousing the reader with gentle romance ("He kissed her neck and ran his tongue along her smooth flesh. She tasted like the ocean."), before assaulting us with a climax of vivid XXX-rated details, the likes of which only lascivious historical fiction storyteller Gary Jennings heretofore could only conjure.

Regardless of the novel's title, Ayaou is not nor does she ever become within the parameters of the story Sir Robert Hart's "concubine." For all intents and purposes, she is stolen property liberated by Hart from a rival whom he considers undeserving of Ayaou's affections. Beginning with their first embrace, Hart and Ayaou's entire relationship is founded on deceit and infidelity ("What they had was like a fantasy, and he wondered when it would dissolve"), which lends to the uncomfortable sense of anxiety felt throughout the book, ominously hanging over the reader like a dark cloud, as would any illicit affair - cheating can't possibly have a happy ending, especially in the lawlessness of 19th century China.

Hart's true splendid concubine, bought and paid for with opium-tainted Chinese RMB, is in fact Ayaou's little sister, a pubescent firecracker named Shao-mei. Hart gallantly purchases Shao-mei to spare her from the talons of his fellow foreigners. Only fourteen years old, the blossoming Shao-mei is admittedly even more desirable to the insatiable Brit than Ayaou, but Hart is intent on staying faithful to the woman who "fought her way into his heart."

Curious of the pleasures she hears through the wall at night, the jealous younger sister Shao-mei attempts to seduce Hart at every turn: "I'm not a finished woman, but I am a woman." She slid her hands down the length of her nude torso to her vulva..."If you aren't pleased because I don't have full breasts yet, I promise that they'll grow to the size of tomatoes in a few months. I'm not lying. See, these nipples were not like this a few weeks ago." She fondled a nipple and it hardened and stood at attention."

While the China around him is literally on fire with opium wars and Taping rebellions, Sir Robert Hart is on the front lines of his own private "battle of the flesh." Adding to Hart's bittersweet frustrations, Ayaou uses Chinese logic to try to persuade him into enjoying her juvenile sister, so that the three can live together in harmony: "If I am your happiness, by having her you will achieve double happiness." It is arguably every man's fantasy, but Hart's Wesleyan beliefs, and fear of sibling rivalry, prohibit him from indulging in the sisterly threesome.

"Your passion is like an ocean," Ayaou admits to Hart one night after he refuses to enter Shao-mei ('s chamber). "Why not spare a little of that for my sister? It is all she is asking for. Would you acknowledge that I sometimes can't keep up with you? You want me three times a night, and sometimes that is not enough. Why can't you let Shao-mei take some pressure off me?"

My Splendid Concubine is rife with the sexual dalliances of a white man adrift in China ("What a strange night, a strange place and strange girls"), and will undoubtedly appeal to the backpacker set looking for a good read during those long train rides from Beijing to Xi'an. Lofthouse also plaits his page-turning story with amusing cultural anecdotes that surely must have come from the author's personal observations of China ("Live here long enough, see crazy things") as well as his own experiences married to a Chinese woman, but does so with wit and deference, such as with the line "Robert tried to avoid watching Ayaou spitting out mice bones. He wondered if he could still kiss her after seeing her do that."

In fact, Lloyd Lofthouse is to be commended for writing a novel that so cleverly balances an engaging tale of culture and romance with a wealth of period detail that will educate readers about dynastic China as thoroughly as any university textbook. And while he may have a few more bestsellers to go before he can be compared with the great James Clavell, famed for his Asian Saga historical fiction series, Lofthouse knows his China, and definitely knows his Robert Hart.

What would become an "academic and then personal treasure hunt," Lofthouse spent nine years meticulously researching Sir Robert Hart's past before piecing together the lost years of his life that purportedly went up in flames when Hart burned the most intimate passages of his diary, including details of his affair with Ayaou.

Just as the Chinese prefer explanations that come around to the meaning in a circle instead of a straight line, Lofthouse prefers to keep the methods of his inexhaustible research under wraps, but rumors of Lofthouse and wife Anchee Min sneaking into a top-secret Communist Party archive in Shanghai to retrieve an official Red Guard dossier entitled "British Imperialist Robert Hart's intimate corrupted life" is just too delicious not to footnote in this review.

Sir Robert Hart, 1st Baronet of Ireland, resided in China for over fifty years as British Consular and Inspector General of China's Imperial Maritime Custom Service. As the architect behind China's railway network, postal service and education system, Hart was conferred numerous Chinese awards and titles, and also had the supreme honor to be both the first foreigner and the first non-imperial male ever to appear in the presence of Empress Dowager Cixi. As Anchee Min writes in her foreword to Concubine, "Few know that Sir Robert Hart was once a household name in China...a giant moral hero."

My Splendid Concubine depicts another half of Sir Robert Hart: the dark half that Hart himself relegated to ashes and the Communist Party of China put on trial half a century after his death. Conscious that historical fiction readers demand potboilers over academic fare, Lofthouse plays on Hart's notoriety, and obviously has fun while doing it.

But behind the scandalous, revisionist adventures My Splendid Concubine is a comprehensible and remarkably accurate narrative history of real-life man whom the author quite obviously admires, and in doing so presents an authentic story that readers interested in world culture can draw a number of invaluable lessons from.

As Sir Robert Hart came to China to run away from his past transgressions, so do we travel to escape, but we also travel to learn by immersion. And for those of us who do not have the luxury of drifting across the world, we rely on imaginative yet resourceful authors such as Lloyd Lofthouse to immerse us in times, places and persons whom might otherwise be forgotten in the dusty archives of the Red Guard.

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When we last saw our hero, or should we say, our Hart, 19th century China was being raped, ravaged and rebelled against from every direction. South China has been taken over by European merchants determined to turn the entire country into one big opium den, British military patrolling the Eastern shore are forcing the emperor to pay reparations "for wars China lost but didn't start," whilst Christian fanatics called Taiping are waging bloody hell against imperialism.

Enter a broken, distraught man who has just witnessed the rape and murder of one of his two beloved concubines. It is no secret who the perpetrator is, but instead of having the means or status to avenge his love, Robert Hart must "swallow his hate" and go into hiding with his remaining concubine, Ayaou, for as it turns out, it was she who was his nemesis's intended victim. Some hero!

Robert Hart, as sketched by Lofthouse, was never, in fact, meant to be a hero. He is an admittedly flawed man with weaknesses, vices and sins: he is not above cold-blooded revenge; the "childlike bodies" of Chinese women "excite him"; he even steals concubines from his friends ("He didn't know what was worse - having syphilis or another man hating him").

But Hart's coming-of-age during his riotous first years in China, underscored by the tragic loss of one of his concubines, has now turned the boy into a man, and a bitter one at that, since "replacing the pain with anger made him feel like a thief and a liar."

Just as our protagonist has matured, complete with a receding hairline, `Our Hart' the novel is also a more mature read than its predecessor. Passion has been replaced by piety while the lust of the first novel has been lost to love ("He had changed...what he enjoyed more was the companionship"). Rather than spending his nights exploring his concubine's body, an older Hart is now kept awake exploring his heart.

Yet despite saving Hart's life in battle and being his Chinese voice of reason throughout his career, Ayaou remains just that: his concubine ("she came from peasant stock...she didn't know any other way"). Hart, in a crisis of conscience that many an expat might identify with, "dreads the day he has to tell his friends and family back home about her." Even after Ayaou gives birth to their first child, Hart remains conflicted ("If he named the baby, he was accepting responsibility..."). And how many westerners residing overseas can relate to this all-too-real passage: "One part of him wanted to make a marriage proposal, but his other half, the British half, said no." Hart, by way of Lloyd Lofthouse, is the voice of any expat who has ever lived and loved in China.

From dealing with the bedroom complexities that came with having two competing concubines, to dealing with the political complexities of competing imperial officials; from the weight of a pubescent concubine in Robert Hart's arms to the weight of an ancient empire on his shoulders, the story of `Our Hart' is divided by romantic drama and political intrigue as the protagonist himself is divided by his allegiance to both China and England.

`Our Hart' is a dark novel intent on capturing the despondent spirit of an outsider immersed in a brutal, bloody period of Chinese history. Dynastic Chinese nobility may have held an affinity for scenery and poetry to escape the harsh reality of medieval life, but Lofthouse, writing through the frantic eyes of his title character, wastes no time with lyrical beauty, with nary a description of a sunset to brighten its pages: "The world turned black and white with occasional violent flashes...there was no color in his life."

Lofthouse gets down and dirty with gritty, old-fashioned storytelling, proletariat-style, but where author Lofthouse truly shines is his thought-provoking messages on relationships, attitudes and cultures.

When Lofthouse writes, "It is a sad truth that most (foreigners) only come to China to steal from us or cheat us. They do not spend the time to learn about our people and culture. They sail in...buy Chinese women, defile them and leave the women with ruined lives," it is commentary directed at western expats as valid in 2010 as it was in the mid-1800's.

`Our Hart' may also borrow a page from the author's own experiences married to a Chinese, for only a white man who has ever experienced the near impossibility of trying to reason with an angry Chinese woman ("her voice was high, screeching") could pen the emotionally exhausting dialogue described in the brilliant Chapter 13 - and then sum it up in what this reviewer considers perhaps the book's most poignant sentence: "Understanding her behavior didn't stop him from resenting it."

To be sure, just as Robert Hart had his flaws, so too does `Our Hart'. With such a rich cast of characters in Hart's universe whom Lofthouse could have tapped for the occasional alternative perspective to the storyline, one wonders why the author was set on a single, one-dimensional narrative. In this respect, Lofthouse could stand to learn from historical fiction masters James Michener and James Clavell, famed for plaiting their epic tales with intersecting subplots. Nonetheless, for its steamy romance and grapeshot-like action sequences, this reviewer nominates Lofthouse's `Concubine' saga Most Likely to be Optioned for a Film or Miniseries.

Lloyd Lofthouse is to be commended for immortalizing China's most exemplary expatriate in the pages of his `Concubine' books. For all his faults and sins, Sir Robert Hart was a true hero to both Chinese and westerners alike. Hart resided in China for over fifty years as "the lord and master of Chinese Maritime Customs" while serving the last emperor of the Qing dynasty. He was conferred numerous awards and titles and had a bronze statue constructed in his honor at Shanghai Square.

Yet as Shanghai-born authoress Anchee Min wrote in her prologue to `My Splendid Concubine,' "Few know that Sir Robert Hart was once a household name in China." A Beijing Today review of `Concubine' also had it correct when it declared "today Hart is entirely without fame...the most famous foreigner in China would be Dashan." True, true. But in spite of Dashan's cool hair or his god-like name recognition amongst the television-addicted masses of New China, it is highly unlikely that the Canadian CCTV host will ever inspire anyone to pen novels about him.

In fact, one wonders if historical fiction is not a dying art simply because, thus far, the 21st century lacks any real heroes like Sir Robert Hart for future authors to write about.

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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People

Hard to believe, but not fifty years have yet passed since the offspring of mixed couples in Asia were still seen as an unwanted byproduct of the West's perceived subjugation over the East. To be sure, racism and discrimination against westerners continues to exist in various degrees of blatancy all across a newly-resurgent Asia, but if the fashion and entertainment industries are anything to go by, one thing is certain: Eurasians, once consigned to a purgatorial fate worse than being born of the lowest classes, are now all the rage.

Kirsteen Zimmern's coffee table book, The Eurasian Face, features 70 photo-essays in celebration of Asia's ever-expanding Eurasian nation. Hailing from the multicultural kingdom of Hong Kong, Zimmern confesses that, as a child, she used to chant "gwei lei ga, gwei lei ga!" (it's a ghost!) at random Caucasian sightings despite the fact that she herself is partly of Scottish ancestry. Zimmern is now making reparations by granting her fellow Eurasians face time in the form of first-person profiles in which to share their stories.

They are not celebrities, but rather, extraordinarily-ordinary civilians of hybrid heritage who comprise Hong Kong's increasingly kaleidoscopic population. Some are unabashedly proud of their genetics, such as Lawrence Matthews, the son of a Chinese model and an Englishman ("I think there is some jealousy from non-Eurasians...after all, Eurasians are widely known to be the best looking"), while others, like Chinese/German Lisa Rosentreter, who grew up in Manitoba "embarrassed that my family's staple starch was rice," struggled with their ambiguous ancestry.

Stephen Fung, of Chinese/Irish/Scottish descent, recalls a butcher at Hong Kong's wet market enquiring why he was so "funny looking". When told that it was Fung's dad who was Chinese, "the butcher insisted on shaking my hand, saying that it wasn't every day that `one of us Chinese guys gets together with a white woman.'"

Cantonese/Irish Liam Fitzpatrick, a senior writer for Time Magazine who was born in late-60s Hong Kong, offers a more poignant reflection of his mixed-blood upbringing: "We were surrounded by a jeering mob of leftists, calling (my mother) a foreigner's erohw and me her dratsab half-breed."

Race seems to play less of a factor in these subjects' lives than their upbringing, which is described in Zimmern's book as "Chinese morals with western social habits." Many are in favor of the Eurasian ethnicity being officially recognized as a domiciled community ("we always have to tick the 'Others' box when filling out forms"), while just as many do not, including Chinese-Brit Sarah Fung, who declares "it's as crass and patronizing as lumping Chinese, Japanese and Korean together because they come under the umbrella of "Asian."

As an aside, it is this photographer's critical opinion that, to better study the "genetic legacy etched upon their faces," the portraits would have benefited from studio sessions rather than candid snapshots. Another flaw is the choice of black and white film; skin tones are vital for visually discerning someone's ethnicity, not to mention that B&W is negatively symbolic of exactly the sort of outlook which Eurasians seek to eradicate.

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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People

"Can you imagine, a mere girl fighting on the battlefield?"

The role of females in combat is a debate as timeless as war itself, and one that remains divisive and unresolved to this century. While present-day arguments for and against allowing women in the military revolve around psychological and biological issues, back in olden times, one needed only cite "tradition" and "familial roles" to silence the detractors.

The teenaged heroine of Dori Jones Yang's new 13th-century historical fiction novel, Daughter of Xanadu, is one such detractor, albeit immutable. Often imagining herself on the battlefield, "the son my father never had," Emmajin Beki, the granddaughter of Mongolian king Khubilai Khan, learned to ride a horse before she could walk and can outshoot all her cousins in archery. She confidently and outspokenly aspires to emulate her female ancestors who assisted Chinggis Khan in conquering Asia ("the blood of all these earlier strong women flowed in my veins").

Unfortunately for this princess, "the days of strong women had ended once luxurious court life had begun." The Mongols, fattened, lazy and resting on their laurels, now prefer to tell stories of battles-past over lavish "orgies of excess" rather than engage in new wars, much to Emmajin's restless discontent. When she makes known her desire to "become a legend" like real-life women warriors Aiyurug Khutulun and Hua Mulan of China, the great Khan placates her by sending her on a secret mission to spy on a family of foreign merchants currently visiting the Mongol court.

The merchants' young son turns out to be one Marco Polo, the now-legendary Venetian journeyer credited for introducing Asian culture to the west. To Emmajin, however, he is just another "colored-eye man," a court curiosity from Christendom whose gallantry and romantic gestures are as ridiculous to the manly Mongolians as his facial hair ("his beard was so thick I could imagine food sticking in it").

Try as she might, however, Emmajin, caught in the peak of puberty, is unable to resist Marco's western charm, and quickly finds herself enamored by his worldly vision ("I had learned to see the world through Marco's eyes") as well as his pelt. "What would the hair on his arm feel like?" she often fantasized about at night. But she was a Mongolian first, and reluctantly sacrifices her blossoming relationship with the foreigner to complete her spy mission ("He was not a friend but a source of information.").

Authoress Dori Jones Yang is a Caucasian American, yet she is no stranger to writing from the perspective of conflicted adolescent Chinese girls, as evinced in her previous, award-winning novel, The Secret Voice of Gina Zhang. In Daughter of Xanadu, she hones in even deeper into the physiological confusion and emotional conflictions that make youth such a joy, turning Emmajin into such a hormonal wreck that this male reviewer often found himself gritting his teeth in frustration at such contradictive revelations as, "if he had pursued me, I would have rebuffed him. By holding himself aloof, he challenged me to win back his esteem."

Daughter of Xanadu is not all teenage angst. As our protagonist matures, so does the content of the story. Emmajin eventually persuades Khubilai Khan to allow her to train for war against the Burmese at the Battle of Vochan (present-day Yunnan province), where the embarrassment of getting her period in front of the all-male troops is a bloody omen for what's to come. Upon seeing her cousin slain, innocent Emmajin is transformed into a "mindless killer." Bloodlust unleashed, the young princess swings her sword indiscriminately ("the hatred pounded in my ears...killing him felt good"), resulting in hundreds of men dead by her hand alone. One can only imagine all the Mulan vs. Emmajin fanfiction that this novel will inspire!

By story's conclusion, Messer Polo, who witnessed and wrote about the Mongols' real-life battle against the Burmese in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, has elevated "Emmajin the Brave" into the living legend she wanted to be, though she now regrets it. "These men needed a hero, but I no longer needed to be one." She resigns her sword and rank, and departs with Polo back to Europe as the Khan's emissary of peace, leaving the literary door wide open for a sequel.

Dori Jones Yang, who also penned the best-selling Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, is a skilled historian. In researching Daughter of Xanadu, Yang, fluent in Putonghua, traveled all the way to the ruins of Xanadu in remote Inner Mongolia, which this itinerant backpacker can personally attest is no easy journey. The short chapters and brief sentences, edited with razor precision for a younger audience, along with a helpful glossary for ESL students, make reading Daughter of Xanadu a breeze, though adults will admittedly want to beg this book back afterwards from their tweens.

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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People

China's love affair with superstition, pseudoscience and the fantastical can be traced back over five millennia, whence some of history's oldest myths and legends originated.

Journey to the West (Xi You Ji), published anonymously by scholar Wu Cheng'en in the 16th century Ming Dynasty, remains China's most beloved fantasy story. Considered one of the "Four Great Classical Novels" of Chinese literature, the 100 chapters of `Journey' are replete with monkey kings, flesh-eating demons, immortal sages and celestial battles.

When science fiction became all the craze in 1950's America, Red China followed suit by founding its first sci-fi periodical. But unlike in the west, where science fiction was fueled by rapid advances in the tech sector, China promoted sci-fi to help inspire its own dormant technological progress. Conversely, about the same time during the 70's that American director George Lucas was preparing to film a little space opera called Star Wars, the Cultural Revolution was banishing all its scientists to hard-labor communes.

Indeed, where the Chinese have categorically failed in speculative fiction (programming on the Communist-controlled CCTV is evidence enough that future perspective is held in little regard here: of China's 19 official television channels, all feature serials set in olden times, some in the present, none about the future), they remain masters of mythology and purveyors of the past.

Present-day PRC is seeing a renaissance of the fantasy genre. The wuxia-inspired Chinese film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a critical and commercial success, generations of young, Chinese cyber-punks are hopelessly addicted to the virtual sorcery of World of Warcraft, and Harry Potter remains China's "most pirated novel ever." Even so, no Chinese author has ever been able to replicate the success of Journey to the West; as a result, publishing houses in the Middle Kingdom prefer to translate western best-sellers like Lord of the Rings and Narnia rather than take their chances on local fantasy fiction writers.

Enter Zee Gorman, nee Yan Zihong, China's response to J.K. Rowling. Born in Guangdong province during the Cultural Revolution (both her parents were exiled to the countryside for being "intellectuals"), Zee was raised on a literary diet of propaganda and scar literature. But rather than publish a clichéd daughter-of-the-Revolution memoir about her hardships, the aspiring author opted for the escapism of fantasy. Hence her decades-in-the-making debut novel, The Altethlon Chronicles.

A high-fantasy fiction set in a parallel universe either far in China's future or its past, Altethlon Chronicles is a complex blend of military, history, romance and sorcery. Leading the rich cast of green-eyed, purple-skinned characters is the royal yet rebellious teen Ximia ("what kind of princess are you anyway, running around like a wildcat?") and her forbidden lover, Nikolas, the leader of a rival tribe - a tumultuous relationship most likely inspired by Zee's own experience with cultural clash when she immigrated to the U.S. and married an American. Ximia is misled into believing that Nikolas has been killed during an escape attempt, whereby the princess is married off by her father to a dastardly lord. The two young warriors go on to lead their respective armies until the day when destiny arranges for them to meet again in battle. Lots of magic, weird names and epic battles of Tolkien proportions (note: this reviewer has never actually read a J. R. R. Tolkien book; I just thought it sounded cool to say that) ensue.

In creating this alternate world, Zee draws heavily on her Chinese heritage. Kingdoms such as Manchuli, Dalong and Taklaman are each reminiscent of real regions in China. Nonetheless, Zee, who is bi-lingual and holds dual degrees in English Literature, chose to write The Altethlon Chronicles in her second language and self-publish in America rather than risk having it pirated in China's nascent fantasy market. Some realities are worth escaping.

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German businessman Bernd Hagemann arrived in China in 2002 amidst media reports of China's impending rise to global domination. "News outlets around the world," he writes, "were warning us about...how fast China is developing, how competitive it is, and what a tense life the Chinese people must live."

Casual strolls down the streets of China in between boardroom meetings and networking, however, soon revealed to Hagemann a far less threatening side of China. So he took out his point-and-shoot camera and documented what he saw all around him. In just 148 pages, Hagemann's debut photography book Sleeping Chinese swiftly dispels 9 years of chest-pounding by the PRC propaganda machine.

Sleeping Chinese is a fun little novelty item the exact same dimensions as a postcard that will leave you either laughing out loud or scratching your head in perplexity. The pages are divided into 3 parts: Hard Sleepers, Soft Sleepers and Group Sleepers, a clever allusion to China's train carriage classification system.

1) Hard Sleepers: "Those who snooze in hard and uncomfortable places can fall asleep anywhere - even on a pile of bricks in a construction site!" Hagemann defines. Witness, then, the dozens of people who have drifted into deep slumber atop stones, wood, mortar blocks, concrete and even cold slabs of raw meat. The most comical of the chapter being the dozing shoe repair man balancing precariously on a saw horse with an extra 2x4 for a pillow.

2) Soft Sleepers: "A little more fussy than their hard sleeper comrades," the chapter intro explains, "fussy" meaning in plastic wash bins, hammocks slung under freight trucks, sleeping lengthwise across a motor scooter and even a laborer using a tape measure to cover his eyes.

3) Group Sleepers: "A traveling family needs no pillows when they have each other's knees." Truly, the photo of the family of five all huddled together like newborn puppies gives greater meaning to `jiating,' china's family unit.

Some Chinese might take offense to Hagemann's photographic agenda, but anyone with a sense of humor will see that the book was made out of affection. "I'd like to express my appreciation of the hard work and effort put in by migrant workers who play a central role in China's success story but seldom receive the attention they deserve," writes Hagemann. Indeed, anyone who has spent quality time in China knows that these laborers, more than anyone else, deserve their rest - and anywhere they can get it.

None of the snapshots in Sleeping Chinese were staged. Any foreign tourist in China who bothers to stray from his package tour group or get out of his hotel for a jaunt off the tourist trail will see these exact same sights, and more. Incidentally, taking and publishing photos of sleeping Chinese people will often land a foreign tourist in hot water if caught by the authorities (the subjects themselves tend not to mind).

People's Daily newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the Politburo, even attempted to put a socialist spin on Hagemann's revealing imagery in an article about Sleeping Chinese: "If (we) are tired, (we) lie down anywhere and anytime and sleep. This shows (our) society's accepting attitude."

Regarding the western media's scare tactics of China's "waking dragon," this reviewer is reminded by Sleeping Chinese of a particular song from old-school hip-hop artists Public Enemy (who I had occasion to watch perform during their 2007 tour through Beijing): Don't Believe the Hype!

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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People

Growing up in a rural, slate-roofed village deep in the countryside of southeast China, the only English books my Chinese fiancée had to read back then were a brittle copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and a set of Harlequin novels.

Yes, Harlequin, those pulpy paperbacks found on revolving wire racks at supermarket checkout aisles across North America and the UK. Their enticing cover art - usually, nay, always featuring shirtless, square-jawed men hovering millimeters away from the glistening-red lips of a damsel in distress - and formulaic flirt/fight/fall-in-love storylines mercilessly targeted housewives and secretaries longing for a 200-page escape from the dirty diapers and pot-bellied husbands of their mid-life realities.

As it turns out, it was by reading books like "Stormy Voyage" by Sally Wentworth and Roberta Leigh's "Two-Timing Man" (purchased used for 7 RMB out of a sidewalk vendor's book cart), amongst other Harlequin classics, that my fiancée managed to teach herself English (which explains her tendency to throw her head back dramatically whenever we kiss).

Curious how Harlequin, the forbidden fruit of literature, could be found anywhere in a Communist republic that has the world's most strict state-sponsored vetting process for publications, I was surprised to learn that in 1995 (about when my fiancée found her copies) Harlequin received official, red star-stamped permission to place half a million copies of twenty titles in Mandarin and a quarter-million copies of ten English versions on the shelves of Xinhua. Harlequin's stated goal: "to bring romance to millions of Chinese Women."

A [...] article on the increasing popularity of romance books in the P.R.C. concurred with Harlequin's audacious move: "Chinese women today have new demands for their Prince Charming: first, he must be powerful and distinguished...next, he must unlimited financial resources." Wosai! No wonder China has become home to the world's highest surplus of single men!

Harlequin, which puts out 1,500 new titles annually in over 100 international markets, has yet to think up a romance set in present-day China (possible storyline: wealthy, second-generation Beijing businessman seduces sexy xiaojie with his shiny black Audie, pleather man-purse and a thick stack of redbacks; he agrees to save her Anhui village from being bulldozed by corrupt cadres if she will become his kept woman.). Until that day, we will have to entertain ourselves with stories set in China's olden times starring princesses and concubines.

Enter Jeannie Lin, Harlequin's rising red-star of romance writing. She isn't the first author on Harlequin's roster to set her books in China (that honor goes to Jade Lee and her infinite "Tigress" series). But Lin's debut novel, Butterfly Swords, has been attracting a viral buzz louder than a summertime cicada not just for being the first Harlequin novel to NOT feature a man on the cover, but for using an Asian model as the cover girl, another Harlequin first.

The star of Butterfly Swords is a Chinese woman, yes. But to give American readers something that they can relate to, the male love interest of Lin's novel is not a Chinese but a wandering whiteboy from the west. Ryam is drifting around the Tang empire begging for food (this sounds exactly like my own travels across China!) when he spots a disguised female being attacked by a pack of marauding bandits. The swordsman, who evokes images of bare-chested, fur underwear-wearing Thundarr the Barbarian from the eponymous 80's cartoon, rescues her, then agrees to escort her home. Little does Ryam know that young Ai Li is really a princess on the run from an arranged marriage to a dastardly warlord. The two proceed on their journey together across the 7th-century frontier, getting in adventures and slowly but surely falling in love.

Pitting strength, courage and her fabulous butterfly swords against the forces of evil, Ai Li proves herself in the battlefield ("With Ai Li's swords and determined spirit it was easy to forget that she was innocent"). But where the book has significant cultural crossover appeal is in author Jeannie Lin's ability to keenly capture the multi-dimensional perspectives of both characters throughout their budding interracial relationship.

From Ryam's course communicative abilities ("Where did you learn how to speak Chinese" Ai Li asks him, laughing. "You sound like you were taught in a brothel") to his struggles with his inner-white demons as a big, bad bai gui ("It was so much easier to seduce a woman than talk to her"), the reader is introduced not to some empty-headed he-man but a complex male of the species who is genuinely torn between his biological needs and respecting Ai Li's virtue. "I don't understand what she's talking about half the time," Ryam grumbles to himself. "Everything is about honor and duty." Surely even expats living in present-day P.R.C. can relate to this dilemma.

Ai Li, meanwhile, finds herself attracted not only to Ryam's "musky scent" and "sleek muscles" (Harlequin prerequisites; don't blame the authoress), but his sincerity ("There was nothing barbaric about him. His manner was direct and honest. It was her own countrymen she needed to be worried about."). The protagonist does find herself frustrated with "this swordsman with blue eyes and the storm of emotions that came with him," but, true to life, Ai Li comes with her own personality flaws as well ("she was being irrational and she knew it").

Of course, it wouldn't be a Harlequin without passionate love scenes, something my fiancée missed out on in the heavily-censored Chinese versions. This Jeannie Lin does in the poetic prose of a Tang Dynasty-era pillow book yet with just enough creatively-provocative language to keep sex-numbed westerners interested ("Ryam slipped his fingers into her silken, heated flesh...her body went liquid and damp in welcome."). And thankfully without ever once resorting to the word "loin."

Ryam proves himself to be an ideal lover for nubile Ai Li, "rough enough to make her breath catch, gentle enough to have her opening her knees," though one can't help but wonder how these two nomadic warriors can go so long without bathing nor brushing their teeth yet still manage to say things like "her mouth tasted just as sweet as he remembered." If only real life were as hygienic as a Harlequin novel.

One of the reasons why Harlequin is able to sell over 100 million units per year (the most profitable publishing company in the industry) is because every book is part of a series. There are no individual Harlequin titles, which brilliantly leaves the reader yearning for more from the characters they have literally become so intimate with. In this respect, Butterfly Swords concludes with a wide opening that screams sequel, but thankfully lacks the typical Harlequin-happy ending of matrimonial bliss.

One familiar with Chinese culture can't help but wonder, then, what kind of future Ai Li and Ryam actually have together: in reality, Ai Li would put on weight, cut her hair short and become a shrill nag; her parents and grandparents would all move into their cramped apartment, and a frustrated Ryam, now with beer-belly, would spend more and more time at card games and with karaoke parlor hostesses than at home.

But before the infuriating realties of interracial marriage set in, we hope Jeannie Lin has at least a few more of her trade-mark sword fights and steamy sensuality in store.

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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People