Preface

What follows are a few short stories about ordinary people of the city Hangzhou in China.

They were written in 2002, a time when international media coverage on China by Washington Post, New York Times and alike were limited to mostly political news in Beijing and occasional news on Shanghai. Unlike today, where there is voracious information on many aspects on different parts in China thanks to the proliferation of social media sites, very little were known then about people in second or third-tier Chinese cities such as Hangzhou.

The intent was to record the views of people who had generously shared a conversation with me. More importantly, to let the world outside of China better understand views of ordinary Chinese people that were not known.

Publishing these stories again more than a decade later is an opportunity to see again what Chinese people were like then and reflect on the social changes in the last dacade.