Flowers for Mei-ling

by Lorraine Lachs

Chinese by birth, Eurasian by blood, Mei-ling Wang's extraordinary life is a mirror of our time. Born in 1949, the year of the Red Army's entry into Beijing, she is the daughter of an English mother and Chinese father who share the Communist vision of a more perfect future. Mei-ling grows to womanhood amid the violent passions and numbing brutality unleashed by the cultural Revolution. In 1968, as a tidal wave of a political turmoil engull's the globe, Mei-ling, penniless, is forced to flee her homeland. She embarks on an odyssey that carries her from China to Hong Kong to Europe to North America. Beautiful and intelligent, compelled by necessity and desire, Mei-ling threads her way carefully among the men who love her and use her. She discovers the power of sex and the lure of wealth; she masters the art of survival. When she returns to Hong Kong and China in 1997, the Colony and the mainland are about to become one country again. The People's Republic and the daughter who was forced