Beginning with a letter penned by a Chinese girl in heaven to "poor Mr. Nixon" in hell, Gish Jen embarks on a fictional journey through U.S.-China relations. Opal Chen reunites with her sisters after forty years; Lulu Koo wonders why Americans "like to walk around in the woods with the mosquitoes"; Hong Kong parents go to extreme lengths to re-establish contact with their daughter in New York; and Betty Koo, brought up on "no politics, just make money," must reassess her mother's philosophy. These eleven stories trace the ways in which humans make and are made by history, capturing an extraordinary era in an extraordinary way.