
As protests swirl in the cities & all foreign faces arouse suspicions, venturesome young Japanese student Aya Goda travels deep into the interior of China. There she falls in love with the charismatic & combative wandering painter Cao, whose work is initially tolerated by the Chinese authorities & then banned, suddenly flipping the couple over onto the wrong side of the law. With the police on their tails, the pair criss-cross the vastnesses of middle China & push up into Tibet, where Cao has been trained as a sky-burial master. By truck & by jalopy, biplane & train, dodging bandits & bureaucrats alike, the pair take a high-speed, high-risk journey through this fast-changing country. Like some East Asian Cassady & Kerouac, Cao & Goda are wild kindred spirits in search of enlightenment & freedom, & Goda's prose
- clear & metallic as a Himalayan stream
- permits the reader to share their every intrepid step & twist & to taste the tangily different flavours of contemporary China.