Alex Smith, aspirant novelist, jaded social editor, and reluctant English teacher, makes her way to the centre of China in the hopes of writing a 'Great Chinese Novel'. On a scant budget, she trips through Shanghai, sails the Yangtze, explores the dusty relics of Xi'an and sojourns in Beijing. Eventually she signs up for a job in a bastion of conservative communism on a university campus in Wuhan, home to nine million people. After a year she finds herself broke, stranded and hungry in a semi-deserted, snow-covered campus locked up for the holidays, and decides to return to Cape Town. Her detailed impressions and experiences create a multilayered text, documenting China and its many facets, from its people to its poetry, as well as aspects of the complex and engaging author herself.
