Excerpt from The Lost Daughter of Happiness by Geling Yan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

There's no need; he hasn't done anything wrong.

If he gives you any trouble, just call. I'll take him out at the knees, no big deal.

Thank you.

My pleasure.

With a final nod at Chris, they walked out the door, straightening their hats.

Fusang stood too, straightened her shirt, and said to Chris, It's getting late.

The waiter came over to tell her the grocers had paid for her tea. Motioning toward Chris, he said, There's nothing I can do. I can't kick him out. The white devils waltz in here like Chinatown is the outhouse in their own backyard.

Fusang glanced at Chris in farewell and stepped over the high threshold. Across the street, a crowd was watching the grand opening of a variety meats shop. The foreigners were cringing at the noise of firecrackers. Two female impersonators on stilts were holding a crock of marinade from China, an old Ming dynasty recipe. Several strings of firecrackers went off at once, exploding debris everywhere. The shopkeeper and clerks ushered the crock inside as if it were one of their own ancestors.

Fusang squeezed through the crowd. Looking back almost unconsciously, she saw Chris five or six paces behind her.

When she stopped, he did too. He looked like a waif standing there in the wind. His persistence disrupted her sluggish thoughts. She knew she'd never forgotten the boy.

She was surprised to find him quite handsome.

She stood there locking eyes with him. She had never held eyes so long with anyone. The firecrackers down the street were exploding at the tip of every hair on her body, at the tips of her eyelashes.

Finally, she lowered her eyes, but he did not.

one hundred and twenty-eight years ago,

you and he stood where I am now. The ground is still covered with the red debris of firecrackers, but bubble gum has replaced the phlegm. White cops have been fining Chinese for spitting for a good seventy or eighty years now. You see? The gum, which doesn't evaporate, represents progress.

You and Chris are standing here. The variety meats shop on the left has changed storefronts dozens of times by now, and the right side of the street has changed even more. With all the fires and earthquakes, historians lost track of all the changes over the years. Yet the moment when you and Chris stand here locking eyes is an undocumented eternity. The trembling brought on by such a gaze continues to this day. I don't know how many times my husband and I have trembled when my eyes meet the gray depths of his--in the infatuation born of our differences, in our desire to understand each other, it stops mattering how close we are; trembling, we become strangers to each other.

Awareness returns with a single breath. You are aware of your strange feet, the high collar tight around your neck, your cold faux jade bracelet. You are aware of the heartbeat of every embroidered blossom on your peach silk blouse. You know this boy named Chris wants something other than your body.

But you don't know why he got on his horse and rode into the city from his father's estate first thing that morning. He'd followed the lily white crowd--eighty thousand strong--thronging the municipal government to protest Chinese coolies, opium addicts, and prostitutes. At first Chris just wanted a look. But the excitement was contagious and soon he was picking up handbills from the ground, dusting them off, and handing them out to bewildered passersby.

Even now his pocket contains one of those handbills. It lists over ten accusations against the Chinese: "The men wear queues, the women bind their feet, their diet consists primarily of vegetables and rice, they live in crowded unsanitary quarters, they spread TB, they hoard their wages for use in their native land....' It suggests that such an evil, inferior race ought to be wiped out. He thinks of you. He certainly doesn't want you wiped out; instead, he wishes everything around you would be, leaving only you behind. He doesn't know that everything he wants to wipe out is precisely what gives you your appeal, your opium like powers.

From The Lost Daughter of Happiness, copyright (c) 2001, Hyperion Press. Reproduced with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.