This anthology, a revision of one published by Picador in the U.K. in 1998, contains 21 stories equally divided between urban and rural settings, mostly granting a view of life in modern China unlike anything presented to us by the news media. The perspective throughout the book is consistently childlike, without the ambivalence of most modern fiction in English: all women are exceedingly beautiful or plain; men are clever, dull or merely dutiful. Life follows the simple parameters of Communist dictum: birth, marriage, one child (two if it's a rich or aristocratic family) and death. Decidedly tame in tone and subject matter, the tales offer only mild, glancing criticism of Communism; they often focus on single characters who disrupt the social fabric through small "rebellions."