33 years after publication of her huge bestseller Wild Swans, JC picks up where she left off… in 1978, leaving Chengdu as a student bound for London. ‘It was like landing on Mars…’ What follows is her adaptation to democratic freedom, her work, her visits to China – where all her books are still banned – to visit her mother, something she has been unable to do since 2018. She also writes about China’s precipitous economic growth and authoritarian tightening in the C21st.