Skye, Christina

Chritina Skye has eaten snake meat in Shanghai and armadillo in Canton. A Ph.D. graduate in Chinese literature, she has translated for Chinese generals, dissident poets, and fifth-generation puppet masters. In 1981 the Ohio native was nearly arrested when a businessman she was working for insisted she help him smuggle two "ladies of dubious virtue" into Peking's prestigious State Guest House.

The armed PLA soldiers at the gate were not amused, shenotes. But these days Skye's greatest love is England, especially the fog-swept southeast coast. Here she firstencountered the portrait of a proud-...