A first-hand account of the remarkable transformation of China over the past forty years as seen through the life of an award-winning journalist and his four Chinese classmates

As a twenty-year-old exchange student from Stanford University, John Pomfret spent a year at Nanjing University in China. His fellow classmates were among those who survived the twin tragedies of Mao's rule the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and whose success in government and private industry today are shaping China's future. Pomfret went on to a career in journalism, spending the bulk of his time...