China 1382 A new emperor has been on the throne since 1368 and proceeds to purge the empire of the supporters of the previous Muslim Mongol dynasty. The village of Kunyang in Yunnan is destroyed and its young taken into slavery. Out of this chaos, an exceptionally gifted boy grows up to become ZhengHe, the right-hand man of the founding emperor's third son, the Warrior Prince Zhu Di. He helps Zhu Di take the throne from his nephew, the mandated heir. As Emperor Yongle, Zhu Di makes the former Mongol capital of Dadu his own and calls it Beijing. He builds The Forbidden City and moves the...

This is the second book in the Trilogy of the Chinese Diaspora, following the fortunes of Zhou Yu's children as they move between the worlds of New Zealand, China, America, and the trenches of the Western Front. At the end of the first book, Memories in the Bone, China is on the brink of civil war. The Boxers, after cruelly murdering many missionaries around north China, are finally defeated in their fifty-five day siege of Beijing. The triumphant foreign Eight Nations exact crippling penalties, stripping China of all her sovereign rights, bringing her to her knees. The ruling Qing Dynasty is...

Chinese language translation. In the crumbling days of the Qing Dynasty, a failed peasant-scholar styles himself God's Chinese Son and Jesus' Younger Brother to lead the biggest uprising against any emperor in Chinese history. Caught up in this tumult leading them into battle, death and exile are the three sons of the Zhou family from Suzhou. Zhou Fengyi, the patriarch with his own ghosts to overcome, struggles to hold his family together as he lives in fear of what he witnessed as a twelve-year old. A young Zhou Yu and his brothers join the rebel army and Yu quickly excels as a fearless...