[1] Six years after the death of Mao, the People's Republic of China opens its doors to learn how to integrate into the larger world.

The title character, a thirty-six-year-old English teacher in Shanghai, learns a great deal of Chinese culture from interacting with her students in and out of class.

The narrator of the novel, twenty-nine-year-old Zebra Wong, is one of the students who eventually helps her adopt a Chinese girl, Little Rabbit.

In 2000, the Chicago Tribune stated that the reviews of the book tended to be "cool" (meaning negative).

[2] A review in Publishers Weekly found the novel to be poorer than Min's first book, the memoir Red Azalea.