My mother was born and raised in China by her American missionary parents. Throughout my childhood growing up in Michigan, my mother and my grandfather told my brother and me stories about their life in the Orient. My grandfather was a superb storyteller and I was always fascinated by his descriptions of the Chinses people and their culture. Later I would live in both Korea and Japan, adding to my interest in the Far East. Each of these fictional short stories is anchored in Chinese and Japanese history and, in some part, on my firsthand experiences and those of my mother and grandparents.