A Looking-Glass World Av Feng Jicai

<p><p>1900. For Tianjin’s European colonists a profitable new century is dawning, but for the city’s downtrodden Chinese natives the Zodiac cycle’s end signals imminent catastrophe. Meanwhile the fearsome Boxer warriors – said by some to be bulletproof – are spilling in from the provinces.<p></p><p><p>On restless streets, a dangerous liaison begins. Ouyang Jue, gentle layabout and heir to a merchant fortune, finds himself entangled with Xénia, a French officer’s daughter indulging every impulse on her first visit to China. Each sees liberation in the other; a chance to leap through the mirror and escape the mundane.<p></p><p><p>Separated by the widening divide between their two worlds, the lovers were never meant to be. But as discontent sparks into all-out conflagration, will they find paradise behind the glass? Or will they join the ashes of what might have been?<p></p>