The Early Arrival of Dreams

In 1988 the author took part in a teaching exchange between an American college and Hangzhou University. In this book she conveys the mixture of respect and disdain accorded foreigners in China, and the dreams and realities faced by a people within the confines of their political system.

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A year before the protests in Tiananmen Square, Rosemary Mahoney participated in a teaching exchange between an American college and Hangzhou University in China. Eager to absorb as much Western culture as possible, the students embraced Mahoney and allowed her a rare glimpse of Chinese life. In this book she conveys the unsettling mixture of respect and disdain accorded foreigners, and the dreams and grim realities faced by a people within the confines of their political system. She relates chance encounters such as a discussion with a Chinese intellectual about the "total absence" of homosexuality in China, and a visit to a women's prison where most of the young women were supposedly incarcerated for engaging in premarital sex. Rosemary Mahoney won the Charles E. Horman Prize for Creative Writing at Harvard.