This potpourri of short reads explores the lives of people from a range of backgrounds, locations, and time periods. They include true cases and imaginary ones. Some of the protagonists do well, others not so well. You'll find stories that are one-hundred percent factual, some purely imaginary, others a bit of each-creative nonfiction. Some end ambiguously or have no end at all. Among them, to wit: A foreign visitor stops in a rural town in southern China, characteristically xenophobic, where he meets a young woman, "Li Dan," in a surrealistic relationship which he is not sure actually took place. In 1968 Czechoslovakia felt the blow of Russian military might, though it was the will and tenacity of the people to remain free that takes center stage in "Prelude to Ukraine." China's longest river is the setting for old Boley's demise in "Death on the Yangtze." What did he die of? Only Mrs. Boley knows the answer to that, but who is Mrs. Boley? In 1960's Los Angeles, a white man and a black woman enjoy an intimate relationship in which they learn much about themselves and about the other in "Colorblind." During a trip through China in "Soulmate," a tour guide and tourist share compatibility and exchange insights on China's history and the psychology of movie dubbing. The son of missionaries, raised in the Burmese outback, becomes one of the most celebrated freedom fighters or, according to his detractors, vilified mercenaries in Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle.