"In China, a woman is nothing," began Yu-i over tea and dumplings. "This is the first lesson I want to give so that you will understand." Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last Emperor and the Communist Revolution, Yu-i led a life marked by a series of rebellions that changed the course of her life, including the first and most lasting: her refusal to have her feet bound. And through Yu-i's stories, Pang-Mei comes to understand something of her own ambivalences regarding her Chinese heritage and the ever-present tug between familial duty and individual desire.