“China had me rendered speechless that first day and for many months on. Then followed a gradual change in us, from feeling like aliens who’d just landed from Mars, right through the two and a half years, to a family who, while we would never truly blend in, felt like we kinda belonged. It was then as I tried to understand this curious and kind culture of people outside the typical stereotype of loud, boisterous and pushy locals living under a communist regime in one of the world’s largest economies, that the seeds of my book began to sprout.”