by Rachel DeWoskin

This incisive portrait of ’the new China’ comes from an American women who went to Beijing in the 1990s to work in public relations and who somehow wound up on a popular television soap opera there (whose translated title is the same as the title of her book.) Rachel DeWoskin witnesses first-hand the incredible and swift changes that occur in a city welcoming of modernity in a land bound by tradition. Rachel learns Chinese and becomes a celebrity, while the characters in the show experience parallel challenges brought on by relationships and cultural conflict. Part memoir, part social study, FOREIGN BABES IN PEKING chronicles how DeWoskin and friends participated in a sometimes exhilarating cultural revolution, and how both they and the city came out changed.