M.J. Rose has posted my backstory for Dream of the Blue Room, which includes a NYT classified ad, a last-minute trip to China, a lonely but posh apartment in Beijing, a failed memoir, an outspoken geologist I met on a bus in Xian, the Three Gorges Dam, and an Alabama murder.

For more information about the Three Gorges Dam, go here. For more info about Dream of the Blue Room, go here. If you have a broad interest in Chinese affairs, both political and cultural, check out the excellent blog Peking Duck, which is written by an expat (American? The flavor of the writing is American, but the bio doesn’t name the writer’s country of origin) currently living in Taipei. Although there are some unfortunately distracting ads, the content is excellent.