conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Joy, Pearl, Dog entitled Dreams of Joy.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Dreams of Joy: Dreams of Joy is organized in four sections—The Tiger Leaps, The Rabbit Dodges, The Dog Grins, and The Dragon Rises.\nJoy is the Tiger – romantic, artistic, rash, and impulsive.\nIn this novel, unlike Shanghai Girls, Joy and Pearl are both narrators.\nDriven by anger at Pearl and May for lying to her about her identity and filled with guilt because of her role in Sam\'s death, Joy hastily leaves Los Angeles Chinatown to find her biological fatherG.\nand to join the new Chinese society.\nFinding her father rather quickly in Shanghai, Joy goes with him to a village collective where he is forced to teach art to the peasants.\nJoy throws herself enthusiastically into the life of the collective and into a hasty marriage with Tao, a peasant artist.\nOnly through motherhood and terrible suffering is Joy able to find her true identity and to exorcise her inner demons.\nSee has written about the difficulty she faced in developing Joy\'s character: "At first, Joy was hard to write about because she\'s so naïve and stubborn.\nShe makes such terrible mistakes, which, as a mother and her writer, I found hard to watch.\nBut what an experience it was to watch her go through all the terrible things she experiences and see her grow up to be a wonderful artist and courageous mother.\n" G.\nis the Rabbit, frequently hopping away from danger.\nAlthough close to Mao himself, the Chairman can\'t trust the artist because of his individualistic streak and Western influencesG.\nhas to go to the country as a form of punishment for his subversive tendencies.\nWhat bringsG.\nthrough in the end are his art, his growing love for Joy and his granddaughter Samantha, his friendship with Pearl, and his devotion to May.\nThe Dog is Tao, the village artist who Joy marries.\nAs Pearl sees it, the question is what kind of Dog will Tao turn out to be.\n"\'A Dog can be violent.\nIs he the kind of Dog you can trust and love, or will he bite you\'".\nUnfortunately Joy\'s passionate view of Tao as a good Dog turns out to be false.\nTao is a poor husband, an indifferent father, and a young man devoted to seeking the main chance, no matter who he has to step over to reach his goals.\nEven surviving the most desperate of circumstances does not change Tao\'s character.\nPearl is the Dragon.\nShe is the second narrator of Dreams of Joy and the character See found easiest to write.\n"I was already so familiar with Pearl\'s strengths and weaknesses from Shanghai Girls.\nHer words just flowed, because I\'ve now lived with her every day for over four years.\nIn Shanghai Girls Mama speaks frequently of Pearl\'s Dragon nature -- and does so even when she is dying: "\'There was a typhoon the day you were born.\nIt is said that a Dragon born in a storm will have a particularly tempestuous fate.\nYou always believe you are right, and this makes you do things you shouldn\'t.\nYou\'re a Dragon, and of all the signs only a Dragon can tame the fates.\nOnly a Dragon can wear the horns of destiny, duty and power\'".\nMama\'s mother love in giving up her life for her daughters becomes the standard by which Pearl judges herself.\nIf Dreams of Joy is the story of Joy\'s coming of age, it also describes Pearl\'s growth through love, courage, and self-sacrifice.\nShe pursues Joy to a China she never knew, living in her old Shanghai home as just another boarder, earning a living by collecting papers, and trying desperately to reconnect with her daughter.\nIf such a pursuit requires painful patience and hard work at a collective farm, so be it.\nLike her mother before her, Pearl is willing to give up everything to save Joy and her granddaughter Samantha from death.\nDespite such trials, Pearl endures to the end to find joy in her daughter and granddaughter, friendship inG, a new love with Dun the professor, and reaffirmation of her enduring bond with May.\nLittle wonder that Pearl is radiant at novel\'s end.\nAs for May the Sheep, See keeps her offstage for almost the entire novel.\nShe is constantly present, however, through her letters to Pearl and the money and gifts she sends to her sister and Joy.\nAt home May endures much hardship -- especially in the context of the death of her husband Vern.\nOnly when Vern dies does May understand the suffering Pearl experienced after Sam\'s death.\nShe is also tormented by Pearl\'s refusal to tell her the state of her relationship withG.\nNevertheless, in the end May finds the love she has been seeking her entire life.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this book.. Start with the sentence 'Dreams of Joy
  Now I needed a village in Anwei'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Dreams of Joy
  Now I needed a village in Anwei. I was thinking about how and where I would find one when out of the blue, Amy Tan sent me an e-mail saying that she was writing a new novel and had been invited to do some research in a small village in Anwei province. Would I like to come? Of course! A few months later, when we crested the little hill and started our descent into Huangcun Village, I knew I had found my physical model for Green Dragon.
  People in Huangcun live off the land. They grow their own rapeseed for oil, and vegetables, rice, and raise hogs to eat. Most houses had pork legs and pork pieces hanging on exterior walls. Many houses also had dried fish and vegetables strung either outside the house or from rafters inside the main room. At first glance, this may seem primitive and unsanitary, but countries around the world and throughout history have dried vegetables and cured meat. (Where would we be without prosciutto?) Nevertheless, I thought Joy, who had grown up in Los Angeles, would be unsettled by this custom.
  This little pathway runs alongside the villa in Huangcun. Even in what seems like the middle of nowhere, here was something extremely beautiful and delicately carved. I loved how moss had grown up over the stone, and the bridge's patina of age. I also loved the quiet of this spot. Here in the United States, even if you get away from the sound of cars, you can never completely escape the sound and sight of planes flying overhead. To me, nothing casts me back in time more than the silence that I find in the Chinese countryside.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'People in Huangcun live off the land'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: People in Huangcun live off the land. They grow their own rapeseed for oil, and vegetables, rice, and raise hogs to eat. Most houses had pork legs and pork pieces hanging on exterior walls. Many houses also had dried fish and vegetables strung either outside the house or from rafters inside the main room. At first glance, this may seem primitive and unsanitary, but countries around the world and throughout history have dried vegetables and cured meat. (Where would we be without prosciutto?) Nevertheless, I thought Joy, who had grown up in Los Angeles, would be unsettled by this custom.
  This little pathway runs alongside the villa in Huangcun. Even in what seems like the middle of nowhere, here was something extremely beautiful and delicately carved. I loved how moss had grown up over the stone, and the bridge's patina of age. I also loved the quiet of this spot. Here in the United States, even if you get away from the sound of cars, you can never completely escape the sound and sight of planes flying overhead. To me, nothing casts me back in time more than the silence that I find in the Chinese countryside.
  Today if you continue on this path in the opposite direction of this photo, you'll find yourself in the next village. In the novel, this path led to the center of the fictional commune. It's along this path that Yong had to walk on her unbound feet. This path also became the way to the fictional cutoff to the Charity Pavilion, which I modeled on a pavilion I'd seen in the Huizhou district at Qiankou, a tourist attraction comprised of historic buildings from around the province, dating from several different dynasties and highlighting all levels of wealth and poverty. I was inspired to move the pavilion at Qiankou back out to the countryside and place it on a hill above Green Dragon. Even now, I can imagine Joy and Tao skirting along the villa's wall, dashing over the little stone bridge, and hurrying to the cutoff that will lead them to their secret meeting place.
  This 1955 New Year's poster painted by Jin Meisheng has the slogan "Vegetables are green, melons are plump, harvest is beautiful." The artist was an extremely handsome man who wore heavy black-framed glasses. I don't know anything about his personal life, but much like Z.G., Jin started his career as a commercial artist, painting beautiful girls to sell products as prosaic as flashlights and batteries. In this poster, Jin has fully embraced the Great Leap Forward. Here, a strong peasant girl helps to bring in an abundant harvest. Look at the size of some of those vegetables! And yet the reality of the Great Leap Forward was far from this optimistic. As I looked at this poster, I thought about how Joy had embraced this ideal. Beyond all that, don't you think the girl looks a bit like Kumei but without the scars—spirited, strong, and forthright? What is she thinking behind that smile?
  We can now look back and see that the Great Leap Forward was a terrible calamity, but it's important to remember that the People's Republic of China was a brand-new country, just eight years old. People were filled with enthusiasm and believed that only good could come from their new leader, government, and country. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 launched our involvement in the Space Race and inspired Mao to launch the Great Leap Forward. Many Chinese posters from this era evoke space flight, a new society, opportunity, and optimism. This New Year's poster shows small children in their own little rocket, accepting greetings from the Moon Goddess and her handmaidens. It's sweet and filled with good cheer, yet for real children the reality was dire.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: From the teeming streets of Beijing to Los Angeles and back, detective Liu Hulan and American attorney David Stark are caught in a perilous net of politics, organized crime, family loyalties, and their own passion for each other.
  An old friend from deep in China's interior asks detective Liu Hulan to uncover the truth about her daughter's suspicious suicide—a case that will take Hulan into her own buried past and into the heart of a dangerous mystery.
  Hulan and David are swept into a maze of murder and a deadly political power struggle when the corpse of an American archaeologist is found at the mouth of the Yangzi River.
  Lisa See is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please visit www.rhspeakers.com or call 212-572-2013.