conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Olivia, Kwan, Chinese entitled The Hundred Secret Senses.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Hundred Secret Senses: The story focuses on the relationship between Chinese-born Kwan and her younger, Chinese American sister Olivia, who serves as the book\'s primary narrator.\nOlivia and Kwan\'s relationship begins when their father dies and Kwan is sent to live with the family.\nOlivia is embarrassed by Kwan because she is unfamiliar with American customs and does not speak English well.\nShe constantly makes a fool of herself, and Olivia is teased by peers for having a "retarded" sister.\nKwan relates to Olivia through the telling of Chinese tales and superstitions.\nShe believes she has "Yin eyes", which means that she can see ghosts.\nShe converses with them at night, frightening Olivia.\nShe speaks Chinese in private, and Olivia picks up the language.\nKwan believes that her stories aren\'t just stories; they are based on her belief that she is part of the Yin world, the world of the ghosts.\nShe believes that she is recounting tales from her past lives.\nIn the melding of Olivia\'s modern Western world and Kwan\'s yin world, Olivia and Kwan create Asian-American identities for themselves, individually and together.\nKwan plans a trip to China which is actually a scheme to get Olivia and her estranged husband, Simon, back together.\nNow Kwan serves as the translator for the writer (Simon) and photographer (Olivia).\nThe real purpose of the trip is to discover Olivia and Kwan\'s connection to the Yin world.\nKwan makes Olivia come to see that besides what we understand through our five senses, there are many things that can only be understood by using the "hundred secret senses".\nThis story is about the journey of identity, family history, past lives, and ultimately, love.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Hundred Secret Senses
  But in spite of all my logic and doubt, I can't dismiss something larger I know about Kwan: that it isn't in her nature to lie. Whatever she says, she believes is true. Like what she said about Simon, that she hadn't seen him as a ghost, which means he's alive. I believe her. I have to. Then again, if I believe what she says, does that mean I now believe she has yin eyes? Do I believe that she talks to Big Ma, that there actually is a cave with a Stone Age village inside? That Miss Banner, General Cape, and One-half Johnson were real people? That she was Nunumu? And if that's all true, the stories she told throughout these years... well, she must have told me for a reason.
  I know the reason. I've known since I was a child, really I have. Long ago I buried that reason in a safe place, just as she had done with her music box. Out of guilt, I listened to her stories, all the while holding on to my doubts, my sanity. Time after time, I refused to give her what she wanted most. She'd say, "Libby-ah, you remember?" And I'd always shake my head, knowing she hoped I would say, "Yes, Kwan, of course I remember. I was Miss Banner...."
  My lips are numb. "Oh. You know. Simon. I keep thinking, and everything I think about gets worse and worse."
  She scoots over so that we are sitting side by side. She massages my cold fingers, and instant warmth flows through my veins.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This question was even stranger than the last! "I don't know. I have never talked to anyone who has been there and back. But I think if you speak Chinese, maybe this is enough. Yes, I'm sure of it."
  Ah, now I understood all her questions. I wanted to comfort her. So I told her the last lie: "Come, Miss Banner. Come with me. Yiban already told me. If he dies, he will meet you again, in the World of Yin."
  She believed me, because I was her loyal friend. "Please take my hand, Miss Moo," she said. "Don't let go until we arrive."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ". I have never talked to anyone who has been there and back. But I think if you speak Chinese, maybe this is enough. Yes, I'm sure of it."
  Ah, now I understood all her questions. I wanted to comfort her. So I told her the last lie: "Come, Miss Banner. Come with me. Yiban already told me. If he dies, he will meet you again, in the World of Yin."
  She believed me, because I was her loyal friend. "Please take my hand, Miss Moo," she said. "Don't let go until we arrive.This question was even stranger than the last! "I don't know.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: How else can I explain why I have a fourteen-month-old baby girl? Like everyone else, I was astounded when I went to the doctor and he said I was three months along. I gave birth nine months after Simon and I made love in the marriage bed, nine months after Kwan disappeared. I'm sure there were those who suspected the father was some fly-by-night date, that I was careless, pregnant by accident. But Simon and I both know: That baby is ours. Sure, there was a reasonable explanation. We went back to the fertility specialist and he did more tests. Well, what do you know? The earlier tests were wrong. The lab must have made a mistake, switched the charts, because sterility, the doctor said, is not a reversible condition. Simon, he announced, had in fact not been sterile. I asked the doctor, "So how do you explain why I never became pregnant before?"
  All I know is what I want to believe. I have a gift from Kwan, a baby girl with dimples in her fat cheeks. And no, I didn't name her Kwan or Nelly. I'm not that morbidly sentimental. I call her Samantha, sometimes Sammy. Samantha Li. She and I took Kwan's last name. Why not? What's a family name if not a claim to being connected in the future to someone from the past?
  Sammy calls me "Mama." Her favorite toy is "ba," the music box Kwan gave me for my wedding. Sammy's other word is "Da," which is what she calls Simon, "Da" for "Daddy," even though he doesn't live with us all the time. We're still working things out, deciding what's important, what matters, how to be together for more than eight hours at a stretch without disagreeing about which radio station we should put on. On Fridays, he comes over and stays the weekend. We snuggle in bed, Simon and I, Sammy and Bubba. We are practicing being a family, and we're grateful for every moment together. The petty arguments, snipes and gripes, they still crop up. But it's easier to remember how unimportant they are, how they shrink the heart and make life small.
  I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true. I once thought love was supposed to be nothing but bliss. I now know it is also worry and grief, hope and trust. And believing in ghosts—that's believing that love never dies. If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses. "This a secret," I can still hear Kwan whispering. "Don't tell anyone. Promise, Libby-ah."
  I hear my baby calling me. She gurgles and thrusts her hand toward the fireplace, at what I don't know. She insists. "What is it, Sammy? What do you see?" My heart races as I sense it might be Kwan.