The author describes China through a framework of ten common phrases in the Chinese vernacular, including people, leader, reading, writing, Lu Xun, disparity, revolution, grassroots, copycat, and bamboozle.
Baldy Li, a sex-obsessed boy, and Song Gang, his sensitive, intelligent stepbrother, live in newly capitalist China, where they struggle with their bond and make and lose money around the village of Liu Town as everybody experiences the shift to extreme materialism after the Cultural Revolution.
After losing his family's fortune in gambling dens and brothels, Fugui is forced by the Nationalist Army to leave behind his family to witness the horrors of the Civil War, only to return years later to face the hardships brought on by the Cultural Revolution.
