Jade Flower (A New Adult Travel Memoir)

When Anna moves to China without the approval of friends or family, she goes from recent graduate to language teacher in a country in which she knows nothing and no one. As she overcomes culture shock and gets used to being illiterate, her explorations take her to the eastern start of the Great Wall, densely-populated chaotic cities, serene mountaintop temples of silent monks and former pleasure palaces of emperors. But she wants to learn more, to understand, to go deeper. It is only in the Chinese nightclubs, where she becomes Cui Hua, or Jade Flower, a stage dancer, that she finds what she didn't know she was searching for: self-acceptance, self-confidence and eventually, herself.

Dear Potential Reader,
This is my memoir of my time in China in my early twenties in 2006-2007, before there was a fence all the way along the North Korean border. It is generally true, although names and some events have been fictionalized, and some conversations and situations recreated from diary entries and vague, hazy memories of them. I hope you enjoy it!
Kind regards,
AJ