Searching, Escaping, and Longing for True Love. Set in Dunhuang, China, a city on the ancient Silk Road and home to thousands of painted cave murals, Dunhuang Dream magically blends the stories of three protagonists: Xiao Xingxing, a talented young female artist; Zhang Shu, a laboratory technician from a Beijing research institute who recently quit his job; and Xiang Wuye, a medical student. These three seek refuge in Dunhuang from their troubled lives, but soon find themselves in a strange entanglement of love. During their visit to the world-renowned Mogao Caves, they are attracted by the marvelous murals but are unaware that they will soon become involved in scandal.

Yang Tianyi is a "leftover woman" and under pressure to find a husband. She is attractive and intelligent but knows little of the world, and finally makes a disastrous marriage to a man, Wang Lian. At the end of the 1980s, in Tiananmen Square, she meets her love Hua Zheng again. However, after the political turmoil, Hua Zheng is framed as one of the perpetrators of the disturbances, and is sentenced to prison. Set against the background of China's turbulent 1980s and 1990s, Crystal Wedding is a novel of searing emotional honesty. (Winner of English Pen Translates Award).