Saving the World

An English teacher gets pulled into a clash between hedonism and Jesus on a college campus; two backpackers in Hong Kong plot revenge on another; volunteers with the United Nations gather in Beijing; a group of Australian students decide to stage their own protest at Tiananmen Square. These are stories about China in the 1990s, a between-times place of baggy blue Mao suits, garlic breath, and bicycles, before communists became capitalists and China became the world's factory. It was a time when TV newscasters still badgered viewers with the heroics of selfless communist heroes and the glories of the Revolution, while college students devoured Lee Iacocca's autobiography and salesgirls argued over investment strategies. In the evenings, men in badly-cut suits and clip-on ties flirted with back alley karaoke hostesses in leather miniskirts and Jane Austin blouses. Former factory hands who had struck it rich in porn or black market money-changing rubbed shoulders with hookers at gaudy public dance halls and hotel discos. Foreigners intent on saving Chinese preached Jesus and free markets, convinced of their own righteousness. Others were in it for the money.