Book Description
Sara and Zhang Jianlong seem destined to fall in love. The rat and the dragon are suitably matched in the Chinese zodiac. By chance they meet a few days before Sara returns to Australia after a semester of Mandarin language study at Hubei University, Wuhan in Central China. Jianlong, a uni student and fan of Italian soccer has borrowed Paolo as his "English" name. Eight-minute phone calls and letters of friendship chronicle the emergence of their feelings as love.Love is strange, very strange?. Paolo writes.He is just twenty-one and Sara is forty-eight, single, a mother and grandmother. After months of intense communication, their love is betrayed by Sara's brief affair with an Australian Chinese man. Paolo is flung into the depths of jealousy. Frantic with remorse, Sara rushes to Qingdao where Paolo is working. A honeymoon flavoured month is a prelude to their plan to live together. Flouting Chinese regulations and society, Paolo's life with Sara is kept a secret from his family. Over time his guilt and inner conflict combines with Sara's insecurity, threatening to embitter their love.Woven though the memoir is Sara's fascination with China, that began in childhood.
