This book caught my eye on the new book shelf at the library. It's a selection of short stories for current day China written by a Chinese woman who had emigrated to the US as an adult. Her stories are quite a snapshot of China now with a hint of what life was like during different periods preceding the present.
My favorite story was "Prison" about a Chinese couple living in the US with their daughter. The story opens after the death of the daughter in an accident. Since they are in their 40s they decide to go back to China and hire a woman to be the surrogate mother for their embryo. Apparently this is illegal in China but they manage it. The husband returns to the US to continue working while the wife remains behind to monitor the surrogate mother.
I don't want to give too much of the story away but I will say this I feel it ends very abruptly. In fact all her stories tend to end before you want them to. In that way they are like snapshots, just a fragment of time and its up to the reader to decide what comes next. It was an interesting diversion from Shakespeare and the long novels I've been reading.