Ears is a wily figure, lusty and irreverent, who seems almost to have stepped out of a Mozart opera Skillfully crafted and well-paced ... Green River Daydreams is rich in archetype and allegory but also revelatory of universal human emotion, human predicaments, and human nature.

Liu Heng is one of contemporary China's most acclaimed writers,and with Green River Daydreams, he has written a tragic story of love, duty, and the coming of modernity. Ears is a slave to the family of Master Cao, a wealthy landowner in early- twentieth-century China. The family's prodigal son, Guanghan, has just returned from four years of study in Europe with a French engineer friend and a dream of starting a collectively run match factory, but little interest in the bride his family has arranged for him. Her beauty and goodheart have;.not gone unnoticed by Ears, nor has her growing closeness to the Frenchman. As Guanghan's Western individualism confronts his mother's devout Buddhism and his brother's grim authority, rumors of clashes between the Qing imperialists and the resistance are quickly becoming bloody reality. Then Guanghan comes under suspicion from the Emperor's men, and the outcome will destroy the fragile balance of the Cao household forever.