Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In 1884, my great-grandfather was looking for his servant Chen She. He had never lit his own pipe, and he wouldn’t even know where to find it. He was beaten to the punch when Great-Grandfather entered the room and walloped him across the head. #2 The concubines rise to flee. Great-Grandfather is worshipping at his Confucian altar when he tells the ancestral tablets and statues what a disappointment everyone else in the compound is. He confides his deep regret at employing, marrying, and spawning such insolence. #3 Ying Kam was the only unmarried boy among his rich and privileged friends. He was ready to forge his way in elite Chinese society, and most of all, be a man. But the stone carvings, ancestors, and heating pipes of the compound knew that this argument could only end one way. #4 My grandfather Ying Kam created distance from his beginnings by propelling himself closer to a new life. The family diaspora caught a north wind as they wheeled past the stone lions and a sleeping guard.