This is the only book that I’ve finished reading in a while. A book written in the time of peace and prosperity, for a people and place now almost lost to the chaos and darkness of history.
So it ends:
Pamela Wener’s body now lies somewhere deep under modern Beijing’s Second Ring Road, in what was once the British Cemetery. For these past seventy-odd years she has been what she claimed to have always been—alone.
The Fox Tower still looms over Armour Factory Alley, and over what is left of the messy rookery of hutong that were the Peking Badlands. It looms over the ancient Tartar Wall, where Parmela was found that freezing morning in January 1937. Only very elderly Pekingers call it the Fox Tower now; only the very old talk of fox spirits. Few, if any, are left who remember the day that the mutilated body of a foreign girls was found at its base.
Cherish the peace while you still have it, until all are lost in time.