“Tweak a Dragon’sTail” is both an adventure and a love story, based up a chase through China a quarter of a century ago. The chase, and its false trails, leads across the whole country and in doing so shows what the life of the people was like in those days

The action takes place in 1980 – not long ago in terms of the history of man but eons in life styles. It is long enough ago that modern communications: cellular phones, the Internet, satellites, and e-mail, did not exist. Moreover the divisions of world politics had not yet undergone the changes that were due. The Soviet Union still existed and China was a communist police state. So, this tale takes place when the world was compartmentalized by distance in communications and by differences in political beliefs.

China was just beginning to open its doors to Western ideas in 1980. The people were emerging from the Cultural Revolution and trying to catch up after an eight-year hiatus in education. Everyone had a job but they lacked the freedom to travel or to choose how to live. Punishments were extreme. You did not fool with the regulations of the People’s Republic. Your papers had to be in order.

Pinyin had been developed to unify the language across the Chinese subcontinent: so Peking had just become Beijing and Canton was now Guangzhou. Many things were happening.

However, during these upheavals in China and across the world one thing didn’t change. Men (and women) did not change. They have since 1980 exhibited the same range of passions, of violence, of greed, of evil, and of adherence to mythical gods, that they had ever done before.

The chase through China develops along the lines of a classic English public school paper chase, which gave rise to the modern practice of harriers chasing a hare with the expectation of beer and goodwill when they find him at the end of the trail. The travel through the country provides an accurate and living account of rural China.

“Tweak a Dragon;s Tail," John Graham, To be published.

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