With the success of the Communist Revolution in 1949, many middle-class Chinese panicked—especially the intellectuals and entrepreneurs of Shanghai—and began a mass emigration. In the first book in English to chronicle this tremendous upheaval, Zia draws on interviews with more than one hundred former Shanghai residents. From these many stirring accounts, she focuses on four young people who eventually went to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S., telling the stories of a man haunted by his father’s wartime legacy, a woman whose family history made her unwelcome in Taiwan, a student who pursued his studies in the U.S. despite risking deportation, and a woman given away by her impoverished parents. Zia, who first visited China in 1972, is the author of Asian American Dreams and a former executive editor of Ms. magazine.