In her introduction to Encounters with Chinese Writers, Annie Dillard writes, “These are only glimpses, not portraits; their subject is not China, and not even entirely Chinese writers, but a few vivid, equivocal moments in the days of some of earth’s people in the twentieth century. What interests me here, and elsewhere, is the possibility for a purified nonfiction narration – a kind of Chekhovian storytelling which might illuminate the actual world with a delicate light – coupled with humor in the American tradition and no comment.”