AS FLOWERS BLOOM AND WITHER

1949, before the Communist Party's occupation of Shanghai, the Nationalist Party, knowing that they were soon to lose the Chinese mainland, secretly shipped the treasury gold to Taiwan. Aboard the ship, lurked several Chinese Communist spies. One of these spies was sent secretly by Communist Vice-Chairman, Zhou Enlai, with a particular mission in mind: to gain the long-term trust of Chiang Kai-shek.
Decades later, through the declassifying of certain previously sealed files, the true identity of the woman who had been the secret lover of both Zhou Enlai and Chiang Kai-shek, and the shocking truth behind Chiang Kai-shek's death, are finally revealed...
In this bold and powerful new novel, spanning a turbulent period of Taiwanese history, Chang Ying Tai Tai weaves a complex tale of loyalty and betrayal, innocence and evil, love, forgiveness and regret, and suggests that human history's real tragedy is to be found not the confrontation between wrong and right, but in the clashes between wrongs.

Chang, Ying-Tai is a Taiwanese writer. She is also Professor at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and the Director of the Center for Art and Culture. She has won various major literary awards in Taiwan, represented by a total of twenty-six literary prizes such as China Times first prize for fiction and prose; United Daily Press first prize for fiction; Central Daily News first prize for fiction; annual award for fiction; etc. Her work has been selected for inclusion in various literary anthologies on mainland China and in Taiwan and has been continuously listed among the Best Taiwanese Fiction at the Frankfurt Book Fair.