“Love in the Marketplace” describes Sansan’s regret that, as a college student ten years before, she had fallen in love with Tu but then convinced him to travel to the United States and marry Min, who was barred from many careers in China due to having taken part in the protests at Tiananmen Square. Boshen pressures Sasha to continue the pregnancy, hoping that a child will convince Yang to come to the United States Sasha considers the benefits of a child being born in the US, but is ultimately overwhelmed by the sadness of her situation. When Yang felt that Boshen was not keeping his promise to return Yang to the stage, Yang left Boshen for Sasha, just before Sasha left China for school in Nebraska and Boshen was exiled for writing about an AIDS epidemic. As Sasha and Boshen watch the Thanksgiving Day parade, several flashbacks occur, communicating that Sasha is pregnant by Yang, a young opera singer turned prostitute, who also happened to be Boshen’s lover in China. “The Princess of Nebraska” follows Sasha and Boshen as they navigate Chicago to get Sasha to her appointment for an abortion.
Upon returning to the village, the man castrates himself. Once the boy is a middle-aged man, he becomes concerned that no woman or potential child would live up to his greatness, and so never marries this leads to his being caught with a prostitute, which causes his dismissal from his role as Mao’s impersonator.
The villagers take pride that one of their own has such an important role to play, despite having refused him their daughters as wives in his youth. An unnamed boy of a disgraced family in the village grows up with a face very similar to Mao’s, and leaves the village after Mao’s death to become Mao’s impersonator. “Immortality” describes the inhabitants of a rural village, which historically provided eunuchs as servants to the emperors, as they shift their loyalties to Chairman Mao.
Fong, who has just suggested to his wife that his mistress move in with them. Su feeds Beibei extra sleeping pills before Mr. Su admits that he and his wife are first cousins. Fong was in jail for embezzlement, and Mr. Fong fell in love with another woman when Mrs. Fong spend their days at the stock brokerage, discussing China’s movement towards a capitalist economy and the difficulties of love: Mr. Su’s best friend, who suspects her husband of using Mr. Su, who stays at home with Beibei, with the frequent phone calls from Mrs. The Sus meticulously hide Beibei’s existence, which isolates Mrs. Su, the retired parents of Jian, a college-aged son, and Beibei, Jian’s elder sister who was born with “severe mental retardation” (23). The story “After a Life” describes the lives of Mr. When this habit is revealed to the school supervisors, Granny Lin is dismissed from her job she leaves the school with her belongings, which are quickly stolen from her, leaving her with a lunch pail containing her compensation and a few packages of socks. Granny Lin notices that Kang steals girls’ socks and keeps them in his bed, but chooses to allow Kang this idiosyncrasy. Granny Lin then becomes a maid in a boarding school, where she befriends a young boy named Kang. She marries an older man and becomes his caretaker, but he soon dies and the family blames Granny Lin’s negligence for his death. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers begins with “Extra,” a story that follows Granny Lin in Beijing as she struggles after the factory where she works goes bankrupt.