Shao Xunmei, poet, essayist, publisher, and printer, played a signifcant role in the publication and dissemination of journals and pictorial magazines in Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s, but this is the first collection of his prose writings to be published in English. The essays in this book, some of which were selected by the writer's daughter, Shao Xiaohong, include long essays such as “One Man Talking” and “A Year in Shanghai” as well as several shorter essays on subjects as diverse as the caricatures of Miguel Covarrubias, woodblock
printing, and pictorial magazines—all of which were published in Shao’s own magazines.