The Chinese Ginger Jars is a bright and intimate portrait of the adventures, trials, and achievements of an American housewife who lived through dangerous days in modern China. When Myra Scovel arrived in Peking in 1930 with her medical missionary husband and infant son, China was a land steeped in an ancient culture, mellow as the smooth cream ivory of its curio shops, relaxed as the curves of a temple roof against the sky. Twenty-one years later—as the Scovels were forced to leave China by the Communists—it was a country of fear, of terror, of hatred toward the foreigner. The dramatic events that transformed China are recounted here from the fresh and poignant viewpoint of an extraordinary American wife and mother.