This is a 'really as it was' tale of a middle-aged journalist throwing up his settled life in provincial England to become a professor in China in the late 1980s, only to fall in love with China, his students and all their fellows who were massacred in the Tiannanmen massacre of 1989. Into every life a moment comes when, if you take it, your life could change for ever. This happened to Michael Niblock when, after 40 years working mainly as a sub-editor on local and national newspapers in Scotland and the North of England, he drained his bank account of his last £3000 to take himself, wife and youngest son on a 'first time abroad' trip to distant China to visit their eldest son, who was working on the English language newspaper China Daily. It was only a trip of two weeks in the cold January of 1987, but while there, encouraged by new American friends at a very jolly party, he wrote a job application on a paper dinner napkin.