Crossroads

Introduction to Crossroads

What shapes the course of history: inevitability or chance? If history were a speeding train, inevitability would be its powerful engine, driving it forward. Anyone who tried to make the wheels turn backward would be crushed. Chance, meanwhile, would be a humble switch operator. A single pull at a crucial junction could send the train down an entirely different track, determining the direction history takes.

History does not need the sort of hero found in traditional alternate-history or fantasy novels, a visitor from the future who "turns the tide" and changes its course. A gentle nudge at a few critical moments is enough to send it along another path, in keeping with its own momentum.

The purpose of this novel is to do my best to show you a future China that should have existed, but was changed by one or two chance events, and to reveal the true face of Chinese civilization, so often misunderstood.