A child of China's Cultural Revolution, Li Lanni has always persevered through hardship. Despite her many health struggles, including cancer, Lanni went through life with a smile on her face until she was diagnosed with depression in 2003.

This powerful memoir, told in part through diary entries written soon after her diagnosis, follows the extraordinary story of her life, from her upbringing on communist military bases to her coming of age in the high-pressure, freewheeling commercial centre of Shenzhen. At once deeply personal and profoundly universal, this story of cancer and mental illness captures the life and times of a generation struggling for health and happiness in a rapidly changing China.

Prizes

Commended for International Publications of Chinese Classics 2009

Li Lanni writes from her experiences in her fight against cancer, depression and their subsequent relapses. Her writing consistently examines and explores mental health issues among the Chinese people of today, the difficulties they are confronted with, as well as the problems that stem from an increasingly modernised world.