She may have been a girl from peasant stock, brought up in "a nothing place that won't be found on any map of China". But in these twenty fragments of Fenfang's life after she `escapes' to Beijing, the skill of her humour, the tales of her loves and particularly her losses combine as gleaming coordinates to fix her new position clearly. As she tears up her own foundations, the new building of her career as a scriptwriter starts to arise.