"This unique book explores the wide range of views of Britons in China from the late 1700s to the 1840s as they chafed under the restrictions imposed by the Canton System. Carroll brings a seminal period in the Chinese-British relationship, which revolved around tea and opium, to vivid life...

"After an Oregon mother finds an SOS letter in a box of Halloween decorations, a story unfolds about the man who wrote it: a Chinese political prisoner, sentenced without trial to work grueling hours at a "reeducation" camp-manufacturing the products sold in our own big-box stores."