An account of China's past and present, how a small group of people at the edges of the Yellow River evolved to become the state of China today. Despite decades of a relatively open door relationship with the rest of the world, China is still a mystery to many outside it. How does China work, what does it want, why does it want it, and what does its rise to global power mean for the rest of the world? As the twenty-first century looks set to be the stage for a battle about competing geopolitical ideals, these are urgent questions for everyone with an interest in what the future might bring. A world of its own, China is both a microcosm and an amplification of questions and events in the wider world. China's story offers us an opportunity to hold a mirror to ourselves: to our own assumptions, to our values, and to our ideas about the most important question of all: what it means to be human in the world of the state. Epic in scope, this is the story of how China became the state it is today and how its worldview is based on what has gone before. Weaving together inspirations, ideas, wars and dreams, Jeanne-Marie Gescher reveals the heart of what it means to be Chinese and how the past impacts the present.