What would you do if given the chance to relocate to a far-off country, leaving everything you know behind? Part love story, part travelogue, Call Me Tai Tai explores author Joan Kelleher’s life-changing journey as she follows her husband to 1980’s China. Departing her beloved Hawaii, where she raised her children and carved out a career, it’s Joan’s time to leave the nest. Throwing caution to the wind, she gives up her predictable future to follow her instincts and take the biggest gamble of her life. But it wouldn’t be just a simple move. She’d need to leave her grown son, who had been diagnosed four years previously, with a crippling mental illness. Still, his doctors believed his parents’ relocation could be the change he needed to find more independence. And maybe, Joan hoped, it could also be the chance she needed to salvage her broken marriage. For anyone looking to begin anew or find their footing after their children have left the nest, this memoir can stand as a rallying cry and inspiration. A two-year assignment turned into many more and Call Me Tai Tai recounts Joan’s adventures, from the humbling spiritual visits to Tibet to her discovery of a love for hunting for antiques. Armchair travelers will delight in this breathtaking tour of the scenic beauty and culture of Asia, that is as much a chronicle of change and self-discovery. Throughout her journey, Joan provides an heartfelt recounting of both the beauty and the hardships of the land, while introducing a myriad of unforgettable characters as Joan rediscovers herself. Insightful, poignant, and exciting, Call Me Tai Tai is the story of an inquisitive, adventurous heart in a magnificent and magical world. At its heart, it is the universal story of the power that love and faith can have on a family.

Tales of Ai Tai To offers readers the ability to understand this ancient spiritual way and apply it to their lives. After each story there is a section called “Something to think about” where the reader is challenged to consider the teaching in the story and what it means to them. Kurt Aschermann is a follower of Tao and has written four books about coaching sports, a children’s chapter book and a book about the search for meaning and a spiritual life.

I am the Emperor of the Nine Layered Heavens of the Myriad Domain! My decree is so vast that in this world, there is no one who dares to disobey it! This was the story of an ordinary boy like Lin Dong growing up to become the Nine Heavens Emperor! Experts were as numerous as the clouds, and they could also be seen how Lin Dong managed to carve a path through countless geniuses and powerhouses! If a beauty falls in love, how could the main character choose?

For the past few decades, China has made the news on a daily basis, and Westerners have flocked over to capitalize on its business boom. While in China, it's one thing to enjoy a short hotel stay and some casual city explorations, but it's another to actually live there. After leading a comfortable life in charming Shaker Heights, Ohio, trailing spouse Shelly Aschkenase suddenly found her family shuttled off to Shanghai for a two-and-a-half-year stint. While countless journalists, teachers, and service mission representatives have described their gritty and heart-warming experiences in the Middle Kingdom, no one has documented the daily dramas and delights of pampered executives' spouses' lives. Thus, Call Me Tai Tai was born. Expect the unexpected in her Asian-expat version of Dallas, as the extraordinary experiences of the unique world she inhabited spring to life. There, a country once isolated and frozen in time hurtles into the twenty-first century at Mach 3 speed, perhaps best symbolized by the way it's iconic ancient wall constructed to keep intruders out ironically reinvented itself, now eagerly inviting millions of visitors per year to tramp over its stones or undertake its challenging marathon. Grab a cup of jasmine tea and enjoy tales of the craziness, the follies, the glamour, and the pleasures encompassing the rarified domain of the early 2000s "Shanghai Tai Tai" in a land struggling to balance the old with the new.

This is the story of Sensei Reese Rigbys journey into Isshin-ryu karate-do from beginner white belt to ninth-degree black belt grandmaster, starting with his school of fourteen students in 1973 and growing to approximately three hundred karate students and an additional one hundred combined cardio kickboxing and tai chi students in 2012. In writing this book, Sensei Rigby wanted to share his story with his students, family, and others who are interested in a martial arts journey. This book is a tribute to his Isshin-ryu instructors, Grandmaster Angi Uezu and Grandmaster Tom Lewis, and his tai chi instructor, Sifu Diane Cannon.

In February 2006, Emily Foster ventured from Canada to China, following in the footsteps of her grandparents and great-grandparents, who had worked in China from 1920 to 1968. Throughout the course of her journey, Emily discovered a powerful new sense of family roots. She now shares her passionate account of their experiences to inspire others to make the most of life's adventures. Emily's great-grandparents left their Saskatchewan farm in 1920 and immigrated to Szechuan province, West China. Their daughter, Muriel Kitchen, grew up surrounded by missionary compound walls, amidst battling warlords, Japanese invasions, and the rise of Chinese Communism. After obtaining a nursing degree in Canada, and marrying Walton Tonge, Muriel returned to China with her new husband. They were expelled two years later by the Communist regime. Banned from China, Muriel, Walton, and their young children moved to Hong Kong. There, Muriel worked as the superintendent of an orphanage where she helped save the lives of many abandoned infants. The Banquet: My Grandma's Memories of China chronicles Muriel Tonge's unforgettable experiences in the East, and celebrates her tireless dedication to people in need.

During the tumultuous 1970s, competing warlords are killing each other to gain control of the opium grown in the Golden Triangle, the mountainous region in Southeast Asia where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Burma join. The winner in the latest opium war, Tai Los, which means "dope boss," is now the "King of the Golden Triangle." Tai Los is the leader of a militia he calls the Shan Liberation Army-a group fighting for independence from the Burmese government and the creation of a separate Shan state. To raise money for guns and to gain respectability, he has offered to sell the opium crop now under his control to the United States. When President Carter's administration decides to turn down Tia Los's offer, the CIA brings in Mike Shannon, a young drug enforcement agent from South Boston, to broker a new deal. Shannon faces two major threats as he heads into the perilous assignment: knowing that he is expendable, and the Triads. An ancient Chinese gang operating out of Hong Kong, the Triads are dependent on the Golden Triangle for their supply of heroin. Once they learn that their supply is threatened, they will not hesitate to hunt Shannon down for the sole purpose of eliminating him.

In a parallel world, perhaps not so different from our own, a marble ‘City of Enlightenment’ has been built, claiming to have eliminated negative emotions from day-to-day life. But what the oblivious ‘Whitehead’ race – citizens of the City – do not realise is that such emotions have not been abolished; only obscured behind the City Wall. When ten-year-old Zulu accidentally steps into the other – secreted – half of her seemingly perfect world, she discovers a new existence, where the Blackhead race endure every negative emotion possible in order to ensure that the Whiteheads never learn of them. The slave force behind the Wall, working to keep the City functioning, is frightening and undeserving. But, as Zulu comes to learn, the truth almost always is... Cold White Marble tells the story of eight people from every status and corner of the City, thrown together by fate and by circumstance, but not by choice. Along with Zulu, these include Goldhead (and leader) Jufu Delani, Blackhead Savanyah and the fiery - but ultimately loathed – Brownhead, widely believed to be the lowest being in existence: Tai. Their individual views and opinions of each other, distorted by hatred and prejudice, are challenged in a way they have never been before, in an epic quest to find a better world for all of them... Cold White Marble is a gripping work of adult fiction that will be enjoyed by fans of science fiction. Many elements of the story reflect the western world we live in, challenging readers’ perceptions of their own ‘perfect city’ and what secrets are hidden behind their walls.

Orphaned by a tidal wave which claims her parents and her home, Ming Pei Sha is at the mercy of a world of human squalor and degradation. Destitute, she sells her body in a loveless match with an old businessman desperate for a son. Pei Sha witnesses first-hand the savage contrasts of the teeming city of Hong Kong, where the affluence and extravagance of the financiers' palaces cannot hide the appalling poverty of the slums. A city where and ancient and proud civilisation struggles against the corruption and greed of the modern age.

An epic, heart-wrenching story of a mother and daughter's journey to their destiny. Lotus Feet. He would give his daughter the dainty feet of a courtesan. This would enhance her beauty and her price, making her future shine like a new coin. He smiled to himself, pouring fresh tea. And it would stop her from running away... When the young concubine of an old farmer in rural China gives birth to a daughter called Li-Xia, or "Beautiful One," the child seems destined to become a concubine herself. Li refuses to submit to her fate, outwitting her father's orders to bind her feet and escaping the silk farm with an English sea captain. Li takes her first steps toward fulfilling her mother's dreams of becoming a scholar—but her final triumph must be left to her daughter, Su Sing, "Little Star," in a journey that will take her from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Hong Kong on the eve of World War II.