Farewell the Dragon: American Boomer in China Before the Boom (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781735251400)

Nate Scheutt, American, 35, is pulled into a politically charged murder investigation when he stumbles onto the bodies of two young Europeans on a prestigious Beijing university campus. Gradually Nate discovers the case is entwined with an international quest for a small stone tablet, (a stele) that might contain the key to ancient China's long-lost link with the West.

In the 1980's, old Beijing's walls and hutong alleyways were disappearing, victims of Deng Xiaoping's proclamation 致富光 荣 (To get rich is glorious ). While juggling teaching English, his business, (and women), Nate seeks refuge at the bar on the roof of the Friendship Hotel with a legation of self-imposed exiles from the both sides of the Cold War. There he enters a netherworld of sex, spies, strange religion and the hidden history of China's Cultural Revolution.