New in paperback! Leslie Li belongs to the illustrious Lu family of Guilin, China. Her paternal grandfather, Li Zongren, was China's first elected vice president, to whom Chiang Kai-shek left control of the country when he fled to Formosa. Leslie's father was studying in the US when he met and married her American-born mother.

Nine years after the Communist takeover in 1949, Leslie's grandmother, Nai-nai, comes from China to live with her son's family in New York, bringing a whole new world of sights, smells, and tastes as she quickly takes control of the kitchen. Nai-nai's wonderfully exotic new cooking opens up the heart and mind of her American granddaughter to her Chinese heritage--and to the world. As Leslie grows into adulthood, taste becomes the keeper of memories, and food the keeper of culture. It is through her grandmother's traditional Chinese cuisine that Leslie expertly bridges the cultural divide in an America in which she is a minority--and the growing gap at home between her rigid, traditional father and her progressive American-born mother. Interspersed throughout her poignant and moving memoir are the author's personal recipes, most from Nai-nai's kitchen, that add a delicious dimension to the work.