February Flowers

Wu, Fan

Picador

Set in modern China, February Flowers tells the stories of two young women’s journeys to self-discovery and reconciliation with the past. Seventeen-year-old Ming and twenty-four-year-old Yan have very little in common other than studying in the same college. Ming, idealistic and preoccupied, lives in a world of books, music, and imagination. Yan, by contrast, is sexy, cynical, and wild, with no sense of home. Yet when the two meet, they soon become best friends. Their friendship is brief, almost accidental, but intense, and it changes Ming’s world forever. Insightful, sophisticated, and rich with complex characters, February Flowers captures a society torn between tradition and modernity, dogma and freedom. It is a meditation on friendship, family, love, loss and redemption, and how a background shapes a life.

Literature & Fiction

World Literature

Doubleday, Canada

Set in modern China, February Flowers tells the stories of two young women’s journeys to self-discovery and reconciliation with the past. Seventeen-year-old Ming and twenty-four-year-old Yan have very little in common other than studying in the same college. Ming, idealistic and preoccupied, lives in a world of books, music, and imagination. Yan, by contrast, is sexy, cynical, and wild, with no sense of home. Yet when the two meet, they soon become best friends. Their friendship is brief, almost accidental, but intense, and it changes Ming’s world forever. Insightful, sophisticated, and rich with complex characters, February Flowers captures a society torn between tradition and modernity, dogma and freedom. It is a meditation on friendship, family, love, loss and redemption, and how a background shapes a life. From the Hardcover edition.

Anchor Canada

Modeling and State Estimation of Automotive Lithium-Ion Batteries

Engineering & Transportation

Wang, Shunli

Fernández, Carlos

Qiao, Jialu

Automotive

CRC-Press

Set in modern China, February Flowers tells the stories of two young women's journeys to self-discovery and reconciliation with the past. Seventeen-year-old Ming and twenty-four-year-old Yan have very little in common other than studying at the same college. Ming, idealistic and preoccupied, lives in her own world of books, music, and imagination. Yan, by contrast, is sexy but cynical, beautiful but wild, with no sense of home. When the two meet and become friends, Ming's world is forever changed. But their differences in upbringing and ideology ultimately drive them apart, leaving each to face her dark secret alone. Insightful, sophisticated, and rich with complex characters, February Flowers captures a society torn between tradition and modernity, dogma and freedom. It is a meditation on friendship, family, love, loss, and redemption and how a background shapes a life.

United States

Washington Square Press

Stretching from mid-century China to both coasts of the United States at the turn of the millennium, Beautiful as Yesterday tells the powerful and captivating story of three Chinese women from the same family. It is a penetrating exploration of what it means to belong, what it means to be a family, and the impact of history and memories on one's life.
"Speaking English is like taking a bath with my clothes on," Mary Chang admits after having lived in America for more than ten years. Under the facade of being a devoted wife, mother, churchgoer, and a hightech professional, she is tormented by adultery, her grudge toward her parents, and her despair at work. Ingrid, Mary's attractive estranged sister, prefers her bohemian friends' Latin culture to her own, though her college boyfriend's tragic death never fails to haunt her. And when their widowed mother Wang Fenglan, a state factory retiree, travels from China to America for the first time under Mary's request to explore the possibility of emigrating, she awkwardly reunites the family and unknowingly stirs up buried family tensions and secrets.

Beautiful as Yesterday: A Novel

Atria Books

Mary and Ingrid are sisters who were born and brought up in China but now reside in the United States. Mary is the older of the two; seemingly a devoted wife, mother, and churchgoer. Yet she is tormented by adultery, a grudge toward her parents, and her despair at work. Her estranged sister Ingrid has never settled for anything; she prefers her bohemian friends’ culture to her own, and is haunted by her college boyfriend’s tragic death. When their widowed mother travels to the United States for the first time, they can’t avoid a family get-together. Amid all it stirs up, it becomes clear that the uneasy relationship between the sisters has roots deeper than either had ever acknowledged—and extends to their parents and their homeland. Stretching from mid-century China to the United States at the turn of the millennium, Beautiful as Yesterday explores issues of identity, of family and friendship, love and loss. Written in beautifully crafted prose, this is a penetrating exploration of what it means to belong, and the impact of history and memories on one’s life.

This brief examines issues of spectrum allocation for the limited resources of radio spectrum. It uses a game-theoretic perspective, in which the nodes in the wireless network are rational and always pursue their own objectives. It provides a systematic study of the approaches that can guarantee the system’s convergence at an equilibrium state, in which the system performance is optimal or sub-optimal. The author provides a short tutorial on game theory, explains game-theoretic channel allocation in clique and in multi-hop wireless networks and explores challenges in designing game-theoretic mechanisms for dynamic channel redistribution. Since designing a completely secure mechanism is extremely expensive or impossible in most of distributed autonomous systems, it is more beneficial to study misbehavior of the nodes and develop light-weighted game-theoretic channel allocation mechanisms. With a mix of theoretical and hands-on information, the brief traces the concepts of game theory, the current state of spectrum allocation in wireless networks and future competition for resources. Thorough yet accessible, the content is ideal for researchers and practitioners working on spectrum redistribution. It is also a helpful resource for researchers and advanced-level students interested in game theory and wireless communications.

Game Theoretic Approaches for Spectrum Redistribution (SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering)

Computers & Technology

Games & Strategy Guides

Springer

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Books by Wu, Fan