Irreverent eye

Way of Dog: A Canine Guide to Ancient Chinese Wisdom By: Cherry Denman Publisher: Penguin/ Viking Publication year: 2014 Pages: 131 Price: $10.68

The most eye-opening change, she says, is the young Chinese, who have so much independence (and money) compared to their parents in their youth.

"Last week I saw a gay guy in a glorious camp outfit and makeup hailing a cab - with a dog - and I was just amazed," she says during a dim-sum lunch in Sanlitun. "Unimaginable in Beijing in 1985. The kids are amazing - I just love them."

In one of Denman's previous books, Diplomatic Incidents: Memoirs of an (un) Diplomatic Wife, she learned that illustrating is more fun than writing, she says. In that book, she merrily recounts the challenges of living abroad - from finding a holiday turkey in 1983 Beijing to sharing an overnight sleeper on the train to Xi'an with an ancient Chinese general and his interpreter. She admits that her efforts to learn Chinese have been a total loss, but blesses her first language tutor for teaching her to love Cantonese film-gossip magazines (Where else can you read: "She's the richest girl in China, but she's been locked away for eating her own baby"?)

That 2010 book is an intimate narrative, sometimes gossipy and sometimes Advice From Aunt Cherry. ("Storage is for sissies," she writes in an ode to ruthless packing.) With her cheerful irreverence about toilets, packing, almost anything French and multicultural Christmas Eve Mass ("Rubbeesh, they are rubbeesh," an African choir member mutters as Iraqi carolers belted out Adeste Fidelis), you'd think the British Foreign Office, which took a look at the book before publication, would have collectively gasped and fainted at the regular appearance of phrases such as "snotlike" and "naked Ukranians".

"They were great," she says of her husband Charlie, the first reader, and his bosses. "They pointed out about two small things that might have been taken the wrong way, and that was it."