Living treasures

the long version

"Gu Bao has always cherished a childhood memory of a starving panda who ate a hen in order to nurse her cub. Bao grows up to become a law student at a provincial Chinese university during the tumultuous Tiananmen Square protest in 1989. Falling in love with a dashing young soldier, she promptly finds herself pregnant and faced with the potential end of her academic career. Bao finds out what it feels like to be an endangered species. She searches for her inner strength while exploring the evocative Sichuan mountain landscape, discovers a panda mother caught in a poacher's snare, and befriends an expectant young mother hiding from villainous one-child policy enforcers bent on giving compulsory abortions. All three females struggle against society to preserve the treasure of their little ones. Can Bao defy the one-child policy to bestow the gift of life upon a rural family, and help a giant panda along the way? She devises a daring plan to change the lives of everyone around her."--Page 4 of cover.