"Which US president's family built their fortune on opium?" "Did the Jesuits teach the Chinese how to build better war machines?" "Was Chiang Kai-shek a hit-man for Shanghai mobsters?" The answers to these questions and more are to found in this rollicking history of China and its tempestuous relationship with the outside world. Tabloid journalist and China hand Geoffrey Summers digs deep into the nation's past to bring readers a blunt, often hilarious history of missteps and mishaps.