THE DAY OF THE FALSE DRAGON

Communist China today, near Peking, is the background of an honest if naive story of two young science teachers in a once Christian school and their ideological conflicts with the post-Liberation regime. The girl Ling Ning and the boy Lu Min have both been raised with non-Communist ideals- Ling Ning with a deep respect for Confucianism and Christianity and Lu Min with an all pervading Christianity. When they come to the school at Wangshan, their position as science teachers has its strange network of complications. The hard headed politics teacher Miss Pu, baits Ling Ning at every step and presents arguments for pure science over the superstition of religion- in ironical contrast to Ling Ning's and Lu Min's goals. Lu Min finds he cannot be true to himself under communism, even though it professes freedom of religion. By the time Ling Ning and Lu Min have been inevitably forced to leave their jobs, many aspects of the New China have come into focus. But the conclusion is unsatisfactory for it posits their hope of working through science and Christianity for the New China, which now seems unattainable.