A Norwegian engineer innocently undertook to irrigate the Northern province of Shensi. His story is a fantastic one, of high comedy and frustration, muddle and success, providing a unique glimpse of a China that, basically, changes little through the centuries. Sigurd Eliassen, employed before the war by the International Relief Organization in Peking, received an urgent summons to 'an uncommonly interesting hydraulic job' in Shensi, a province celebrated for droughts, famines and bandits. Eliassen soon discovered that the project had already caused much bad blood and was, in the main, impracticable although a pilot scheme was possible. He found that China becomes a mysterious duality when the smell of money is in the air. With civil war, intrigue, various forms of 'squeeze', sabotage and attempted murder, the project had no lack of incidents, but when Eliassen finally left Shensi, having escaped from the Communists, who held him to ransom, the parched plain had changed from green to gold between spring and autumn. This strange and hectic story is made all the more compelling by the many people who hindered and helped the engineer: Mrs. Miao, an attractive though eminently strong-minded widow; her eldest son, a hostile character in blue spectacles; and even such humble and endearing figures as the two drivers, Russian and Chinese, Malik and Wang. The Norwegian engineer narrowly escaped death; his legendary forerunner Cheng had not been so fortunate, he never returned from his mission.
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