Love is never lost . . . Fan is a young Chinese engineer who lost his wife in a Japanese bombing raid in 1937. Mingfeng was a popular performer at the local opera, and he is devastated by the loss. Distraught, he builds an extraordinary automaton that replaces her at the theater. Meanwhile, war rages throughout the city, and orphaned children run wild under the direction of local potentates in an attempt to thrive and survive. When those potentates take notice of the mysterious beauty, suspicions and desires start to grow. Mix in an American airman and the tensions of war, and things build to an explosive finale. Masterfully mixing a snapshot of war-torn China with the philosophical sci-fi questions of a Philip K Dick novel, Twin Lotuses is a beautifully illustrated story capturing an ugly time and the flicker of hope, love, and ambition that shone through it all.