The readers of the work will learn […] the proper methods of the survey of green-wax, and the trial of the pyx.

The 1990s confirmed the United States as the world's sole superpower. Bipolarity had disappeared with the Soviet Union; contrary to predictions, Germany and Japan had not yet turned economic muscle into military might to create a new era of “multipolarity.”

On April 1, 2001, an American surveillance plane known as an EP-3 collided with a Chinese aircraft and made an emergency landing on Hainan Island. The Chinese pilot ejected from the cockpit and died. Our twenty-four-person crew was held at a military barracks on the island and interrogated. The Iranian hostage crisis was at the forefront of my mind. This was not the way I wanted to start my relationship with China.

A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman.