This week on q a our guest is journalist and author who discusses his new book, age of ambition chasing fortune, truth, and faith in the new chin china. Host evan osnos in your new book, under the acknowledgments, you start out by saying none of my grand parents lived to see the book but they are responsible for its conception. Tell us more. Well, my grandparents on my fathers side came from poland and my mothers father was a diplomat sent to hungary and kicked out accused of being a spy but he wasnt. But the experience of being ejected from poland and hungry founded a backdrop for the life under authority. It wasnt explicit parts of the conversation but i was interested in what it felt like to live in a country in which there were constraints on what you could care about and what your values were like and when there was a moment in my life where you could do that china fascinated me. Host when you went there in there in 1996 could you speak chinese . Guest i was starting to speak it.