The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai — Ruiyan Xu

Li Jing, a successful, happily married businessman, is dining at a hotel in Shanghai when a gas explosion shatters the building, leaving him unable to titter a word of Chinese. The only words that emerge from his mouth are faltering phrases of the English he spoke as a child growing up in Virginia. Unable to communicate with his wife, Meiling, whom Li once courted with beautiful words, the family turns to an American neurologist, Rosalyn Neal. Rosalyn is as lost as Li in this bewildering city, where the two form a bond that Meiling does not need a translator to understand.