The title The Way of the World came into being from a near drunken stupor after several glasses of wine on the third day of the author’s arrival in Paris in 1971. He was pursuing a dream. He was there to challenge life, but equally to find himself. At 26, his life was in turmoil. Could he fulfill that dream and become the hero of his own life? Michael Jian received his bachelor’s degree from the Citadel in 1966. He received graduate degrees from the Sorbonne in 1976. In 2013 he earned his doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, having lived in four foreign countries and worked in or traveled to twenty-three others. I shall become a writer, he told himself that night in Paris long ago. He wrote forty-six pages that night. Waking up the next morning, he tore them up. Great expectations, Mister Dickens, he muttered. Decades later he was to remember Owen. The author lives in Newport Beach, California. He visits family in China regularly.