I finally got a golden story-line for a book (a memoir, no less) that would for sure earn a permanent position on the New York Times bestseller list.

A man named Ivan Rudolf Chen got caught in the heat of Stalin's Great Purge in the 1930s for writing a thesis on the famine in Ukraine. After being arrested, beaten, and executed by shooting, he miraculously survived and fled to Germany. He plotted an assassination of Hitler but the bomb he planted in Hitler's car didn't work. Gestapo arrested him and threw him into a concentration camp, which was equivalent to a death sentence. But Ivan Rudolf Chen survived despite experiencing and witnessing many atrocities. Liberated by General Patton's 3rd Army towards the end of 2nd World War, he decided to emigrate to China against all odds. He settled down in a modest house in Shanghai and taught languages at a university. He was adored by kids in the neighborhood and was affectionately called 'great beard uncle'. One of his favorite young friends was a girl, Pingping, from next door. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, he was asked to leave China by Chairman Mao himself because of a report of his on the famine in China a few years before. This time, he finally got it right by coming to the United States. A late bloomer in life, he nevertheless went on to find love and invent GPS, and lived happily ever after.