I enjoyed the story. Kudos on Ms Foster for a great reading. The story itself was good, not great, primarily because of logic and plot holes. I would think that a Japanese military capable of fielding powerful AI tanks would have been capable of intercepting radio transmissions from Grandma Thinkbox, or at least have been able to track the heat signatures of Xiaoying via satellite or UAV. It was also hard to believe that the heavy-tech machinery would not have been easily countered by any number of low-tech means like rigging up several hundred armor-piercing RPGs at some point along it's patrol route and firing them all at once. Or leaving a few plastic/ceramic/wooden landmines strong enough to blow off one of its treads. Or just simply coordinate a missile attack to coincide with a home-made pipebomb planted nearby the tank designed to spray several pounds of shredded tin foil into the air, making radar tracking and counter-missile impossible. Or just bury and EMP bomb (which can be made the size of a shoebox with today's technology) in the road and trigger it right as the tank drives over. I could go on.
BTW, someone mentioned the status of women in China. The Communists were actually very pro-women's rights, and banned many practices of arranged marriages, foot-bindings, as well as instituting equal pay for women and allowing divorces. Although they didn't use women as frontline combat troops the way the Russians did, many women were used extensively as spies or guerillas against the Japanese occupation.
Also, Harbin is in northern China, where historically the Japanese occupied and controlled for the better part of WWII. China's a huge country. It's entirely possible that Japan occupied parts of China, while fighting in others parts of the country continued.
Oh yeah, Gweilo is really a catonese phrase, meaning "foreign devil". Up in Harbin, they would have probably spoken mandarin and called them Yang-gwei (foreign devil), or Ri-gwei (japanese devils).
