Part 27 (1/2)

One evening that winter, Polat tried to call his mother in Xinjiang, but the apartment's phone service was cut off. He decided to use the public telephone near the corner of Rhode Island and Franklin. It was almost midnight. The pay phone was right across the street from the Good Ole Reliable Liquor Store.

While he was punching the numbers, a man came up from behind and said something that Polat didn't understand. He ignored the man and kept dialing Xinjiang. Before Polat could finish, he felt something pressed against his back. He whirled around and saw that the object was a handgun.

Two men: one with the gun, one in a car. ”Lay down,” said the gunman, and this time Polat understood. He dropped down; the gunman searched him. He found seventy dollars in a front pocket but somehow missed the three hundred that Polat had stashed in another pocket. The two muggers drove away on Rhode Island Avenue. Polat picked himself up and hurried back to the apartment. He had been outside for less than five minutes.

THAT WINTER, I visited the United States for a month. I spent Christmas with my parents and sisters in Missouri, and I saw friends and editors in various cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. None of these places felt truly familiar. I had grown up in one American small town and attended college in another; since graduation I had lived overseas. There wasn't a single big city in America that I could negotiate without a map.

To me, the capital felt the most foreign. The layout was intimidating; there never seemed to be enough people to fill the District. In January, the monuments looked particularly deserted: empty paths, yellowed gra.s.s. The sky was the color of cold metal; the forecast called for snow. I took the metro to Rhode Island Avenue, surrounded by unfamiliar faces. The first person I recognized was a Uighur.

He had waited outside the station, on foot-his Honda was in the shop. We grinned and shook hands, just like the old days in Yabaolu. His face looked thinner; he had lost weight since coming to America. He still chain-smoked, but now he bought Marlboro Lights instead of Hilton. Back in Beijing, he had preferred Marlboro but usually didn't buy them, because of all the fakes.

We walked to his apartment, and he laughed when I took off my coat.

”Your s.h.i.+rt's the same as mine,” he said.

I looked down and realized that we had dressed identically: olive green Caterpillar-brand denim s.h.i.+rts.

”Did you buy that in Yabaolu?” he asked.

”Yes. In that new market in Chaoyangmenwai.”

”It's jiade jiade,” he said, laughing. ”Fake. Same as mine. How much did you pay?”

That was a question that had no good answer in China; the moment anybody asked, you knew you had gotten ripped off.

”Maybe seventy yuan,” I said, hopelessly.

”I paid forty,” Polat said. ”They probably charged you more because you're a foreigner.”

Don't miss the next book by your favorite author. Sign up now for Author Tracker by visiting .

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE without my family. I owe a great deal to all the Hesslers and Gundys who kept in touch during my two years in Sichuan, and thanks for your encouragement and support while I was writing. I promise that someday I'll find subjects closer to home. without my family. I owe a great deal to all the Hesslers and Gundys who kept in touch during my two years in Sichuan, and thanks for your encouragement and support while I was writing. I promise that someday I'll find subjects closer to home.

From the first trip downriver to the final revision of the ma.n.u.script, Adam Meier has been everything I could ask of a friend. In particular, thanks for being such a steadying influence in Fuling, and thanks for all your help with the editing-at times, a difficult and delicate process. We've tilted at our share of windmills together and not for a moment would I have rather been there with anybody else.

I was also fortunate to share the joys and challenges of Fuling life with Sunni Fa.s.s and Noreen Finnegan, who were great sitemates. I couldn't have started my time in Sichuan with a better group than Peace Corps China 3: Tamy Chapman, Sean Coady, Mike Goettig, Rose Karkoski, Karen Lauck, Lisa McCallum, Rob Schmitz, Craig Simons, Sarah Telford, Rebecca Steinle Wallihan, Andrew and Molly Watkins, and Adam Weiss. I also want to thank Travis Klingberg, Christopher Marquardt, Mike Meyer, and the Wolken family for their friends.h.i.+p, both in Sichuan and afterwards.

The Peace Corps China staff provided me with a perfect combination of support and freedom while I was in Fuling, especially Dr. William Speidel, Kandice Christian, Don McKay, and Zhan Yimei.

A number of editors helped me with revisions. In particular, I was fortunate to work with Doug Hunt of the University of Missouri, who was always generous with his time and good advice. I appreciated the comments and recommendations of Scott Kramer, Matt Metzger, Angela Hessler, Terzah Ewing of the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal, and Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal's Wall Street Journal's Beijing bureau. I benefited from the recommendations of a former Fuling student who read the ma.n.u.script and gave me a local's reaction-I won't name you here, but I very much appreciate your help. And I want to thank John McPhee of Princeton University for both guidance and friends.h.i.+p; your encouragement while I was living in Fuling helped get this book started. Beijing bureau. I benefited from the recommendations of a former Fuling student who read the ma.n.u.script and gave me a local's reaction-I won't name you here, but I very much appreciate your help. And I want to thank John McPhee of Princeton University for both guidance and friends.h.i.+p; your encouragement while I was living in Fuling helped get this book started.

Thanks to Tim Duggan, my editor at HarperCollins, and William Clark, my agent, for your enthusiasm and support for this project.

My largest debt of grat.i.tude is to my friends in Fuling. I hope that my stories reflect your generosity, patience, and understanding. In particular I want to thank my former students, who are now working all across China, from the highlands of Tibet to southern boom towns like Shenzhen. Most of you are now teachers, and many of you are living in your own Sichuanese river towns, along the Yangtze, the Wu, the Longxi, the Changtou, the Meixi, the Yancang, the Quxi, the Daxi-all of the small and remote rivers that run through eastern Sichuan, where the schools are simple and the cla.s.ses crowded but the teachers do the best they can. I hope that you are blessed with students as wonderful as mine.