On the outskirts of one town, a pickup truck like theirs had flipped off the road. It lay belly up, its wheels splayed like the limbs of some roadkill. Next to it crouched family members, crying. Two bodies covered with blood lay in the midst of strewn vegetables.

“Lot of accidents in China. Bad roads, bad drivers,” Ming-Ji said, and Nola thought that there but for the grace of God were she and Lulu. And their trip had barely begun.

Ming-Ji said something to the old driver, and he slowed down but did not stop while she viewed the scene. In the wide field beside the accident, men and women, young and old, all in the bluish or gray Mao work clothes, cut sugarcane. They loaded wooden wheelbarrows or handcarts. No one came to check on the victims.

Nola glanced at Ming-Ji.

“Get you and others out more important,” Ming-Ji answered her unspoken question. “We stop, and everyone run to see you, then tell police about foreigner. And my friends are waiting in train station.”

What others was Ming-Ji saving? Nola glanced at the physician’s profile. It was hard to fathom the kind of harsh medical choices this intrepid woman faced every day.

When the sun was high in the sky, the truck stopped at a village with small huts and sparse tiny gardens beside a canal only ten feet wide. Only the glimpse of an occasional lantern or embroidered red curtain hinted at things Chinese.

Nola pressed money on Ming-Ji and the two men, and the three set out to buy food. She stayed in the cab of the pickup, bending down to avoid detection. She perched a coolie hat on top of her baseball cap and peeked at the bare-bottomed children who jumped in and out of wooden dinghies tied to the dock. Ducks and pigs splashed in the mud. Ravens soared, shrieked and dove into a garbage pile. The air was putrid.

Ming-Ji and the men brought back woven steam baskets. They drove out of the village and stopped by a shed made of vine trellises. This late in the season, the vines had lost most of their leaves, except for a few that still clung along with clusters of shrunken grape buds that had never blossomed. Bees buzzed about as the three Chinese, chattering excitedly, laid out a feast of pickled eggplant, salted eggs, sticky cakes stuffed with bean paste, cabbage cooked with scallion, small fried fish with their heads and tails, and hot tea in a large thermos. They shared the screw-on cap of the thermos as their collective cup. Nola asked to have her water bottle refilled, but Ming-Ji wouldn’t permit her to drink unboiled well water.

The young man kept staring at Nola. Finally, Ming-Ji spoke to him in a harsh tone, and the old man slapped him on the head. Nola lowered her gaze.