“A billion men and women are studying you, just as they do every foreigner they encounter on the street. But while the citizens of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have seen many Westerners, there are sixty more cities in China with over one million in population each—sixty cities!—plus thousands of other villages whose people have never met a foreigner.” His words came out crooked, like the side of his lower lip that bounced with the pipe. “Through TV and through your music—even if it’s pirated—you are reaching these people in a way no other Westerner ever has. While we can’t deliver to them a political message of democracy, we can bring to them the feel of personal freedom and individual choice with the image you project, with the songs you sing—with the spreading of American culture in whichever form—so the masses will not see us as the imperialistic villains their government sometimes still portrays. You are being studied and emulated.”

She wanted to yank the stupid pipe out of his mouth and hurl it into the useless fireplace. “I’m a singer, not a political animal. And none of this has anything to do with Lulu, the baby I need your help to adopt.”

“You’re not a ‘political animal’? What do you think your job was when you agreed to be our goodwill ambassador?” He rose to his feet and paced by the coffee table. His large frame loomed above Nola, blocking her view of the room.

“You must understand that the Chinese have accomplished their nation’s prosperity and stability by instituting national discipline and a code of individual and group responsibility. Yes, the government controls every niche in society, and at times it seems to us a social experiment gone awry. That is because we forget that communism here was grafted onto traditions of obedience going back thousands of years. So when we barge in with our Judeo-Christian mores, judge this country by our values, and meddle in their affairs, we look no different than the Portuguese or the British who humiliated them for centuries. We are just another imperialistic, Western aggressor. Their resentment is understandable.”

She was on safe ground again. “They won’t resent my adopting this baby. Thousands of American couples have adopted here and were welcomed.”

He broadened the circle of his pacing and strode behind the couches. “You are a public figure. The incident with that baby literally thrust upon you was captured by dozens of cameras. The hoopla around it—with commentary by reporters in the U.S., Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia—happens to be extremely uncomplimentary to your hosts. Every entertainment TV show is outdoing the next with talk about the one-child policy, piling on criticism of the Chinese government without even trying to understand the context or to present the circumstances. It is this crisis we are trying to contain.”