I’m here, I think to myself again, yet what I really mean is: I’m home.

* * *

The longer I stay in this country, the more words I collect.

It happens naturally, as if they’ve been hidden in the corners of my mind this whole time, waiting for me to brush away the dust. I’m staring out at the mountains beyond the city, their highest peaks painted indigo and softening with distance, when I remember the character shan, followed by the characters for rivers and lakes. When a stray dog comes bounding up to us in the streets and I crouch down to stroke the soft, dappled fur on its belly, the word keai forms on my lips, containing within it the same character for love. I learn how to say tao yan, for “annoying,” when Cyrus bumps against my shoulders on the escalator or steals the mango jelly from my bag at lunch, and I say it to him so often that soon it’s as familiar to me as his name. I learn how to pay by zhifu, with a tap of the phone, and how to ask for more space by shouting rang yi rang in every crowd, and how to ask for more time. I learn the difference between hai shui, for “seawater,” and he shui, for “drinking water,” when I accidentally ask for the former at a restaurant and the waitress offers me nothing but a bewildered look in response. I learn that shui itself can be used as an insult, but only if there’s too much of it. I learn plenty of insults and curses, thanks to the boys at the back of the bus. Under Oliver’s unwanted influence, I learn a dozen pickup lines, all of which are so nauseating I do my best to forget them immediately after.

The word guimi—“best friend”—unfurls in my mind one evening while Daisy and I are making friendship bracelets on the carpeted floor of our hotel room, the shiny beads she’d bought at the market scattered between us. The word kaixin—“happiness”—trickles sweetly down my throat like the snow pear and rock sugar soup we were given for breakfast during our last day in Anhui.

And the word mei, for “beautiful,” finds its way to me as we wander deeper and deeper into a bamboo forest. It’s the kind of beautiful that sneaks up on you. One moment we’re batting away leaves from the overgrown shrubbery, grumbling about the wet grass and the mud and the steep, uneven paths, and the next moment I gaze up and my breath catches. The late-afternoon light prickles through the foliage, and thousands of bamboos curve elegantly forward over a lake, their reflections blurred and distorted like watercolor. The lake itself is such a vivid, crystal blue it hardly seems real.