Their next move is to go out and buy some new clothes. Small fortunes are put out for a wardrobe full of qipaos. Chinese girls will take out loans and surety bonds just to follow the latest trend, complete slaves of fashion. For all the book learning, not an iota of common sense.

I’m five foot six and when I walk the back alleys to Sichuan University or tool over there on my Flying Pigeon bicycle, people will point and stare. “There goes the round-eyed barbarian. No doubt she’s a Western spy.”

I’m not fat by American standards, but they call me fat here, follow me and gawk at my foreignness. They chant “fatso” in the local dialect, Sichuanhua. They don’t know I speak Chinese until I turn around and lower the boom with “Cao ni ma!,” which translates into “Fuck your mother!” That little bon mot never fails to get a rise out of them. Often they retort something to the effect that I’m a cheap American whore, when in fact I’m the very model of propriety. To keep the men off me, I wear a plain gold wedding band. I tell them, “My husband got out of prison yesterday and as we speak, he’s on a flight to Chengdu. And brother, let me tell you, he’s a bad motor scooter, jealous as hell. So you better look out; he’ll nail your ass to the nearest tree.” Of course, since the Chinese have cut down every tree in the country you would have to go to Finland for a tree. My father knows nothing of this.

When pressed on matters of nationality, I claim to be Canadian. The Chinese love things American but hate America. As for Canada, they think it’s a city in southern Ecuador. Americans in China take a lot of heat over Iraq and our honorable president, George W. Bush. I learned not to admit to being American after the third or so cab driver yelled vehemently at me for voting GWB. Shit, I wasn’t even old enough to vote yet when he was elected. And good luck explaining the Electoral College to a stranger in Mandarin. Not worth the effort, so Canadian I became.

China is one of the few remaining places on earth where material goods are still cheap, though there are two prices, prices for locals and prices for foreigners. You have to bargain them down or they have contempt for you. In America you bargain down the price of a house or car, but you don’t go into a supermarket and haggle over the price of canned peas. I let Elizabeth handle this. At least she’s good for something.