“Suppose that on Monday morning, all of you go back to your school. You go to your desks. And what do you see? You see that there are doodles and marks all over your desks, chewing gum stuck under the seat, one of your classroom slippers is missing. How would you feel?”

Silence.

“For instance, you,” he said, turning to point right at me, me with the lowest registration number, “would you be happy?”

Everyone looked at me.

I blushed bright red and shook my head.

“So you see,” he said, turning back to the class again, as everyone’s eyes shifted back to the front of the room, “you must not mark up the desks or stick gum under the seats or go fooling around with what’s inside the desks. Is that understood?”

Silence.

“Chinese children speak up louder when they answer.”

Yes, came forty replies. Or, rather, thirty-nine. My mouth wouldn’t open.

“Well, then, heads up, chests out.”

We looked up and swelled to attention.

“And be proud.”

•   •   •

SOME TWENTY YEARS ON, I’ve completely forgotten the results of the test. All I remember is the school kids walking quietly up the hill and the Chinese teacher. That, and how to hold my head up with pride.

3.

THE TOWN WHERE I WENT to high school was a port town, so there were quite a few Chinese around. Not that they seemed any different from the rest of us. Nor did they have any special traits. They were as different from each other as could be, and in that way they were the same as us. When I think about it, the curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book.

There were several Chinese kids in my class. Some got good grades, others didn’t. There was the cheerful type and the dead-quiet character. One who lived in an almost palatial spread, another in a sunless one-room-kitchenette walk-up. Really, all sorts. Though I never did get especially close to any of them. I wasn’t your let’s-make-friends sort of guy. Japanese or Chinese or anything else, made no difference.

I did, however, meet up with one of them ten years later, though I probably shouldn’t get into that just yet.

Meanwhile, the scene shifts to Tokyo.

MY NEXT CHINESE—that is, not counting those high-school Chinese classmates whom I didn’t especially speak to—was a shy girl I got to know at a part-time job during the spring of my sophomore year. She was nineteen, like me, and petite, and pretty. We worked together for three weeks during the break.