I later learned that I was the only interviewee who expressed a keen interest in the liberal arts. The others all wanted to specialize in the hard sciences. That might have given me an edge in my application. In fact, when I later ran into Professor Daniels on campus, he smiled and said he remembered me, impressed by my “bold and heartfelt answers” in the interview.

  Yawei and Yasheng came back around midafternoon. At the sight of me, they rushed over and hugged me, pressing their faces against my waist and beaming with happiness. I went with them to their room, in which they each had a computer that sat on a desk beside their identical beds. Even their lamps were identical. They showed me a war game that had a lot of monsters and flying creatures. I pretended to be interested, just to humor them. An eviscerated laptop sat on the floor in a corner of the room. Yawei, bespectacled and half a head shorter than Yasheng, was a computer whiz. He had been assembling his own laptop. They had started learning English at school this year. They showed me their textbooks, which were full of platitudes, such as “I love my motherland! We must work hard to build a harmonious society!”

  “What does ‘a harmonious society’ mean?” I was amazed that such a slogan, coined by the party’s Propaganda Department just a few years ago, appeared in a children’s English textbook, where a word like “harmonious” was too big, too much of a mouthful for beginning learners.

  They both shook their heads and couldn’t answer. I said, “If your teacher asks you to read out this sentence again, you should ask her what ‘a harmonious society’ is like.”

  More surprisingly, their pronunciation was deplorable, incomprehensible, as though their tongues had been crippled. If they continued to learn English this way, they might become messed up, never able to speak the language clearly and fluently. I told Meichin, “English is taught differently in Beijing, where the teachers are much better. In my high school, we actually had two American teachers.” I knew it would cost a fortune to have private English tutors, but it would be a better investment than the money spent on luxury cars, brand-name bags, jewelry.

  “I wish I had known this earlier,” she said, genuinely worried. “What should we do? Both your dad and I want the boys to speak English like you in the future.”

  “Maybe hire a private tutor to help them with English. Today I can record a few lessons for them so they can follow my way of speaking when they practice.”

  “That’s great. We can’t thank you enough, Lulu.”

  I read out eight lessons from their textbook. The recording was clear and crisp, so Yawei and Yasheng were impressed. Yawei said, “I’ve never met anyone who speaks English as well as you, sister.”

  I told them that actually my oral English was just so-so, but I could write better. Next year, when I came back, I’d teach them more. They loved that idea.

  In fact, Meichin seemed eager to have me more involved in the two boys’ life. She often urged them, “Try to learn from your sister Lulu.” She might mean they should follow in my footsteps. I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t really a top student—my admission to Harvard was largely due to luck.

  My father was pleased to see that his young wife and I could get along. Before I returned to Beijing that evening, I asked him to keep an eye on my mother when I was away in America. He said, “Rest assured, even though your mom might still hate my guts, I respect her and will watch after her.”

  I blurted out the proverb, half in jest, “One day spent together as man and wife guarantees a lifelong affection, doesn’t it?”

  He smiled with a nod of his head, though he looked uneasy and sucked his teeth.

  On my way to the train station, the bus had to be stopped on Huachang Road, near Walmart, because a top official came from Beijing and his motorcade needed to go before others. There were traffic cops everywhere. All the pedestrians and other vehicles had to halt to give way to the leader’s retinue. Our bus stayed where we were for more than half an hour. That made me restless, worried that I might miss the train home, but people around me seemed untroubled by this delay. Everybody must be used to this kind of abuse of official privilege. Fortunately, even though I missed my train, there was another one an hour later and I was allowed to get aboard since it was a slow train. Most passengers on it were daily commuters, and their tickets didn’t have the assigned seats that a fast train had.

  10

  IN MID-AUGUST, RACHEL’S father, Guo Huan, appeared in the news. Numerous customers had complained that they had received knockoffs and counterfeits in place of the genuine products advertised by his company. Although Mr. Guo was not the owner of Baobao, the online retailing business he worked for, it had to respond to the barrage of criticism. So Guo Huan, as a top manager in the company, was dismissed from his position. Apparently he had been chosen to be the scapegoat, and the unfair treatment he received was pointed out by the public. Many people argued that firing him wouldn’t get rid of the fraudulence rooted in the company’s system and culture.

  The news made me think a lot about Rachel these days. Her father’s dismissal might make her family regret having donated six million dollars to Harvard, and her life might change. She could no longer be a superrich girl. It might do her some good if she began to taste hardship like others. On the other hand, even if her family didn’t have a prodigious income anymore, they should be able to manage. An emaciated camel is still larger than a horse—they might have other kinds of earnings. I didn’t think I needed to worry too much about her.

  Back on campus, I ran into Rachel at the Fogg Museum. She was having coffee alone in the vaulted-ceilinged lobby, with a half-eaten quiche next to her cup. I forced myself to say “Hey, can I join you?”

  “Sure thing,” she said with a grin and removed her tote bag from the metal chair next to her.

  I bought a latte and came back to sit across from her. There was a palpable barrier between us, even though we both tried to pretend that everything was normal, like before. She hadn’t returned home for the summer and instead had gone to Wall Street for an internship. I asked her if she had liked it there.

  “I hated it,” she said. “I told my parents I’d never do trading for a living.”

  My curiosity was piqued. I said, “Does this have something to do with your dad? I read about his trouble in the newspapers back home.”

  “I know he’s notorious now, but that made me more determined to stay away from the bloody business world.”

  “Can your parents manage now that he lost his big job?”

  “They’re doing okay. They’ve accumulated some of the company stock. Compared to others, they’re still well-to-do.”

  “I heard that your dad is just a scapegoat. He must be very upset.”

  “He’s unhappy about having lost his job, but he’s already in his late fifties, close to retirement age, so he feels at peace with his situation now. He wants to do something he really likes. For years he kept grumbling that he was wasting his life making money. Now’s the time for a change.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “He wants to paint. He always wanted to become an artist. I told him to take it easy and do it just for fun. The truth is that he spent his prime years building wealth. He no longer has the fresh creative energy an artist needs for his work. That’s why I don’t want to repeat his mistake.”

  “So you plan to go to graduate school?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “What will you study?”

  “I don’t have a practical field. Probably literature.”

  “That’s bold, but I admire it,” I said in earnest.

  “I don’t think a well-educated person will starve in America, so my parents don’t mind if I pick a field that doesn’t make money.” She batted her round eyes as if smiling to herself.

  “I’ve also been thinking of graduate school, but definitely not to study literature. That would be too hard for me.”

  “What do you want to study?”

  “Nothing’s certain yet, maybe history.”

  “That will make us a pair of rare birds in the humanities.”

  “History is often treated as a social science.”

  “But many schools list it as a branch of the humanities too.”

  That was true. I was pleased that Rachel seemed more than willing to reconnect with me as a friend. We also chatted about others. At my mention of Joe, Rachel sneered, wrinkling her turned-up nose. She said, “He’s going to become a PhD candidate at MIT, he’s already been accepted by a professor there. Once he starts full-time, his boss will pay him a big stipend for lab work, thirty-five grand a year.”

  “That’s impressive. I might never pull in that kind of income.” I wondered whether to pass my greetings on to Joe, but decided against it. I still didn’t like him.

  Rachel sighed and confessed, “He’s opposed to my doing graduate work in literature. He said the humanities were useless, and that he had no use for fiction or poetry. He’s only interested in sciences.”

  “So you two are still dating?”

  “Yes, but Joe is a difficult person, you know that.”

  I didn’t press her for more information on him; I wanted to leave someone that was so arrogant and zealous out of my orbit. Later I heard that the two of them had split, in part because Rachel wasn’t as openhanded as before and no longer could afford to take him on cruises or to Europe for skiing and sightseeing. She must not have been fun for Joe anymore. Then I heard he had another girlfriend, one from Singapore. He was nasty about Rachel, badmouthing her behind her back, and even said she was a nympho, “broad like a city gate,”

  meaning that everyone could enter. Such a sordid end to their relationship disturbed some of us who knew them. I could hardly imagine that an educated young man could be so crude, so unfeeling, so malicious. When I bumped into Rachel the next time, she had red eyes and a puffy face, and was apparently suffering from sleep deprivation. She claimed she’d never date a Chinese man again; to her, every Chinese man was potentially a wife or girlfriend abuser. Though I didn’t share her bias, her quandary unsettled me and made me see that a bad boyfriend could easily mess up a girl, so I’d better not have such a relationship at college. That was what my mother had admonished me to avoid in America. For senior year, I’d better devote my energy and time to my studies. I also had to figure out what to do afterward.

  11

  I DROPPED IN on Loana and talked with her about my concerns and future plans. I wanted to do graduate work after college, but wasn’t sure if I should go for a master’s or a PhD in history. Loana was warm and always helpful. Smiling with pinkish cheeks, she explained, “You ought to go for a PhD, because most scholarships are given to doctoral students. Schools usually use master’s students to make money for sustaining their PhD programs. Also, a master’s can be awarded while you are completing your PhD.”

  “Doesn’t a doctoral degree cost a lot?” I asked.

  “No, you’ll be paid to do the graduate work,” she said.

  “I don’t understand. Why pay me for my study since I’m the beneficiary?”

  “Because history is a branch of the humanities or a social science. Unlike a law or business degree, a PhD in an impractical field won’t make you rich. But society needs some people to specialize in social sciences and the humanities. That’s why they pay you to study. In general, a good graduate program gives a PhD candidate a financial package of five or six years—full tuition plus a substantial stipend. It’s a lot of money, more than a regular worker can make. That means you’ll be financially secure during your studies.”

  “It’s great to know this. Then I can tell my parents that I’ll be on my own if I get into a PhD program.”

  “Yes, you can assure them of that. What do they want you to do after college?”

  “My mother wants me to get married and raise a family.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Not really. In fact, my parents won’t have a problem if I decide to do graduate work, but I just don’t want to become a financial burden to them.”

  “Most people don’t understand that as a rule, you don’t spend your own money if you do a PhD.”

  “How long does it take to complete such a degree?”

  “It depends. I finished mine in seven years. I have a friend who did his doctorate in history at the University of Chicago. It took him ten years, which is the average there.”

  “What? That’s tremendous dedication, ten of your best years.”

  “Of course, it means you must love what you study. So don’t rush to a decision. Think carefully. If you decide on a field, you should treat it as your lifelong calling.”

  Loana agreed to write a letter of recommendation for me if I decided to apply to graduate school. She also said I would need another letter from a professor, since as a rule most programs require at least two recommendations. I’d gotten an A for Professor Jeffrey Snelling’s seminar on modern Japanese history, so perhaps I could ask him for a letter. Loana said, “That’s a good idea. Jeff is a great guy, well respected in the field.”

  We also talked about what one could do with a PhD in the humanities or social sciences. Loana said most people became professors. “Do you like teaching?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never taught,” I said. “What else can I do if I don’t like teaching?”

  “You can do research or become an editor. There are other options. Above all, you must love what you study. Treat it as fun and eventually make a living out of it.” She looked at me searchingly, narrowing her eyes a little, as though to assess my earnestness.

  I was intimidated by the length of time needed for completing a PhD. I wasn’t sure I was willing to spend many years at a desk in a carrel like Mark Stone, who seemed to enjoy his life in the library, poring over kung fu novels by Jin Yong and working on his dissertation. His life was like that of a book louse, though he looked happy and content. If I went for a PhD, I’d want to finish it within five or six years.

  Speak of the devil—as I stepped out of Loana’s office building on Divinity Avenue, I caught sight of Mark with Rachel. They were heading toward Oxford Street, Rachel’s hand holding his upper arms, her big earrings jiggling a little. Their body language showed the close intimacy that only belonged to lovers. They must have been sleeping together, given that for Mark, going to bed with a woman was just like having dessert after an entrée. Somehow I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them. Observing them from behind—Rachel shaking a bit with her head bowed while laughing—I couldn’t help but feel a touch of bitterness. She was really a slut, I muttered to myself. From now on, I’d better give her a wide berth.

  But whenever I went into the library, I passed Mark’s carrel, in which the Tank Man poster remained on the door of his cabinet. I wanted to tear it off, but I checked my impulse. One afternoon I saw him bent over his desk, typing away at his laptop. He lifted his head and saw me, his face breaking into a smile. I said hello and pointed at the poster, saying, “You shouldn’t keep that up.”

  “Why does it bother you so much?” he asked and grinned. He stood and seemed eager to chat some.

  “It makes your workspace seem immature,” I said.

  “Don’t be a bigot.” He made a wry face and began twisting the small beard he’d been growing lately.

  “We all know Tank Man might be fake.”

  “Who are ‘we’?”

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Rachel. She also took Dr. Hong’s seminar and can tell you about it.”

  “Rachel has no problem with this poster at all. I have another one in my living room. She’s more easygoing than you.”

  “Of course she’s easy.”

  “Whoa, whoa, she thinks highly of you and values you as a friend. Why are you so bitter?”

  “She and I are friends, for sure, but I’m talking about the Tank Man poster.”

  “Like I said, if you want me to stop adoring my hero, you ought to explain your reasoning. Do some research and write a paper or even a book on him, so I can see why he’s so problematic to you. You can’t just stick your pretty nose into others’ business and dictate to others what to do.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you my reasons,” I huffed.

  “I can’t wait to hear about it.” He put on a practiced smile again.

  I swerved and hurried away, flustered. I shouldn’t have engaged him in that argument in the first place. I was amazed that Rachel may have accepted him completely as a boyfriend.

  Yet intuitively I felt Tank Man could be a good point of entry if I wanted to study the history of political suppression in contemporary China. Because my mother had joined the hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, my exploration of Tank Man could become something personal and intimate, and Mark’s casual remarks had prompted me to think seriously about Tank Man as a dissertation topic. On the other hand, it gnawed at me. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was jealous of Rachel and intended to do something that might exert my influence on Mark. I was bewildered by my obsession with Tank Man, unable to sort out my feelings and thoughts.