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table clinking glasses—to speak with tranquil conviction of the strength of the personal ties that bound us, my taste for Peking duck in all of its manifestations, and the resolution I had formed to return to China whenever the “relevant authorities” found it convenient—and then to endon an elegant and noncommittal note. I drank to the Shanghai Communiqué, the ninth anniversary of which had just passed. A puff of added inspiration, and I raised my glass also to Harvard University. After all, was it not Harvard that had loosed Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s improbable Sancho Panza, upon America, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and so many other interesting locations on our tired planet?
    By the time the banquet was over, the only diners left in the downstairs part of the restaurant were our drivers, lingering over the remains of a chauffeurs’ meal. The private dining room we had occupied was windowless; we had not seen the sky grow dark over Beijing. Now we stood on the sidewalk, beside the huddle of black cars, shaking hands in that city’s vast and obscure silence broken only by low-pitched human voices and the dring-dring of an occasional bicycle bell. The yellow rectangles of light framed by the restaurant’s windows and its door filled one with confused longing. Miss Wang and an older bureaucrat of uncertain rank installed me in the car assigned for my use and then got in themselves to accompany me to the hotel. I had come to understand the practicality of that polite gesture, which was repeated by dinner companions every evening: afterward, the driver would deposit them wherever they lived, probably miles away, at the edge of Beijing’s endless outskirts.
    The next day was Saturday; work ended at noon, or possibly—I had not penetrated that particular mystery—at the start of the sacrosanct rest period that precedes the lunch hour. But I had realized early on that it was useless and possibly annoying to my clientele of civil servants to try to conduct my seminar on Saturday mornings. As a result, Ienjoyed Western-style weekends, devoted to sleeping late, as a compensation for the absurdly early morning hour when, according to local custom, I started operations on the days I taught, and to long visits to the Forbidden City. I felt happiest there; my predilection amused my hosts. Reluctantly but wisely, they gave up organizing visits to ball-bearing factories, model schools, and establishments in which I might have observed the industrial confection of Tang-dynasty horses or folk art objects. There was a difference, however, between respecting my choice and allowing me to be unsupervised. Miss Wang accompanied me to the Imperial Palace and on the walks I liked to take at the end of the afternoon in the Muslim quarter south of Tiananmen Square. If I wanted to play hooky and be alone with my thoughts I pleaded the urgent necessity of preparing my course, implying that I would stay in the hotel. Then, feeling guilty, jaunty, and sly, I would stride westward on Chang An Boulevard, the blue-clad crowd, itself in constant motion, parting before me magically like the Red Sea.
    I called her Miss Wang in public, and also in my thoughts. When we were alone, I used her first name, Jun Jun, because she considered that more friendly. And I was far from disliking her presence, notwithstanding my occasional rebellious search for solitude. The Mao suit was still de rigueur in China, for men and women, as was the absence of all makeup. The garment worn over it was almost universally a lined green field jacket or an army coat without military insignia. Miss Wang, though, was the owner of a wine-colored ski parka, purchased in Canada, where she had visited with a trade mission. She wore this high-fashion object with pride,notwithstanding the recent mild weather, and what with its bulk and the floating nature of those blue suits, the notion I had of her body owed more to inflamed speculation than to anything I had actually observed. I