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stares out the window. I try to remember if I know anything about Anhwei province. Isn’t that where the movie The Good Earth took place? I practically grew up playing in the set of Wang’s Farmhouse, which had been part of China City, the tourist attraction where my parents worked. A peasant farmhouse will be familiar to me: chickens pecking outside the front door, wooden farm tools, a simple table, a couple of chairs.
    In Hangchow, we stay at a guesthouse—clean enough but with a squat toilet down the hall for everyone to share. Z.G. takes me to a restaurant on the lake. We chat about the meal: fish soup with rice noodles, pea greens, and rice. He calls me Joy and I call him Z.G. For dessert, we have fritters made with corn fresh off the cob and sprinkled with powdered sugar. After dinner, we stroll along the lakeshore. My stomach and heart are full as I walk next to my birth father. Here I am, in China, by a lake shimmering pink as the summer sun sets. Weeping willows drape their tendrils into the water. I can’t decide where to look or what makes me happier—seeing our two shadows lengthening before us or his face in the soothing light.

Joy
    A SPRIG OF BAMBOO

    THE NEXT MORNING , my first Sunday in China, I’m unsure what will happen. All my life I’ve gone either to the Methodist mission or church for Sunday school and services. Even when I was in Chicago, I went to services. But today? Z.G. emerges from his room looking very different. He no longer wears his elegantly tailored suit. Instead, he wears loose trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt, and sandals. He sees me in a pair of pink capris with a sleeveless white blouse that Auntie May bought for me at the Bullock’s sale last year. She said the outfit looked “crisp, fresh, and young,” but Z.G. doesn’t appear to care for it.
    After a breakfast of rice porridge, rice cakes stuffed with spicy greens, fresh loquats, and strong tea, we take another boat up a small river to Tun-hsi, where we hire a pedicab to the bus station. Tun-hsi is tiny compared with Shanghai and rather featureless compared with the beauty of Hangchow. The town’s buildings are modest in size, and there doesn’t seem to be any real industry here. It looks to be the place where people in this area bring produce and other homemade commodities to sell and trade. We arrive at the bus station, and it’s positively alive with travelers and goods. I see people in ethnic dress—wearing blue tunics, colorful woven headdresses, and hand-wrought silver jewelry. I hear dialects I can’t understand, which is strange because we’re still so close to Shanghai. People stare at me, but instead of turning away, as so many did in Shanghai, they greet me with broad—often toothless—grins.
    We board a rickety bus. The passengers—smelling of garlic and increasingly sweaty—carry crying babies, live chickens and ducks, bags of produce, and jars of pickles and salted things that reek, ooze, and stink up the bus as the day wears on. I look out the window across fields sweltering under the hot sun. Soon the road narrows, then turns to dirt. We’re climbing into low-lying hills. I ask Z.G. how much farther to Green Dragon Village.
    “I’m not sure. I’ve never been there. I’ve been told it was once a prosperous village. We’ll be staying in a villa.” He juts his chin. My father Sam used to do that instead of shrugging. “I’m unclear what that means.”
    Z.G. says Green Dragon is 400 kilometers from Shanghai. That’s something like 250 miles, but the road—if you can call it that—is so bad that we’re just creeping and bumping along. After a couple of hours, the bus pulls to a stop. The driver calls the names of several villages, including Green Dragon. We’re the only two people to get out. I have my suitcase. Z.G. has his bags and boxes. We’re on a dusty track in the middle of nowhere. Finally, a boy riding a donkey-pulled cart comes along. Z.G. talks to the boy. I don’t