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give her private Chinese lessons. I told her with great delight that I would teach her Chinese but would accept no money. She didn’t understand that I could be reported as a spy for taking her money. She told me I was being ridiculous. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “If you don’t want to accept money, no deal.” I said that I couldn’t explain any further, because I didn’t know her well. How could I know that she wouldn’t report me? I would be in trouble if she leaked our conversation to the school authority. I would be labeled as one who “sabotaged the great open image of New China by misinforming a foreign guest.”
    I was confused when she said that she had to respect my choice. To me it had nothing to do with “choice.” It was about the reality of survival.
    *   *   *
    O ne of the strangest things Katherine did in our eyes was to rent a peasant’s hut for herself. The place was surrounded by rice paddies and was about a half hour by bicycle from the school. It didn’t make sense to me that she turned down the offer to live in the university dormitory. Her hut looked primitive; she practically hadto shit in a pigpen. Katherine seemed very happy with the hut though. She called it “my home.”
    Before the semester was over, Katherine said that she would like to invite the class to a party at her hut. The news excited us. We started to plan how we could get permission from the school authority to go. Lion Head suggested that Katherine inform the school authority that she was giving a lesson in American working-class cooking.
    The request was granted without any problem. We arrived at her hut earlier than we were supposed to. The sun was still high but the heat wasn’t as strong. Katherine had borrowed some straw mats from her peasant neighbor, so we could sit outside. She prepared barbecued chicken with green peppers and onions. Jim and I made an “underground stove.” We told Katherine that this was how Mao and the Communist Red Army cooked during wartime. Lion Head went to pick tree branches, straw, and dry leaves, while Jasmine and others came in from the fields with fresh beans.
    Katherine said she had a hard time watching the peasants kill live hens. She couldn’t eat meat anymore. We waved away her disgust. Jim told her that she would soon get over it. Lion Head said that he would show her how to kill a cat to prepare “sweet and sour cat receiving the worship of frogs.” He explained how when frogs were fried their legs extended as if in supplication to the cat meat roasting above. Jasmine said she had already caught a jar of frogs. Katherine said she was going to puke and I thought I heard the sound of her stomach churning.
    To distract her I asked why she gave up the convenience of living in the dormitory. She said she liked the countryside and enjoyed the privacy. She said that the landscape and greenery were important to her.
    I looked around, trying to see things from Katherine’s point ofview. There were rice paddies on every side. On the left there was a little pond covered with giant round green lotus leaves. Two big black trees grew out of the water. A bull was taking a mud bath in the pond. Three geese were knotting their heads together, chewing
gao-bai
—turnips. Ducks were chasing each other, fighting over an earthworm. Not far away, peasants were working in the fields. To the right of her hut there was a small path that led to the road to town. Thick swirling dust in the distance meant that a bus had just passed through.
    I figured out that Katherine’s hut used to be a storehouse for crops. Katherine told us that she had been here for two months and loved every minute of it. She took me to her backyard, where I saw chicks, a goat, and two cats running freely. “This is my zoo,” she said proudly. She told me that she had built the fence herself. “I didn’t do a great job but it’s good enough to keep the animals in.” She laughed and told me she