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It was no concern of theirs that at the time the old man died few residents of the city had ever heard of a death certificate. And, finally, the officials had pointed out that if the family had not been observing old-fashioned, feudalistic customs, they would have buried Mr. Yu properly right after he died and there would have been no trouble for anyone.
    After two more weeks of waiting and asking, the family was given a carefully worded death certificate, which said that the cause of death was unknown and which seemed to imply that, for all the authorities could say, the old man might have been done in by his sons and daughters. Two days later, the permit to move the body out of the city came through, along with a burial permit, but there was no permit to hold a procession. All the delay and harassment had been, I believe, simply the government’s way of asserting its authority. So the end of the funeral ceremonies was at hand at last, and the great black coffin was loaded without much ceremony into the back of an open truck for its final journey.
    Elder Brother rode with it. He was still dressed in muslin and had put his blinkers on again, and clutched in his hands were the documents without which the truck couldn’t have been driven around the block.
    A few other members of the family were to follow the truck in a rented Buick — the second son, two of Mr. Yu’s sisters, the only one of his brothers then living in the city, the eldest daughter, and Aimee. Though this was intended to be only a small group of elders, Aimee was taken along because, as the most eloquent member of the family, she had been involved in the negotiations for the permits and might be needed to make explanations at the city gates. Suddenly, when everything seemed ready, there was a great flurry of excitement, incense was hastily burned, and old Aunt Yu, one of Mr. Yu’s two sisters, was expelled from the Buick. As it drove away, she stood beside me looking after it and sniffling. “What did you do?” I asked her.
    â€œI stepped over water,” she said. “It rained last night, and there was a puddle. It’s very unpropitious to step over water on the way to a burial.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    She looked surprised. “I wonder,” she said, and went into the house.
    A short while later, I was sitting alone and rather sad in the Eastern Study, when I heard a tap at the door and Ninth Sister’s voice asking, “Fourth Brother, are you there?”
    â€œCome in!” I called.
    She came, holding something behind her back and looking wise. “I have a present for you. It’s my surprise,” she said.
    She thrust a pair of white socks at me. “I made them. These are my first. I learned to work the machine all by myself. We must buy more machines, and then the whole family can make them. We’ll have a factory.”
    She was quite serious. I put on the socks, feeling old and somewhat abashed by my forebodings in the face of her resilience. I could leave China. I could take my wife and get out any time I wanted to, but Ninth Sister was already planning to build a life for herself, to see that her family made its way in a society she could not yet begin to understand. The socks were good ones, and were the right size, too.
    â€œThank you,” I said. “You made them very well.”
    In the fashion of polite Chinese, she answered, “I cannot dare presume so.”

ALL THE EMPEROR’S HORSES
    M Y CHINESE father-in-law had been well known not only as a former Chief Justice of the Chinese Supreme Court but also as a collector of antiques. His name was a legend in Peking’s famous Liu Li Ch’ang, a street where the finest art was bought and sold over cups of tea in back rooms filled with the smell of old woods and paper, and even people who cared little or nothing for antiques knew that he had once swapped a country estate in the Western Hills for a pair of