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chitchatted.

    Great teacher, great leader,
You are the sun in all our hearts,
Dear Chairman Mao.
Long live Chairman Mao.
Long live, long live, long live, long live Chairman Mao!

    Neighbors waved their hands above their heads and kicked their feet from side to side. Old ladies in the back gossiped as they danced. Old men puffed on hand-rolled cigarettes, and little boys waved canes and sticks like swords.
    I wondered if the family of the undercover enemy was among them. It had been weeks since the arrest, but no one ever talked about it. When I questioned
my parents, Mother gave me her disapproving look. Father said, “It is grown-up business.”
    Comrade Li’s voice broke on the high notes. Young nurses giggled. He continued:

    Long live Chairman Mao!
Long live, long live Chairman Mao!

    One young doctor sent his slipper flying right past me. Red-faced, he ran over to get it back. I wished I could stay to join the class. Then I could show off my ballet turns. But I didn’t want to be late for school.
    When we walked by the milk trees lining the courtyard, I plucked a leaf and licked the sap. Mother glared at me, but I was too happy to care. The milk even tasted a bit sweet today. I was going to be in a class with older kids. None of them would have runny noses.
    Mother said I was old enough to go to school by myself. She and I had made a few practice walks. The compound gate opened onto busy Victory Road. Across that road was the hospital. Between home and school, only Victory Road was wide enough for cars.
The rest of my way was through a short, narrow alley. Mother stopped at the left turn to Flower Alley.
    â€œCome home as soon as morning classes are over,” she said. “And don’t talk to strangers.”
    Nodding cheerfully, I skipped down the alley. In my mind, I practiced introducing myself to my new classmates. “Hello, I’m Ling. I’m glad to meet you. What’s your name?” Or, “Hello, what’s your name? Mine is Ling.”
    I felt grown up now that I could walk to school by myself. During outings with Father to the park or the pastry shop, he had told me about the history of the city. Before Chairman Mao’s Communists took over, many foreigners lived here. They built the wide-paved streets lined with schools, churches, modern hospitals, tall office buildings, and fancy apartment buildings with kitchens and bathrooms. It was as if someone had picked up buildings from Western countries and scattered them all around the city. To celebrate the victory of the Communist Revolution, many of the streets had been renamed, such as Big Liberation Road, Victory Road, Workers and Parents Road, and Red Five Stars Road.

    Along these streets, walls were covered with huge murals. Chairman Mao’s portraits, red flags, and posters of his teachings were in every corner of the city.
    All the Westerners were gone now. When I thought about San Francisco, I wondered what kind of murals they had of their leader. Did he also wear a funny hat like Chairman Mao?
    As I walked around the city with my parents, one moment we’d be among large Western-style buildings, and the next in one of many narrow stone-paved alleys. These older alleys were lined with single-story houses with low roofs. In warm weather, their doors were open. Families crowded inside. They had no bathrooms. When I used our large, clean bathroom, I often felt sorry for those people who had to walk blocks to use dirty public bathrooms like the one at the end of Flower Alley.
    I went in once and found there were no toilets, only holes in the ground. One girl squatted over a hole, reading a picture book, as if the smell didn’t bother her at all. The stink forced me to run right out.
    Pinching my nose with my flowered handkerchief until I was well past the public bathroom, I turned
right at the end of the alley. There stood the school’s iron gates, painted bright blue. In front of the open gates,