ABSTRACT
Michael felt too nauseated to look for the muffled laughter on the bus, more like an American school bus than a Greyhound. It rode slowly without shock absorbers to Xi’an from Macau, sixty miles past the Communist border. He brushed away his father’s breath from his arm as he inched toward the window. Outside was a monotonous field of short rice plants, jutting out of a mirror of water. Occasionally there stood a half-naked Chinese farmer under an oversize straw hat.
