If he doesn't talk to me, and he doesn't walk around with me, and he doesn't travel in the same compartment,' I said, 'I don't understand why he wants to come with me.''To make sure you are comfortable. Hospitality. You are our guest ...

Where are you going, Mr. Paul?''For a walk.'Mr. Fang conferred with his Hothot deputy. My walk was given official sanction, and I was driven about a hundred yards to the People's Park and released.

I could tell he was worried by what I would ask to do next. I spent the rest of the day trying to elude him and his deputy, and at last, in the market, I succeeded. It was late in the afternoon. We were all (Mr. Fang, his deputy, the driver and I) admiring a stack of vegetables, and when I saw they were transfixed by a shaggy mound of blue cabbages I slipped away.

Xian was one of the few exceptions I found. It was genuinely interesting and pretty, and rather a stately and dignified place

He had been sent to nanny me and breathe down my neck. He had been discreet-he had not gotten in my way; but who had asked him to come? Not me.

Using an extremely clever if somewhat fanciful Chinese technique for ensnaring awkward visitors, they insisted that I was too important to travel alone and so stuck me with Mr. Fang.

Transportation in China is always crowded; it is nearly always uncomfortable; it is often a struggle.

Primeval forest,' he said. 'Original forest.''Wouldn't you like to build a house here and live alone with your wife?''Yes,' he said. 'Have a family and write something-poems and stories.''Maybe have four children.''It is not permitted,' he said. Then he smiled. 'But this is so far they wouldn't know. It wouldn't matter. Yes, I would like that.

the predominating characteristic of the Chinese was stoicism