"And we've even brought up," she drops her voice, "the 'D' word, so it qualifies."

"-then we must really be married. Like people who don't get married so one of them doesn't have to go to the South Pole."

"Which would normally mean that right now we should make up," she says,

"except-"

"Yes?" I say.

"We have a kitchen full of goats, Mr. Dormov. But I do like," her voice quavers a bit, "sex with you."

"And I like sex with you. And I don't think you're old," I say. "Ms. Jansch," I put my arms around her and give her a hug, "how about if we go back into the kitchen and sit on the counter and smooch."

"As long as the goats don't start chewing on the furniture," she says.

DAOIST ENGINEERING (Zhang)

The train rests heavily on track 3, long gleaming and white. White is the color of death in the east and dawn is the time of burial. My breath is white. The platform is lined with people waiting to get on the train. I have a soft seat ticket and stand near the end of the platform in a cluster of people waiting for soft seat and sleeper berths. By sheer foolish luck I am privileged, Engineer Zhang on his way to the site. I am not yet really an engineer, I have to co-op first, but the co-op company has paid for this.

My fellow passengers are business travelers-men dressed as I am in black suits with red shirts, the uniform of the bailing jieceng de, the white collar class (so why, if they are called 'white collar' do they wear red?)-and qingderen, 'green men', except that of course the army wears silver-gray trimmed in red. The business men hunch their shoulders a bit and read their flimsies, straddling their briefcases. The officers, there are three, stand in a small group, shoulders thrown back, oblivious to the weight of the early hour, talking quietly to one another.

I find a fax and pick up the day's news and carry it back so as to blend in. World news first, in America there is a drought in the corridor, families along the fringes are being evacuated. In related news, the world CO2 level has fallen for the third straight year and science predicts that if the trend continues that in fifty years we'll see more rain across northern Africa, Australia, the middle of China and western America. In Paris a structural failure caused a wall to collapse in an apartment complex and 32 people are missing, believed killed.

I turn the pages until I find an article on a commune in Hubei which is celebrating it's 150th year of existence. Imagine that, 150 years. Haibao couldn't even make it to 35.

The doors sigh open. Further down the platform the people press forward trying to push on before all of the hard seats are taken. Above us huge smiling conductors hang in the air saying gently but firmly, 'Do Not Push To Get On The Train.' At soft seat, we wait in line, our seat numbers already guaranteed.

The air in the train smells new and unused. The seats are pale gray, the soft music is about the same color. The officers fit the decor. I find my seat which is next to a window, shove my bag in the overhead and hope they start soon. Trains serve coffee as well as tea and I'm looking forward to a cup. Finally I feel the sudden suspense as the mag-lev comes on, and then we begin to slide smoothly out of the station. Pale faces upturned watch us go. A dispenser hung off the ceiling comes down the aisle and I get my cup of coffee, peal off the top and wait for it to heat. I bow my head, wreathed in the aroma and somewhere deep in my head some primitive portion of my brain is momentarily lulled into believing I am home. For a breath I feel ease. Home.

Wuxi. The name means 'tinless' and refers to tin mines exhausted over 1000 years ago. We cross the Grand Canal before we get to the train station. I am the only person in my car who gets off; the next stop is Suzhou and after that, Shanghai, the financial heart of China. The door sighs open and I swing my bag in front of me and step down. The air is full of mist and drizzle, thick with moisture even under the cover that protects the platform.

"Engineer Zhang?"

I turn, looking, and find a dark, neat little man. "Not yet," I answer smiling, "only Student Zhang."

He laughs politely. "I am Engineer Xi. I will see to it that you are called Engineer Zhang by the time you leave here."

We make the requisite small talk on the platform, did I have a good journey? Did I eat yet? Chinese do not often talk about the weather. Behind us the mag-lev shifts from inert to alive, although not watching closely I don't see the train rise bare centimeters above the track. It begins to slip soundlessly forward and I follow Engineer Xi back to and through the station.

Students in a university live transient and comparatively marginal existences. That is true the world over. A university is concerned with preparation for the future and there is an underlying philosophy that overcrowded living conditions and a lack of the comforts of the middle class is not only excused but somehow educational. In Brooklyn, students who lived at school were six to a room. At thirty-one I am not particularly interested in a marginal existence, feeling that perhaps I have paid my dues. But student life in Nanjing has not seemed very marginal, at the very least the amount of hot water is astonishing. I shower every day without regard for cost. The rooms are clean and pretty in their way. Comfortable. For a foreigner life in a Chinese university is a pleasure, full of unexpected amenities-for example, when I discovered therm containers. The idea that I pull the therm of coffee out of the cupboard, open it, and in a minute it's hot just amazes me. Sure I know all about the way the lining reacts with light to excite the water molecules. I'm just astounded that they would go to all that trouble.

It is only now, in Wuxi, that I discover that the definition of marginal is comparative. Which is to say that 'marginal' means one thing in New York, and an entirely different thing in the middle kingdom. The first lesson is the car waiting for us.

"Engineer Zhang," Engineer Xi says, "this is Driver Shi."

Driver Shi nods at me and smiles. The car is a Renminde-Hou, a 'People's Tiger'. I've heard of Renmin cars. Engineer Xi opens the back door and I get in. The door closes and my ears feel the way they did on the flight over here, as if we have been completely isolated. It smells different than I expected, faintly sweet, lemony. The interior is uniform-gray. I've been in a car before, three times, in fact. My mother hired a car to take me to the hospital when I broke my arm; my father hired a car to take us from the port to his father's place in California (that car was red and had a slogan across the front panel where the instruments are. My father told me what it said, "Revolution is not a dinner party.") I in a car when Janvier got married just out of middle school, I was a member of the wedding. That car was also red. The cab that took us to the hospital was yellow, of course.

The feeling of movement in a car is stronger than it is on a train, acceleration pushes me firmly back in my seat, and when the car goes around corners the pull right or left is very sharp. The first time we turn I grab the door, and am embarrassed that Engineer Xi doesn't, but he pretends not to notice.

The next surprise is the office complex of Wuxi Engineering Technologies. Red lacquer roof tiles swoop in graceful waves down the hill. The buildings themselves are black matte. Engineer Xi describes how the building fuses traditional Chinese architectural details-the many connected buildings and the roofs with the upturned eaves-with more modern architectural technology. The black matte walls actually absorb enough light and sound radiation to provide the energy needed to run the complex. Driver Shi glances back, "Do you know why the eaves go up?" he asks. "Demon slides. Demons can only travel in straight lines, so when a demon came down from the sky it would hit the roof and be shunted along to the eave and whip off the end back into the sky."