Once I had stood before the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City, hat in my hands, waiting for the realization to engulf me. It had only been in Beijing that I learned to say 'ancestors' without feeling too self-aware. But the tourists jostled around me, stepped on my foot, faces glowering in irritation at the sight of the crowd shoving each other to see the Imperial Throne, and the realization never came. The tourists in Beijing are the Chinese from Hong Kong or Taiwan or the other provinces in the mainland. They call my province Overseas.
I went to parks often to escape the crowds. One of them had a small pavilion midway the hill, the small inlaid paintings of willows and lakes on the ceiling restored. When I reached the pavilion, a few lights were turned on softly and old fifties music was being played and people were dancing. They were middle-aged, people who could have afforded to take dancing lessons. The music crackled through a radio somewhere. Some wore cocktail dresses; others office clothes. Swing, tango, waltz. They shook their arms and legs to help their blood circulate after every set as people walked around to change partners, their faces drenched in perspiration. Then the music would start and they would laugh and take each other's arms and twirl over the floor, these old people, lost in the sepia-colored music I was hearing. Spring was turning to summer. I sat on a nearby bench, feeling the air turn humid, and a dragonfly landed on my shoulder.


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My friend and her boyfriend went traveling to Tianjin the weekend after they moved to their new apartment. Tianjin is Beijing's neighboring harbor city, two hours away by bus.
There my friend saw the saddest opera singer in the world. Up on a pavilion the middle-aged lady was dressed in her gaudy finery, a green lace tunic over a white gown with sleeves to the floor. Her face was powdered with the rouge of Beijing opera and she wore a headpiece of braids. The pavilion was in the middle of the souvenir bazaar that had been built for the tourists. People were looking at maps, calling lost friends on mobile phones, and had crowded there, drawn by the human tendency towards collectivity. She sang to the tourists in Tianjin, her eyes far away, one hand on her heart, the other arm up in supplication. She looked exhausted. The people below the stage came and went. The boyfriend took a Polaroid of the opera singer and the heads of the tourists, and my friend had written on the back in English: The meaning of indifference.