When I was twenty-five years old, the Chinese government quietly deported me. I was terrified to leave my homeland. But the alternative was exile to a remote place in China--or worse.

On January 14, 1984, my parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and siblings gathered at the Shanghai International Airport to send me off for my flight to San Francisco. I'll never forget that cold, wet afternoon.

As the embarking process began, my family stood in a tight circle outside the passport checkpoint, shuffling our feet and avoiding eye contact. We made small talk about the weather, the clothes we wore, and the farewell banquet they had hosted the night before--anything to distract us from our imminent parting.

Hesitating for a moment before she spoke, my Shanghai Mama, the woman who raised me, broached the subject on everyone's mind. "Ping-Ping," she said, her tongue tripping as she called me by my family nickname, "I made you a dish so you won't get hungry on the long flight." Her whole body trembled as she reached into her bag and passed me a round tin pan tightly covered in foil, still warm. I lifted a corner of the foil and inhaled. The sharp, sweet scent of duck with soy sauce wafted up to my nostrils, a poignant reminder of my happy childhood years in Shanghai. I reached my hand out to clasp hers, giving it a gentle squeeze.

I glanced around; nearly everyone in our group was crying. My younger sister, Hong, grabbed at my shirt to mop the tears from her face, the way she had done as a little girl. I couldn't bring myself to utter any words of comfort for fear that I, too, would break down sobbing.

Only Nanjing Mother and Father, my birth parents, kept their gaze steady. "You will be fine, Ping-Ping," Nanjing Mother said, clearing her throat. "I know you will be able to handle whatever comes your way."

I waited until the last possible minute to go. "It's time," I said, making an effort to keep my voice from catching. My family members began to cry the way people do at funerals, as if I would disappear from their lives forever. They knew that since I was in trouble with the authorities, we might never see one another again or even be allowed to communicate. Resolutely, I kept my eyes dry as I walked down the ramp and away from everything that I had ever known.

As I settled into my seat aboard the aircraft, the vent blasted warm air at my forehead. It occurred to me that this was my first experience of temperature-controlled air. I had never flown in an airplane, though I had spent most of my childhood sliding down aircraft wings at an abandoned airfield and dreaming of becoming an astronaut. I had never traveled anywhere outside of China. The farthest I had been from Nanjing, the city of my birth, was Suzhou University, where I had studied journalism and literature. But that was not why I felt apprehensive about the journey that lay ahead. Because of my writing and other activities, I was no longer welcome in my homeland, yet I knew little about America. I had no home, no friends, and no sense of what awaited me there. I didn't have a single spare dollar in my pocket or speak more than three words of English.

When we were airborne, the flight attendant came by, wheeling a cart. She was an American with blond hair, blue eyes, and a warm smile. In English, she asked me if I wanted something to eat or drink. I didn't understand her since I knew how to say only "Hello," "Thank you," and "Help," but I guessed at her intention. I presumed that the refreshments would cost money, so I waved my hand in a gesture that said no, hugging Shanghai Mama's tin pan even tighter on my lap. Then I pointed toward the cocktail napkins piled high at the edge of the cart, and the stewardess wordlessly handed me a large stack.

For hours, I scribbled Chinese characters onto the thin squares of paper, placing one after another at the corner of my tray like miniature flags of surrender. I did not intend to share these notes; journaling had proved comforting to me since I was a child. The act of recording my thoughts gave the illusion of having a conversation with a trusted friend, when in truth I now had none.

I landed in San Francisco fourteen hours later, jet-lagged and emotionally drained. The airport amazed me. It glittered like a jewel with its multiple-story-tall windows and sparkling cleanliness.

As soon as I had cleared immigration, I sought out the ticket counter. I was en route to Albuquerque, where I was registered to study English as a second language at the University of New Mexico. Although I had exactly eighty dollars in traveler's checks to pay for the connecting flight, the airline staff refused to issue me a ticket. I couldn't understand why; that had been the price when I had checked in Shanghai.

Bless San Francisco--there was a Mandarin-speaking agent behind the counter who understood my problem. In China, the government sets prices, so ticket prices rarely changed. But here in America, prices changed frequently, she explained. "The ticket price has increased since you left Shanghai. You are five dollars short."

I didn't have five dollars, a credit card, or a number to call for help. As I stood there silently, an American man waiting behind me in line asked us what the problem was. When the desk agent explained my predicament, he took a five-dollar bill out of his wallet.

"Here you go," he said, flashing an easy smile. The ticket agent translated.

"Thank you," I replied in English, surprised that a stranger would help me. The gesture may not have meant much to him, but it meant the world to me. My first impression of Americans--and one that endures to this day--was that they are warm, giving people. The experience offered me this life lesson: "When in doubt, always err on the side of generosity." It is a value that I have held dear to my heart ever since.

When I got to Albuquerque, I found myself stranded once again. My father had given me the name of Mr. Sheng, a former student of his who was studying at the University of New Mexico and had helped my family to get me accepted there. I called him collect several times, but the phone rang endlessly. I waited, hoping eventually I'd reach this stranger who was my only U.S. contact. I had nowhere else to turn. (Later, I learned that Mr. Sheng had graduated from UNM a few weeks before I arrived and was touring America before returning to China.)

As I sat on the curb outside the luggage claim with my one large, tattered bag, I watched the cars coming and going. The popping sound of car trunks opening unnerved me. No one seemed to notice me; they were all too busy leaving the airport or coming here to pick up their loved ones. It reminded me of the day, when I was eight years old, that I left Shanghai by train and arrived at the Nanjing station alone. The feelings of loss hit me hard, and I began to cry.

A car pulled up in front of me some time later. When I looked up with hazy eyes, I saw a Chinese man sitting in the driver's seat. He rolled down the window slowly.

"Do you need help?" the man asked, speaking in Mandarin with a thick accent that I couldn't place. Yes, I said, I needed a ride to the University of New Mexico campus. "Get in," he said, waving his hand toward the passenger seat. "I'll take you there."

Another generous American! And not only that, there were Chinese-speaking people everywhere here. I couldn't believe my luck.

We drove off in his beat-up car across a vast and desolate desert plain that resembled a postapocalyptic landscape. My limited impressions of America had come entirely from Chinese state-run television, which I had watched from time to time, huddled in groups with my classmates and neighbors around someone's black-and-white TV. Mostly, I knew that the Chinese dominated the Americans in Ping-Pong. Still, I had expected to be living in a city like the dense metropolises of Nanjing and Shanghai where I had grown up, not a place like this.

"Do you mind if we stop by my house?" the man asked. "I need to check in on my kids before I can drop you off at the university."

I nodded. A few minutes later, we drove into the Albuquerque center city, where the cluttered, uniform housing complexes looked not unlike those in Nanjing. At least here were signs of familiarity. But unlike in any Chinese urban center, the streets were empty. The only people I saw were homeless with dirty sleeping bags and signs that looked like they were selling themselves or their children. I began anxiously tapping my fingers against my knee. The man pulled up in front of an apartment compound with high windows covered by metal bars. It reminded me of a Chinese prison. Later, I found out it was government-subsidized housing for refugees, and the man was a Vietnamese refugee of Chinese descent.

"Please come inside and meet my children for a minute," the man offered.

I climbed out of the passenger seat and followed him. Although the surroundings made me a little uneasy, I had no reason to feel suspicious. He seemed like a caring father and had been so kind to me.

As soon as I stepped inside, he handed me a box of cookies and stammered, "My wife just walked out on me. I need someone to look after the children for a few hours because I have to go to work." Then he dashed out of the small apartment. I heard him lock the front door from the outside with a padlock.

I turned around and saw two young boys, perhaps three and four years old, and a baby girl with wide, watery eyes. They stared at me with their hands reaching out and feet glued to the ground, desperate for attention but too scared to approach me.

"Mama, Mama," they cried out. Mama means "mother" in Chinese as it does in much of the rest of the world.

"No, no, I am not your mother," I said in Mandarin. But they didn't understand.

"Mama, mama," they continued in unison, voices reaching a fever pitch.

For a few frantic moments, I ignored the children and searched the dingy apartment for a back door or a window whose bars I could slide my petite frame through--any hope of escape. I found none. I saw no telephone, either, though even if I had, I wouldn't have known to dial 911. I was a prisoner.

The strain of the past few days caught up with me and I sank onto the cool concrete of the living room floor. My body frozen, all I could hear was the pounding of my heart. The plain gray walls were closing in on me. The faces of the children were fading. I felt like I was going to pass out.

Then the toddler came up to me and took my hand. She placed her face next to mine, eyes innocent as a bunny rabbit's and skin soft as finely ground flour. I had a great deal of experience caring for children, so I gathered up the energy to care for these three. I doled out the cookies, washed their dirty faces, and let them ride on my back for a game of horsey, which I'd been fond of playing as a child. When I got worn out, I would fall to the ground. They would laugh and call out strange words. It didn't matter that I didn't understand; I assumed they wanted me to repeat the game, time and time again.

Hours passed and the sky grew dark, but the children's father did not return. I wondered how long I might be held captive, hoping that the man was working a late shift and would come home soon. I put the children to sleep in the bedroom, which had only one bed. The living room and kitchen shared the same space. Next to the dining table were two chairs and a hard bench, no couch. I was too tired to care. I wound up spending my first night in America as I had passed many in China: sleeping on a concrete floor, cold, exhausted, hungry, and miserable.

The next morning, the children quickly finished the cookies. The two boys became cranky, crying and patting their tummies. I found a box of macaroni and cheese in the apartment's near-empty cupboards, but I had no idea how to prepare it properly. So I boiled the noodles and we ate them plain, without the cheese that lay hidden in its metal envelope.

By midmorning, with no sign of the father's return, I started to wonder if something had happened to him. Through an open barred window, I began shouting one of the few English words I knew: "Help." The children joined in with me, thinking we were playing another game. But the passersby--and there weren't many--did nothing.

The next day I tried again. My voice grew louder and more desperate with each passing hour, as we all became hungrier and I lost hope that my captor would ever return to set us free.

Finally, on the third day, we heard shouts from just outside, followed by pounding on the apartment door. "Help, help!" I screamed. Moments later, police busted the door open. At last, a neighbor had heard us and called the cops. They loaded us into a paddy wagon and took us downtown to the police station.

As soon as they had found a Chinese interpreter, two burly policemen began to interrogate me. "Do you know your kidnapper? Why did you get into a stranger's car? How did you end up inside his house? Who can we call about the children? Do you have any family or friends we can call to verify your identity? Did the man hurt you?"

My answers came out as hysterical semi-nonsense. Not only was I sleep deprived and ravenous, but also I had a well-developed suspicion of authority figures. In China, no one trusted the police, and we never wanted our names appearing on official paperwork-- that almost always brought lifelong troubles. Was I now considered a criminal by the American government, I wondered? Would I be punished? Would the Chinese government find out that I'd gotten into trouble on my very first day in the United States of America? If so, would they go after my family in China for revenge?

The police tried to get me to press kidnapping charges against the Vietnamese man. I refused. I simply begged them to set me free. Eventually they gave up on me and put a call into UNM on my behalf. They got directions for where on campus to take me: the International Student Center.

I arrived at the University of New Mexico in a squad car.

Although I had made up my mind to leave my life in China behind, those days of captivity that followed my arrival in the United States had drawn me back into painful memories of my childhood. Ones that I had tried hard to forget.

When I was little, I thought dragonflies chose to hover just above my family's garden because they liked to admire its beauty. I was the baby of the family, younger by several years than my sister and four brothers, and we lived together in a grand Shanghai home with our parents, whom I called Shanghai Mama and Papa. We liked to catch the magnificent humming red-orange dragonflies in a net. We would compare the colors of their wings, debating which was most beautiful.

I assumed that Shanghai was the center of the earth, partly because of my grandfather's historic maps etched with many shipping lines that fanned out from the Bund, partly because of the city's sheer enormity and traffic, and partly because it was the only home I knew. We lived on a tree-lined lane in a neighborhood of "little mansions" built by entrepreneurs of the early twentieth century, when Shanghai was known as the "Paris of the East."

Our family house was peaceful rather than showy, a three-story and three-section villa connecting to a courtyard with a front gate that opened onto the main street of our neighborhood. Surrounding the complex, a stone wall decorated with an ornate iron fence shielded the serene interior from the unpredictable outside world.

Curved, handcrafted iron and stone balconies adorned the south facade, letting in warm light on sunny days and offering a panoramic view. Standing there, you could glean something of our lives in the early 1960s: the imposing headquarters of the Soviet Friendship Society looming large amid the boutiques and businesses that lined the city's famous Nanjing Road. Chairman Mao's most radical reforms had yet to fully penetrate China's most cosmopolitan city then; a Hong Kong tailor still made the Western suits that my brothers wore to school. Streetcar Number 24 passed nearby, and my family and I often took it into the heart of the old city, surrounded by swarms of bicyclists commuting to work or school, past ancient bazaars and old ladies selling flowers.

The front of our house held a traditional Chinese courtyard with a well that offered us crystal clear drinking water. In the backyard, a lovely garden filled with exotic species of flowers, wooden pagodas, and winding stone paths offered itself up to our imagination. This was my father's scholar garden, a modest version of the symbolic landscapes developed centuries earlier by the educated elite of China, places they went to contemplate and restore their serenity when Europe was still in the Dark Ages. Shanghai Papa taught me that the garden contained plants for each season, and that there was a reason for each plant.

"There are three friends of winter: the pine tree, the plum blossom, and bamboo," Shanghai Papa once told me. "Pine trees are strong. They remain happy and green throughout the year. In the unbearable heat of summer and the severe cold of winter, they stand unperturbed." He plucked a branch and offered it to me. I inhaled the sharp odor.

"The crimson petals of the plum blossom gleam brilliantly against the white snow," he continued, pointing to a tree covered in magenta flowers. "The ability to bloom in the midst of misfortune suggests dignity and forbearance under harsh circumstances."

Shanghai Papa then walked over to a grove of bamboo. "This is the third friend of winter. Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times."

I nodded, reaching out to grab a stalk of bamboo and bending it toward me until its leaves tickled my nose. Shanghai Papa smiled and continued, "The Taoists understand that there can be no summer without winter, no ups without downs, no growth without decay. Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. When you are like the three friends of winter, you take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly." He asked me to memorize that and other Taoist sayings, and was proud when I could recite them in front of our frequent houseguests.

It was said that Shanghai Papa's hair was completely silver by the time he was thirty, a confirmation of his wisdom. For a while, I thought that if I painted my hair white I would become wise like him. He was a man of influence. When he spoke, each phrase unfolded like a precious gift. Yet he also had a way of making others laugh, and was unafraid to make jokes at his own expense.

Shanghai Papa ran a factory that made thread. When he came home at night, he would enter the front gate and call out, "Sweetheart, I'm home!" Shanghai Mama would come running, her footsteps quick and light. I liked to stick my head out from the second-floor balcony to spy on them in the courtyard below, hugging and kissing. Then, when they came walking up the stairs inside the house hand in hand, I would jump on them. They made a game of fighting to see who could catch me first. I never once saw them raise their voices with each other or with us. Theirs was the happiest marriage I have ever known.

Shanghai Mama was the embodiment of Chinese womanhood, dimpled and pretty with large, gentle eyes and soft skin. She made every visitor, including her own children, feel as though it were a great pleasure that we stayed in her home. I loved her tender embraces. Every morning, she would buy three jasmine flower buds from the market. One she pinned to her blouse. The other two she gave to me and my sister, whom I called Jie Jie (meaning "big sister"), so that we always carried a sweet fragrance with us.

While my older siblings were off at school, I would spend afternoons with Shanghai Mama in the kitchen. She said that food must appeal to all five senses: aroma, color, texture, taste, and love. I'd hang on to her legs amid the sizzle and steam and chopping sounds as she prepared the traditional dinners we enjoyed each night: four appetizers, one soup, and eight main courses. My favorite dish was crabmeat with ginkgo nuts in mint mango sauce.

Shanghai Mama loved all six children dearly, and since I was the youngest, I was still small enough to cuddle and kiss. She used to call me her "pearl in the hand," a Chinese phrase used to refer to that which is most delicate and precious, something that must be kept close to safeguard it from harm. She gave me the nickname that the rest of my family later adopted: Ping-Ping, which means "Little Apple." At night, though I had a small canopy bed of my own, she would let me fall asleep in a corner of her and Papa's large rosewood bed.

It was in the library that I taught myself to write a phonetic form of Chinese known as pinyin at an early age. It is also where Shanghai Papa and his father, my grandfather, cultivated in me a lasting appreciation of ideas--which they said, like books, required proper care. They would easily forgive me if I left a scroll out on the floor; I was just a small child. But returning it to the wrong cubicle was a more serious infraction.

My brothers teased me that I was a bookworm, but I wasn't always reading. I also enjoyed the library because it was at tree level and I could look out the windows past the heavy drapes embroidered with cranes, symbolizing peace, to catch a glimpse of the sparrows as they darted in and out of our garden at sunset. I saved kernels of rice for the birds, my wild golden pets, and dreamed of growing wings so that I could fly with them through the clouds and even higher, to the moon. It was said that a woman with a long flowing robe lived there, and I longed to pay her a visit.

I wanted so much to fly that I wished for it on my eighth birthday, in May of 1966. Shanghai Mama brought out a square cake decorated with green latticework on the sides and covered with roses made of yellow cream. It looked like our garden! I blew hard, but two of the candles stayed lit.

"You won't get your wish," taunted Brother Four, before Shanghai Mama shushed him and told me I could try again. But my brother was right.

When I look back on that birthday dinner, I see the ink print of a perfect childhood. It was as a member of that family, within those nurturing, loving, and intellectually inspiring arms, that I assumed I would grow up. I don't know how I could have coped with what happened next if I hadn't first known the beauty that flows from a child's simple expectation of love.

That spring, rain fell in torrents, washing away the spectacularly colored flowers in our garden and the tranquillity of our neighborhood. I didn't know at the time that the Cultural Revolution was just beginning, and no one in my family anticipated that it would last for the next ten years. It would prove to be the darkest period in modern Chinese history: thirty-six million people were persecuted, and three million were killed or maimed. Chairman Mao was consolidating his grip as the leader of the People's Republic of China with an ultra-left-wing, anti-intellectual, pro-labor version of Communism fueled by his often out-of-control army of fanatical young people, the Red Guard. In order to seize power, he had elevated an existing student movement to the level of a nationwide campaign. Mao called on not only the youth but also the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers to carry out the task of reforming China by ridding it of corrupting capitalist and intellectual influences.

Many young Chinese at the time were enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming politically influential at such a young age. With "Little Red Books" filled with Chairman Mao's quotations in their hands, squads of Red Guards formed and began to go from house to house looking for potential elements of corruption, which often included their own family members. The accusations against their opponents frequently seemed ridiculous to outsiders, yet the punishments the Red Guard extracted could be exceptionally cruel.

I was too young to understand the political surges that were changing our lives, but I remember noticing strange things happening around that time.

First, a friendly German man who lived across the street from us left without saying good-bye, as if the rain had washed him away. I had liked him. He used to give me horsey rides on his back, one after another, until he ran out of breath and put me down, huffing and muttering, "Kaputt! Kaputt!"

I went into his empty house after I found out that he'd gone. The door was unlocked, yet the furniture remained untouched. I saw his favorite armchair, its sagging cushions permanently indented from where he used to sit. It was like looking at a photographic negative, a shadow of a presence. The air seemed thin without the sounds of his Chinese, thickened by a German accent, and his resounding laughter.

I walked back to our house and found Shanghai Mama. I asked her where the German man had gone. She told me that he was a "foreign devil" and that I should put him out of my mind. The unusual sharpness in her voice scared me so much that I didn't dare ask any questions about him again.

Shanghai Mama came home with bad news one afternoon not long after that. She had lost her position as head of our neighborhood committee because she wasn't a member of the Communist Party. Being part of a well-educated, relatively wealthy merchant-class family was rapidly falling out of favor.

Communist flags unfurled furiously throughout the city. Pieces of propaganda sailed through the streets like autumn leaves, calling everyone to join the revolution. Posters with big black characters soon covered the real estate of every enclosing wall around our neighborhood. I grew particularly fearful of those with thick red lines painted over a person's name. One of my brothers explained that these people had been identified as enemies of the state. I overheard them telling one another stories of neighbors being tortured to death. The graphic details made me feel so ill that I had to cover my ears.

Learning itself came to be labeled "counterrevolutionary." I was in first grade that spring when Mao closed down all the schools in China. Everyone, old and young, was required to get up each morning and stand outside to salute a picture of Chairman Mao that hung at the end of the lane. From there, the older children headed off to study sessions, during which they recited quotes from Mao's Little Red Book. I was still young enough to stay home.

One day, a frenzy of excitement swept the country as Mao eliminated train fares and invited millions of Chinese to travel to Beijing to see him speak in the People's Square. My brothers were excited and applied to make the trip. But Mao's army was conducting background checks that extended back for three generations. If you received verification that your family tree was "clean"--that you were descended from three generations of workers, farmers, or soldiers--then you were given a red band to put on your arm, a moss green military uniform, a cap with a single red star, and the status that went along with being a Red Guard.

"We're dirty," my brothers complained over dinner when they were denied.

"See, you should have listened to Mama and bathed every day," I teased. Shanghai Mama often chased after my mud-stained brothers at bedtime, trying to get them to wash up.

"You don't understand," my third brother said, shaking his head.

"Well, I'm just glad we are all home safe," Shanghai Papa spoke firmly, urging us to eat our dinner. That may have been one of our last meals together as a family.

Communist Party meetings were held in homes all over the city. Later that week, our iron gates swung open and people poured into our courtyard. Shanghai Papa escorted them into the ballroom on the ground floor. Some were neighbors, but most of them I didn't recognize. At first, my brothers, sister, and I took it all for fun, buzzing about like bees. Then the talking started. It went on and on as people dozed off sitting in our sofas or propped up against the walls.

I lost interest until Shanghai Papa took the microphone in his hand and started talking. I cannot remember his words, but I know that he was saying something in his wise and careful manner about himself and our family.

"Revisionist!" someone in the audience shouted at Shanghai Papa rudely.

The room went quiet. Shanghai Papa searched the room until his eyes locked onto the person who had spoken out against him. I was shocked when Papa thanked him, saying he was grateful for the man's feedback. Shanghai Mama immediately found me and led me upstairs to my room, telling me this conversation wasn't meant for my little ears.

Red Guards appeared at the doorway to our home the next day, commanding my brothers to go with them. They were being "sent up to the mountains or down to the countryside," a Communist Chinese expression that soon became synonymous with forced labor and a hefty dose of physical and psychological abuse. Shanghai Papa was arrested. Only then did I become frightened for the first time.

I never imagined that they might come after me next.

It was later that summer. I was sitting on the floor of my grandfather's library. A column of small drawers, like the ones in traditional Chinese medicine cabinets, extended floor to ceiling from the library's mahogany wall. Numbered and meticulously stacked in these drawers were picture books, stories illustrated in fine ink on long and narrow sheets of rice paper protected by silk covers. Shanghai Papa said they were special because they were hand drawn, with only a few copies made of each edition. I knew how to open and close the accordion folds carefully so as not to damage the books. I loved to touch the beautiful pictures and trace my index finger over the dense and delicate black ink strokes.

Outside, the streets of Shanghai, which were often foggy during the summer, wore a thick coat of hazy drizzle. I paged through a story about the Monkey King, the infamous trickster of Chinese mythology who could fly thousands of miles across the clouds. I imagined the Monkey King hopping off the page and, with a naughty grin, handing me a peach he had stolen.

Suddenly, I heard a crash echoing from the courtyard below. Next came the heavy beating of boots entering our home, and then voices from the living room on the ground floor. Soon I could hear shouting, then my mother's voice, soft but broken. She and I were the only ones home.

I threw my book onto the floor and ran to the library door. The sound of my mother's pleading was almost buried under quarrelsome shouts, the smashing of broken glass, and the cracking of furniture.

"Where is she?" a young male voice demanded. "Where did you hide her?"

"She--she is so little . . ." my mother murmured, breaking into sobs.

I rushed out of the library to the top of the staircase and poked my head through the banister to see what was happening.

"She's upstairs!" a teenage boy cried, spotting me and pointing me out to the others.

Oh, no--they want to catch me, I thought. My legs barely obeyed my panicked mind as I scampered for a hiding place. I ran directly back into the library, the safest and most comforting place I'd ever known.

But there was no escape. The invaders made their way up the stairs too quickly--four boys and one girl, all teenagers, all members of Mao's Red Guard. They wore matching oversized moss green uniforms, red armbands, and olive-colored caps adorned with a simple red star. Two of them held lit cigarettes between their fingers. They backed me into a corner of the library and surrounded me in a half circle.

The boy who had spotted me spoke first. "You are not a resident of Shanghai. You can't live here." He stepped forward to grab me by the shoulders. "Come on--follow us," he said close to my ear, adopting a gentler tone. "We will take you to Nanjing. It is the city of your registry residence because you were born there."

I felt more and more confused. No one had ever told me that I'd been born in Nanjing. I had lived in this house my entire life and didn't know any other home. I took a step back, and the female guard slammed me backward into a mahogany cabinet.

"Come with us this minute," the girl ordered, grabbing my right arm with a firm grip, her face flush with excitement. Then her eyes narrowed even further. "Let me tell you," she said, turning her head toward my mama, who had followed the guards upstairs. "This woman is not your mother."

"No, no, no! That's not true," I said. "She is my mama, she is my mama!" I kicked my feet and squirmed in the girl's grip until she handed me back to the boy who had spotted me first.

I lifted my head to look at him. He was quite handsome in his uniform, as tall as my oldest brother. The red star on his cap was slightly bent and scratched. I immediately thought of him as "Bent Star."

Bent Star tapped the ashes off his cigarette and stuck it into the right side of his mouth. Then he lifted me up with one hand, roughly grabbing the back of my T-shirt

"Let me go," I said as I struggled. "Mama, save me, save me!" I called out to her, my arms waving.

Bent Star dropped me onto the wooden floor and took another drag from his cigarette. Ashes fell from the air, a spark singeing my ankle before dying out. He then grabbed my hand and pulled me through the library door to the top of the stairs. His strides were long, like a giraffe's, so I had to scramble to keep up with him in order to avoid being dragged across the floor.

"Don't be stupid," he said. "You are lucky that we're taking you to your real mother."

"But she is my real mother," I replied, pointing back to where Mama stood at the library door, hands over her mouth to muffle her cries. "Please, let me go, let me go! You're hurting me!"

"Shut up or I'll hit you," he hissed, his big palm rising in the air. I could see, though, that he was like a barking dog that is not really going to bite. He was only trying to appear tough in front of the others. My brothers behaved the same way. I wished that they were home. They would not have allowed anyone to hurt me.

"Ping-Ping, stop fighting," my mama said, raising her voice to stop my protests. "He is right--I did not give birth to you. Nanjing Mother is your real mother."

"No, no, no! You are my mother. You told me so many times. I'll be good. Don't let them take me away--please!"

Tears gushed down my face and blinded my eyes. How could my mama say such a thing? Only a few weeks ago, I was playing in the kitchen while she cooked dinner and she had told me that I was her favorite child. My mama only uttered a small cry. Her hands shook furiously, and her almond-shaped eyes filled with tears.

"She's lying!" I screamed.

The girl guard walked over and slapped me twice on the face, hard.

"What are you doing that for, Lin?" Bent Star asked, placing his arm in front of my face to shield it from any further blows. Lin threw her head back in disgust. Bent Star tossed aside his cigarette butt, picked me up with both arms, and carried me downstairs. The others cheered as they marched down the stairs behind us.

"Mama, please take me back. I'll be good--I promise. Please!" I wailed, as the guards carried me out the villa's front door.

The last glimpse I had was Shanghai Mama standing behind the iron gate, waving, her hands stretched toward me while she spilled out a few halting words. "Ping-Ping, be . . . be good. Ping-Ping. . .be a . . . a brave girl . . ."

Bent Star pushed me quickly away from the house, while Lin gave me another slap. "Keep quiet," she hissed. They loaded me into an empty black military van. Ten minutes later, we arrived at our destination.

Shanghai Train Station West was jammed to the breaking point with people carrying babies, baskets, and suitcases. I had never seen it so busy before. Bent Star grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the van. His eyes wandered around as if he were confused.

"Over there!" Lin said, pointing to an approaching train. I watched the hot steel creature grunt and lurch into the station. Sparks of burning coal swirled out of the engine pipe until they faded into the damp gray air.

As we walked closer to the train, the scene grew even more chaotic. The cars were already packed full when the train pulled in, yet more people struggled to get on board anyway, pushing their way through doors and climbing in windows. Arms, legs, and bottoms stuck out from every possible opening. I noticed several other groups of Red Guards on the platform as well. Some were boarding the train themselves; others were pushing unwilling passengers with tear-streaked faces.

Bent Star watched the scene for a few moments as he tried to figure out how to load me onto the train. I noticed that we stood in front of car number five. Copying the other Red Guards, the gangly teenager picked me up and heaved me through the nearest window like a sack of rice. I was struggling to find my footing in the crowded compartment when I heard him call out my name.

"Ping, catch!" Bent Star said, throwing his own wool sweater in after me. "Put it on before you get sick," he ordered. Then he turned and disappeared into the sea of people.

I found myself crammed into a tiny space on the floor surrounded by strong odors of cigarette smoke, urine, and sweat, fighting for breathing room with strangers far larger than I. Family members screamed for each other and babies cried, creating a symphony of suffering. I began to weep.

An old man noticed me and asked if I was traveling alone. When I nodded, he offered me a wedge of seat between himself and the window. I felt a breeze as the train began to move. The fresh air, the view of the deep green rice fields, and the swaying motion of the train offered me some small comfort.

Smashed into my seat corner, I sorted through the puzzling events that had just taken place. I tried to tell myself that Mama had said those hurtful things about not being my real mother only because the Red Guards had been threatening me and she had been afraid that they would hurt me if she didn't lie. But the truth of the matter was, there had been hints before that I'd been adopted. I remembered a time when my older sister had complained that my brothers were giving me a longer sedan chair ride in their arms than they were giving their "real" sister. I had run inside the house crying. Mama had assured me that she was my real mother.

"Ping-Ping," she had said, stroking my hair, "you're so special that you needed two mothers to give birth to you."

Nanjing Mother, Shanghai Mama's sister, had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. I had often wondered why Shanghai Mama had worked so hard to encourage me to form a bond with Nanjing Mother and write letters to her. My nanny had even taken me on this very train to visit Nanjing a few times, though it had been a while since our last trip. I had also found it strange that Shanghai Mama had always asked me to call her sister "Nanjing Mother," as opposed to "Auntie." Still, it had never occurred to me that Nanjing Mother might be my real mother. Now I finally faced the undeniable truth: Nanjing Mother must be my birth mother.

I remembered Nanjing Mother as a serious person. She had an efficient, close-cropped hairdo that she kept perfectly blow-dried. Short and thin with a round face and sloping shoulders that made her face seem even rounder, she nonetheless stood very erect. During my visits, she always hurried off to work early in the morning and arrived home late. She carried with her at all times a dark wooden abacus, each bead shining from use. At night, I would fall asleep to the sound of the abacus clicking in a pleasant consistent rhythm. Once she told me proudly that she had won the Nanjing city abacus championship.

Nanjing Mother often asked me questions to test my knowledge of basic math, such as, "Two plus two equals?" If I knew the answer, another question would follow. "Two times three equals?" This would go on for a while until I didn't know an answer. "You'll know next time," she'd say.

In Shanghai, we always had a table full of fragrant homemade dishes for dinner. Mama was a wonderful chef. Papa would share his stories of the day, while my brothers interjected their jokes, making me laugh so hard that my tummy ached. Nanjing Mother, on the other hand, didn't like to cook. She often went out to get dinner. I accompanied her a couple of times. We waited in a long line until we reached the window of a large cafeteria. Servers scooped the food out from vast metal containers. It didn't look or smell appealing, and it often contained big chunks of pig fat that I couldn't swallow. When I spit them out, it would infuriate Nanjing Mother. "You are wasting food," she'd complain. We never talked or laughed at the dinner table. Nanjing Mother didn't seem to enjoy the food or her time with me.

Nanjing Mother's husband, whom I now realized was probably my birth father, was even shorter than she was, but I couldn't picture his face. I just remembered Nanjing Father getting up early each morning to fetch fresh food from the market and make me sesame pancakes with soymilk for breakfast.

"Don't say you like it," Nanjing Mother warned. "You will get the same breakfast every day if you do."

They had a two-bedroom flat on the second floor of an apartment building with an old-fashioned Chinese roof and patchy, discolored brick walls. The building housed members of the faculty of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, or NUAA , where Nanjing Father taught engineering. They had a cute little daughter named Hong, four years younger than I was. The last time I'd seen her, she was learning how to use the potty by herself.

I didn't dislike my Nanjing parents; I just didn't know them. They hadn't raised me, and I couldn't think of them as my real parents. But I took comfort in knowing that at least I wouldn't be alone when I got to Nanjing. I was going to live with them and visit my Shanghai Mama and Papa, instead of the other way around.

In the seat opposite me, a woman nursed her baby girl. Faces filled with love, they seemed oblivious to the cacophony surrounding them. It made me miss Shanghai Mama even more.

Four hours later, the train came to a squeaking halt at Nanjing Station, where the scene was almost identical to the one I'd witnessed in Shanghai. People fought their way off the train and onto the packed platform, sending their sacks flying through the windows. Fights broke out. Women, their clothes and children wrapped tightly in bundles under their arms, dashed out of sight.

I felt beads of sweat form on my forehead and the palms of my hands. I wondered if everyone except for me knew where to go and what to do. The kind old man who had shared his seat with me had already left; I was alone.

I sat motionless on my seat, trying to make myself invisible. Streetcar Number 24, which stopped in front of our Shanghai house, traveled in a loop. Shanghai Mama always told me that if I ever got lost, I only needed to stay on the same streetcar until it brought me back home. It occurred to me that the train probably worked the same way. If no one found me here, I could simply stay put, and this train would take me back to Shanghai, where I would be reunited with my mama.

"Ping Fu! Ping Fu!" The sound of my name being called by two voices--one male and one female--jolted me to attention.

"I'm here! I'm here!" I answered instinctively, thinking this must be my Nanjing parents coming to fetch me. I poked my head out the train window and waved my hand furiously. But the afternoon sun blinded me so that all I could make out rushing across the platform toward me were two silhouettes.

As the figures came stomping onto the train, I was horrified to discover that these were not my Nanjing parents after all, but two new Red Guards. How had they known where to find me? Bent Star must have notified them that I was in car number five. I glanced around for an escape route, but it was too late. The girl already had her hand on my shoulder and was shaking me.

"Why the hell did you stay on the train, you idiot? Get off this minute," she commanded in a high-pitched voice. I decided to call her "Squeaky."

"She wanted a free round-trip," the boy guard joked, not realizing just how close he was to the truth. It looked as if he had broken or dislocated his nose at some point, so I labeled him "Crank Nose."

Crank Nose and Squeaky led me to a car and drove me through the city. I had learned just about everything I knew of Nanjing from my Shanghai Papa. He had told me that the city was known for its prime location on the Yangtze River and for attracting intellectuals as well as artists. Nanjing means "Southern Capital." The city had earned this name because it served as the capital of ten dynasties in ancient China. Papa's tales of its rich history, plus the presence of Nanjing Mother and Father, made the city mystical in my childhood mind.

A dark period in Nanjing's recent history had lent the city a newfound and unwelcome notoriety. In December 1937, the Japanese army occupied Nanjing for six weeks. The city erupted in violence, becoming the scene of one of the biggest massacres in modern history. An estimated three hundred thousand Chinese civilians were slaughtered, with mass beheadings, live burials, burnings, and other forms of torture. More than twenty thousand women were raped and many were then killed. A third of the city's buildings were damaged by fire, and countless shops, stores, and residences were looted and sacked. Blood ran through the boulevards; corpses floated on rivers and littered the streets and alleys. Children, the elderly, even nuns--no one could escape the savagery of the Japanese army. When I was nine or ten, I learned that the Rape of Nanjing Memorial Day falls on May 30, my birthday. The coincidence unsettles me to this day, making my birthday both a cause for celebration and an opportunity for grave reflection on humankind's potential for cruelty.

Nanjing had recovered somewhat in the decades that followed the Japanese occupation, but I recalled from my previous visits that it was still nowhere near the glamorous, cosmopolitan city that Shanghai was. As we drove through the streets that day, I saw that it was not even as pleasant as I had remembered; it seemed more like a war zone. Military tanks rolled down the tree-lined roads. Gunshots rang out like bad omens. Bloodstains dotted the sidewalks, serving as warning signs. The streets were almost empty of citizens except for a few people dressed in blue-and-gray Mao-style Jackets riding bicycles silently with their heads down. But everywhere, I saw Red Guards with their matching military uniforms, caps, and red armbands. It was clear that these young people were running the show.

Without a word, Crank Nose and Squeaky dropped me off at the front gate of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I was relieved to recognize the place from previous visits: this was where Nanjing Father was a professor. I got out of the car excitedly, hoping to catch site of my birth parents. My two Red Guard escorts darted away in their vehicle, leaving me behind with nothing more than the stink of their black exhaust.

Once I took in the scene, the situation seemed hopeless. Armed military personnel unloaded from tanks and trucks lining the road in front of the main entrance to the university. Behind the military line they had formed, a crowd of thousands pushed at one another and yelled at the Red Guards. Trucks jammed with more people passed by. Chaos filled the air, and confusion shone forth from the face of every citizen. Still eager to find Nanjing Mother and Father, I squeezed between people's legs and made my way to the front of the crowd, right up against the university gates.

Suddenly, I heard my nickname being called by a thin and familiar voice. Standing on my tiptoes and stretching my neck long to make myself taller, I struggled to determine where the sound was coming from.

"Ping-Ping!" the voice called again, enabling me to home in on one of the trucks where Red Guards were loading up citizens. Standing there in the truck bed were my Nanjing parents. They furiously nudged their bodies through the crowd to get closer to the edge of the truck bed so that they could wave to me. Their faces were flushed red and drawn tight.

I kept pushing my way toward them through the crowd, but their truck pulled away too quickly. All I caught were a few glimpses of Nanjing Mother, with Nanjing Father's head popping up over her shoulder.

"Ping-Ping, take care of your sister," I heard Nanjing Mother shout as the truck drove off in a cloud of dust.

At their disappearance, I felt numb. My shoulders shook as I doubled over on myself, scared and confused.

That was the first time I felt the falling sensation that was to become so familiar to me over the years. I was falling, falling, and there was no one to catch me. There was no one left here who knew me, and no one to care for me. I got sick to my stomach, nearly vomiting onto the shoes of the people surrounding me.

If only my eighth birthday wish had come true, I thought. If only I could fly. I'd soar like a bird up into the heavens, out of this nightmare, and back home to Shanghai, to my loving mama and siblings and our peaceful home.

The next thing I knew, Red Guards grabbed me and pushed me into a line with other disheveled kids. We walked across the street to the student dormitory area, where a pair of two-story gray concrete buildings stood parallel; not far from them were a scum-filled water canal and a long brick wall. A trail of garbage brought my attention to a soccer field on the west side. This would be my home and neighborhood for the next ten years.

In the early 1960s, the government provided Chinese students and faculty with standard housing on campus. But everything changed with the Cultural Revolution. Receiving an education suddenly was considered an activity of the bourgeois elite, and teachers were declared enemies of the state. Most people with an intellectual background--merchants, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, professors, and students--were killed or carted off to the countryside for reeducation. I later found out that, before my arrival in Nanjing, my parents' two-bedroom faculty flat had been confiscated along with everything in it.

Now that Mao had decided to require everyone in China to return to the city of their birth--even children unaccompanied by their parents--the university student dormitories were being converted into housing for families or individuals who had been relocated, like me. Several Red Guards sat at a table calling out names and assigning room numbers. I waited until they called "Ping Fu," and I approached the table.

I was handed papers that I couldn't read--the characters were too sophisticated for me. A big, official red stamp decorated the top of each page. Along with several dozen other children who either wept or wore blank expressions, I was escorted up to the second floor of the dormitory. At the top of the stairs, I gazed, terrified, down a long, dark hallway illuminated by a single lightbulb that hung by a wire from its socket. Identical rooms lined each side. The door hinges all were smashed, leaving the doors hanging at a slant.

Room 202 was near the stairs. "This is yours," a Red Guard escort told me. "You are forbidden from talking to anyone but your sister." I didn't have time to register what he'd said before he pushed open the creaking door to reveal a four-year-old girl sitting in the middle of a trash-littered room. She was wailing for her mama. A circle of shiny cement surrounded her on the filthy floor. She had flailed there for so long that she had polished it, like a halo, with her clothes, tears, and sweat.

"Mama!" she cried out, reaching her hands out to me.

I recognized her vaguely as Hong. When I had seen my Nanjing parents' little girl during previous visits, I had thought of her as my cousin. Now I realized that Hong was my sister. Still, I wasn't her mother!

"I'm your jie jie--your big sister," I said as I approached her cautiously. "I am not your mama."

The guard left us there. I told Hong to stop screaming, but she wouldn't listen. Exhausted, I threw myself onto the floor next to her, and we cried "Mama, Mama" in unison, but for different mothers. I don't know how long we stayed that way.

When I couldn't stand her screams any longer, I pulled Hong into an embrace and tried to quiet her. She sagged into my arms like a dirty puppet. I examined her face closely for the first time. Bubbles of snot blew out of her nostrils. Her cheeks were muddy, and her eyes swollen and bloodshot. Her voice had gone raw, but she wouldn't stop crying. I panicked, thinking that if she kept going at this rate, she might cause herself permanent damage.

What would Shanghai Mama do? I asked myself. I looked around the room, where all I saw was trash--mostly paper, a few notebooks, some broken pencils, a few rags. A smashed table lamp with a broken lightbulb sat not too far from Hong. There was no sink, but there was a faucet sticking out of the wall with a bucket underneath it. I was excited to find an old half-empty box of powdered laundry detergent nearby. I poured water into the bucket, dumped in some of the detergent, and dipped a filthy rag into the mixture, hoping to clean Hong's face and cool her down. Bubbles floated up into the room, and Hong chased after them, murmuring, "Bubbles, bubbles . . ." Magically, she burst into giggles.

Night fell, and our room was engulfed in darkness. There was no food, but neither of us was hungry; we were too grief-stricken. There was also no bed. I found an old sheet in the corner, folded it in half, and spread it over the shiny spot Hong had made. I lay down next to her and tried to wrap the top half over us, but the sheet wasn't wide enough. So I turned around, placing my head at Hong's feet. We lay there, upside-down sisters each absorbed by our own agony.

It probably didn't strike me then, but in the course of one day I had not only lost the mother I loved and the mother who had given birth to me; I had also become a mother myself.

That first night, I felt an acute sense of loss and confusion. I had no food, no friends, no family other than my helpless baby sister, and no clue as to when, if ever, my birth parents or my Shanghai parents might come to my rescue. Everything I had known and loved was gone. The beautiful house and its scholar garden, the aroma of Shanghai Mama's delicious dinner wafting throughout our home, the silky feeling of my skin as it touched the sheets on my Shanghai parents' bed, the echo of my siblings' laughter. The days ahead held only a hideous dorm room, the stench of humans living in close quarters, the sting of a cold concrete floor, and my newfound sister's howling sobs.

I wanted to run away, but I was fearful of being caught and tortured by the Red Guards, who seemed to know more about me than I knew about myself. Nor could I imagine leaving Hong alone in this awful place. I felt trapped. I couldn't turn off what I saw, heard, smelled, or touched. Even the humid summer air felt oppressive, as though it couldn't escape through our open window. I lay awake for hours, staring out into the darkness. Eventually, Hong's breathing fell into the soft, regular pattern of deep sleep.

I crept to the window, where a tiny shard of light illuminated a section of the floor. With a piece of newspaper and a bit of charcoal I found among the trash, I began to scribble a letter. I don't know why, but I began with Nanjing Mother. Perhaps I thought it would be easier for her to find me since she was originally from this city. I wrote:

Then I etched a letter to the parents who were most dear to my heart, Shanghai Mama and Papa:

I awoke to loudspeakers in the hallway blaring the song that had become the People's Republic of China's anthem, "The East Is Red." The East was Red and Mao was our Sun, the one who would bring fortune to us all.

"I have to go pee-pee," Hong informed me in her baby voice.

I had no idea where the bathrooms were, but the little creature seemed to know the way. She took my hand and we ventured outside. There were people in the corridor, their faces no more distinguishable in the dim light than pancakes. Many seemed to be Red Guards who had taken up residence with their families; others were orphaned children like me. I avoided their eyes as we made our way to the end of the hall, where there was a common lavatory.

The stink shocked tears back into my eyes even before we went inside. Instead of Western-style commodes or traditional Chinese squat toilets, there was only a long, open U-shaped concrete trough. Sewage floated inside, in danger of overflowing. A line of strangers squatted over it, dropping waste in front of me from their bare bottoms.

When we returned to our room, Hong resumed her crying. I looked around for something to distract her, but the room was barren. I dumped the rest of the detergent into the bucket and blew more bubbles at her. She giggled for a while as I stared out the window, trying not to cry and set her off again.

Looking out the window, I could see the dirty water of the canal I'd noticed the day before and hundreds of rusty bicycles. Close by stood another concrete dormitory like ours. Countless lines of laundry crisscrossed the short span between the two buildings: soggy gray pants and green uniforms, garments stitched from bedsheets, and nylon underpants in all colors of the rainbow. I knew underclothes had to be dried in the sun to sanitize them, but in Shanghai we hung our things in private. Here, as evidenced by the toilets and the laundry lines, there was no privacy. That, I came to understand, was why the doors hung so oddly: the hinges had been systematically broken so the doors could never be locked.

I desperately needed to find drinking water and food for myself and Hong. I eyed the faucet sticking out of the wall, but I knew that water had to be boiled before it was safe to drink. The problem was, I had no idea how or where to do it. I had eaten nothing since the morning before, and I longed to be back in the kitchen with my mama, delighting in a simple bowl of rice congee.

Hidden among the litter in our room, I found some rancid pickles, a small amount of rice in a jar, and a few pieces of discarded cookware. The Red Guard had told me not to speak to anyone other than my sister, and I was shy around strangers anyway, so I was reluctant to ask for help. I went out into the hall to observe what others were doing. It turned out that what I had thought were pipes outside each door were actually small coal-burning stoves. I had never been allowed to play with fire, but I brought some coal from a common bin as others were doing, stuffed it in the stove with some bits of newspaper, and lit a match. I tried again and again, but the flame went out each time.

An old man watched me for a while. Finally, he brought over a live coal from his stove and, without speaking a word, showed me the way to light a fire with it. I bowed my head in gratitude and boiled water to drink. Then I boiled more water and put the rice that I'd found into the pot. After we had finished our meager meal, Hong said she was still hungry. But there was no more food.

I learned later that week that each of us got rations from the Communist government. We could collect food stamps from the neighborhood community office and exchange these for products at the community store. The government told us how much we could fetch each month--for instance, ten kilos of rice, one bar of soap, a quarter kilo of salt, one bottle of soy sauce, a half kilo of meat, one bottle of cooking oil, ten eggs, and so on.

But for now, there were no food coupons and there was no mealtime. Hong was too young to understand, but I had gotten the impression that there were no bedtimes, no playtimes, no evening bath times, no good-night kisses, and no one other than the Red Guards to tell us what to do. Still, I couldn't begin to comprehend what living alone with my four-year-old sister really would mean.

From that moment on, I would never again be a child at my parents' side, under their protection and guidance. The boat on the long river of life was in my hands alone.

I thought of the three friends of winter: pine tree, plum blossom, and bamboo. Strength, courage, and resilience. I would need to keep all of them close by my side from now on. I could sense that a long winter lay ahead.