Beautiful Country by J.R. Thornton Read Free Book Online Page A

can use the emergency lane. They don’t have to follow the rules.”
    I would come to understand that there were a lot of things in China that I could not explain, for example how Driver Wu always knew when a motorcade was coming, or when he could cross into the wrong lane, or when he should obey the traffic cop standing in the middle of a busy intersection, and when he could ignore him.
    I yawned and let my eyes close for a second. I was still fighting off jet lag, and the exhaustion and disassociation came in waves. I leaned my head against the window and tried not to think too much about what I had traded for this year. I forced myself to stay awake by trying to translate the road signs we passed.
    The traffic had slowly started moving again. When I asked Victoria why there was traffic going into Beijing at this time, she just laughed and said there is always traffic, it doesn’t matter which way or what time. Driver Wu decided to try a shortcut, and soon we were going through narrow single lanes and alleyways. It was slow, but at least we were moving. At a crossroad with a lightI saw two boys playing a makeshift game of badminton in the street with the heads of two broken badminton rackets attached with twine to some sticks. I tapped Victoria on the shoulder and said, “Isn’t that dangerous?”
    Victoria shrugged her shoulders. “They will be okay.” I thought about David and Lily Zhang and tried to imagine them being allowed to play badminton on the streets, but I wasn’t able to picture it. These children were part of a different China.
    Victoria pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through some of the features. I asked her if it was new. She nodded. “Pink is very hard to get. I had to wait for six hours!” On our long car rides, Victoria often placed her pink cell phone on the seat next to her. Sometimes she would pick it up and play with the features or send text messages to friends. Sometimes she would just hold it and admire it.
    My father had told me that the Chinese had the biggest cell phone system in the world. They had leapfrogged technology; many Chinese went from no phones to cell phones. In many places they didn’t even bother installing landlines. During my time in China, Victoria upgraded her cell phone twice. She would spend hours learning all the features of each new phone. Cell phones were one of the few Western consumer goods that were affordable but expensive enough to be prestigious. To her, a phone was a fashion accessory in the same way the newest pair of shoes or an expensive bracelet would have been.
    After a gruesome two hours we made it back to the Chaoyang District where the Zhangs lived. I had asked Victoria about Beijing’s famous fake DVD shops, and on the way back to the Zhangs she told Driver Wu to stop at a dismal-looking store with DVD VIDEO in large soot-covered red letters emblazoned on its windows. I had seen at least a dozen of these stores on the way home. When we went in I was surprised to see titles that had not come out yet in America. I looked at the price, 10 RMB, slightly more than one dollar. The store had all of the new movies and most of the popular TV shows. The television show 24 had just finished season two in America and it wouldn’t be out on DVD for another six months, but here it was, right in front of me. It cost the equivalent of five U.S. dollars as opposed to the fifty dollars it would cost when it would come out in the States. I couldn’t wait to message my friends back home once I had internet hooked up in my room. I ended up getting the season of 24 and three other DVDS for nine U.S. dollars total.
    Victoria and I crossed the street to the Zhangs’ apartment building compound. With the building in sight, I convinced Victoria—and it did take some convincing—that I’d be able to survive an elevator ride by myself. I rang the doorbell and waited a few minutes. One of the maids opened