A WORKMAN COMES TO paint the living room ceiling after some repairs, and while he’s working we have a long conversation in Mandarin. He seems to have a lot of problems with his boss—there’s some profanity involved—and then he tells me a story about a relative in America who has either made a million bucks or come to a tragic end, I’m not sure which. As he talks, he sort of stilt-walks his ladder to the next spot, so he doesn’t have to get down—a motion as deft and graceful as the cranes walking in the tall grass by the pond down the road. And I keep nodding and saying yes, yes, and hmm, and he keeps talking, and we are both perfectly happy.