He asked where my family was from, what part of China. Fuzhou. That’s where I was born. Ah, Fujian province. He nodded knowingly. I looked at Balthasar uneasily. There was a hierarchy of provinces, and each province carried a stereotype, like the cultural biases associated with different New York neighborhoods. He was probably unimpressed. My knowledge of Fujian consisted of basic encyclopedic details: it is located directly across the strait from traitorous Taiwan; it has been historically separated from the rest of the mainland by a mountain range. With its seafaring traditions, most of the
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