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The free channels— FOX 5, PBS 13, and the later-named UPN 9, and WB 11 —made my life feel less empty. Before leaving Zhong Guo, I had never been alone. So it was nice to be embraced again by the sounds of people, even if they were in a little screen, even if they spoke in a language I did not yet speak.
They wore a look that I had never before seen in Zhong Guo. Their eyes did not greet mine when I looked at them; their mouths did not smile; and the pall of exhaustion shaded their faces. Mei Guo had done something to them to change them forever.
Only later, after living many years in fear, would I understand that the risks were much lower than we believed at the time. But in the vacuum of anxiety that was undocumented life, fear was gaseous: it expanded to fill our entire world until it was all we could breathe.
