She was keen to avoid the stares of the Falun Gong protesters across the street and lowered her head as she turned left towards the lake. Her hands gripped a small bag containing a paperback: Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet. She’d borrowed the novel from a colleague, Xiu Linjiang, to read on the plane from Beijing, taking his word that it contained ‘great insight’ into the Australian character. How she had enjoyed the foray into the lives of two working-class families, desperate and dirt poor, drawn together by their daily effort to survive. It had reminded her of stories her mother told of growing up in the backstreets of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, following the 1950 ‘liberation’. She was returning the book and was keen to see how Xiu had been faring in the month since he’d arrived from the northern winter to work at the new embassy compound, installing communications equipment, he’d told her. The compound was only four hundred metres from the embassy, but the workers’ accommodation was very different to the luxury Weng enjoyed in her suite.
