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not!” Viv says unequivocally. “I haven’t talked to him in several years and am not planning to. In fact, he’s not a topic of conversation that I enjoy.”
    After lunch, we head back to Deryk’s apartment to book more flights for our journey. We ride the elevator to the seventeenthfloor. I comment that it’s actually the fourteenth floor, since the fourth, thirteenth and fourteenth floors are missing.
    â€œIt makes sense that Deryk lives on this floor and it’s partly empty. Anyone Chinese would hesitate to live on the fourteenth flour, even though it’s listed as the seventeenth flour. Four and fourteen are very bad numbers. The words in Mandarin sound like death.”
    â€œThat strikes me as rather foolish. Not you?”
    â€œOh, come on! It’s tradition. We Chinese are raised to be superstitious.”
    â€œBut you seem so rational.” I say teasingly.
    â€œYou don’t get it. I choose to be superstitious,” she counters. “It’s a way to honour one’s ancestors by carrying forth their beliefs. Superstition is an act of awe. Ancestors should be held in awe,” she says, a little unsure of her footing in English.
    â€œ Awe ? Are you sure you intend to use that word?”
    â€œIt means fear and respect, right?”
    â€œYes. And that’s how you would describe your feelings toward these beliefs?”
    â€œYes,” she says firmly.
    Vivien certainly has no awe for the Chinese Communist Party. She has even cultivated a group of friends who have distinguished themselves through their opposition to the central government. Many of her contacts in activist and intellectual circles are from her days at Peking University. She was clearly a dedicated student and has maintained ties to many of her professors.
    She sets up a meeting for us with her former professor, Hé Weifang, at a place called Thinker’s Café, a hangout for students of the humanities. As we approach, Viv explains the café’s real name: “ Xing Ke means sober guest, probably after one of the greatest ofChinese poets, Qu Yuan, who was persecuted and committed suicide twenty-three hundred years ago. He wrote: ‘I was banished because everyone is drunk while I’m the only one sober.’”
    The café’s front door is discreet; it leads to a dirty staircase, at the bottom of which sits a bald-headed old man smiling a toothless grin.
    â€œI love this place,” Viv tells me as we climb the stairs.
    Landing on the second floor, I notice that the atmosphere has changed: the walls are painted black. The café is on one side; the All Sages Bookstore, the other. We turn toward the café. We pass a few display cabinets and I see Chinese titles for Jared Diamond, Milton Friedman and Edward Said.
    The café is stylish and moody. It’s obviously popular with young intellectuals. We head to a table by the window to wait for Professor Hé. Viv is excited to see him again and briefs me on his biography. Hé specializes in constitutional law. He has been particularly involved in cases of discrimination arising from China’s dual residency system, known as the hukou system. He has become a critic of the government and was one of a few legal academics to write an open letter criticizing the central government.
    â€œThere was a famous case a few years ago of a student dying in police custody,” Viv explains. “This student was out one night without his papers. If you are from the countryside, you must have written authorization to live in the city. If you don’t, you can be fined by the local authorities. If you can’t pay the fine immediately, they can force you to work. The authorities farm out this indentured labour to local contractors. In this case, the student was unable to prove on the spot that he was in fact a student. The police took him in as a potential labourer. Some people say that the student was lippy