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with them. The Albanians are being killed because they’re an ethnic minority. I listen to the Voice of America and I know what’s happening there. And I think it’s important because I am a Uighur from Xinjiang. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    I nodded, but he looked hard at me.
    “Mingbai le ma?” he said. “Do you understand?”
    “I understand,” I said.
    “Many things are difficult to talk about openly in Beijing,” he said. “Mingbai le ma?”
    “I understand,” I said. He studied me carefully, and then he smiled and raised his glass. All three of us drained our cups and made that face that men make when they drink baijiu . The young Azerbaijani asked, through Polat, if Americans often drank this sort of alcohol. I shook my head and then Polat mentioned the drinking habits of the Russians. This was an easy topic of international conversation; each of us had stories about Russian drunks, which turned out to be remarkably similar regardless of whether seen from the perspective of Uighurs, Azerbaijanis, or Americans. Polat translated the stories back and forth. The young trader remarked that the average Azerbaijani could not drink as much as the average Russian, but the best Azerbaijani drinkers were better than the best Russian drinkers. He made this point carefully and with great pride. The waiter brought us barbecued lamb. The lamb was spicy and quite good; it would have been even better with beer. I glanced longingly at the manhole.
    After a while, the conversation turned to the Uighurs, and Polat mentioned how some of them look like Europeans. “One of my closest friends is blond,” he told me. “He looks more foreign than you. He looks so much like a foreigner that he sometimes plays them in Chinese movies. Did you see The Opium War ?”
    I nodded. The government-financed epic had been released in 1997, shortly before Hong Kong was returned to China. That had been a good year for nationalism and the movie consisted of two hours of evil British imperialists and heroic Chinese resistance.
    “Do you remember the scene where the foreigner gets his throat cut by the Chinese person?” Polat asked.

    “Not specifically,” I said. “But I probably saw it.”
    He said that I couldn’t have missed it—they cut his friend’s throat right in the middle of the screen. Later this year the man was scheduled to appear in another government movie that celebrated the return of Macau to the Motherland.
    “There’s a group of Uighurs and Kazaks who often play foreigners in those patriotic movies,” Polat explained. “They have real foreigners for the big roles, but they use the Uighurs and Kazaks for the smaller parts.”
    “Do they pay them well?”
    “Not particularly. My friend made three thousand yuan. But it wasn’t difficult work.”
    The money was the equivalent of less than four hundred dollars. Polat laughed when I asked if he had enjoyed the movie.
    “Of course not,” he said. “You know what those Chinese history movies are like—everything is jiade . It’s not what really happened.”
    The young Azerbaijani sat silently while we spoke in Chinese, but he seemed to be observing me intently. Polat continued. “I prefer American movies,” he said. “The Godfather movies are my favorite. And I like any movie with De Ni Luo .”
    The moment he said it, I realized that he vaguely resembled the actor: worn features, a solid jaw, and a certain weight that lurked behind his eyes. He was a Uighur Robert De Niro. The young Azerbaijani was still studying my face and finally he spoke to Polat.
    “My friend would like to know something,” Polat said. “Are you a Jew?”
    Sitting in the Muslim restaurant, I was taken aback by the question. The young trader leaned forward, and Polat explained: “He says that you look very much like a Jew.”
    “I’m not,” I said. “Actually, I’m Catholic. Some of my ancestors were German and some were Italian. De Ni Luo is Italian, too.”
    He