My lucky face

by May-Lee Chai

Lin Jun has everything a modern woman in China could hope for: a fulfilling job, a handsome intellectual husband, a son, a mother-in-law with connections, and an impressive TV set with which to see the larger world. But neither the TV set nor her marriage is working: her husband is frustrated by his career, her very young son is already at a state boarding school, and she has been given the extra work of interpreting for the young American woman who has come to teach at their school. The transition to the new social freedoms is dismaying. Should she selflessly continue teaching or use her skills to obtain a lucrative job in the new economy? Should she stick it out with her husband or do the unthinkable. A friend urges her in one direction, her "old" culture in another. Lin Jun must face the challenge of China's emerging identity and her own.