This is a story that began in ancient times, so it is hard to know where to begin the telling. Perhaps at the beginning of the end, although even the end is a beginning, just as the end of the night is the start of the day, and the end of the day the start of the night.

Let us start then with sunset, with summer heat shimmering on the streets poured with copper light, as the fire eye of sun burned away a late-day thundercloud. Jin Jin stood in the window staring into the street, one hand holding the other against her fine silk dress. I start the tale here because it was the first time I saw her, placid and still like a statue brought from some dynastic musem and installed there as decoration for the restaurant. Which, in a way, I suppose was true.

I was rushing up the stairs, all sneakers and blue jeans, while Skinny Dou cursed in Cantonese and English from the bottom of the steps to hurry myself up. Imagine me, a bundle of sweaty energy bursting into that room, where the window burned with gold and she stood in cool silhouette, like an empress. The new world and the old colliding, my questions piled one atop the other: who was she, would I find clothes up here, why would no one explain anything to me, ever. Maybe Uncle Charlie would change his mind about this job. My mind was so busy, but my body went suddenly still when faced with her image and one last question: why did she stare out the window so, and for what or whom did she look?