Julia Wu begins each day with stretching exercises. Or at least she tries to begin each day with the exercises and sometimes, like today, she succeeds and feels so much better for it. There are those mornings, though, when her cat watches as she allows herself to get sidetracked long enough to make the possibility of exercising not feasible. She always feels guilty when that happens but not guilty enough to always exercise, just guilty enough to sometimes exercise. So today she assuages her guilt by doing leg stretches on the floor in front of her bed while the cat Li Ch’ing-chao watches her bobbing legs with some degree of interest. Once finished, Julia stands in the middle of her studio apartment and looks at her computer. It sits on her desk with a blank screen and a complacent air. Julia thinks this machine is the bane of her existence, and yet also the path toward a future in this country. Unlike the Americans, it does not judge her by her race or her native tongue, only her skill on its keyboard. For it, she did not have to change her name from Chao Ru to Julia because of the difficulty of pronunciation. This machine has programs that allow it to speak her language. It is willing to compromise. It is more American in practice than the people she has met on these shores. And though it saddens her, that only machines seem capable of not being discriminating, it at least presents her with an ally in this city. The phone rings and ends her musings. It always seems to ring in the morning. If it’s early, like before seven, she knows it’s China, but if it’s after eight, like now, she knows it’s just a friend trying to catch her before she leaves for the day. “Hello.” “Hi, it’s me,” says Hui Lang. “Ah,” Julia says. “You’re up early.”“I have a job interview,” she says. “And I’m very nervous.” “Why?” “Oh, you know, all those questions, and in English, and my skill is not as good as yours. I always think I sound like such a dullard to these Americans. They just see this pleasant smile and this nodding head and hear monosyllabic answers to complex questions. They probably think I have no personality.”