After the project I settle into days of reviewing jobs and creating variations on whatever themes Woo Eubong assigns me. Ten weeks, eleven weeks. The Wuxi Complex begins to matter less and less to me. It is late May. I will by in New York on July 1.

I pick out my final project. I must do a final project for Nanjing University based on my co-op experience. I chose to expand on the systems work I did with the project team. It is interesting, mildly diverting. But it is hard to care. My credit balance is blooming, my apartment is beautiful, but all I want to do is go home. I will eat fried chicken and biscuits, pasta smothered in cheese (cheese is not eaten very much in China.) Peter has promised to make me lasagna my first week home. Rice and beans my second week home, although I make better rice and beans than Peter.

Woo Eubong shows me the specs for her projects. A housing complex, an office building. A beach house.

A beach house sounds nice. I ask her about it. It will be on the island of Hainandao. Hainandao was one of the original special economic zones like Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Taiwan. It is still a freemarket zone, a place of virulent capitalism, mean to fuel the socialist system. The beach house is for one of the old mercantile families of Hainandao, built by the clan corporation.

She points out the setting. No specs, she says. "The only reason they didn't give it to an architect is that Comrade Gao, the big man of Wuxi Engineering, is friends with Comrade Wang. Comrade Gao wants a number of designs. Engineer Li Jian-fen is submitting one."

"And you," I say.

She looks down.

"Humble administrators build gardens, too," I say, referring to the Zhuozheng, the Humble Administrator's garden, one of the famous gardens of Suzhou.

She glances up at me but doesn't answer and I wonder if I've offended her.

"You should try," she says.

"I can't compete with organic engineering," I say.

"Okay, then see what you can do with heating and cooling," she says. It is an infuriating answer. Why did she suggest that I try?

Does she feel that I might be able to create an adequate building? She doesn't ever much comment on how I fulfill her assignments, I never know if I've met with her approval or not.

I fiddle with heating and cooling systems. Convection. Conduction. Old fashioned systems. Expensive systems. Efficient systems. This is a big area, I suspect I will do heating and cooling systems for awhile.

Hainandao. The name means South Sea Island. The first character, 'hai' means 'sea'. It is the same as the 'hai' in Haibao. Sea-wave. I think about heating and cooling systems. (On Hainandao they would only need a cooling system. There's a lot of sunlight.) I try to imagine a beach house in Hainandao, lots of wood. Maybe paper screens, like they use in Japan.

I scribble more heating and cooling systems. And eventually I stop thinking about Hainandao. And I do not think about Haibao's white clothes folded neatly by the shattered starburst of the window.

That evening I spend a long time making dinner, trying to concoct rice and beans from the local ingredients. The result is pretty close, although not what my mother would make. Not even what I would make under normal circumstances. I leave it on cycle; flash, stand, flash, stand. My mother cooks on a stove, but I have only a flash wok and an oven, it is hard to slow cook something.

Then while it is cooking I sit down and tap the system. I am not going to scribble anything, I just want to try to imagine a beach house. And so I try. I try to imagine something that looks as insubstantial as paper, maybe sliding walls.

23 seconds.

Disgusted I get up and go back to the beans and rice. But there's nothing to do but wait. I try the beach house again.

28 seconds.

Back to the rice and beans. And then again, the beach house.

19 seconds.

Woo Eubong taps in for twenty, thirty minutes at a time. She sits at the desk for three hours, working, answering questions, dropping back into her work. I have even tried to mimic her posture. I am so frustrated I could hit something. I force myself into the chair and decide I will keep doing it until I manage. I imagine the beach house.

Contact breaks.

I imagine the beach house.

Contact breaks.

I tap in.

Contact breaks.

The flimsies pile up by the printer and finally I override the system and tell it not to print unless I tell it to.

And finally, I give up, get up, put away my beans and rice uneaten and go to bed. I am not, am not, will never be, a daoist engineer.

I wake up. Some burden has been lifted. I have discovered that I am not capable, and now I no longer have to try. Or even if I am capable, it doesn't matter. Tonight I will come back, eat rice and beans, and work on my project for the University.

I work well this day. Woo Eubong told me that by the time I left I'd be able to review thirty, forty jobs a day, and she is correct. I have learned a great deal about engineering and however strange her teaching methods may be, I am grateful. Even for all those days of doing heating and cooling systems.

At the end of the day I am feeling pleased with myself. It doesn't bother me when Woo Eubong says, "You have homework."

I wait. I'd prefer to work on my project, but I have three weeks to do that and it is almost finished already.

"I want you to scribble again, the way you did when you first came."

"How many?" I ask.

"Three," she says.

Okay. I'll have time to work on my project. "Good," I say. If I finish my project I can do some shopping, buy things to send home.

So I go home, take out my beans and rice and sit down to scribble. I'll do my three, eat, and then work on my project. Above my desk the scroll reads "Inaction."

I can say for the first time that I really don't care. I am thinking a little that when I finish I can do some work on my project, but my mind is empty. I am not trying to succeed.

I tap in, remember to tell the system to produce a flimsie. I do not think of anything for a moment, I have to think of something to scribble. The beach house is as good as anything else. All white, but this time it isn't paper I think of, but ice. I think again of Borden Station. I invision a huge expanse of window. It's not very Chinese, more like the glass and steel tradition of New York. Something long and low, and I know how it should flow. A great room, a kitchen divided by very little wall, slightly higher than the long great room with it's window looking over the ocean-

And I reach. For a moment there is no perspective and I am on the edge of panic, but instead I give in, I let myself be swallowed by the emptiness and instead I expand, the system becomes my own memory. I fall through. I feel my mind's boundaries, I know how little I can think about at one time, and then those boundaries become unimaginably huge and I am myself, myself, but able to think and have the thing I think in my mind without holding it, without concentrating, because I am using the system to concentrate for me. The system is there for me, a part of me. To modify the house I only have to think it and it is so, it hangs there. I am outside it, seeing the long portion of the house that is the kitchen and great room, off the kitchen the steps down to the beach (and at the landing, there I use my paper screen, although I have to come up with some substitute for paper that has the lucent qualities but is not so fragile.) The bedrooms are beyond the kitchen, higher to take advantage of the uneven terrain (also in memory) and I think that this western building needs a tile roof. Blue chinese tile. Soften the variation in the roof height and the roof becomes a wave.

I stop, and look around the room. The printer sighs and there is the flimsie. I pick it up. The things I have designed (little more than a shell, not real finish yet) are all there. 14 minutes.