THE MIDDLEMAN.(Uighur traders in China)

You can buy anything in Yabaolu. The neighborhood borders the embassy district in downtown Beijing, and over the years it has become a Russian ghetto. Small-time traders come from all over Russia and Central Asia to cut deals, often for Chinese-produced clothing of American name-brand descent: Nautica, Nike, Gap, Guess. North Face knockoffs are everywhere, and the red-white-and-blue of Tommy Hilfiger is part of the landscape. Occasionally, ancient Chinese men stroll down the streets, dressed in fake Fubu jackets and Pure Playaz hoodies. Signs are in Cyrillic; restaurants serve borscht. A night with a white prostitute--a knockoff blonde, peroxide and mascara, straight from Vladivostok--runs about a hundred dollars. Chinese prostitutes are cheaper; Mongolians are the cheapest. It's not hard to find drugs. I've seen crossbows for sale. Once, when I was sitting in a restaurant, a Eurasian trader offered to sell me some of his products. He had arrived on a customized mountain bike that was equipped with lights, shock absorbers, and a motion sensor that rang out if you bumped the parked bike. When I asked him what he had to sell, he scrawled on a scrap of paper:

.45-1911 A (Colt), .380 (Beretta) M9 U.S.A.

The Yabaolu markets shut down in May of 1999, when NATO bombed the People's Republic Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese. In Beijing, protesters swarmed the embassy district, and some of them marched through Yabaolu on their way to the American and British diplomatic buildings, where they threw stones and paint bombs. For a week, the Russian district was on edge--deals hung fire while frustrated traders watched the street action.

A week after the bombing, I went to a dumpling restaurant. The other diners--all men--stopped talking when I walked in. Three tables were occupied by Chinese. At another table were two Uighurs, members of a non-Chinese ethnic group that is predominantly Islamic. I sat down by myself and ordered dinner. It didn't take long for one of the Chinese to ask, "What country are you from?"

That month, I had been learning a new body language: I kept my head down, and I shrugged and smiled and tried to look friendly. When I told the man that I was from America, everyone looked up. The man asked why Americans had to act as if they were the "world policeman," and another muttered something about the Opium War. A third got stuck on the issue of technology. "If America is such an advanced country, how could it possibly say that the bombing was a mistake?" he said. "They claim that they used an old map--that's ridiculous."

I said that I didn't really understand what had happened in Belgrade. "Americans can see anything from space," the man continued. "With such great science, how could they bomb the wrong building?" He was about to say something else when one of the Uighurs spoke up. "With such great science," he said, "how could America kill only three Chinese?"

The restaurant went silent. The Chinese man asked the Uighur what he meant. The Uighur smiled and said, "I'm just saying that if America has such advanced technology they should be able to kill more than three Chinese people when they want to."