I was 17 and playing basketball thousands of miles from home with kids whose halting English still made a mockery of my infantile Mandarin. But it didn’t matter; it never does.
It’s a hackneyed thread, about sports as a global language and cross-cultural connective tissue. It’s true, though.
What did they think of us? Two American teenagers, dribbling a basketball on an empty court outside a school in Beijing. Heads popped out of dormitory windows, from floors high and low, as if the students had been waiting for something to shatter the monotony of a languid mid-week afternoon. “What the hell?” they must have said, before rushing downstairs to play.
I most remember their faces, so exuberant and curious. We were just kids playing ball. Nothing else mattered.
Distant music flitted on the air as the sun set in China.