Albert was both a friend and a character. I had worked with him and I had written about him; each of those relationships carried a distinct sense of obligation. When he called me into his office, explaining that he had a favor to ask of me, I knew there was no way to refuse.

		River Town Redux Photographs by MARK LEONG

It was the autumn of 2002, more than four years after we had been colleagues at a teachers' college in Fuling, a small city on the Yangtze River. Back then Albert had been a junior instructor and a low-level administrator. In River Town, the book I wrote about my experiences in Fuling, I described him as "an uneasy young man in a new position of authority." I hadn't agonized over that description—half a sentence in a 400-page book. But now, with the man standing in front of me, it seemed as important as anything else I had written.

A great deal had changed since I left Fuling in 1998. In those days, the Three Gorges Dam still seemed abstract; residents spoke only vaguely of the way the project would change their city. Whenever I asked about the future, my friends created pictures in the air: Fuling would have a highway; a dike would surround the city; a new suburb would be built on a mountaintop. They sounded like dreams—visions that flickered away once I started asking about details. In June 1998, I left Fuling the same way I had arrived—on a boat, looking back on a city that had no traffic lights, no highway, no dike. A mist had hung like a dirty gray silk above the river.

My own future was just as unclear. I wanted to write about the city, but every time I thought about the details—the sentences, the chapters, the characters—I felt uneasy. My years in Fuling had been enjoyable but there had also been difficult experiences, and I was concerned about trampling on political sensitivities in a communist country. Mostly, I worried that locals would feel violated by a foreigner writing about them.

Since that day, however, the dreams have materialized, one by one. New sections of Fuling are linked by new roads, passing beneath new traffic lights. A new highway connects the city to Chongqing. When I visited in October, Fuling's dike was nearly finished. The college's student population had doubled. Albert was still young, but he was no longer uneasy—he had risen to become dean of the English department. The new authority seemed to sit lightly on his shoulders. When I came to his office, he smiled, shook my hand and poured me a cup of tea. From a desk drawer he produced a copy of my book. A year earlier I had sent the hardback to the English department in Fuling. Now he handed the volume back to me.

"You can see that a lot of people have read it," he said. The cover jacket was torn and tea-stained; the corners had been bent. Fingers had marked the pages a light gray. It felt heavy in my hands—an artifact. How could I have written anything that looked this old?

"Do you have any plans to have it translated into Chinese?" Albert asked, and I told him that nothing had been arranged yet. "What if I translate it?" he said with a grin. "Will you sue me?"

We laughed, and I asked about Albert's son, who had been born after I left Fuling. After chatting for a while, Albert made his request.

"I don't want to bother you," he said slowly. "But the college would be very happy if you could give a lecture to our English students and faculty."

I asked what they wanted me to talk about. Albert looked up and said, "How about, 'Why I Wrote the Book'?"

For a moment I didn't know how to respond. I had been expecting one of the topics that my former students often asked me to lecture on when I visited their classes—"Life in America"; "How to Learn English"; "What It's Like to Live in Beijing." Albert's request was so direct that my first instinct was to refuse. But then I realized it was the best question anybody had asked me in a long time.

"O.K.," I stammered. "I can do that."

"Thank you!" Albert beamed. "The students will be very excited."

I asked him when he wanted the lecture.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Five o'clock."

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