“Yulan” by M Lin Yuchen sat in the back of the taxi as it turned onto Chang’an Avenue. Seventeen years ago, she had biked to high school on this ten-lane boulevard every day. So, so wide, she thought then. It had made her feel small. She rolled down her window and let the breeze carry her hair into a frenzy. Tiananmen Square dark on the left, Tiananmen Tower lit up on the right. Chairman Mao’s Mona Lisa smile had looked benign to Yuchen as a child, the look of a gentle grandfather, but now the portrait seemed menacing, as if it could, any second, turn into a scowl. There were many situations in which Yuchen couldn’t be sure if or how she had changed, but in this moment, she was confident that neither Tiananmen Square nor Chairman Mao’s painted face had been altered; it was that she was no longer as Chinese as she used to be. But what did she mean by Chinese ? It was a categorical adjective one would only use from the outside looking in: This was Chinese, that was not so Chinese.…