While I was gone, China had morphed from a closed communist society with few material comforts into a market-driven economy in which anything seems possible, and purchasable. A new generation of wealthy Chinese jet-sets around the globe, drives its own cars to work and owns apartments or villas with names like Palm Springs and Orange County. They shop at Hermes, sip coffee at Starbucks, play golf on the weekends with former Red Guards-turned-millionaires. Their children drink imported infant formula, play at pricey Gymborees, listen to music on iPods and blog on the Web.

I wanted to show my husband, who was born and raised in a small town in eastern Shandong province, something of China that he hadn’t seen before—the China of my childhood. But my old walk-up apartment is gone, replaced by a residential complex that bears no resemblance to the neighborhood I knew.

My children would have to imagine where Mommy was a youngster not much older than they are now, begging with all the other neighborhood kids for a chunk of ice from the industrial fridge kept by the local bus mechanic. Those were days long before the invasions of the Haagen-Dazs cafes. It was even before the arrival of refrigerators, air conditioners and running hot water. All summer long you could hear children pleading, “Tong zhi, gei wo men diar bing (Comrade, give us some ice).”

Class struggle permeated every aspect of our supposedly egalitarian society. Even as a child I was branded a capitalist because of my grandparents’ education abroad.

... contd.