WHEAT. 麦。

It’s a bristling summer afternoon on the Chinese east coast. I’m cramming my suitcase into the back seat of a taxi on Donghuan Road. “Train station,” I tell the driver as I climb in, wiping the sweat off my brow. He grunts in acknowledgment as we make a U-turn and speed away.

Though nicely renovated, the Suzhou Railway Station nonetheless subjects the traveler to a ubiquitous Chinese experience. No matter how expansive they make the waiting halls, there are always people overflowing into the grimy bathrooms. Uncouth countryfolk splay themselves along the walls, bellies bared next to their enormous plastic sacks of grain or what have you. A few bewildered foreigners wade through this sea of humanity, stricken with self-consciousness, trying to remain calm.

In Chinese, they call it chuan liu bu xi, likening a densely populated space to endless flow. This is perhaps a more poetic way to look at it. Grim faced, I squeeze along with the crowd when it’s time to descend to the platform. The sunlight is scorching, even as it turns darker and crisper as the day wanes.

We reach Shanghai and then I’m in another cab, gliding past the sparkling lights of a shopper’s paradise on Hongqiao Road. Night has fallen. I’m supposed to retrieve keys to my parents’ apartment from their friends. Exhausted already, I secretly hope they’ll meet me downstairs, pass off the keys, and let me go on my merry way. But decorum would not allow such a thing. I sit in their cramped living room eating watermelon and making small talk for half an hour.

They look at me with puzzlement and benign curiosity. The husband is one of my father’s college friends, who now teaches in Shanghai. He is a slight man with a friendly disposition. The wife is feisty, unabashed by her thick southwestern accent. They nod vaguely to everything I tell them, signaling approval or merely building an assessment.

At last I am on my way, ready to tucker out for an early flight to Taipei the next morning. My family is away for a brief vacation, so I have the place to myself. They recently moved to a different flat in the same apartment complex. The new place is on the fifteenth floor, with a nice view of the vicinity. I ride the elevator, roll my suitcase behind me, and stop.

Something doesn’t look right. I’ve come here once before but suddenly I think I’m at the wrong door. It must have been the tenth floor, not fifteenth. I try calling my mother’s cellphone before I realize I’m out of minutes already. Heart pounding, I take the elevator down a few flights. Each time the doors open, I find myself in a narrow fluorescent hallway, gleaming austere and nondescript. Everything looks the same, except for a different set of slippers by the door. I try the keys on several apartments, to no avail. I’m wary of looking more suspicious than I already do.

Downstairs in the lobby, I look at the keys in my hand and consider my options. Finally, I approach a teenager about borrowing his cellphone. You see, I live here, I tell him. Or rather, my parents live here. But they just moved into this building, and I’ve been here, but they’re not here now and I don’t know what apartment number they are. But you see, I have keys. I just need to call them to make sure.

He passes the phone to me silently.

I get through to my father after a few tries. I try to speak to him in English to sound more believable. But I’m starting to feel like an impostor, my story more and more strained each time I tell it. “Who is this?” my dad asks several times. “Your voice doesn’t sound right.”

I bark responses impatiently, nerves frayed. It’s me, I tell him. I forgot your apartment number!

After several minutes of this, I am able to wrench the number from him. I was right the first time. But for some reason, the door had looked unfamiliar. I wheel my suitcase inside, spread out my stuff, and pant wearily on the couch. Is this the right apartment? Am I the right person? Shanghai has never been my home. I am a transient in her mid-July swelter. The evening pulses as I close my eyes. The screech of cicadas continues softly, a lullaby for the city.