As he walks back to his hotel, he sees, beyond its roof, a single star “flashing and glittering against a vast constellation.” At this moment, Tian feels like that star. Tian tells Yabin that he would like to accept but that, again, he has to get permission. Four thousand dollars! That is almost a quarter of Tian’s annual salary in China. Once the two men are settled with their drinks, Yabin, who worked as an impresario in China and knows Tian’s value, offers him four thousand dollars to stay in New York a few extra days and sing at Taiwan’s National Day celebrations. Off Tian goes to have what Meng, who is responsible for seeing that all his singers are on the plane to Beijing the next day, clearly regards as an ill-advised get-together. “Meng’s heavy lidded eyes fixed on him, alarmed,” but eventually he says O.K. Could they go for a drink? Not without permission, as Tian knows, and so, like a schoolchild who needs a bathroom, Tian asks the troupe’s director, Meng, for leave to accept the invitation. After the final show-in New York’s huge Chinatown in Flushing-the troupe’s lead tenor, Yao Tian, is greeted by a man, Han Yabin, whom he knew in Beijing but who later left and ended up in New York. At the opening of Ha Jin’s new novel, “ A Song Everlasting” (Pantheon), a troupe of Chinese singers is finishing an American tour.
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