No one knew where I was in the old, ill-lit alleys, the zigzag streets of the hutong, and not a soul could find me. It seemed the quiet the hermit seeks in the wild or the stylite on his post might be realized here, like this, amid Beijing’s chaos. I felt free, blameless: I’d have liked to be lost all night.

It is important to be on the alert for “the decisive moment,” says the man next to me who is talking to his date. I agree. The only difference is that he is talking about twentieth-century photography and I am talking about twenty-first-century everything.

We do not share much in the U.S. culture of individualism except our delusions about meritocracy.