NAKWANING!

Foreigners on the run in China in 1983.

Shanghai Train Station: Four young Americans studying Chinese at East China Normal University make a break for it — bolting across the platform of a crowded station at the last minute. Black-market tickets in hand, they possess no travel permits, and have no official escort, but for one angry party minder in hot pursuit.

Nàkwāníng! Nàkwāníng! Shouts ring out across the platform as their train groans into motion. But the crowd, long tired of petty officialdom, and not particularly bothered by the sight of four foreign backpackers, lets them go.

What follows is a journey into a China that no longer exists: a country just cracking open after decades of enforced isolation, where a foreigner on a hard-sleeper bunk was still a novelty, where sunflower seeds and broken Mandarin could forge instant friendships, and where getting on the wrong side of a communist party gatekeeper was a badge of honor, if it didn't land you in jail.

Part road story, part period history, Nakwaning! captures the exhilarating, chaotic early days of China's opening up as seen from the hard seats, at ground level, reveling in illusory moments of freedom among ordinary people also under constant watch.