The taxi driver’s face brightened up when my husband and I arrived at the dingy Guilin airport in southern China on the last flight in from Shanghai. We were exhausted from traveling by plane and train every couple of days. The drive to Yangshuo, where the mountain peaks are shaped like gumdrops, would take an hour and a half.

“You’re Chinese,” she said. She was short and wore baggy clothes. “You speak Chinese?”

“Yi dian,” I said. One drop. A little. After traveling in China for more than a week, my language skills had improved somewhat. I could make small talk, though I would struggle in an argument. But Yi dian was invitation enough for the cabby to start chatting.

We started down a steep, dark gravel road, the tiny car shaking. “Is this the exit?” I asked, adjusting my seat belt and holding onto the vibrating door handle.

“This will save money,” the cabby said, evading the toll. A shortcut to save money. I understood. Like my parents, the cabby was penny-pinching. My parents, kin to many who came of age in war and its aftermath, haven’t shaken the memory of want. We were “not cheap,” Mom had insisted. “Thrift. We are thrift.”