It wasn’t until a whole week later that I found out my mother had had a stroke.

She’d been a typical Chinese mother about it, not telling any relatives about her illness. She didn’t want to trouble anyone: She didn’t tell my two cousins because she thought they were busy caring for their young child. She didn’t tell me, her only child, because she didn’t want me to change my plans — applying to a Ph.D. program and continuing to write fiction in English. I found out only after her health took a turn for the worse — after she went to the hospital a bit too late and didn’t receive very good treatment, and I was told that she, not yet 60, would probably have trouble walking for the rest of her life.

I was paralyzed, both by the horrible news and by the unbearable weight of motherly love . I talked with my cousin and was told not to come back. “There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “Even if you get on the next plane.”

And so I set about trying to help from afar, where I soon discovered that there was still very little I could do. I tried to secure her a specialist appointment at Huashan Hospital, one of the best public hospitals in Shanghai, only to discover that they were full till the end of August. You could still make an appointment, but only if you knew somebody on the inside — only if you had enough “guanxi,” the network of connections and relationships that make China function.

I should have had some guanxi. I’m a graduate of Fudan University, the most renowned university in Shanghai; a lot of my fellow alumni are probably in the process of rising to important positions in that very hospital right now. If I had followed the advice of older family members and socialized more in college, I would have a long list of “useful friends” whom I could call. I don’t. I made very few friends in college, real friends, whom I bonded with based on our shared values and interests. The only friend I could think of was my dorm mate, Y.C., but like my mother, I felt reluctant to inconvenience her. She is pregnant. And I didn’t want her to face the same moment of truth that I was facing — have I made “useful” friends that I can ask for a favor?