I was reminded of it early on after our move to Beijing. Dog ownership isn’t a new thing in China, but the rapid rise of it over the last decade has turned it from a novelty into something more commonplace. This is especially true for millennials who have, for several reasons, put off starting a family.

But unlike in the US, where certain, dirtier aspects of pet ownership see both widely held adherence and some level of public opprobrium if not followed, those things are the exception rather than the rule in China.

I didn’t care. At that stage of my college life, I thought it was cool not to be into anything mainstream. We had a great foreign film series every semester, and I absolutely loved it. First of all, it was free. And second, it was an excellent way to figure out if the chick you were trying to holler at was willing to expand her horizons.

They loved their father. There was no doubt about that. They had forgiven him, but some unhealed wounds continued to fester even in adulthood. Those open emotional scars made their father’s transgressions hard to forget. But it was their father’s refusal to acknowledge the pain he had caused that compounded chinks in their psyche and kept their relationship with him lukewarm in the best of times. Amir’s revelation, though, was yet another reason for Cyrus to figure out how to spend more time here. He and his siblings needed each other.

The cobblestone streets of Regensburg’s Altstadt clicked and clacked under the steady footfall of Cyrus’s desert boots. He hated wearing them when he traveled because they were more cumbersome than his driving loafers. But he also didn’t know what he would be doing or where he would end up. Besides, it looked like rain, and no self-respecting son of a bourbon heiress should ever be caught dead wearing loafers in a downpour.