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Larry Feldman desperately needed a kidney. After two god-awful years on dialysis, watching his life ebb away while waiting on a transplant list behind 74,000 other Americans, the gun-toting couch potato decided to risk everything and travel to China, the controversial kingdom of organ transplants. But Larry urgently needed his cousin Daniel's help...even though they had been on the outs with each other for years. So begins the quest of two star-crossed cousins to rejuvenate Larry's failing body and ever-romantic heart, while avoiding getting tossed into a Chinese slammer.
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L A RR Y ’S K IDNE Y Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in CHINA with My BLACK SHEEP Cousin and His MAIL-ORDERR Bride, Skirting the LAW to Get Him a AND Save His Daniel A s a Rose LIFE TRANSPLANTT — for the patients . . . If a mad dog runs at you, whistle for him. —A NC I E N T C H I N E S E P R OV E R B Contents Epigraph iii Author’s Note vii 1. The Phone Call 1 2. McMao 12 3. The Larry and Mary Show 22 4. Making Love Out of Nothing at All 40 5. Situation Splendid 56 6. “Chutzpah” Is a Jewish Word 67 7. Good Luck, We Trick You 83 8. Anaerobic Memories 101 9. The Kidnap Cabbie 114 10. Welcome to the Super 2 129 11. Return of the Kidnap Cabbie 144 12. Shabbos Duck 159 13. Dear Florida Power & Light 178 14. Long, Long Live! 197 15. Knock-Knock-Knock 208 16. Thousand-Year-Old Panda 223 17. Fate Make Us Together 234 18. The Last Kidney in China 249 19. Long Live Larry 265 20. The Art of War 283 Epilogue 299 Nice Clear Morals, as Larry Prescribed 302 Acknowledgments 303 About the Author Other Books by Daniel Asa Rose Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher Author’s Note When Larry and I were in China, a number of people put themselves and their livelihoods on the line to help us. Throughout the writing of this book, it has been crucial to protect these people by preserving their anonymity. For this reason, I have changed names, locations, and key features of several individuals and institutions, and have compressed a few time lines connected to their activities, so that they may continue their lives without being identifi fied. A word about the dialect: Although it has traditionally been considered condescending to write in dialect, the climate seems to be changing—and for good reason. In his recent book about India, The Elephanta Suite, Paul Theroux uses such locutions as “wicious” for “vicious,” “moddom” for “madam,” and “wee-icle” for “vehicle” in an effort to transmit more shades of emotional truth than a sanitized transcript can. Nor is the practice limited to native English writers. By writing, “My bawss was sacked, so we got laid all together” in his recent novel A Free Life, the Chinese-American author Ha Jin suggests how crosscultural communication is a creative process for both native and visitor, with results that are sometimes as revealing as Freudian slips. Track- VIII Author ’s Note ing both how foreigners use the English language and how an American visitor scrambles to make sense of foreign sounds is here meant to transmit the spirit of modern travel—equal parts charming and alarming. Larry’s dialect, meanwhile, is another matter entirely. Chap ter 1 The Phone Call o The c a