I returned not long ago from a posting in Shenzhen, a large and sprawling industrial city in Guangdong province, China. Locate Hong Kong on a map, and you’re almost there; a golf pro could drive a ball south across the irrecoverably polluted Shenzhen River to the New Territories, as I myself often tried to do in my leisure moments until the border patrol sternly warned me to stop. Despite the proximity to this former outpost of British civilization, I might as well have been living on a desert island (minus the associated amenities), so isolated is this Chinese city—culturally, socially, and logistically—from the outside world. A two-hour wait at the border customs post typically faces the unwary traveler who would venture in by train from Hong Kong for a peek at the mainland. An electrified fence with checkpoints manned by the internal immigration police has kept Shenzhen divided from the rest of the mainland ever since its inception as a "special economic zone" in Chinese bureaucrat-speak, as if that would prevent Deng Xiao Ping’s fledgling experiments with capitalism in this former fishing village from contaminating the politically correct socialist thinking of the interior.

Although I lived through some defining moments in Chinese history—the death of Deng, the ascension of Jiang, the retrocession of Hong Kong and Macao—my personal life was microcosmically centered around maintaining my own equilibrium in this most chaotic and uncharming corner of China. I sought to insulate myself from the environment by slipping into comfortable invisibility rather than interact and risk getting caught up in the madness that surrounds unrestrained economic development in a moral and intellectual vacuum.

My Chinese business partner had, after searching extensively, found a family that not only was willing to accept a gweilo (foreign devil) boarder but also had an apartment with a spare room, a rarity in this overcrowded city. I paid a few hundred dollars a month to live with Ho Bing and, in so doing, increased his household income substantially. The mainland Chinese save a larger portion of their small salaries than most any other people; however, in the course of my first few months with the Ho family, I started to notice some subtle effects brought about by the extra revenue. Mr. Ho bought several new shirts, the son cut his hair more frequently, the supply in Mrs. Ho’s pantry grew—but that was only the beginning. After I took home leave one summer, I returned to learn that the family had taken their first vacation ever and, prompted by my beaming host, noted approvingly that the old and temperamental hot water heater in the bathroom had been replaced by one that functioned without the strategic application of chewing gum or rubber bands.

As part of my daily routine, I was always out of the apartment and on my way to work before sunrise; thus, the streets were not as packed as they would become an hour later with hordes of bicyclists and pedestrians, swarms of scooters, columns of dilapidated minibuses spewing smoky exhaust, and army trucks asserting their priority over all the latter. I soon became oblivious to the stares of the passersby and started to feel that I was just one of the 1.2 billion people who call this most populous of all nations their home. In reality, as the only gweilo in the quarter, I probably stood out as if I glowed with neon.

On occasion, some of the passersby, conscious of my unchanging daily route—which, of course, my security personnel strongly advised me not to have—took the initiative to say a word or two in English to me, if only “good morning" (which usually ended up sounding like guji maji) and then sped on their way without awaiting my reply. My favorite of all was a child of some 4 years of age on his way to preschool with his parents. How we got into the habit of doing so, I don’t recall, but this invariably cheerful youngster and I together counted to 20 in English most every morning, to the admiration of the crowd that spontaneously formed. Prodded by his proud parents, he even gave a credible shot at the alphabet. My young pupil was as austerely clothed as his elders, so during a business trip to Switzerland, I bought him a bright red and yellow T-shirt. The day Xiao (little) Zhang first wore it, he was surely the most conspicuous child in a city whose dominant color is the gray of unfinished concrete.

But sooner or later, I had to abandon my role of private English tutor and start the daily grind.

I worked alongside a privileged class of young Chinese “cadres," as finance director of a Sino-European joint venture. Most of my co-workers had university degrees; some had even traveled overseas. One—the deputy communist party leader of our joint venture—had received an M.B.A. from one of the numerous third-rate American schools that specialize in the lucrative niche of educating the privileged youth of developing nations. Han Ping, my second-in-command, was as devious a colleague as I’ve encountered anywhere, and I still chuckle at the recollection of his escapades. Not too many accountants of my acquaintance rifle through the office trash bins after office hours to report their contents to their party bosses. Yet, in the end, we accomplished our mission of starting up a joint venture and parted ways, if not best friends, then at least with a better understanding of each other’s Weltanschauung.

While growing up, my grandparents’ idea of exposing me to foreign culture was taking the family to dinner in Paris’ Chinatown one Sunday a month. Remarkably foreshadowing future events in my life, I developed an unusual facility with chopsticks as a child, which was to earn me great admiration in Asia decades later. In most any business dinner where East meets West, the Asians will use silverware, and the Europeans will use chopsticks—each in an effort to impress the other with their multicultural agility. Indeed, at one such dinner, my nimbleness with these instruments was rewarded with breaking a deadlock with a recalcitrant customs inspector who had been needlessly holding up the import of a critical piece of production machinery for our factory.

For fun, I regularly taught conversational English at the local night university, and hundreds attended my two-hour–long classes. After a day’s work, there was scarcely one tired face in the lecture hall, excepting perhaps my own, although Mr. Ho—an occasional attendee despite his 10-word vocabulary—informed me that my students most likely napped during office hours while at their mind-mummifying jobs. Nonetheless, and even though individual skill level varied, they devoted themselves to my lessons with the single-mindedness of purpose typically associated with the success of many overseas Chinese, once liberated from the repressive environment of their homeland.

I started my sojourn in this very foreign corner of Asia with the expectation—indeed, the intent—of remaining an outsider. I had expected the cultural and linguistic barriers to be simply insurmountable, even over a period of years. But in examining the evolution of my life over the course of my posting, I see that I finally did integrate myself into the society, even if in a very special and transitory way. Mr. Ho often proclaimed me his brother after a night of drinking Tsingtao together. The Hos’ son and I slowly advanced our way together through the belt rankings of kung fu. I developed a large circle of friends among my English students and have received numerous e-mails from them. Through my business connections, I got to know several of the very few personalities of any cultural attainment in Guangdong province. A calligraphy painted for me by one of them, Gin Long, hangs in my study. And most important to me, Xiao Zhang, encouraged by his parents, started calling me “Uncle," a title expressing both respect and affection.

Inevitably, the end of my stay in Shenzhen approached. Just as well, as the Hong Kong fiscal authorities had inexplicably decided that part of my income was taxable in what had then become the Special Administrative Region, and I had no intention of enriching Mr. Tung’s bloated coffers. For me, it was just a transition point from one job to the next, and I have returned to a quiet existence in Pennsylvania. For the Ho family, however, it marked the end of the good life, as they have had to adapt to half the income they enjoyed while I was their guest. Perhaps my young star pupil has forgotten both me and the English alphabet. But if I ever do return to Shenzhen and search hard enough, I hope to see some other small child proudly sporting a colorful, if now faded, T-shirt with the seal of the canton of Geneva.

Stephen Burns is currently a consultant who lives in suburban Philadelphia.