Audrea Lim

The sun is shining at the Tsiigetchic ferry crossing, though it is midnight. It’s a week after the summer solstice, just north of the Arctic Circle, and Amar Al-Awad stands by his red pickup taxi puffing on a cigarette. The river glows pink, and the ferry puttering from shore to shore is the only other sign of life, so we follow it with our eyes. Otherwise, our two vehicles are the only ones in sight. I ask Amar if he’s adjusted well to the north. “It’s not easy. But it’s not bad,” he says. “I like the north, but it’s just too far.”

At the café in Huangjueping, Johnny Cash was playing on the stereo. Art students lingered in the glow of their laptop screens and older artists congregated around tables crowded with cigarette packs. The furniture was mismatched and worn, odd trinkets crowded the shelves. It might have been anywhere in the West—anywhere in the world.