But for Foote and other American scientists, the presence of Chinese graduate and postdoctoral students in their laboratories is a blessing in countless ways. Seven days a week, the students run day-to-day lab operations. Their dedication enables American scientists to publish a prodigious amount of research during the 1980s and 1990s. During Yang's stay, the Cornell College of Agriculture, and Foote's lab in particular, builds a national reputation for excellence.

In his decade at Cornell, Yang dwells on a single overriding goal -- to use his knowledge of animal embryology to help feed rural China. Yang masters new micromanipulation technology that allows him to study how embryos develop.

He believes that by intervening at an early stage of development, it may be possible to coax the fertilized egg of a valuable animal to divide into two -- or more -- genetically identical embryos. The embryos from, say, a champion dairy cow could then be implanted into surrogates, yielding a crop of potentially productive cows.

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He also presses Western scientists to visit China, and Chinese scientists in the United States to spend at least a few months each year back home. For him personally, the question of returning to China is not so much about if, but when.

His message is a hard sell. His fellow Chinese students are not returning home. Even before the People's Liberation Army crushes protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989, the students begin settling down and raising families in the United States.

Yang understands his peers' reluctance to return. The best higher education institutions in China, gutted by the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, lag far behind U.S. universities. But he asks his fellow students: How can life ever get better in poor villages if you will not bring your knowledge home? How will China ever rebuild its higher educational system without you, the brightest students?

Going Home

The next year, in 1993, Yang decides that it is time to pay his own debt to China. He makes plans to go home.

During the spring, Yang and Tian go to Beijing to explore potential academic openings. They are standing at a busy Beijing intersection, when their 5-year-old son, Andrew, wriggles out of the clutches of his grandmother and runs off the curb. The couple hears the thud of a military car hitting their son. Andrew flies 40 yards through the air before he hits concrete. The blow is so fierce it snaps Andrew's right leg in half. Doctors later find that his brain is 30 degrees off kilter.

At the hospital, Yang and Tian panic. They know that Andrew is receiving woefully substandard care by U.S. standards. They fear for their son's life. They have no idea where they can go to find better care.

They are also furious at the condition of the military vehicle that struck their son; the vehicle's brakes had failed. They complain bitterly to authorities about the negligence that nearly killed Andrew.

Government officials counter by threatening to revoke their visas. The couple fears not only for the health of their son, but also for the lives and careers they have built in the United States.

``You realize then that you do not live in a science lab,'' Tian says. ``You live in the real world.''

It is not until six weeks later that authorities relent and allow them to leave.

Robert Foote drives to the Syracuse airport to pick up the couple. In the airport terminal, he looks down a corridor and spots Yang, carrying his son in his arms, tears running down his face.

Tian puts an end to family discussions about a return to China. Andrew grows up hating the government of the country his father loves, though Yang still nurtures a dream of helping poor farmers who live on the desolate rolling plains, one calamity away from starvation.

A startling scientific discovery will soon supply him the tools for a breathtaking gift not only to China, but to the world.