Two stories from Granta and a novel by Ha Jin

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I gave up heroin and went home and began the methadone treatment administered at the outpatient clinic and I didn't have much else to do except get up each morning and watch TV and try to sleep at night, but I couldn't, something made me unable to close my eyes and rest, and that was my routine, until one day I couldn't stand it any more and I bought myself a pair of black swimming trunks at a store in the centre of town and I went to the beach, wearing the trunks and with a towel and a magazine, and I spread my towel not too far from the water and then I lay down and spent a while trying to decide whether to go into the water or not . . .  
--From "Beach," a short story by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, Granta, Number 114 (July 18, 2011). 

Some time ago, when my husband went to stay at the American Academy in Rome in order to do research, I accompanied him because I had never seen the Roman Forum.  I had a book Harold had given me for my birthday that showed how the ruins looked in the present day, and each page also had its own transparent sheet with drawings that filled in what was missing, or completed the fragments that remained, so you could see what the scene had looked like in ancient times. . . .  At dinner, our first night there, we were introduced to other visitors, and here is where the story starts: they were the parents of a young man to whom our daughter, Angela, had briefly been engaged at the end of her senior year at Yale--so briefly that I had never met his parents, though Harold and Donald Stipley had a passing acquaintance.  
--From "Lavande," a short story by Ann Beattie, Granta, Number 94 (December 10, 2008).   

Finally Taotao got his passport and visa.  For weeks his parents had feared that China, even if not closing the door outright, would restrict the outflow of people.  After the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 1989, all the American airlines except United had canceled their flights to Beijing and Shanghai.  At the good news, Pingping burst into tears.  She quickly rinsed the colander in which she had drained the shredded turnip for her jellyfish salad, took off her apron, and set out with her husband, Nan Wu, for the town center of Woodland, where the office of Travel International was located.
--From A Free Life, a novel by Ha Jin (Pantheon Books, 2007).