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“The air smelled of rotten melon. A few flies kept buzzing above the couple’s lunch. Hundreds of people were rushing around to get on the platform or to catch buses to downtown. Food and fruit vendors were crying for customers in lazy voices. About a dozen young women, representing the local hotels, held up placards which displayed the daily prices and words as large as a palm, like FREE MEALS, AIR-CONDITIONING, and ON THE RIVER.”

This early quote presents what seems to be an ordinary day in the square in Muji, seemingly no different from any other day in the city. It’s not an absolutely perfect setting, due to the smell of rotting fruit and the presence of flies. The flies and the smell of rancid melons may be a hint at the pending interruption of the couple’s lunch and the ensuing disruption of their lives. The rancid melons and their suggestion of rotten, inedible food may be a hint at how a hepatitis outbreak will eventually sicken the population through tainted food.

The presence of the young women with the hotel placards, each advertising the hotel’s modern amenities, may be a suggestion of the inroads of changing economic ideals. Each hotel is competing with each other for business. People are hurrying past, on their way to work or to train stations or bus stops, thinking about what they need to accomplish that day, just as Mr. Chiu and his bride are planning to do. But aside from the two policemen stealing glances at Mr. Chiu, there is nothing to suggest that today will be the day that Mr. Chiu’s life, and eventually, the lives of Muji’s citizens, will be turned upside down. 

“The single window in the room was blocked by six steel bars; it faced a spacious yard, in which stood a few pines. Beyond the trees, two swings hung from an iron frame, swaying gently in the breeze. Somewhere in the building a cleaver was chopping rhythmically. There must be a kitchen upstairs, Mr. Chiu thought.”

The cell at the police station is definitely a prison, with only one window barricaded by bars. It is a tiny, enclosed space at odds with the spacious courtyard beyond it. It is a reminder to anyone kept in the cell that the inside is prison and outside is freedom. The presence of two swings, suggestive of playground equipment, gives the courtyard the air of being the playground at a school. This in turn feeds into the concept that the police station is another form of school, dispensing a rather distorted form of education. The swings, supposedly a device for play, are greatly at odds with the courtyard’s main use as the setting of Fenjin’s torture. The presence of a kitchen somewhere nearby supports the significance of food as a motif in the story. However, the sound of a cleaver, a large blade, is highly suggestive of something being chopped to pieces, a hint of the threat of violence that looms over Mr. Chiu.

“He wasn’t afraid. The Cultural Revolution was over already, and recently the Party had been propagating the idea that all citizens were equal before the law. The police ought to be a law-abiding model for common people. As long as he remained coolheaded and reasoned with them, they probably wouldn’t harm him.”

This quote appears shortly after Mr. Chiu’s arrest and before he meets with the chief. The passing mention of the end of the Cultural Revolution firmly sets the story at some point after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. Here Mr. Chiu’s thoughts reveal that he assumes that since the Cultural Revolution has ended, he should be safe in the hands of the police. Because the government has recently proclaimed that all citizens are equal under the law, he imagines that he will face rational, understanding officials when dealing with his predicament. This proves to be naïve. The Cultural Revolution may be over, but state officials still harbor elements of its philosophy and its drive to purge.

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