Yifei Liu Character Analysis: The Pragmatic Friend with a Violent Past

Overview

Yifei Liu is a crime-scene cleaner and Cora Zeng’s closest confidant in Kylie Lee Baker’s 2025 novel Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. She presents as pragmatic, blunt, and fiercely protective, but beneath that surface lies a deeply traumatized young woman who never received a name from her parents, survived a childhood tainted by the one-child policy and filicide attempts, and carries a secret violent history that foreshadows her own sudden death. Yifei serves as both an emotional anchor and a foil to Cora, embodying the proactive anger that Cora initially lacks. Her abrupt, off-page death—unclaimed and buried on Hart Island—underscores the novel’s themes of systemic injustice and the erasure of Asian lives.

Plot Role

Yifei works alongside Cora and Harvey for a dry-cleaner-turned-corpse-cleaning operation. She is the only member of the trio who was born in China—though she refuses to specify which province—and her perfect Mandarin accent sets her apart from Cora, who is an ABC (American-born Chinese). Yifei’s apartment in Confucius Plaza becomes a sanctuary for Cora; it is there that Cora first discloses her hallucinations of Delilah’s hungry ghost. Yifei also drives the plan to break into the subway to find Delilah’s skull and later orchestrates a ghost feast meant to send Delilah away. Her decision to leak details of the serial killer’s bat-marked crime scenes to a reporter represents a pivotal turning point in the narrative, forcing Cora to confront her own passivity. After Yifei’s death in Chapter 19 (inside Harvey’s washing machine), Cora impersonates her to the landlord to retrieve her belongings, and her unclaimed corpse is likely buried on Hart Island, a mass grave for the indigent.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Yifei is driven by a fierce sense of justice and a refusal to be rendered invisible. When the police suppress evidence of the “Batman” murders, Yifei declares, “I am not going to let anyone take away what makes me a human.” This line crystallizes her core motivation: to resist dehumanization and the kind of erasure she experienced as a child in China. Her actions—leaking the story, insisting on the ghost feast, and even covering up the double killing of her roommates—all stem from a pragmatic, survivalist ethic. She is blunt and confrontational, as when she smacks the back of Harvey’s head for a tasteless joke. Yet she also reveals deep vulnerability: she admits she “never had a name” and that her birth parents called her only “girl.” Yifei’s scar on her ribs, which she claims came from a hungry ghost, symbolizes her lifelong proximity to death and the supernatural. She uses this scar to bond with Cora, showing a desire for connection even as she hides her family’s horrific story.

Chronological Arc

Yifei’s arc is compressed but impactful. She is introduced in Chapter 2 cleaning the apartment of Dr. Yuxi He, where Cora first notices her calm competence. In Chapter 5, Yifei opens a vent that releases a bat, leading to Harvey killing it and the crew burying it on train tracks. By Chapter 7, she invites Cora to her apartment, where she reveals her scar and her fake accent trick on her roommates. Her arc accelerates in Chapter 11: after cleaning Ai Wu’s murder scene, she decides to leak the story to a reporter, telling Harvey, “I’m done waiting.” In Chapter 12, at the bar meeting with reporter Devin, Yifei describes the bat-marked scene and later agrees to help Cora find Delilah’s skull. In Chapter 17, she angrily demands a proper ghost feast at H Mart. Her story peaks in Chapter 18, when Delilah’s hungry ghost manifests in Yifei’s apartment and devours her roommates; Yifei instantly agrees to cover up the crime. In Chapter 19, she dies off-page, found inside the dry cleaner’s washing machine—a fate she herself feared. In Chapter 25, Cora reflects that Yifei’s body was never claimed and was likely buried on Hart Island, closing her arc with institutional erasure.

Relationships

Cora Zeng: Yifei is Cora’s closest ally. She offers emotional support without judgment, listens to Cora’s confession about seeing Delilah’s ghost, and shares her own trauma. Their bond is reciprocal: Cora touches Yifei’s scar, and later retrieves her belongings after death. Yifei represents the proactive anger Cora eventually adopts.

Harvey: The three form a found family. Yifei frequently teases Harvey about being a “lightweight” and calls him out for his morbid jokes, but she trusts him enough to involve him in the ghost feast. Harvey’s line “There are three ghostbusters, not two” underscores their mutual reliance.

Paisley and Ryan (roommates): Yifei exploits their assumption that she cannot speak English to avoid conversation. She admits to bruising their pears and playing Chinese opera during sex. Her contempt for them reflects her isolation in America—she only feels safe with Cora and Harvey.

Her biological family: Never named, Yifei’s parents attempted to drown her infant sister and later died floating in a river; Yifei’s narrative strongly implies her sister killed them. This backstory reveals a capacity for violence that echoes her own sudden death.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Theme and Symbol Connections

Yifei connects directly to the novel’s major themes: anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, as she is harassed by a white reporter grabbing her arm, and she explicitly warns that Asian women are being turned into “gore porn.” She also embodies the theme of grief and unresolved trauma; her scar and haunted childhood parallel Cora’s loss of Delilah. The hungry ghosts and Chinese spiritual traditions are literalized through her explanation that a missing head prevents a spirit from moving on—a belief that drives the subway search. Yifei’s death and unclaimed body underscore systemic injustice: her killer is never caught, and she ends up on Hart Island despite her fierce fight for recognition. Finally, Yifei is the strongest proponent of survival and found family; she creates a makeshift family with Cora and Harvey, and her defiance against erasure enables Cora’s eventual reclamation of agency.

5 Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. Why does Yifei pretend not to speak English to her roommates?
Yifei maintains this facade to avoid conversation and maintain privacy. She tells Cora in Mandarin that an old coworker sublet the room and assumed Yifei didn’t speak English; she simply “went along with it” and now doesn’t have to talk to them. The arrangement gives her control over how much of herself she reveals in a space where she feels like an outsider.

2. What is the significance of Yifei’s scar on her ribs?
Yifei shows Cora the scar and claims it is a bite mark from a hungry ghost. Whether literal or symbolic, the scar represents her deep entanglement with the supernatural and with death from a young age. It serves as a physical token of the trauma she carries and becomes a point of connection with Cora, who touches the scar but feels “no ghostly energy” (Chapter 7).

3. How does Yifei’s backstory about her unnamed sister connect to the novel’s themes?
Yifei describes how her parents attempted to drown her infant sister because of the one-child policy’s devaluation of girls. That sister later likely caused the parents’ deaths in the river. This backstory illustrates systemic anti-Asian misogyny and the violence that arises from being denied a name or humanity—mirroring the serial killer’s dehumanization of Asian women.

4. Why does Yifei decide to leak the “Batman” case to a reporter?
After cleaning the murder of Ai Wu, Yifei becomes furious that the police have suppressed details about bats being stuffed inside victims’ bodies. She says she is “done waiting” for justice and refuses to be “one of those bodies that we have to scrape off the ceiling.” Her decision stems from a conviction that silence will only lead to more deaths.

5. What leads to Yifei’s death, and how does Cora respond afterward?
Yifei dies off-page in Chapter 19, presumably killed by the serial killer Batman inside the dry cleaner’s washing machine. Harvey’s voice is heard through the machine, implying his own violent death. Cora later learns that Yifei’s body was unclaimed and likely buried on Hart Island. Cora responds by impersonating Yifei to the landlord to save her belongings, and she builds an altar for Yifei alongside the other dead, integrating Yifei’s pragmatic anger into her own final acts of defiance.