Chapter 41 Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Mei opens the chapter by confessing two shameful secrets from her village life. The first concerns Mr. Haw, a farmer in his fifties with bloodshot eyes and decades of taro farming behind him. On her sixteenth birthday, as she went to fetch water, he intercepted her, pressed her against a stone wall, and assaulted her. Thunder and rain startled him, and she escaped that first time. But subsequent encounters were not so lucky. She learned to dissociate—floating away from her body, going blank and limp. She feared pregnancy, believing she could not love a baby half his, and would have abandoned it. She saw a silver lining in her starvation: her hungry body was an inhospitable home, perhaps sparing her pregnancy.

Her second secret was her ambition to attend Peking University, following in the footsteps of Kong Tee, who had given her books including On the Origin of Species. She was first in her class, though competition was scarce among hungry, preoccupied classmates. She studied each night after field work until early morning, wishing for thirty-four-hour days.

The entrance exam took place in June. Most classmates didn't sit for it. Her father scoffed, suggesting she could marry with her not-bad looks and was needed in the fields. Her mother, who never challenged her father, argued fiercely on her behalf, and he relented.

The exam hall was nearly empty. One essay prompt asked about freedom—whether choosing how to cross a desert constitutes freedom when crossing the desert is unavoidable. Mei recalled Marx's observation that people make their own history but not under circumstances of their choosing, and wrote that we make choices in daily life but countless things are already chosen for us.

An official in a many-pocketed uniform came to the village to announce her acceptance to Peking University to study biology. Her brothers snickered and accused her of cheating, but she tuned them out.

She left for Beijing in 1965, thin from never having enough to eat. Beijing was gray—gray stone, gray sky—which seemed more reasonable than the vibrant green of home. She was dizzy with happiness. She was assigned to a siheyuan with four other girls, daughters of Communist Party officials. She knew no one in Beijing, and felt loneliness and pride, recalling Madame Curie's words about finding charm and a sense of liberty in a painful life.

Her roommates were city girls with well-fitting clothes and makeup. They laughed at her, though Lanlan said