The burning of Madame Zhou’s Palace

The burning of Madame Zhou’s Palace destroys the physical center of Madame Zhou’s power without killing her. Reported after the fact and then encountered through Lin’s search of the wreckage, the attack turns a feared and inaccessible stronghold into a ruined building where its former ruler waits in isolation, dependent on servants to bring her food.

Background and Attack

Lin learns of the attack while explaining that he intends to confront Madame Zhou. He had been imprisoned for four months in Arthur Road Prison, and that experience has made the matter personal: he still does not understand why she had him jailed, but he now means to settle the score. His immediate plans include getting a motorcycle rather than relying on cabs and arranging his passport in case the police become involved.

Didier tells him that a mob of Sena people attacked the Palace ten days earlier. They ran inside, destroyed everything, and set the building on fire. The account supplies no detailed chronology of the assault or information about casualties; its emphasis is on the destruction and on how decisively the attack has altered the Palace’s status. The building itself still stands, but the place is ruined and will never open again. It is expected to be pulled down.

Madame Zhou’s Fate

Lin first asks whether Madame Zhou is dead. Didier confirms that she is alive and, according to reports, still inside the Palace. Yet survival does not mean she has retained any of the authority that once made the place formidable. Didier describes her power as destroyed and her circumstances as reduced to begging: her servants search the streets for scraps of food to bring her while she waits for the building’s demolition.

The attack therefore changes the meaning of the Palace as well as its condition. It had been a guarded seat of Madame Zhou’s influence; now the damaged building encloses a ruler who has lost her power and depends on others for basic sustenance. Lin refuses to regard her as beyond reach simply because her position has collapsed. He leaves Didier’s apartment to go to her, making clear that the ruined Palace will not, by itself, settle their conflict.

The Ruin from Outside

Lin and Didier approach by motorcycle and leave it in the driveway of an apartment building a block away. From the opposite side of the road, they study the Palace’s façade, which appears intact. The boarded windows and planks nailed across the main door tell a different story: the visible exterior has survived, but the building has been closed off after the destruction inside. They pass it, turn, and look for another entrance, reasoning that servants bringing food to Madame Zhou would not use the sealed front door.

Their search leads to a narrow lane behind the buildings. Its filthy pools of black liquid and heaps of oily debris contrast with the clean, proud main street. Counting buildings back from the corner, they identify the Palace’s rear wall and find a small wooden gate set into it. The gate opens at a touch. Beyond it, the courtyard still has the spacious proportions of what must once have been a luxurious retreat, but its furnishings have been smashed: heavy clay pots lie broken, earth and flowers are scattered in mud, garden furniture has been reduced to kindling, and paving tiles are cracked as if hammered.

Inside the Burned Palace

A blackened, unlocked door gives Lin access to the house. He leaves Didier outside to watch the gate and signal if anyone approaches, then enters alone. In the dark, he picks his way over broken dishes, pots, pans, and other vessels mixed with blackened furniture and fallen beams. The damage continues through the ground-floor kitchen and into a corridor toward the front of the house. Some rooms have burned; in one, the fire consumed the floor, exposing charred supporting beams through the gaps.

Near the front, Lin finds the staircase he once climbed with Karla when they came to rescue Lisa Carter. The Compton wallpaper is scorched and peeling from blistered walls, and the stair carpet has burned down to stringy clumps of ash. Lin tests the steps as he climbs; one collapses beneath him halfway up, forcing him to scramble to the landing.

The upper floor is not uniformly destroyed. Fire has incinerated some sections, leaving holes and blackened stumps, while others remain strikingly clean and recognizable. The contrast makes the house feel divided between its former state and its ruined present. Lin’s remembered image of the Palace seems to persist in the untouched rooms, so that entering the building becomes both a search through actual wreckage and a passage through the place as he knew it. The attack has not erased every trace of that past, but the surviving rooms stand amid damage that makes the Palace’s end unmistakable.