Ma Hanzhi

Ma Hanzhi is Xiao Fengzhen’s mother and Lijia’s grandmother, a working woman whose account of her daughter’s disappearance gives Li Yan and Nien Mei-Ling a personal lead in their effort to identify several recovered bodies. She cannot confirm that Xiao Fengzhen is among the dead, but she explains the last known circumstances of her disappearance and identifies An Wenjiang as someone investigators should seek. The scene also shows how the investigation reaches into the lives of those left waiting: Ma must keep working and care for a child while the possibility of her daughter’s death remains unresolved.

Identity and Family Circumstances

The novel introduces Ma through the practical demands of her day. When Li Yan and Nien Mei-Ling arrive looking for her, they are told she has gone to collect Lijia because the school has closed after its heating broke down. By the time the detectives speak with her, Lijia is with her grandmother at a venue where sex goods are sold. One of the women there takes the child behind the counter, allowing Ma to talk with the visitors in a back office.

Li Yan objects to bringing a child into such a place. Ma answers that she has to work and asks, with evident apprehension, whether the detectives have news of Xiao Fengzhen. Her response establishes the constraints around her caregiving: she is responsible for Lijia, but work and childcare cannot be neatly separated. The text gives no wider account of Ma’s circumstances or employment; what it does show is that she is trying to manage both while the family faces a crisis.

Her connection to Xiao Fengzhen is marked by contradictory feelings. Ma had disapproved of her daughter’s relationship with An Wenjiang, whom she describes as having treated Xiao Fengzhen badly, yet she also recognizes that her daughter loved him. Her frustration comes partly from having failed to understand that attachment. She is not presented with a settled explanation for her daughter’s choices; instead, the remembered relationship remains a source of anger, regret, and unanswered questions.

The Detectives’ Visit

Li Yan explains that investigators have uncovered several bodies and are trying to identify them, but do not know whether Xiao Fengzhen is among them. Nien Mei-Ling adds that one of the women found was believed to have been a singer. That detail connects the investigation to Ma’s daughter, but it does not amount to identification. The uncertainty is crucial: Ma is given reason to fear the worst without receiving confirmation or closure.

Ma reacts with intense distress. Li Yan takes her hand, leads her to a seat, and asks gently about the circumstances of Xiao Fengzhen’s disappearance. The exchange shifts from the detectives’ initial request for information to a conversation shaped by Ma’s grief. Her effort to compose herself allows her to recount events, but the account is not detached testimony: she is describing a daughter whose absence has already been painful and whose possible presence among the dead now threatens to make that absence final.

The visit also exposes the cost of investigative uncertainty. Li Yan and Nien Mei-Ling need information that might help identify the bodies, while Ma is asked to revisit a disappearance that has never been explained. After leaving, Li Yan recognizes that the questions have stirred up memories, hopes, and fears without giving the family even an ending. His response underscores the imbalance of the encounter: the investigation needs what Ma can remember, but cannot yet offer her anything certain in return.

Xiao Fengzhen’s Disappearance

Ma says Xiao Fengzhen went to An Wenjiang’s apartment intending to repair their relationship. She told her mother she would stay for the weekend and return on Sunday night. When she did not come back, Ma first considered the possibility that the couple had reconciled. By Tuesday, however, her concern had grown enough that she went to the music school, where Xiao Fengzhen had not appeared either.

The sequence gives the disappearance a specific, troubling shape: a promised return, an absence from home, and then a second absence from the place where Xiao Fengzhen was expected to be. Ma suspected An Wenjiang because of their history, but suspicion is not proof. She reports that he told the police Xiao Fengzhen had never visited his apartment and that he thought she had simply changed her mind. Ma considers that account inconsistent with what he knew of her daughter, and believes he understood how strongly he could influence her. Her accusation sharpens the investigators’ lead without resolving what happened.

Ma’s account preserves Xiao Fengzhen as more than a possible victim in an unidentified group. She recalls a daughter with a relationship, a destination, a promised return, and routines connected to the music school. The singer clue may help the police connect a body to an identity, but Ma’s testimony supplies the domestic chronology behind that clue: the missed Sunday return and the search by Tuesday.

An Wenjiang and Lijia

Ma identifies An Wenjiang as working on boats, or as having done so the last time she heard, on tourist cruises on the Huangpu River. This is the practical information she can give investigators about where they might look for him. She also says that he has never visited Lijia. The absence matters in two ways: it confirms that Ma is caring for her granddaughter, and it deepens her hostility toward the man she associates with Xiao Fengzhen’s disappearance.

Lijia’s presence gives that hostility an immediate family context. Ma says that when she looks at the child, she sees An Wenjiang rather than Xiao Fengzhen, and describes the resemblance as a burden. The remark reveals an emotional conflict rather than a lack of care for Lijia: she has gone to collect her granddaughter, brought her along while working, and arranged for someone to watch her during the interview. At the same time, the child’s resemblance keeps the painful relationship present in Ma’s daily life. The scene does not show how this conflict develops beyond the encounter.

Ma’s anger at An Wenjiang culminates in the wish that he might have fallen overboard and drowned. It is an expression of her resentment and fear, not evidence of what happened to him. The distinction is important to the investigation: Ma supplies a name, a possible workplace, and a reason for suspicion, while the circumstances of Xiao Fengzhen’s disappearance—and An Wenjiang’s role in it—remain unconfirmed.

Narrative Role

Ma’s short appearance turns an identification inquiry into a family history assembled from fragments. Her testimony gives the police a timeline and a person to pursue, but it also resists the reduction of Xiao Fengzhen to a possible match among recovered bodies. In Ma’s account, the missing woman remains a daughter who planned to come home, a singer, and a mother whose child is now in her grandmother’s care.

The scene places that unresolved loss amid ordinary obligations: a school closed because its heating has failed, a child needing care, a workplace Ma cannot simply abandon, and the detectives’ questions. After the conversation, life continues along Nanjing Road around people unaware of one another’s private tragedies. Li Yan’s discomfort at having reopened Ma’s pain without being able to offer an answer gives the encounter its quiet consequence. Ma has helped advance the inquiry, but neither she nor the investigators yet knows whether the bodies will provide the certainty she needs.