China

China is the setting of Margaret Campbell’s professional life during a period of personal displacement: she teaches at the University of Public Security, receives news of her father’s death while in Beijing, and comes to see her ties to the country as bound up with a relationship she had believed in. The discovery of bodies in Shanghai brings that unsettled connection to a decision point, drawing her back to China to conduct autopsies.

Work and Daily Life

Margaret lectures at the University of Public Security, where police officers are trained. She describes her work as mostly teaching and compares the institution to the Chinese equivalent of West Point. The position pays poorly, but it provides her with an apartment and rice, practical benefits that help explain why she had been willing to remain in China.

Personal Ties and Distance

The news of her father’s death reaches Margaret in Beijing in a brief, cold phone call from her mother. At the time, she has been away from her father for nearly two years and has spoken with him only a handful of times. Her grief emerges later, when she wakes in tears, while the loss also sharpens her awareness that the ties keeping her in China had been fragile and connected to a man she thought she loved.

The Decision to Return

When Margaret discusses China with David Webber, his description of it as a communist state provokes her to challenge the assumption that it should simply be turned into a democracy, pointing to Russia as a counterexample. Their exchange makes clear that China is not merely the location of her employment but also the focus of an argument about political judgment and her reasons for being there. After returning to Chicago, Margaret tells her mother that she is going back to China because she has been asked to perform autopsies on bodies found in Shanghai. The decision gives her a concrete professional purpose at a moment when she has not settled where her future lies. China remains both the place she had been reluctant to leave and the destination she chooses again when the investigation calls her back.