Li Yan–Xinxin relationship

The Li Yan–Xinxin relationship is built from an act of abandonment that becomes an everyday responsibility: Li takes in his six-year-old niece and tries to make a dependable home for her while his police work repeatedly pulls him away. His care is practical and sometimes improvised, but it is also intimate. He makes time for her questions, carries concern for her into other crises, and recognizes that providing a roof and a succession of caregivers may not be enough to give her the family stability she needs.

Becoming Xinxin’s Guardian

Xinxin comes to live with Li after her mother becomes pregnant again, learns the child is a boy, and leaves Xinxin with him, almost literally on his doorstep, before going into hiding to have the son she had long wanted. Xinxin’s father had wanted an abortion; when her mother ran away, he rejected both of them. Li describes himself as having a child in all but name, and takes on the work of bringing up his sister’s daughter without either parent’s support.

The circumstances give Li’s care a broader social context. He wonders whether the One-Child Policy creates as many problems as it solves, pointing to unwanted girls, children growing up without siblings, and a generation with fewer aunts and uncles. His own family is marked by precisely the kind of fractured responsibility he describes: Xinxin’s parents withdraw, while her uncle assumes the role of parent. The relationship is not presented as an easy substitute for what she has lost; it is Li’s effort to answer that loss with sustained care.

A Home Made Around Work

Xinxin lives in Li’s apartment, but his police duties can take him away at any hour of the day or night. He has to arrange for other people to look after her while he works. When he may be in Shanghai for an extended period, he realizes that the arrangements made for her elsewhere will not be enough and begins planning to bring her with him. On the eve of leaving, a book of Xinxin’s on a chest of drawers interrupts his packing: he remembers that Mei Yuan will need to care for her while he is gone, and that Margaret Campbell is no longer there to help.

The practical details reveal both Li’s commitment and its limits. He does not treat Xinxin’s care as something that will take care of itself; he plans around his absence and seeks help from people he trusts. Yet each solution depends on another person being available. Later, in Shanghai, he asks Margaret Campbell to collect Xinxin and bring her back to him. A kindergarten has agreed to take her temporarily, his hotel provides an adjoining room, and he pays a babysitter to look after her in the evenings and on weekends when work requires it. These arrangements bring her close to Li without freeing him from the pressures that make childcare difficult.

Affection, Memory, and Inadequacy

Xinxin’s home is also her great-uncle Yifu’s former room. His smiling photograph hangs on the wall, and she often asks Li to tell her stories about the old man. Li always makes time to tell them. In this small ritual, he connects her to a family member she knows through stories and preserves a place for Yifu in their shared domestic life. The room is no longer only a reminder of Li’s grief; it is also where he answers Xinxin’s curiosity and gives her a living account of their family.

Li’s care is shaped by absence as well as presence. While thinking about a young boy whose mother may have been murdered, he recalls the months after Xinxin’s mother abandoned her and her father refused to take her back. He recognizes how much change and adjustment the child had to endure, then turns the comparison against himself: an unmarried uncle and a string of babysitters, he thinks, do not amount to the life a little girl needs. His conclusion is not that he has failed to love her, but that love and effort alone may not supply the security of a stable family. The gap between his devotion and his sense of what she needs gives the relationship much of its emotional weight.

Care Across Distance

When Li is away from Xinxin, she remains present in his thoughts alongside the cases and people occupying his attention. In a Shanghai hotel room, he thinks of her among the women found in a collective grave, Margaret Campbell’s arrival, and the feelings stirred by Nien Mei-Ling. The juxtaposition places his domestic responsibility within the same unsettled life as his work: he cannot separate concern for Xinxin from the loneliness and strain of being far from home.

The plan to bring her to Shanghai shows care becoming collaborative rather than solitary. Nien Mei-Ling has helped arrange the kindergarten and other practical support, and Li is glad that Xinxin will have people around who enjoy children and can play with her. Margaret Campbell responds with evident excitement when Li asks her to collect the girl, welcoming the prospect of spending time with her. These arrangements offer Xinxin a wider circle of attention, while also underscoring how much of Li’s guardianship depends on relationships beyond the two of them.

Narrative Significance

The relationship makes Li’s private responsibilities a counterpoint to the demands of investigation. His work requires irregular hours and travel; Xinxin requires a reliable adult, a home, and continuity after her parents’ rejection. The novel repeatedly brings those demands into contact through concrete acts—finding a caregiver, arranging a place at kindergarten, booking adjoining hotel rooms, and telling stories at bedtime. Li’s guardianship is therefore neither a simple declaration of affection nor a problem neatly solved by logistics. It is an ongoing attempt to turn responsibility into belonging, shadowed by his fear that the life he can provide is not yet the stable family life she deserves.