Ma Hanzhi–Lijia relationship

Ma Hanzhi’s bond with her granddaughter Lijia is marked by both everyday responsibility and a painful family absence. Ma goes to collect Lijia when a heating failure closes the girl’s school, but the place she brings her is her workplace, where the child’s presence exposes how caregiving continues amid circumstances that are far from suitable for a young girl.

Care in a Precarious Setting

When Li Yan and Nien Mei-Ling arrive looking for Ma, they learn that she has gone to collect Lijia from school. The heating has broken down, and the school has closed for the day. Ma returns holding the hand of the curious young girl, then offers to speak with the visitors in an office while the women working in the shop look after Lijia. The sequence presents Ma as the person responsible for responding to the child’s immediate needs, even though her work brings Lijia into an adult-oriented environment.

A Child Bound to Her Mother’s Absence

Lijia is Xiao Fengzhen’s daughter, and Ma’s account of the family is shaped by Xiao Fengzhen’s disappearance from her life. Ma believes An Wenjiang, Xiao Fengzhen’s former partner, had a powerful hold over her daughter; after Xiao Fengzhen went to his apartment and failed to return, Ma searched for her at the music school. Her anger at An Wenjiang is bound up with the child’s presence: looking at Lijia, Ma says, she sees him rather than her daughter. The resemblance makes the granddaughter a reminder of the man Ma blames and of the daughter she misses.

Care and Resentment Together

Ma’s bitterness does not erase her practical care for Lijia. She collects her when school closes and keeps her nearby while she speaks with the investigators, arranging for the shop’s workers to watch her. At the same time, Ma describes the child’s resemblance to An Wenjiang as a curse and expresses the intensity of her resentment toward him, noting that he has never visited his daughter. Their relationship is therefore neither simple rejection nor uncomplicated affection: Lijia depends on Ma’s care, while Ma’s grief and anger complicate the emotional meaning of that care.