Suzhou serves two sharply contrasting roles: it is a city celebrated for its beauty and waterways, and it is the setting of the concealed clinic where Li Yan and Margaret Campbell search for Xinxin. The journey through its old streets ends not at a public entrance but at a basement reachable only by river, making the city’s distinctive geography part of the operation—and of the danger surrounding it.

City and Setting

Li Yan knows Suzhou as a place famous in China for its beauty, described as the Venice of the East. The narrative connects that reputation to the city’s waterways and to a traditional saying that places Suzhou alongside Hangzhou as a place like Heaven on earth. Remembering that Nien Mei-Ling had told him her family originally came from Hangzhou, Li Yan reflects on the bitter contrast between this idealized landscape and the women held in the clinic. The women’s last days and nights, as he understands them, were spent in a place celebrated as earthly paradise, while they faced the surgeon’s table.

The city’s setting unfolds in layers as the police convoy approaches. Shortly before Suzhou comes into view, the rain stops; Yang Cheng Lake lies in the darkness to the right of the expressway. Li turns south toward Loumen Gate, at the northeastern corner of the old city wall. The officers first travel through the brightly lit modern town, then leave it for the narrower streets of the ancient city. The change of route shifts the scene from open roads and a coordinated vehicle convoy to a close-knit urban landscape organized around bridges and waterways.

The Waterways and Old City

The old city is described as a jumble of whitewashed houses, with hundreds of steeply arched bridges crossing the many natural waterways on which the town was built some two and a half thousand years earlier. Margaret glimpses a pagoda beyond the tiled roofs and a tearoom beside a narrow creek. These observations place ordinary urban life—houses, bridges, and a place where older residents gather—within the same waterside environment that conceals the clinic’s entrance.

After the convoy divides, Li, Margaret, and the Suzhou officers stop in a dark square. They continue on foot through a brick-carved arch and a narrow lane between old private dwellings, crossing humpback bridges and passing covered corridors that connect buildings over the water. Their route eventually reaches a wider river and a landing stage. The movement through successive passages and crossings makes the geography consequential: the clinic cannot be approached in the ordinary way by vehicle, and the police must follow the waterways to reach its rear entrance.

The Clinic and the Police Approach

Huang Tsuo identifies the clinic as Cui Feng’s and says that the women were kept in its basement. He explains that the basement can be reached only by canal from behind the building, allowing women to be moved by boat at night without attracting notice. The location is therefore not simply an address in Suzhou; its hidden river access is part of how the operation was concealed.

The local officers prepare for that constraint by arranging a small sampan rather than a motorboat, which they fear could alert anyone guarding the premises. Three officers accompany Li and Margaret by water; others remain at the landing stage, while the rest cover the building from the road at the front. The building has no lights and appears locked and empty. An arrest warrant for Cui Feng has been refused for lack of evidence, so the journey proceeds without that legal authorization. The planned division of officers reflects both the uncertainty at the site and the need to secure its separate approaches.

At the river steps, the officers find a shut, studded wooden door and barred lower windows; two further levels appear to be accessible from the street on the other side. Li cannot force the door, and an officer uses a crowbar to open it. Inside, the search begins along a narrow corridor with several rooms. The first two stand open and contain prepared cot beds, sheets, blankets, bedside cabinets, and rush matting. Those details give the basement the appearance of an arranged place of confinement rather than an abandoned passageway.

Search and Discovery

The search in Suzhou becomes a rescue attempt when the officers encounter a confrontation inside the building. After the disturbance, Margaret and Li continue down the corridor, where a police officer has been fatally wounded. Li forces open another locked door and finds Xinxin lying on a cot, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. He removes the gag and blindfold, but she is not breathing. The passage ends at this discovery, leaving her immediate fate unresolved in the scene.

Suzhou’s waterways thus carry the investigation from Li Yan’s recollection of an idealized city to the hidden entrance of a place where women were held. The contrast is not incidental: the same geography associated with beauty, old streets, and a celebrated saying also provides the discreet route to the clinic’s basement. The city’s canals determine how the police reach the site, while the concealed riverside access helps explain how the building could be used without drawing notice.