Essay Questions

What do cities represent?

Initially, the novel's main character (a female chef) lives and works in a city. Zhang describes the city as "dreary" and "crumbling" because so many people are dying as a result of climate change. Cities represent the last bastion of an old culture before climate change caused the world to dramatically change. As the cities began to crumble, the kind of civilization that so many were used to started to disintegrate, too. In other words, the life many people knew started to disappear.

In contrast, the tiny (but serene) hamlet that the chef gets a job represents the new world: one by wealthy people who don't have to suffer from the effects of climate change like their lower-class peers do. They are, in many ways, isolated from climate change, unlike those who live in cities.

How does the novel comment on class?

Historians have coined the terms "haves" and "have nots" to describe those in the upper class and those in the lower class, respectively. In Zhang's novel, readers are introduced to a world in which there is an incredibly stark divide between the haves and the have-nots. Those without much money are forced to live in "dreary" cities, which are dying a slow death. On the flip side, those with some money are able to live in an isolated community that has largely been unaffected by climate change. Even though those wealthy people disproportionately contributed to climate change, which drastically altered the city dwellers' lives, they didn't have to feel the effects of their actions.

The novel makes a sweeping point: the rich can act with impunity because of their money, and lower-class people have to frequently clean up their messes. In other words, rich people destroy things, and lower-class people fix them.