This was obviously one of the reasons why almost every night Mei stayed awake, painfully awake, for hours. And when she was wildly awake, she imagined herself lying in an enormous coffi n hung high before a tall monument, with only a small hole to see the outside world.
Mei stood the wet umbrella in a corner of the living room. She felt the need to change the clothes of her sons and cook the dinner. She did not change herself but just took off the wet coat and the wet shoes. Compared to the kitchens in a city where every inch of land was as costly as gold, hers was almost as big as the living room. There was one open washroom with dozens of broken taps lined along a trough, an independent bathroom built of wood in a quiet corner and one shallow pool sunken under a table in the middle. It was a standard kitchen for an industrial project.