Severance

The visit to Shenzhen puts Candace’s estrangement from her Chinese heritage on display. Her accommodation, the Grand Shenzhen Moon Palace Hotel, is a culturally amorphous island—Candace states that “you wouldn’t know from staying there that it is located […] in China” (78). At the Phoenix Ltd. Factory, she is self-conscious about her poor Mandarin and feels the guilt of being in an indirect position of power over the workers. She tries to relate to Balthasar by making jokes about how fat and lazy American children are, but they fall flat.

Balthasar tells Candace that her name reminds him of a famous poem studied by all Chinese students, but Candace doesn’t recognize it, a moment which puts her disconnect with Chinese youth culture on display. Seeing the unhappy workers who make the Bibles, she also must confront the consequences of the decisions she makes an ocean away in the Spectra offices. Although she knew about this in theory, she is very unsettled by the reality of the conditions that her work facilitates.

Candace’s feeling of displacement isn’t alleviated by being back in the US. Even after the rules and regulations of society have ostensibly broken down, she finds a way to blend into the background, dutifully following orders like she did at Spectra. Her obedience masks the isolation she feels from the rest of the survivor group. Part of Bob’s pre-stalk ritual includes listing out everyone’s full names. Amidst a sea of three-part American names (Adam Patrick Robinson, Rachel Sara Aberdeen, etc.) “Candace Chen” sticks out as different, a break in the established rhythm.

The motif of routine emerges prominently in these chapters. Candace loves routines. After the apocalypse, she seeks out familiar patterns wherever she can find them, replacing her aimless walks with the predictable and repetitive actions of a stalk. The recurrent actions help her drown out anxieties and disengage from the unpleasant reality of her circumstances. Routine pervades Candace’s memories of her mother, who once practiced an involved skincare ritual. Ruifang tells Candace that “what you do every day matters,” (63), a sentiment which can be expanded to apply to everything in the novel.

Although routine comforts Candace, the novel explores the dark side of repetition as well. At the factory in Shenzhen, Candace observes an angry worker repeating the same actions over and over, resembling a machine in the rote quality of his work. The fact that routine can numb the psyche is a double-edged sword—it makes certain situations more tolerable, but the fates of Shen Fever victims make it clear that too much mindless repetition can be a deadly trap.

Memories begin to play a larger role in the narrative more of Candace’s life story is pieced together. In Chapter 7, she recalls visiting her hometown, the coastal Chinese city of Fuzhou. Although she describes the city as dirty and dangerous, her narration comes alive with the most evocative language she uses in the entire novel. The memory of Fuzhou elicits a level of emotion that her life in New York lacks. Her electrified walks through the city with Bing Bing contrast her “grim” and aimless solo wandering through Manhattan. The key difference is that in Fuzhou, she has a true and close friend in Bing Bing. Now, she wonders if staying in Fuzhou would have made her happy, inventing an alternate past to linger in, a habit that will become characteristic.

In one of Candace’s memories, her uncle fights with her father, accusing him of abandoning his family in China. Their argument encapsulates a common dilemma for first-generation immigrants: Assimilation into a new country can come at the cost of old relationships and ways of life. As an adult, Candace barely maintains contact with her Chinese relatives, even though a part of her yearns for a return to Fuzhou. Perhaps the thing stopping her from going back is the fear that she will find herself even more unwelcomed and out of place than she feels in the US Trapped somewhere between America and China, Candace is neither here nor there, a character without a place to call home.