“The understanding, of course, is that we’ll never see this person again, that he or she will not return, even for a visit. For what good would that do? What lasting joy would it bring, to us or to them? Isn’t it better that we send them off once and for all beneath the glow of carnival lights, with the taste of treats on our tongues, rather than invite the acrid tang of doubt and undue longing, and the heart-stab of a freshly sundered bond? Isn’t it kinder to simply let them exit the gates, and for us to turn away too, and let our thoughts instead draft up on their triumphs to come?” – pg. 185
In this introduction to Liwei, Fan’s eldest brother, the reader learns that he was one of the lucky few B-Mor residents promoted into Charter life.
The customary celebrations that take place for this occasion are facility-wide, being one of the most vibrant public festivals in B-Mor. In this passage, the narrator ruminates on the significance of the B-Mor community convening in this way, sending the child off to a Charter village once and for all. By posing a series of rhetorical questions, the reader is allowed some insight into the emotional weight amidst the joyous festivities, a shared poignant acceptance that if mobility is unattainable for everyone else, at least one bright B-Mor clan member will have gone into a “better” future.
For them, it is a future utterly unforeseeable, and literally invisible save the “vids” and “pix” on their handscreens, yet it whispers all the promises of upper-class living. From the insides of the labor settlement, the hopes of Liwei’s clan are only ensured by the invisible ties that maintain economical flows, and a strict class hierarchy between B-Mor and Charter villages. As the narrator questions the reader to consider the implications of this ritual from the perspective of Liwei’s clan members, there seems to be the underlying invitation to doubt, the suggestion that any freedoms of uncertainty and suspicion on part of the residents have been reigned in and managed by capitalist forces.
In the meantime, the rest of B-Mor rationalizes that there is no time or practicality in sentimental longing beyond Liwei’s point of departure. “Isn’t it kinder to simply let them exit the gates, and for us to turn away too, and let our thoughts instead draft up on their triumphs to come?” The celebration is somewhat similar to a funeral, in that there is a common understanding that a permanent wall of life / death will be set between Liwei and everyone he knew in B-Mor. In thinking of the best in terms of labor and congruity, the reader can infer this tightly operated infrastructure of the B-Mor community— they come to accept their fate as is designated, and the pressures for productivity remain just so, a constant in the minds and bodies of the laborers.