February 2019
Beginner to intermediate
224 pages
3h 58m
English
6:30 in the morning, still dark outside. The alarm squawks at Zhang Min and her eight-hundred-square-foot apartment in Chengdu, China, just outside of Chongqing Nan’an. She’d love to eat something before she leaves, but she needs to make the train to get to work at Standard Chartered Bank, the British multinational financial services company.
Soon after, she is squeezing through the forest of arms and torsos toward the train door at Nanping station, just like the other 900,000 people using this stop today. Her belly grumbling, she wishes she’d eaten a boiled egg on the way to the station. It’s hot—almost 85°F. It’s going up to 104° today.
Getting out of the train, she makes her way over ...