Daowai

Like everyone in Daowai, the Shens were accustomed to using one room for everything.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

Like everyone in Daowai, the Shens were accustomed to using one room for everything.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

Like everyone in Daowai, the Shens were accustomed to using one room for everything.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

Lowly Daowai was a rabbit’s warren of ancient, ramshackle hutong houses and crooked alleyways.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

Shen Jie did not want his daughter to grow up to be a shop clerk living in one room in Daowai; he did not want her to know what it felt like to have your life’s opportunity taken away from you and be powerless to get it back.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

Shen Jie did not want his daughter to grow up to be a shop clerk living in one room in Daowai; he did not want her to know what it felt like to have your life’s opportunity taken away from you and be powerless to get it back.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

Lowly Daowai was a rabbit’s warren of ancient, ramshackle hutong houses and crooked alleyways.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

At the time that Shen Xue was born, they were living in a one-room apartment with Shen Jie’s mother in the run-down Daowai district.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

At the time that Shen Xue was born, they were living in a one-room apartment with Shen Jie’s mother in the run-down Daowai district.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004

The apartment is a sixth-floor walk-up in an outwardly unimpressive building, and on the outside door is the same red-and-gold good-luck banner that hung on the Shens’ door when they lived in a hundred and sixty square feet in Daowai.

THE SECOND MARK JOY GOODWIN 2004