[Photo/China Daily]

While she regards her life as failure-ridden, especially in light of her unhappy marriage, she has one point of pride－she has led a consistently "clean", virtuous life.

This obsession drives her to ultimately choose to believe the "policeman". Her ideological upbringing has taught her to never question the public security bureau's authority. Despite hesitation, she obeys.

Her mindset was forged in a more idealistic era－to which the book flashes back as she considers the transfer－and she has yet to catch up to contemporary realities and ethics.

For instance, she takes pride in her faithfulness to her husband, a philanderer who abandoned her until he got cancer and was on his deathbed. Yet she has taken no security from that relationship. Nor has she taken a sense of stability from the political movements she has piously supported.

The author uses the protagonist's chronic constipation as an analogy for her inability to purge herself of filth. Here again, she falls prey to a doctor who claims he can cure her.

Too late, she realizes her obsession with purity and consequent inability to question authority have made her fall for the bank scam.

After totally evacuating her bowels later, she understands her husband may have been right to sneer at her fixation with cleanliness.

She realizes filth is part of life. Perfect purity's pursuit isn't only impossible but also perhaps is undesirable and has likely been the source of－rather than a shield against－misfortune.