"Following our visit to the Wuhan depot, I spoke much more frequently with Maggie. I learned that the time we first met was the one negative episode in her otherwise happy life. Born in 1976, she had grown up in Wuhan, the youngest child of parents also born and raised in Wuhan. Her parents were both engineers, and her father worked in the military when she was young.

Maggie enjoys happy memories of her childhood years, when life – in her own words – was ‘simple and basic.’ Her family had enough to eat, and she spent her days playing on the riverbanks with her younger brother. That sense of ‘keeping things simple’ still strongly influences her. Maggie views herself as an ‘ordinary person,’ and she has no intention of ever leaving Wuhan. She hopes that life will be simple and happy for her child as well, so as far as possible, she shields him from the pressures of China’s currently very competitive environment "