Liu is the father of two young women, Mei-po and Mei-ling. He is a philosophy professor. His daughters, aged twelve and sixteen, don't yet understand the risks of traveling in the world. In 1982, when Liu was nineteen-- around their age--he moved to New York City from Wuhan, China. The city was a big cause of anxiety for Liu because of the large number of muggings that occurred, day and night. Finding himself short on money, Liu answered an ad promising work. Liu called Wu, the name listed on the advertisement.  Soon Liu found himself delivering Chinese food on a bicycle for a New York City restaurant called the Lucky Dragon. It became a good source of income for him, until one fateful evening late at night. The Lucky Dragon got a call for a large amount of food to be delivered to tenth street, a dangerous area they usually didn't make deliveries in.  Liu took the food to the location and became held as a hostage by a man named William. William needed money desperately and feared he will be killed if he couldn't pay his debt. In an attempt to calm William, Liu told the story of Heaven Lake-- a legend in which a giant fish transformed into a bird as big as the entire sky. However, his efforts fell short and soon a van of men took William away. Liu uses this encounter to inform his experience of life, and its intrinsic entanglement with both fate and chance.