Zichen is a middle-aged Chinese American woman living in contemporary Wisconsin. She sits at the animal-care shelter where she works as a clinician with two men, Ted and Henry. As they eat lunch, she reveals her plans to break from her usual tradition and visit England instead of China for her vacation. Ted and Henry joke around, asking why she’d want to go there. Zichen claims she’s tired of seeing her family and would like a change. Planning out her vacation, she thinks back to the most difficult moments of her past. She was raised by her grandmother after her mother gave birth to her out of wedlock. In reality, she’d go to China not to visit her parents, who she’d met only once before she left for America with her now ex-husband, but to visit her grandmother, who’d died and whose funeral Zichen was not even invited to. Zichen thinks back to her friendless childhood and a day she spent with a man who pretended to be her father, to her ex-husband who now lives in New Jersey with a new family, and to Margaret and John, two elderly people who took her in and taught her Latin.  After reflecting, Zichen decides to go to England. Although she’s never been able to tell the truth of her past to her only two friends, Ted and Henry, she fantasizes about telling the innkeepers in England her battle stories.