Lixue (22) doesn’t ask herself if she likes Recife. She certainly doesn’t want to ask whether her new city likes her, after being sent there to live with her aunt. Aunt Lili owns an emporium of shops for Chinese import products and lives with her family and her workers on the 22nd floor of an exclusive apartment building. Much to the disapproval of the upper-class Brazilian landlords, who think the Chinese immigrants don’t belong in the tower. When Lixue disappears from the city, Ah (22) arrives on the scene: the first tourist in Recife in years. Her physical resemblance to Lixue is astonishing. Jetlag, insomnia and solitude lead Ah into Recife’s Chinatown. She finds a box of postcards, scrolled with Lixue’s observations of the substitute city inside the tower. Ah starts to follow in Lixue’s tracks. But after all, don’t Lixue and Ah share the same face, the same voice? Is Lixue a product of Ah’s imagination?
Nele Wohlatz
