“Ni hao.”
Li Yang called out in Mandarin, greeting her husband as she pushed the front door to their tiny apartment closed with her foot, whilst balancing a huge nylon bag in her arms. It had been a long day and the middle-aged woman desperately longed to sit with her feet in a bowl of warm water, but there was still dinner to prepare, washing to do and a pile of socks to darn.
“Ni hao ma (How are you?)” Xu Wei asked sleepily as he trudged into the hallway to relieve his wife of her heavy burden, his slippers scraping across the tiled floor as he walked.
Li Yang quickly gave him a run-down of her day in rapid-fire Shanghainese, emphasising how tired she was but still excited to show him the goodies that her departing employers had bestowed upon her. Most of the contents of her chequered
