Lin Zhi

Lin Zhi came to school one day with her head shaved. She announced that she was “no longer Chinese or a woman” and renounced the Chinese government as wreckers.

Lin Zhi did not have any friends except Tzipora because she was extraordinarily rude and spoke only broken English. She was a disgraced princeling descended from Long Marchers and had only been living in Vekllei three or four years. Tzipora liked her a lot.

“Do you think you will ever go back to being a woman?” Tzipora asked. Lin Zhi said no, she was now only a synthesis of the international worker and could have no gender or race.

“But you still wear earrings,” said Tzipora. “It takes more than earrings to be a woman,” Zhi said.