The Windup Girl

Jaidee has become lionized and immortalized as the people build makeshift shrines to him in order to stave off white shirt anger. One old woman, a food vendor, is smashed in the legs after attempting to bribe the white shirts because of her use of blue methane. The white shirts look for any opportunity to cause problems and the people, especially yellow cards like Hock Seng, are visibly afraid. He uses Mai as a guide since she is Thai. He still feels ambivalently toward her—in one moment she seems like a daughter; in another, he wishes to strangle her because he fears she will betray him. He makes it back to the slum where he lives and gives her money. She says she is not a yellow card and has nothing to fear after he asks her if she can make her way back. Hock “makes himself smile in return, thinking that she does not know how little anyone cares to separate the wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field” (204).