Mei Xiang

Mei is the protagonist. She is a teenage girl who gets selected to join a dancing troupe of similarly-aged girls who live in the Forbidden City in Beijing. She and the Chairman soon form a sexual relationship, and she becomes his close attendant and pupil. The Chairman assigns Mei a mission to deceive the president into a scheme that will lead the student population to rebel against him in the name of the Chairman. At first, Mei is in awe of the Chairman, but as their relationship develops, she comes to understand him as an imperfect person, and eventually she disdains his distant view of the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens.

Mei narrates the novel primarily in the first person, but there is a “you” she seems to address the story to. Eventually, it is revealed that this “you” is her infant child, begot by Secretary Sun...