Summary

In “Love in a Fallen City,” the Bai family demonstrated its inability to modernize by refusing to change their clocks when the rest of the city set its clocks ahead as a way to save daylight. The family home also had a broken clock in the drawing-room.

The action starts when the family received a telegram reporting that the man to whom Bai Liusu had been married and had divorced seven years prior was dead. According to custom, Liusu was supposed to return to her husband’s family to mourn. Her family complained when she refused to leave and argued she was a burden to them. The family decided to try to get a new husband for Liusu at the same time her younger sister, Baolu, was getting a marriage arranged.

Baolu was given the priority because it was not...