When I was reading Flame yesterday, the story really got me with a Disney-esque feel. A woman who was forced into a marriage to support her family instead of marrying the man of his dreams. She gets a letter from that man and and many times throughout the story I was under the impression that the story would end with them finally together. She waited 17 years to see him again and throughout the story reminisced on all the good times she had with him when they were younger. Unfortunately the lives they had to live in the newly established PRC was no fairy tale. The military in this story were the ones constantly feed with their new shiny cars and upgraded barracks where they could sleep every night. Meanwhile getting something as simple as bricks did not come in a truck but instead 3 Mongolian mules. She had a tough livelihood as a nurse and she had to work for the military and bureaucratic side of the People’s Republic. She had some advantages finically like getting her husband a new job as a director in another sector but she was still another pawn in the system at the end of the day. I thought reading this chapter that the reason she had to struggle so much in the beginning and middle is because it would end with her meeting the man of her dreams again. I was wrong. It ends with him finally getting the revenge he talked about by delivering food via his soldiers in their new shiny jeeps. His revenge was to show how far he came and how she is still stuck where she was 17 years ago. He wanted to make a point that life could have been hers if she stayed with him and instead of the chapter ending in a romantic Disney movie, it felt more of a tragedy.