This chapter's epigraph comes from a famous line from the play, The Merchant of Venice. It's about a merchant who goes to Venice to find his wife. He finds her there, but she's too young to marry him, so she goes back to her family in China. Her uncle, who's also a merchant, comes to see her. He's furious that his son-in-law, the heir to the family fortune, has been caught having an affair with a woman at the same time that he's in love with her. Uncle Xiao is furious, too, because he thinks that the whole world will be watching him and his wife's affair. He orders his wife to leave the city immediately, because they're going to be watched by the entire world. When they get to the city, uncle Xiao asks his wife about her wedding plans. She says that