I can tell how you’re feeling. The two of us are the only ones who feel this way.
-- Bai Mulin (Chapter 2)

Importance: Following the factional wars of the mid-1960s, Ye Wenjie is drafted into the Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps, where she is forced to cut down trees. Ye Wenjie does not like the mass deforestation going on, just as she is not overly thrilled with the Revolution. She is joined in her sadness over deforestation by Bai Mulin. Bai and Ye Wenjie are very rare individuals who must keep their sadness a secret, or they will be considered pro-Western and reactionary to progress.

To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.
-- Narrator (Chapter 2)

Importance: Here, the narrator reflects on Ye Wenjie’s consideration of the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which deeply troubles her based on the deforestation of the Communists. Ye Wenjie is not opposed to progress, but...