Kind captors
When Yu is captured, he is overcome by dread and fear. Thinking back to the way his country used to treat the prisoners of war, Yu believed he was going to be mistreated, beaten, tortured and maybe killed. When Yu arrives at a POW camp, he is shocked to see the kindness with which the Americans and the Koreans treated the prisoners. Thus, in this context, the Koreans and Americans are portrayed as being kind captors, interested in the well-being of their prisoners.
The land of freedom
Yu is forced to take a hard decision during the two years he is a prisoner. He was given the possibility of moving to a neutral country or returning back to China and all he had to do was express his desire. Europe, America as well as South Korea are among the places suggested as being neutral and thus suitable for Yu to start over his life. Thus, in this context, the above-mentioned areas are portrayed as being lands where freedom is granted to everyone and where it is up to the people to decide what they want.
China and the motherland
China is portrayed in two ways in the novel and this difference is given by the fact that Yu is able to experience his motherland under two different types of management. Before the communists took over the country, China is described as being a normal country where the citizens had relative freedom. This changed drastically when the country was overtaken by the communists who imposed their rules with an iron fist. From that point on, China was no longer a place where everyone would live in peace but rather the place where everyone feared and questioned everything.
Persona non grata
The last part of the novel focuses on Yu's life after he returned to China as a freed prisoner of war. Instead of being opened with open arms, he was a persona non grata whose loyalties were always questioned. Because of this, Yu was never able to use his college degree and his family was persecuted constantly. The image portrayed by Yu at the end of the novel shows just how much the communist regime tried to control the lives of the people and how much power they had over every aspect of a person's life.
