3 ideas
Nan Wu abandons his political science PhD after Tiananmen, works as a night watchman, busboy, and cook in Boston and New York, then moves to the Atlanta suburbs and runs a small Chinese restaurant with his wife Pingping. They buy a house and secure a middle-class life, but the restaurant's constant demands squeeze out his writing. He eventually sells it to commit to poetry in English, trading financial security for vocation.
Nan chooses to write poetry in English rather than Chinese and struggles with idiom and fluency in his adopted language. The novel ties this choice to his wish for independence from the old nation, while leaving open whether the effort will succeed artistically.
Liberation from an authoritarian state does not deliver a free life but hands the person the harder task of deciding what to live for without prescribed roles. Seen this way, the immigrant's anxieties about money, marriage, and purpose are the real price of freedom, not failures to achieve it.