We are still together and things calmed down for a bit. There is now a moratorium on discussing China and we have painted over the Maoist slogans on the walls so my parents could visit without seeing it.

But yesterday I came home and she was outside throwing rocks at birds. I asked why, and she told me “the sparrows are bourgeois”. Her victims were pigeons.

After I pointed this out she called me a “lysenkoist”. I’m truly at a loss for words here.