The occupants of Pudong—a mixture of barbarians, Coastal Republic 
Chinese who feared persecution at the hands of their Celestial cousins, and 
Nell's little sisters, a third of a million strong and constituting a new phyle 
unto themselves—were thus caught between the Celestials on the south, 
the Huang Pu on the west, the Yangtze on the north, and the ocean on the east. 
All the links to the artificial islands offshore had been cut.