On rational grounds, she could not make a choice from among these, but her gut feeling was strongly in favor of a large, locally notorious dump of a place, five stories high, enmeshed in the finely reticulated streets of an old neighborhood but close enough to its edge that it was probably fated for demolition and skyscraperization. It had been a proud building during the era that the city was called Amoy and rich Europeans maintained wine cellars on Gulangyu. A hotel, perhaps. But long since repurposed into a workers’ apartment building.