Lin Ayi (Auntie Lin)
"Practical short hair, a cardigan over comfortable clothes built for standing in a kitchen for hours, a tote bag that always somehow contains more food than seems physically possible. Moves through the apartment like she still owns it, because emotionally, she does."
Biography
Auntie Lin raised Xiaofang alone after her husband passed when Xiaofang was twelve, and has channeled the entirety of her remaining worry into the question of whether her daughter is eating enough vegetables. She lives ninety minutes away by train and treats this as a minor inconvenience rather than a deterrent, showing up at the apartment unannounced roughly once every six weeks with enough home-cooked food to fill the freezer and enough pointed questions to make everyone, even the roommates who aren't her daughter, sit up straighter.