The psychiatric ward was once called an asylum, yet it was no place to seek asylum, not the true meaning of the word. It should be a place of refuge from the storms that hurt the mind, a place of love and sanctuary, a place to be welcomed into arms that would hold one until the entire self was soothed, content simply to dwell in those moments with the person, being their anchor, the pillar in their hurricane.
The bare walls and bare floors as reflections of what the place really was, as if the building itself was trying to tell the staff what they had built and perpetuated. Then there were the windowless rooms, the lack of real light, the doors without handles for the patients with worse conditions. It was the world's most obvious constructed metaphor for emotional indifference.
Gu Haiyang, Fan Xiao Yao's mother was located in a nicer room with a room that showed the beautiful scenery of the garden.
