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Reader question: In this sentence - She comes back to her ancestral home in order to reach “full circle” - what does full circle mean? My comments: Well, the wanderer comes back home as leaves fall from the tree to return to the soil. It’s a natural phenomenon, like an earthquake or a tsunami. If you draw a ring, observe how the tip of the pencil come round to the original point to complete the drawing – in other words, the tip of the pencil has come full circle. Hence, if something has come, or gone full circle they come back to their original starting point. As a young person, “she”, whoever she may be, went away from home, went abroad to seek work, adventure, better prospects, what have you. In old age, she returns to her hometown, her birthplace. As a youth, life at home may have been too simple, routine, dull, unexciting and above all, as we Chinese perfectly understand this, suppressive. Therefore, she went away. Many times she returned to her homeland to visit, to bring money and gifts to her folks and to tell them stories, which all sounded like “adventures” to the country folk. Those stays were all brief. She had to leave after a matter of weeks or even days. Home was always the stifling old home – people still moved slow, talked slow. After retirement, however, she begins to miss that kind of slowness. The simple, routine and nothing-happens lifestyle is exactly what she’s looking for nowadays. Therefore she returns home to be with her kin and kindred again. As a young girl, dreams and claims to fame made her restless. The outside world attracted her like a magnet. These days, she sleeps soundly without dreaming (or having nightmares). “Popularity” nowadays sounds like a chore and she much prefers to be left alone. | 
