The Dark Road A Novel

KEYWORDS: win–win situation, egg lady, amino acids, orphanage, fermented hair, motherwort.

NAKED FROM THE waist up, Meili sits on a concrete brick beneath the porch and stares out at the enclosure. In the midday sun, the pond and the white ducks look blindingly bright. A small bird darting across the creek faints from the heat and falls into the water with a loud splash. The sky and earth seem paralysed by the sun’s burning rays.

The dead fish Kongzi scooped from the floodwater and laid out to dry were washed away in a torrential downpour last week. Kongzi and Meili have bought thirty new ducklings and cordoned off a section of the pond to protect them from the adult ducks. With any luck, they’ll be able to sell them next month for two hundred yuan. Waterborn is eight weeks old now, and still does nothing all day but eat and sleep. Meili is afraid to put her down for naps inside the hut in case she’s attacked by stray dogs, so she carries her around all day wrapped to her chest with a long cloth, as is the custom in Guangdong Province. Now, all she wants is to find a job and start making some good money. There’s an agricultural market in a town four kilometres downstream, and she’s considering going there to ask if she can hire a stall. The feeling of emptiness in her flat belly is reassuring. If family planning officers were to catch her now and insert an IUD into her or even sterilise her, she wouldn’t put up a fight.

The two sisters, Gu and Hua, who rent out this plot to them, turn up after lunch. They drop by once a week to collect rent, buy ducks from Meili and pick fruit from the lychee trees. Gu is tall and thin, and is wearing a conical straw hat. Hua, shorter and stockier, is holding a dainty black parasol.

‘Nannan, bring the beer crate over here for the aunties to sit on,’ Meili calls out, picking up the paper fan that Kongzi made.

‘No need,’ says Hua, as she and her sister squeeze into the remaining shade beneath the porch. ‘Look how the baby’s grown! She must be a good feeder.’

‘You don’t mind if I don’t put on a vest, do you? It’s just too hot today.’ The sweat streaming down Meili’s cleavage has soaked Waterborn’s face and the piece of cloth in which she’s wrapped.

‘Your ducks are selling well in the village. They taste just like the ones I used to eat as a child.’ From her smooth pale hands, one can tell that Hua has never worked on the fields.

‘We feed them a pure grain diet, and don’t let them touch the dead fish that wash up on the beach.’ Meili’s heart always beats faster when she lies. ‘Give the aunties some fizzy orange,’ she calls out to Nannan, who’s standing naked beside the pond, spraying water onto an ant nest.

‘Yes, your baby’s a sturdy little thing, but look how her feet curl inwards,’ says Gu, sneering under her conical hat. ‘I heard your husband say that there might be something wrong with her.’

‘Think about your future, Meili,’ says Hua. ‘Bringing up a handicapped child is expensive, and exhausting too. All that money and effort, and you won’t even be able to marry her off in the end!’

Meili crosses her legs, rests a foot on a burnt tin can and pushes her nipple back into Waterborn’s mouth. ‘What does your husband do, Hua?’ she asks.

‘He works at the Radiance Hair Factory. I believe your husband’s delivered some stock to them.’

‘What do they do with the hair?’ Meili asks, coiling her own hair into a bun then securing it with a twig.

‘If it’s long, they make wigs out of it. If it’s short, they ferment it.’ The two sisters are now sitting down on the beer crate, cooling themselves with the paper fans Nannan has just made.

‘Ferment it? To make shampoo?’ Meili closes her eyes briefly and imagines sailing upstream to a clean stretch of the Xi River, then jumping in and washing herself with soap. Although according to custom she is allowed to bathe now that her confinement is over, she still wouldn’t dare enter the filthy creek. Kongzi brings back bottles of clean river water from his trips, but never enough to wash more than her hands and face.

‘See that brand of soy sauce you have there?’ says Hua, pointing her fan at the bottle. ‘It’s made from fermented hair. Hair is amazing stuff: it’s full of nutritious protein and amino acids, and it never rots. A corpse’s hair can survive thousands of years.’

Waterborn frowns nervously. She has very little hair on her scalp, and small scratches on her eyelids and forehead. Although she’s in the shade, she doesn’t dare open her eyes. Her damp face glistens like a peeled lychee.

‘I’ve heard that parents in the village mutilate their babies then rent them out to illegal gangs,’ Meili blurts, unable to restrain her curiosity.

‘Nonsense!’ exclaims Hua, the gold wedding ring glinting on her chubby finger. ‘Only a couple of families have done that. They may have nice houses now, but no one will speak to them. They’ve ruined the reputation of the village.’

‘She’s got your ears, I see,’ says Gu, ‘and your upward-slanting eyes.’

‘Thank goodness the family planning officers are relaxed here, or I would have got into deep trouble,’ Meili says.

‘They used to be much stricter,’ Hua replies. ‘When the Fujian couple’s third daughter was just three days old, the officers came down here and drowned her in the pond.’

‘No!’ gasps Meili, her eyes moving to the pond’s still surface. The drake is floating in the middle, his beak in the air, while the ducks drift slowly around him with bowed heads.

‘No, they didn’t drown the baby – they kicked her to death up there,’ Gu says, pointing to the terraced hill behind. A dog’s black tail darts down a path running between the overgrown fields.

‘I heard someone’s offered you seven thousand yuan for her already,’ Hua whispers to Meili.

‘If you wait any longer, the price will go down,’ Gu says softly.

‘So, you’re agents?’ Meili asks, staring at the crate lying at the edge of the creek, which she uses as a rubbish bin to keep the flies away from the hut.

‘It can’t be cheap, rearing ducks. Look, it’s not as if you’re paying Sister Mao to break her legs. You’ll be selling her to an orphanage who will export her to a foreign country where there are no mosquitoes in summer, no flies in winter, and medical care is free. She’ll be in Heaven!’

‘Your baby’s retarded, no doubt about it. So do it for her sake. If not for her sake, then do it for your husband and your elder daughter.’

‘But I heard that if orphanages can’t get the children adopted, they sell them to child traffickers who break their limbs and force them to beg on the streets,’ Meili says testily.

‘No, no, that’s complete nonsense,’ Gu says, flicking a fly away from her bottle of fizzy orange.

‘Trust us, egg lady, we wouldn’t lie to you,’ Hua says. The drake on the pond puffs out his chest and grunts.

‘My name is Meili – so don’t call me “egg lady”!’ Meili says, staring down angrily at the plantain leaves on the ground.

‘But that’s what we call people who live on boats. Perhaps you northerners use a different term.’

‘We’re not from the north, and we’re not from the south – we’re from the very centre, just like this!’ Meili says, pointing to her crotch, then laughing triumphantly. The sisters roll their eyes, not knowing where to look. ‘Yes, I was born in the birthplace of Nuwa, the goddess of fertility and the founder of the Chinese race. So don’t patronise me.’

Gu pulls out a box from her bag. ‘Try one of these, my dear. I made them myself. You’ve only recently finished your confinement. You need to build up your strength.’

Meili takes the box and lifts the lid. ‘How pretty! Nannan, come and look! I’ve never seen sticky rice cakes as green as this before.’

‘It’s a local speciality,’ Hua says. ‘We colour glutinous rice with crushed motherwort, then divide it into small balls which we steam then roll in shredded coconut.’

‘Would you like to buy today’s batch of eggs?’ Meili asks, trying to steer the conversation further away from Waterborn. ‘I’ll sell them to you for three mao each and you can sell them on for five. Pay me later, if you don’t have cash on you.’

‘All right,’ Gu says. ‘I’ll take some and see how I do. If they don’t sell, I’ll preserve them in salt and eat them myself. Those bananas up there look ripe. Feel free to chop some off.’ Most of the banana trees have died; only two are still producing fruit. A swarm of flies are now circling the sisters, attracted perhaps by the smell of warm rice rising from their clothes. They stand up and get ready to leave.

‘You’re so clever, you family planning violators – you’ve realised you can make far more money having babies than you could raising pigs!’ Hua says conspiratorially. ‘How many more do you plan to have?’

‘I’m finished now!’ Meili says, getting up and brushing off the coconut shreds that have fallen onto her breasts. ‘My husband’s desperate for a son, but I refuse to have any more.’

‘I only ever wanted one,’ says Gu. ‘I read in the papers that if a woman eats tadpoles on a regular basis, she’ll never get pregnant. So after I had my first child, I scooped some from a pond every week and swallowed them. Fine lot of good it did! I was pregnant again within two months!’ Gu laughs loudly, revealing her long yellow teeth.

‘But who can afford to have more than one child these days, the way school fees and medical fees keep rising?’ Hua says.

‘So how many children do you have, Hua?’ Meili asks, glancing down at the braised duck simmering on the stove.

‘Four. Only two of them are legally registered, though.’

‘I’ve told you, Hua, you must hurry up and buy permits for the other two or they won’t be able to go to school,’ Gu says.

‘If you do decide you want to go ahead with the sale, come and speak to us,’ Hua says to Meili. ‘Don’t go to that guy who runs the scrapyard. He’s a nasty crook. If the babies are alive, he sells them to traffickers, and if they’re dead he sells them to restaurants.’

‘I would never sell my own child,’ Meili says, softly rocking Waterborn as she starts to cry again. ‘If she does turn out to be mentally handicapped, I won’t mind – I’d be happy to look after her for the rest of my life.’

‘We just want to help you secure a good future for your daughter, and for your family as well,’ Gu says. ‘If you sell her, everyone will benefit.’

‘Yes, it will be a win–win situation, just like President Jiang Zemin said to the US in the international trade discussions last week,’ Hua says. ‘Come on now, let’s go and choose our eggs.’

When the sisters walk past her, they seem to give off more heat than the scorching pot on the stove.





KEYWORDS: flea-ridden, magnet, scum, beautification fee, gangsters, Custody and Repatriation Centre.

RETURNING TO THE hut and seeing Nannan sitting alone under the porch and the boat gone, Meili knows at once that Kongzi has gone to give Waterborn away.

‘Where’s Daddy, Nannan?’ she shouts.

‘He said he’s taking Waterborn on a trip. He said he’ll be back very soon, and when he comes back I’ll be his only daughter and he’ll only love me.’

‘The evil bastard! I know what he’s done – he’s gone to sell her to a Welfare Office! Kongzi, you monster! You force me to get pregnant, then you take my baby from me. You’re worse than the Communist Party. I despise you. I never want to set eyes on you again!’ Shaking with rage and howling curses, she kicks out at the wok and bowls on the ground, stamps on the peanut oil and mosquito coils she just bought in the village, then turns round and marches away into the fields. The ducks in the pond flap their wings and take flight.

‘Mummy, come back, I’m frightened . . .’ Nannan cries out, but Meili is so delirious with rage she can’t hear her. She strides across the fields all the way to the public road, then stops a passing minibus and jumps aboard. She wants to go as far away as possible. No – she wants to return to Nuwa Village, to her birthplace. She finds a seat at the back, buries her face in her scarf and weeps. May you get struck by lightning, Kongzi! she mutters under her breath. All these years you drone on about benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, then you go and sell your own daughter! How could I have married such a monster? . . . When she met him at seventeen, she believed marriage was for ever, that the government protects and cares for the people, and that husbands protect and care for their wives. But as soon as she got married, these naive beliefs were shattered. She discovered that women don’t own their bodies: their wombs and genitals are battle zones over which their husband and the state fight for control – territories their husbands invade for sexual gratification and to produce male heirs, and which the state probes, monitors, guards and scrapes so as to assert its power and spread fear. These continual intrusions into her body’s most intimate parts have made her lose her sense of who she is. All she is certain of is that she is a legal wife and an illegal mother. I’d be better off dead, she mumbles to herself. I should throw myself into the Yangtze and join Happiness on the riverbed. With a jolt, she remembers Nannan and wishes she’d had the presence of mind to bring her with her. She decides to spend the night in whatever town the minibus is taking her to, then to sneak back to the hut in the morning and fetch Nannan.

Only at night, when the minibus pulls into the terminal and she steps off, goes outside and looks at the dark road running downhill, does she begin to feel helpless and alone. On a dimly lit fruit stall, peeled pineapples gleam like freshly plucked ducks. The pavements are littered with the trampled pulp of chewed sugar cane. Sensing that the road leads to the centre of town she follows it down. It stretches on through the darkness, desolate as a barren field. At last, in the distance, she sees neon signs flashing from tall buildings, and begins to walk towards them as though pulled by a magnet.

The road bends and becomes wider and brighter. There are cars and buses now. After crossing two junctions, waiting for the pedestrian lights to turn green, she begins to realise that this is not a town but a city. She must ask someone where the train station is. She’d like to go home now and see her parents. The thought of being fined or arrested doesn’t frighten her any more. If there’s no train to Nuwa, she’ll return to Guai Village in the morning, take Nannan and a few belongings, and set off for Heaven Township, leaving Kongzi to fend for himself. She approaches a small kiosk to ask for directions. When she sees the red telephone on the counter, she has a longing to phone Weiwei and pour her heart out to him, but she doesn’t have his number on her. She thinks of phoning Kongzi’s parents, but is afraid the line might be bugged, and besides, she’s not in the mood to speak to them. Clubfoot has a telephone too now, as well as a laptop computer and satellite TV, but she has forgotten his number. The only other person in Kong Village whose number she can remember is Kong Zhaobo. He’s opened a dairy farm that supplies milk to an infant formula company. She phoned him a couple of times in Guai Village, asking if he could give her brother a job.

‘Want to use the phone?’ the vendor asks, leaning over the counter. ‘Domestic calls are four jiao a minute. Dial the area code first. The list’s up there.’

‘It’s a Hubei number,’ says Meili, as she dials the last digit. As soon as the ringing tone sounds, she immediately regrets making the call. Kong Zhaobo says hello in his heavy accent.

‘It’s Meili,’ she says, feeling drops of milk start to leak from her full breasts. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone I phoned.’

‘Won’t tell a soul, I promise. Where are you?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve just got off a bus.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing. I just wanted to hear how things are in the village.’

‘Oh, there’ve been big changes. You know Kong Dufa who took over your husband’s teaching post? Slimy bastard. Well, he’s village head now. His son graduated from university last summer and has got a job at the County Transport Bureau. You won’t believe it: the village has become a tourist destination! Six coachloads of visitors arrive every day. My neighbour has built a side extension and opened a restaurant called the Happy Farmer. And that painter, Old Cao, who created the mosaic mural for you. Well, his son, Cao Niuniu, has done well. He’s a successful artist now. Lives in Beijing. He came back to the village a few months ago and bought the Sky Beyond the Sky Hotel and has turned it into a painters’ colony. He’s got a hundred artists living there, churning out copies of foreign masterpieces that he sells back in Beijing. And you heard that Kong Qing’s wife was arrested for complaining about her forced abortion? Yes, she’s still locked up in the mental asylum . . . Five of the villagers who were arrested in the riots are still in jail. One poor sod is serving fourteen years. Kong Guo was released last month, thank goodness.’

‘What about that sweet, gentle man . . . ?’

‘Kong Fanhua? He’s all right. He chopped down the huge tree in his yard and sold the timber to pay off his fine. His wife has gone to work in Guangzhou. He still cycles around the village every morning collecting eggs . . . Listen, if you do give birth to a son and earn enough money to pay the fine, don’t come back here. Go and live in the county town. The schools are much better there.’

‘How’s Li Peisong, and his son, Little Fatty?’

‘Oh, Little Fatty – he’s in a juvenile detention centre. Granny Kong told him off about something, and he ended up beating her to the ground with a stick. Well, it’s not surprising he’s turned out that way. His parents were left destitute after paying the fine for his birth, and couldn’t even afford to send him or his brother to school . . .’

As Meili puts a ten-yuan note on the counter to pay for the call, a man behind her says, ‘You’re not local, are you? Where are you from?’

‘Hubei Province,’ she says, counting the change before putting it in her pocket.

‘Do you have a temporary residence card for this city?’

‘No, I haven’t brought any documents with me.’

‘Well, you won’t be able to get a room in a hotel, then. Come with me. I’ll take you somewhere that provides free food and lodging.’

Meili follows the man back to the main road. Growing suspicious, she asks, ‘So, how come the food and lodging are free?’

‘The city authorities pay for it. They know hotels won’t accept flea-ridden peasants like you, and they don’t want you sleeping on the streets, spoiling the city’s image, so they’ve built a guest house where you can stay for free.’

‘Are you trying to say that no one in the city has fleas?’ Meili says indignantly. ‘I can’t believe that’s true.’

They reach a dark doorway. When Meili reads the words CHANGSHA CITY CUSTODY AND REPATRIATION CENTRE on the sign above it, she turns to run, but the man grabs hold of her and drags her inside.

‘This is the fourth one I’ve brought in today,’ he says to a uniformed officer at the front desk. ‘So that’s 120 yuan you owe me.’

‘The child you brought in this afternoon doesn’t count. He was ten years old and mute. We couldn’t have sold him on, so we let him go.’

‘You never told me you don’t take children,’ he says, fingering the loose threads on his shirt where his top button has been tugged off.

‘Well, you’d better read the detention criteria again.’

‘This one’s a peasant. She has no documents.’

‘Let me go, comrade,’ Meili says to the officer. ‘I’ll make my own way to the train station. You won’t need to escort me.’

‘You think you can escape that easily? We’ll only release you if someone pays your bail. Old Wu, give her a body search. When did you arrive in Changsha?’ The officer picks up a pen and takes out a registration form.

‘About an hour ago.’

‘Why did you come here? Where were you planning to stay?’

‘I was just passing through, on my way to the train station.’

‘Education?’

‘Primary school.’

‘Where were you travelling from? Take off your belt.’

‘I’m not wearing one,’ Meili says, slapping Old Wu’s hands as he runs them up her legs.

‘Put all your cash and valuables on the table, then,’ Old Wu says, pointing at her aggressively. ‘If you try to hide anything from me, I’ll f*cking kill you!’

‘All I have is the thirty yuan I made from selling eggs this morning. Comrade, can I ask you something?’

‘What?’ the officer behind the desk says, looking up.

‘The sign outside said Custody and Repatriation Centre. So is this a prison? Have I committed a crime?’

‘No, it’s not a prison.’

‘What is it, then?’ Meili says, her voice shaking.

‘It’s a place that houses undesirables like you. We’ve been ordered to evict 300,000 peasants and vagrants from the city before the National Day celebrations next week, and you’ve fallen into our net, I’m afraid.’ He hands her the registration form, tells her to sign at the bottom, then passes her a sponge filled with red ink, two blank sheets of paper and tells her to sign and fingerprint these as well.

‘But there’s nothing written on them. What am I signing for?’

‘None of your business. Just get on with it.’

Meili does as she’s told.

‘Now take her to the warehouse!’ The officer files away the forms, brushes some orange peel from his desk and takes a sip from his mug of tea.

Meili follows a policewoman into a warehouse in the backyard. The interior is dark and cavernous. A single bulb hangs from the high ceiling. There are no beds, just numbered rectangles painted in yellow on the concrete floor. Meili is taken to number 15. A narrow path between the rectangles leads to a large plastic bucket at the far end for the detainees to use as a toilet.

‘Where do we go to make telephone calls, comrade?’ Meili asks a girl with glasses who’s lying on the rectangle next to hers.

‘You’ll have to wait until the morning.’

‘Where do you come from?’ Glancing around her, Meili notices that all the detainees are women. Some are crying, others are eating and chatting, but most are curled up like shrimp on their yellow rectangles.

‘Me?’ the girl says with a look of unease on her face. ‘I’m a graduate. I came to Changsha to find work.’

‘Ah, you must be very knowledgeable then. So can you tell me, is this a prison?’

‘Look at point number 8 of the notice on the wall: “Voluntarily confess your crimes and expose the crimes of others.” So it’s obvious they consider us to be criminals.’

‘I’ve only had one baby out of quota,’ Meili says. ‘Is that enough to get me locked up?’

‘It’s nothing to do with family planning. You’re here because you’re a peasant, and peasants aren’t allowed in the cities unless they have a temporary urban residence permit. Surely you know that?’

A female correctional officer sticks her head round the door and shouts, ‘Shut up and lie down, you scum. The light goes out in five minutes!’

‘I beg you, government lady, let me go home,’ a voice cries out. ‘My son’s alone in the flat. What if he walks onto the balcony and falls over the rails?’

‘You can’t just abduct people in broad daylight and lock them up for no reason,’ another woman says. ‘You’re behaving like gangsters.’

‘I’m not a peasant. I was just having a meal in a restaurant after work. Is that against the law now? Please let me go. Look, I have a train ticket to Guangzhou. It’s leaving in two hours. My uncle will be waiting at the other end to collect me.’ This girl has a fashionable bob and a smart dress and could easily pass for a city dweller were it not for her thick rural accent.

‘It’s strange that they should arrest you – you don’t look like a peasant at all,’ Meili says to the graduate, then scans the room again while the light is still on, breathing the unfamiliar, pungent smells of perfume and unwashed bodies. The graduate looks away, her expression blank. ‘So, when were you arrested?’ Meili asks her.

‘Three days ago,’ she replies. ‘There’s no one in this city who can help me. I warn you, if your family or friends don’t bail you out, you’ll be sent to a labour camp for three months. You must phone someone and ask them to rescue you.’

‘No, I’m a family planning fugitive. If any of my relatives turn up here, they’ll have to confirm my identity, and I’ll be sent back to the village and be forced to pay a huge fine.’

‘To think that we’re illegal residents in our own country!’ the graduate says, sitting up and smoothing her hair back. ‘God, what a stench. This place is a cesspit.’

‘It’s much nicer than the hut I’ve been living in,’ Meili says, scratching a loose flake of paint from her yellow rectangle. ‘It doesn’t smell nearly as bad as our duck enclosure, and there are fewer mosquitoes here, too. I wouldn’t mind staying a few days. But I’m worried about my daughter. My husband just sits down and drinks beer all evening. What will they eat?’

‘How old-fashioned you are. Don’t worry about them! What about you?’

‘Well, as Confucius said: “Men are the sky, women are the earth.”’

‘Patriarchal nonsense! Just wait until he leaves you for another woman.’

‘Only men from the cities behave like that. We peasants are much more traditional. My husband would never leave me.’

‘How do you know? There are no certainties in life. I never imagined my boyfriend would leave me and I’d end up having to sell my body.’

‘You’re a prostitute?’ Meili says in disbelief.

‘Yes. They arrested me while I was talking to a client in a hotel lobby. Look at point number 10: “Individuals involved in prostitution and whoring will undergo re-education and reform through labour for a period of six months to two years.” That’s what I’m heading for.’

‘But you wear glasses. You’re a graduate, for goodness’ sake! How did you get into this mess?’ The light is turned off. Meili smells a whiff of dirty nylon socks that reminds her of Kongzi. She still hates him for giving Waterborn away, but understands what drove him to it. If she were released now, she’d rush back to the hut and demand that he bring Waterborn home.

‘I came to Changsha last year to look for my boyfriend and tell him I was pregnant with his child,’ the graduate explains. ‘But when I found him, I discovered he was engaged to someone else. I was so distraught I went straight to a backstreet clinic and had an abortion. Love only strikes once – when it dies, you’re a walking corpse. After the abortion, I was too ashamed to go home. I ran out of money and needed to find work. I didn’t care what I did.’

‘How dreadful,’ Meili says, trying to find words to console her. Her eyes have become accustomed to the dark, and she can see the small flowers embroidered on the collar of the graduate’s blouse.

‘These custody centres are just moneymaking rackets,’ the graduate says. ‘If you can’t find anyone to pay your bail, local crooks will pay it for you, at a discounted rate, then sell you for double the price to village police who run labour camps up in the mountains. You’re forced to work on the fields for three months for no pay. They call it the “bail trade”. The city authorities get the bail money, the crooks make enough to build themselves villas in the countryside, and the village police can retire early on the profits from the labour camps. So everyone’s happy.’

‘Why’s the bail so high?’ Meili says, then thinks about the thirty yuan that the police confiscated from her.

‘They charge thirty yuan a night. It’s more expensive than a hotel! Then there’s the urban beautification fee, management fee, meals. If you can’t pay the bail, you’ll just have to come along with me to the labour camp.’

‘How will my husband and daughter cope on their own for all that time?’ Meili says, regretting her impetuous decision to storm off.

‘If your husband comes to bail you out, he’ll have to hand over at least a thousand yuan,’ the graduate says, shifting to the side so that Meili can share some of her mat. Then she opens her handbag and takes out a mobile phone.

‘Is there really no one in this city you can call?’ Meili asks, her eyes drawn to the phone. Until now, she’s only ever seen one on the television.

‘There’s no point calling anyone. This is the second time I’ve been caught for soliciting. I was allowed to pay my bail the first time, but this time they won’t take my money. Prostitutes are only given one chance.’

‘My parents could never raise a thousand yuan. They wouldn’t even be able to afford the train ticket here. And I don’t want to ask my husband to bail me out. I stormed off in a fit of anger. It would be too humiliating to have to beg him to come to fetch me . . . Tell me, what’s your name?’

‘Wang Suya.’

‘I’m Meili. I’ve never spoken to a university graduate before. Is that a mobile phone you have there?’

‘Yes. It cost me four thousand yuan. But the battery only lasts two hours. Have a look if you like.’

Meili takes the phone, presses it to her ear, then rolls it around in her hands. ‘Amazing,’ she says, giving it back to her. Through the darkness, Meili can see that the woman on her right is doubled up in pain. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ she asks Suya.

‘She’s had diarrhoea for three days. And the guards have the gall to say she’s faking . . .’

Meili leans over and shakes the woman’s arm. ‘Sister, you should go to hospital and get some medicine.’

‘Poor thing,’ Suya says. ‘The officers beat her up before she’d even had a chance to sign the registration form . . .’

The woman opens her eyes and whispers to Meili, ‘You’re a mother, aren’t you? I can tell you, then. I’m six months pregnant. When I arrived, the officers asked me to give them telephone numbers. I told them my village doesn’t have electricity, let alone a phone connection. So they punched me and kicked me in the belly. I think they killed my baby. I can’t feel it moving any more.’

‘They beat you up just because you couldn’t give any numbers?’ Meili says, wondering which ones she’d give if they asked. If she could remember Weiwei’s number, she’d phone him right now and ask him to rescue her. She doesn’t have any numbers for Guai Village, so she wouldn’t be able to contact Kongzi, even if she wanted to. The only number she can remember is Kong Zhaobo’s, but if she gave it to the police, they’d find out her history and send her back to Kong Village. She’s relieved she didn’t put her parents’ address on the registration form. Closing her eyes, she realises that this is the time she would be giving Waterborn her last feed. Her breasts feel tender, swollen, and as hard as rock. The sweet-smelling milk leaking from her nipples has drenched the front of her shirt. She rolls onto her side and squeezes the milk out onto the concrete floor to relieve the pain.





KEYWORDS: stone cold, follow the chicken, urban residence permit, white cotton scarf, green breeze, re-education through labour.

WHEN THE BUS leaves the Custody and Repatriation Centre’s cement-walled compound, Meili has a sense of freedom. She’s reminded of the day they took Weiwei down the Xi River, when the wind blew through her hair and sleeveless dress and the hot sun shone on her arms . . . Outside the window, busy crowds jostle along the pavements, past concrete-bordered flower beds crammed with pink and red chrysanthemums. A mother in a short denim skirt pushes a pram past a bridal portrait studio. A young couple in white stand hand in hand waiting for the pedestrian lights to turn green. Sunlight spills onto trees, asphalt roads and parasols shading ice-cream carts, and swirls between passing cars and a department store’s revolving glass doors. Everyone looks happy and bright as they shop for this evening’s National Day celebrations.

A man at the back of the bus shouts, ‘See that tall glass building over there? Our team of workers from Henan built that.’

‘And that’s the orange crane I operate. Look, my hat’s still on the dashboard!’

‘I work in that office next to the Starbucks,’ says a woman on the seat behind. Then spotting a colleague crossing the street, she bangs on the window and shouts: ‘Li Na! It’s me! Tell the boss I’ve been detained!’

‘Shut your mouths!’ the burly man at the front shouts, jumping to his feet.

‘This area’s nothing special,’ Suya says, noticing the look of wonder on Meili’s face. ‘See that TV tower? All the grand hotels and office blocks are there. A guest at one of those hotels offered me three thousand yuan to spend the night with him.’

‘I don’t want to hear about that,’ Meili says, feeling uncomfortable. ‘This city’s so huge. I bet it would take two days just to walk from one end to the other.’ She stares at the succession of shop windows, mesmerised by the televisions, leather sofas, denim jackets, high-heeled shoes, brogues, satin slippers . . . ‘I’d love to walk down this street. Not to buy anything, just to gaze into the windows.’

‘If you did what I do, in one year you’d have enough money to open a beauty salon, just like that one,’ Suya says, pointing to a window with a poster of a woman with long blonde hair, lying in a bath filled with bubbles.

‘I have a husband, and even if I didn’t, I’d still never do what you do.’

‘Why did you run away, then, if he’s so important to you? Why waste your youth living with a man you don’t love?’

Meili stays silent. Last night, she said to Suya, ‘I’ll never divorce Kongzi. As the saying goes: If you marry a chicken, you must follow the chicken.’ Suya laughed and told her she was a fool.

When the bus leaves the city, a green breeze carrying the scent of bamboo and wild grass blows in through the open window. Meili hasn’t washed for days, so she turns her face to it and inhales large draughts. The patches of leaked milk on her shirt begin to dry. When travelling by bus, the city and the countryside are only a few minutes apart, but for a peasant the distance always feels insurmountable. Meili is frustrated that although she’s not pregnant, she’s still considered to be a criminal for daring to enter a city. Her dream of living a modern urban life seems remote and unattainable.

At dusk, the bus reaches a village high in the hills and stops outside a compound of brick buildings. The two wooden signs outside the gate say YANG VILLAGE POLICE STATION and YANG VILLAGE LABOUR CAMP. In the setting sun they seem cast in bronze.

After supper, the village Party Secretary turns up. He spits out a toothpick, scoops some wax from his ear with his finger and says, ‘Comrades, welcome to the labour camp. Today is National Day, so we served you a local speciality: hot and numbing chicken. Delicious, wasn’t it?’ He breaks into a wide grin, but the forty inmates seated around him remain po-faced. ‘While you’re here you must abide by the rules and work hard. If your families pay the thousand-yuan bail, you can leave at once. If not, you’ll be with us for some time –’

‘I’m a welder at Compassion Villas construction site,’ interrupts a middle-aged man dressed in a grubby suit. ‘The foundations are going down this week. How will they manage without me?’

‘You should’ve thought about that before you wandered off-site,’ a village policeman says, jabbing his finger at him. ‘Now you’re here, you’ll have to do as you’re told.’ There are only three genuine policemen in the barn. The four others are local peasants dressed in the cheap uniforms of urban control officers that were probably bought in a local market. If these impostors were to enter a town or city, they would also be detained.

‘You will undergo re-education through labour and attend introductory classes in politics and law,’ the village Party Secretary continues. ‘We hope that you will use your time here well and make a valuable contribution to the modernisation of the village.’

‘I don’t understand why we’ve been brought to this camp,’ a woman at the back says. ‘We were taken to a Custody and Repatriation Centre. So why haven’t we been repatriated to our villages?’

‘Why is it a crime to leave the countryside to look for work? Which city in China hasn’t been built by migrants? Which factory in Guangdong, which Sino-foreign joint venture doesn’t rely on migrant workers? Are the authorities going to arrest every one of us?’

‘Yes, we migrants are the engines powering China’s miraculous economic rise. It said so in the newspapers. Don’t any of you know how to read?’

‘Foreign capitalists are flooding to China to take advantage of our cheap labour, so why are we branded criminals?’

‘I was told we were going to be sent back to our villages, so why have we been brought here to work like slaves?’

‘As I said, if your bail’s paid, you’ll be free to go,’ the Party Secretary repeats angrily, slipping back into his regional accent.

‘You bought us from crooked middlemen for five hundred yuan each, and now you want our relatives to pay you a thousand to release us? We’re being traded like cattle in a market. If it’s illegal for us to live in our own country, what do you expect us to do? Smuggle ourselves into Hong Kong? . . .’ All the inmates are on their feet now, gesticulating angrily and swearing.

‘Enough!’ the Party Secretary barks. ‘That’s it for tonight. Fill out the registration forms, take a handbook, and I’ll see you at seven tomorrow morning for the name call . . .’

After five days of hard labour in the fields, Meili gains the respect of her fellow inmates. While most of the women plant sugar cane, she helps the men with the back-breaking job of digging and filling irrigation channels. At dusk, when Suya collapses with exhaustion, she heaves her onto her back and carries her to the barn. Suya desperately wants to escape, but the nearest public road is thirty kilometres away. Two Sichuanese inmates attempted to flee three weeks ago, but as soon as they reached the road they were arrested, and were beaten so violently on their return to the camp that they’re still unable to walk.

‘That lecherous Instructor Zheng has got his eyes on me,’ Suya tells Meili. ‘I’m afraid to go out at night here. It gets so dark outside, you can’t see a thing.’ She and Meili have returned to the barn and are sitting on a tattered quilt, their backs against the wall. The ground is littered with laminate flooring offcuts and the scarves, underwear and broken flip-flops left behind by previous inmates. ‘Bloody Communist Party,’ Suya continues. ‘How dare they lock us up in this dump! Once I’ve made enough money, I’ll go and study abroad, and I’ll never come back.’ She grabs a scrap of flooring and wedges it behind her aching back, then puts a blanket over her legs.

‘I haven’t slept in a brick building like this for years, so it doesn’t feel like a dump to me,’ says Meili. ‘If you’re afraid of the dark, you should try sleeping on a boat at night. It’s not only pitch black, it rocks from side to side. You feel yourself floating in mid-air, with no idea where you might land . . .’ Then she rubs the mud from her hands and says, ‘So, has Inspector Zheng done anything to you?’

‘He took me aside today and said if I spent the night with him, I could leave the camp next week. I’d rather die than let that sleazy bastard put his hands on me. Besides, he’s a minor official – he has no authority to release any inmates.’

‘When you go to the latrines, I’ll go with you, and if he dares come near, I’ll sink my teeth into his shoulder!’

‘You’re so brave. Is there nothing you’re afraid of?’

‘Yes – the land. As soon as my feet touch firm ground, my heart starts pounding, because suddenly I’m a peasant again, a nobody who the government can arrest at will. I always feel safer on the water.’

‘Earth is man, water is woman, as the saying goes,’ Suya says. ‘Grains of soil are seeds of the masculine spirit; rivers are dark roads to the eternal female.’

Meili combs Suya’s hair and braids it into plaits. Since her milk began to dry up, her maternal feelings have grown stronger. She yearns to hold Waterborn and Nannan in her arms, and can’t bring herself to contemplate where Waterborn might be now.

‘How pretty you are,’ Meili says, stroking Suya’s face. ‘Such large eyes – you could almost be mistaken for a foreigner.’

‘To tell you the truth, I belong to the Wei Minority, so I suppose I am a bit foreign. Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she’ll always remain under a man’s thumb. I believe that every woman should strive to achieve something. Self-respect can only be gained through hard work.’

‘Well, as it happens, I’m not pure Chinese either. My mother told me that my grandfather had light brown hair and a big nose. A rumour has passed down that, after he was born and the umbilical cord was cut, his mother smashed a bowl onto the ground, grabbed a shard and slit her throat with it. Apparently, she’d been raped by a foreign missionary and was terrified her parents would beat her for bringing shame on the family. I’ve never dared tell anyone that before – not even my husband.’

‘You’ve no need to tell him. Now that I look closely, there is a foreign air about you. You have the wholesome look of a peasant girl, but in your eyes, there’s a wildness. They slant upwards in the Chinese phoenix style, but the pupils are so black and shiny they almost look blue. If you educated yourself and read widely, you could become a formidable woman. And with just a little grooming and sprucing up, you’d have men falling at your feet.’

Feeling her cheeks colour, Meili lowers her head and says, ‘How can you bear making love to strangers?’

‘Don’t be so childish, big sister! As far as I’m concerned, I’m simply renting out a part of my body that doesn’t even belong to me. I don’t make love to them, I just allow them to ejaculate inside me. The only man I’ll ever love is my boyfriend. When I’ve got my life in order, I’ll visit him and make him sorry he left me. I’ll be his lover until the day I die.’

‘Lover? I’ve only heard that word used in soap operas.’ Meili thinks of Kongzi, and feels a pang. He’s a talented calligrapher and is good with words. All the villagers used to ask him to choose names for their children. If he didn’t have such a reactionary, Confucian outlook on life, he’d be the perfect husband.

‘In this cut-throat age, women are on the ascendency, and men are being left floundering at the side,’ Suya says. ‘But there are still only three roles we women can choose: girlfriend, wife or single woman. Which one will you go for?’

‘All I want is to be a good wife and for my family to be happy and safe.’ An image of Weiwei’s face suddenly appears in Meili’s mind. To dispel it, she glances around the barn. A woman is standing at the door, begging to be let out to use the latrines.

‘A good wife, you say?’ Suya says, smiling. ‘Do good wives run away from home? Before I turn thirty, I will have been a lover, a single woman and will have made a lot of money. After that I will get married and be a good wife. So in one lifetime, I will have experienced it all.’

Meili is speechless. She never knew it was possible for a woman to lead such a varied existence. She is twenty-four years old now, but still feels shamefully naive. She wonders whether, if she’d had Weiwei’s number on her in Changsha and had given him a call, they would now be lovers. Her stomach churns noisily as it has done repeatedly since she ate the turnip soup they were served at lunch.

A woman in a quilted jerkin walks over and says: ‘Can you lend me a sanitary towel, sister? I’ve run out.’

‘Go to the latrines, and if anyone walks in ask them for some toilet paper,’ Meili replies.

‘I know that woman over there has got her period,’ Suya says. ‘Ask her.’

‘No, her period has finished now. She gave me her last towel this morning. She pulled it out from her knickers. Luckily, there wasn’t too much blood on it.’

Suya tucks her blanket tightly around her body. She got so cold out in the fields in her thin cotton skirt and blouse that she bought a long-sleeved vest from an inmate before he was released two days ago, but she still gets cold at night. She opens her handbag and takes out her red journal again.

‘What do you write in that journal?’ Meili asks.

‘Everything that happens to me. One day I’ll give it to my boyfriend, and he’ll be able to see how much I’ve suffered. If you don’t write things down, the past becomes a blank page. Everything is forgotten. All great people keep records of their lives. Will you promise that if anything happens to me, you’ll give the journal to him? I promise that if anything happens to you, I’ll tell your husband. I don’t know how I’ll find that little bamboo hut of yours, but I’ll do my best.’

‘Don’t say such inauspicious things! When we’re released, I’ll take you to the hut myself, and make you some duck stew.’

‘No way! You’re not dragging me off to that mosquito-infested swamp! When we’re released, you’ll come with me. I’ll open a shop and you can work behind the counter. We’ll learn English at night school together, and when I have a child you can be its nanny.’

‘I’m not sure if I could look after someone else’s child, but I can definitely work in a shop. I can sell vegetables, baby formula, anything . . .’

‘That’s settled then! Here, I want to give this English dictionary to you. Every day you must learn a new word. The more knowledge you acquire the more paths open before you.’

‘After we’re released, I’ll take you in my boat to a stretch of the river where the water is crystal clear. When you swim in it, all your troubles will float away.’ As she leans back, she catches a smell on Suya’s skin which seems to offer her an intimation of her own future.

‘No, I don’t want to swim in a river. I want to go to a spa. I’ll soak for hours in a warm pool of gurgling water, sipping green tea from a porcelain cup. Then I’ll have a foot massage and a back rub, I’ll go to a salon for a haircut and manicure, then finish the day off with a dinner date at a nice restaurant . . .’

‘How much would all that cost?’ Meili asks, seeing Suya’s eyes start to droop. In Changsha, she stared in wonder at Suya’s long manicured fingernails, with the tiny garlands of flowers painted along the sides. But after just two hours of work on the fields, they all snapped off. Meili feels embarrassed that in her entire life she has never once stepped inside a hair salon.

‘Who cares how much it costs? Money exists to buy happiness and comfort, and to pay servants to look after you. What other purpose does it serve?’

Meili tries to think of the last time she felt comfortable, pampered or cared for. She often washed Kongzi’s feet but he never once washed hers. She had a hot bath once, in the Golden Age Hotel when she was travelling round the county with the Nuwa International Arts Troupe. After soaking in the bath for half an hour, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw that she looked like a nymph from a Tang Dynasty painting, rising from a steaming pond. But she doesn’t want to think about the past now. All she wants is to be free. She has eighty-six more days left to endure in the camp. Suya said that when they reach the sixtieth day, she’ll buy some beer and biscuits to celebrate.

‘But even when I’m released, will I ever be free, or be able to take control of my life?’ Meili thinks aloud. ‘The government aborted my second child, my husband has given away my third. I don’t want to live in the countryside, and I’m banned from living in the cities. So where can I go now? What can I do?’

‘If you want to be free, you must become resourceful, independent,’ Suya replies. ‘Divorce Kongzi and marry a man from the city who’ll be able to give you an urban residence permit. Or set up your own business and buy the permit yourself, and an apartment too. Go to Shenzhen. It’s full of businesswomen driving around in their private cars, negotiating business deals on their mobile phones. If you buy a villa in the city, you’ll get three residence permits thrown in. You’ll be able to live in peace for the rest of your life.’

Meili understands that the root of all her problems is poverty. If she had money, she wouldn’t be afraid of falling pregnant – she could simply pay the fine. One thing is certain, though: she will never divorce Kongzi. However monstrously he’s behaved, she still believes that marriage is for life.

‘What’s happened to the pregnant woman the officers attacked yesterday?’ Suya says. ‘Do you think she’s escaped?’ The pregnant woman is a member of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. After responding gruffly to a policeman’s command in the sugar-cane field yesterday, the policeman knocked her to the ground and kicked her face until it bled. Meili and Suya begged him to stop, but he said, ‘Don’t worry, she won’t die – the Falun Wheel in her abdomen will save her!’

‘Yes, I wonder where she’s gone. She wouldn’t dare run away with a belly that size, and the guy from Jiangxi has been locked up in the prison hut, so she can’t be there.’ Meili thinks of the yellow shirt hanging on the washing line outside which no one has dared remove. When the wind blows it flaps like a ragged sail. A rumour has gone around that it belonged to an inmate from Shandong who hung herself in the latrines.

At the name call after supper, Suya is nowhere to be seen. Meili searches the fields, the latrines and the construction site behind, and returns to the barn in floods of tears. Last night, when Meili told her it was her birthday, Suya took off her earrings and gave them to her as a present.

Two sisters, who know how close Meili has become to Suya, walk over and sit down beside her. A man came to their village last month and persuaded them to travel with him to Changsha, promising them jobs in a Sino-foreign pharmaceutical company with monthly wages of a thousand yuan and free food and accommodation. But when they arrived they discovered that he’d sold them to work as hostesses in a nightclub. The next morning, they escaped out of the nightclub’s kitchen window and went straight to the police, who put them in handcuffs and bundled them off to the Custody and Repatriation Centre.

An hour or so later, as she lies down listening to the wind rustle through the trees outside, she suddenly remembers Suya mention that prostitutes are sometimes transferred from labour camps to specialist penitentiaries that examine women for sexual diseases. But if she’d been transferred, surely they would have let her take her handbag? Meili quickly reaches for the handbag, pulls out the red journal and hides it under her blanket. The lights are turned off, but Meili is too upset to sleep. She stays awake all night, tossing and turning, only managing to doze off a few minutes before dawn . . .

In her dream, she is swimming towards her womb along a dark channel, pursued by thousands of babies. When she reaches the end, she rubs the walls but is unable to find any entrance. The babies come closer, mouths wide open. With a jolt, she wakes, rolls onto her side and notices that Suya’s handbag has gone. She has a vague memory of torchlight flitting across her face a few moments ago and of the sound of receding footsteps. She closes her eyes again, but can’t return to sleep. She wonders whether Instructor Zheng has dragged Suya off into the woods. As she rubs the red journal under her blanket, she remembers the day her grandmother took her to a market stall beneath a large tree in the centre of Nuwa Village. Among the earth-coloured felt and the bobbins of black thread, she spotted a white cotton scarf and white hairclip that seemed to her immaculate and other-worldly. From that moment on, white became her favourite colour. She remembers the first white van she saw enter the village, with revolutionary slogans blaring from the speakers on its roof and posters of Chairman Mao and Premier Hua Guofeng stuck to the side windows. Then she remembers, when she was about five years old, watching a man daub onto a village wall the words CARRY OUT THE FOUR MODERNISATIONS; IMPLEMENT THE ONE CHILD POLICY. As soon as he was finished, her friend pushed her against the slogan, staining her clothes with chalky-smelling whitewash. Her grandmother shouted at her and told her to go straight home.

Meili thinks of Waterborn and wonders how she’s survived these past two weeks without her milk. She thinks how Nannan always kicks off her blanket in the middle of the night, and if it’s not wrapped over her again, her arms and legs become stone cold. She thinks of Kongzi’s obsessive desire for a son and feels angry, then consoles herself with the thought that at least he’s never stolen anything or slept with a prostitute. He may have watched a few porn films and forced her into some of the lewd positions he picked up from them, but compared to the depraved men Suya described, he’s pretty respectable and honourable. If only he was willing to talk to her and listen to her more, everything would be fine.

When the wind outside drops, she hears fresh cement being stirred in the construction site beyond the latrines. The male inmates are building a factory. Next year the camp will receive official permission to accommodate four hundred inmates, and to take advantage of this expansion of free labour, the Party Secretary has decided that the camp should manufacture Christmas crackers for export to Europe and America. Suya told Meili that Christmas is the foreigners’ equivalent of Spring Festival and that an old man with a white beard squeezes down your chimney at night with a bag of presents and waits for you to wake up. Meili rubs Suya’s red journal again and tries to think of a place where she can keep it safe.