The Dark Road A Novel

KEYWORDS: respected scholar, red and pink balloons, maternity dress, looking for whores, hammer and sickle, candlelight.

‘LET ME SEE if you’ve got everything you need,’ Kongzi says, opening Nannan’s satchel and checking that it contains the Year One textbooks, her pencil case and a ruler. She is eight today, and tomorrow he’ll take her for her first day at an illegal school for children of migrant workers. It’s housed in an aluminium warehouse on the southern edge of town, and the fees are reasonable. As a descendant of Confucius, Kongzi is annoyed that he didn’t think of opening a school like this himself.

After breakfast, he listens to Nannan read out the first chapter of the literacy textbook. He’s recently taken up a temporary, part-time post at Red Flag Primary – a government school next to the Confucius Temple – covering for a Chinese-literature teacher who’s gone on maternity leave. He and Nannan are sitting at a small table in the yard, the sunlight shining on their faces. The landlord now uses the three other houses as storerooms for his broken televisions, so the compound is much more peaceful. Kongzi’s delivery van has broken down and now stands in the corner covered with rusty metal sheets and bicycle frames. The ducks waddle out of the pen and peck at the noodles Meili is scattering on the ground.

Nannan reads out the words as she follows Kongzi’s moving finger. ‘“The red flag flaps in the wind. The hammer and sickle in the centre represents the Chinese Communist Party: eternally leading the people forward . . .”’

‘“Question One: What is the name of the flag? . . .”’ Kongzi says, lowering his voice to an authoritative pitch. Although he only teaches three afternoons a week, he is delighted to have returned to his true calling. As soon as he wakes up, he puts on his dark grey suit and polishes his glasses, whether he’s working that day or not.

The Sunday broadcast booms through the town from distant loudspeakers: ‘As part of our ongoing campaign to improve the implementation of national population control policies, Director Jie Ailing, Deputy Chair of the Provincial Family Planning Association, will visit Heaven Township today to carry out a thorough investigation of . . .’

‘Did you hear that, Kongzi?’ Meili says, looking in the mirror attached to the front door as she applies her lipstick. ‘Does that mean we’ll have to lie low today?’ She’s wearing her favourite cream coat and a white maternity dress she paid a seamstress to copy from a photo in a fashion magazine.

‘No, don’t worry,’ Kongzi says. ‘Director Jie won’t have a chance to inspect anything. Heaven officials will whizz him around town on a quick sightseeing tour, then take him out to lunch and get him drunk.’

‘Dad, when the family planning has finished, will we be able to go home?’ Nannan asks.

‘The Family Planning Policy is a protracted war waged against women and children,’ Kongzi replies. ‘No one knows how long it will last. That’s why your little brother is still inside Mummy’s tummy. He’s too afraid to come out.’

‘Why didn’t I get family planned?’

‘You were our first child, so your birth was legal. When you’re older you’ll be able to apply for a residence permit and go to university.’

‘Mummy has a residence permit, so how come she was arrested when she went to that big city?’

‘Because she has a rural permit, not an urban one, and she didn’t have any money on her.’

‘Do we have money now?’

‘Some. Not much. When we have a bit more, we’ll be free. We’ll be able to go to whichever city we like.’

‘I don’t want to go to university. I want to make money for you and Mummy.’

‘Nannan, remember that saying I taught you: “Children who don’t read books don’t know what treasures they contain. If they knew how precious these treasures were, they’d stay up all night, reading by candlelight.” The meaning is simple: if you study hard, you’ll get rich.’

‘But, Dad, you studied hard, so why aren’t you rich?’

‘Because I’ve had to concentrate on making sure you have a little brother. Once he’s born, I’ll make lots of money for us, I promise.’

‘Why doesn’t Grandpa give you money?’

‘You mean my father? He doesn’t have much money now. But before the Communists came to power, his father – my grandfather that is – was very wealthy. He was a rich landowner and respected scholar. Everyone in the village looked up to him. In 1951, when Mao told peasants to attack counter-revolutionary forces, every landowner in Nuwa County was buried alive, but no one touched my grandfather. He was arrested ten years later, though, and died in prison.’

‘What happened to his wife?’

‘You’re too young to hear about all this, Nannan. All I can tell you is she died a few years later, in the Cultural Revolution.’

‘What about your mother’s parents – what happened to them?’ For the last week, Nannan has refused to eat breakfast. She hasn’t touched the fried eggs and soya bean milk Meili gave her, and is just nibbling on a coconut bun left over from yesterday.

‘They died years ago. Enough questions! Back to your work. Let’s have a look at Lesson Five. The title is “What a good idea!”’

Nannan turns to the page and starts reading: ‘“One day, when Chairman Mao was seven years old, he and his friends went into the mountains to let their cattle graze on fresh pastures. The question was: how could they keep an eye on the animals, collect firewood and pick wild fruit, all at the same time? Mao had a good idea. He divided his friends into three teams and told the first team to look after the cattle, the second team to chop wood, and the third team to pick fruit—”’

‘Fine, class over,’ Meili interrupts. ‘Nannan, you’re coming with me today.’ She ties a scarf around Nannan’s neck and heads off to work.

‘Don’t forget to kill the rat in the toilet, Dad,’ Nannan shouts to Kongzi as they walk out of the gate.

When they’ve left, Kongzi wonders again how much he’ll be able to get for his broken van. Three hundred yuan at the most, he thinks. The owner of the car-repair workshop is coming to buy it back this morning. Once it’s sold, Kongzi will open a new bank account. Since they arrived in Heaven, they’ve been stashing all their earnings under their bed, apart from the small sums they send back to their parents or spend on food and rent. They’ve saved sixteen thousand yuan already. If they bought shares with the money, they could make a fortune. Kongzi visited an underground gambling house the other day. It charges no entrance free, provides a free lunch at noon, and if your money runs out, it will lend you more. He spent all day there and lost eighty yuan. Today, he’ll try his luck again. If the gods look favourably on him, perhaps he’ll have a big win, and will be able to open his own Confucius school. The Confucius Temple would be an ideal location. When he’s saved enough money, he’ll discuss the matter with the local Education Department and request official authorisation. Yes, he’ll go gambling again today. Even if he loses a few hundred yuan, Meili will never find out. In preparation for Nannan’s birthday meal tonight, he inflates some red and pink balloons and hangs them outside the front door. Meili said she’d buy a cream-filled birthday cake on her way home this evening. Before he has time to finish his cup of tea, the owner of the car-repair shop pulls up outside the compound and honks his horn.

At noon, Kongzi arrives at the entrance of the underground gambling house with three hundred yuan in his pocket, but as soon as he steps inside, four men huddled around the card table jump onto their stools, pull guns from their pockets and shout: ‘Freeze!’ Kongzi and the other gamblers in the room are handcuffed, bundled into a van and driven to the local police station, where they’re dragged to the backyard, searched and cross-questioned one by one. The first three men to be dealt with only went to the gambling house for a free lunch, and have no money on them. After a fierce kicking, they’re released, and are left to crawl out onto the street, bruised and covered in dust.

Kongzi is the last to be seen. He fills out a form and empties his pockets. ‘I’d only just stepped through the door,’ he says angrily. ‘I didn’t go there to gamble. You had no right to arrest me!’

‘What were you doing with all this cash, then – looking for whores?’ a young officer says mockingly, picking up the wad of notes and counting them.

‘Give that money back to me, you f*cking gangsters! I didn’t commit any crime.’

A bald man standing behind him kicks him in the shins. ‘You dare swear at us, in this place?’ he shouts. Kongzi falls to the ground, then quickly jumps up, but just as he’s about to swing his fist at the bald man’s face, another officer kicks him down again. The bald man pulls out an electric baton and smashes it onto Kongzi’s head. As Kongzi attempts to rise to his feet, the bald man grabs him by the hair and rams his knee into his jaw.

‘Come and hit me again, you motherf*ckers, if you think you have the balls!’ Kongzi cries out after falling flat on his back.

‘Shut your mouth, you filthy vagrant!’ the young officer shouts, and kicks Kongzi’s mouth until it bleeds. Kongzi spews out another stream of abuse. The three officers crouch down, pin back his arms and legs, then the bald man leans over and shoves the electric baton into Kongzi’s mouth. ‘After this, you’ll never be able to swear at us again!’ he says, and flicks on the switch.

Just as Meili is placing Nannan’s birthday cake onto a plate after returning home from work, the landlord runs into the compound and tells her that he’s heard Kongzi has been arrested. She leaves Nannan in his care, rushes to the police station and finds Kongzi lying semi-conscious in the waiting room. While she pays the thousand-yuan fine before taking him off to hospital, the sergeant behind the desk tells her that Kongzi confessed to sleeping with a hair-salon prostitute. ‘You think we beat him up for no reason?’ he says. ‘No, he attacked us and we fought back in self-defence. He’s lucky we’re letting him go. But when he wakes up, tell him this: next time we find him in a gambling house, he’ll get ten years behind bars.’

When Kongzi returns from hospital two weeks later, the electrical burns on his lips and tongue have almost healed, but he’s still unable to speak. This episode has cost them a total of eleven thousand yuan. Meili had to take time off work to look after him in hospital, and Nannan had to stay with Lulu. The events have upset her greatly. She went missing yesterday. Meili searched for her for several hours, and found her at last standing all alone on a riverbank.

Although Kongzi is on the mend, Meili is on the verge of a breakdown. The morning of Kongzi’s birthday, she takes out the ‘Fishing Boat Lullaby’ CD she gave him when they were living on the sand island, and attacks it with the kitchen cleaver. She tolerated him watching porn movies, but the thought of him sleeping with a hair-salon prostitute is too much for her to bear. She deplores the police’s brutality but loathes Kongzi’s degenerate behaviour even more. The village teacher she once worshipped has become a man who fills her with disgust. She looks down at him now and spits: ‘What were those sayings you kept rattling off? “Cultivate yourself and bring order to your family, and the nation will be at peace . . .” and “The gentleman embraces virtue and the sanctions of the law . . .” Huh! You foul hypocrite!’ She stares into his eyes and asks him if he did indeed sleep with a prostitute, and he looks back at her and calmly shakes his head. She knows it’s possible that the sergeant was lying when he told her about the confession, but suspects that he wasn’t. When Kongzi first returned from hospital, the sight of his gruesomely swollen face aroused her pity, but as soon as he was able to take his first sip of milk, she felt like grabbing her shoe-cutting knife and plunging it into his neck.

As evening falls, Mother continues to curse Father, tears streaming down her face. ‘You spineless rat! You heartless, brainless bastard! Drinking, gambling, sleeping with prostitutes! Where did you get all the energy? Did you really think that there would be no consequences?’ Father opens his eyes feebly then closes them, unable to respond . . . ‘Filthy sod! Not satisfied with eating from the family wok, you have to scoff from the dirty saucepans as well! Womb Lake is just out there! I wish you’d fling yourself into it and drown . . . Kong the Second Son, indeed! Remember what they used to sing about Confucius? Kong the Second Son was an evil man. He spouted righteousness from his mouth, while concealing ruses in his heart. How right they were!’ Mother dances around the room, singing the Cultural Revolution song, her hands cupping her swollen belly. Nannan peeps out from under her blanket. Father stays still, his eyes tightly closed. Several hours later, the lights are finally switched off. In the darkness outside, the wind sways the strings of dried chillies and shrivelled red and pink balloons hanging from the front door, then races out through the gates, lifts chewed sugar-cane pulp from the pavements and swirls along the riverbank, tossing scraps of tarpaulin into the river.





KEYWORDS: dirges, black coffin, wild ghost, gold-rimmed glasses, lotus pond, funeral objects, mandarin ducks.

AFTER SHE FINISHES work for the day, Meili decides to go to the market to buy chicken blood and chives for tonight’s dumplings. Spring Festival is only a few days away, but she still hasn’t prepared a decorative table display. She’s bought New Year sticky rice buns and some dates to make the traditional ‘give birth to a noble son’ cakes. Little Heaven has now been inside her for two years. It thoughtfully keeps itself tightly curled up, so her bulge is much less noticeable. When Kongzi’s mouth was injured, Meili began having long conversations with the infant spirit instead, and this has continued even now that Kongzi is able to speak again.

On her way to the market, she strolls down Magnificent Street. The sparkling jewels and designer clothes in the shop windows and the bright hoardings overhead divert attention from the peasants selling oranges on grubby carpets, and the oily smells of grilled mutton wafting from the street stalls. Between the Cloudy Mountain Printers and the Friendship Hotel is a winding lane Meili went down last week to check out a noodle shop that was up for rent. The shop itself was all right, but she was put off by the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases next door, and its large notice that said WE SPECIALISE IN SKIN COMPLAINTS. Since Kongzi’s arrest and hospital treatment ate up most of their savings, Meili has wanted more than ever to give up work and open her own shop. Knowing that it’s a short cut to the market, she turns into the lane and immediately hears funeral wailing, then sees a large white mourning tent erected further down. A lead runs from the window of a house to a bulb on the tent’s roof. The wailing is coming from a cassette player. She thinks at once of her grandmother and feels her eyes fill up. Without hesitating, she strides into the tent and introduces herself to an old man in white mourning dress who’s standing beside an open coffin. ‘I can sing funeral laments,’ she says to him, glancing down at the corpse. It’s a woman in a white robe. She looks about fifty and has a big smile on her face. Roasted heads of a chicken and a duck have been placed on her chest. There are eight banquet tables of guests, all dressed in white. Plates are clattering, everyone is chatting noisily. ‘Fill your glasses,’ someone shouts. ‘Drink! Drink!’

‘What do you charge per hour?’ says a middle-aged man standing in front of a large photograph of the deceased. Meili assumes that he’s the husband.

‘Two hundred yuan,’ she replies, sweeping her gaze over the bright interior.

The husband goes to fetch his father-in-law who asks her in a thick southern accent, ‘Can you sing “The Memorial Altar” and “Soul Rising from the Coffin” sutras?’ He has white hair and is holding a walking stick with a dragon-head handle.

‘Yes, I can sing dirges for fathers, husbands, mothers – the whole repertoire. How many children did your daughter have? If you tell me some interesting events from her life, I can weave them into the lament.’

‘Our family’s from Chaozhou,’ he answers. ‘We don’t understand your northern dialect, so sing what you like. Improvise as you go along.’ He coughs loudly into his hand. A woman walks up and leads him back to one of the tables.

‘The funeral band we hired has been delayed and won’t be here until ten,’ the husband says. ‘So, yes, you’re welcome to sing for a couple of hours. I’ll fetch you a microphone.’ As he walks off again, Meili suddenly regrets offering to sing, but knows it’s too late to back out now. Although she watched her grandmother perform at funerals, she has never sung at one herself.

Meili takes off her jacket and drapes a white funeral cloak over her shoulders, and remembering the white turban her grandmother used to wear, ties a large napkin around her head. She steps nervously onto the dais, takes a deep breath and sings into the microphone: ‘My dearest mother, what grief we feel! You’ve left this world before you’ve had a chance to savour one moment of joy . . .’ Real tears begin to run down her face. She closes her eyes and listens to her high-pitched lament pour out of the loudspeakers, pound the walls of the tent and flow into the lane outside. She feels herself drown in the deafening noise . . . ‘Sparrows search for their mothers under the eaves of roofs. Pheasants search for their mothers in bramble bushes. Carps search for their mothers among river weeds. But where can I go to search for you? . . .’ When she comes to the end of ‘Yearning for My Departed Mother on the Twelfth Lunar Month’, she sits down on a stool, wipes the tears from her face and looks out at the guests seated before her. Some are still wolfing down their food, shoulders hunched over their plates, some are deep in conversation, but most are looking up, staring straight back at her. She has no idea what these southerners made of her performance. She’s never sung with such intense grief before. Feeling another wave of sadness take over her, she sinks her head into her hands. Someone taps her shoulder and gives her a bottle of mineral water. She takes it without looking up, but feels too weak to open it. She thinks of how Kongzi, the only person she thought she could rely on, sold her baby daughter, and has very probably slept with a prostitute. She thinks of how the nightclub boss pinned her to a single bed and raped her, and how the government pinned her to a steel table and murdered her newborn son. Unable to control herself, she kneels beside the black coffin and weeps: ‘Beloved husband, five hundred years ago, our marriage was predestined in Heaven. In this lifetime we met at last and became as inseparable as two mandarin ducks. But now you’ve released your hand from mine and returned to the Western Paradise. Who will feed the geese and chicken in our backyard? . . . I hope that evil bastard burned to death in the fire . . .’ Harrowing images flash through her mind. She weeps about her grandmother’s corpse being dug up and burned, about Happiness lying on a riverbed, about Waterborn’s unknown fate, and about her fear of giving birth to Heaven and of Heaven’s fear of being born. Moaning and sobbing, she cries herself into a stupor.

‘Take a break,’ the husband says, handing her a plate of rice and fish. ‘Have something to eat.’

‘Thank you,’ she replies, her snot dripping onto the floor. She looks at the deep-fried fish, but has no appetite to eat it. Through the tent’s open door she sees windows light up in the dark lane, and whispers to the infant spirit: It’s time to leave. Your daddy and sister will be getting hungry. I’ll make a soup for them with the turnip and squid Cha Na gave me. She glances down at the fish again and whispers: All right, little Heaven, I’ll have some, just for you. Then she picks up the fish with her chopsticks, takes a bite, and studies the paper funeral objects displayed below the portrait of the deceased: miniature cars, fridges, houses and wads of American dollars – all the things that she herself hopes to acquire one day. As she looks down at the discarded chopstick wrappers and cigarette butts on the floor, she senses someone’s gaze fall on her. She turns round and sees a tall bespectacled young man in a black suit and tie.

‘How beautifully you sang!’ he says. ‘I wish I could have recorded you.’

‘That wasn’t singing, it was just wailing!’ Meili replies. She looks down at the coffin and imagines the woman inside listening to their conversation. She saw many corpses at the funerals her grandmother took her to, so isn’t afraid of them.

‘Well, how beautifully you wailed, then! Where did you study?’ The young man’s hair smells freshly blow-dried. Meili has become familiar with the smell of scorched hair and lacquer. She visits the hairdresser once a month now for a wash and blow-dry, and walks out looking like a film star.

‘The songs were passed down through my family,’ Meili says, then shudders at the thought that her grandmother is now as motionless and lifeless as the woman in the coffin.

‘You sound like that Hong Kong singer, Anita Mui. I’m very happy to meet you. My name is Zhang Tang. Just call me Tang.’

‘Anita Mui is a superstar! How can you compare me to her?’ Meili turns her head away to swallow the remaining food in her mouth.

‘She was my aunt,’ Tang says, pointing to the corpse. ‘She died of pancreatic cancer. I’m sure the pollution was to blame.’

Meili wipes her mouth with a napkin. ‘Your accent isn’t strong. Where are you from?’

‘I grew up here, but went to university in Europe. I graduated last year.’ When he closes his mouth his two front teeth protrude over his lower lip.

‘Europe? I’ve dismantled lots of computers and phones from there. Is it a nice country?’

‘It’s not a country, it’s a continent! France, Italy, Germany – they’re all part of Europe. I was studying in England.’

‘Well, those countries must be much better than China. They dump their rubbish on us, and we treat it like treasure. How lucky you were to go there. Why on earth did you come back?’

‘I love this place. When I was a child, it was idyllic. There was a beautiful lotus pond near the harbour and every house had a clean well. My friends and I would go to Womb Lake after school and fish for carp and shrimp.’

‘I live right by the lake. It’s squalid. The rivers are so polluted that just six months after we arrived, our boat rotted away.’ Meili doesn’t want to continue the conversation. She steps off the dais and pretends to read the messages on the flower wreaths.

‘I’d like to give you an Anita Mui CD,’ Tang says, following her.

‘Don’t bother. I’m twenty-six now – too old to think of being a pop star.’ She puts her plate on the ground and, trying to get rid of him, says: ‘Could you move away a little? I think I should sing a last song.’

‘I can’t,’ Tang says, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses further up his nose. ‘It’s my turn to stay by the coffin.’

The husband walks over and hands her a paper cup of tea. Wanting to make an escape, Meili gulps it down in one and says, ‘Boss, my throat is sore. I don’t think I can perform any more laments.’

A few minutes later she strolls out of the tent, whispering to the infant spirit, I bet you’re even more afraid to come out after hearing Mummy wailing like that! She thinks of how the dead woman will be given a proper burial tomorrow so that her soul can rest in peace until its next incarnation. Nobody wailed when her grandmother died and her mangled remains entered the earth, so her spirit is doomed to wander for eternity as a rootless wild ghost. Meili puts the cash she was paid into her pocket and examines the business card Tang gave her before she left. As they were saying goodbye, he told her that his sister-in-law is looking for a nanny, and asked if she’d be interested in the job. She thinks of Nannan, and hopes she’s home by now. For the last few days, she’s gone to the train station after school to collect discarded ticket stubs which Kongzi then sells to business travellers who claim the cost back on expenses.

Mother loses herself in the lampless winding lane. She passes a tricycle covered in a yellow cloth which in the faint light from a window above looks like a dusty cream cake. At last she sees a bright street ahead, and quickens her pace. In the distance, she hears a pop ballad lilt from the mourning tent: ‘Has anyone told you they love you or shed tears over the poems you wrote? . . .’ After crossing the street, she takes two lefts then a right, and comes to the lotus pond near the harbour. The plastic rubbish heaped around its edge emits a cold, deathly light. She walks down towards the lake and follows the stone path that leads straight to their gate.

When she opens the front door, she sees Kongzi stuffing clothes into a bag, and asks him where he’s going.

‘My father died,’ Kongzi says, quietly enough for Nannan not to hear him.

‘When?’

‘Three months ago, on his birthday.’

‘Was it an illness or an accident?’

‘He drank some fake wine and it perforated his stomach.’

‘But if you go back to the village, the police will fling you in jail. My brother said that they have evidence you took part in the riots. Your family have always begged you not to go home. They didn’t contact you when he died, did they? They were probably afraid you’d want to attend the funeral. Anyway, he’s been buried for months, so what’s the point of going back?’ She puts her arm around him and takes him to sit down on the bed. Her heart softens. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Kongzi. I know you would have liked to have attended his funeral, but I’m sure your father wouldn’t have wanted you to put yourself in danger.’ She rests her head on his shoulder. This is the first time they’ve touched since his arrest.

Kongzi punches his chest and wails like a strangled cat: ‘What an unfilial wretch I am! I should be garrotted, stabbed ten thousand times . . .’ Nannan runs out into the yard and sits in a corner with her eyes closed.

‘After my grandmother died, my mother fell ill and had to have an operation, but I didn’t go back to see her,’ Meili says, stroking his back. ‘Don’t leave tonight. It would be too hot-headed. See how you feel in the morning.’

‘Enough,’ Kongzi says, putting his hands over his ears.

‘Well, you sit here quietly and I’ll get supper ready.’ She wipes the table and sets out plates of marinated peanuts, deep-fried shrimp and mini tomatoes. ‘So who told you he died?’ she asks. ‘Who arranged the funeral?’ She tries to picture Kongzi’s father, but all she sees in her mind’s eye is the dead woman in the black coffin.

‘I phoned home to ask if they’d received the ham and dried fish I sent them for Spring Festival, and my mother told me the news. There was a proper ceremony. The County Party Secretary sent a wreath, and a Communist Party flag was draped over the coffin.’

‘What an honour! Aren’t you proud?’ Meili rubs the cash in her pocket, and thinks what an odd coincidence it is that just after singing at a stranger’s funeral she hears of a death in her own family. She resolves never to sing at a funeral again.

‘He was a twelfth-level cadre, so of course he was entitled to have a Party flag over his coffin.’ Kongzi takes a sip from the mug of warm wine Meili gives him, then swallows the rest in one gulp. Nannan runs back into the room with Lulu, who’s come round to see her. Unlike Nannan, whose eyes slant elegantly upwards, Lulu has large goldfish eyes.

‘Go out and play, girls,’ Meili says, noticing tears drip down Kongzi’s face. She gives the girls two date biscuits and says, ‘Off you go now!’

‘But I’m tired,’ Nannan says, pursing her lips. She’s wearing her red flower hairclip, blue jeans and a red jumper covered with stickers of cartoon characters.

‘Can you take Nannan back to your place, Lulu?’ Meili says. ‘Tell your mother I’ll fetch her in an hour.’





KEYWORDS: tumour, bedraggled alchemists, heart as soft as tofu, electronic messages, refurbished, second-hand.

HEARING LOUD WAILING, Meili leaves the kitchen, goes up to little Hong’s bedroom on the second floor and picks her up out of the cot. ‘Don’t cry, little one, here’s your milk,’ she says. She pushes the bottle’s teat into Hong’s mouth and watches her stomach rise and fall in time with the sucking noises, and drops of milk run down her chin and neck. Meili can tell genuine imported milk powder from the fake domestic products simply by squeezing the bag. While running her market stall in Xijiang, she learned that imported powder is soft, but fake powder is hard and granular and tastes so bad that babies will only drink it if strawberry flavouring is added. She’s been working as a nanny for Tang’s sister-in-law, Jun, since Jun gave birth to Hong seven months ago. She often fantasises that Hong is little Heaven, who’s still stubbornly planted in her womb. Hong’s fine black hair has grown so long that it now falls below her eyes. When it’s brushed back into a ponytail, the white marks from the chickenpox she contracted last month are visible on her forehead. Beside the cot are a nappy-changing table and a chest of drawers piled with soft toys – teddy bears, puppies, monkeys, elephants – which make the bare room seem full of life.

‘Don’t let her finish the bottle, Meili,’ Jun shouts up from the first-floor sitting room where she’s playing a game of mahjong. ‘I want her to finish off with some of my milk.’

Meili doesn’t like the sitting room. The beige fake leather sofas and blue tiled walls dazzle her eyes, and the Hong Kong soap operas blaring from the television and constant clatter of mahjong grate on her nerves. Tang’s family bought this three-storey Western-style villa four years ago. Most of the Heaven residents who’ve made money from electronic waste live in houses like this. The ground floors are used as workshops or storerooms, the first and second floors for the living areas, and the flat roofs for drying clothes and sitting out in the summer. Meili hands Jun the baby to breastfeed, then stands at the kitchen sink washing bottles and bibs, listening to Tang speak to his brother about England. ‘And they’ve even stopped building new motorways, just so children can play safely in the fields . . .’ he says, glancing at little Hong as she latches onto Jun’s breast.

‘They put children before the country’s economic development? No wonder they’re an empire in decline.’ Tang’s brother slides a mahjong piece forward and expels a stream of tobacco smoke through the corner of his mouth. He has the same buck teeth as Tang.

‘Human life is more important to them than money. Heaven is so choked with waste these days that even if you’re rich, you have no quality of life.’

‘How can you say that?’ the brother replies. ‘You live in this beautiful villa, dine on fresh seafood every day, sleep on an imported sprung mattress and you can hop over the border to Hong Kong or Macao whenever you like. What more could you want?’

‘Yes, if China’s economy hadn’t developed so fast, you wouldn’t have been able to study abroad,’ Jun chimes in. ‘Down, naughty dog!’ she shouts to the black lapdog that’s coming up the stairs. Since Hong was born, the dog has been banished from the sitting room and has to live among the crates of cables on the ground floor.

‘May this fish bring us abundance!’ Meili says, walking out of the kitchen with steamed carp she has prepared in the Cantonese style. The fragrance of ginger, spring onion and sesame oil briefly masks the odours of sulphur drifting up from the workshop downstairs.

She sits between Tang and his brother. After Jun finishes nursing Hong, she serves Tang’s mother a chunk of suckling pig and switches on a soap opera called The Qing Dynasty God of Medicine. An ancient courtyard residence is on fire, and men with long pigtails are rushing about in panic, shouting commands in Beijing accents. Tang’s father comes in and joins them at the table. He doesn’t like mahjong, so spends most of his time with the workers downstairs or tending his plants on the flat roof.

Meili takes little Hong from Jun and studies the dishes she’s brought to the table. The pigs’ trotters braised in bitter gourd and the garlic-fried aubergines look fine, but when she sticks a chopstick into the carp she sees flecks of blood near the bones and wishes she’d given it two more minutes.

‘Thank you, Meili,’ Tang exclaims. ‘What a feast!’ He fell in love with her as soon as he heard her sing at the funeral, and now that she’s working for his family, he’s continually finding excuses to spend time with her or give her a small tip. When Hong has her afternoon naps, he teaches her to type and guides her through the internet, helping her explore her areas of interest. Meili likes to watch clips of fashion shows and pop concerts. The first time she saw a Madonna video, she abandoned her dreams of becoming a singer for good. ‘What a star!’ she sighed, gazing at her cavort around the stage in a golden bodice. Every morning, Tang puts on a surgical face mask and goes jogging around the lake. He told Meili that in England, he used to jog every day in the forest near his university campus. When he gets back, Meili gives him a bowl of fish slice congee, a bread roll or a custard tart. He’s not fussy about what he eats.

Meili appreciates the kindness he shows her, especially when his mother or Jun scold her for not cleaning the bottles properly or for overcooking the rice. On those occasions, Tang will always look up from his computer, ask Meili to pour him another cup of tea, then whisper in her ear that his mother has a mouth as sharp as a knife but a heart as soft as tofu. His words reassure her, but she doesn’t want him to grow too fond of her. She’s afraid of men, and of losing control. But when she hears him sitting at his desk talking to female friends on the phone, she feels sad, and wonders if she’d feel the same if she heard Kongzi speak to other women in a similar tone.

After clearing away the dinner and washing the dishes, Meili goes to the second floor to say goodbye to Tang. He points at his computer screen and says, ‘Look, this student has written an article about pollution in Heaven Township: “Using 19th-Century Techniques to Dismantle 21st-Century Waste”. See here, it says: “Migrants toil like bedraggled alchemists in family workshops, washing circuit boards in sulphuric acid to salvage tiny granules of gold.” And look at this picture: “Female workers strip plastic casings from electric cables with their bare hands, their only tools a fold-up table and a rusty nail . . .”’

‘That woman there . . .’ Meili gasps, ‘it’s me!’

‘My God, you’re right! I recognise that flowery shirt. Let me enlarge the photo. Yes, no question about it. It’s you!’

‘My face is filthy. How embarrassing! Close it at once!’ Meili puts her hands over the screen. ‘Must have been that student from Guangzhou University who came to our workshop last year. He walked straight in, squatted down beside me and started snapping away without asking my permission.’

‘I’m going to download the photo. How amazing! My little village songstress has entered the world wide web . . . Look at this article I found on a British website. It says: “The Emma Maersk, the largest container ship in the world, sailed from China to the United Kingdom to deliver 45,000 tonnes of Chinese-manufactured Christmas toys, then returned to southern China a few weeks later loaded with UK electronic waste . . . Heaven Township is now the largest e-waste dump in the world. As much as 70% of the world’s toxic e-waste is shipped to this area of southern China, where it is processed in makeshift workshops by migrant labourers who are paid just $1.50 a day . . .”’

‘Will everyone in the world be able to see that photograph of me?’

‘Yes, once it’s online it can’t be removed. This is the age of the internet.’

‘So, if I sang on the computer, the whole world would be able to hear me?’

‘Yes, you can upload anything you want onto the net . . . Look – this is the most important part: “88% of Heaven residents suffer from skin, respiratory, neurological or digestive diseases. Levels of lead poisoning and leukaemia among children are six times higher than the national average. In just ten years, Heaven Township, once a collection of sleepy rice villages, has become a digital-waste hell, a toxic graveyard of the world’s electronic refuse. The air is thick with dioxin-laden ash; the soil saturated with lead, mercury and tin; the rivers and groundwater are so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from neighbouring counties . . .”’ Tang peeps over his glasses to check Meili’s reaction.

‘I’d hate to contract a skin disease,’ she says. ‘If you know computers are so dangerous, why do you sit in front of one all day?’

‘They’re only dangerous when you take them apart . . . Look here: “High levels of infertility have been detected among women who have resided in Heaven Township for over three years.”’

‘Lucky them! No illness can match the pain of childbirth.’

‘Meili, you’re not pregnant, are you?’ Tang asks tentatively. ‘Forgive me for asking.’

‘Are you saying I look fat?’ Meili has become accustomed to this question over the last two and a half years.

‘No, no – not fat. It’s just that your belly looks a little bloated, that’s all. I was worried you might have developed a tumour, or something, from working with all that toxic waste.’

‘You’re right, I probably have cancer of the womb. I should rip my uterus out and give it back to the state.’ She turns to leave, but Tang grabs her hand and pulls her back.

‘I don’t think you look fat,’ he says. ‘I promise you. I’m just . . . so fond of you, that’s all. I can’t help saying what’s on my mind.’

‘I’d better rinse the bottles again before I go,’ Meili says, trying to pull her hand free. He often attempts to plant a kiss on her cheek before she leaves, telling her that this is what foreigners do, but she always backs away. She strokes her belly and says to herself, Yes – little Heaven is a tumour growing in my flesh. If anyone asks me if I’m pregnant, I’ll tell them I have a tumour. I have the right to have one, and I have the right to be too poor to have it removed . . .

‘How long have you been married?’ he asks, still clutching her hand.

‘Ten years,’ she says, her cheeks reddening. ‘We had the wedding in the village, then honeymooned in Beijing,’ she blurts, wanting him to know that she’s visited the capital. Since Kongzi was arrested for gambling, she no longer feels proud to be his wife. And since she returned to him after her escape from the brothel, she has felt that the old Meili died somewhere out on the road. She wants to be a strong, adventurous woman who doesn’t rely on a man for her happiness. She is comfortable treating Tang as a friend or a younger brother, but if he asked to be her lover or husband, she’d cut all ties with him. As Suya wrote in her red journal, ‘Love is the beginning of all pain.’

‘So, what did you think of Beijing?’ Tang asks, stroking the desk now that Meili has tugged her hand free.

‘The Forbidden Palace was so huge it terrified me – only emperors would dare live in such a place . . .’ Meili says, then dries up. She isn’t used to being asked her opinions. ‘I went into a supermarket to buy a drink. There was a mountain of lemonade bottles on display but when I tried to pay for one the checkout girl said no one could buy any until Workers’ Day . . .’

‘Look at these photographs I took in England. This is my lecture hall. This is the university garden when it snowed.’

‘Was one of those your girlfriend?’ Meili asks nervously, standing behind his chair.

‘She’s Spanish – a great dancer! And the other girl’s from France. I travelled to Switzerland with them.’

‘Huh – I don’t want to hear about that,’ Meili says disapprovingly. The photograph shows Tang sitting between two foreign girls, his arms around their shoulders and a big grin on his face. On the table in front of them are glasses of wine and a large birthday cake.

‘This is a protest march in Paris . . . St Peter’s Square in Rome.’

‘Let me see if any of the countries you visited have population-control policies,’ Meili says, leaning over to type a few keywords into the search box.

‘I know that England certainly doesn’t. Pregnant women are treated with respect there. They have specially allocated seats on buses and trains, and can give birth in hospital free of charge. The government even pays parents a weekly allowance to cover the cost of milk powder and nappies.’

‘You’re lying to me! How could such a wonderful place exist?’

‘I’m not lying. Lots of pregnant women smuggle themselves out of China to give birth in Europe or Hong Kong. If you plan to have another baby, you should do the same. Now that China has entered the WTO, foreign countries are much more welcoming to Chinese visitors.’

‘You’ll have to teach me English first,’ says Meili, then remembering how Suya said men should be used but not loved, she kneels down and looks up at him with a smile. ‘You mustn’t say I’m stupid, though. I only went to school for three years.’

Tang puts his arm around her. ‘You’re not stupid. You’re just pure and wholesome and . . . Listen, I wanted to ask you: will you let me take you out for dinner at the China Pavilion Restaurant tomorrow evening?’

‘What for? No, no . . .’

‘It’s your birthday. Have you forgotten?’ He strokes her hair and looks lovingly into her eyes. ‘You must have more belief in yourself and value your talents. In England, the first thing our professor told us was that we should find the confidence to surpass him . . .’

‘Are you still here, Meili?’ Jun calls out from the landing. ‘Then you can change Hong’s nappy before you leave.’

Tang pulls a face and whispers: ‘Better do as she asks.’ When his buck teeth show, he reminds her of the pet rabbit she had as a child.

It’s dark outside now. The fluorescent strip on the sitting-room ceiling and the blue light from the mute television in the corner make the room feel cold and stiff. The infant spirit sees Mother change the nappy of the screaming baby, put it to sleep in a cot, and move downstairs. On the ground floor, workers are dismantling and smelting. The smell of burnt Bakelite follows Mother out into the garden that is fenced with corrugated iron and barbed wire. She opens the steel security gate and closes it behind her. In a shop window at the end of the dark street she sees a seascape painting framed in bright strip lights above a bowl of pink plastic tulips. Smiling down at her belly, she whispers, Still don’t want to come out? Well, he’s noticed you, little tumour. Look at those nice jeans in the window. If it weren’t for you, I could fit into them . . . Mother puts one hand on her hip and throws the other in the air, mimicking the pose of the mannequin in the window . . . Back in the house, Father is filling out forms while Nannan is writing essays in exercise books, wearing a blue dress with a panda badge pinned to the front. ‘Did you know you can explore the whole world on the internet?’ Mother says as she walks in. ‘We must buy a computer. They’re so much more interesting than televisions.’

‘You can barely read – what use would a computer be to you?’ Father says. ‘Just stick to dismantling them.’

‘I can type words using Roman script. Once I learn all twenty-six letters, I’ll be able to go online by myself and travel the world. We’ll be able to send our relatives electronic messages and photographs which they’ll receive in seconds. I dismantled computers for two years, but I’ve only just understood what they’re used for . . .’ Mother sees Father smear green tea and ink over the exercise books Nannan has written in, and sandpaper the corners of the forms. The floor is strewn with pencils and balls of cotton wool. ‘What’s going on here?’ she asks.

‘Inspectors are visiting Red Flag Primary next week. We have two hundred pupils, but to get a larger government subsidy we need to tell them we have two hundred and fifty. So I’m having to fabricate fifty students. Help me fill some exercise books. If they’re all in Nannan’s handwriting, it’ll look suspicious.’

‘I’ve finished twelve literacy homework books,’ Nannan says. ‘Daddy said he’d buy me some candyfloss as a reward.’

‘You can do Year 3 homework, Nannan?’ Mother says. ‘Clever girl!’

‘She knows more characters than you do now, and she can write out each of the three hundred Tang poems from memory. She will be a worthy descendant of Confucius!’

‘Daddy, Confucius was an evil man. I wish we didn’t share his surname.’

‘Who told you he was evil?’ Father says. ‘Confucius was a great sage. You should feel proud to have him as an ancestor.’

‘If he was so great, why don’t they mention him in our textbooks? Lulu keeps singing “Down with Kong the Second Son!” but I pretend not to hear her.’

‘I assure you, Nannan: Confucius was a great philosopher and teacher. He taught us to respect learning, honour our parents and care for our young, and lead a virtuous life, even in times of turmoil. He said that people should obey their leaders, but only so long as their leaders rule with compassion. For two thousand years, his words formed the bedrock of Chinese culture. The Communist Party may have cursed him, vilified him, dug up his grave, but his ideas live on. You’re almost nine years old now, Nannan. You must study hard and build up the knowledge that will help you carve a path through this difficult world. Tell me how that saying goes?’ Father puts down the forged exercise book he’s holding and stares into Nannan’s eyes.

‘“Children who don’t read books, don’t know the treasures they contain. If they knew . . .” blah, blah, blah.’

‘That’s right. But listen to me, Nannan. The tide is changing. Confucius’s name is being mentioned in the newspapers. One day he’ll be rehabilitated, and those evil cadres who spat on his corpse thirty years ago will light incense sticks in his temple and beg forgiveness.’

‘Don’t talk to your classmates about any of this, Nannan,’ Mother says. ‘Your school may not teach you about Confucius, but it will teach you Tang poetry, so I’m sure you’ll rise to the top of the class. Remember: learning is a joy, not a burden.’ Mother turns on the electric fan and takes off her dress. ‘Kongzi, I want to open my own shop. I only need twenty thousand yuan to get started.’

‘I’m too busy to talk about that now,’ Father says. ‘Fill up this homework book for me. Use your left hand. No, come to think of it, you write like a child with your right hand so just stick to that.’

‘I want to open a baby shop that sells milk powder, toys, cots,’ Mother says dreamily. ‘When mothers see me stand at the counter with my pregnant bulge, they’ll come flocking in. Or I could sell refurbished computers. This town has mountains of scrap components but no one’s thought of reassembling them to make functioning machines. I’m sure we could earn more money assembling computers than these workshops do taking them apart. We could sell them to people in the countryside. The market for cheap second-hand computers there must be enormous.’

Nannan completes an exercise book then starts writing on the first page of another, her long hair dangling over the desk.

Meili walks barefoot over the white vinyl mat. A large black spider crawls behind her. Kongzi has become very close to Nannan, she says to herself. Perhaps by the time the baby’s born, he’ll come round to the idea of having another daughter and everything will be fine. I’ll find a nanny for little Heaven, set up my own business, then return to Nuwa County and open a chain of second-hand computer shops.

Three hours later, Kongzi is still crouched on the floor, scribbling in the exercise books. Meili has nodded off on the chair, her ink-stained hands resting on her belly. In her dream she sees her future self galloping up a hill, her hair and the grass blowing in the wind. When she reaches the top she takes flight. From a heap of computers below the infant spirit shouts out to her, ‘Keep flying, keep flying. You’re crossing the border. If the soldiers see you, they’ll gun you down . . .’