The Dark Road A Novel

KEYWORDS: cruise ship, wawa soup, kitten-heeled shoes, Three Gorges Resettlement Programme, boat puller, two dragons, bulldozer.

THE MAY SUNLIGHT gleams over the Yangtze, soaking up the river mist and spreading it about the deck. As the damp seeps into Meili’s skin, she feels her body soften and warm blood course through her veins into her unborn child and its infant spirit. In a relaxed stupor, it extends a leg. Don’t kick so hard, Meili whispers. She’s leaning on the deck railing wearing a white shirt and a long flowery skirt. When the breeze drops, her skirt becomes still. She’s finished washing Kongzi’s dirty work clothes and has hung them out to dry. Whether you’re a boy or a girl, you’re my flesh and blood and I’ll make sure you have a good life, she whispers, stroking her belly. You’ll go to university, then find a job in a tall building. Every morning, you’ll take a lift to your office on the top floor.

Kongzi’s white vest and her white bra flap in the wind. Meili sees a tall cruise ship glide slowly upstream like a floating skyscraper. Against the blue sky, the tourists on the front deck resemble party balloons tethered to the white railings. They turn their cameras to her. One man smiles broadly and waves. Meili raises her hand, about to wave back, but feels her face redden and quickly lowers her head. Inside her womb, the fetus squirms like a fish in a net. A foreigner, she says to herself, regretting her uncouth appearance. Kongzi told her that foreign men travel to China with the sole intention of sleeping with Chinese girls.

The ship’s large wake rocks the boats and barges moored at the bank. Meili stares at the white clouds sliding across the blue-green water, and the spray hovering above the wake’s splashing waves. Time seems to slow down. She looks up at the river town and through the corner of her eye sees the cruise ship slip away. Beyond it, where the river becomes enclosed by two bulging precipices, a small raft appears to sway towards a place beyond river and sky.

What am I doing, lazing in the sun like an old woman? she says to herself, then remembers that this morning she must go into town to buy mosquito coils and fresh vegetables. It’s her third wedding anniversary today. Kongzi has given her a pair of kitten-heeled shoes as a present, and she’s eager to try them out. They’ve been away for almost three months now, and this evening she wants the three of them to enjoy a celebratory meal. Although the barge hotel is foul-smelling and shabby, there’s a television in the meeting room, which Nannan is happy to watch for hours, so the days go pleasantly by. Meili also wants to phone her brother, who’s working in a coal mine with her father fifty kilometres from Nuwa, and tell him to go home and assure her mother that all is well. As it’s the second week of May, he’ll need to spray the sesame plants with insecticide. Her grandmother is eighty years old and too frail to help in the fields.

‘Me want jump in river, Mummy!’ Nannan cries, rushing out onto the deck and stepping onto the lower railing. ‘Me want see King Crab’s palace.’

‘Get down!’ Meili cries. ‘That palace only exists in the television – it’s not real.’

‘It is real! Me saw it. It has ice cream and big bed.’ Nannan is wearing a long green dress, and has her hair in two small bunches.

‘Come on, let’s go and buy some vegetables,’ says Meili. She pulls a pair of socks over her nylon tights, steps into her kitten-heeled shoes, grabs Nannan’s hand and leads her across the gangplank. As soon as her feet tread onto the bank, her muscles tense with apprehension. ‘Remember, if anyone asks you whether your mum is pregnant, just shake your head. Do you hear me? Don’t babble a load of nonsense like you usually do, or the family planning officers will give you a nasty injection.’ Meili thinks of her primary-school friend Rongrong who was the prettiest girl in the class. Two years ago, she went to hide up in a mountain hut to give birth to an unauthorised child, but when her baby boy was just two weeks old, three family planning officers tracked her down and gang-raped her. She only narrowly escaped with her life, and still has to take herbal medicine for the pelvic disease she contracted.

‘Shh!’ Nannan says, pointing to Meili’s mouth. ‘Give me hot hat!’

Meili pulls a yellow sun hat from her bag and claps it on Nannan’s head.

‘Hurray!’ Nannan cries. ‘Let’s go!’

They ascend the steep stairs to the old town and stroll through the street market. The air reeks of fish. Everyone is shouting. Meili sees dozens of silver carp writhing in the shallow water of a polystyrene box, waiting to be pulled out, slit open and gutted. Bright green mustard tubers and pungent-smelling preserved sprouts lie scattered on the wooden counter above. The stallholder reaches into a large bucket and pulls out the black, mottled tail of a giant salamander. ‘Fancy this wawa fish? I caught it today. It makes wonderful fish stew. Just the thing for pregnant women.’

Fish stew would be nice, Meili thinks to herself. A bit of garlic to bring out the flavour. But that creature would cost at least eight yuan. Too expensive. She remembers the wedding feast she attended last Spring Festival. The steamed fish were still alive when they were served to the guests. Displayed on the centre of each table were two roast chickens, the male mounted on the female, mimicking the position the married couple would adopt later that night. She hasn’t been able to eat chicken since.

‘I want wawa fish, Mum,’ Nannan says, looking down at the wriggling black tail.

‘No, it smells bad,’ says Meili, staring at the guts, fish scales, spinach leaves and noodles trampled onto the ground. She goes to a fruit stall, buys a jin of oranges, peels one and puts a segment in Nannan’s mouth. Nannan wrinkles her nose and says, ‘Too sour! Me no want orange. Me want wawa. If me eat wawa me be wawa too.’

‘Come on, lady, buy this one,’ another fish seller says, walking over with a large bucket. ‘Wawa nourishes the yin and fortifies the yang. It’s a nationally protected species, unique to the Yangtze River. We’re only able to catch them now because of the chaos caused by the dam project. Usually, you’d never get a chance to taste one.’ He leans into the bucket and pulls out a slippery beast that is twice the size of the wawa at the other stall. Its arms and legs flailing wildly, it opens its wide mouth and takes a gulp of air.

‘Why called wawa fish, Mummy?’

‘Because when it mates, it cries “wa-wa”, just like a baby.’

‘Why it called fish? It no look like fish.’

‘It just is. Don’t touch it. It’s very expensive.’ Meili remembers reading that women are given wawa soup during their one-month postpartum confinement to restore their energy and encourage lactation. ‘All right, I’ll buy it,’ she says. But as she digs into her bag for her purse she looks up and sees the words RATHER RIVERS OF BLOOD THAN ONE MORE UNAUTHORISED CHILD sprayed in red paint onto a wall that is splattered with chicken shit and blood. Struck with panic, she abandons the purchase, grabs Nannan’s hand and runs away down a side lane, turns left into another and stops outside a row of half-demolished buildings. ‘Why your face red, Mummy?’ asks Nannan.

‘I’m hot, that’s all.’ Meili pulls off Nannan’s yellow hat and fans her face with it. Her new kitten-heeled shoes are covered in dust.

The deserted lane is littered with broken bricks and refuse. An old man passes through the ruins behind, dragging a bundle of flattened cardboard boxes. Nannan climbs a heap of rubbish and picks up a plastic duck.

‘Drop it, it’s filthy!’ Meili shouts. She thinks of their house in Kong Village. Before Spring Festival this year, she and Kongzi painted the front door and window frames dark red and began re-cementing the yard. She’d wanted to plant an osmanthus tree beside the date tree so that when she opened the windows next spring the house would be filled with its fragrance.

‘Me wash it,’ says Nannan, smiling at the dirty plastic duck. On the broken window frames and doors behind her is an empty can of almond juice and some smouldering charcoal briquettes.

They walk down another lane, climbing over toppled telegraph poles. The segments of wall on either side are still pasted with flyers advertising the services of lock-breakers and door-menders. On a broken bulletin board next to an abandoned shop is a list of women of childbearing age drawn up by the local residents’ committee. Around the next corner they find themselves in a large demolition site from which there appears to be no way out.

‘Mum, that dog poo is dead,’ Nannan says, pointing to two dry turds.

Meili takes Nannan’s hand and enters a roofless building which was once a restaurant. On one of the greasy walls are a photograph of a roast duck on a white platter and a laminated menu featuring Sliced Beef in Hot Chilli Oil and Fish Poached in Pickle Broth.

Meili has lost all sense of direction. She climbs over the rubble and heads downhill, searching for a path. As long as she makes her way down to the river, she’ll be able to find her way back to the barge hotel.

‘Me can’t walk, Mum,’ says Nannan, her floppy sun hat slipping off her hot head.

Meili squeezes her hand and leads her across the shattered tiles and bricks. In the distance she sees a red car speeding past. Assuming it’s driving along a proper road, she walks in that direction, and soon comes to an ancient brick house that’s in the process of being torn down.

A large crowd has gathered to watch. A bulldozer is ramming into the remains of the ground floor. Workers with hammers are pounding the compound walls. The owner of the house bellows a curse, picks up a wooden bed leg and charges at a man dressed in the uniform of a judicial cadre. But before he can strike, three policemen jump on him and throw him to the ground. The cadre shouts, ‘If you continue to put up a fight, you’ll be charged not only with endangering state security but with political crimes as well, and will get three years in jail.’

‘I’m just a simple boat puller,’ the man shouts back, his face contorted with rage. ‘I can’t read or write. What would I know about politics?’

‘We have all the evidence we need. We found the business card of a Hong Kong journalist in your drawer, so we can have you for “resisting the Three Gorges Dam Resettlement Programme” and “divulging state secrets to foreigners”.’

‘What state secrets do you imagine I know? I warn you, if you upset it enough, even a timid rabbit will bite! I’ll take this to the higher authorities. Just wait and see!’ He’s kicking his legs wildly now, as the policemen press his face onto the floorboards and twist his arms behind his back.

An old man in a straw hat, presumably the owner’s father, scrapes some loose plaster from a wall into a paper bag then holds it close to his chest.

An elderly woman beside him wraps her arms tightly around a wooden chair and sobs: ‘The Japanese bombers didn’t manage to flatten our house in 1941. Who would have thought that you Communists would end up destroying it!’

Two demolition workers pick up the old woman and carry her to the pigsty, her arms still clutching the chair. Meili wonders whether this is the demolition team Kongzi belongs to. The team manager has a limp. He hobbles over to the owner and shouts angrily: ‘I warn you, if you petition the higher authorities we’ll bury you alive. We offered you land to build a new house on, a weekly allowance, but you turned it all down. You dare resist the edicts from the Party Central Committee?’

‘The land you offered was in the mountains, a hundred kilometres away,’ the owner says. ‘What would I do there? I’ve spent my life working on that river.’ He looks down over the compound wall. Although the view of the sky and river is intersected by tall emerald peaks, one can still sense the sweeping expanse beyond – the warmth of the sunlight on the boats and barges, the coolness at the base of the gorge, the giddiness one feels when disembarking onto the riverbanks.

‘Shut up and go, and take your parents with you,’ the team leader yells to the man. ‘There’s no need to worry about your future. The authorities are going to pay boat pullers like you to tug rafts up a tributary as a spectacle for foreign tourists.’ He then knocks off an elm door lintel carved with two dragons leaping through turbulent waves. After a brief glance at the intricate design, he stamps on it, breaking it in two. The two children squatting on a sofa cushion behind him look younger than Nannan.

Spluttering clouds of diesel fumes, the bulldozer knocks over the last section of wall, then trundles back and forth across the rubble, until all that remains of the house is a flat expanse of crushed wood, glass and brick. The old woman is cowering behind the toilet hut now, a finger in each ear. The heady fragrance of the lilac tree beside her scatters onto the ground.

Meili feels the fetus give a sharp kick and tug its umbilical cord. Afraid that someone might notice the juddering of her belly, she turns away and runs, forgetting for a moment Nannan, who was crouched at her feet playing idly with the dirty plastic duck.





KEYWORDS: glossy magazine, peach blossom, azure, barge hotel, deep-fried meatballs, black children.

AFTER DUSK HAS fallen the crowds and buildings disappear and the riverside becomes tranquil. Scraps of polystyrene criss-cross the dark green river like flecks on an antique mirror, making one forget the watery world that extends a hundred metres below the surface. A song drifts from a cassette player on a nearby boat: ‘I give you my love, but you always refuse it. Did my words sadden you that much? . . .’

At this moment, Meili feels happy, as though every part of her body were connected, from her toenails to the hairs on her scalp. A sense of contentment, long dormant, stirs within her. She knows that to remain happy, love is not enough: one must make a living, strive to accomplish something, find a sense of purpose. When she realised that Kongzi’s only aim in life was to impregnate her again and again until she produced a son, she feared that her road to happiness would be blocked for ever. But now she is confident that as long as she pursues goals of her own, however unachievable they may be, a happy life will be possible.

Only a few lights are still twinkling in the old town. Soon the mountains will merge into the dark sky, and everything will become quiet. Meili remembers opening a glossy magazine and seeing a fashion spread featuring a woman walking barefoot on a beach, her white dress fluttering in the wind. Not daring to let her gaze fall too long on the exposed legs and cleavage, she leafed through the other pages, mesmerised by the vibrant scarves and jewellery. She’d never seen such vivid colours before. As a child, she’d always loved the soft hues of the countryside: the dark greens and light greens, the pale yellow of celery shoots, the tender pink of peach blossom, the milky white of osmanthus blooms and the rusty orange of the wild chrysanthemums that grow at the margins of fields. But the colours in the magazine seemed to come from another world. She didn’t know where this world was, but sensed that its colours were infused with joy. She used to loathe blue. It was the colour she had to look up at every day when she worked on the fields. But the azure of the sea in the magazine transfixed her. If coffins were painted such a heavenly blue, she thought to herself, one could lie down inside one without fear. She was sitting in the garden of the Sky Beyond the Sky Hotel at the time, facing the setting sun. The magazine had been left behind by a guest from a distant city.

The cabin is filled with the smell of someone’s fish and red turnip soup, and the deep-fried meatballs Kongzi bought at a stall near the wharf. The meatballs will be delicious once they’re reheated: crisp on the outside, with a soft, piping-hot interior. She can almost taste them in her mouth now. Kongzi is kneeling by the kerosene stove, tossing chopped spring onions into the wok.

‘Have a glass of Addled Immortal with us, Mr Kong,’ calls out one of the four men who live in the cabin next door and work for the same demolition team as Kongzi. On the dirty wall behind them is a pin-up of a Chinese model with peroxide hair.

‘No, you carry on without me,’ Kongzi replies, dropping the meatballs into the sizzling spring onions. His greasy hair is thick with dust. The only clean thing on his body is the sweat running down his face.

As Meili gets up to fetch some bowls, she feels the blood rush to her head. The fetus kicks her low in the abdomen, making her lose balance. She has to remind herself that this isn’t their kitchen back at home. There is no table to lean on. They have left the village and are now living on a barge hotel.

‘Why not have a shower before we eat?’ she says to Kongzi. After he grabs a towel and wanders off, she sits down and hums along to the song playing on the distant cassette player. Closing her eyes, she imagines herself onstage belting out the ballad wearing an elegant silk gown. But soon two men on the deck below start arguing over a stolen leg of ham, a child cackles in the corridor and a soap opera’s theme tune booms from the television in the meeting room. Annoyed by the din, she wraps a rag around her hands and carries the stove onto the deck. The air is fresher outside, although smells of rust and mould from the cabins leak out now and then.

‘I know there’s no family planning squad here,’ Meili says to Kongzi when he returns from his shower, ‘but I still feel nervous, living on this boat like outcasts.’

‘You’ve no need to,’ Kongzi says, sitting down, bare-chested, beside the cardboard box they use as a table. ‘We’ve been in Sanxia almost four months, and haven’t been approached by one family planning cadre. Your hormones are making you overly anxious.’

‘Have you called home recently?’ she asks, slipping her shoes off and rubbing her bare feet on the metal deck.

‘Not since last month. Father said the whole of Nuwa County is under martial law. Riot police have been stationed in every village. He told me not to phone them again until the baby’s born. I don’t know why he’s so nervous. The county authorities would never turn on a war hero like him. The school’s summer term has started. Kong Dufa has taken over my post.’

‘That po-faced bore – what does he know about teaching?’ Meili says testily, whisking a mosquito from her face. ‘If only we’d waited five years before having a second child. Look at all the sacrifices we’ve had to make to bring little Happiness into the world. When is this going to end?’ She sits on a stool, bending her legs behind her so that her knees don’t press into her large belly.

‘Don’t worry – we’ll go home as soon as martial law is lifted,’ Kongzi says, trying to sound confident.

‘The baby is due in three months, but this town is a demolition site – it doesn’t even have a hospital. I think I’m developing a fever. You must buy me some Yellow Ox pills tomorrow to bring it down.’ Meili feels stifled by the darkness surrounding her, and wishes something stimulating could break the atmosphere. She looks over to the boat near the wharf which has been converted into a video parlour. Three coloured light bulbs are flashing above its entrance. It screens martial arts films during the day and porn movies at night. Kongzi sneaked off to watch one a few nights ago without telling her. When he returned to the cabin afterwards he made love to her like an animal.

‘I’ll find a hospital for you when the time comes, I promise,’ he says to her. ‘I earn ten times more as a demolition worker than I did as a teacher. Once I’ve saved enough money, we’ll buy ourselves a boat. Many local fishermen are planning to leave town before the valley is flooded. I met one who’s moving to Guangzhou. He owns a fishing boat that’s worth ten thousand yuan, but he said he’ll sell it to me for just three thousand. Once we have a boat of our own, we’ll be free. We won’t need residence permits. If the police try to arrest us, we’ll start the engine and escape. And if we don’t manage to find a hospital in time, you can have the baby on our boat.’

‘Yes, at least a boat would give us somewhere to hide. How much money have we got now? Last night I dreamed that little Happiness left my belly and flew into the sky. It was terrifying.’

As night falls, the infant spirit can see Mother and Father sitting at the cardboard box eating dinner. Nannan has come out from the meeting room. She’s walking along the deck, or skipping – it’s hard to tell.

‘You keep talking about the fetus having a spirit,’ Father says. ‘That’s why you had the dream. We have one thousand yuan now. In two more months, we’ll have enough to buy the boat.’

‘I know you don’t believe in ghosts, Kongzi, but I’m convinced the fetus has a spirit. I saw it the moment I became pregnant. It often speaks to me. Why do you think babies cry when they’re born? It’s because the infant spirits that have been assigned to their bodies don’t want to go through another incarnation. They want to break free and fly away.’

Nannan grips Mother’s hand. ‘I want nice food, Mum.’

‘What kind of food?’ says Mother, her belly jutting out as she sits up straight.

‘That!’ says Nannan, pointing to the deep-fried fish being eaten by the four bare-chested workers who, in the soft light cast from the lamp behind them, resemble four smooth eggs. At the bow, a few men are leaning against the railing having a smoke. Other figures are sitting or lying down in clusters on the still-warm metal deck.

‘Try this meatball,’ Mother says to Nannan. ‘I sprinkled some magic powder on it just for you. And here’s a tomato. You like tomatoes.’

‘Me want fish,’ says Nannan, stamping her feet. ‘Me want that fish!’

‘Don’t be so rude!’ Mother whispers, slapping her bottom. ‘It’s their fish, not yours.’

Nannan frowns and tries to hold back her sobs. ‘You bad mummy,’ she splutters. ‘You no wear glasses, so you bad mummy.’

‘Come and sit down here by the mosquito coil,’ Mother says, pulling Nannan close to her. ‘Remember what I told you? If anyone asks you how old you are, you must say you’re five years old. Don’t tell them you’re only two and a half. Do you hear? If you do, I’ll have to spank you again.’ She watches Nannan crawl onto Father’s lap. ‘You’re too soft on her, Kongzi,’ Mother says. ‘If she blabs out our secrets, the authorities will arrest me, and our family will be finished.’

‘Stop worrying,’ says Father, lighting a cigarette. ‘Nannan’s a good girl. She won’t blab.’

‘Oh, what are we going to do? This baby will never get a residence permit. It will be one of those “Black Children” who are born without permission and banned from getting free schooling and medical treatment. When it grows up, it won’t even be able to marry, and it’ll curse us for condemning it to a life as an outcast.’

‘Me not black children!’ says Nannan, punching Mother’s thigh. ‘You bad mummy.’ She kicks a leg in the air, sending her flip-flop flying across the deck.

‘I’m sure that in a couple of years Nuwa County will have calmed down,’ says Father, lifting a meatball with his chopsticks. ‘Then we can go home and do our best to get little Happiness registered.’

‘Stop kicking my bladder, little one!’ Mother says, glancing down at her belly. ‘I’m sick of having to go to the toilet every five minutes.’

‘Do me kick you when me inside you, Mum?’ asks Nannan, wiping a scrap of meatball from her hot face.

‘No, you didn’t have as much strength as this one,’ Mother says, then mutters to Father: ‘Nannan’s getting so naughty. She threw your lighter into the river this morning.’ A speedboat passes, churning up waves that tip the barge to the side. Mother puts her hands over the bowls on the cardboard box to stop them falling off.

‘Me no throw lighter away!’ Nannan protests, wrinkling her nose. ‘Baby Crab wanted lighter, so I borrowed it him.’

‘Look – see how she thinks she can get away with everything!’ Mother says, wiping the sweat from her face with the corner of her shirt. A damp breeze lifts her skirt and Father’s cigarette smoke into the air. Flies encrusting the remains of the food flutter up briefly then settle back down again. The long dank barge, crammed with male guests, floats beside the bank like the corpse of an old woman, its lower half soaking in cool water, its upper half still swollen from the intense heat of the day. As the night air cools, the metal decks and wood-panelled cabins contract, letting out creaks and groans.

‘Stop kicking, will you, and allow me to finish my dinner in peace!’ Mother says, rubbing her belly and expelling a loud fart.





KEYWORDS: bamboo bird cage, the wise in water, housewife, safe refuge, wild duck, floating happiness.

IT’S AN OLD fishing boat, about five metres long, with a bow and stern wide enough for two people to sit side by side. The cabin at the centre has a bitumen-coated canopy attached to a bamboo and metal frame. Although you have to crouch down to enter it, once you’re inside it feels like a proper room, almost the size of a double bed. Plastic sheets can be lowered over the front and back openings to block out the wind and rain. Meili has become fond of this new home. She likes the washing lines strung between the canopy and the bow, and the bamboo birdcage attached to the side of the boat. The only problem is her constant fear that Nannan might fall overboard. When Meili stepped onto the boat for the first time, she immediately tripped and fell, landing hard on her swollen belly. The thought of Nannan falling into the river makes her twitch with alarm.

‘Slow down, Kongzi!’ Meili calls out. ‘We’ve gone far enough. Let’s turn round and go back to our mooring.’ She’s sitting in the cabin with her arms around Nannan. This is the first trip they’ve made on their new boat. Meili can’t swim, so as soon as Kongzi accelerates, her body becomes rigid with fear.

A giant, shark-like fish swims past, its long snout and crenulated spine rising above the water.

‘What’s that strange creature?’ asks Meili.

‘A Chinese sturgeon,’ Kongzi replies. ‘It’s the oldest vertebrate in the world. The government has granted it Class One Protection. They hatch in the upper reaches of the Yangtze then swim down to the sea. Ten years later, they swim back against the river’s flow to spawn in their place of origin.’

‘Class One Protection for fish, indeed! What about us humans? When will we be able to return to our place of origin?’ Meili grasps the bottle of lemonade Nannan is drinking and takes a quick sip.

‘The Yangtze has become so polluted, there are only a few hundred sturgeon left. And when the dam is finished, their migration route will be completely cut off. They’re doomed to extinction.’ Kongzi watches the sturgeon sink below the surface. As he slows the boat down, Meili crawls to the bow. The breeze moving through the blazing summer heat feels cool and refreshing. Grassy embankments, mud houses and mandarin trees slip by on both sides. Her fears seem to blow away. Closing her eyes, she imagines soaring over the golden waters like a wild goose, the river mist in her face, seeing the boats and barges behind her form dark silhouettes against the low sun and the Yangtze stretch into the distance, dissolving finally between two cliff faces into a haze of water and sky.

She begins to sense that drifting down the river could offer her a new way of life, a floating happiness. She feels free and at peace.

Kongzi notices a barge approach and bites his lower lip nervously. He’s never driven a boat before, and is afraid of colliding. In a fluster, he decelerates too quickly and the engine stalls. Once the barge has passed, he pulls the start cord again, adjusts the throttle and the boat sets off once more. Eager to regain face, he slows the boat, throws it in reverse then artfully turns it in a circle. Looking both surprised and proud, he glances back at Meili and says, ‘As my great ancestor Confucius once remarked: “The benevolent find joy in mountains, the wise in water.” How right he was! When he left home after offending the Duke of Lu, he wandered from state to state for thirteen years, an exile in his own country. Now two thousand years later, I’m also on the run, but unlike him, I’m not free to travel across the land, so all I can do is drift down the Yangtze.’

At noon, before Nannan has woken from her morning nap, Meili goes to the tiny galley area in the stern, lights the kerosene stove and puts a pan of water on to boil. Beside her is a mound of spinach leaves she cleaned earlier. Whenever she needs to wash vegetables or clothes, she simply leans overboard and scoops up a bucket of water. Thrilled to have a place of their own at last, she has already scrubbed the boat from stern to bow, torn off the mouldy bitumen canopy and replaced it with new tarpaulin. Now when they sleep in the cabin at night, they’re no longer disturbed by a musty smell of rot. Meili has also tied a rope from Nannan’s waist to the cabin frame, short enough to prevent her leaning overboard to dip her hands in the water. But Meili can’t stop the boat rocking. Although she feels more free on the water than she did on the land, she knows it will take time for her to become used to this fluid substance that adapts its form to the contours of the earth and exists in constant flux. The river is a moving landscape which flows in directions she can’t always determine.

After becoming pregnant with Happiness, the earth no longer felt solid underfoot. Not even their house or the dugout Kongzi created beneath Nannan’s bed could provide a safe refuge. The land belongs to the government. Whether it’s rented or borrowed, every patch of soil in this country is controlled by the state; no citizen can own a single grain. If she’d stayed planted in the village like a maize stalk waiting to be trampled on, she too might have had her belly injected with disinfectant like Yuanyuan, or been bundled into a cart a few weeks after childbirth like her neighbour Fang, milk leaking from her bare breasts. Ever since they left the village, her muscles have clenched with fear as soon as her feet touch the ground. Although the barge hotel was on the river, it was in effect an extension of the town. But this wavering fishing boat has liberated her. She will learn to drive it and survive on the little they possess. She told Kongzi that in Guangdong Province there’s a place called Heaven Township where people can have as many children as they wish, making sure, of course, not to tell him that its polluted air renders men sterile. Kongzi said that this was just the kind of enlightened place where Happiness should be born.

‘Cooking lunch?’ Meili calls out to the pregnant woman in the houseboat moored a few metres away. ‘It smells good.’

The woman is sitting at the bow, her toes like chicken claws gripping the edge of the boat. She and her husband already have a baby, and two daughters who are old enough to go into Sanxia and buy provisions on their own. Meili glanced at the baby when the woman held it over the river to defecate, and saw that it was a girl. The woman’s boat is twice the size of Meili’s. It has a tall control room and a shorter cabin behind with a bitumen-coated felt roof held down with bricks. When the boat is stacked with polystyrene panels the husband hauls to construction sites, it looks like a sparkling iceberg. While he’s away on a trip, the woman and her daughters often wander around the wharf, hawking home-made snacks, shaking plastic bags of eggs boiled in tea, spiced tofu and marinated broad beans below the windows of buses waiting to board the ferry.

‘It’s imported Thai rice,’ the woman calls back to Meili. ‘I bought it in the supermarket. What are you having?’

‘Fried celery and some reheated chicken soup.’

‘You shouldn’t drink hot liquids in the middle of the day,’ says the woman, hoisting up a bundle of garlic shoots she’s been soaking in the river. ‘And with a belly that size, you should move more slowly around the boat.’

‘Let those soak a little longer if you want to wash off the chemicals. I planted half a field of garlic shoots last year and had to spray pesticides on them twice a week to keep the insects away.’

‘No need – I’m going to boil them for ten minutes. The river water may look clean, but it’s riddled with threadworm.’

Meili grimaces. They’ve been drinking boiled river water since they moved onto the boat. ‘But the water’s safe to drink, surely, if you boil it?’ she asks.

‘No, not at this time of year! You should fetch your drinking water from the barge hotel’s washroom. Go at lunchtime when no one’s about. Or give the man at the diesel station a couple of mao and he’ll let you fill your bucket at his tap. You can drink river water in the winter, but in the summer, it’s infested with germs and parasites.’

‘How come your stove doesn’t give off smoke?’ Meili asks, looking at the broad beans the woman has laid out to dry on the deck.

‘It’s a gas stove. Cost me a hundred yuan. Come and have a look at it, if you want.’

Meili fetches her hooked bamboo pole.

‘Always turn off your stove before you disembark,’ the woman says, her eyes beady as a cormorant’s. ‘If it topples over, your boat will burn to a cinder.’

Meili extends her pole, drags the woman’s boat towards hers then ties them together with rope.

‘The current is strong,’ the woman says. ‘Your boat will break free with a knot like that.’ She loosens Meili’s knot and reties it. ‘This is a bowline knot. It won’t slip.’

‘I should learn how to do that,’ says Meili, gripping her canopy. She glances into the woman’s spacious cabin, and inhales the fragrant smell of rice wafting from the pot on the gas stove.

After checking that Nannan is still asleep, Meili steps over onto the woman’s boat and squats on the cabin’s vinyl-covered floor. ‘What a great stove!’ she says, and looks at the clothes and hats hanging neatly on the wall next to a glossy calendar with a photograph of a woman in a long silver dress.

‘You should buy one. One canister will last you a whole week. And another tip: when a large vessel approaches head on, slow down and turn towards the bank so the waves hit you at right angles, or your boat will capsize. Ha! I could tell from the way you were gripping your canopy just now that you haven’t been on the river long. Is that your daughter sleeping in the cabin? Make sure she stays inside when the boat is moving, or she might fall overboard.’

‘You’re right. We only bought the boat a week ago. I haven’t got used to the constant movement. I feel as though I’m rocking on a swing the whole time. You have a television and an electric fan, I see. What luxury.’

‘We’ve lived on this boat for ten years. I still get seasick, though. Summers are tolerable, but in winter, if you don’t have an electric heater it’s as cold as the grave. Before the frost sets in, tell your husband to buy a mini generator and a heater or you’ll freeze to death.’

‘What do you use for a toilet?’ asks Meili, watching an army of weevils scuttle across the scorching deck and fall into the river.

‘When we’re anchored here, I just do it on the bank.’ Then she crawls to the bow and lifts a square panel from the deck. ‘And when we’re sailing, I can do it straight into the river!’

‘You’re family planning fugitives too, aren’t you?’ Meili says, seeing the baby strapped to the woman’s back focus her triangular eyes on her. ‘What’s your name, little one?’ she asks, realising suddenly that other people’s children are of little interest to her.

‘She’s called Little Third. A third girl. What bad luck! This one in my belly will be my last. I’m fed up with this drifting life. I want to live in a brick house with a front door I can lock, a wardrobe to store my clothes in, a big fridge to keep all my food fresh and a comfortable armchair I can sit on.’

‘But this boat is so much better than ours. It has everything you could need.’

‘The river may be nice to look at, but I don’t want to spend my life on it. I have parents back home. Fallen leaves must return to their roots, as the saying goes. Besides, this vagrant life is not good for men. My husband seldom sleeps here at night.’

‘Yes, like crops in the fields we all need roots to survive.’ Meili feels her belly expand. She wants to lie on her side and breathe deeply. Little Third peeps over her mother’s shoulder again and smiles. She has two upper and two lower teeth. Meili pretends not to see her.

‘I’ve seen your husband on the boat in the evenings,’ the woman says, ‘sitting out on the deck smoking while you cook supper. How lucky you are!’ Then she turns to the bank and shouts to her two older daughters, ‘Come and have your lunch, girls.’ They’re standing on a field of cabbages near an abandoned barge that’s being used as a chicken hutch. A rooster digging at the muddy bank spots a cabbage leaf out of the corner of its eye and scuttles over to it.

‘But your husband has done so well, setting up his cargo business,’ Meili says. ‘Mine just works on a demolition site. He used to be a teacher, though. Men – if you don’t keep them on a tight rein, their eyes are bound to wander.’ She glances into her boat and sees Nannan is still asleep. Her sweat-soaked hair is stuck to her face, and below her rucked-up skirt insects are crawling over her chubby thighs.

‘He’s grown tired of me,’ the woman says, snapping the garlic shoots in half. ‘You know what they say: the song of the wild duck in the fields always sounds more melodious than the clucking of the hen at home.’ Her T-shirt has large damp patches over her breasts.

Meili watches the woman move about the deck – sallow cheeks, lined forehead, hunched, twig-like frame – and imagines how a man would feel lying on top of her at night. She thinks how, in ten years, she will be thirty and by then she too may have three or four children. The thought terrifies her. Whatever happens, she won’t confine herself to the role of housewife like this woman. Once Happiness is born, she will find a job, train as a beautician and dress her children in the finest clothes. The woman’s elder daughters jump aboard and the boat tips to the side. Their faces are grimy and their bare feet covered in mud.

‘I’ll leave you to have lunch,’ Meili says, stepping back onto her boat and unfastening the rope. ‘It’s time for my daughter to wake up.’

The noon sun scorches the tarpaulin canopy and the wooden deck at the bow and stern. Even the shade inside the cabin is swelteringly hot. Meili wants to sail downriver to pick up a breeze, but isn’t confident using the outboard motor yet. Kongzi has said he’d like to pick up some work hauling cargo, but doesn’t know who to approach. There are thirty or so families living in the houseboats moored here. Most of the men work in factories or on demolition sites; only a few have managed to make a living transporting goods. When the men return at dusk, they come laden with vegetables, deep-fried dough sticks and packets of instant noodles, and the wharf area becomes filled with the smell of chemical flavourings and the squealing and cursing of children.