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.