A girl in a black-and-white-checked jacket gets up and says, ‘Teacher Meili, I miss my mummy. She works in Zhuhai. After I speak to her on the phone, my grades always go down.’
‘Teacher, why are we peasants?’ asks a girl in an orange jacket with a white collar.
‘Because we were born in the countryside,’ Meili replies. ‘And if we’re born there, our fate is sealed: the authorities deny us free education, housing, medical care and all the other privileges city dwellers enjoy, and through the household registration system and family planning laws they bind us for ever to the land. But we mustn’t despair, students. There are 900 million of us. We make up two-thirds of China’s population. We can’t be kept down for ever. Look how many millions of peasants have already dared to ignore the laws and move to the cities. We’re on the move and no one can stop us. I’ve heard the police no longer bar peasants from boarding trains to the cities. Soon, pregnant women will be able to walk through the streets without fear of being dragged off for an abortion, and peasants will be able to move to any place they wish. The cages that have imprisoned us for so long will topple to the ground, and we will all be treated as legal citizens.’
‘Please, Teacher, what is the countryside like?’ asks a boy with a flat nose and thin, sparse hair. He is the youngest child in the school, and the only one who was born in Heaven Township.
‘Look, that’s the countryside,’ the boy next to him says, pointing his dirty finger at the window.
‘Do those farmers have residence permits?’ asks the flat-nosed boy.
‘Probably,’ says an older girl behind him. ‘It’s just us kids born without permission who aren’t allowed to have residence permits – we can’t even get rural ones.’
A police car overtakes them and screeches to a halt, blocking the road ahead. Two officers step out and climb onto the bus. ‘Who’s the teacher here?’
‘I am,’ Meili says, confident that she’ll be able to handle the conversation better than Kongzi.
‘SARS has broken out in this county,’ says one of the officers, whisking a fly from his face. ‘Didn’t you receive the notification?’
‘No,’ Meili says, then remembers reading about the disease on the internet. ‘Oh, you mean the acute respiratory disease? Yes, of course we were informed. We were told not to go into school, so we’ve taken the children out on a trip.’
‘A strict curfew has been imposed. The instructions were clear. Return to your school immediately. A team from the World Health Organisation is touring China to make sure we’re in a fit state to host the Olympics. If they find out we’ve got SARS here, it will be a disaster, so no one must wear a face mask.’
‘Fine, thank you, officers, we’ll let everyone else at Red Flag Primary know,’ Meili calls out to them as they return to their car.
‘Auntie Meili, I need to go to the toilet,’ a little boy says, frowning in discomfort.
The boys at the back laugh. ‘He’s always asking to go to the toilet in class, Miss! He never stops drinking – that’s why. He’s always thirsty.’
‘Says if he doesn’t keep drinking water, he’ll die!’
‘Be quiet! OK, get out and go behind that tree.’ It occurs to Meili that the toilet pit behind the school hasn’t been scooped out for months. Back in the village, excrement from the pits was removed regularly, dried and used as fuel, but in Heaven it all goes to waste.
‘Why won’t the government let us go to their schools?’ Nannan asks as the bus sets off again. She’s wearing a pink jumper and has her hair scraped back in a tight ponytail. When Kongzi took her to Red Flag Primary on his last day there, she took one look at the orderly rows of desks and bright posters in the classrooms and said she wished she could stay there for the rest of her life.
‘After the Education Department grants us authorisation, our school will be just like their ones,’ Kongzi replies. ‘We’ll get ourselves a tall flagpole, a big entrance lobby, flushing toilets and a canteen. Hey, have you at the back finished writing out the vocab?’
‘I thought you wanted us to do the sums,’ says the naughtiest boy in the class. Kongzi found him smoking in the toilet pit yesterday and gave him a sharp kick in the shins.
‘No, I told you to copy the new words from Lesson 17. Rivulet, ocean . . .’
‘We’ll be back in time for lunch, I promise,’ Meili tells a child. ‘There’ll be rice, vegetables and a soup.’ She reaches into her pocket and answers her phone: ‘Hi, Cha Na . . . Yes, those Disney DVDs have been selling well. You’d better order some more.’
‘Turn over your sheets of paper, everyone,’ Kongzi says. ‘I’ll read out some keywords from the text. Write them down then copy them out ten times. Ready? Illuminate. Green meadows. Serene. Verdant . . .’
Meili stares at the picture of the little girl in pigtails on the cover of the textbook she’s holding, then looks outside and sees a large photograph of a missing girl stuck to the side of a passing van. On the van’s boot is a notice with a telephone number and the message
IF YOU FIND OUR DAUGHTER
,
WE WILL GIVE YOU ALL OUR SAVINGS AND BELONGINGS
. Meili feels a stab of sympathy, and instantly thinks of Waterborn.
‘I’ve seen lots of notices like that recently,’ says Kongzi, watching the van speed off into the distance. ‘I read in the papers that 200,000 children go missing in China every year, and that very few are ever found.’ The eucalyptus trees along both sides of the road bask in the midday sun. The pale green leaves at the top look as soft as babies’ hands. Kongzi turns round and shouts: ‘Dong Ping! How dare you throw that carton out of the window!’
‘But I picked it up outside,’ the boy in the blue tracksuit says, kicking his legs about, ‘so it belongs out there.’
‘Oh, just stay still,’ Kongzi says impatiently. ‘If Confucius were here, he’d slap your hands with a wooden ruler.’
Boys in the seat behind get up and cheer. ‘Hit him, Teacher!’ one of them shouts. ‘Here, you can use this ping-pong bat!’
‘Use my hat!’
‘No, whack him with my trainers!’
Meili puts her phone away and says, ‘Quieten down. Now, listen, children. Spring Festival is coming up. If your parents haven’t decided what to give you yet, tell them to visit my shop. It’s called Fangfang Toy Emporium. It’s packed with wonderful toys and games. If they bring one of these business cards I’m handing out to you, they’ll get a 20 per cent discount . . .’
At the southern outskirts of town, the bus picks up speed and hurtles past lines of shacks with aluminium rain barrels glinting on the tin roofs.
KEYWORDS:
Ming Dynasty theatre, face shape, toffee apple, swaddled, jewel-encrusted, sensitive.
AT THE END
of the dancing policemen act, Nannan weaves her way back through the crowd of spectators with three bottles of Coca-Cola, and reaches her seat just as the curtains rise again. The instrumental prelude of a Cantonese opera begins to pour from the large loudspeakers flanking the stage. Meili, Kongzi and Nannan are sitting at the back. A group of scruffy workers who’ve wandered out from their nearby dormitory house in shorts and flip-flops are standing behind them, smoking. Local officials are seated on the front rows, dressed in freshly pressed trousers and short-sleeved shirts. ‘We’re in the birthplace of Cantonese opera,’ Kongzi shouts over the din. ‘This theatre is even older than the Confucius Temple and the Town God Temple. It’s the perfect place to watch
The Seventh Fairy Delivers her Son to Earth
!’
‘Is the opera based on the weaver girl and the cowherd story?’ Meili asks, putting her arm around Nannan. She cracks a sunflower seed between her teeth and spits the shell onto her bulge. ‘Here,’ she says, offering some seeds to Nannan.
‘You know I don’t like them,’ Nannan says, pushing them away.
‘But these ones are freshly roasted, just try one – they’re delicious,’ Meili says, wishing Nannan would overcome her irrational dislike of seeds. The drums are so loud now, she has to raise her voice to be heard.
‘Yes, the Seventh Fairy is the weaver girl, the seventh daughter of the Jade Emperor and the Mother of the West. When she fell pregnant with the cowherd’s child, her mother was furious and commanded her to return to Heaven. Now that it’s born, she has to hand it over to the father.’
Gongs, violins, drums and guitars all sound out at once, drawing the audience’s attention to the brightly lit stage, where two men with hoses are filling the air with white smoke in preparation of the fairy’s descent to earth.
‘Look, there she is!’ Nannan cries out, jumping to her feet. A canvas backdrop is lowered, revealing the green landscape of terraced tea plantations beneath a clear blue sky. The sea of heads, hats and paper fans below wave about in anticipation.
A woman in a jewel-encrusted headdress and a long red robe wafts down from the sky with a baby in her arm, singing: ‘
The Seventh Fairy cradles her swaddled baby son, and looks down at the Nine Regions and weeps, her tears flowing like a river . . .
’
‘This is boring,’ Nannan moans. ‘I much preferred the moon-dancing policemen just now.’ This free show has been staged by the Foshan Song and Dance Troupe and the Shenxian County Cantonese Opera Company to celebrate 1 August Army Day. Meili, Kongzi and Nannan arrived at the theatre at five o’clock to make sure they’d get seats.
‘Shut up!’ Kongzi says, tapping Nannan’s leg.
‘
My darling son is too young to know the meaning of grief, to know how my heart breaks at the thought of leaving him . . .’
the fairy sings. The cowherd walks onto the stage wearing a headdress decorated with pompoms and tassels, a thick-belted tunic and padded boots. To a melancholy strain from the violins, he twirls around the fairy and takes her in his arms.
‘Feel how fast my heart is beating, Kongzi,’ Meili says, pressing his hand against her chest. The sunflower seeds on her belly scatter to the floor. ‘The baby reminds me of Waterborn. She was no bigger than that when you sold her. I was still producing milk six months after she was gone. My body was yearning for her to come back.’
Kongzi pulls his hand away and takes a swig of Coca-Cola. Nannan sees a classmate in the crowd and waves to her. The sweltering, muggy air smells of cigarette smoke, sweat and sulphur. The open-air Ming Dynasty theatre is on the north shore of Womb Lake. Its ornate stage resembles the entrance to the Confucius Temple, with a golden roof supported by large red pillars. Lights pointing at the upturned eaves illuminate strange carved beasts glaring at the audience with mouths agape.
‘
Forget your sorrow for a moment
,’ the cowherd sings to the fairy. ‘
Let me wipe the hot tears from your face, and hold my son in my arms.
’ He takes the baby from the fairy and, gazing down at him, dances about the stage, the drums beating in time with his rhythmic steps.
‘That baby’s not real,’ Nannan says, brushing a mosquito off her arm. ‘See, it’s not moving at all.’
‘
I am a celestial being and you a mere mortal,’
the fairy sings.
‘Our love defies the Laws of Heaven. For giving you a male heir, I have been berated and humiliated . . .
’ As the fairy bursts into tears on the stage, in the unlit darkness at the back of the theatre, Meili weeps as well. Although she can remain on the earth, she has to live like an escaped convict, searching in vain for a place where she can legally give birth to her child. At least no one has tried to harm the fairy’s son. As soon as her own son was born, he was killed and condemned to another reincarnation.
When Meili returns her tear-filled eyes to the stage, suddenly the fairy looks identical to her, and the cowherd to Kongzi.
‘
What miseries you’ve had to endure to produce a child for me!’
the cowherd sings.
‘
I have no regrets,
’ the fairy sings back to him. ‘
The hundred days we spent together could vanquish a lifetime of sadness.’
‘
Yes, for one hundred days, we were as happy as two fish in a lake. And now, as I hold my son in my arms, my sorrows melt away . . .
’
‘
My dear love, we’re not fated to remain together. Now that I have delivered our son to you, I must return to the Celestial Palace. I in the sky and you on the earth, with the Milky Way between us: it won’t be easy to meet again . . .’
Meili pats her belly and whispers, Don’t worry, little Heaven, I’ll make sure that this incarnation will be successful. The family planning laws won’t last much longer. Just wait patiently in my womb a few more years until it’s legal for you to come out. And when that time comes, if you still refuse to budge, I’ll dig into my tummy button and pull you out with my bare hands! On the stage, the heartbroken fairy circles the cowherd, tossing her head back and flicking her long sleeves in despair. Meili strokes Nannan’s ponytail, and feels her tears slowly dry up.
‘Why were you crying, Mum?’ Nannan asks. ‘That baby won’t die. I understand Cantonese. The daddy said he’d look after him.’
‘I was just thinking about Waterborn,’ Meili says, wiping her eyes carefully, trying not to smudge her eyeliner.
‘If I died and came back as a boy, you and Daddy would be so happy! I hate myself. I hate being a girl . . .’
‘Stop muttering and look at the opera,’ Kongzi says impatiently. Nannan leans over Meili and taps her empty Coca-Cola bottle on his head.
‘
How sad that you must leave us!’
the cowherd cries. He is stifling in his thick costume, and sweat flies from his face whenever he moves his head. ‘
My love for you is like a river. Not even the sharpest sword can sever its flow. Farewell, sweet fairy . . .
’
‘
My heart is dying, but we mustn’t cry. Goodbye, husband, goodbye, child . . .
’ Meili watches the fairy step onto a cloud and rise into the blue sky, and feels a part of herself rise to the heavens with her.
By the time they squeeze their way out of the departing crowd, Meili’s dress is drenched in sweat. Halfway home, Kongzi takes her hand and says, ‘Let’s go to a restaurant. My treat.’
‘Your treat?’ Meili says, taken aback. ‘OK then, follow me.’ She decides to take them to the Hunan restaurant Tang introduced her to. She loves its homely atmosphere and rich, spicy food.