Remembering that moment, I felt good for the first time in a long time. Being surrounded by colleagues and watching children play in the lively compound made me feel as if I had climbed out of a tomb and come back to life.
Maybe I should get a real boyfriend now, I thought as I dozed off.
A few days later, the new semester began, and the school was overrun with students again. After finishing my duty of giving out textbooks on the first day, I biked back to my attic. It was my third year in the town. It was also the final year of middle school for the students I’d been teaching since they had started at the school. Soon they would graduate and disperse to many different places, some to senior high schools in Suzhou, some to cheaper high schools in other towns, and some back to the rice fields.
I stopped at the grocery store at the corner, rested on the bench in front of it, and quietly watched the teenagers on the street laughing and chasing each other. I was jealous of them. I felt as though I had never really lived a single day of my life, and as though I never would.
A young man in a light brown suit appeared in the corner of my eye. I turned and studied him as he walked into the store. His leather shoes were shiny, and he was tidy and clean all over, like a newly washed and ironed white shirt. I saw him glancing around the store as he waited for his bag of salt. His skin was fair and delicate like wax. I saw anxiety flickering in his fine eyes, and I couldn’t help but pipe up: “You must be the new teacher, Wang.”
“How do you know?” He turned to me, surprised.
“Everybody in town knows.” He looked so brand-new. No one here had such long and slender fingers. At first glance, they reminded me of piano keys.
Wang was a new math teacher at the local vocational school, which offered continuing education for students who had failed to enter any senior high schools. At first, since the school was located in a different part of town, we seldom saw each other. When we met on the street, we simply nodded our heads. But he was soon assigned to live in the teacher’s compound, and we became acquaintances. When our paths crossed, we would stop our bikes for short conversations.
“Man, what a shitty place. What a shitty school. When they recruited me in my province, they painted it as a paradise. It’s a shithole,” he would say. He had an innocent smile, and his eyes were bright. He was like a shy boy. He spoke so softly when he was complaining that it didn’t seem like he meant it at all.
I would nod my head and agree with him and then say good-bye, jump on my bike, and leave quickly. I wanted to stay and look at his handsome face longer, but I had to keep moving. If we were seen together on the street more than three times, I was sure everyone would say we were dating.
But then, what would be wrong with dating him? It was common for a teacher to grab another teacher and rush to the marriage registration office. Sooner or later you needed to marry someone and have children, so why not do it quickly and conveniently? Then you would be set, entitled to a bigger room, a condo, or even a house from the school. Plus, you’d always have someone to look after you.
The thought of Teacher Wang being my boyfriend made my cheeks burn. What would it be like? I wondered. It had been so long since I’d had a real boyfriend.
But as soon as I opened my tattered door with its flaking red paint and saw my tiny attic, which was as ratty as a dump, I sobered. That sight drove away the thought of becoming a teacher’s wife. I had suffered so much as part of a poor family. For a poor, lowly couple, everything in this world would be sorrowful. You couldn’t be merry if you spent all day worrying about your next meal. Would you be in the mood for love when the mosquitoes were biting you like crazy just because you couldn’t afford a bottle of bug repellent?
No, I couldn’t marry a teacher. It would take us three years to buy a refrigerator and maybe five years to get a Sony television for the living room—if we had a living room. No, I definitely couldn’t marry Teacher Wang, who also came from a peasant family and had no connections in this town. I didn’t want to relive my parents’ life.
I began to avoid Teacher Wang as much as I could and was reserved when I ran into him on the street. But when loneliness drilled into me, my heart wanted to go against my mind. I longed to have someone I could talk to, someone who had graduated from college and could speak Mandarin instead of the raspy local dialect that came out of the mouths of everyone in this town. So when one day after work Teacher Wang ran up the stairs to my attic and asked if I wanted to join him and his friend in his room for dinner, I looked into his tender eyes and said yes.
He asked if I could cook the chicken he had bought at the market, like a boyfriend would expect his girlfriend to do. His friend asked if I wanted a beer. I said yes to both, smiling, happy in his crude but warm room. Then I sat quietly at the table and listened to him and his friend complaining about their schools. He turned to tell me that he liked the chicken. When our eyes met, he quickly looked away. In the dim light, I saw his cheeks turning red. His friend chuckled. I lowered my head.
His friend left to catch the last bus to the town where he lived. I cleaned the pots and dishes, and then I sat down on the edge of his bed. He had been sitting in his only chair and watching me. The light from the bulb in the middle of the room seemed extremely bright through my tipsy eyes. There was a nervousness in the air. Faintly, I heard him speaking and my own voice talking back to him. I leaned against the folded sheet on the bed, wondering why I was suddenly so giggly. Then I saw his handsome face moving close to me, and, the next thing I realized, his lips were on mine.
The alcohol emboldened his hands. He stripped off my coat and then unbuttoned my blouse. He was breathing quickly. He seemed shy but glad. I realized that he liked me. He liked me in the way a normal man liked a woman. He got on top of me. He smelled fresh and clean, like bamboo leaves after a spring rain. He was trying to be my boyfriend, and then he would become my husband, and then—I couldn’t think. I couldn’t let him become my boyfriend. I liked him, but I didn’t love him. I pushed him and leaped up from the bed before he got too far. I stood indecisively on the bare floor. He looked like an injured deer.
“I can’t. . . .” I tried to explain but couldn’t articulate the reason. It would hurt him like hell if I told him that I couldn’t be with him because he was as poor and lowly as I was.
I turned around and ran.
Later that night, a couple of light taps on my door woke me. I got up, opened the door slightly, and peered out. Hao, who had discarded me like a cigarette stub a year earlier and left for Shanghai, was outside my door. How had he found me here? Fear started to rise inside me.
“How are you?” With his chin lifted, he slowly pronounced each word to me. Grinning, he unhurriedly exhaled whiffs of smoke through his nostrils.
He pushed the door all the way open and strode into my attic. He sat down on my bed and put his feet up on the chair, as if he had just entered his own home.
“I thought you were in Shanghai.” I forced a grin.
“I come back here once in a while.” With a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, he looked as haughty as ever. Cold, I went back to the bed and wrapped myself in my blanket. It was autumn already.
“So, did you miss me?” he asked jokingly.
I giggled nervously and pulled the cover around my waist. “How is Shanghai?” I said, trying to make conversation.
“Oh, Shanghai is fucking awesome.” Engaged by my question, he leaned forward and told me excitedly, “Hey, you know, you should really leave this fucking stupid town and go to Shanghai. You can speak English, right? Go wait in the airport. So many rich foreigners get off planes every day. Talk to them and take them to hotels. Do you know how much you can make sleeping with foreigners?”
I looked at his puffy face, the result of a lifetime of debauchery, as he prattled on about Shanghai, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his absurd idea. A few months ago I had been willing to sell my body on the streets of Shanghai, but right now I just wanted to tell him to shu
t up.
He yanked the corner of the cover toward him and tried to sneak under.
“I’m cold,” he said.
“No,” I refused, but it was useless. He pushed me back and squeezed himself closer to me.
“I have a boyfriend now. Please leave,” I begged, irritated. Teacher Wang’s face flashed across in my mind.
Hao chuckled at my pleas and kept pulling the quilt toward himself. Then he wrapped his arms around my waist. I twisted myself away forcefully and got off the bed.
“If you don’t leave, I will,” I announced. I knew this time my heart wanted him to go, as well as my senses.
“Come on. Didn’t you miss me?” He sat wrapped in the cover, an expectant look in his eyes.
I realized that it would be impossible to get him out of my attic without waking up the entire compound. I grabbed my coat and ran out of my own home. He could do whatever he wanted while I was gone. I knew he wouldn’t follow me. I was never that important to him.
Outside, I stopped in front of Teacher Wang’s room. I stood below his windowsill for a while. The moonlight reflected off the thin layer of frost on the cement ground. The world was bathed in silvery white. I pulled my coat tightly around me, raised my head, and looked at the full moon hanging in the sky.
I felt confused. I didn’t know what I really wanted. Wang was so poor, but maybe he was the best I would ever find. After all, he was pure and fresh, while I was beaten and incomplete. I didn’t feel love for him, but then, I told myself, I wasn’t a woman who deserved to love.
I thought of what the great poet Li Bai had written two thousand years ago:
The luminous moonlight before my bed—
I thought it might be the frost fallen on the ground. I lift my head to gaze at the cliff moon
And then bow down to muse on my distant home.
Suddenly an overwhelming desire to have a home hit me. I had a home in the Shen Hamlet, but that had never felt like a real home. Was a home really too much to ask?
10
I STARTED TO date Teacher Wang, whose full name was Wang Hui. Fate wanted me to, I thought, so I succumbed to it.
We rarely saw each other in the daytime. He got off work earlier and always waited for me at his rear window, through which he could see me standing on the top of the stairs to my attic. When I turned toward him, he would wave to me, smiling shyly. When I went to his room, he didn’t speak much, but he would lift the lid of his rice cooker and show me the dinner he had made. With the door shut and curtains down, it was easy for me to start dreaming. Was this what I had been looking for all my life: a bowl of rice, a few bok choy leaves, flickering candles, and a hand on my shoulder?
But the next morning, the warmth would disappear. I avoided being seen with him on the street. The thought of being his girlfriend in public made every inch of my skin itch. His body felt real and warm, but when I lay next to him my mind rarely had a moment of peace. I was torn. I could not bear to think of a dismal future with him in this deserted town. I didn’t want people to think I had chosen such a poor man.
“How do you picture your future?” I asked Wang one day when I saw him flipping the pages of a book titled Introduction to Programming.
“I don’t know. It sucks here, but what can I do?” He shrugged.
“Why are you reading that book, then?” I asked curiously, some hope rising in my mind. Perhaps he wanted to get out of this town too.
“My cousin is working in a joint venture in southern China. He sent me this book and told me to study English. He says computers and English are really hot down there right now.”
My body tingled with excitement. His cousin was in southern China, one of the few economic special zones in the country, where foreign investors flooded in with money to build factories, where the boldest Chinese headed for brand-new futures. If Wang Hui and I were going to stay together, I knew both of us couldn’t be teachers all our lives. Maybe it would be better if Wang Hui joined the gold rush. Maybe his cousin could help.
“Are you thinking of going there someday?” I sounded him out nervously, praying to hear a positive answer. I hoped my boyfriend was an ambitious man who didn’t want to waste his life in this small town.
“I don’t know. Give up teaching?” He shrugged again. “I don’t know if I can find a job there.”
I replied tentatively. “No, maybe you should go. A man shouldn’t be stuck here forever.”
He scratched his head and didn’t say anything.
We didn’t talk about it again for weeks, but I couldn’t get southern China out of my mind. All I could think about was “jumping in the ocean,” a phrase newly coined to describe people giving up governmental jobs and joining the free market. Since 1949, when New China was founded, every governmental worker had been guaranteed an unbreakable iron bowl into which the government put just enough food to keep your stomach full. Most people chose to stay on the dry land, with their bowls. You might find gold and silver in the ocean; but if you couldn’t swim, you would be lost. But the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I would rather drown in the roaring waves of the South than let time slowly and painfully suck the life out of me in this town.
A few weeks later, I shared my thoughts with Wang Hui.
“Go to the South. I’ll join you later,” I said confidently.
He sounded doubtful. “Are you sure you’ll come? Teaching is a pretty good job for a girl. Besides, will the school let you go? I am different. I’m a man, and my school is much more flexible.”
“Yes, I promise I’ll join you later. I am not going to stay here forever. Go and see if your cousin can get you a job at his company. I’ll meet you there, and we’ll build a future together,” I encouraged him. I believed every word I said. By conventional standards, Wang was the ideal husband, good-looking, poised, and easygoing, and if he could succeed financially, he would be perfect. I was thrilled by the possibilities.
Wang Hui took my words to heart and arranged to leave for the South. At the end of the fall semester in December, it was time for him to go. Unfortunately, my mother visited me on the very day of his departure. When he appeared on my threshold, my mother was sitting on my bed wagging her tongue as usual. He stayed at the door and said good-bye. My mother looked at him suspiciously. He waved his hand once and smiled weakly before turning around and going downstairs. I pushed all my sad feelings aside. I wanted to remain calm and normal in front of my mother. I instinctively hid every emotion from her.
“Who is he?” she asked, getting up to clean my gas stove.
“Just a teacher at the school,” I answered nonchalantly.
“Are you dating him?”
“No!” I said.
She clearly didn’t believe me. She continued to vigorously scrub the stove, but soon she couldn’t keep quiet. “I know you’re dating him,” she said.
I didn’t respond.
“A teacher,” she scoffed. “What does he have besides his own penis?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Mama! He is leaving for the South. Come on. I am not dating him. I wouldn’t date a teacher.”
“Learn a lesson from me, Juanjuan. Date any man, just not a poor and incompetent man like your father,” my mother said.
“Mama, have some confidence in me. I won’t,” I replied impatiently. I had faith in Wang Hui. I was certain he would build a warm nest for us in the South.
Wang Hui had come into my life and left in just five short months. I was alone again. My attic no longer had any scandalous visitors. I had no friends and lived like a hermit. But I felt calmer, since I had a future to look forward to.
In February I received a postcard from Wang Hui, on which he had handwritten a poem to me:
Raindrops fall onto the banana leaves outside my window. When I wake up, my tears are all over the pillow.
A rush of sweetness mixed with relief swept through me. He was safe, and I was sure he would have found a job by then. I knew nothing could stop me from goin
g to the South. My imagination had already flown me there. In my mind, I’d already touched the green banana leaves. Now I just needed to find a way out of the school.
By then, Principal Chen had left the school, and a new principal from out of town had been in the role for a semester. In April, I volunteered to write a long glorification letter about the new principal, which I read aloud in the town’s committee meeting on electing outstanding leaders. My actions scored major points for the principal’s political career. At the end of the semester, bringing a couple of cases of nourishment drinks, I visited his house one night. After rounds of sincere begging, I finally got his nod.
The next day, I signed my name on the contract of Shen Juanjuan vs. Hope Middle School. I was given my freedom for three years, during which the school would not only take my paycheck issued by the government every month, but also expect me to pay an annual fee of five thousand yuan. If I chose to return within three years, my teaching position would still be available, as well as the benefits of a governmental worker.
Five thousand yuan was equivalent to my whole yearly salary and year-end bonus as a teacher. I would have to earn at least double this amount in order to survive. How? I had no idea, and I didn’t care.
My last day of teaching ended with me flicking the chalk dust off my clothes and walking out of the classroom with nothing: not my teaching notes, not my lunch box, not my pointer. The cement walkway outside the school entrance was no longer narrow and dull; it was a colorful, wide rainbow to the world beyond the sky. I skipped down the walkway. I was free. I couldn’t believe it—I was free! I was going to leave this town, this trap that I had been in for the last three years, and I was sure I would never miss anything about it.
I did very little packing. After purchasing an airline ticket and sending Wang Hui a telegram, I spent the rest of the day dancing excitedly about my room like a lunatic.
The next day, I caught a bus to the Shen Hamlet. I knew that it would be almost impossible, but I still wanted to try to step over another stumbling block—my family. I wanted their support.
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