by Sheng Keyi
‘Brilliant! Really brilliant!’ Wu Ying and Ah Xing cried in agreement. ‘But who’s the best one to do it?’
They were all unequivocally agreed that it was a great idea but they each tried to push the other into the most dangerous role of actually executing the plan. In the end, they decided to put it to a vote and let the majority have its say. Wu Ying and Ah Xing both thought Xiaohong’s penmanship best and that she would be most able to imitate Mr Pan’s writing. Since she was most likely to pass the signature off as his, it was settled.
She bought some exercise books and practised throughout the night, writing Mr Pan’s name until she thought she would drown in it. She wrote it at work and after work she’d go back to the dorm and write it some more, like a forlorn woman pining for her lover.
Julia’s eyes noted this and her mind began to tick over. When she could stand it no more, she said, ‘Xiaohong, wake up and look around! Mr Pan has a family and he’s got a name in Qianshan Town. Just because you’ve got a crush on him, do you really want to go and make life difficult for yourself?’
Julia, wearing a skimpy rose-coloured tank top, wiggled her round hips. Her recently-dyed blonde hair made her fair skin glow all the more.
‘Men just have to look at me once and they get a hard-on. If I coo at them and shake my arse a bit, they practically want to burst.’ Julia boasted without the least hint of shame. Xiaohong found it a bit over the top.
Pretending that Julia had seen right through her, Xiaohong poked her friend as if in embarrassment. ‘You’re the one with a crush on him! Who knows perhaps he’s already had a piece of you, the way you’re always running in and out of his office. His desk is at least as wide as our beds.’
Julia laughed, the three pairs of studs in her ears sparkling. A fourth pair of earrings dangled, swinging in rhythm with her giggling.
‘Even if he wanted to do me, he doesn’t have the guts. Getting it on with your subordinates is one of the stupidest things you can do, don’t you know? So you better not get any ideas in your head either. He’s one of the top ten most upstanding citizens in Shenzhen, a real family man. Quite civilised. When that son-of-a-bitch does his womanising, it’s strictly hands-off with his employees.’
‘Please don’t say anything. I have to have a way to get it out of my system, don’t I?’
A week later, Xiaohong slapped her imitation of Mr Pan’s signature on a form and took it along with a genuine signature to Wu Ying and Ah Xing for inspection. After looking them over carefully, they failed to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit. They all agreed that, with this approach, they could pass the forms off as the real thing and that even Mr Pan himself would not notice.
II
Ever since the Qianshan Township’s enterprises had been listed on the local stock exchange, delegations from all over the country had been coming to the town to study, research and pick up some tips. The Qianshan Hotel was almost always full of guests coming to seek their fortune. Being the town’s high-end guesthouse, many civil servants turned their beady eyes on the hotel, where the staff did their best to accommodate the needs of these noble guests in style. As civil servants, they naturally did not care whether prices were low or high. In the morning, they slept in then had a late breakfast. Rejuvenated, they calmly set out for their daily tour, after which they happily returned to the hotel and descended on the restaurant on the second floor to devour their dinner, as they were passionate about the food in Guangdong. After they had eaten, drunk and relaxed to their heart’s content, they carried the name of the Qianshan Hotel to the four corners of the nation.
The visitors had a long-lived fascination with Shenzhen’s nightlife. At each event, the officials were led like a flock of sheep to green pastures. The schedule was always arranged with regimented precision. To put it another way, they all knew exactly what Shenzhen’s nightlife had to offer, so there was no real danger of any of them unintentionally falling into a romantic entanglement that could derail his career. No sheep was left out of the fold and each was treated better than if he were some visiting head of state from a foreign nation.
Once, though, when Xiaohong and Wu Ying were doing the night shift, a guest, an official from Zhejiang, called the desk at eleven o’clock at night. ‘Miss,’ he said, ‘can you send a few cans of San Miguel to room 807?’
Wu Ying had answered the call. She replied, ‘I’ll just need to go out and buy it for you.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘that’s exactly what I had in mind.’
But what the official really had in mind was only made known when Xiaohong took the beer to his door. Room 807 was the deluxe suite and the fact that this official was staying there showed that he was a man of no mean status. When he turned on the TV, it was replaying a conference. Clad in a white vest and shorts, he moved in for a closer look. A bulge of white flesh appeared at his belly, round as a bucket of water. He was shaped like a capital letter ‘S’.
Mr S was a big spender. He gave Xiaohong a sizable tip for running the errand, then said he would like to hear a little about her life working at the hotel. Xiaohong glanced at the money in her hand then, facing the large mirror on the wall, said, ‘To earn fifty kuai, we have to work three shifts. Now, I’ve just walked no more than fifty metres and earned it from you. Working life is like that. Sometimes, money is only earned through sweat and blood. Other times, it comes easily.’
Mr S rubbed his hand over his bald scalp. Sweetly, he said, ‘Which method of earning do you prefer?’
Xiaohong, having sensed his intentions early on, gave a knowing smile as she made her evasive actions. He was running out of patience, standing before this eighteen-year-old girl. Late-night passion was beginning to ferment in his swelling body.
‘Let’s talk. What number do you have in mind?’ Meaningfully, Mr S moved in closer to Xiaohong. His full belly was the first thing to press itself up against her.
‘Me? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. What about you? What number do you have in mind?’ Facing Mr S with calm restraint, Xiaohong casually began toying with the fifty yuan note.
‘For ten, I have to bring my own condom. For a hundred, I get any position I want. For a thousand, I get the whole night. For ten thousand, I get to do you to death. So Miss, which do you prefer?’ Mr S smiled as if he had just delivered the cleverest little jingle ever spoken.
The thought of a romp on the pure white bed with its fluffy pillows and a night of ecstasy was certainly an interesting proposition. Sadly, though, the lead actor here was not award-winning material. Xiaohong bit her lip, putting on a pretence of childishness. She put a hand out and removed Mr S’s tank top, then started to take off his shorts. Mr S immediately stripped and stood there looking like a frog. He reached out to undress Xiaohong, but she moved away and said demurely, ‘Let me look at you first.’
The fifty-odd-year-old, S-shaped man stood naked – soft muscles, flabby arse, and round, fat belly all on display. At the spot where his smooth skin should have come to a gully, the thing that hung there looked like a seed dropped into a furrow in a ploughed field. It had begun to sprout, standing up just above the soil. In the heat, though, it was wilting, sagging hopelessly towards the ground. Xiaohong stood facing Mr S, and his round belly began to shake with laughter. She said in a deep voice, ‘Uncle, I’m a virgin. I’m just curious about your body. I took off your clothes. If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind putting them back on now? This fifty yuan is a tip for your trouble.’ Xiaohong took the note she had been toying with for so long and tossed it toward him. Then she turned and ran out the door.
‘You’re too much, Ah Hong. You really humiliated him. At least he was good enough to tip you.’ Wu Ying listened to the story anxiously, eyes wide with horror.
‘No, Wu Ying, the tip was just bait. He wanted me hooked.’ Xiaohong recited Mr S’s jingle again and went on to say, ‘He humiliated all women with that. He thought having a cock meant he could manipulate everyone else. But the money is the o
nly life he’s got in him, I tell you.’
The paternal Mr S seemed to suffer a setback in his spirits. From then on, when he went in or out of the Qianshan Hotel, he walked straight through the lobby without a glance right or left. He did not approach the desk for help again.
III
Though life seemed quiet and simple on the surface, it was full of complications and noise. In Wu Ying’s case, her eyes were as black as a panda’s and her ears had been ringing for three days. On top of that, she had backache. It was all because of her constant fighting with Yan. But Wu Ying still had a quiet demeanour, bearing these complex issues with a smile on her face as she went about her life and work. It was an ongoing process and no one really saw a clear linear development of the struggle. One afternoon while Ah Xing and Xiaohong were on duty, munching sour plums and chatting idly, Wu Ying came in excitedly.
‘Hey, if you aren’t busy, you got a moment for a chat?’ she said, stopping in front of the counter.
‘Of course we’re not busy.’
Xiaohong said, ‘Looks like Big Sister is about to make a great leap forward.’
Wu Ying came behind the counter and went straight to the issue of the twenty per cent discount. ‘Sisters, there have been too many forms lately. Take it easy. There’s no point fishing if the pond runs dry. Also, put more of Mr Pan’s originals in when you take them up and less of Xiaohong’s so that the fakes are hidden a little better.’
‘Wu Ying, I don’t believe you’ve come running in here all worked up like this just to talk about this.’ Xiaohong winked at her.
‘So I came in on my day off, you little monster. Is that such a big deal?’ Wu Ying chided, smiling.
‘Aha! Let the fireworks begin! You must have some news for us. Are you expecting again or something?’ Ah Xing said with an air of mock graciousness.
‘Not everyone is as happy-go-lucky as you, you little witch. Just look at the way you torture poor Li Xuewen! Lately I, Wu Ying, have been living the life of abstinence. I’m like a recently converted vegetarian, though I’ve known the taste of meat in times past. But I’ll be liberated soon. He’s finally agreed to the divorce,’ Wu Ying said.
‘That’s great! Congratulations!’
‘Yeah, Wu Ying, I think it’s for the best too.’
Ah Xing and Xiaohong expressed their support.
‘But he gets custody of Sparky. At the end of it all, he still wanted to stick a knife in my heart,’ Wu Ying said, sadly. Immediately, though, she smiled and added, ‘But never mind, I’m the one who gave birth to Sparky. Blood ties can’t be cut. And now I have a free hand to go and learn something new.’
Sure enough, not long afterwards, Wu Ying was like a young girl all over again. She had her hair cut into a fresh new look and started carrying a stylish black handbag. Released from the pressures of home, parenting and relationships, her back straightened and her chest thrust forward as if it had never cradled a suckling infant. With gusto, she pursued an affair. No one really knew what was going on inside of Wu Ying, except that she wanted to sow her wild oats. Wu Ying herself said, ‘I want to set out on a second spring!’ She was like a young chick. Bursting from the fragile shell of her broken marriage, she found herself in this new world with all sorts of opportunities lying before her. She started a computer training course at evening classes. Whatever enterprise she might eventually put her hand to, the chick was starting a journey of growth.
IV
Unless he is a peeping tom, a man can never know the various shapes of the seductive Venuses who fill the female portion of a public bath-house. Of course, he can picture them, but imagination is merely imagination. The open area outside of a public bathhouse, set aside for washing clothes, is as near to the bathhouse as it is to the imagination. There one may find many damp young women – legs bare below the knee and freshly clean arms exposed, clad in the fragrance of just-shampooed hair – their laughter and their jokes both dripping. Sometimes each of them was like a washer woman, humming as she pounds the clothes, breasts hanging freely in loose, open-collared pyjamas, inattentive, as she bends over her work, to the eye that might gaze through the neckline right down to her navel. If she does notice, she intentionally screams and pulls on the clothing of the one caught looking, casually fighting back with, ‘What’re you looking at? Don’t you have a pair of your own?’
Doing their laundry after they bathed was, for the girls at the Qianshan Hotel, the moment of greatest leisure. So they slowly washed their clothes, scrubbing away their exhaustion and troubles.
Ever since the occasion at the bathhouse when Julia Wilde, her great white breasts jiggling, spoke disparagingly about Sijiang’s two oranges, Sijiang stayed far away from the merriment of the showering area when it was crowded. She made a special point to avoid the place when Julia and Xiaohong and their big boobs met. If a mother has an ugly child, she might not mind commenting on it herself but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth if someone else says anything about it. Sijiang had never felt those two things had any significant impact on her, thinking of them no more than she did the pair of feet tucked away inside her shoes. She was not like Xiaohong and the rest, who might comfort themselves with an inspection of their breasts when they were bored, calling it a scientific investigation of the activity of tendons and blood. They touched them to feel the ecstasy, and as a way of showing off.
The bathhouse was an open bathing space. There was a long pipe, and water sprayed out from several lotus-shaped spouts high overhead, covering the women in a mist. Beneath each lotus, a devout group of followers always gathered to cleanse themselves. Sijiang looked the others over, noting which were alike and which were not. They were all familiar, and yet all strangers. She would always hide at the innermost tap to bathe, casually washing herself as she carefully watched the others. This sort of bathhouse could not be found just anywhere and this sort of scene was not enjoyed by just anyone. She saw clearly all of the naked bodies of the girls at the Qianshan, grasping all the specifics of the breast size and shape of each. Summarising the status of both breasts and people, Sijiang came to a conclusion: one’s fate lay in one’s breasts. She thought about her two little oranges and became frustrated by the road ahead of her.
The fate of Julia, Xiaohong and the others was not the fate of oranges. Sijiang just wanted understanding. Burying herself in her self-study materials, she turned the pages of the book until they were frayed and dirty.
When October came, Sijiang’s apple-shaped face had grown round. If someone who had not seen her in several months had bumped into her, they would certainly have been in for a surprise.
‘Hey Sijiang,’ Xiaohong said, ‘what’s got into you? Your eyes are looking really bright. If you could take a little flesh from your cheeks and move it to your boobs, it would be perfect. You can’t imagine the killer image you’d have then!’
As always, Xiaohong was at her most charming when she praised Sijiang.
V
When Wu Ying took over the bunk that had been vacated by Ah Xing, things in the dorm really livened up. Julia joked that it would soon be as bad as student quarters, saying, ‘Wu Ying, you’re a newly hatched chick and need to focus on getting your wings under you. This slutty little Xiaohong has, surprisingly, also registered for self-study exams. Every day, you’re both as serious as nuns, hitting the books as if you’re preparing for the imperial exam. You two, when you’re supposed to be studying, it’s OK to work hard. But when it’s time to go about flirting and enjoying a healthy sex life, you still work like dogs at your studies. There’s something really wrong with that! The way I see it, you should take this opportunity to earn some money, then go back to your hometown and open up a little shop or something. You’ll be all set,’ Julia said, her breasts quivering at an unbelievable rate as she spoke.
‘You little Jezebel, all you ever think about is your sex life. Sooner or later you’ll be worn out. Pick up a diploma, learn something new first then worry about your sex life. Who knows how different thi
ngs might be for you then. Look at Wu Ying. She got so worn out she finally left. Of course she knows what she should do with herself now.’ No one but Xiaohong would have dealt with Julia this way. Wu Ying’s mantra where Julia was concerned was simply, ‘You’re still young.’ It was her way of laughing things off.
In late October, Xiaohong, Sijiang and Wu Ying went into the exam hall in high spirits. Coming back to the dorm, Xiaohong was like a rooster that had just lost a cock fight, moaning, ‘That was so hard!’
Feeling depressed, she felt the sudden urge to find someone with whom she could have a frantic roll in the hay. When that was done, she could begin to regroup. She walked irritably to the Qianshan Hotel and went straight to Mr Pan’s office. He was flipping through a book when she went in. He immediately picked up his pen, assuming she had forms for him to sign.
‘Mr Pan, I’m here to see if I can borrow some books from you. I’m sure I didn’t do well on my exams this time round. My reading has been too narrow. Or, maybe not narrow, but I haven’t read anything with any real artistic or literary value.’
‘You’re doing the self-study exam? That’s excellent. What books do you want to borrow? Have a look for yourself.’
‘Why don’t you recommend something, sir?’
Mr Pan’s eyes lit up. ‘You really want to read?’
Xiaohong nodded fiercely.
Mr Pan, leading her into a small inner room lined with books, said, ‘Here are the literary works. You can choose anything you want from here.’
The windows of the study were stained the colour of tea, giving the light in the room a sort of dingy hue as if it had suddenly grown dark outside, creating in Xiaohong the sudden urge to go back to the dorm. She boldly turned her gaze to Mr Pan and was surprised to find a sort of perverted uncertainty there. She purposely moved closer to him, so close he could smell her breath. Then she pretentiously removed a book from the shelf, flipped through it and put it back. She did this four or five times, Mr Pan exhaling heavily through his nose as she did so. Xiaohong turned her head and saw Mr Pan standing with his eyes closed. It seemed he was struggling against his body’s desires, but at the same time, he looked like he was savouring the passion that was so close at hand. At last, Xiaohong closed the gap between them and gently touched his arm, moving her hands to his chest when he wrapped her in a tight embrace. He hesitated, as if deciding whether or not he should take Xiaohong. She’d already started removing his shirt, as if dismantling his last line of defence. At first, they stood leaning against the bookcase, then crashed down onto the carpet. It would be fair to say that Xiaohong managed her manager quite well.