The Dark Road

by Ma Jian

  Their new home is directly opposite the illegal migrant school. It’s an ugly tin shack, but at least it’s watertight and windproof. In the yard outside is a barren durian tree whose bare branches are hung with damp laundry and bags of washing powder. Nannan found a dusty felt flower on the road the other day and has stuck it on the end of a branch. If it were an osmanthus tree, Meili would almost feel she were back in her parents’ house. She has discovered from the red journal that osmanthus was also Suya’s favourite flower. The shack and school are surrounded on three sides by abandoned fields fenced with the redundant glass interiors of dismantled televisions. Ten years ago, before the farmers turned to the e-waste business, these were well-irrigated rice fields, but apart from a few scattered plots cultivated with celery or taro, they are now overgrown with wild grasses and morning glories. Heaven Township can be seen to the north, its squat houses dwarfed by ancient trees. The air smells mostly of manure and grass, and the chemical odours are much less pronounced.

  The migrant school is in a fertiliser warehouse at the other end of Meili’s washing line. The rent is cheap, as the area is low-lying and liable to flood. Last year in the rainy season, waters from Womb Lake flowed through here towards the sea, laden with timber and burnt plastic. Meili hopes that after one more year of hard work, they can move to an apartment in the centre of town, bring her parents to live with them and pay for her mother to be treated in Heaven Hospital. Her cancer has spread, and the rural hospitals are unable to perform the complicated operation she needs. The warehouse is only just large enough to seat the school’s fifty pupils. If government inspectors turn up, the children escape through the back door and hide in the fields. During the nationwide clampdown on illegal schools last year, the teachers put the students on a rented bus and drove them into the countryside, giving lessons as they went.

  At eight in the morning, the children stroll into the warehouse singing a Hong Kong pop song: ‘Neither fragrant like a flower, nor tall like a tree, I’m just a blade of grass that people walk past. Nobody knows it’s me . . .’ Meili drops her mobile phone into her bag, looks into the mirror hanging from the durian tree, applies a coat of lipstick, then steps into her kitten-heeled shoes and heads off to work up the road that runs along the river. It’s Spring Festival next week, and before the holiday starts, she wants to sell off the company’s excess stock of transistors, inductors and resistors. A small factory in Hubei has become an important client. The manager is one of the Wang Suyas with whom she formed an online friendship. This woman always sends cash payment before consignments are dispatched, and has even promised to travel down to Heaven with her five-year-old daughter to pay Meili a visit.

  Through the morning mist rising from the river, Meili sees a Bureau of Industry and Commerce van parked further ahead. She turns on her heels, goes to a nearby kiosk and tries to phone the headmaster of the migrant school, Mr Sun, but he’s teaching an elementary maths class and has switched off his mobile phone. She phones Kongzi, but he’s asleep, so she pulls off her shoes, returns to the school as swiftly as she can and tells Mr Sun to take the children out into the fields and hide them in the irrigation channels. As the children file out, she pushes the school bags, exercise books and lunch boxes into a corner and covers them with a black sheet. Then she goes into the yard and rakes out a pile of plastic granules so that the inspectors assume this is an e-waste warehouse. When Kongzi wakes up, she tells him to join the children in the fields.

  Mr Sun reappears in a flustered state. ‘Can you take the morning off work today and help us out, Meili? I’ve ordered a bus. Go to the intersection and flag it down. Here’s the driver’s business card.’

  When Kongzi ushers the children onto the clean bus, he wishes he’d had time to put on his usual suit and tie. The children glance at his mud-splattered shorts and dirty flip-flops, and smirk. He’s due to teach a maths class and two literacy classes this morning, but he has no textbooks with him, nor do most of the children.

  ‘Keep going,’ Meili tells the driver, pointing the way with her left hand, which she quickly hides in her pocket, embarrassed by the missing finger. ‘Just stick to the quiet roads.’ Then she looks over her shoulder at the children, saying, ‘How about I teach you a song?’ The children cheer and clap. ‘All right. This one’s called “Waking from a Dream”. It’s the theme tune for a new TV series you might have seen: I remember you describing Heaven to me, drawing the outline of a house with your finger . . .’ Her phone rings. She presses the answer button. ‘Yes, I’m the general manager,’ she says. ‘Fine. I’ll send my assistant to inspect the goods at midday. And remember, we want hard box packaging . . .’

  The bus drives on through a string of quiet villages. Poplars, willows and telegraph poles slice through the view outside the window. When a fresh breeze blows into the bus, Meili knows they’ve left Heaven Township behind. The bus stops at the edge of the next village. Apart from two figures in the distance and the aerials swaying on the roofs, everything is still. A pale blue banner proclaiming NEW TRENDS IN MARRIAGE AND PROCREATION SPREAD THROUGH THE NATION; FLOWERS OF JOY BLOOM IN EVERY HOUSEHOLD hangs from one end of the village to the other. The long empty road makes Meili nervous. She tells the driver to carry on and stop at the crossroads so that if the police turn up, they’ll be able to escape.

  Kongzi stands at the front of the bus, opens a textbook he’s borrowed from a child and says, ‘Turn to Lesson 18, please, and let’s read out the story at the bottom of the page. Altogether now: “The Raincoat. Late one night, Premier Zhou Enlai was working feverishly by candlelight when suddenly there was a clap of thunder and a heavy rain began to fall. He immediately ordered his maid to take a raincoat to the man guarding the gate. The maid draped the coat over the guard’s shoulders and said: ‘Premier Zhou asked me to give this to you, and to remind you that one must never stand under a tree during a thunderstorm.’ The guard was so moved by the premier’s thoughtfulness that he didn’t know what to say.”’ Kongzi returns the textbook to the child and says, ‘Right children, make a list of the new vocabulary.’

  Two hours later, the bus turns round and heads back to the school. Meili kneels on her seat and says, ‘Don’t worry, students. We should be back soon, so you won’t miss lunch.’ Smells of nitric acid from a workshop outside flow in through the open window.

  ‘Auntie Meili, how come you still haven’t given birth to your baby?’ asks a boy at the front who has a worm-like bogey dangling from his nose. ‘Nannan told me it’s been inside you for four years.’ A yellow-clawed eagle is embroidered on the front pocket of his red coat.

  ‘I’m waiting for the baby to become legal, so that it can get a residence permit,’ she says, thinking on her feet. ‘Otherwise it will be like you lot, and won’t be allowed to attend a proper school.’ She’s wearing jeans, a red-and-white-striped shirt and gold earrings today. If she had glasses on, she’d look like a teacher of a government primary school.

  Lulu is sitting next to Nannan. She raises her unblinking goldfish eyes to Meili and says, ‘My dad told me my residence permit is fake. Does that mean I won’t be able to go to university in Beijing?’

  ‘What’s the point of us studying, Teacher Kong, if none of us will be allowed to go to university?’ says a chubby boy with hair neatly parted down the middle.

  ‘I want to be a judge when I grow up, and sentence all the family planning officials to death,’ says a small boy at the back wearing a blue jacket with a broken zip.

  ‘Don’t worry, students,’ Kongzi says. ‘Mr Sun has applied for authorisation from the Education Department, so with any luck, our migrant school will soon be legal.’

  ‘Teacher Kong, did Confucius get into as much trouble as us when he set up his own schools?’ asks a girl with a ponytail, her small eyes darting behind her overgrown fringe.

  ‘Back then, Confucius was an unofficial teacher, just like me,’ Kongzi says with a smile, ‘but he wasn’t treated like a criminal. Anyone could set up their own school. Thi
ngs may be very different now, but we mustn’t lose heart. Every child deserves an education, whether they’re recognised by the state or not. We must assert our rights, or this country will never change.’

  ‘Yes, students, our paths are made as we tread them,’ Meili says, rising to her feet. ‘We must have the courage to strike out on our own and challenge injustices. On the internet, more and more people are daring to voice criticisms of the One Child Policy. The government is launching campaigns telling young couples that girls are as good as boys – that shows they’re aware of the millions of baby girls that have been killed because of their evil policies.’

  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!’