by Xinran
In the bathroom, Five washed her face and gave her hair a special wash with Mei Mei’s shampoo. Mei Mei had two bottles for her hair: the shampoo and one that she said was called ‘conditioner’. Five had never worked out how to use this second bottle. Were you supposed to put it on before or after washing your hair, and did you rinse it out afterwards? She would look longingly at the pretty bottle wishing she knew how to read so that she could understand the instructions.
When Five had first arrived, she had asked the head of the dormitory, Mei Mei, whenever she didn’t understand something. To her distress, one day Mei Mei had yawned and said, ‘Five, can’t you save up your questions and ask them all at the same time? Otherwise I won’t get any sleep, let alone do any work.’
It was natural to Five that Mei Mei should be annoyed and she tried to stop pestering her. After all, her family always complained about how slow she was, and how she asked too many questions. Even so, Mei Mei continued to help Five whenever she had a spare moment and Five felt truly grateful. In order to repay her kindness, Five asked Engineer Wu to take her to a shop so that she could buy Mei Mei some shampoo. She spent half an hour wandering the aisles of the supermarket until she found a bottle that looked the same as Mei Mei’s and took it proudly the counter. It didn’t occur to her to buy one for herself – she had never bought herself anything – and so she carried on using Mei Mei’s shampoo whenever she needed to wash her hair.
Back in the dormitory, Five got dressed as quietly as she could. She put on the clothes she had worn to come to the city. They were her favourites: a bright orange top and sea-green nylon trousers. The other girls at the Water Centre kept going on about how these clothes made her ‘look like a hick’, and the colours ‘clashed horribly’, but Five didn’t care. She saw that other migrant workers tried to fit in with city people by buying clothes in the duller colours they liked – or in red, which in the country was only worn at festival time – but she wasn’t going to spend money changing her wardrobe. She wanted to save all her earnings for her mother and, besides, she liked her clothes. People who had never been to the countryside didn’t know how beautiful it was to see girls dressed in brightly coloured clothes working in the grey, barren fields in winter, or standing out amidst the flowers in summer. So, when the girls teased her, she didn’t try to argue with them. She knew they all thought she was an idiot, so she followed her mother’s advice: ‘Don’t open your mouth and no one can take advantage of you, no matter how clever they are.’
It had taken three weeks for the girls to find a way to see each other all at the same time. Three, whose day off was Monday, had been to see Six a couple of times. Since the Book Taster’s Teahouse had only just opened, Six was allowed to choose which day of the week she would like to take off and she would meet up with Three just outside the teahouse and spend the rest of the day walking around the area. However, Five had not realised that employees of the Dragon Water-Culture Centre had any say about their free day, and so had simply nodded when Auntie Wang suggested that hers might be Wednesday. This would give Five two days to restock medicines that had been used over the busy weekend, and then a further two days to prepare for the next weekend. Although Three had tried to visit Five twice on a Monday, the receptionists hadn’t let her in because it wasn’t permitted to disturb the employees during their shifts. As for Six, she didn’t have enough knowledge of Nanjing to visit Five by herself. Fortunately Engineer Wu had looked after Five. Wednesday was his day off too and, since he didn’t have a family, he had spent time showing her the city. Five worried about what would happen if there was a problem with the pumps or pools while Engineer Wu wasn’t there, but he assured her that he made thorough checks on Monday and Tuesday: if there was a minor problem they could always shut down one of the pools for that day.
Three wouldn’t have dreamed of telling her employers that she was having difficulty meeting up with her sisters. In fact she didn’t even mention to Wang Tong that Five and Six had come to Nanjing until it came up in the course of a conversation. ‘But, Three,’ Wang Tong had exclaimed, ‘why didn’t you say something? Let’s change your day off to Wednesday so that you can spend time with your family.’ Once again, Three had been surprised by Wang Tong’s kindness. She hadn’t expected city employers to be so lenient.
Five was bursting to tell her sisters everything that had happened to her. As soon as she was dressed, she rushed out and stood beside the huge dragon’s mouth in the street to wait for them. The green girl saw her standing there and suggested she come and wait in the reception area, but she didn’t dare sit on the expensive sofas. The green girl laughed and said she was being foolish: if she didn’t sit there, lots of other people would come and wear the sofas out; she would be saving her employers money. But Five was determined to wait outside. She only began to regret her decision when, after two hours, her sisters still hadn’t appeared. Half past ten came and went, and even Manager Shui, who was always the last person to arrive in the mornings, had walked through the entrance, stopping briefly to chat to Five. Soon afterwards, Three and Six came running towards her, panting. Although they, too, had got up early, it had taken several bus journeys for Three to collect Six and bring her to the Dragon Water-Culture Centre.
Three was wearing her uniform: a red T-shirt and black trousers with two white stripes down the sides. Six had on a pretty wool dress that had been given to her by Meng. Five was astounded to see how elegant her younger sister had become after just a few weeks in the city. She wasn’t the only one to be surpised: Six gasped when she saw her.
‘Aiya,’ she cried. ‘How did Five’s skin get to be so lovely and pale?’
Three was just as eager to know about Five’s new life. ‘Who was the man with the big gut you were talking to just now?’ she asked.
Five was about to answer when the two sisters began assailing her with so many questions that she could hardly get a word in edgeways.
‘This dragon’s mouth is huge. How big is the building inside? What do they do in there?’
‘What are the other people like?’
‘Where do you live? Are you settling in all right? What do you eat?’
‘Is your boss nice?’
‘Listen,’ Five shouted, ‘I’ve been standing here for more than two hours waiting for you. Can’t you keep your questions for later? Are we going somewhere or aren’t we? Three, back home you said that you’d take us to try those famous Yangzi Delta sticky rice balls when we got to the city. Are you going back on your word?’
‘Going back on my word? I like that! Aren’t you in a hurry … OK then, come on. Follow me.’
Three led her sisters onto a crowded bus where they were all immediately separated in the crush. Standing on tiptoes to try and locate her sisters, Three screeched out instructions about where they should get off.
‘Six, it’s Confucius Temple. Five, did you hear that? Listen carefully to the loudspeaker announcements. When you get to South Tai … Ping … Road push your way to the door, but don’t get off there. Wait till Con … fu … cius Temple, and be quick getting off otherwise you won’t be able to get out. Do you hear?’
‘Yes!’ Five and Six shouted in reply.
The other passengers on the bus were annoyed by the noise the sisters were making and all began shouting at once:
‘Oi, be quiet. You’re not in the fields now!’
‘Are you training to be a station announcer or what?’
‘If you don’t even know how to take a bus, what are you doing in the city?’
‘Give them a break,’ someone else said. ‘They aren’t the only ones who know how to shout!’
‘Hey, don’t you give me that righteous indignation. Go and sow your seeds of compassion somewhere else …’
Before long, a full-scale argument had broken out in the bus. Three and Six were terrified and held their breath until they reached their stop. Five was more relaxed. She had no idea what anyone was talking about and was simply worried that the noise wo
uld prevent her from hearing when her stop was announced. Eventually the bus arrived at the Confucius Temple stop and the sisters spilled out on to the pavement with relief.
After two years in Nanjing, Three wasn’t intimidated by the colourful pedestrianised streets near the Confucius Temple, with their shops and restaurants, but Five and Six were amazed by what they saw. Around the ancient temple complex, all sorts of people were milling about, eating food as they walked along and crowding round the stalls of the many street vendors who kept up a constant, noisy patter. Three told her sisters that, during the time of the emperors, anyone who wanted to enter into imperial service would have to come to the Confucius Temple to take an examination; this was why parents still came to the temple to light candles when their children had exams. Great and important families had made their homes around the temple, she said, but she preferred the little lanes where you could still see the old, traditional houses that poor people lived in. ‘Those houses aren’t much to look at in the cold months,’ she said, ‘but you wait until later in the spring. The courtyards will be full of flowers.’
By this point, Five was more interested in her stomach than in flowers. ‘Where’s this food you talked about?’ she asked, worried that Six, whose eye had been drawn by the little boats plying back and forth on the river, would lead them away from the lanes of exciting-looking restaurants and take-aways. Engineer Wu had told her that, although many of the restaurants near the river were for the big bosses, who would sit in splendour and listen to the splash of oars in the water while their wine glowed in the lamplight, there were lots of takeaways for ordinary people. There, for a few yuan, you could sample all the specialities of Nanjing: duck-blood soup, bean-flour noodles, crispy ‘money cakes’ coated in honey and sesame and, in summer, a bowl of refreshing bean jelly seasoned with spices.
Three laughed at her hungry sister. ‘Don’t worry,’ she reassured her. ‘It’s always easy to find food here.’ And she led Five and Six along the lanes, pointing out the various specialities of the different restaurants and teaching them about Nanjing food in the same way that Wang Tong had taught her when she had first arrived. Five’s eyes were like saucers when she saw the array of local delicacies: flat-cakes fried in duck fat, steamed dumplings filled with vegetables, dried tofu with tiny shrimps, spring-onion seedcakes and as many different types of sticky rice ball as you could think of … Three told her how young girls in Nanjing adored eating wangjidan, an egg boiled with a half-developed embryo inside, because they thought it kept them healthy and beautiful. They spotted several girls squatting on the pavement beside a wangjidan- vendor’s stove, plucking the fine floss of feathers off the embryo before dipping their eggs in salt and pepper and wolfing them down.
Three bought some snacks, and took her sisters towards the river in search of a place to sit down. Soon they came to a stone bridge, which she said was called Half-Moon Bridge.
‘Why Half-Moon?’ Five asked.
‘Oh, I know this,’ said Six. ‘I’ve read about it. It’s called Half-Moon because if you stand on the bridge on the night of the fifteenth day of the eleventh month, when the moon is at its height, you’ll see the reflection of the bridge and exactly half the moon no matter which side you stand on. I think the bridge has another name. Something like “The Separation of Culture and Virtue” – two things which of course are supposed to be indivisible like the moon.’
Five looked at her sister in bewilderment. ‘Doesn’t Nanjing have the same moon as us?’
‘It’s the same moon all over the world,’ said Three in exasperation. ‘It’s just that the bridge has been made in a clever way to cut the moon in two.’
Five was still confused. ‘How long does it take for the moon to grow back together once it’s been cut in two?’ she asked.
‘Aiya, you’re the limit!’ said Six. ‘The moon is never actually broken. The bridge makes it look as if it is …’
‘Don’t worry about it, Five,’ said Three more kindly. ‘When it comes to the fifteenth of the eleventh we’ll bring you here and show you. Then you’ll see.’
‘Come on, eat while you’re talking, or else you’ll be on at me for not keeping my word,’ said Three.
The three girls sat down at a stone table beside the Half-Moon Bridge, and Three produced several skewers of stinky tofu fritters, some Suzhou sticky rice balls, and a bag of crispy dried turnips.
‘Hm, this smelly tofu fritter isn’t as good as the Tofu Lady’s,’ said Six, biting a lump of tofu off her skewer. ‘OK, Five. Now you’ve got food in front of you, answer our questions and tell us who the man with the big gut was …’
‘He’s our General Manager. Everyone calls him Manager Shui. He’s a really good guy. Three, I want a rice ball, which is nicest?’
Three pushed some rice balls towards Five and then chose a skewer of tofu for herself saying it was best eaten hot. ‘In what way is your Manager Shui a good guy?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know … He’s just good. I mean, he doesn’t talk to me in a cold way like other city people, and he’s never scolded me, or told me I can’t do the job …’
The rice ball in Five’s hand hovered at her mouth as she tried to describe Manager Shui’s good qualities.
‘Are people cold to you?’ Three asked Five in concern. She was used to city people being rude to her in the restaurant, but she didn’t like to think of her vulnerable younger sister being treated in such a way.
‘How else would they be?’ said Five. ‘Everyone in the village treats me that way. Why would city people be different?’
‘Can’t you do something about it?’ asked Six, who had also stopped eating.
‘Do what? Put up with it, that’s what. Doesn’t our mum say that the fewer things in life you have to worry about the better? You just have to keep going and things will turn out all right in the end if you’re tough about it.’
‘Well, what work do you do?’ asked Six, biting off a second tofu fritter.
‘I’m called an “assistant”. It’s a bit like what Four does at home: passing Mum and Dad things when they need them and generally lending a hand. So, what’s your job like?’
‘I asked you about yours first … Why’s it called a “Water-Culture Centre”? What’s water got to do with culture?’
Five was flabbergasted that her educated sister didn’t know this and she did.
‘How come you’ve never read about it in books?’
‘I’ve not read every book there is!’ Six said grumpily. ‘Well? Explain to us …’
‘Engineer Wu says that knowing how to put herbal medicines into pools to make people well is an art, and is part of what’s called “Culture”.’
‘But how does the business make money?’ Six asked, finishing off the last morsel of tofu.
‘People pay to come and bathe in the water …’
‘Bathe? What, you mean with no clothes on?’ Both Three and Six gaped at their sister, open-mouthed.
‘I know. I was shocked too. The first time I saw a customer wearing nothing but a little pair of pants I nearly died of fright. I hid in the office, and I was too scared to come out for ages.’
‘Then, later on you were all right?’ Three was filled with anxiety. She had heard about how some country girls were dragged into dirty behaviour when they came to the city. Perhaps, because of her, Five would be lost for ever …
‘It’s not like that,’ said Five. ‘At first I thought it was, but then the head of my department, who we all call Auntie Wang, showed me a book about it with pictures. There were lots of proper doctors in that book …’
Six was amazed. She had never imagined that her stupid sister could cope with such a situation, let alone explain it with clarity. She found herself looking at Five with new eyes. ‘So, if there are doctors, why do the people bathe?’ she asked.
‘If you two interrupt me again I won’t say,’ said Five crossly. ‘The clients soak in different types of medicine for an hour, then they wash away the medicin
e with fresh water, and then they go to something called a “treatment room” to have a massage. Some of the masseurs work on their bodies, others on their feet. My friend Mei Mei’s the best foot masseur and she told me all about it. She says you can make all of a person feel better through their foot. She showed me a picture of how the soles of our left and right feet are connected to our whole body – stomach and everything. She’s a miracle worker. She can tell what’s wrong with someone just by placing her hands on their feet, and she can cure them too. Engineer Wu says she gets it right twenty times out of twenty.’ Five stuffed a rice ball into her mouth.
‘Do they give you enough to eat?’ asked Six.
‘Oh yes, there’s food at every meal, you can come back for seconds too. At first I was really packing it away, but after a bit I stopped because I saw that nobody else was asking for more. In fact, some people were even leaving food. I didn’t want people to laugh at me for being a greedy pig.’
‘Aiya, but you must get hungry!’ cried Three who had never had a moment’s hunger at the Happy Fool and was worried about her sister.
‘Of course I get hungry! I got stars in my eyes at first, and my legs were like cotton wool, but after a while I got used to it. My country girl’s stomach must be as small as a city girl’s by now.’
Three and Six burst out laughing at their foolish sister’s belief that she could become like a city girl just by eating less.
‘Don’t laugh! Why are you always laughing at me? If any of the clients laugh at me, Auntie Wang or Engineer Wu speaks up for me.’