Mountain Girl River Girl

by Ting-Xing Ye

  Shui-lian blinked, licking her parched lips. She opened her mouth to speak but changed her mind. She was afraid she might not have enough money to get to Beijing.

  “Don’t worry,” Pan-pan said, as if reading her friend’s mind. “I’ve saved enough for both of us.”

  “All right. Let’s do it. I promise to pay you back the train fare,” said Shui-lian, a weak smile appearing on her face, the first since the accident. With some effort, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Let’s pack up and get out of this place.”

  SHORTLY AFTER the shift ended, Fang-yuan rushed into the dorm, hot and sweaty, a white ring left by perspiration around her shirt collar. Most of the other women had already flopped onto their bunks and sat fanning themselves as they chatted.

  Fang-yuan stood before Pan-pan, hands on hips. “Is it true that you were both fired?” she asked.

  “No,” Pan-pan replied calmly. “We quit.”

  The bamboo fans ceased flapping and the conversations died. All eyes fixed upon Pan-pan.

  “You what?” Fang-yuan exclaimed, blinking in disbelief. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “She’s not,” Shui-lian put in. “I was fired, she’s quitting.”

  “What happened?” another woman asked from the end of the room as the fans resumed their rhythms. “What did Ah-Wu have to say about that?”

  Pan-pan repeated what she had told Shui-lian, but left out the part about her and Shui-lian not being cousins.

  “Animals,” a third woman spat. “How could anyone be so heartless? Throwing an injured girl out on the street. How can they get away with it? It’s a pity labour unions no longer speak for the workers of this country. What we need is—”

  “Maybe we can all go to talk to Ah-Wu,” Fang-yuan interrupted. “He should realize you two are good workers.”

  “It’s kind of you, Fang-yuan,” said Pan-pan with emotion. “But Ah-Wu has made up his mind. And so have we.” She paused for a second, shifting her eyes to Shui-lian, who was trying to zip up her bag with her good hand. “And we, or rather I, haven’t been totally honest with you. We told you on our first day here that we were cousins.”

  Fang-yuan smiled. “I remember. And I got mad at you.”

  “Well, we aren’t related. She’s from Sichuan, and I’m from Guizhou. The recruiter advised us not to say she was Sichuanese. But it turns out Ah-Wu knew the truth all along.”

  Elder Sister Meng, who had dropped by the dorm to say goodbye, asked, “And he used this against you?”

  Pan-pan nodded. “You could say that.”

  “But, Pan-pan, you’re giving up your job because someone who is not even related to you got fired?” another woman chimed in.

  Fang-yuan turned to the speaker. “It’s called sacrifice.”

  “I wouldn’t use that word,” Pan-pan said, eyeing Shui-lian, who had finally managed to close the bag. “The way I see it, we came here together and we’re leaving as a pair as well.”

  “But where will you go?” Elder Sister Meng asked again. “Home?”

  “Not home,” said Shui-lian quickly. “We’re off to the capital. Pan-pan has a contact there. We’re going to find her—and better jobs than this.”

  “You are both brave girls,” Elder Sister Meng commented, smiling. Bending over, she dragged an empty washbasin from under a bunk. Before she set it on the floor in front of her, she dropped in a twenty-yuan note.

  “Man zou—go with care,” she said softly, then left the room.

  By the time Pan-pan and Shui-lian were ready to leave, the basin was more than half full of crumpled bills. After a final goodbye to everyone in the dorm, and one last look at the bare bunk, they headed toward the door.

  “Wait!” someone called out.

  It was Fang-yuan. She gave each of the two friends a bone-crushing hug. “Goodbye, cousins,” she said, smiling, her eyes brimming with tears.

  TWO GUARDS, leaning against the door frame of the hut, watched them approach. One frowned; the other just shrugged his shoulders. The guards saw workers coming and going all the time. While all the new arrivals brought different dreams and expectations, every departing worker acted more or less the same, crushed and defeated. Many had to be hauled out of their dorms, dragged across the compound, and thrown out the door, their belongings tossed after them over the closed gate.

  But the scene they were witnessing today was something entirely different. One of the girls had a dirty sling on her chest. There were no tears, or angry shouts. They looked almost triumphant as they walked past the gatehouse. They didn’t stop or turn their heads when the gate was pushed shut with a loud clunk.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When Shui-lian opened her eyes, she saw, through the train window, the pale light of early morning illuminating the landscape. Trucks and carts drawn by horses and donkeys were lined up at the rail crossings as the train sped past, its horn a long, mournful cry. Gradually, the orderly cultivated fields yielded to paved roads that grew wider and longer by the minute. In the distance, the roads appeared in stacks, one on top of another. A few merged with the sky at the horizon. Shui-lian realized that these must be the freeways Pan-pan had talked about, like the one that her father had been labouring on for years. Alongside the tracks, the simple, sparse dwellings gave way to tall buildings that kept growing larger and soaring higher.

  Then the train began to slow down, reducing its speed to that of a turtle as it crawled to a halt. “Beijing Central Station!” the conductor declared.

  Slinging their bedrolls onto their backs and their canvas bags across their shoulders, Pan-pan and Shui-lian stepped down from the train and trailed after a stream of passengers toward the exit. The air was hot and dry. Their plastic sandals felt like dough, warm and soft against their bare soles as they moved along the sun-baked platform and into the station. Finally, they stopped in the centre of an enormous circular hall, where they were surrounded by the echoing din of thousands of voices and moving feet. Dozens of large colour-TV monitors mounted on the walls showed not pictures but lines of text.

  Pan-pan put down her bedroll, leaning it against her leg. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her shirt sleeve, letting her eyes devour everything in front of her: the smooth, shining marble floor that must feel cool and heavenly if she were allowed to lie on it; the giant lamps dangling in the corners, suspended from the towering ceiling—lamps that could brighten the entire place like the crystal palace at the bottom of the Eastern Sea, she thought, recalling a fairy tale she had loved hearing her mother tell.

  Shui-lian’s wandering eyes fixed on a pair of moving staircases, one carrying people up, the other bringing them down—all so effortlessly—and probably a lot of fun. From the look of it, the ride was free. She pulled Pan-pan along beside her to the moving steps. They rode, laughing, up and down three times before they reluctantly got off and headed for the station’s main exit.

  Out in the square, Pan-pan reminded herself that they had better ask how to get to Sun Ming’s place or they might end up having nowhere to spend the night and the days to come. After a furious discussion, in which Shui-lian wouldn’t give in to Pan-pan’s suggestion that they look for a policeman, Shui-lian pointed to a middle-aged woman shouting at the top of her lungs, selling maps.

  “How about her?”

  “One yuan,” the woman said to Shui-lian, peeling a sheet from a thick stack draped over her outstretched forearm.

  “Fine, Auntie,” Pan-pan answered before Shui-lian had a chance to, reaching inside her pocket. “But first, could you help us find a certain street? We’re new in Beijing.”

  “Tell me quick,” the woman grumbled. “I have to sell a hundred of these maps a day, the entire stack, to make a profit.”

  “It’s Chaoyangmen—Chao-yang Gate,” Pan-pan said without hesitation, for she had memorized that part of Sun Ming’s address long ago.

  “Aiya, typical wai-di-ren,” the map-seller cried out. Wai-di-ren referred to someone who wasn’t a local, but
Pan-pan knew it could be a put-down, meaning a country bumpkin. As soon as she saw Shui-lian’s face darken, a prelude to an outburst, she grabbed her elbow. Quickly she added, “Please help us.”

  “Whereabouts on Chaoyangmen?” the woman demanded impatiently. “There are lots of places named after the Gate of the Rising Sun. First of all, there’s Chaoyangmen District. As for the streets, there are Inner Chaoyangmen Avenue and Outer Chaoyangmen Avenue, Northern Chaoyangmen Road and Southern Chaoyangmen Road. So which one are you looking for?”

  When she saw Pan-pan take a piece of paper out of her bag, the woman snatched it from her hand. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she sighed.

  “You know where it is?” Pan-pan chirped anxiously, her eyes flashing. “I hope it’s not too far.”

  “I know where it is all right, or should I say, where it used to be.”

  “What do you mean?” Shui-lian cut in finally. “It’s a place, not a piece of ice that may have melted on a hot day like this. The street couldn’t have just disappeared, could it?”

  “It has disappeared, young woman. Don’t you understand what’s happening in this city?” The map-seller raised her voice again, but this time Shui-lian could tell that the woman’s anger was not directed at her. Tapping Sun Ming’s address with her finger, the map-seller went on. “The whole area was levelled not long ago to build fancy hotels. Now the damned Olympics!” she spat. “Ever since the announcement, everything in the city is subjected to the Olympic Games. When the time comes, the government wants to pretend to the rest of the world that China is as rich as the West.”

  The woman rattled on, not realizing that most of her words, in particular the reference to the Olympics, were going straight over Shui-lian’s head.

  “But what happened to the people who used to live there?” Pan-pan asked when the map-seller finally decided to catch a breath. “We don’t care about what’s going on there. We just want to find this person.”

  “Gone,” the woman replied, lashing her free hand into the air.

  “Gone?” Pan-pan stumbled. “Where? All of them? Are you sure? How…?”

  “If you don’t believe me, go check it out yourself,” the woman scolded and began to shout. “Map! Get your Beijing map!”

  “Wait, Auntie. At least tell us how to get there,” Pan-pan pleaded. All the expectations she had harboured since she decided to leave the factory were threatening to evaporate.

  “That’s what the map’s for!” the woman snapped. Shaking her head, she took a pen out of her pocket and circled an intersection within a maze of crisscrossed lanes on Pan-pan’s map. “Here’s where we are.” She then moved the tip of the pen upward and drew a square over a web of thin lines. “Here’s the area where your relative lives, or used to. These thin lines are hu-tongs, the residential alleyways. Most are gone now. Some are still being demolished. You’ll see for yourself.” She pointed north with her free hand, and her voice softened. “Walk straight and pass …” she stopped, looking up at a hazy sky and counting in murmurs, “pass seven, maybe eight streets, I’m not sure anymore. Anyway, you won’t miss it. It’s the second wide street next to Changan Avenue. Cross on your left and walk a few more blocks before heading north again. Aiya, why am I telling you all this? It’s a wasteland now. A ruin. You can’t miss it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Fifteen minutes later, after saying goodbye to the cranky map-seller, Pan-pan and Shui-lian reached Changan Avenue, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, the widest road either of them had ever clapped eyes on. Pan-pan peered in both directions, wondering how on earth a road could be so long and flat—and so straight, without a single turn or twist as far as her eyes could see. Standing on tiptoe, Shui-lian, too, craned her neck, gazing up and down the spacious boulevard that was broader than some of the rivers in Sichuan. Yet all six lanes were jam-packed with moving vehicles, all zipping past like blowing wind, all in a great hurry.

  But nothing was as strange or scary as the discovery that there was no means to cross the thoroughfare. Each corner of the sidewalk was fenced off by metal bars. If it hadn’t been for a kind old man who directed them to an underground passage, Pan-pan and Shui-lian would have been stranded there for a long time. When they re-emerged on the north side of the boulevard, Pan-pan stopped to check the map and realized that the famous Tiananmen Square was only blocks away. So was the Forbidden City, the residence of the Chinese emperors and their families that her mother had talked about so often when Pan-pan was a child. Thinking about her mother, Pan-pan was engulfed by an aching homesickness. After almost three months of living in a walled compound, Beijing’s busy streets, the towering buildings, and the throngs of people made her yearn for her village and her home in Guizhou, for Ah-Po’s cooking, even Xin-Ma’s chirpiness, and the shrieks of little Gui-yang. In the past three months she had written home twice and received one letter from Xin-Ma, which she had kept from Shui-lian, as her friend had heard nothing from her family in Sichuan. Pan-pan planned to write again as soon as she located Sun Ming. The last time she heard from them, her half-brother was learning to talk. By now he had probably become a chatterbox like his mother. The rising heat and constant din that wrapped around her like a thick blanket also stirred memories of cool mountain air, even in the midst of summer, and tranquility. The twisting trails and footpaths she had disliked for as long as she could remember seemed enchanting now.

  As she and Shui-lian plodded wordlessly along the hot pavement, Pan-pan didn’t want to think about where they would spend the night if they failed to find Sun Ming. Nevertheless, the worry hung in her mind and refused to leave.

  Beside her, Shui-lian paused to loosen the shoulder straps of her bedroll. It was getting heavier, leaving a large soggy patch on her back. As she trudged along beside Pan-pan, she didn’t understand how Beijing—Northern Capital—could be this hot. She wished there was a river nearby, even a pond, that she could jump into to cool herself, as she had often done as a child. And she was thirsty and hungry. The throbbing pain from her wound and the insistent buzzing of cicadas in the trees made her head spin. She wished time would stop. If she were alone, she would plunk herself down right in the middle of the sidewalk, stretch out, close her eyes, and try to ignore the heat, the noise, and the endless flow of people.

  Following the map, Pan-pan led Shui-lian onto Inner Chaoyangmen Avenue. A few blocks farther west they crossed the road onto North Chaoyangmen Road. Immediately they found themselves facing a field of ruins. It looked as though an earthquake had struck, with the piles of debris, mounds of broken bricks and clay roof tiles, heaps of severed wooden posts and beams. Like battered curbs, the wall foundations mapped a whole neighbourhood of single-storey houses, courtyards, and hu-tongs that had once existed. Two giant yellow machines were working in the distance, growling and puffing black smoke. Each was armed with a long steel claw, slowly yet determinedly clearing the ground. A mere touch of the claw, it appeared, and everything standing in its way was toppled, as though the clay and brick structures as well as the concrete walls were all made of toy blocks. Clouds of dust rose and mingled with the quivering heat, tangling and dancing together. It was a scene of desolation and despair, a ghost town under a bright sunny sky, a sharp contrast with what they’d just witnessed: the vast tree-lined boulevards, the glittering glass and steel high-rises and apartment buildings.

  As she looked about, Pan-pan felt anxious and confused. How could a neighbourhood vanish? The area was, by the look of it, at least several times larger than her village, and had been home to so many people, including Sun Ming. Where were they? They couldn’t have just disappeared like the swirling dust. Even dust, Pan-pan thought, would eventually have to settle somewhere.

  Pan-pan felt overcome by desperation. Where would she start her search for Sun Ming? She had failed Shui-lian again, dragged her all the way north to this wasteland. Another futile mission, like fetching water in a bamboo basket. First the factory, now this. By the look of it, Sun Ming could be anywhere, maybe
not even in the city anymore. Pan-pan didn’t have a clue where to go from here, nor enough money to go home even if she and Shui-lian wanted to.

  “Everything’s gone,” she said. “It’s hopeless!”

  “Look, Pan-pan,” said Shui-lian, pointing into the sun. “What about that house?”

  As a hot breeze parted the dust, a low wall, then the house behind it, came into view. The house’s black clay tile roof was still intact. Shielding her eyes against the sun with her hand, Pan-pan squinted harder and saw a chimney.

  “Good,” she said with relief. “It looks like people still live there. Let’s go and see.”

  Gingerly, they picked their way forward, circling heaps of splintered wood and shards of plaster and mortar, passing dismantled furniture and broken household items, skipping over puddles of black water and ditches filled with soiled red and green plastic bags. The whole place smelled of manure and urine and seemed to have become a haven for rats, stray dogs and cats, and swarms of redheaded flies.

  As they got closer, Shui-lian realized she was looking at a damaged courtyard. Two side walls had been reduced to mounds of bricks. Half of the doorway and the back wall remained standing like defiant warriors on a battlefield. On the left, a dwelling stood almost intact, though its wooden door and window frames were all askew, vibrating and trembling in rhythm with the digging and demolition going on nearby. It must take a will of steel to live here in the midst of such chaos, thought Shui-lian. No wonder all the windows and doors were tightly shut and the curtains pulled closed despite the high temperature. From the corner of her eye she saw the curtain twitch.

  “Someone’s in the house,” she whispered into Pan-pan’s ear so that Pan-pan could hear her above the din. “Maybe they know where Sun Ming is.”

  “I don’t think so. We’re already too far away from Sun Ming’s street,” Pan-pan snapped, fingering the map, irritated by the heat and noise. “We’re in the wrong place. Remember, she should be in an apartment building, on the third floor, not a one-storey house like this.”