The men’s bathhouse didn’t have running water. Rain barrels just outside the door collected water and inside were three shallow wooden tubs. A brick stove heated metal pails of water and a long wooden table held washbasins. By now the students considered this the height of luxury. The boys drew straws for the first shift. Shao, Shorty Ho, and Shorty’s best friend, Chen Ping, won the first draw. Towels thrown over their shoulders, the three grinned at their envious classmates and strolled through the door of the bathhouse, hands raised in mock victory.
“Ten minutes,” shouted a student at the end of the line, “or we’ll come and tip you out of those tubs.”
“Keep that door shut,” Shorty Ho hollered back, “you’re letting the cold air in!”
Shorty Ho pulled off his tunic and then his cardigan and sweater, his undershirt. He poured hot water into the shallow wooden tub, added some cold water from another bucket, and climbed in. Doubled up, knees to chest, the water just came to his hips. He ladled warm water over his head and groaned with pleasure.
It was amusing to Shao how much Shorty Ho had changed. He was no longer the fashionable, swaggering urbanite. Now he layered on clothing with more concern for warmth than style. He had shaved his head to discourage lice. Instead of his usual two-tone leather wing tips, he sported cloth shoes with straw sandals tied over them. The students’ leather shoes, made for sidewalks and classroom hallways, had fallen apart after constant walking on rough roads. As replacements, students bought the traditional cloth shoes available in every small town, the soles made from layers of cloth glued and sewn onto stiff cardboard. Then they tied straw sandals over the shoes, a trick learned from other foot travelers they’d met. The sandals kept cloth soles from touching damp earth and slowed down wear; they were also cheap to replace, only a penny for three pairs.
“The factory owner must’ve been a good employer,” Shao said, rubbing soap on his face, “to provide sleeping quarters and bathing facilities for his workers.”
“I can’t believe you’re that naïve,” Chen Ping said. “The owner charged them rent and took it out of their wages. He probably charged them for hot water, too. And the workers counted themselves lucky to have jobs at all.”
“You don’t know that,” Shao said. It was a mystery how someone as serious as Chen Ping had become such good friends with Shorty. Yet other strange friendships had developed on this journey. Lian and that talkative Yee Meirong, for instance.
“I do. Our family owns cotton mills,” Chen Ping said, pulling a sliver of soap out of a mesh bag. “It’s how things are done. Don’t you know how your family business operates?”
This mildly reproachful comment stung Shao. The Liu clan had so many business interests. His father’s newspaper. Real estate. There was a tin mine somewhere up north. His older brother Tienming ran one of the shipping firms. But Shao had never taken an interest in any of them.
“Five minutes left!” a voice shouted from outside the bathhouse door. “And don’t use up all the hot water!”
The three finished washing and quickly got dressed. They emerged into the cold air, skin pink from hot water and scrubbing. A clothesline had been strung between two bunkhouses and they hung their towels up to dry.
“Look at the cuffs on my shirt,” Shorty remarked to Shao, “disgusting. You’ve managed to keep your clothes pretty clean.”
“What? Oh, it’s Sparrow,” Shao said. “I think she washed a few of my things.”
“As good as a personal maid, eh?” Shorty said. “I don’t suppose she’d be willing to do my laundry?”
“Ask her yourself,” he said, suddenly irritated with Shorty. “I’m going to help put away library books.”
But in the library warehouse, the shelves were already stacked, and volunteers were giving the books a final dusting. All that was left to do was put away the empty crates. Shao picked up the last two crates and carried them to the factory building. There, a dozen students had gathered, perched on empty carts and wagons, listening intently to Jenmei. He set the crates down.
“All of us come from big cities,” she said, “cities transformed by contact with the West. Foreign movies, international newspapers, schools that gave us the education needed to qualify for university. Even the poorest scholarship students among us are better off than the peasants and villagers we meet on our travels.”
From the quick turn of her head, he knew Jenmei had seen him.
“But we know nothing about the rural population. The government is counting on us to shape China’s future,” Jenmei said. “The vast majority of Chinese are rural. How can we shape China’s future, how can we help our countrymen when we’re ignorant about the lives of peasants a few miles outside our cities?”
In a rush of understanding, Shao realized Jenmei counted herself as one of the ignorant, as unprepared as the rest of them for the poverty they witnessed every day. Jenmei looked at him with a self-deprecatory smile. In the set of her shoulders Shao recognized purpose, enough to anchor a life. Resolve and determination he had yet to discover in himself.
IN THE COURTYARD house beside the factory, the women of Minghua 123 were also busy with laundry and baths. The weather had turned sunny. Lian, Meirong, and a dozen others leaned against the smooth wooden railings of the veranda, towels wrapped around newly washed hair, the sun warning their shoulders. Some girls had rinsed their hair with an infusion of simmered bai bu roots, easily available from herbalists. Others had been lucky enough to get hold of rubbing alcohol, which they had massaged into their scalps.
Even though Minghua 123 traveled with their own sheets and blankets, it had been impossible to stay free of pests. No matter how much they swept and mopped the floors of the inns and halls where they stayed, they couldn’t get rid of fleas and bedbugs. There were times when Lian thought bare floors were cleaner than the beds, mattresses stuffed with straw or kapok cotton that bred new generations of pests, all of which migrated to blankets and clothing.
“And now lice. How mortifying,” Meirong said. “I wish we could wear crew cuts or shave our heads as the men do.” Most of the girls, Lian and Meirong included, had already cut their hair to blunt, chin-length bobs.
“Has it been an hour yet?” one girl asked. “Should we keep the towels on for another ten minutes to be sure?”
In reply, Meirong pulled off her towel. She hung her head upside down and began combing out damp hair. Specks like black sesame seeds fell to the ground.
“Who’s next for the steamers?” one of the servants shouted from the courtyard kitchen.
Lian and Meirong folded their sheets and blankets into neat squares then joined the line by the kitchen door. They placed the bedding in deep bamboo baskets that the servants would stack over large tubs of boiling water. An hour of steaming was the only way to be certain of killing bedbugs and their eggs.
“After this, a few nights of peaceful sleep,” Meirong said, “and then those little demons will jump back on and we’ll be scratching again.”
“Clean hair, clean sheets,” Lian said. “What a luxury. Almost makes me want to stay here in this ugly campus.”
“A few weeks here means we might get one more steaming session before moving on,” Meirong said. “Lian, come with me to the library for a minute, before we go work on the newspaper. I need to find Ying-Ying. She borrowed one of my textbooks again. Took it right out of my rucksack and then asked permission.”
Inside the factory gates, Lian automatically looked around for Shao. And for Jenmei. Fortunately, they were at opposite corners of the yard, Jenmei talking to some girls, Shao surrounded by classmates. Shorty, Chen Ping. They all looked conspicuously clean. Then Jenmei strolled across the yard to join Shao’s group. She said something and the two laughed. They broke off from the group and sat together on a bench beside the bunkhouses. Lian suppressed a jolt of dismay.
“You go inside the library and find Ying-Ying,” she said to Meirong. “I’ll stay out here in the sun and let my hair dry a bit more.”
She tried not to stare too obviously as Jenmei leaned closer to Shao. The look on his face was thoughtful and searching. The look that made Lian feel she had his complete attention. Would Shao become one of those students who melted away in the evenings, attending those not-so-secret political meetings?
“That Ying-Ying,” Meirong said. She came out of the library waving a textbook. “She’s the most absentminded person I’ve ever met. Now, to the newspaper office. You promised to help.” Meirong was determined to make her take part. Lian could no longer refuse without being rude.
Somehow Jenmei had managed to cajole Professor Kang into giving Minghua 123 News its own bunkhouse to use as an office. To Lian’s surprise, Sparrow was inside, standing at a long table built from sawhorses and boards. Her right sleeve was rolled up and she held a calligraphy brush.
“These are the stories that have been approved,” Meirong said, after greeting Sparrow. She handed Lian several sheets of paper. “Now we need them copied onto newsprint.”
Meirong put a stick of ink and an inkstone in front of her, then poured a little water from a beaker into the inkstone’s well. Silently, Lian began grinding the ink.
“I don’t think Jenmei has done any work at all this week,” Meirong said, looking irritably at a stack of writing. “She promised to give these articles a final review before we started copying. I need to go remind her.”
The door slammed shut behind Meirong. Sparrow glanced up from her writing and looked amused. Lian had never noticed the young woman’s eyes before. They were as dark as the waters of a forest pool, yet luminous as though a lamp shone in their depths. A pointed chin lent determination to her features. Slim, steady fingers guided the brush in neat columns of beautifully formed characters. Her hands were delicate, not rough and red as Lian would’ve expected from years of scrubbing floors.
“Your calligraphy is exceptional, Sparrow,” Lian said, looking over her shoulder. “How did you learn?”
“From a classical scholar,” Sparrow said. “The Young Master’s fourth great-uncle. When I was a child, I cleaned his study and afterward he would give me lessons. He taught me to read and write. And eventually, calligraphy.”
“Fourth Great-Uncle must be a very kind man,” Lian said, “taking the time to do that.”
“He had retired,” Sparrow said, “so I suppose tutoring a servant gave him something to do.”
They worked across from each other in quiet concentration. Over the weeks and miles, students and servants had become more familiar with each other. Professors even chatted with laborers as they walked along the road. But Lian realized she’d never had a conversation with Sparrow, nor had she ever seen Sparrow gossip with any of the other servants. Lian stole a glance at the servant, who had known Shao since he was a boy, and probably knew him better than anyone else.
“Sparrow, do you think Shao would join the Communist Students Club?” she said.
The young woman wet her brush on the inkstone. “His family forbids it,” she said. “But the Young Master is not with his family right now. I suppose he might attend a meeting or two out of curiosity.”
If only out of curiosity, then there was no need to report to Mr. Lee. But what if the director of student services thought she was holding back? What if he punished her by telling Shao about her father? Shao would despise her.
And so would Meirong, she realized with an unexpectedly sharp pang of distress.
THAT EVENING, AS the dining hall filled with hungry students, Lian looked around but couldn’t see Meirong. Food went quickly. If anyone was even a few minutes late, they’d be lucky to scrape a spoonful of rice from the bottom of the pot. She had last seen Meirong back at the newspaper office. That’s probably where she was, Lian thought, too absorbed in her work to realize how much time had passed. Lian hurried across the yard, cursing Jenmei under her breath. If Meirong was overworked, it was from trying to please the senior student. But when Lian got to the newspaper office, the bunkhouse windows were dark. The next place to look was the courtyard house where all the women lived.
Then she paused at the sound of voices from inside the bunkhouse. Soft laughter. One of the windows now betrayed a small gleam of light. Silently, Lian moved closer and stood on tiptoe to look in. A candle on a saucer flickered. There was a dish of dried apricots on the table beside the saucer. A hand reached in from the darkness and took an apricot. Then another candle flared, brightening the space. Jenmei leaned down and fed a dried apricot to someone sitting on the floor. Shao.
Mesmerized, Lian watched as Jenmei knelt on the blanket to face Shao. Under the quivering flame her expression was rapt, adoring. She moved her face close to his, but he leaned back slightly, his smile as uncertain and wavering as candlelight. Jenmei took his hand and placed it on her cheek. This time, when she leaned forward, he didn’t resist her kiss. And when she finally pulled away from him, Jenmei’s expression was no longer adoring but something else. Triumphant.
Lian backed away from the bunkhouse, fist jammed in her mouth. She ran all the way back to the dining hall, where she found Meirong eating dinner.
“Where’ve you been, Lian?” her friend asked. “It’s a good thing I saved a bowl of food for you.”
AFTER DINNER, LIAN returned to her room. Lights and noises filtered through her window shutters, servants bustling about finishing the day’s chores, families putting children to bed. She lit a lamp and sat beside it to read but the printed pages may as well have been blank. All she could see were two dim figures under the flicker of candles. Had she been the only one who didn’t realize what was going on between Jenmei and Shao?
She’d been so sure that Shao’s feelings for her ran deeper than mere kindness. At the same time, she’d never dared hope for much. After all, he belonged to one of Shanghai’s great families. Her daydreams had been modest, laughably naïve now that she thought of it. Walks along the lakeshore. Moments of quiet conversation. Nothing as deliberate, as brazen, as Jenmei’s advances.
When her roommates came back, Meirong wasn’t with them.
Lian joined in the small talk while the two other girls got ready for bed; they chattered for what seemed an interminably long time before they finally got under the covers. Silence fell over the courtyard home and deep even breathing filled the room. But Lian stared up at the ceiling, listening until the door opened and shut with a soft click of the latch. Then the scuffle of shoes being removed and the bed beside hers creaked.
“It’s really late,” Lian whispered, “where’ve you been?”
“I did it, Lian, I went,” Meirong said. “I went to the Communist Students Club meeting. Jenmei made so much sense.” She spoke in a low voice but Lian could hear the quiver of excitement. More than excitement. Jubilation.
“Oh no, Meirong,” Lian said. She had been afraid of this. “Please, you mustn’t join them.”
“It was just one meeting,” Meirong said. “It is late, isn’t it? I’m tired.”
“Who . . . who else was there?” Lian couldn’t help asking.
“We promised Jenmei we wouldn’t tell,” Meirong said, yawning. “Safer that way.”
Lian waited a few moments, then whispered, “Meirong, was Shao there?”
But there was only the soft exhalation of Meirong’s breath, the shadowy rise and fall of her chest.
LIAN DIDN’T WANT to see Shao or Jenmei, on their own or together, didn’t want to hear the gossip. She ate her meals quickly and returned directly to the courtyard house to study there instead of at the library. She avoided her classmates even more now, slipping easily into practiced isolation. She would hover at the periphery of a group, offer a few words of conversation, and then slip away. She kept her distance so unobtrusively none of her classmates, even Meirong, seemed to notice.
But Mr. Lee noticed.
When Lian left the dining hall after breakfast one morning, she and Ying-Ying passed Mr. Lee crossing the yard. They exchanged greetings but before he sauntered away, Lee tossed a comment to Lian, a casual passing thought.
“You seem rather solitary these days, Miss Hu. I’d like to see you spend more time with your classmates. More time with the newspaper, perhaps?”
His tone was amiable and no one but Lian would’ve caught the menace in those words. Lee continued across the yard, his sturdy figure and ponderous walk unmistakable, his shadow a stain on the ground.
“You have been rather a hermit these days, now that I think of it,” Ying-Ying said. “Will you do more with the newspaper?”
But the last thing Lian wanted was more opportunity to rub shoulders with Jenmei. She couldn’t bear to watch her draw Meirong further into the Communist Students Club or endure the sight of Jenmei with Shao.
“I was thinking I’d volunteer for Professor Kang,” she said. “He needs help with the Library of Legends.” The library was always busy. If she spent time there, Mr. Lee couldn’t accuse her of being solitary. Not for the next little while.