A MONTH AFTER I had arrived in the South, Wang Hui finally rented a place of our own, as I had secretly urged him to do many times. I was ecstatic. The rental house was cheap and small, but it was clean and made of concrete with two big iron front doors. It was completely empty inside. Except for a bamboo mat and some clothes, we had no possessions of our own, but we were young and cheerful. On our first night there, we spread the mat on the cement floor and cuddled together in the dark. There was a Chinese rose plant outside the window waving in the night breeze. I watched the dark shadows of the leaves moving on the wall while Wang Hui made love to me like crazy. That night in an alien land felt so serene.
The second day, Wang and I sat on the floor and drew up a list of things we needed for our new home, such as a bed, a mosquito net, a few chairs, a table, a stove, dishes, pots, and so forth. The more we wrote down, the quieter we became. Everything cost money, the very thing we needed the most.
We stepped out the door with the complete list. I locked up and turned around, and I saw Wang Hui looking at me oddly. “I don’t have any money,” he said, clearly embarrassed.
“Didn’t you save any after you came here?” I asked, incredulous.
He shook his head. “No.”
“You made three times more than I did, and you knew I was coming.” I found it hard to believe him, so I pressed on. I thought we had planned our future together, but once more it seemed that he had never believed I would really come.
“I spent it all here and there. I don’t know.” With free rent and food from his cousin, what other expenses had he had? All sorts of questions flew into my mind, but I swallowed them all and unlocked the door. Out of my duffel bag, I took the bonus I had received from the school before I left. I locked the door again and followed him to the market.
After Wang Hui left for work the next morning, I sat on our new small plastic stool and looked around the house. Even with all the furniture we had just bought, it still looked almost empty. We’d picked the cheapest stuff, yet it had cost all my savings—fifteen hundred yuan. I told myself that I now had a home, but strangely I didn’t feel any joy. I felt as empty as the house. Not only did I have no job, I now had no money either, and as soon as I let this reality creep into my mind, it burned me like a match. I heard my mother’s voice in my head: don’t date a poor man like your father. I smiled to myself bitterly. My mother may have been illiterate, but she had taught me a lesson with her own life. For some reason, fate had arranged for me to run into Wang Hui, a man who was poorer than I was. But I wouldn’t give in to fate, I told myself. I would not allow us to be poor all our lives.
Every day, Wang Hui left for work in the morning and got back as the six o’clock news was starting on the Hong Kong Pearl TV station on a neighbor’s television. We would put the table and chairs under the eaves and start dinner. As the warm evening breeze blew into his relaxed, content face, I wanted to ask him whether the rice was too dry or moist or whether the chicken soup was too salty or just right, but the questions never made their way out of my mouth. It felt as if there was a gulf between us and it was growing by the day. After dinner, he would sit on the threshold, facing the mulberry bush, and read some junk magazines until it got dark. At night he always slept peacefully after he had used up all his energy on me. He never snored.
Two weeks flashed by. One day after Wang Hui left for work at eight o’clock, I picked up a magazine and sat under the eaves as usual. The sound of the neighbor’s television became distant. Soon I found myself staring blankly into the air, the magazine lying at my feet. I was becoming a zombie. Suddenly, I felt the impulse to go somewhere. I stood up and locked the door hurriedly. I went to the bus station and soon found myself on a bus to Guangzhou.
Back in Guangzhou—a forest of steel and an ocean of noise—I started to walk aimlessly, just as I had in Shanghai a year earlier. Every face passing by was a stranger’s. Every word I heard was in loud Cantonese. The sun in the South was relentless, so that every girl had a few zits on her flat face and every man had swarthy skin. The southerners loved durian and made the whole city smell like spoiled food. There were many old square cement buildings with air conditioners sticking out of every window, blasting heat into the streets. The air tasted like metal. There were no plants in sight. Girls in shorts and heavy makeup stood on the sidewalks, which were scattered with vegetable leaves and melon peels, pulling the sleeves of passing men boldly. Popular Cantonese music was playing at the maximum volume in every store.
For hours I walked in this strange city, thinking about how different it was from Shanghai. They were similar in size, but if Shanghai was a sophisticated Japanese geisha, Guangzhou made me think of the Times Square strippers I’d read about in magazines.
My mother used to yell at me when I hadn’t opened my mouth for days. “What’s that thing under your nose?” she would say. “You don’t just use it to eat!” I had never been bold enough to just stop a stranger on the street and ask for directions. I would end up standing still with my face red, letting everyone walk by me, and then get lost for hours. But that day I knew I had to toughen up, because nobody was going to stop and help me if I didn’t ask. So with some new force inside me, I approached a middle-aged man in a suit and asked him where the labor market was. I kept asking, changing buses, and walking, and eventually I was standing in front of the Guangzhou Labor and Talent Intercommunication Center.
I froze on the stone steps leading to the door, panicked. I just couldn’t make my feet take me inside. I saw people walking quickly in and out of the revolving glass door in suits or skirts, carrying briefcases and looking confident, and I wondered if I should go inside at all. I only had an associate degree, and I was an ugly girl who smelled like the countryside. I had no charm and always blushed and stuttered when I was nervous.
I paced in front of the entrance, feeling cowardly. My knees were weak and my mind was like mush. It looked so easy for everyone else to go through the glass door without thinking, but I felt like there was a thick invisible wall blocking my way.
After struggling with myself for a while, I looked at the clock on a church tower not far away and realized it was time for me to get back to Gao Ming. I started to walk toward the bus station. I’ll come back; I’ll give myself more time, I told myself.
A few blocks away, I spotted a small tailor shop. I would need some decent clothes for myself if I was going to look for a job, so I walked in. I chose some white cloth and told the needlewoman there that I wanted to have a blazer and a pair of pants made and that I would pick them up a few days later. I had never dared to wear white before, afraid that it would expose all my flaws. But in this foreign land, I didn’t have a mother who would yell that white made me looked fatter. I didn’t have any school leaders to warn me that, for the sake of our future generations’ mental health, I had better not dress so flashily. Nobody at the school wore white, but those people were out of my life now.
I got home in time to make dinner for Wang Hui, and I didn’t mention anything about my trip to Guangzhou. I wasn’t sure what I was doing or whether I should let him know that I was looking for jobs on my own instead of waiting for one to fall into my lap. Though we were in the South, he was still a conservative man from Inner China who would get upset if he knew I had gone to Guangzhou without discussing it with him first. He didn’t want his woman acting in such an independent way. Trust Older Brother, he had told me all along.
A few days later, I left for Guangzhou again. In a small copy shop near the Labor and Talent Center, I made thirty copies of my résumé. Then I picked up my new clothes and changed in a public bathroom. Armed with a sudden confidence, I strode into the center, the plastic folder that contained my résumés held tightly in my arms.
People who were hiring sat leisurely behind rows of tables, examining every person walking by. Behind them stood large boards with big posters glued on them containing brush-painted descriptions and requirements for the open positions. As my eyes scanned the posters, I grew discouraged. Phrases like “bachelor’s degree” and “well-proportioned features” appeared on almost every poster. After circling around the tables a few times, I found myself back at one whose poster read “Secretary for Director wanted. Associate degree and regular features required.” I stood sideways far away from the table and looked at the poster again and again, debating whether I should step forward.
Behind the table sat a tall man in a blue suit. He looked like he was in his early thirties, and he seemed to be in charge of the booth. Casually leaning back in his chair, he was looking at me, a thin smile on his fine-featured face. He seemed interested—playful, even—and suddenly I wanted to run away. It was like he saw the fear inside me as clearly as a blazing fire.
“Miss.” His voice rang out before I could turn around. “Please come here.”
I forced myself to walk up to him.
“Are you looking for a job?” He was obviously Cantonese, and his Mandarin was so bad that it hurt my teeth, but I understood him.
I nodded and slid a copy of my résumé out of the folder and put it on the table in front of him. He read it carefully.
“Are you interested in any of the positions we offer?” His eyes locked on mine. Something in them rattled me. I shifted my eyes away from him to the poster.
“Yes,” I said with a smile. “I want to apply for the secretary job.” After a moment I added hastily, “I think I can do it.”
I waited tensely while he and his companions looked over my résumé and my college diploma and whispered in each other’s ears. Then he handed everything back to me and said, “Come to our company next week for an interview. I am Manager Huang, head of Human Resources. Find me when you come.”
I thanked him, grabbed the documents, and rushed out of the center. I stood outside on the steps and took a deep breath. The hot air tasted sweet in my mouth. I couldn’t believe that I had just gotten an interview.
Back home, I decided to tell Wang Hui everything. He stood with his hands on his hips and listened to me quietly.
“Where is this company?”
“In the town of Long Jiang, about an hour and half’s bus ride away,” I said carefully.
“If you get the job, what are we going to do with this apartment and all the furniture we just bought?”
I didn’t know how to answer. And what would happen between him and me? That was the bigger question hovering in the air. I didn’t want to think about it further, though, so I just changed the subject.
The following week, I left for Long Jiang for the interview. I got off the bus at the main road. Through the heavy dust, I saw lots of furniture shops and office parks with low buildings behind them. Furniture manufacturing was the town’s main industry. In the distance I saw several buildings with signs reading LongJiang Enterprises Group on the top, the name of the company I was looking for. I strolled down one of the paved walkways lined with trees and flowers for a few minutes. Before I could find the entrance to the company, I caught sight of Manager Huang approaching me, his leather bag tucked under one arm while the other swung back and forth like a pendulum. I narrowed my eyes and took a good look at him. He was very tall, over six feet. He had a noticeably small head, a straight stature, exquisite facial features, and dark but smooth skin. In my eyes, he shone in the sun like Apollo.
“Manager Huang!” I called out respectfully. A faint smile floated to his face.
He began filling me in on the company as we walked. “LongJiang is a very large entity. We have thirty subsidiary companies all over town. You can imagine how important the secretary to the director is.”
I followed him closely. His long legs took big steps.
An hour later, I met Director Yip, the head of LongJiang Enterprises, in his large, empty office. Tall and well-built, but with a beer belly, Director Yip sat behind a huge oak table and glared at me with round dark angry eyes. He looked like a ferocious leopard, ready to bite at any minute. It was as if he was trying his hardest to appear terrifying. I understood now why it had seemed like everyone within a ten-foot range of his office was on tiptoes.
“You studied English?” He put his elbows on the table heavily and interlaced his fingers. His voice was a little hoarse. His thick eyebrows were raised, and he looked extremely irritated.
I put my sweaty palms in my lap and nodded.
“A teacher before?”
“Yes.”
He threw his arms onto the table. “I’ll give you a threemonth tryout period at nine hundred yuan a month. Go work for Manager Huang first.”
Then he stood up and walked toward the door, taking vigorous strides, leaving his black leather chair swiveling. I watched him leave the office. With both arms bent and swinging, he resembled a crab.
I sat there perplexed. Had I gotten the job?
After waiting a few minutes with no sign of Director Yip’s returning, I decided to get up and go to the lobby. I saw Manager Huang sitting in one of the sliding chairs there. He sprang to his feet.
“You got the job! Congratulations!” he said in his horrible Mandarin. “Come on. Let me show you where you’re going to live.”
On the way, we stopped at his office, a real estate salesroom where I would work for three months before being considered for the position of Director Yip’s secretary. In addition to being the head of Human Resources, Huang was also the sales manager of LongJiang’s real estate company, which meant I would be working with him every day. I was pleased to hear this.
We climbed the cement stairs of a building that was one of the real estate company’s projects but was temporarily being used to accommodate the employees. “I’ll show you your room,” he told me.
We stopped in front of a white-painted fiberboard door on the sixth floor. He fished a key out of his leather bag and unlocked it. Inside the room I saw a bed, a desk, a television, a table, a few chairs, and some clothes. Apparently someone was already living here. I stood at the door, confused.
He threw his leather bag onto the bed. “Sit,” he ordered.
I looked at him, bewildered. He smiled mysteriously and then he sat down on the bed. He took out some pliers from one of the desk drawers and turned the television around and started to fix a broken wire.
“I thought you were going to show me my place,” I worked up the nerve to say. He tilted his head sideways and looked at me again. I started to hate that smile on his face. He was a cat and I was a mouse. He was playing with me and enjoying it.
“This is where I live,” he said.
“Oh.” I chuckled nervously.
“You’re going to live here too,” he added in an assertive tone.
My forehead started to sweat. Was he serious or just testing me? What should I do? Should I tell him to go to hell and throw away the job I’d just gotten?
I laughed dryly, spread my palms, and chirped, “Sure, sounds nice, maybe in the future, but I don’t think that’s appropriate now.”
He burst out laughing, still playing with the wire in his hands. When he was done fixing it, he picked up his bag from the bed, unzipped it, took out a key, and tossed it to me. “Your room is upstairs on the seventh floor. I was just joking with you.”
What a bizarre experience, I thought to myself on the way back to Gao Ming. Everything I had seen so far in LongJiang was out of the ordinary. But hey, it didn’t matter: I had gotten the job.
Upon hearing my news, Wang Hui was grouchy and unresponsive. That night he made love to me wordlessly and passionately, as if he wanted to get the most out of me before I left. I tried my best to cater to him. We would see each other on the weekends, I consoled him, and finally he seemed to consent to this arrangement.
The next day, I reported to Manager Huang. He put me at a desk adjacent to his in the real estate sales office. Then he brought me a bunch of real estate brochures and told me to get familiar with the real estate market and sales techniques. “Also, go buy a book and start learning Cantonese.”
Manager Huang was so busy that I rarely saw him. Every morning he would show up in the office for a little while and then leave for all sorts of gatherings. He didn’t appear to be paying special attention to me, but when he yelled at the other two salesgirls in the office for not wearing lipstick and then turned around and spoke to me like a gentle brother would, I felt pleased. I was still a little scared of him, but he fascinated me. Why did he seem so happy that I had gotten the job? Why was he so nice to me? As time passed, I felt thrilled whenever his tall figure appeared outside the heavy glass door. It became the highlight of my day.
Occasionally he took me to the evening dinner party, where all the important people in the company clinked liquor bottles and buried their faces in delicacies of every kind. Southerners rarely cooked at home and loved to drink and eat in restaurants. At the table, he introduced me to everyone as Director Yip’s secretary-to-be and told them to treat me like a little sister. He would whisper in my ear when important people showed up at the table: “That’s the assistant director, a bookworm. Talk to him honestly. That’s Director Zhang, an easygoing big guy. Show some charm to him and he will be your slave. That’s Director Jia, a slimy son of a bitch who uses the company’s Mercedes 600 as his own. Be careful when talking to him.”
He was always right. Director Jia’s eyes remained on my face for only a second. He must be wondering why Manager Huang picked such an ordinary-looking girl to be the big boss’s secretary, I thought. In the South, the most important prerequisite for becoming a secretary was to be beautiful. She primarily functioned like a decorative flower vase that her boss liked to show clients. “If you want to be Director Yip’s secretary, you have to speak Cantonese. I give you three months,” Jia said to me.
His tiny eyes paused on mine and then flicked away quickly behind his gilt-framed glasses. He was the type of person who could make you feel so uncomfortable that you wanted to punch him in the face.
I straightened my back and answered him calmly. “Thank you, Director Jia. I think I’ll only need two months.”
I started learning Cantonese. I couldn’t afford a tape recorder, so every day I begged the two girls who worked in the same office to keep talking to me in Cantonese. I wanted to prove to Director Jia that Manager Huang hadn’t made a mistake in recruiting me.
Manager Huang and I became closer as time went by. One night, after having a lot to drink, we walked together back to his room, and he told me about his personal life for the first time. “Long Jiang is my home town, you know, but I don’t want to be here. My family is in Shenzhen.” Shenzhen was the newest and most modern city in the South.
He leaned against his chair. “Director Yip and I grew up together, but he’s the big boss now. He’s the emperor, and it’s almost like serving a tiger, working for him. If it wasn’t for the money, I wouldn’t be here.” He sighed wistfully. “Life is so tough. I only have a high school degree, and it’s hard to find a good job in Shenzhen.”
“Do you miss your wife?” I asked cautiously. The girls in the office had told me that Manager Huang had been married for many years.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t miss her. I wouldn’t miss her no matter where I was. But I miss my son terribly.” He sighed and mourned to himself, “Son, dad is so sorry. Dad cannot be with you.”
I saw tears at the corners of his eyes, and my heart ached for him. I would never have thought that a seemingly high-spirited man like him could carry such a secret anguish. I wanted to hold him and wipe away his tears.
My heart was betraying Wang Hui. I felt guilty, but I wasn’t going to stop it. In contrast to Wang’s cowardice and incompetence, Huang was mature and masterful socially, yet he was also tender and complicated on the inside. More importantly, he looked after me at every occasion and protected me from the harshness of the South like a big umbrella.
Three weeks after I had started my new job, Wang Hui came to Long Jiang to see me. As I stood on the main road watching him get off the bus, I sadly realized that his once familiar and intimate face was no longer able to stir me. Still, I walked up to him and put my hands in his.
On the same day as Wang’s visit, a girl my age came to our office. She had thick black rings around her eyes; pale, loose skin; and a distressed look. She walked around the office freely, as if she belonged, and everyone tolerated her, behaving as if nothing odd was happening. She took a tape out of her purse and put it into the VCR next to Manager Huang’s desk. She said that she was working for a TV station in Guangzhou and this was a documentary she had made for our company, which, she emphasized, would really give us excellent publicity. The VCR squeaked as she pressed the buttons of the remote control impatiently. She grew frustrated.
“Take it easy. Let it go.” Huang spoke to her in a soothing tone and took away the remote. I sat on the big leather couch at the window and watched this scene curiously. Was Manager Huang involved with her? I felt a little jealous.
Abruptly, the glass doors swung open and Director Yip stormed into the room. The two salesgirls lowered their heads, pretending they had been working hard all day. I saw fear in everyone’s eyes. I stayed still on the couch, having no idea how to greet the big boss properly. There was only one person in the room who seemed not to mind the presence of Director Yip. It was that girl. She was sitting with her back to him.
At the sight of her, he paused and then turned around and sat heavily on the couch. I scooted a few inches away from him. Huang came up to him right away.
“Why is she here?” Director Yip asked him in a low angry voice.
“Ah, you know. She can’t forget. She made this documentary tape for us,” Huang explained, sounding like a parent trying to calm a child.
“Hmm. She was just a fucking secretary,” Director Yip snorted. “Why did she want to be so ambitious and greedy, wanting to be a manager? It’s a good thing that she’s gone.”
“Well, she is a girl, and the abortion wasn’t easy,” Huang said patiently.
“Damn her for threatening to call my wife. Who the hell does she think she is?” Director Yip stared at the girl’s back furiously. “Give her ten thousand and tell her never to show up here again,” he ordered, then heaved his big body off the couch and left.
Huang sighed. He turned to the girl. “Now you should feel better,” he said.
She sat with a bent back and didn’t budge.
I was astounded by what I had just seen. So this odd girl was Yip’s former secretary, and he’d gotten her pregnant and was now trying to get rid of her with ten thousand yuan. Was Huang Director Yip’s personal disposer? I frowned. Was he planning to get rid of me in a similar way one day?
Seeing my displeasure, Huang shook his head. He moved close and told me quietly, “Now you see why I brought you to my room on the interview day. I was testing you. She was Director Yip’s Number 6 secretary, and she slept with him.”
The girl turned her face to me. I couldn’t bear to see the sadness and jealousy in her eyes. Was she thinking that I wanted to be like her, the mistress of the big boss? I would rather have died than sleep with the monstrous Director Yip and get money in such a pathetic way. I felt sympathy for this girl, but I knew it was stupid and self-destructive of her to have taken this path.
“She is staying with you tonight, Ah-Juan,” Huang said.
“What? But my boyfriend just got here,” I objected.
“Oh, please. He can have a break,” he insisted, throwing his arm up dismissively.
He must be doing this on purpose, I thought. She could easily have stayed with another female employee. I opened my mouth, wanting to object more, but no words came. Strangely, I felt a little relieved. I knew Wang Hui had come to see me for sex. I had never refused him before, but that night I had no desire to be intimate with him.
I took the girl to my room. Wang Hui was sitting on the mattress on the cement floor, the only thing in the room besides the desk, reading a magazine. He looked up curiously as we entered. With a sad and solemn face, the girl went straight to the desk, sat down, took out a cassette player, and started to listen to music as if there was nobody else in the room.
I sat down on the mattress next to Wang Hui and told him that he would have to stay with one of the male employees for the night, since the sixth secretary was staying with me.
Looking angry, Wang Hui fell back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.
“Why is it like this? I traveled an hour and a half on the bus to see you, and this is how you greet me?”
His response infuriated me. I had hoped he would be tolerant and understanding. Perhaps we could salvage our relationship at the last minute, I had thought. But finally I saw the truth—all he cared about was sex. That was what he had wanted from me all along; not love, not the promise of a life together.
I stood up. “Is this all you want from me? Sex?” I screamed with tears in my eyes. He didn’t answer; instead, he punched the mattress. I left the room and went outside to walk off my anger.
When I came back, it was clear that Wang regretted having reacted in such a way. His face was relaxed, and we didn’t argue any more that night. Together with two male employees of LongJiang, we had dinner at a small Cantonese restaurant in the local market downstairs. I looked at Wang Hui across the table and realized regretfully that we couldn’t go forward any more. I knew that sooner or later I would tell him this, but I just couldn’t bring it up right then. After all, I had feelings for him, had dreamed of a future with him. My feelings were changing, though, and every day my thoughts turned more and more to Huang. Wang had never been perfect, but he had been good enough in dinky little Ba Jin. Yet, like a grinding machine, the South had quickly crushed my old dreams and changed my feelings.
The next morning, Wang Hui went back to Gao Ming upset, like a debt collector who had just made an unsuccessful trip.
The following weekend, I returned to Gao Ming. That night, with the moon shining through the window, we sat against the wall on the cement floor of the house we had rented together. Facing each other, we both knew it was coming to an end.
“So you come here, stay for two months, and now you’re just going to dump me?” He remained outwardly calm, but his voice shook. His eyes glittered in the moonlight.
There was nothing I could say. I was at fault in this relationship because I liked another man.
Wang Hui gritted his teeth. “Do you really think you were the only person I liked before?” he snorted. “When I was teaching math, a girl wrote a love letter to me and put it in her homework.”
“Please, please. Don’t ruin everything we had,” I begged him.
He laughed exaltedly and ignored me. “So I opened the letter and I saw a heart made of red paper. And then there was another girl. . . .”
He spoke faster and louder as he told me these victory stories. I covered my ears as tightly as I could. I wanted to scream to him: Why? Why do you want to ruin the few good memories we had together?
The next day, with dried tears on my face and my duffel bag in my arms, I left everything behind—Wang Hui, the home we had once had, all the furniture I had bought with my savings, and Gao Ming, my first stop in the South—forever.