ON A CHILLY day in March 1997, two months after I’d started attending Amway lessons, I went to meet Brother Yong at the Amway headquarters in the Tianhe business district in Guangzhou. The building stood on high ground, and people gathered in groups on the plaza below, most carrying cardboard boxes or plastic bags with the Amway logo on them.
After spotting him at the top of the marble staircase leading to the building’s entrance, I ran up the steps. I had just received my monthly salary. I proudly handed him 721 yuan. In return, Brother Yong handed me an Amway cardboard box and said joyfully, “Congratulations! Now you are officially an Amway businesswoman and my protégé!”
With all the detergent and cleanser inside, the box was heavy. I held it with both hands and gazed at Brother Yong. The flags behind him waved majestically, and his clean-cut face looked firm and determined. I promised myself that I would work very hard to become the protégé he was most proud of. I started to imagine the day when I would have thousands of subordinates in my pyramid and be a millionaire, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“You know, Ah-Juan, Sister Grace is holding a three-day seminar this weekend at a hotel. I think you should come. People learn tremendously from successful people just by being with them every minute,” Brother Yong told me.
“Three days? That means I would have to skip work on Friday?” I stammered. “And . . . hmm . . . do you know how much the seminar costs?”
“Ah-Juan, this is very important to you. You need to look at it as your new career. Be prepared to invest, to suffer, to fight, and to work hard,” he said emphatically. “Get a day off from work, and get the money you need. It’s all worth it.”
He spoke in such a decisive and encouraging tone that I couldn’t help doing what he said.
I skipped work on Friday, hoping that Director Yip, who might not even come to the office, wouldn’t notice my absence and that the other secretary, Chen, would not tell anyone. During the three-day seminar at a Guangzhou hotel, I listened to numerous speeches given by successful Amway businessmen. I introduced myself to thousands of strangers, who came from every corner of China and who all clutched small tape recorders to record every single speech. We shook hands wildly and called each other brother and sister. At night, we sat on the beds and shared our life stories. I listened to other members telling each other excitedly how many subordinates they had developed, how many Amway products they had sold, and how promising the Amway market was. I felt like part of a big family composed of all kinds of people—professors with gray hair, peasants from Inner China, young nurses, retired street cleaners—who all shared the same dream: success with Amway.
“Brothers and sisters, let me tell you, my vision has been widened a thousand times since I joined Amway. Our business is everywhere. Think about it: if everyone in China gives you one yuan, you have 1.2 billion yuan already! Go talk to the old man cleaning the street. Go talk to the woman serving you noodles. They may buy your products. They may join Amway and become your subordinates! Because, brothers and sisters, remember this, you are bringing a brand-new future to them, and you are helping them and at the same time helping yourself!”
Roomfuls of passion, roomfuls of ambition, and roomfuls of responses and applause! I was falling in love with Amway. By the time the seminar had ended, I had become a member of the dare-to-die Amway squad.
At the end of the seminar, I left the hotel alongside Brother Yong and a few others, feeling overwhelmingly happy about my experience. The chilly wind blew into my face. I shivered in my thin clothes. I reached into my pocket and found that I had a hundred yuan left. It was Sunday. I was cold and hungry, and I should have headed back to Long Jiang to work the next day. But no, I told myself. Sister Grace was holding another seminar in Hangzhou, a city that was twenty-five hours away by train in the Yangtze River Delta, my own “home” territory, and I had to keep following her in order to become successful like she was.
“Go. You should definitely go. Follow her. Be her protégé. This is the exactly the kind of passion you need to succeed in Amway.” Brother Yong gave me an approving smile.
“Yeah, you should go. I’ve been following Sister Grace for two months, and so far I have developed two subordinates,” someone else chimed in.
I decided that I should go directly to Hangzhou. Let Director Yip go to hell. Let everything else go to hell, I cursed loudly into the evening wind as I marched toward the train station. Huang would be worried about my disappearance, I realized; but, filled with passion for Amway, I quickly put the thought behind me.
Before boarding the train, I went to a public phone and called Spring, who now sold clothes in Zhenze for a living. I told her to meet me in Hangzhou, three hours away from the hamlet by bus, and to bring me a jacket and not say anything to our mother. Without giving her time to ask questions, I hung up.
I took out my list of potential subordinates and called one of my old college classmates, Wu. She and I hadn’t been good friends in college, but, after she was assigned to a middle school in the town next to Ba Jin, we had started talking on the phone once in a while. I knew she wasn’t satisfied with her teaching job.
As soon as she picked up the phone, I asked, “Do you want to succeed in life?”
“Yeah, of course. Where are you?” Wu sounded confused but curious.
“Don’t ask. I have an incredible career opportunity for you. Take the next train to Hangzhou, and meet me at the Community Center on Jinling Road.”
“Right now? That’s four hours away by bus! What—”
“Don’t ask. I promise you, you won’t regret it. Just come here.” I hung up.
Next I called Fish, my best friend from college. I repeated the conversation I’d had with Wu. I had done exactly what Amway instructed—get your friends to a lesson first and then tell them what a life-changing opportunity Amway was. I had just tricked my friends into traveling hundreds of miles, but I didn’t feel guilty at all. I was giving them Amway, and I truly believed I was helping them change their lives.
The train stopped in Hangzhou just as it started to get dark. After standing in the crowded cabin for most of the ride, I was exhausted. March in Hangzhou was much colder than in tropical Guangzhou. Wearing an unlined dress, I rubbed my arms and rushed to People’s Square, where Spring was waiting for me.
The square was bigger and more crowded than I’d expected. The circular fountain in the center, which was as tall as two people, sprinkled water into a pond at its base surrounded by colorful flowers. Children were chasing each other, and adults were strolling on the vast cement plaza. I ran around a few times and at first was unable to find Spring. I became worried. In my mind, Spring was a quiet and timid young country girl, and I chastised myself for asking her to take a three-hour bus ride to this strange city to meet me.
Finally, I saw her standing next to some flowering shrubs, carrying a plastic bag and looking around anxiously. I ran to her.
“Meimei!” I called, using the term for younger sister.
She turned at the sound of my voice. I saw her face, still puffy from the motorcycle accident, in the setting sun. I was grateful to see her but saddened by all the heart-breaking memories brought back by her appearance. I hadn’t thought of her face in a long time.
“Why are you so late? I’ve been here for a couple of hours,” she complained mildly, taking a jacket out from the plastic bag. I quickly put it on.
She scrutinized me for a few seconds. I saw tenderness and worry in her eyes. Exhausted and thin from all the rushing about, I knew I didn’t look good for someone who had left home determined to pursue her dreams. She pursed her lips as if she was going to say something important, but only said, “I have to leave now.” She turned around.
“Meimei!” I called to her. She paused and turned back to me.
“Do you have any money with you?” I asked her after a short hesitation.
She searched her pocket and took out ninety yuan. “This is all I got.”
I took the money. Then I stood in the crowd watching her figure getting smaller and smaller and eventually disappearing. Family would always be there for you, I realized, no matter how much you wanted to distance yourself from them. Spring would never expect me to pay back the money. I felt ashamed that I had had to ask her for help.
On the train to Hangzhou, I had schemed to bring Spring to the Amway seminar, but now, standing on the street with phoenix tree leaves strewn about, I doubted if she belonged to any of my worlds. I knew little about my only sister. She must have had a complicated inner world just like I did, but she never let anyone in. We were like two trains running on parallel tracks: watching each other, yet never getting closer. What we shared—our childhoods, our parents—were the very things that created the distance between us.
I quickly shook away my sad feelings and rushed to the Amway seminar. I had much more important things to worry about: I had two friends waiting for me to change their miserable and boring teaching lives.
Wu and Fish were just as responsive to Amway’s message as I had been—after two days at the conference, they joined right away. Thus I became a superior of two subordinates. They went back to their teaching jobs and promised to carry out Amway business in their small towns.
How happy and proud Brother Yong would be when he heard my news. Despite my disheveled hair and dirty face, I was bubbling with joy on the train back to Guangzhou. What I was wearing, whether my face was clean, and when I had last eaten were the farthest things from my mind. I was occupied with one mission—to spread Amway to every corner of the world.
I surveyed the packed train car. My eyes scanned each person’s face—they were all my potential subordinates. Amway was a business you could do anywhere and at any time. Yes, I was a cheetah, and anyone in the car could be my next meal.
I took the Amway showering gel out of the Amway bag, which never left my shoulder. I put the gel on the small table in front of the benches, and then, under everyone’s inquisitive gaze, I took out a bottle of Lux with the name covered with a sticker because of the anti-competition policy that Amway preached.
I cleared my throat and spoke loudly to the people around me. “Folks, have you all heard of Amway products?” Once I had their attention I started to talk about the gel in my hand. Different passengers had different responses to my speech. Some leaned forward and listened carefully; some sat there indifferently; and some even closed their eyes. I knew people were wary of scams, but I told myself that I shouldn’t feel guilty because I wasn’t spreading a scam—I was introducing a career.
“Friends, do you know that a very good way to tell whether a showering gel is good is to see if the mixture is pure?” I poured a drop of Lux into a clean tube, added some water, and then shook the tube wildly. Immediately the water in the tube became cloudy with drops of white secretion floating around. Then I did the same thing with the Amway gel.
I placed the two tubes side by side in front of everybody and said proudly, “Folks, do you see how crystal-clean the Amway solution in this tube is? And do you see the white drops bobbing in the other tube, which I cannot tell you the brand name of, but I am sure everyone has seen enough of their commercials. Can you imagine putting these on your body every day? You can easily see that the Amway gel is much better.”
“I don’t believe you. If Amway products are so good, why aren’t they selling in stores?” a sturdy man sitting across the aisle asked.
“Well, Amway is smart. It costs a lot of money to set up stores and hire staff, so Amway does a pyramid sales system. Instead of giving the money to second-hand wholesalers, Amway decided to skip them and sell directly to consumers. What’s even better is that ordinary people, people like you and me, can become successful by selling Amway products and also introducing Amway to people we know—or even to strangers. Everyone needs showering gel. Everyone needs shampoo and detergent, right?” I flourished the Amway brochures, putting the techniques Amway had taught me to good use. “Take a look at the brochures. Go ahead and take a look. Believe me. I used to be a middle school teacher. I am not a swindler.”
While I was busy explaining, a man suddenly threw the brochure in his hand down on the table and said with a contemptuous sneer, “Save your breath! These are fraudulent practices. The government should forbid them all.”
I looked at him and wanted to scream: Why don’t you believe me? I’m doing a good thing! I’m helping you!
I returned to Long Jiang on Friday afternoon. It was a windy and dusty day. I went back to the eighth floor of LongJiang headquarters and sat at my desk. I looked around the stillmagnificent office and felt as if I had been away for a lifetime. I prayed that Chen had been enjoying her solo reign over the eighth floor so much that she hadn’t drawn undue attention to my absence.
Director Yip appeared behind the glass door. I stood up and held my breath.
“Where the hell have you been?” He glowered and continued into his office.
I thanked God that that was all he had said. For Director Yip, it was a mild response. I shot a look at Chen, who was pouring water into a teacup with her back to me. She must have kept Director Yip happy. He had rarely been so easy on me before.
That night, I went to Huang’s room. He was sitting on the bed watching TV. At the sight of me, he shook his head and scolded me mildly: “Ah-Juan, where have you been?”
I sat next to him and put my arms around him. His image rarely entered my mind when I was in my frenetic Amway world. I still loved him, but we weren’t close any more. I had emerged from under his wing and taken on my own mission.
I continued to work at LongJiang as one of Director Yip’s secretaries. I realized it was best to keep my job while doing Amway business. After all, I hadn’t made any money from Amway yet. But one month later, Assistant Director Li called me in for a serious talk.
“I heard you’re selling Amway products around the town. Do you know how bad this sounds? The secretary of Director Yip of the LongJiang Group, the biggest boss in town, is selling shampoo and detergent to people on the street?” The scholarlike Assistant Director Li spoke softly but sternly.
“I want to make some money,” I mumbled, feeling a little scared and embarrassed.
“I know LongJiang is not paying you a lot right now, but you need to think about the consequences of your own action, and always have Director Yip’s reputation in mind,” he cautioned. “Ah-Juan, you need to think about your future. LongJiang is a big company, and you’re so close to Director Yip that maybe some day he’ll promote you. You’ll have a much better future here than with Amway.”
I nodded but inwardly rolled my eyes. I didn’t really look forward to a promotion at LongJiang, where I had to tiptoe around to avoid being yelled at by my boss.
One week later, Director Yip stuck his head out of his office and yelled to Chen and me, “What the hell is going on with the floor? Why is it so dirty?”
Chen and I exchanged looks, and then, to my surprise, she pointed her finger at me and said, “I don’t know. It’s her day to clean the floor.”
I looked at her in disbelief. It was, in fact, her day.
Upon hearing her words, Yip glared at me and exploded, “What the fuck do you think you are doing lately? You can’t even do this one little thing?”
I felt a mixture of anger and disgust toward both of them—toward Chen for pushing her blame off on me, and toward Director Yip for scolding me before bothering to hear my side of the story. As soon as he finished his diatribe and returned to his office, I sat down at my desk and started writing my resignation letter. I knew Yip would never like me, and I would never be calculating enough to compete with Chen, so it was time for me to leave, to march on toward my bright and promising Amway future.
Later that afternoon, as I was packing up my things in my room, Huang came in with a sad look on his face.
“I heard what happened and that you wrote a letter.” He sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. I kept throwing things into my duffel bag and didn’t say anything.
“Yip told me that in the letter, you said that he heeded and trusted only one side. You shouldn’t have said that. After all, he is the big boss,” Huang said.
“I hate people not believing me,” I told him angrily.
“Come on, you shouldn’t have made such a big deal of it. Everybody, including Yip, knows that you’re very honest, and he’s realized now that perhaps he shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.”
“Too bad honest people aren’t popular.” I chuckled. Nothing could change my mind. Amway was calling me.
“Well, it happened, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Yip is the big boss. He can’t apologize to you. But guess what. I just talked to him. He says if you don’t leave, he’ll consider promoting you to the position of departmental manager.” His tone had turned cheerful, and he looked at me expectantly.
A little surprised, I raised my head and stopped packing. I felt so sad at that moment, seeing Huang’s efforts to keep me there. I didn’t understand why Yip had treated me like a slave if he had expected to promote me one day.
“Too late. My heart is not here any more,” I said. I cringed at the look of disappointment in his eyes.
“Are you going to your Amway friends?” he asked me carefully.
I nodded.
“I knew you would leave me some day,” he murmured.
His distressed tone affected me, but it was time for me to move on to the next phase in my life, and he didn’t belong in it. It was heartbreaking to leave him, but I knew I had to.
I forced a smile. “I’ll come back and see you as long as I am in Guangzhou.”
“Be really careful out there,” he counseled.
I called Brother Yong and told him that I had quit my job and that I would come to the meeting that night in Guangzhou.
“Brother Yong, do you know any place I can stay for tonight?” I asked.
“Let me see what I can do.”
I had my long hair cut to my ears, bought a new dress for myself, and left for Guangzhou that evening. I wanted a new start, to appear as a new person in front of Brother Yong.
“Wow, you look even prettier now!” Brother Yong exclaimed as soon as I came up to him after the Amway meeting.
“Everyone!” He clapped his hands. “Ah-Juan followed in Sister Grace’s footsteps and had her hair cut short. And what is even more exciting is that she has quit her job to do Amway. Now she is a full-time Amway doer. Congratulations!”
People applauded my devotion to Amway. I stood in the middle of the circle with my hands clutched together, turning red and glancing bashfully at Brother Yong. Now that I had cut my hair for him, now that I had given up my job for Amway, now that I was willing to follow him everywhere, would he want me, a country girl?
After the meeting, we went to his motorcycle together. Quietly I glanced at him walking steadily next to me, hands deep in his pockets.
We had been alone many times this late at night, but I had never felt so romantic before. Stars were shining in the sky; my dress rippled gently in the wind; and I had quit everything to come to Brother Yong, a city man I desperately admired.
I stopped and clasped his sleeve. “Brother Yong, I have left everything for Amway. Now I can follow you everywhere.”
“Good!” he said.
I looked up at him. “Brother Yong,” I said timidly. “You know I like you, don’t you?”
“I know,” he answered, cracking a thin smile.
Ah, he knew. I smiled happily. I dared not ask if he liked me too, afraid of breaking my big dream. I blindly followed him.
We traveled on his motorcycle to the northern edge of the city. He led me down a dark lane and into a small room through a back door. The rolling steel front door was shut and the room was crude and dusty, containing only a desk and a chair. “A friend is going to open a store here,” he explained. “He let me use it tonight.”
We stood in the middle of the room in the dark, listening to the sound of rats running around and feeling awkward.
“I guess this is my bed tonight.” I walked over to the desk and lay down on it. “Brother Yong, do you want to lie down too?”
“No, I just want to look at you.” He chuckled nervously.
“‘Look at me’? What do you mean?”
“You know, just look at you. I have never looked at a woman so closely before.”
I sat up. “You mean . . . you’ve never slept with a woman before?”
“Yes.”
I was astonished. He was a thirty-three-year-old goodlooking city man who rode a Harley and yet still a virgin. I felt more tenderly toward him, having discovered this secret.
“Brother Yong, I’ll let you look if you want.”
I took off my clothes and lay down in the dark. I heard him approaching the desk carefully and then felt him putting his hands on my knees. He touched and examined me cautiously, like a curious child with a glass ball. The Diamond Bachelor everyone looked up to, the man who gave such stimulating speeches in front of everybody, was a virgin. I wasn’t sure if I felt closer to him now or if I was even further away from him since I was not a virgin.
“Do you want to try it, Brother Yong?” His touch aroused my desire. I closed my eyes. I could hear him taking off his pants. He moved closer to me and then knelt on the desk, and I felt the warmth of his legs as they touched mine. He felt so soft.
After a while, I heard him getting off the desk and getting dressed. I opened my eyes and sat up. “I don’t think I can do it,” he said softly. And then the confident, sunny look reappeared on his face, as if nothing had just happened. I tried to hide my disappointment. He liked me, otherwise he wouldn’t have touched me, I told myself. Some day he would be moved by my persistence.
The next day I moved into an apartment that Brother Yong helped me find. It was hidden in an alley deep in a dirty neighborhood. Butchers, street cleaners, hookers, and Guangzhou’s poorest working classes lived there. The alley was littered with beer cans, coal cinders, and vegetable leaves and was seldom swept. The smell of rotten meat and urine was ever-present.
I shared a bedroom, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen with eleven other penniless and frustrated Amway adherents. Six females shared the bed in the bedroom, and the men just crashed in the living room, like dogs that could lie down and fall asleep anywhere. The apartment was moist and humid and smelled like a rat house. The bathroom, which was merely a squat toilet and a showerhead above, was covered with layers and layers of filth. I pinched my nose in the kitchen and the bathroom, telling myself that there were people in this world living in worse conditions and that I could take this.
Brother Yong never talked about what had happened that night. I still looked at him admiringly and believed that some day he would look into my eyes and tell me that he liked me.
A few weeks later, I followed Brother Yong on a trip to Guangxi Province, where one of his subordinates needed help developing his local network. You are a seed; you can take root and blossom anywhere and grow into a towering big tree, Amway taught. Everyone in Amway is your brother or sister, your arm; you should never hesitate to help, Brother Yong told me. So I grabbed all the money I had left, put on my jacket, picked up my backpack, and hopped on the train.
We arrived at a small city called Bingyang, and when Brother Yong told me that we were right next to the border between China and Vietnam, I was surprised that somehow I had gotten myself all the way to the border of my country. I knew little about Vietnam except that my country had helped the Northern Vietnamese fight off the Americans in the 1960s.
“This is what’s so cool about doing Amway: you get to travel to so many places,” he told me as we dodged the locals squatting on the sidewalks. They stared at us strangely, as if we were aliens. All the stories that I had ever heard about drug dealers came to mind. Brother Yong had told me that this region was close to the Golden Triangle, the notorious area where the borders of Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand converge, where opium is grown, turned into heroin, and smuggled out. The Golden Triangle was the source of half the world’s heroin. Heroin was the only illegal drug people could get in China and was considered a great scourge, and anyone who touched one drop of it was seen as a dead person or destined to become a life prisoner in a rehab center. I had never heard of anyone using drugs except in vague stories, let alone met an addict.
We stayed in a mountain village. Life was simple there. Brother Yong and I worked well as a team; when he gave me looks of approval, I felt content and happy. Our audience shook our hands after lectures, thanking us for bringing such a great opportunity to such a backward place; at moments like that, I felt fulfilled. I imagined that this was how Chairman Mao had felt after liberating the peasants from the oppression of the capitalists in the olden days. How simple and frank the people here were!
I slept on a wooden bed in a small room; and every night after the village went dark at around eight o’clock, I thought of Brother Yong’s daytime praises, recited Amway’s mission statement once, and fell asleep peacefully. I stopped worrying about my future, for the first time since I had come to the South.
Before we returned to Guangzhou, Brother Yong suggested visiting the checkpoint where General Chen Yi had fought off the Southern Vietnamese in the Vietnam War.
We strolled through the fruit stands along the path leading to the gun turret. In every fruit stand, golden mangos were spread on the square bottoms of the hand-woven wicker baskets.
“The best thing about this place is the local mango, so sweet and soft. Oh, I can never resist it.” Brother Yong sighed with contentment.
Rays of afternoon sunlight shone on his face, making it look extra bold and vigorous. I smiled leisurely and nodded my head.
“There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said to me slowly.
I heard my heart thumping heavily. It felt like it was being hit by a hammer. The moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived.
“I hope you are not going to be offended. I want to tell you because, as your superior, I think it is important for you to do Amway well,” he continued.
I held my breath, waiting, a wait of a thousand years.
“You have this smell that comes from your body. I think you should find a way to get rid of it.”
I froze where I was, mortified, and watched him continuing to stroll ahead. I wished I could find a place to bury myself right then. I gazed at his back and wanted to run and tell him: I don’t have body odor. In this rural village, I can only clean myself with a towel and a bucket of water every couple of days, and I couldn’t even find any sanitary napkins. It’s not my fault. It’s these conditions.
But all I could do was run after him, force an awkward smile, and say, “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay!” he answered cheerfully, and then he ran ahead to his other subordinate, who had spotted us and was waving from the foot of the turret.
I walked slowly up the steps to the top of the turret. I sat down on the stone surface and crossed my legs. It was secluded and quiet, except for the trees of the woods surrounding the turret murmuring in the breeze. Through the leaves I saw the checkpoint below, where women dressed in robes holding flat bamboo baskets on the tops of their heads walked stiffly in the clouds of dust and men whipped their oxen through the gate.
I looked around myself, almost in a trance, and suddenly wondered why I was here. Brother Yong had never liked me. Everything he did for me was because of Amway. I had left Huang and my job and chased him all the way to the end of the world only to find I was just chasing my own dream.