“THIS IS XIAO Yi. She’s a translator here too. She’ll teach you what to do.” My new boss, Zhou, a bald man with an eggshaped face and a round stomach spilling over his belt, pointed to the girl feeding a piece of paper into the fax machine.
She turned her head. I smiled. Her thin lips moved slightly sideways and a faint smile floated over her waxy face. She had dark circles under her eyes and a big head that looked disproportionate to her skinny body. This is a wary girl who trusts no one, I thought. Hopefully she would relax her vigilance when she realized that I was just in the South to make a living.
It was a spacious office. Two oak boss desks occupied the east side of the room. They faced a big television that sat on a shelf against the west wall. Against the south wall, a long leather couch stretched across the room. Xiao Yi’s desk and her fax machine took up the north side of the rectangle, facing the window. After being told I would share Xiao Yi’s desk, I sat down in the chair next to her.
“Hi, Xiao Yi, could you give me something to read?” I asked politely after sitting awkwardly in silence for a while.
She took out a blue folder from a desk drawer and handed it to me. I opened it curiously. It was jammed with faxes, all of which had Xiao Yi’s delicate, hasty handwriting on them in blue ballpoint pen. I read through the pages quickly, eager to learn more about my new job.
The first stack of faxes was a series of negotiations between Zhou and a couple of foreign suppliers.
03/12/97 8:58pm From: Paris To: GrandKnit China
Dear Mr. Zhou,
My lowest price for the 45 sets of 1982 KOKETT machines is $17,000 each.
Best Regards,
Jacques :o)
* * *
03/12/97 9:00pm From: GrandKnit China To: South Carolina
Dear Carl,
Your KOKETT are too expensive. Jacques offered $15,000 each. Please give us your rock bottom price.
Best, Zhou
* * *
03/13/97 9:30pm From: South Carolina To: GrandKnit China
Dear Mr. Zhou,
The best price I can offer is $15,000 each. They are in perfect condition, still running in Russia. I can give you accessories with them, beams and needles. I cannot do it any lower.
Best wishes,
Carl
* * *
03/13/97 9:40pm From: GrandKnit China To: Paris
Dear Jacques,
Carl’s price is much cheaper than yours, $12,000 each.
But we prefer to buy them from you.
Best, Zhou
* * *
03/13/97 9:55pm From: Paris To: GrandKnit China
Dear Mr. Zhou,
OK. I’ll sell them at $12,000 each. :o(
Best regards,
Jacques
* * *
03/13/97 10:04pm From: GrandKnit China To: Paris
Dear Jacques,
We’ll buy the 30 KOKETT from you. 40’ containers to Guangzhou Port. Deposit will be wired from HK tomorrow. Thanks. You are always our best partner!
Best,
Zhou
* * *
03/14/97 5:37pm From: GrandKnit China To: South Carolina
Dear Carl,
The KOKETT are not popular lately. We decide not to buy them.
Best, Zhou
* * *
03/15/97 11:35pm From: South Carolina To: GrandKnit China
Dear Mr. Zhou,
I heard you bought the 45 KOKETT from Jacques. Why not from me? I can be cheaper.
Best wishes,
Carl
* * *
03/16/97 8:43am From: GrandKnit China To: South Carolina
Dear Carl,
We didn’t buy the KOKETT, must be somebody else. We would of course buy from you if it were us. Don’t worry. You are always our best friend.
Best, Zhou.
* * *
Zhou’s loud voice on the phone made me look up from my reading.
“Old Song, this is Old Zhou!” He was almost shouting. “How are you, Old Song? You’ve gotten yourself some pretty whores lately?”
He chuckled lasciviously and then, raising his voice even louder, said, “Listen, I just got in some KS3, 1991, beautiful condition, 350,000 yuan each, very good price, but only for you. Interested? Yeah, yeah, I’ll be in the office this month. Fly over. But I have to warn you, you’d better hurry. I can’t hold them too long, even for you, my best customer.”
After hanging up the phone, he turned to his brother, who had been listening at the desk next to him. “I think for 350,000 each he would take them all. Let’s fleece this sucker again.” His brother, a bald man with a droopy, unhappy face and a pair of goldfish eyes, looked pleased to hear this news.
“What are KOKETT and KS3?” I whispered to Xiao Yi.
“Knitting machines made in East Germany.” She spoke briefly and coldly, eyes remaining on the notebook in front of her.
“I thought GrandKnit produced warp-knitted fabric. Do they actually buy and sell used knitting machines? Is it legal?”
“It makes more money. Who cares whether or not it’s legal?” she whispered. She pressed her index finger to her lips and gestured for me to stop talking, her thin eyebrows frowning.
Thus I started my second job in the South, as a translator for GrandKnit. It was a small company in Long Jiang a couple of miles away from LongJiang Enterprise’s headquarters. It consisted of a few factory buildings, a warehouse, and a small office building and was enclosed by a tall cement wall with a big iron gate in the front. It was essentially closed off from the outside. There were roughly twenty employees, most of whom were migrant workers who spent their entire days in the factories and then at night jammed into the four dorm rooms on the second floor of the office building. I didn’t understand how just one floor could accommodate all the workers until Xiao Yi took me inside. Each dorm room was as tiny as a chicken barn and had a very low ceiling, but they were further divided into six or even more sections with pieces of thin wood, and each section was only long enough for a single-size bed and wide enough for a person to turn around in.
My assigned sleeping spot was next to the window. Xiao Yi’s was on the other side of a board, next to the squat toilet with a faucet above it, the bathroom for the six girls in the room. It was summer, and the toilet was so stinky that Xiao Yi and I spent most of the days and nights in the air-conditioned office upstairs. One of us always had to be in the office anyway, because the fax machine spat out quotes and counteroffers at all times. These faxes, Zhou emphasized, required immediate attention. He demanded that we contact him right away with any valuable information, no matter where he was at the time—at the drinking table, in a karaoke club, or even sleeping in his apartment upstairs. So Xiao Yi and I took turns napping on the couch, and whoever was on duty watched the fax machine while the television constantly showed the exchange rates of different currencies.
Soon I understood why Xiao Yi was thin as a stick and pale as a ghost—this was a job that required at least sixteen hours’ work if you were the only one doing it. Work and sleep were really the only two activities in the place. You didn’t need to worry about passing the interrogation of the guards at the iron gate to get out of the compound, because you didn’t really have time to go out.
“I have always gotten sick frequently, even under normal conditions, but I have been sick every day since I came to this company. This work is just too exhausting. That’s why I asked Zhou to hire another translator,” Xiao Yi told me one day when we were sitting on the couch alone in the office. It had been two weeks since I had started work there, and Xiao Yi and I now chatted every once in a while. I looked at her sympathetically, understanding her pain at being far away from home and fighting for a life in the South.
Unlike Xiao Yi, I was happy with my job. Now I had enough food for every meal. The food in the company’s cafeteria was cooked in cauldrons, placed on big, filthy bamboo plates, and sold through dirty windows in the cement wall. Every day it was the same dish—pork with green peppers swimming in oil—but I was content. When I was a child, we had never had enough meat.
At first, I didn’t understand why the cook, a local man who threw spatulas and yelled at the outlanders who complained about the food, always smiled at me, refused my money, and even put extra food on my plate. So one day I asked Xiao Yi. She seemed to secretly know about everything at this company and was never reluctant to teach me.
“He’s currying favor with you. Don’t you know how important your position is in this company? Without you or me, the Zhous can’t do any business. They can’t even write their own names decently in Chinese, let alone read English letters,” Xiao Yi said scornfully.
She looked around the office, made sure that the door was shut, and then whispered, “Do you know how much money I have made for the Zhous these past two years? Millions and millions. When I first came here, GrandKnit was just one of the thousands of knitting companies in China competing for the domestic warp fabric market. Then one day I accidentally discovered that Chinese knitting companies were dying for used Western machines. These machines, they are trash in Europe and America, but they are gold in China. So I searched around for foreign dealers, and I found so many for the Zhous, and then we worked out all the other details such as shipping, customs, method of payment, et cetera. And since then, they have been rolling in dough.
“But these men are so cheap.” Her tone turned sour. “I do all the work for them—negotiation, shipment arrangement, order of bills, everything—but they pay me only eighteen hundred yuan a month, not a penny more. They don’t give me any days off during the year except Christmas time, when the foreigners are not working. I can’t stand the food in the cafeteria, but they don’t even allow an electric stove in my room, just to save that tiny bit of electricity. People here have secretly asked me so many times, why haven’t I betrayed these two blackhearted Zhous? If I did, their business would collapse.” Xiao Yi’s cheeks flushed with anger and resentment.
“Have you thought of leaving?” I asked her sympathetically, feeling that we were two people crossing a river in the same boat.
“I’m planning on it.”
“Have you found a new job?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, if you find a job, could you please let me know? Let’s stay in touch.” By then I considered Xiao Yi a close friend. We spent practically every waking moment with each other.
She hesitated a little and then said reluctantly, “Yeah, sure, I will let you know, but promise me you won’t tell anyone. I will only give two days’ notice before I leave, and I don’t want the Zhous ever to be able to find me for the rest of my life.”
“Xiao Yi, when did you come to the South?” I was curious about her. She appeared weak and frail but seemed to know how to take care of herself.
“About three years ago. I’ve lived in three different towns for jobs, but I can’t find a good one. There’s no stability in the South.” She sighed.
One month after I started the job, Xiao Yi gave the Zhous notice three days before her actual leaving date. After making sure she had taught me everything and given me all the data, the Zhous happily let her go. Xiao Yi told everyone that she was going back to her home town in Jiangxi Province for a break before searching for a new job, but I knew she wasn’t telling the truth.
“Good luck with your future. Call me. You know where I am,” I said during the final long talk we had in the office the night before she left. I grinned. “I’ll just be here, making fortunes for the Zhous.”
She made a small laugh. Then after a short silence, she spoke. “You know, I’ve thought about importing machines myself before. It’s so tempting. This business can make you rich overnight.”
Her words caught my interest immediately, like a flame suddenly appearing in the dark and tearing apart the night before my eyes. To become rich. It was the universal dream of every outlander drifting through the South. If I became rich, I could give my parents lots of money so they would stop fighting, and I could finally have a happy family. I could buy a lot of cosmetics and clothes and become a city girl. More importantly, though, I could prove to everyone, my mother, my father, and all the villagers in the Shen Hamlet, that I could succeed, that I was different.
I held my breath and asked, “Do it yourself? How?”
“Well, I know all the suppliers’ information and the procedure. We’d only need someone to put up the money.”
“It’s not that easy, is it?”
“The most difficult part is getting the machines through customs. It’s very tough to import used machines into China, because the government protects domestic manufacturers, so there’s a quota on them every year. Do you ever wonder why the Zhous unload their machines at night? They’ve bribed somebody working at Customs and figured out a way to bring the machines into the country under the category of ‘parts’ instead of as whole machines.”
A strong desire to make money surged through me. If the Zhous could do it, why couldn’t I?
I grasped Xiao Yi’s arm. “Xiao Yi, let’s do it ourselves. We can make it work. You must have thought it through already.”
“We really need a millionaire. Every deal is at least half a million, and the turnover takes two months including the shipping, clearing, selling, et cetera.” Xiao Yi thought for a few seconds and then lowered her voice even more. “The best person would be Song, the Zhous’ biggest client.”
“You mean the fat guy who loves hookers and doesn’t close the bathroom door when he pees? The one Zhou’s wife calls a country bumpkin?”
“Yes, the guy with the huge stomach. But you would be wrong to think he’s just an illiterate peasant. He has a lot of money and buys at least half of the Zhous’ machines and then sells them himself. I think he would be thrilled to be able to bypass Zhou and import himself.”
“Why haven’t you talked to him, then?”
“Well, it’s not that easy.” She sighed. “What if Song can’t find a way through Customs? Would he really want to work with us? What if he tells the Zhous? They’d kill us. I’m not kidding. You and I are just two of the millions of migrant workers drifting here from Inner China, but the Zhous are powerful men in this town. Nobody would even know if we disappeared one day.”
She was right about everything. We could get in big trouble with the Zhous. But the idea that we could become rich teased me like the tip of a goose feather. I just couldn’t put it out of my mind. I knew it could be life-threatening to approach Song, but this was my chance, the opportunity I had longed for when I came to the South.
“Xiao Yi, Song should be in town soon again. Don’t leave yet. Stay somewhere in the town, and we can find an opportunity to approach him.”
She grinned. “No, Ah-Juan. Don’t get too excited. It’s just a beautiful dream. Who knows if it would ever work out? It’s too risky. I am leaving, no matter what. Life is too tiring. I just want a peaceful job in some small town where I can work normal hours and stay healthy.” She looked at me. “But why don’t you go and talk to Song? You seem to be good with men.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. I summoned up my courage and said resolutely, “I’ll find a chance to go and talk to him, and I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Her eyes glinted. She didn’t believe I’d do it. I would prove to her that I was serious. I was young and impatient, and I had nothing to lose.
The next day, Xiao Yi left the company and I became the only translator. I worked day and night and gradually became familiar with the two major suppliers, Jacques in Paris and Carl in South Carolina. I kept getting good deals for the Zhous, and they seemed pleased with my performance.
Finally, the day I had been waiting for arrived. Song, the rich country bumpkin who always had stacks of cash in his pockets, flew in to buy the KS machines. Sitting at my desk, I heard Zhou telling his driver to pick up Song at Guangzhou Airport.
After the driver left, Zhou turned to me and ordered, “Ah-Juan, lock all the drawers and don’t let Song near the fax machine.”
Song’s oval stomach, wrapped up in a blue suit, was the first thing to appear at the door, and then came his flat, swarthy face with its two small eyes. After dropping his buttocks into a leather chair, he quickly surveyed the room. I smiled to him politely and then turned back to the faxes scattered on my desk. I could feel his eyes burning into my back.
“Old Zhou, I see you have a new translator. Damn, you change translators as often as you change hookers. That stick Xiao Yi is gone now, and you got yourself a round one. Good choice. I like meaty ones.” He winked to Zhou and laughed lasciviously, swiveling his chair with his bottom like a naughty child.
I kept my eyes focused on the paper and fingers grasping the ballpoint pen.
“Of course! Hookers—you need to change them often, just like machines. You need to change them often too.” Zhou cackled. “Old Song, I’ve told Ah-Juan that being a hooker is the best job for a girl, because not only do you make money, you also have fun. I told her that in my next life I want to be reincarnated as a hooker, and she scoffed. But don’t you agree?”
Both of them roared with laughter. God, how could such sleazebags get so rich? But then I thought of what Chairman Deng Xiaoping once said—white cat or black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat. Moral character was not worth a penny. I shouldn’t care how many hookers Song dealt with or how terribly he behaved, as long as he could help turn my destiny around. I had to like him, and I had to make him like me too. My chance came later that night when Zhou invited me to dinner with them.
I knew Song liked to drink and, like the LongJiang executives, would enjoy watching me drink. So at dinner I filled both our cups with the strongest rice wine the restaurant offered, proposed a toast, and then downed mine in one gulp. Sure enough, he became extremely interested in me and kept pestering me to have more.
“So, where are you staying tonight?” I asked as we clinked our glasses.
“The Golden Swan Hotel. It’s not far from here,” he answered quickly and then ordered me to finish my rice wine.
Soon his face turned red. He took off his blazer and loosened his belt. His belly was as big as an eight-months-pregnant woman’s. He definitely could not see his own toes. After five or six glasses, the rice wine was burning all my internal organs, and I could hardly focus on his face. I saw Zhou stand up and go to the bathroom. I shook the tipsy feeling out of my head and gathered up my remaining sense.
“So, what room are you staying in?” I asked. I tilted my head flirtatiously.
“Why? Are you going to visit me tonight?” He squinted and smiled cunningly. He was playing with a toothpick, sticking it in the gaps between his teeth.
“No, why would I visit you?” I said. Immediately, I realized my tone had been too harsh, and I said sweetly, “Oh, well, maybe, if I don’t have to work too late.”
“Two-oh-seven.” He winked. “I’ll be waiting.”
When Zhou returned to the table, I told him I had had too much to drink and needed to go back to the office building. Zhou instructed his driver to take me home. I said a quick good-bye to Song. I didn’t want to appear too friendly and arouse Zhou’s suspicions.
I stayed next to the fax machine that night as usual, waiting anxiously for Zhou’s return. At around eleven, I heard his Lexus pull up and park and then his footsteps going up the stairs to his bedroom. I waited another hour until I was certain he would be asleep, and then I locked the office door and tiptoed down to the iron gate.
“Miss Shen, going out so late?” the guard grunted.
“Yeah, a friend of mine is really sick, and I need to go and see her. I’m so sorry to wake you up,” I apologized. He picked up the big chain of keys from the table and walked toward the small gate next to the big iron gate. I followed him closely. As soon as he opened the small gate, I stepped into the darkness and ran to the road.
The one-mile distance between the factory and the hotel seemed to take forever to travel in the pitch-dark night. I jogged on the empty asphalt road, looking behind me repeatedly. After ten minutes, I arrived at the entrance of the Golden Swan Hotel, carrying a gust of dust with me.
The receptionist was sleeping behind her desk in the dark lobby. I hid in the space beneath the elegant wooden staircase, which was ornately carved with dragons and phoenixes. After double-checking that the receptionist was still asleep and no one was watching, I ran up the stairs as fast as I could. The rooms on the second floor were located along the four sides of a square whose open center overlooked the lobby. I walked around the square as discreetly as possible, glancing quickly at the golden plates on the doors of the rooms.
I found number 207 and halted. I clutched my jacket with both hands and paused for a moment, waiting for my heart to slow down. I was poised to knock, but my hand dropped to my side. Maybe the cost would be too high. I didn’t know if I was ready for this. But a voice inside of me thundered, Yes! Yes, you are. I knocked.
Song appeared, wearing an open robe, his eyes foggy from sleep. I said a soft hi to him and squeezed in. The funk of foot odor rose to my nose. He slipped back into the bed and leaned his back against the pillow, looking at me, a bit puzzled.
I sat down on the edge of the other bed in the room. He examined me from head to toe, and then I saw a sly smile emerging on his face. I started to get scared, and before he could develop wilder thoughts, I said, “Boss Song, don’t misunderstand. Sorry that I came to visit you so late, but I have a very important matter to discuss.”
“Oh, really?” he said skeptically. “What is it?”
Solemnly and slowly, I asked, “Would you like to bypass Zhou and import machines directly from overseas yourself?”
He was clearly taken aback. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I know everything, and I can help you make so much more money by bypassing Zhou. Right now, the money you are making is just a drop of dirt leaking out of the gaps between Zhou’s toes.”
“You’re selling out your boss? How can you be so bold? Zhou will kill you.” He chuckled a little, but his voice had an edge to it.
I grew frightened, wondering if I had miscalculated. Was there a chance he’d tell Zhou? I stuffed down the fear. “You know the old saying: unless a man looks out for himself, Heaven and Earth will destroy him. I want to make money. I want to succeed. And I think you’re too smart a businessman to let go of this opportunity.”
“No, you’re wrong. I am very happy working with Zhou. I’m content with the current arrangement.”
I didn’t understand how he could reject such a good opportunity. I struggled with the sudden disappointment, but I wasn’t ready to give up. “You can double and triple your profit by importing them yourself. I can arrange for everything. I know the suppliers and how to get through Customs. All you need to supply are the funds.”
“Nah, importing is too much trouble.” Scratching his scalp covered with one-inch long hairs, he sighed contentedly. “I am happy now. All I have to do is to buy machines from Zhou and then sell them to my customers. Very easy, quick money.”
In the mirror across the room, I saw my face losing its color. I couldn’t move my lips. This was it. My grand plan, which I had spent so long concocting and had bet my future on, had turned into a disaster. Now I had to walk out of that door, go back to my fax machine, and pretend that this had never happened.
“All right, Boss Song. I thought I should offer you this chance. Since you’re not interested, please forget what I said tonight.” I forced a smile and drew myself up, acting as dignified as possible, and turned to the door.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
“I have to go back to the office now.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” he called. “Why are you rushing? Come back. Sit down and let’s talk some more.” He pointed at the bed. I sat back down and tried to figure out what kind of game he was playing.
He leaned back. “How can I know that you’re not a spy Zhou sent to test me? You know, I don’t want to offend him and lose my business. He’s the only person importing machines to China right now.”
He sounded half serious and half joking.
I tried to figure out what he wanted to hear, but I could only see daggers behind his genial smile. With my palms open, I said, “Boss Song, I don’t know how to prove my sincerity to you. You’ll just have to trust me.”
“I barely know you. How can I trust you?” His small eyes were narrowed to slits, fixing on my face like a fox’s. Now I could tell where he was going. I felt disgusted, but I controlled myself.
He moved over a little on his bed and patted the space next to him. “Come here,” he said.
I hesitated.
“Come here,” he repeated more emphatically.
I sat next to him. He put his arm around my shoulder and cupped my chin, snickering. “You little thing, coming to my room in the middle of the night! What do you want from me?”
I tore his hand off of my face. “Come on, Boss Song, I didn’t come here for this.”
“Look, how can I believe you if you don’t prove yourself to me?” His voice became impatient and loud.
His words rang in my ears. I couldn’t believe that this big, fat guy breathing heavily on me, whose body smelled like meat, controlled my fate. I felt trapped. I wanted to make my fortune, the fortune I’d dreamed of for so long, so badly. I had given him my word, and now I had nothing left except my body. I didn’t know whether to push him away or embrace him. But I couldn’t dally. I had to make a decision. I steeled myself. If this was what my fate had arranged, if this was the price I had to pay for my dream of getting rich, I’d just close my eyes and do it.
Pushing down the wrath and indignation boiling inside me, I stripped off my clothes quickly and lay on my back. I spread my arms above my head. He got on top of me clumsily. The pungent smell of alcohol mixed with deodorant wafted over my face as he lowered his head and tried to stick his tongue into my mouth. I closed my teeth tightly and raised my chin as high as I could.
“Oh motherfucker, it feels so damn good!” he cried with ecstasy. He collapsed like a dead pig on a butcher’s chopping board. I just wanted to grab all my clothes and run away, but I stayed to explain to him what we would need to get the company started. I insisted that Xiao Yi and I be treated as equal partners, not just employees. He didn’t talk much, just listened, and I couldn’t tell if he was seriously interested.
“I’ll think about your idea,” he said in a perky voice as I stepped out into the corridor. I was too ashamed of what I had just done to press him, and I got out of that filthy hotel as quickly as possible. I didn’t regret it, though. I had done what I had to do.
Two weeks later, Song called me from the city of Xiamen in Fujian Province, where he was from, and told me that he’d found an agency that could import the machines for us in the way I had described to him. He offered to pay Xiao Yi and me five thousand yuan a month each and ten percent of the profits. I wanted more, but he held all the cards.
“Fly over right away, and we’ll find an office space together and set up a company here.” He was in a rush to get me off the phone. I confirmed with him that he would still bring Xiao Yi in, and then I agreed to meet him the next day. I didn’t know how I was going to get the money for the plane ticket, but then I remembered I had someone I could always count on.
I tore a piece of paper out of the notebook on my desk and grabbed a pen.
Boss Zhou, it was my honor to have worked for you for the past two months. Now I have to leave. Please forgive me. I am really sorry.
I ran to my dorm and grabbed my handbag. I didn’t have time to take more than just my ID and phone book. Everything else—my clothes, shoes, toothbrush, bedding, and so forth—I left behind.
I waited in the shadows by the corner of the office building until the guard got up and stepped behind his booth to urinate. Then I reached in and took the key off the table and unlocked the small gate. I didn’t stop running until I reached the main road. I looked behind me, but I saw nothing but darkness. The iron gate of GrandKnit was already out of my sight and out of my life.
Late at night, I knocked at Manager Huang’s door. Sitting on his bed and catching my breath, I told him I was going to Xiamen to set up a new company with Boss Zhou’s biggest client.
“Did you run away from them? God, don’t you want your poor little life any more?” Manager Huang said as he drew all the curtains in his room.
He could see that I was ready to defy death. He sighed and sat down next to me. “I just don’t know how to deal with you.” He took out two thousand yuan.
“Go to Guangzhou airport and buy a ticket right now,” he urged me. “Leave as quickly as you can.”