His eyes were bloodshot, and it was obvious he had been working through the night.
The moment Lijuan saw him, she deliberately pouted.
“So you do remember to come and see me?”
Chen Gang collapsed onto the bed.
“The factory’s been rushing orders nonstop. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in days. Let me sleep for a while first.”
As soon as he finished speaking, he closed his eyes.
No matter how much Lijuan called to him, he didn’t move an inch.
Helpless, she finally gave up.
We went outside and grabbed a hasty breakfast. We didn’t dare go far, so we soon returned to the rental room and sat around reading a book.
Lijuan kept complaining under her breath about how cold Chen Gang had been toward her. From yesterday until now, he hadn’t even given her a proper smile.
But he used to be such a cheerful boy.
It wasn’t until nearly noon that Lijuan finally hardened her heart and woke him.
After a few hours of sleep, Chen Gang seemed to have recovered somewhat. He washed his face, and for a moment, he looked like the clean-cut, smiling boy he had been three years earlier.
When we went out for lunch, he even tentatively reached for Lijuan’s hand.
Her morning complaints had already vanished into thin air.
She followed closely behind him, her face glowing with happiness.
We went back to the same market we had visited the night before.
It wasn’t as lively during the day, but since it was lunchtime, there were still plenty of people around.
The market was large, though everything was shabby. In the distance stood a dilapidated open-air dance floor, where some unfamiliar song was playing.
This time, Chen Gang was treating us.
Instead of the one-yuan portions of fried noodles, we ordered a fast-food meal.
By “fast food,” they meant that various cooked dishes were displayed in several old, faded plastic basins.
Rice cost one yuan, and you could eat as much as you wanted.
Vegetables cost fifty cents a serving.
Meat dishes cost one yuan.
There were quite a few dishes to choose from.
The bowls used for serving rice were the large white bowls our family had used long ago. They were covered with all kinds of mysterious stains. Some had chipped rims; others were cracked.
I could hardly believe that Dongguan, a place famous for its wealth, still had people eating out of bowls like these.
Back in our poor hometown, bowls like that were used to feed cats.
I ordered two vegetable dishes: stir-fried bean sprouts and leafy greens.
The rice seemed to have been made from moldy grain. It crumbled in my mouth like dried bean curd, as coarse and unpleasant as the bowl it was served in.
The dishes looked as though they contained plenty of oil, but the oil had a strange taste I couldn’t identify.
Worst of all, I was someone who loved spicy food. To me, a meal without chili was almost impossible to swallow.
But the dishes containing chili were all classified as meat dishes.
And “meat dishes” was a generous term.
Tomatoes with a few scattered flecks of egg counted as one.
A large serving of chives with a few pieces of pig’s blood counted as another.
Chicken skin stir-fried with chili peppers also qualified.
That last dish looked especially tempting, glistening with oil.
But I didn’t order it.
Although Lijuan, Chen Gang, and I had been classmates, I felt too embarrassed to be extravagant.
After all, every penny Chen Gang spent had been earned through exhausting overtime.
Lijuan ordered the chicken skin with chili peppers, along with chives stir-fried with pig’s blood.
After eating one piece of chicken skin, she found it too fatty and dropped the rest into my bowl.
Back home, our family had been poor, but no matter how much I craved meat, I had always refused to eat fat.
Now, for some reason, I felt that nothing in the world could possibly taste better than that greasy chicken skin.
Just as I was savoring it, taking tiny bites of what seemed like a delicacy, the music from the open-air dance floor suddenly changed.
A woman’s high-pitched voice rang out.
The song didn’t quite sound like singing, yet it was not exactly spoken either. It was something like a rhythmic street performance.
The words went something like this:
“Touch your legs—they’re so beautiful.
Touch your back—come sleep with me.
Touch your hands—come away with me.”
My face instantly grew hot.
I could no longer bring myself to raise my head.
After a long moment, I heard Lijuan say angrily,
“What kind of filthy nonsense is that woman singing? She has no shame!”
Chen Gang merely smiled.
“What’s the big deal? They play that song dozens of times every day. Once you get used to it, you won’t care.”
Lijuan and I exchanged a look.
All around us were busy vendors, filthy cooking stalls, battered tables and stools, and crude, unpleasant food.
I thought I could endure all of that.
But what I couldn’t endure was this:
When poverty forced me to eat spoiled food just to survive, did my spirit also have to be polluted by vulgar songs like that?
Lijuan shoved her half-finished bowl of rice away.
“I’m not eating anymore. This awful place is disgusting. Chen Gang, when can we get into your factory?”
Chen Gang stammered,
“It costs 800 yuan to get one person into our factory. I begged the people in charge for ages, and they finally agreed to let the two of you in for 1,500 yuan. Do you… do you have the money?”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“That much? Can’t they deduct it from our wages later?”
Chen Gang lowered his voice.
“No. The factory itself doesn’t ask for the money. The people handling recruitment collect it privately and put it in their own pockets. If you don’t pay, you can forget about getting in.
“At other factories, the personnel officers usually ask for only three or four hundred yuan. Our factory has better conditions and benefits, so they demand more.”
Lijuan completely lost her temper.
She stood up angrily.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? If I’d known it was so expensive, I never would have come!”
Chen Gang hurriedly caught hold of her.
“Don’t be like this. I’ll get paid in another half a month. I’ve been working a lot of overtime this month. I’m sure I’ll have enough for both of you to get into the factory.”
I quickly asked,
“Do you really have to pay to get into a factory? Charging money privately like that is wrong. Doesn’t anyone report them?”
Chen Gang gave a helpless smile.
“Even if you get them removed, someone new will take their place. And the new people will collect money in exactly the same way. That’s how personnel officers work at the better factories. Reporting them won’t change anything.
“But once you get into our factory, one month’s wages will cover it.”
Lijuan raised her voice.
“So does that mean your factory pays really well? You said you could make 2,000 yuan a month. You’ve been working there for three years. How come you can’t even come up with 1,500 yuan now?”
She was so angry that people sitting nearby began turning to look at us.
Their faces were indifferent, but their attention made Chen Gang deeply uncomfortable.
He lowered his head and spoke in the meek tone of a child who had done something wrong.
“We only make 2,000 when the factory is rushing orders. When there’s no work, we get a living allowance of ten yuan a day. So… so…”
But Lijuan only grew angrier.
“Then weren’t you lying to me?”
Chen Gang hurried to defend himself.
“I wasn’t lying to you. I really wasn’t. My older brother and sister are both married now, and my mother got sick last year. I have to send money home too.”
Only then did Lijuan’s expression soften.
She wasn’t truly angry with him.
She had assumed that Chen Gang was doing well in Dongguan. But now she saw that he had become thin and dark, and that his life was far from what she had imagined.
It would have been more accurate to say that she was heartbroken for him than angry with him.
From then on, all we could do was wait for Chen Gang to receive his wages so that we could enter his factory.
Lijuan and I spent several days walking around the nearby area looking for work.
Just as Chen Gang had said, the larger, better-looking factories were impossible to enter.
The small, shabby factories would take us, but it was obvious at a glance that we would never make much money there.
Of course, even in the better factories, not every position required a private payment to the personnel officer.
Jobs that did not involve working directly on the production line generally required no such fee.
We had thought that, as high-school graduates, we were surely qualified for something better than factory-line work.
Perhaps we could do clerical tasks—copying documents, keeping records, that sort of thing.
But the recruitment advertisements told a different story.
Most required a college or technical-school diploma.
A few accepted high-school graduates, but even those demanded English skills, computer knowledge, or relevant work experience.
After reading those advertisements, we lost not only the desire to apply but even the courage to give it a try.
Before long, we were struggling even to afford food.
Lijuan and I grew increasingly anxious.
What frightened us even more was how strictly temporary-residence permits were being checked.
We often heard A-Ling and the others talking about people who had been arrested while simply walking down the street.
Someone had been sent to Zhangmutou.
Someone else had been beaten nearly to death before relatives managed to pay 300 yuan to get him released.
Rumors like these made our hearts pound.
We had carefully kept the train tickets from our journey, but after three days, the tickets would no longer serve as temporary-residence permits.
And, as if fate were playing a cruel joke on us, during those three days the security patrol never came to inspect our room even once.
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