Just when we had begun to think that the temporary-residence-permit inspections were not as frightening as people had made them sound, something happened in the middle of the night.
We were sleeping soundly when suddenly we heard loud banging and kicking on doors nearby, accompanied by shouted orders and chaotic screams. When I opened my eyes, I could see several beams of glaring flashlight light shining through the cracks of our door, flickering on and off.
The first to cry out was A Ling.
“They’re checking temporary-residence permits!”
The moment I heard that, it felt as though someone had poured a bucket of ice water over me. I went cold from head to toe.
Amid the increasingly frantic noise outside, I tremblingly put on my clothes, then scrambled out from under the mosquito net of the upper bunk and climbed onto Lijuan’s bed. By then Lijuan was awake too. She asked in panic, “What do we do? What are we going to do?”
I was almost crying. “I don’t know either.”
The two of us clung to each other, both of us trembling all over. I could even hear her teeth chattering, and before long my own teeth had started chattering too.
Just when we were completely at a loss, the young man who slept in the upper bunk above A Ling got out of bed as well. He whispered, “You two, come with me. Quickly.”
It was like finding a glimmer of light on a mountain path in the middle of a dark night. Lijuan and I immediately stopped trembling. Normally, he never even looked directly at us, but now we had no choice except to follow him.
Using the faint light coming from outside, we moved toward him. Actually, we were barely able to move at all, because the room was so small.
The young man walked to the only window in the room and gently pushed it open. He slowly stuck both legs out through the window and jumped down first. Then, from outside the window, he whispered, “Come on. Jump down the way I did.”
Fortunately, the window was very low. Lijuan and I followed his example and jumped out. As soon as we were outside, A Ling’s husband gently closed the window from inside.
He and A Ling had been in Dongguan for three or four years. They had temporary-residence permits, a marriage certificate, and even a family-planning certificate, so they were not afraid of the inspections.
We had just breathed a sigh of relief when loud shouting and kicking came from outside the door of the rental room.
“Open the door! Hurry up! Temporary-residence permits!”
The young man suddenly grabbed my hand and ordered, “Go!”
Without even having time to think, I grabbed Lijuan’s hand and ran for my life toward a small hill not far away.
Although we were both wearing cloth shoes, in our panic I still lost one of mine. The ground was hard and uneven. My bare left foot hurt terribly as I stepped on the rough stones.
I said in a tearful voice, “My shoe… my shoe!”
I wanted to stop, but the young man held my hand tightly.
“No time! They’ll see that our beds are empty. They might come after us.”
I had no choice but to suppress the pain in my foot and start running again.
Fortunately, the hill was not far away. It was not a large hill, but it was covered with dense bushes and extremely difficult to walk through. The young man seemed very familiar with the terrain. After turning this way and that several times, he led us to a wide clearing on the hillside.
He sat down on a rock, panting heavily.
“We’ll spend the night here.”
Lijuan cried out, “Spend the night? How can we? There are so many mosquitoes here! You can grab a whole handful just by reaching out. Once they finish checking, won’t they leave?”
The young man said stiffly, “Not necessarily. Sometimes they make two or three rounds of inspections.”
When we had been running, I had not noticed much pain. But now that we had stopped, the sole of my left foot hurt even more. I could not help sucking in air through my teeth.
Lijuan hugged me sadly.
“Hang in there, Haiyan.”
Her words made me think of how I should have been sleeping in the dormitory of that famous university, yet here I was, running for my life in a strange place far from home.
A deep sadness welled up inside me, and I burst into tears.
I had never imagined that even crying could be something I was not free to do here.
The young man spoke harshly.
“What are you crying for? Be careful. If the public-order team hears you, they’ll come up and arrest us.”
My heart jolted.
My crying stopped instantly. I forced the tears back down.
It seemed that even the mosquitoes discriminated against outsiders. In the darkness, the sound of our three pairs of hands slapping ourselves could be heard from time to time.
It was strange. Compared with people from northern China, people in Guangdong were generally smaller and thinner, yet the mosquitoes here were quite large. They were also stupid. Once they locked onto someone, they would cling on and refuse to let go. One slap was usually enough to kill one.
Although our aim was remarkably good, having to keep slapping ourselves was still irritating.
A breeze would have made things bearable. The depressing thing was that it was already October, and the nights back home had begun to turn chilly. But here it was still unbearably hot and humid. The hillside was thick with bushes, and there was not the slightest breeze.
Lijuan and I sat pressed together on a rock, facing the young man who had brought us up the hill.
By then he had taken off his shirt and spread it over a rock. He took off his shoes as well and put them beneath his shirt to use as a pillow. Then he lay down comfortably on his back.
Lijuan exclaimed, “You really plan to sleep here all night?”
The young man replied helplessly, “It’s not the first time I’ve spent a night here. And I’m not the only one who sleeps here. There are plenty of people who have just arrived and haven’t found work yet. Some of them don’t even rent rooms. They simply spend the night on the hill. It saves money, and they don’t have to worry about temporary-residence inspections.”
Curious, I asked, “Ever since we came to Dongguan, we’ve always heard about these temporary-residence inspections. What exactly happens if you don’t have a temporary-residence permit? How serious is it?”
The young man was silent for a while before saying, “I don’t know the details myself. I only know that if the public-order team catches you without a temporary-residence permit, they’ll lock you up. If nobody brings money to claim you, you’ll be detained for fifteen days. If nobody brings money after those fifteen days, they’ll send you to Zhangmutou Town. If nobody comes with money after another month, they’ll send you to Huadu in Guangzhou. After that, I don’t know what they do with you.”
Lijuan said angrily, “It’s all Chen Gang’s fault! Why didn’t he get temporary-residence permits for us? He’s made us live like refugees!”
The young man said coldly, “Do you think temporary-residence permits are that easy to get? If you’re working in a factory, it’s easy enough because the factory handles it for everyone. But for people like us who haven’t entered a factory, getting one costs at least 220 yuan. And even then, you don’t know whether you’ll actually get one.”
Although we had been sharing the same room with him for almost half a month, this was the most he had ever spoken to us.
Thinking that without him we would probably be in the hands of the public-order team by now, I said gratefully, “Thank you. We don’t even know your name yet.”
The young man suddenly fell silent.
He remained silent for a very long time. Just when I thought he was not going to answer, he quietly uttered two words.
“Wang Lei.”
His Mandarin was perfectly clear and precise, without the slightest regional accent.
Lijuan quickly asked, “Where are you from? Are you from our hometown?”
Wang Lei replied, “Hubei.”
After saying that, he seemed somewhat impatient. He turned his back to us.
Lijuan and I felt awkward, so each of us found a flat rock and lay down.
But as I gazed at the stars filling the sky, I simply could not fall asleep.
When we finally endured our way until dawn, I found that my body was covered with little red bumps from mosquito bites and bites from other unidentified insects.
Early the next morning, Wang Lei walked with us as far as the area near our rental house and then left on his own. I had no idea where he went.
As I watched his tall, thin figure disappear, I suddenly felt a faint sense of reluctance as I remembered how his broad hand had held my small hand the night before.
There was something mysterious about this young man.
He lived in a shabby rental room like ours, yet he had been to university. He rarely spoke, but there was an indescribable sadness in his eyes.
To our surprise, when Lijuan helped me limp back toward the rental house, we found that the door was locked.
It was not even six o’clock. A Ling should not have gone to work yet.
We opened the door and went inside. No one was there, and everything had been turned upside down. Our belongings had been rummaged through and were scattered everywhere.
It was not until seven o’clock that people began moving around in the courtyard, though there were very few of them.
Unable to contain our curiosity, Lijuan and I asked a young couple living next door. Only then did we learn that A Ling, her husband, and many other people from the courtyard had been arrested.
It turned out that this time they were not only checking temporary-residence permits. They were also checking marriage certificates, family-planning certificates, and even health certificates.
Although A Ling and her husband had all three required documents—a temporary-residence permit, a marriage certificate, and a family-planning certificate—they did not have health certificates.
Before this, we had never even heard that people could be arrested for failing to obtain a health certificate.
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