‘Go on, open it!’ he said in a voice that made clear he didn’t expect any further questions.
Slowly, and with trembling hands, she peeled away the layers of newspaper. Although the wrapping was not the fashionably glossy paper that city people used for their gifts, it was precious nevertheless. It came from the English newspapers that Six read to practise her language. She had thought long and hard before parting with these pages. Nobody in her village had even read a newspaper article to the end, let alone one in English. They wouldn’t have a clue what the English letters meant. Nevertheless, they were Six’s gift to the village: evidence of the wider world that existed beyond the confines of this tiny place.
Inside the newspapers was a Chinese-style jacket of reddish-purple brocade, with a beautifully embroidered border and elaborately knotted fastenings; a carved wooden pipe decorated with the face of Lao Shou Xing, God of Longevity; a big pink scarf; a pair of butterfly-shaped hair clips, one blue, one green; several envelopes and a cloth bundle.
Five unfolded the jacket and gestured to her mother to put it on. Blushing, she slipped her arms through the sleeves. It was a perfect fit. The whole family was astonished to see how lovely their mother looked in it, and Five noticed that, even her father, who had never once touched his wife in front of his children, went red in the face and put his arm round her shoulders.
‘Who chose this jacket?’ he said admiringly. ‘Someone’s got a good eye!’
‘It was Five!’ Three and Six said together.
‘But how did you know it would fit me so well?’ asked their mother, looking in surprise at the daughter everyone had written off as incapable of learning anything.
‘I … I … Three, please help me explain!’ Five begged her sister, blushing.
‘Well, Mother, it was like this,’ said Three, coming to the rescue. ‘Ever since Five first arrived in the city, she spent all her free time looking at the shops. We couldn’t drag her away from the windows of the city department stores and clothes shops. She stood for hours looking at the fake people inside, dressed up in samples of the clothes they sell. I had no idea why she was doing this until we went to take a photograph of the Dragon Water-Culture Centre just before coming home. Five’s boss, Auntie Wang, told me that, whenever Five saw a female client who had your build, she would politely ask her dress size. When the clients found out that it was because she wanted to buy her mother a present, they were only too happy to give her the information, and many of them praised her as a good daughter, saying there weren’t many girls like her in the city these days. As I said, Mother, Six and I had no idea Five was doing this. She worked it out all for herself …’
Everyone exclaimed with wonder at Five’s cleverness, and then the other presents were distributed: the scarf to Four, the carved pipe with its beaming God of Longevity to their father, and the hairslides to their mother, to be given to One when she next saw her.
‘Since Two isn’t here,’ said Three quietly, ‘One will have to be beautiful on her behalf.’
‘My poor ill-fated child,’ moaned her mother.
Three saw her father take a sharp pull on his pipe. ‘This is a box of sticky rice-balls from the Tofu Lady,’ she continued, not wishing the family to dwell on the misery of the past, ‘and these envelopes contain gifts from our bosses, and a letter from Six’s foreign friends to the two of you.’
‘Foreign? What do you mean foreign? Devils with yellow hair and blue eyes like the ones your uncle talks about?’ asked their father, at a loss. Part of Six was secretly delighted to see how her father, who did not normally have much to say that wasn’t a put-down, now needed her help to understand something.
‘That’s right,’ she said proudly. ‘I’ve met a lot of different people from different countries. They are extremely nice and have taught me a lot.’
‘Do you work together?’ said her mother, tugging at her hand with excitement.
Her father scoffed. ‘Typical woman, making assumptions about a world you’ve never seen! Don’t you listen to a word Uncle Two says? Those foreigners come here to do desk jobs. How could a manual worker like our daughter work alongside them? Just learning their language would take a lifetime and more … Three, did you say just now they’ve written to us? What for? How do they know about me? Explain yourself! And don’t try to bamboozle us with fancy city words either!’
‘But Dad, they’re Six’s friends!’ interrupted Five. ‘It’s like my friends know all about Mum and you.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Five lowered her head instinctively. She had never interrupted anyone in her family, let alone her father. She waited for the inevitable scolding but nothing came.
‘Humph,’ said her father after a while. ‘Five’s got a point! Now read out this letter, Six, and let’s hear what these foreigners have got to say for themselves.’
Five was so stunned by the fact that her father had listened to her opinion and treated it with respect, that she heard none of the letter Six was reading. But, even if she had been paying attention, it is unlikely that she could have made much sense of it. Her mother certainly couldn’t.
‘Child,’ she said to Six, ‘you know your mother has no education. I can’t understand that educated letter of theirs. Couldn’t you just tell me what it means?’
Their father, who had been sitting with neck outstretched and brow furrowed with embarrassment, was flooded with relief when she said this, since it let him off the hook.
‘Women are always sticking their noses in!’ he complained. ‘Six, go over it again slowly for your mother!’
Six and Three exchanged glances about the lengths their father would go to avoid losing face.
‘Well, Dad,’ said Six, ‘you, Mum and Four have all been invited by my foreign friends and my employers, the Shu family, to spend two days with us in Nanjing during the Lantern Festival. We will all go to see the lion dances and stilt walkers, eat rice-balls, and look at the lanterns, and you won’t have to pay a penny. My friends will take care of travelling expenses, including food and lodging, and you can come and see where we all work …’
‘That’s fantastic,’ said Five, jumping up and down. Even Four seemed to understand that she would be included in a treat and made inarticulate cries of excitement. Only their father remained stony-faced.
‘We can’t possibly go. Imagine what a laughing stock we’d be if we went about spending other people’s money. We may have no sons, but we have our pride!’
‘But, Dad,’ said Three quietly, glancing at Five and Six, ‘we don’t need to spend other people’s money.’ When her two sisters nodded, she took the cloth bundle that still lay amidst the newspaper and placed it in her mother’s hands.
‘Mum, this is for you.’
Their mother’s hands trembled as she took the bundle. She recognised the cloth immediately. She had wrapped sweet-potato bread in it for her daughters when she had seen them off to the city eleven months before, but it didn’t look as if it contained sweet-potato bread now. Once again she glanced nervously at her husband. He nodded and gestured, with his old pipe in one hand and his new one in the other, that she should open the package.
Carefully she unfolded the cloth. Inside were three neat bundles of hundred-yuan notes, as thick as bricks.
‘But this is enough to build a new kitchen!’ she gasped, tears coming to her eyes.
Her daughters said nothing, overcome by emotion. They all looked towards their father.
For a while Li Zhongguo said nothing, staring in wonder at the money in his wife’s hands. But then his eyes too began to redden and he asked, in a weak voice, ‘Is it possible that our chopstick girls will be able to hold up our roof?’
It was true that there was still doubt in his voice – that he had asked a question, rather than state a fact. But the three sisters didn’t care. These were the words they had been waiting all their life to hear.
Afterword: The Story after the Story
As soon as I had finish
ed this book, I sent it to my translator, Esther Tyldesley, who is always my first reader and, more importantly, a trusted friend. She is unusual among Westerners in having a deep knowledge of rural China. After studying Chinese at Cambridge University, she spent four years living in a small town in Guizhou, one of the less developed provinces of China, and her perspicacity when it comes to Chinese women’s lives always surprises me. I was on tenterhooks to know what she would think.
I had to wait a while. Esther was busy marking exam papers at Edinburgh University, where she works, and I knew that she valued the importance of ‘letting things settle’, a quality to be cherished in this busy, frantic world of ours. But two weeks later an email arrived in my inbox that filled me with happiness. ‘Someone should have told the world about China’s “chopstick” girls long ago,’ she said. ‘Thank goodness that, now, you have.’
After that, we had a long telephone conversation about the book. As well as discussing how long the translation might take, we shared our opinions about young Chinese female migrant workers. True to form, we saw eye to eye on many issues. And Esther had good news: she was going to marry her Chinese boyfriend, whom she had known for nearly ten years. The wedding would take place, as is traditional in China, in her husband-to-be’s home town, on 1 August – the anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Liberation Army. We talked for a long time about the marriage and then, just as we were about to say goodbye, Esther made a comment that stayed with me. ‘I wish I knew what happened to the three sisters afterwards,’ she said, ‘and I suspect a lot of your readers will too.’ This is Esther all over! She knows the Chinese art of quietly and gently suggesting how something might be made better.
To be honest, I don’t know how the stories of the three sisters finish. Books end, and we can’t see beyond their final sentences. However, I will tell you what I know.
In 2003 I interviewed a cleaner in the Bailuzhou Hotel near the Confucius Temple in Nanjing. She was from the north of Anhui Province, and she told me the story of her elder sister (the girl who is called ‘Three’ in this book). Her sister had tried hard to escape village life, she said. She had worked in the city for three years. However, she became very unhappy when she fell in love with a man who didn’t love her back. When at the end of the third year she went home for Spring Festival, her parents had married her off to a village official who had never left his home because he was lame in one leg.
‘What was it like for her to return to the poverty-stricken countryside after three years in the city?’ I asked. ‘It must have been very hard for her to go back to that way of life …’
‘Who said it wasn’t?’ replied the young woman. ‘But my sister was resigned. She had argued herself into a corner: she couldn’t stay in the same place as the man she loved. I encouraged her to go and find a job in some other city, but she said all city men reminded her of the man who had rejected her.’
‘Is her husband good to her?’ I asked.
The young woman looked at me as if I were from outer space. ‘What does good and bad mean to her there? You just go with whomever your parents marry you off to! That’s been the fate of billions of Chinese women since time began …’
I was struck by her vehemence. ‘Will you follow that fate?’
‘No way! I’m not like my sister. She has a heart of stone: once something’s in there, it’s in for good – she can’t change. Her three years in the city didn’t teach her a thing about women’s freedom and independence. She even warned me not to pick up bad ways from bad women! You tell me, what’s good and what’s bad? How can she be so stubborn, so blind? The standards of good and bad in the country and the city are completely opposite in so many things. You’ve seen foreign countries … Do they have the same standards of good and bad as us? Even my mother and grandmother believe different things. I won’t go back home so my parents can play games with my life. They can’t even read, so they won’t be able to find me.’ As she spoke she clasped her hands together forcefully, as though she was swearing a vow to someone.
‘But aren’t you afraid that you will destroy your family’s reputation?’ I asked. ‘Your sister must have a good name, surely?’
‘Good name? What’s the use of that? In our village women are always killing themselves for the sake of a good name. But what’s the use of a good name if you’re dead? No one will shed any tears over you. They’ll just use your death as a rod to beat other women’s backs. Country people’s hearts have been soaked in poverty and bitterness for so long, there’s not a hint of humanity left!’
With these words, the young woman went back to her work, leaving me feeling chilled to the bone even though it was the height of summer.
After our interview I went to see where her sister used to work. The whole place was a building site, with signs advertising Kentucky Fried Chicken everywhere. There were some old people playing chess in the nearby lane, so I asked them what was going on. They’d heard that several buildings at the junction had been bought out by KFC for its expansion.
‘Did you know the Happy Fool restaurant?’ I asked.
They all nodded vigorously, and every one of them had something to say.
‘That’s right, a nice little restaurant it was … The foreigners destroyed it with their money!’
‘Come off it! It was just a gimmick, and a ridiculous one at that. How can you make any money out of some country girl’s tricks with vegetables?’
‘Don’t say that! It’s better than stuffing cash into the pockets of the Yanks!’
‘What does it matter who the money belongs to, as long as life is good and the country is at peace. Who knows, the Happy Fool may well have sold for a good price! You can still say they got their just deserts.’
‘That’s easy enough to say, but how would you feel if our Confucius Temple was converted into a Catholic church?’
‘How could that happen?’
I left the elderly chess-players to continue their debate. I could see that these questions – which are on the lips of so many Chinese people at the moment – were going to occupy them for hours.
When I returned to Nanjing in 2005, the young cleaner had found a new job at the five-star hotel, Zhuang Yuan Lou. She told me that her elder sister had given birth to a baby girl and was already pregnant with a second child. Apparently the poor woman was desperately worried that it might be another girl, in which case she would repeat her mother’s fate and be discriminated against for the rest of her life as a woman who couldn’t ‘lay eggs’. I asked the young woman to take two sets of ‘Five Poisonous Creatures’ clothes to her sister’s children, in the hope that they would bring peace and help her wishes come true.
I met the girl whom I have called ‘Six’ in Beijing in 2002. She too came from a poor area in the north of Anhui Province and was actually the ninth child in a family of ten. She had a healthy younger brother, but four of her elder sisters had died young. When I asked her how, she said ‘of natural causes’, but it was hard to be sure whether she was being truthful. In the remote, poverty-stricken areas of China girls are of no more value than donkeys, horses, cattle or goats.
I had gone into a small teahouse to find out what had happened to a good vegetarian restaurant I remembered in the area. ‘Six’ was wearing a uniform in the traditional style, and had a piece of paper in front of her on which she was writing in English. She told me that lots of people came into the teahouse to ask questions about places they had known but could no longer find. She had heard her boss say that the vegetarian restaurant had been pulled down. Out of curiosity, I asked which university she was at, and praised her for using the quiet moments in the teahouse to study. When she replied that she had never been to university, and that actually she was a migrant worker who liked books and wanted to save money to go and study abroad, I was flabbergasted. I had talked to many young female migrant workers, but a ‘chopstick’ girl with such a deep love of books and the desire to study abroad was rarer than a phoenix or a unicorn. I wa
s extremely eager to interview her, and to ask her more about herself.
I made a date with ‘Six’ to visit the bookshops in the Wangfujing shopping street with me on her free half-day. There I bought for her tapes and books that would help her prepare for the English exams she needed to take, and afterwards we went to a traditional Beijing restaurant for supper. Hoping to imprint on this young girl’s heart good memories of her native land before she went abroad, I ordered dishes with a strong regional flavour: sliced cold beef with hot, pungent spices from Sichuan called Husband-and-Wife Lung Slices; Manchurian pickled vegetables; deep-fried silver whitebait from the Yangzi delta; and a bowl of Cantonese ‘Dragon and Tiger Fighting’ (wanton and noodles). We talked as we ate, and by the time our plates were empty, I had written down her story.
In 2003 I went back to the teashop, full of excitement at the prospect of seeing her again. I had brought with me information packs from British universities. But both she and the teahouse had vanished. The neighbours said that that teahouse had been shut down for ‘selling banned books’. I was not able to find the girl again. All I had was a telephone number for the teahouse which simply gave a ‘number unobtainable’ tone.
They say that ‘out of blows, friendship grows’, and that is how I got to know ‘Five’.
In 2003, my English husband and I met an American man in Shanghai who was amazed at having discovered that a Chinese businessman he was dealing with held his meetings in a bathhouse. I wasn’t quite so amazed. Ancient texts like the Medical Canon of the Yellow Emperor show how the nurturing of the body has been central to Chinese culture for centuries. But, while the American man’s discovery made me feel patriotic, it simply made my husband curious. I could see the gleam in his eye: he was eager to visit one of Shanghai’s ‘Water-Culture Centres’ to experience for himself this revived interest in the medicinal properties of water.