of the hut looks quite homely now. Meili has covered the floor with a white plastic mat which she found on the banks and keeps scrupulously clean, and has papered three walls with magazine pages and stuck a poster of Niagara Falls on the fourth. The only unsightly part of the room is by the door, where the food is cooked and the bags are stored. In the light from the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, the brightly coloured plastic objects in the room shine out.
Father takes a swig of beer. Feeling a sparrow bone slip from the corner of his mouth, he quickly spits it onto the floor. Mother picks it up with her chopsticks and puts it on the table. ‘Where are your manners?’ she says. ‘We’re not eating in the fields now. To think you were once a respected teacher!’
‘Stop putting on airs. You want us to behave like people from the towns? Heaven might look urban, but officially it’s still categorised as rural.’
‘No, it’s a development zone,’ Mother replies. ‘I’ve seen foreigners walking down its streets. From now on, you must wear shoes whenever you go out. It’s so uncivilised to wander around in bare feet.’
Nannan is staring at the television in the corner, watching three children follow a blue alien onto a flying saucer. ‘I wish I could get on it too!’ she cries, and points her tongue at the screen.
‘I haven’t had a period since we arrived in Heaven, Kongzi,’ Mother says quietly. ‘That’s almost four months. But I can’t be pregnant. I haven’t felt sick at all.’
‘Four months? You must be pregnant, then. I told you: if I plant enough seeds, one of them is bound to sprout! This time, make sure you give me a male heir. Ah, the vitality of the Kong bloodline is indestructible! I put it down to the feng shui of the Temple of Confucius in Qufu. Think about it: the sage’s tomb is in the centre, his sons’ tombs to the left, his grandsons’ to the right. Exactly as the saying goes: “Surrounded by offspring on either side, in prosperity your descendants will always abide.” No wonder there are now three million Kongs scattered around the world.’ Smiling proudly, he waves his chopsticks over the dog-eared astrology books stacked beside him.
‘What superstitious nonsense! If the feng shui was so good, how come the temple was destroyed by the Red Guards? Besides, you may be a Kong, but you don’t exactly abide in prosperity, do you? Hah! If it turns out that I am pregnant, you wouldn’t even be able to find a safe place for the child to be born.’
‘What are you talking about? Heaven must be the safest place in the whole country! There are eighty thousand migrant workers living here. The family planning officers wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up too early. I’ve gone six months without having a period before. Perhaps the chemicals in the water have affected my hormones.’
‘How did you get pregnant, Mum?’ Nannan asks, turning round to look at her.
‘I ate some Kong family seeds and one of them has sprouted inside my tummy.’
‘And it will get bigger and bigger until you explode?’
‘No, when it reaches the right size it will come out, just like Waterborn did.’
‘Well, I won’t eat any more sunflower seeds from now on! Daddy, I miss Waterborn. I want to let her play with my dolly.’ Nannan picks up the plastic doll in the red dress and cradles it in her arms.
‘Waterborn won’t be coming back,’ Father says, scratching the sole of his foot, his flip-flop dangling from his toes.
‘Is it because of me you got rid of her?’ Nannan asks.
‘It’s time for bed now, Nannan. Mummy and Daddy will be going to sleep, too.’
‘But you and Daddy always sleep in the boat and leave me here on my own.’
‘The bed’s too small for the three of us. All right, I’ll squeeze in with you tonight, then. Quick, put on your nightdress.’ Mother pours some water into a plastic bowl, dunks a flannel into it and says, ‘Let me wash your feet, Nannan.’
‘When people die, do their brains still have thoughts, Mummy?’ Nannan asks, perching on the edge of the bed, her large red flower hairclip drooping over her forehead.
‘She hasn’t written her diary, yet,’ says Father, opening the brown notebook. ‘See what she wrote yesterday? She couldn’t remember the characters for “car” and “crash” so she wrote them in roman letters.’