want it, the clinic will take it from her and promise to get it adopted, but as soon as the woman’s gone, they’ll wrap the poor creature in a sheet and sell it to the nearest restaurant. I’d never do that. But we live in the Age of Money. If someone has cash to buy something, someone else will sell it to them. The restaurants simmer the aborted fetuses for six hours in a broth flavoured with ginseng and angelica. Fetus soup is said to build up male strength and sexual prowess. You don’t believe me? I assure you, it’s a prized delicacy now. It’s brought out at the end of banquets to impress important guests.’
‘I believe that whether a baby is inside the womb or outside, it has a soul. And if a baby’s life is taken without good reason, its soul will return in another incarnation and exact revenge. Those cannibals! Aren’t they afraid of retribution?’
‘Those rich bastards couldn’t care less! As long as fetus soup is on the menu, they’ll keep ordering it.’ Dr Wu opens the freezer. ‘Look, I have a fetus right here, waiting to be sold. But frozen ones don’t fetch such high prices.’ Meili peers down at the tiny corpse. She has a full head of yellow hair, a deep crease between her eyebrows and an ice-covered nose. ‘How come she’s blonde?’ Meili asks.
‘The mother is a prostitute from Guangzhou. The father was an English client of hers. She didn’t want to have the abortion in Guangzhou in case the family planning officers fined her, so she came to me for a salt-water termination. She said the English client always refused to wear condoms.’
‘Well, I’ll try the tablets first. If they don’t work I’ll consider having a surgical abortion.’ As soon as Meili utters the word abortion she feels a need to urinate.
‘Does the surgery strike you as too expensive? I can imagine money must be tight. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing shameful about trying to make a little cash from this situation. The government makes a fortune from the family planning policy. A million fetuses are aborted each year – just think how much money they rake in from that! Shouldn’t the common people share some of the wealth, in a win–win sort of way? A rich couple from Guangzhou came here and asked me to help find them a surrogate mother, so I set them up with a girl from Chongqing who works in the salon two doors down, and now she’s pregnant with their child. She came for a scan the other day, and I told her it was a girl. The couple promised to pay her twenty thousand yuan if it’s a boy, but said that if it’s a girl, they’d want her to have an abortion and would only pay her expenses. The Chongqing girl knows that if she has an abortion now, all she’ll get is the expenses from the couple and three thousand yuan from a restaurant, so she asked me to put “gender uncertain” on the scan report, and she’s going to carry to full term. If the couple really don’t want the baby once it’s born, she’ll sell it to a Welfare Office for five thousand yuan. See what a good head for business she has!’
‘But surely your clinic will get closed down if you falsify a scan like that?’ Meili says, sensing her swelling womb press against her bladder.
‘I have no licence, so I don’t need to stick to any rules.’ Dr Wu has a pudgy, slightly masculine face and appears to be in her late fifties.
Meili considers visiting the government hospital to see whether any doctors have targets to meet and would be willing to give her an abortion for free, but is afraid that Kongzi would be notified. ‘Well, I must go away and think about it,’ Meili says, turning to leave.
‘We also sell castor oil, by the way,’ Dr Wu adds, breaking into a light sweat. ‘It helps soften the cervix. It’s just thirty yuan a bottle. Only drink two spoonfuls, though. Any more and you’ll vomit. Come back tomorrow afternoon for the results of your blood test. If everything’s all right, you’ll be able to take the first Dynotrex tablet.’
As Meili leaves the clinic, the dark clouds overhead open and release a heavy rain onto the asphalt lane, the heaps of electrical waste and the tarpaulin shelters under which the workers are retreating. Meili thinks of the