out of the window. The shop belongs to Tang’s family. She pays them two hundred yuan a month in rent, and buys the stock herself. In her spare moments, she surfs the internet on the computer Tang has lent her. He’s taught her to breach the firewall and access the BBC Chinese-language website, so she now knows that Chinese illegal immigrants in America can earn more in one year than their families back home earn in a lifetime. She has also researched the local component trade and worked out the cost of reassembling a computer. Tang has told her she has a good business brain.
It was Hong’s first birthday yesterday. Meili phones Tang and asks how the party went. She was sacked from her job as nanny because while she was changing Hong’s nappy on the ironing board, Hong burned her hand on a hot iron. Jun was furious, and banned Meili from ever setting foot in the house again. Meili still feels terrible about the accident. A couple of days ago, she chose the most expensive baby-walker from her shop and asked Tang to give it to Hong for her birthday.
‘Your present’s a great success!’ Tang tells her down the phone. ‘Hong’s walking around the sitting room with it. She loves the music and flashing lights.’
‘Make sure she doesn’t push it anywhere near the stairs. And remind Jun to tidy all the electric cables away. At twelve months, babies start chewing everything in sight.’
‘No chance of Hong doing that. She has a dummy stuffed in her mouth all day.’
‘Really? I may sell dummies in the shop, but don’t let Hong use one – they make babies’ teeth stick out.’ Meili bites her lip, afraid that the buck-toothed Tang might have taken offence.
‘I need to answer some emails,’ Tang says. ‘I’ll pop by at lunchtime.’
‘To collect the rent? But it’s not due until Monday . . . Well, if you’re coming, you can fix the electricity meter for me – it keeps tripping. Fine. See you later.’ Meili puts the phone down and goes online. Last month she searched the name Wang Suya, and it produced 4 million results. Adding the keyword ‘university’ returned 6,500 results. Remembering that Suya studied English and was from Chengdu, she narrowed the results down to twelve and managed to send each of these Wang Suyas a letter. Although she still hasn’t found the Suya she’s looking for, she has struck up online friendships with two of the Suyas who replied. She’s also visited chat rooms where other women like her lament the babies they’ve lost through forced abortions. The babies’ ghosts haunt the conversations, making the website feel like a graveyard. The women are planning to set up a virtual memorial garden to give the aborted fetuses a safe resting place. Meili has learned that 13 million abortions are performed in China each year, an average of 35,000 per day.
Through the side window she sees a troupe of dragon dancers appear at the end of the lane. Processions are a common sight in Heaven Township, not only on Workers’ Day or National Day, but before weddings or the openings of new businesses. Behind the dragon, four men are holding aloft a statue of the Dark Emperor, the black-bearded Taoist deity. Meili visited a Taoist temple with Tang, and prayed to the Dark Emperor to protect the baby in her womb. When she told Tang that she’s pregnant and that the baby refuses to come out, he said he’d take her to a temple in Foshan where she can pray to a huge statue of the Golden Flower Mother, the goddess of fertility and childbirth. He said that all the Golden Flower Mother statues in the temples in Heaven Township are replicas of the one in Foshan. Meili sees the procession stop at the intersection beneath a ragged red banner that says THE IMPORT OF ELECTRONIC WASTE IS ILLEGAL, and a young couple step out from the crowd to perform the ‘clam dance’. The man dressed as the fisherman has a wicker basket tied to his waist and is swaying his hips and clapping his hands in the air. The woman playing the clam fairy is moving her arms, opening and closing the shells attached to her back. When the fisherman reaches out to catch her, she snaps her shells shut, trapping his hands. He keeps trying, and she keeps snapping, but each time they touch, she grows fonder of him and tightens her grip,