touched, thank goodness. I phoned Kong Zhaobo as well. He said the family planning squad destroyed the homes of nine families who refused to pay the fines. Li Peisong managed to pay off the remaining nine thousand yuan for Little Fatty’s birth, so he was allowed to keep his house. Of the forty-three villagers who were arrested, nine have been released and the rest are still waiting to be sentenced.’
Nannan kisses the plastic doll and presses it close to her chest. ‘What’s her name, Daddy?’
‘Unlucky,’ Kongzi replies. He lies on his side on the bamboo mat, next to Nannan’s half-eaten banana, a pair of Meili’s knickers and the dirty vest he’s just pulled off.
‘Is she real, Daddy? I like her yellow hair. I want wash her face.’
‘But why did they bulldoze our house?’ asks Meili. ‘They had no idea I was pregnant. Perhaps the police were monitoring the line when you phoned your father last month.’ Turning to Nannan, she says, ‘Let me wash that doll before you play with it.’ The cabin is suffocatingly hot. Unable to bend down over her pregnant belly, Meili picks up Kongzi’s vest with her toes, folds it and places it on the stool. Then she goes outside, turns her back to the setting sun and inhales deeply. The scorching breeze blows against her sweat-soaked dress. ‘At least the Kong Village police won’t be able to track us down to this place,’ she says. ‘Not from a phone call.’
‘Probably not. But I’ve heard that the authorities here are sending police to check the documents of every migrant worker in the county. Our team manager told us to make sure our papers are in order.’
‘Let’s sail downriver, then. If the inspectors find me, that’ll be it.’
Meili looks over to the bank and notices some men stepping off a van. Then a white boat approaches and a fat officer standing at the bow shouts out to her: ‘Hey, you with the big belly! Do you have a birth permit for that? Where are you from?’
Panic-struck, Meili stoops down into the cabin and says, ‘Kongzi, quick! Start the engine. They’ve come to arrest us.’
Kongzi scrambles to the stern and grasps the steering wheel, but before he manages to pull the start cord, three men from the van jump aboard and yank his arms behind his back. As swiftly and quietly as she can, Meili crawls to the starboard and lowers herself into the river.
‘Get back on the boat!’ one of the men shouts at her.
‘I’m just having a . . . w-wash,’ she stutters. She’s up to her shoulders in water, quaking with fear.
‘There’s no point trying to hide your belly from us. We can still see it through the water. Get back on board and show us your birth permit.’
‘She’s not pregnant – she’s just plump,’ Kongzi says, the colour draining from his face.
‘We’ll need to take her to the clinic to confirm that.’ As the man speaks, the white boat draws closer and is hooked to theirs. The fat officer at the bow takes a swig from his can of Coke then says to Meili, ‘Get out of the water! We’re from the County Family Planning Commission, and we’ve come to round up every woman in Sanxia who’s pregnant without permission.’ The silver buckle of his belt glints in the sun.
Kongzi pulls Nannan out of the cabin and says, ‘It’s my wife’s first pregnancy. This girl here belongs to our neighbours.’
‘I’m your girl, Daddy, not neighbour girl,’ Nannan splutters, bursting into tears. ‘I not blabbing nonsense. Mummy, Mummy . . .’
The fat man eyes Kongzi sternly. ‘If we take the girl away with us, will you still claim she’s not yours?’
A man in black sunglasses steps aboard. ‘Any woman pregnant without authorisation is both violating the family planning laws and endangering the economic development of our nation,’ he says. ‘You think you can turn up here and breed as you wish? This is the Three Gorges Dam Project Special Economic Zone, don’t you know?’
‘If you cooperate with us, you won’t have to pay the fine,’ another man says. ‘But if you resist, we’ll get your village Party Secretary to arrest every member of your family.’
‘We’re peasants, with rural residence permits, and our daughter here is already five years old, so my wife’s entitled to have a second child,’ Kongzi says.
‘Five years old, you say?’ says the man in sunglasses. ‘Three, more like. And who knows how many more children you’ve got hidden away.’