Wuhan or your sister in Tibet?’ Kongzi’s older brother works for a construction team in Wuhan and his younger sister runs a souvenir shop outside a monastery in Lhasa.
‘No, we’ll go to Dark Water River, sail down to the Yangtze and stay with my cousin in Sanxia. The town’s being pulled down to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project. The place is in chaos, so the family planning policies won’t be strictly enforced. We’ll be safe there. Quick, get our things ready.’ He feels behind the wooden cabinet and pulls out a large hemp sack.
There’s still no scent of spring shoots in the cold February air. The young poplars growing in the roadside ditch seem like railings driven deep into the earth. The icy breeze blowing down the concrete road to Hexi raises no dust, but when a truck or bus drives by, the shreds of plastic bags littering the ground fly up and swirl about.
A passing cyclist stops to tell them that a police checkpoint has been set up on the road ahead.
Kongzi has pulled his blue cap low over his face. His glasses steam up when he exhales. His right hand is thrust into his trouser pocket, gripping Meili’s forged birth permit.
Squinting into the distance, he sees a police car approach with a red light flashing on its roof. He jumps into the ditch, taking Meili with him, and they crouch on all fours until the car has passed.
‘What did you put in there?’ Kongzi asks, glaring at the huge sack Meili has brought.
‘Not much. Just a few clothes, two flannels, a bar of soap, Nannan’s shoes and pencils—’
‘Nannan! Oh God, we forgot to pick her up. I must go back to my parents and fetch her. You wait for me here.’
‘While you’re about it, pop back to our house and get my address book, and my sewing patterns in the top drawer of the cabinet, and your woollen long johns as well . . .’ In her clean white down jacket and red scarf Meili looks like a tour guide, not an illegal mother on the run.
After Kongzi climbs back onto the road and disappears into the village, Meili feels a spasm of morning sickness. She leans over, retches and, like a cat, covers the vomit with soil. Then she cautiously rises to her feet and looks around. On the snow-covered field to her left she sees the grave of one of Kongzi’s distant relatives. Only a few paper petals remain on the bamboo wreath that was laid during the Festival of the Dead. Behind it, dry stalks arch down onto the snow like strands of black hair on a man’s white scalp.
On the other side of the road is a fodder-processing plant. The huge white slogan – RATHER TEN NEW GRAVES THAN ONE NEW COT – which Kongzi was commissioned to paint last year is still visible on the red compound wall. The two osmanthus trees in front are smaller than the one in her parents’ garden in Nuwa Village, but they produce beautiful white blossom in spring. She picked a few branches last May and arranged them in a green bottle with some bamboo leaves, and they stayed fresh for two weeks.
So, I’ll be leaving Kong Village now, Hexi Town, Nuwa County, she says to herself. Apart from their brief honeymoon in Beijing, Meili has never travelled more than ten kilometres from her place of birth. On television, she’s seen images of southern Nuwa, with its forested mountains and prosperous towns where the men dress like high-level cadres and women like hotel receptionists, but she has no idea what lies beyond the county’s southern border. There’s no need to worry, though. Kongzi will lead the way. As long as they can find a safe place for the baby to be born, everything will be fine and she’ll make sure she never falls pregnant again.
In the distance, she can just about make out the two-storey building where she and Kongzi first met. Teacher Zhou came down from Beijing to build it and named it the Sky Beyond the Sky Hotel. Four years ago, Meili travelled from Nuwa Village for an interview, and soon became not only a room attendant but the wife of Kongzi, who was working as hotel manager at the time. She remembers Teacher Zhou turning up with a busload of tourists from a distant town who were dressed even more smartly than the people of southern Nuwa. On the first evening,