to a window with a poster of a woman with long blonde hair, lying in a bath filled with bubbles.
‘I have a husband, and even if I didn’t, I’d still never do what you do.’
‘Why did you run away, then, if he’s so important to you? Why waste your youth living with a man you don’t love?’
Meili stays silent. Last night, she said to Suya, ‘I’ll never divorce Kongzi. As the saying goes: If you marry a chicken, you must follow the chicken.’ Suya laughed and told her she was a fool.
When the bus leaves the city, a green breeze carrying the scent of bamboo and wild grass blows in through the open window. Meili hasn’t washed for days, so she turns her face to it and inhales large draughts. The patches of leaked milk on her shirt begin to dry. When travelling by bus, the city and the countryside are only a few minutes apart, but for a peasant the distance always feels insurmountable. Meili is frustrated that although she’s not pregnant, she’s still considered to be a criminal for daring to enter a city. Her dream of living a modern urban life seems remote and unattainable.
At dusk, the bus reaches a village high in the hills and stops outside a compound of brick buildings. The two wooden signs outside the gate say YANG VILLAGE POLICE STATION and YANG VILLAGE LABOUR CAMP. In the setting sun they seem cast in bronze.
After supper, the village Party Secretary turns up. He spits out a toothpick, scoops some wax from his ear with his finger and says, ‘Comrades, welcome to the labour camp. Today is National Day, so we served you a local speciality: hot and numbing chicken. Delicious, wasn’t it?’ He breaks into a wide grin, but the forty inmates seated around him remain po-faced. ‘While you’re here you must abide by the rules and work hard. If your families pay the thousand-yuan bail, you can leave at once. If not, you’ll be with us for some time –’
‘I’m a welder at Compassion Villas construction site,’ interrupts a middle-aged man dressed in a grubby suit. ‘The foundations are going down this week. How will they manage without me?’
‘You should’ve thought about that before you wandered off-site,’ a village policeman says, jabbing his finger at him. ‘Now you’re here, you’ll have to do as you’re told.’ There are only three genuine policemen in the barn. The four others are local peasants dressed in the cheap uniforms of urban control officers that were probably bought in a local market. If these impostors were to enter a town or city, they would also be detained.
‘You will undergo re-education through labour and attend introductory classes in politics and law,’ the village Party Secretary continues. ‘We hope that you will use your time here well and make a valuable contribution to the modernisation of the village.’
‘I don’t understand why we’ve been brought to this camp,’ a woman at the back says. ‘We were taken to a Custody and Repatriation Centre. So why haven’t we been repatriated to our villages?’
‘Why is it a crime to leave the countryside to look for work? Which city in China hasn’t been built by migrants? Which factory in Guangdong, which Sino-foreign joint venture doesn’t rely on migrant workers? Are the authorities going to arrest every one of us?’
‘Yes, we migrants are the engines powering China’s miraculous economic rise. It said so in the newspapers. Don’t any of you know how to read?’
‘Foreign capitalists are flooding to China to take advantage of our cheap labour, so why are we branded criminals?’
‘I was told we were going to be sent back to our villages, so why have we been brought here to work like slaves?’
‘As I said, if your bail’s paid, you’ll be free to go,’ the Party Secretary repeats angrily, slipping back into his regional accent.
‘You bought us from crooked middlemen for five hundred yuan each, and now you want our relatives to pay you a thousand to release us? We’re being traded like cattle in a market. If it’s illegal for us to live in our own country, what do you expect us to do? Smuggle ourselves into Hong Kong? . . .’ All the inmates are on their feet now, gesticulating angrily and swearing.
‘Enough!’ the Party Secretary barks. ‘That’s it for tonight. Fill out the registration forms, take a handbook, and I’ll see you at seven tomorrow morning for the name call . . .’