The Dark Road: A Novel Part 19

Meili takes little Hong from Jun and studies the dishes she's brought to the table. The pigs' trotters braised in bitter gourd and the garlic-fried aubergines look fine, but when she sticks a chopstick into the carp she sees flecks of blood near the bones and wishes she'd given it two more minutes.

'Thank you, Meili,' Tang exclaims. 'What a feast!' He fell in love with her as soon as he heard her sing at the funeral, and now that she's working for his family, he's continually finding excuses to spend time with her or give her a small tip. When Hong has her afternoon naps, he teaches her to type and guides her through the internet, helping her explore her areas of interest. Meili likes to watch clips of fas.h.i.+on shows and pop concerts. The first time she saw a Madonna video, she abandoned her dreams of becoming a singer for good. 'What a star!' she sighed, gazing at her cavort around the stage in a golden bodice. Every morning, Tang puts on a surgical face mask and goes jogging around the lake. He told Meili that in England, he used to jog every day in the forest near his university campus. When he gets back, Meili gives him a bowl of fish slice congee, a bread roll or a custard tart. He's not fussy about what he eats.

Meili appreciates the kindness he shows her, especially when his mother or Jun scold her for not cleaning the bottles properly or for overcooking the rice. On those occasions, Tang will always look up from his computer, ask Meili to pour him another cup of tea, then whisper in her ear that his mother has a mouth as sharp as a knife but a heart as soft as tofu. His words rea.s.sure her, but she doesn't want him to grow too fond of her. She's afraid of men, and of losing control. But when she hears him sitting at his desk talking to female friends on the phone, she feels sad, and wonders if she'd feel the same if she heard Kongzi speak to other women in a similar tone.

After clearing away the dinner and was.h.i.+ng the dishes, Meili goes to the second floor to say goodbye to Tang. He points at his computer screen and says, 'Look, this student has written an article about pollution in Heaven Towns.h.i.+p: "Using 19th-Century Techniques to Dismantle 21st-Century Waste". See here, it says: "Migrants toil like bedraggled alchemists in family workshops, was.h.i.+ng circuit boards in sulphuric acid to salvage tiny granules of gold." And look at this picture: "Female workers strip plastic casings from electric cables with their bare hands, their only tools a fold-up table and a rusty nail . . ."'

'That woman there . . .' Meili gasps, 'it's me!'

'My G.o.d, you're right! I recognise that flowery s.h.i.+rt. Let me enlarge the photo. Yes, no question about it. It's you!'

'My face is filthy. How embarra.s.sing! Close it at once!' Meili puts her hands over the screen. 'Must have been that student from Guangzhou University who came to our workshop last year. He walked straight in, squatted down beside me and started snapping away without asking my permission.'

'I'm going to download the photo. How amazing! My little village songstress has entered the world wide web . . . Look at this article I found on a British website. It says: "The Emma Maersk, the largest container s.h.i.+p in the world, sailed from China to the United Kingdom to deliver 45,000 tonnes of Chinese-manufactured Christmas toys, then returned to southern China a few weeks later loaded with UK electronic waste . . . Heaven Towns.h.i.+p is now the largest e-waste dump in the world. As much as 70% of the world's toxic e-waste is s.h.i.+pped to this area of southern China, where it is processed in makes.h.i.+ft workshops by migrant labourers who are paid just $1.50 a day . . ."'

'Will everyone in the world be able to see that photograph of me?'

'Yes, once it's online it can't be removed. This is the age of the internet.'

'So, if I sang on the computer, the whole world would be able to hear me?'

'Yes, you can upload anything you want onto the net . . . Look this is the most important part: "88% of Heaven residents suffer from skin, respiratory, neurological or digestive diseases. Levels of lead poisoning and leukaemia among children are six times higher than the national average. In just ten years, Heaven Towns.h.i.+p, once a collection of sleepy rice villages, has become a digital-waste h.e.l.l, a toxic graveyard of the world's electronic refuse. The air is thick with dioxin-laden ash; the soil saturated with lead, mercury and tin; the rivers and groundwater are so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from neighbouring counties . . ."' Tang peeps over his gla.s.ses to check Meili's reaction.

'I'd hate to contract a skin disease,' she says. 'If you know computers are so dangerous, why do you sit in front of one all day?'

'They're only dangerous when you take them apart . . . Look here: "High levels of infertility have been detected among women who have resided in Heaven Towns.h.i.+p for over three years."'

'Lucky them! No illness can match the pain of childbirth.'

'Meili, you're not pregnant, are you?' Tang asks tentatively. 'Forgive me for asking.'

'Are you saying I look fat?' Meili has become accustomed to this question over the last two and a half years.

'No, no not fat. It's just that your belly looks a little bloated, that's all. I was worried you might have developed a tumour, or something, from working with all that toxic waste.'

'You're right, I probably have cancer of the womb. I should rip my uterus out and give it back to the state.' She turns to leave, but Tang grabs her hand and pulls her back.

'I don't think you look fat,' he says. 'I promise you. I'm just . . . so fond of you, that's all. I can't help saying what's on my mind.'

'I'd better rinse the bottles again before I go,' Meili says, trying to pull her hand free. He often attempts to plant a kiss on her cheek before she leaves, telling her that this is what foreigners do, but she always backs away. She strokes her belly and says to herself, Yes little Heaven is a tumour growing in my flesh. If anyone asks me if I'm pregnant, I'll tell them I have a tumour. I have the right to have one, and I have the right to be too poor to have it removed . . .

'How long have you been married?' he asks, still clutching her hand.

'Ten years,' she says, her cheeks reddening. 'We had the wedding in the village, then honeymooned in Beijing,' she blurts, wanting him to know that she's visited the capital. Since Kongzi was arrested for gambling, she no longer feels proud to be his wife. And since she returned to him after her escape from the brothel, she has felt that the old Meili died somewhere out on the road. She wants to be a strong, adventurous woman who doesn't rely on a man for her happiness. She is comfortable treating Tang as a friend or a younger brother, but if he asked to be her lover or husband, she'd cut all ties with him. As Suya wrote in her red journal, 'Love is the beginning of all pain.'

'So, what did you think of Beijing?' Tang asks, stroking the desk now that Meili has tugged her hand free.

'The Forbidden Palace was so huge it terrified me only emperors would dare live in such a place . . .' Meili says, then dries up. She isn't used to being asked her opinions. 'I went into a supermarket to buy a drink. There was a mountain of lemonade bottles on display but when I tried to pay for one the checkout girl said no one could buy any until Workers' Day . . .'

'Look at these photographs I took in England. This is my lecture hall. This is the university garden when it snowed.'

'Was one of those your girlfriend?' Meili asks nervously, standing behind his chair.

'She's Spanish a great dancer! And the other girl's from France. I travelled to Switzerland with them.'

'Huh I don't want to hear about that,' Meili says disapprovingly. The photograph shows Tang sitting between two foreign girls, his arms around their shoulders and a big grin on his face. On the table in front of them are gla.s.ses of wine and a large birthday cake.

'This is a protest march in Paris . . . St Peter's Square in Rome.'

'Let me see if any of the countries you visited have population-control policies,' Meili says, leaning over to type a few keywords into the search box.

'I know that England certainly doesn't. Pregnant women are treated with respect there. They have specially allocated seats on buses and trains, and can give birth in hospital free of charge. The government even pays parents a weekly allowance to cover the cost of milk powder and nappies.'

'You're lying to me! How could such a wonderful place exist?'

'I'm not lying. Lots of pregnant women smuggle themselves out of China to give birth in Europe or Hong Kong. If you plan to have another baby, you should do the same. Now that China has entered the WTO, foreign countries are much more welcoming to Chinese visitors.'

'You'll have to teach me English first,' says Meili, then remembering how Suya said men should be used but not loved, she kneels down and looks up at him with a smile. 'You mustn't say I'm stupid, though. I only went to school for three years.'

Tang puts his arm around her. 'You're not stupid. You're just pure and wholesome and . . . Listen, I wanted to ask you: will you let me take you out for dinner at the China Pavilion Restaurant tomorrow evening?'

'What for? No, no . . .'

'It's your birthday. Have you forgotten?' He strokes her hair and looks lovingly into her eyes. 'You must have more belief in yourself and value your talents. In England, the first thing our professor told us was that we should find the confidence to surpa.s.s him . . .'

'Are you still here, Meili?' Jun calls out from the landing. 'Then you can change Hong's nappy before you leave.'

Tang pulls a face and whispers: 'Better do as she asks.' When his buck teeth show, he reminds her of the pet rabbit she had as a child.

It's dark outside now. The fluorescent strip on the sitting-room ceiling and the blue light from the mute television in the corner make the room feel cold and stiff. The infant spirit sees Mother change the nappy of the screaming baby, put it to sleep in a cot, and move downstairs. On the ground floor, workers are dismantling and smelting. The smell of burnt Bakelite follows Mother out into the garden that is fenced with corrugated iron and barbed wire. She opens the steel security gate and closes it behind her. In a shop window at the end of the dark street she sees a seascape painting framed in bright strip lights above a bowl of pink plastic tulips. Smiling down at her belly, she whispers, Still don't want to come out? Well, he's noticed you, little tumour. Look at those nice jeans in the window. If it weren't for you, I could fit into them . . . Mother puts one hand on her hip and throws the other in the air, mimicking the pose of the mannequin in the window . . . Back in the house, Father is filling out forms while Nannan is writing essays in exercise books, wearing a blue dress with a panda badge pinned to the front. 'Did you know you can explore the whole world on the internet?' Mother says as she walks in. 'We must buy a computer. They're so much more interesting than televisions.'

'You can barely read what use would a computer be to you?' Father says. 'Just stick to dismantling them.'

'I can type words using Roman script. Once I learn all twenty-six letters, I'll be able to go online by myself and travel the world. We'll be able to send our relatives electronic messages and photographs which they'll receive in seconds. I dismantled computers for two years, but I've only just understood what they're used for . . .' Mother sees Father smear green tea and ink over the exercise books Nannan has written in, and sandpaper the corners of the forms. The floor is strewn with pencils and b.a.l.l.s of cotton wool. 'What's going on here?' she asks.

'Inspectors are visiting Red Flag Primary next week. We have two hundred pupils, but to get a larger government subsidy we need to tell them we have two hundred and fifty. So I'm having to fabricate fifty students. Help me fill some exercise books. If they're all in Nannan's handwriting, it'll look suspicious.'

'I've finished twelve literacy homework books,' Nannan says. 'Daddy said he'd buy me some candyfloss as a reward.'

'You can do Year 3 homework, Nannan?' Mother says. 'Clever girl!'

'She knows more characters than you do now, and she can write out each of the three hundred Tang poems from memory. She will be a worthy descendant of Confucius!'

'Daddy, Confucius was an evil man. I wish we didn't share his surname.'

'Who told you he was evil?' Father says. 'Confucius was a great sage. You should feel proud to have him as an ancestor.'

'If he was so great, why don't they mention him in our textbooks? Lulu keeps singing "Down with Kong the Second Son!" but I pretend not to hear her.'

'I a.s.sure you, Nannan: Confucius was a great philosopher and teacher. He taught us to respect learning, honour our parents and care for our young, and lead a virtuous life, even in times of turmoil. He said that people should obey their leaders, but only so long as their leaders rule with compa.s.sion. For two thousand years, his words formed the bedrock of Chinese culture. The Communist Party may have cursed him, vilified him, dug up his grave, but his ideas live on. You're almost nine years old now, Nannan. You must study hard and build up the knowledge that will help you carve a path through this difficult world. Tell me how that saying goes?' Father puts down the forged exercise book he's holding and stares into Nannan's eyes.

'"Children who don't read books, don't know the treasures they contain. If they knew . . ." blah, blah, blah.'

'That's right. But listen to me, Nannan. The tide is changing. Confucius's name is being mentioned in the newspapers. One day he'll be rehabilitated, and those evil cadres who spat on his corpse thirty years ago will light incense sticks in his temple and beg forgiveness.'

'Don't talk to your cla.s.smates about any of this, Nannan,' Mother says. 'Your school may not teach you about Confucius, but it will teach you Tang poetry, so I'm sure you'll rise to the top of the cla.s.s. Remember: learning is a joy, not a burden.' Mother turns on the electric fan and takes off her dress. 'Kongzi, I want to open my own shop. I only need twenty thousand yuan to get started.'

'I'm too busy to talk about that now,' Father says. 'Fill up this homework book for me. Use your left hand. No, come to think of it, you write like a child with your right hand so just stick to that.'

'I want to open a baby shop that sells milk powder, toys, cots,' Mother says dreamily. 'When mothers see me stand at the counter with my pregnant bulge, they'll come flocking in. Or I could sell refurbished computers. This town has mountains of sc.r.a.p components but no one's thought of rea.s.sembling them to make functioning machines. I'm sure we could earn more money a.s.sembling computers than these workshops do taking them apart. We could sell them to people in the countryside. The market for cheap second-hand computers there must be enormous.'

Nannan completes an exercise book then starts writing on the first page of another, her long hair dangling over the desk.

Meili walks barefoot over the white vinyl mat. A large black spider crawls behind her. Kongzi has become very close to Nannan, she says to herself. Perhaps by the time the baby's born, he'll come round to the idea of having another daughter and everything will be fine. I'll find a nanny for little Heaven, set up my own business, then return to Nuwa County and open a chain of second-hand computer shops.

Three hours later, Kongzi is still crouched on the floor, scribbling in the exercise books. Meili has nodded off on the chair, her ink-stained hands resting on her belly. In her dream she sees her future self galloping up a hill, her hair and the gra.s.s blowing in the wind. When she reaches the top she takes flight. From a heap of computers below the infant spirit shouts out to her, 'Keep flying, keep flying. You're crossing the border. If the soldiers see you, they'll gun you down . . .'

KEYWORDS: clam dance, zero protein, sticky rice, banana tree, steel tower, rainbow.

WHEN MEILI OPENS the door in the morning, she has to drag the children's bicycles and baby-walkers onto the pavement before she can make her way to the counter. This shop may be small and cramped, but it has given her a foothold in society. With a look of calm contentment, she plugs her mobile phone into the charger and gazes 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 rea.s.sembling 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 w.a.n.g 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 w.a.n.g Suyas a letter. Although she still hasn't found the Suya she's looking for, she has struck up online friends.h.i.+ps 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 Towns.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.ddess of fertility and childbirth. He said that all the Golden Flower Mother statues in the temples in Heaven Towns.h.i.+p 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 sh.e.l.ls attached to her back. When the fisherman reaches out to catch her, she snaps her sh.e.l.ls 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, until by the end he can't prise his hands free. Meili thinks of the video clip Tang downloaded from a foreign website of a woman being penetrated by two men. She turned away as soon as he showed it to her, but the images have stuck in her mind. Whenever she pa.s.ses a marital-aids shop now, she casts a brief glance at the products in the window. She has started to wear prettier clothes, and has had her hair cut in a fas.h.i.+onable shoulder-length bob.

Although Meili has kept Tang at arm's length, he is still besotted with her, and the knowledge that she's pregnant hasn't put him off. He even lent her ten thousand yuan to settle the unpaid bills for her mother's operation. She doesn't know when she'll be able to repay him. She makes three thousand yuan a month from her shop. But the cyst that was removed during her mother's operation was found to be cancerous, and if the disease returns, there will be endless medical bills to pay. Her father and brother have exhausted their savings and have sold the pig they were hoping to eat at Spring Festival. She can imagine the wretched scene at her parents' house now, with no money to heat the brick bed, or buy New Year posters or her mother's favourite five-spiced sunflower seeds. Tang has become her protector and benefactor. She's grateful for his help, but is still careful not to cross any lines. She suspects her emotions are blunted. Kongzi still burrows his way inside her every night, but as soon as he's finished, she washes all traces of him from her body and returns to how she was. She knows she won't leave him. He a.s.sured her that he never slept with a prost.i.tute, and having no proof, she's given him the benefit of the doubt. As long as both sides remain faithful, she believes that marriage should last for ever. She knows this is a stupid belief. It seems as childish to her as the infant spirit who's now smiling inanely at the toddler playing with a bamboo snake in the doorway. But at the same time, she is aware of deeper longings. She wants to be as independent and confident as Suya, as enterprising as Tang. She knows that a simple peasant woman like her has no right to an independent existence, but she understands that money can widen one's choices in life, so is determined to earn as much as she can. Without money, no marriage or family is secure. She feels that, for years, her true self has been lying buried in the depths with Happiness, but that since meeting Tang, it has begun to rise to the surface again. She wants to dismantle the Meili that has been damaged by men and the state, and rea.s.semble it, like a refurbished computer that may not be as sophisticated as the latest model, but is at least stronger than it was before. She will struggle on and, as Suya advised, use her past suffering as an impetus to achieve happiness.

After the procession has pa.s.sed, Kongzi phones to say that his sister and her Pakistani husband have had a son. 'They've taken their little black baby to Kong Village to spend Spring Festival with my mother. What a loss of face for the Kong clan!'

'Oh, you have such a feudal mentality!' Meili replies. 'Who cares what colour the baby is? The black dolls in my shop sell just as well as the white ones. And besides, the Kong family could do with some new blood. After two thousand years, they still haven't produced an offspring of Confucius's calibre.'

'We'll talk when we get back,' Kongzi says, slamming the phone down. Since Meili told him that her mother has been forcefully fitted with an IUD, he becomes short-tempered whenever babies or childbirth are mentioned. Meili is also upset that both their mothers have had IUDs shoved inside them as a result of their quest for another child, so she puts up with his outbursts. She knows the importance Kongzi places on his responsibilities as a son to his mother. Whenever they made dumplings at home, he'd always serve his mother a bowl first. Now that his brother has moved back to the village following the death of their father, she knows Kongzi is racked with guilt that he's not there too, looking after her.

A young man suddenly storms into the shop and says, 'We're from the Bureau of Industry and Commerce. Open all the bags of milk powder in that crate!' He looks barely out of high school. There are four officers behind him wearing hats emblazoned with gold badges. A large truck is parked outside.

Meili notices that one of the officers is a woman who visited the shop last week, and quickly slips a one-hundred-yuan note into her palm.

'I can't take it,' the woman whispers, glancing behind her. 'Someone's reported you, and we've been told to search your stock and confiscate any counterfeit goods.'

'This brand's definitely fake,' the young man says, pulling a bag from the crate. 'There was a big report about it last week: it contains zero protein. And these ones? Let's see: "Milk Powder for Primary School Children", "Calcium-Enriched Milk Formula" yes, they're fake too.' His eyes flit between the list in his hand and the bags he pulls from the crate.

'No, that brand's not fake,' Meili protests. 'The government awarded it a gold prize last year. I research my products very carefully, I a.s.sure you.'

'Drag the crates outside,' says a middle-aged officer standing in the doorway.

'I bought them from a legitimate wholesale company,' Meili says. 'How was I to know that they're fake?' The truth is, she is fully aware that everything in her shop is counterfeit. If she bought genuine products, her costs would quadruple and she'd make no profit.

'If you had a child of your own, you'd never dream of feeding it fake formula,' the young man says. 'They provide no nourishment at all.'

'I do have a child, and if I could afford it, I certainly would give her this. The women who buy my formula are migrant workers, many of whom have several children, so they get through a lot of it, but not one of them has ever come back to complain.'

'Real formula is a creamy colour, but look, this stuff is white,' the young man says, opening a bag and pouring the powder onto his hand. 'This is just ground rice and instant chrysanthemum tea powder, with some melamine added to ensure it pa.s.ses the protein tests. Melamine that's the plastic that kitchen cupboards are made of. If a baby were to drink this powder, it would develop kidney stones and die.'

'We'll fine you and confiscate your goods,' the middle-aged officer says. 'Count yourself lucky. If you dare sell fake products again we'll revoke your licence.'

Meili's heart sinks as she watches the eleven crates of milk powder being dragged out of her shop and loaded onto the van. That's a thousand yuan lost for ever.

One of the officers notices Meili's round belly and says to his colleague, 'This place really is a heaven for family planning fugitives!' in a local dialect he mistakenly presumes Meili doesn't understand.

Pa.s.sers-by gather outside the shop and mutter among themselves: 'We can't trust anything we eat these days! Tofu fermented in sewage, soy sauce made from human hair, mushrooms bleached with chlorine, and now fake baby formula! Whatever next? . . . Apparently, after just three days on that powder, babies lose weight and develop "big head disease". . . I heard that thirteen babies have died already from kidney stones . . . Those evil peasants who make this stuff have they no conscience? . . .'

Meili looks down, aghast, at the 5,000-yuan fine the officers handed to her. She considers phoning Kongzi, but is afraid he'll blow his top, so she phones Tang instead and asks him to come over straight away.

'I want to throw myself in the lake,' she sobs as Tang walks in.

'This fake milk powder has been in the news a lot recently. The government announced that there would be a national crackdown. Hundreds of infants have developed swollen heads, apparently, and a few have already died. One manufacturer raised the protein levels in the powder by adding ground leather from old shoes and boots. Can you believe it?'

'Why didn't you warn me?' Meili says, feeling stupid and incompetent.

'I had no idea you sold fake goods.'

'But everything in Heaven is fake! Those Clarks shoes you're wearing are as fake as the baby Nike trainers on that shelf. That teddy bear with the Made in France label, that American dummy, that Hong Kong baby-walker, even the President Clinton autobiography I've put in the front window they're all pirated, copied, fake, made in Shenzhen . . . I have a sack of foreign designer labels which I can stick on any product I want. If I didn't sell fake goods, how could the government expect me to pay all the fees they charge? Just take a look at these!' She opens a drawer stuffed with bills. 'Urban infrastructure improvement fee, private leaseholders' public security administration fee, migrant worker integration fee, public security joint defence fee, children's products company administrative fee, fire prevention fee-'

'All right, I understand,' Tang says. 'Come on, let me invite you to lunch. It'll help you take your mind off things.'

The Hunan restaurant he takes her to is a five-minute walk away. By noon the place is packed, and filled with the noise of clanking crockery, loud television and animated chatter. Meili takes a small bite of the taro croquette she ordered, then carefully dabs her mouth with her napkin to stop her lipstick staining the food.

'I have something important to tell you, Meili,' he says. 'I want to set up a business selling second-hand computer components. Would you be my general manager? The salary will be low to start with, but I'll give you a percentage of the profits and shares in the company.'

'Yes, I'd love to! But what about my shop, and your family's business?'

'You can find someone to run the shop for you. And I've had enough of working for my family. I need to strike out on my own, be my own boss. I've researched the computer trade. Dealers from Beijing are already travelling down here to buy used components. There's a big demand for CD drives and motherboards from repair shops up there. An old cla.s.smate of mine has set up a similar company in Guangzhou. We can start by supplying him first, then gradually expand nationwide.'

'Have you thought of selling second-hand televisions as well? I bought one for two hundred yuan the other day. It's been cleaned and repaired, and works perfectly. A similar model would cost five thousand yuan new. If you sell cheap products like that to the poor, you could make a fortune. After all, most people in this country are peasants.'

'We can think about that later. But first let's come up with a name. How about Fangfang Electronics? No, that doesn't work well in English.'