Tiger's Heart (17 page)

I hopped back on my bicycle. Pedaling listlessly in the high noon sun, I felt a new sense of despair. For the first time, I started to question: Did Amway really work? That day, my belief in Amway began to waver, and I considered that it might be the scam everyone said it was.

“You are completely out of your mind, going around the countryside like that,” my mother nagged. “Look at you, as dark as a black monkey. Go back to the middle school, okay? It’s not too late. I’ll go with you and beg the principal to take you back. He won’t cancel the contract you signed with the school, but I’ll beg him to give you some time to pay them back.” She coaxed and cajoled me as if I were a little girl.

I spoke to her as earnestly as I could. “Mama, I really hate teaching. Please understand. There’s no future in teaching. I’ll always be poor. Our family has always been so poor, and I don’t want to be poor any more.”

“I know teachers don’t make much money, but even teaching is such an honor for our family. All the generations of our family have been bare-footed peasants. We eat and breathe dirt every day. Finally you become a teacher, but then you throw it away,” my mother said bitterly.

I didn’t know how to make her understand that there were many opportunities out there, many different occupations, and that not teaching wasn’t the end of the world. I tried to imagine myself going back to Ba Jin, to the middle school, taking the pointer, and standing in front of the blackboard every day. The image frightened me. Though I had tried very hard to keep my teaching post open when I first left the school, now that I had seen the much bigger sky outside that town, I didn’t ever want to go back to it.

“There’s no need to talk about this any longer. I am not going back to that school,” I said with curt finality, despite my mother’s angry glare. I wished her face would heal completely soon so that I could carry on with my life, the destiny I had chosen for myself, free of worries and guilt.

I continued preaching Amway. Often next to a manure pit or in a ditch in the rice fields, I explained the Amway career to somebody with a carrying pole on his shoulder or with pants rolled up to his knees and feet soaked in mud. Knowing how ridiculous I looked in people’s eyes, I had to tell myself to forget my self-consciousness and concentrate on the extraordinary opportunities Amway was offering.

Yet a rock never blossoms, no matter how often you water it. By the end of July, I had given up all hope of succeeding with Amway. Sadly but calmly, I accepted the fact that, despite all the blood and tears, I had failed completely. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t blame myself for this failure, because I knew I had tried my very best to make it work. The fact that it didn’t must have been Amway’s fault, not mine.

I put away all my Amway products and tore all the Amway posters off my wall. I took a deep breath and told myself, I am free of Amway. A huge weight was off my back. I could see through Amway and Brother Yong now. He was just a clown, good at manipulating people, and Amway was just a scheme played on thousands of Chinese who had ambitions but few opportunities to succeed.

The day after I quit Amway, I called Huang.

“Come back here, you silly girl. What are you doing in the countryside?” he shouted at me over the phone. “I just heard that a knitting company here is looking for an English translator. A good friend of mine knows the boss. You can go work there. They pay eighteen hundred yuan a month.”

Eighteen hundred yuan a month, more than I had made in LongJiang as Director Yip’s secretary!

I hung up the phone and went out to the asphalt road in front of the house for a walk. As I listened to the honking of the boats on the canal, I felt the high aspirations I’d had a year ago growing in my mind again. I had thought that I had been completely defeated, but as it turned out, the ambition was still there. I hadn’t had enough sufferings in the South yet. Now after the weeks at home eating well and returning to health, I was reinvigorated, ready to go again.

The night before my departure, I packed two bags, left them downstairs, and then went upstairs to inform my mother of my decision to return to the South. She sat on the bed in her room and couldn’t do or say anything except sob. Honor was sitting next to her, sighing. His face was yellower and skinnier. I had heard that his business was not doing well and he was now short of money himself. I prayed that he would continue to take care of my mother as he had done for the past ten years.

At my mother’s temples I saw streaks of gray. She was growing old. Time had erased the hatred I had had for her. I didn’t know when I had decided to forget the way she had treated me as a child, but at that moment I only wished she could get some love and care in her life, which had been so full of misery.

The next morning, I came downstairs feeling refreshed but a little reluctant to part from home. My mother was on the stool behind the stove, weeping just as she had when I had left the house a year earlier. I hardened my heart and turned to fetch my bags, but when I entered the side room I saw only one bag lying on the cement ground. The big bag with all the vital items such as clothes, shoes, toothbrush, and comb was missing.

I ran back to the kitchen. “Where’s my other bag?”

“I don’t know. Go ask your father,” my mother replied.

I looked at her suspiciously. My father had been as cold as ice to me ever since I had come back. I didn’t think he would bother to hide my bag.

I searched everywhere in the house, flustered and dismayed, but couldn’t find it. “Where is he?” I said, returning to the kitchen, really annoyed.

“He’s gone to the fields.” She stared at the fire in the stove.

Fuming with anger, I stamped the floor with my foot, grabbed the small bag, and ran out of the house. Nothing would stop me. I would have to do without my other bag.

On the way to Shanghai, I visited Wu’s town. Though the guilt of dragging her into joining Amway tormented me, I faced her and admitted that I had given it up and assured her that soon I would compensate her for the money she had lost, no matter what. Her face relaxed, and she took out the two thousand yuan I’d asked to borrow for my plane ticket. I promised her earnestly that I would soon pay her back.

She was the only person I could think of to ask for help. The idea of asking my parents never even occurred to me. Borrowing money from my parents and admitting my financial failure to them was the last thing I wanted to do.

Later that day, I boarded a plane from Shanghai to Guangzhou. Sitting on the plane, I felt a sense of déjà vu. It was July again, the same month I had flown to the South a year earlier. I had many new scars, and I was even poorer than I had been then, indebted to almost everyone I knew. But this time it was going to be different, I promised myself solemnly. This time I was going to find my piece of sky.

IV

17

“THIS IS XIAO
Yi. She’s a translator here too. She’ll teach you what to do.” My new boss, Zhou, a bald man with an eggshaped face and a round stomach spilling over his belt, pointed to the girl feeding a piece of paper into the fax machine.

She turned her head. I smiled. Her thin lips moved slightly sideways and a faint smile floated over her waxy face. She had dark circles under her eyes and a big head that looked disproportionate to her skinny body. This is a wary girl who trusts no one, I thought. Hopefully she would relax her vigilance when she realized that I was just in the South to make a living.

It was a spacious office. Two oak boss desks occupied the east side of the room. They faced a big television that sat on a shelf against the west wall. Against the south wall, a long leather couch stretched across the room. Xiao Yi’s desk and her fax machine took up the north side of the rectangle, facing the window. After being told I would share Xiao Yi’s desk, I sat down in the chair next to her.

“Hi, Xiao Yi, could you give me something to read?” I asked politely after sitting awkwardly in silence for a while.

She took out a blue folder from a desk drawer and handed it to me. I opened it curiously. It was jammed with faxes, all of which had Xiao Yi’s delicate, hasty handwriting on them in blue ballpoint pen. I read through the pages quickly, eager to learn more about my new job.

The first stack of faxes was a series of negotiations between Zhou and a couple of foreign suppliers.

03/12/97 8:58pm From: Paris To: GrandKnit China

Dear Mr. Zhou,

My lowest price for the 45 sets of 1982 KOKETT machines is $17,000 each.

Best Regards,

Jacques :o)

* * *

03/12/97 9:00pm From: GrandKnit China To: South Carolina

Dear Carl,

Your KOKETT are too expensive. Jacques offered $15,000 each. Please give us your rock bottom price.

Best, Zhou

* * *

03/13/97 9:30pm From: South Carolina To: GrandKnit China

Dear Mr. Zhou,

The best price I can offer is $15,000 each. They are in perfect condition, still running in Russia. I can give you accessories with them, beams and needles. I cannot do it any lower.

Best wishes,

Carl

* * *

03/13/97 9:40pm From: GrandKnit China To: Paris

Dear Jacques,

Carl’s price is much cheaper than yours, $12,000 each.

But we prefer to buy them from you.

Best, Zhou

* * *

03/13/97 9:55pm From: Paris To: GrandKnit China

Dear Mr. Zhou,

OK. I’ll sell them at $12,000 each. :o(

Best regards,

Jacques

* * *

03/13/97 10:04pm From: GrandKnit China To: Paris

Dear Jacques,

We’ll buy the 30 KOKETT from you. 40’ containers to Guangzhou Port. Deposit will be wired from HK tomorrow. Thanks. You are always our best partner!

Best,

Zhou

* * *

03/14/97 5:37pm From: GrandKnit China To: South Carolina

Dear Carl,

The KOKETT are not popular lately. We decide not to buy them.

Best, Zhou

* * *

03/15/97 11:35pm From: South Carolina To: GrandKnit China

Dear Mr. Zhou,

I heard you bought the 45 KOKETT from Jacques. Why not from me? I can be cheaper.

Best wishes,

Carl

* * *

03/16/97 8:43am From: GrandKnit China To: South Carolina

Dear Carl,

We didn’t buy the KOKETT, must be somebody else. We would of course buy from you if it were us. Don’t worry. You are always our best friend.

Best, Zhou.

* * *

Zhou’s loud voice on the phone made me look up from my reading.

“Old Song, this is Old Zhou!” He was almost shouting. “How are you, Old Song? You’ve gotten yourself some pretty whores lately?”

He chuckled lasciviously and then, raising his voice even louder, said, “Listen, I just got in some KS3, 1991, beautiful condition, 350,000 yuan each, very good price, but only for you. Interested? Yeah, yeah, I’ll be in the office this month. Fly over. But I have to warn you, you’d better hurry. I can’t hold them too long, even for you, my best customer.”

After hanging up the phone, he turned to his brother, who had been listening at the desk next to him. “I think for 350,000 each he would take them all. Let’s fleece this sucker again.” His brother, a bald man with a droopy, unhappy face and a pair of goldfish eyes, looked pleased to hear this news.

“What are KOKETT and KS3?” I whispered to Xiao Yi.

“Knitting machines made in East Germany.” She spoke briefly and coldly, eyes remaining on the notebook in front of her.

“I thought GrandKnit produced warp-knitted fabric. Do they actually buy and sell used knitting machines? Is it legal?”

“It makes more money. Who cares whether or not it’s legal?” she whispered. She pressed her index finger to her lips and gestured for me to stop talking, her thin eyebrows frowning.

Thus I started my second job in the South, as a translator for GrandKnit. It was a small company in Long Jiang a couple of miles away from LongJiang Enterprise’s headquarters. It consisted of a few factory buildings, a warehouse, and a small office building and was enclosed by a tall cement wall with a big iron gate in the front. It was essentially closed off from the outside. There were roughly twenty employees, most of whom were migrant workers who spent their entire days in the factories and then at night jammed into the four dorm rooms on the second floor of the office building. I didn’t understand how just one floor could accommodate all the workers until Xiao Yi took me inside. Each dorm room was as tiny as a chicken barn and had a very low ceiling, but they were further divided into six or even more sections with pieces of thin wood, and each section was only long enough for a single-size bed and wide enough for a person to turn around in.

My assigned sleeping spot was next to the window. Xiao Yi’s was on the other side of a board, next to the squat toilet with a faucet above it, the bathroom for the six girls in the room. It was summer, and the toilet was so stinky that Xiao Yi and I spent most of the days and nights in the air-conditioned office upstairs. One of us always had to be in the office anyway, because the fax machine spat out quotes and counteroffers at all times. These faxes, Zhou emphasized, required
immediate
attention. He demanded that we contact him right away with any valuable information, no matter where he was at the time—at the drinking table, in a karaoke club, or even sleeping in his apartment upstairs. So Xiao Yi and I took turns napping on the couch, and whoever was on duty watched the fax machine while the television constantly showed the exchange rates of different currencies.

Soon I understood why Xiao Yi was thin as a stick and pale as a ghost—this was a job that required at least sixteen hours’ work if you were the only one doing it. Work and sleep were really the only two activities in the place. You didn’t need to worry about passing the interrogation of the guards at the iron gate to get out of the compound, because you didn’t really have time to go out.

“I have always gotten sick frequently, even under normal conditions, but I have been sick every day since I came to this company. This work is just too exhausting. That’s why I asked Zhou to hire another translator,” Xiao Yi told me one day when we were sitting on the couch alone in the office. It had been two weeks since I had started work there, and Xiao Yi and I now chatted every once in a while. I looked at her sympathetically, understanding her pain at being far away from home and fighting for a life in the South.

Unlike Xiao Yi, I was happy with my job. Now I had enough food for every meal. The food in the company’s cafeteria was cooked in cauldrons, placed on big, filthy bamboo plates, and sold through dirty windows in the cement wall. Every day it was the same dish—pork with green peppers swimming in oil—but I was content. When I was a child, we had never had enough meat.

At first, I didn’t understand why the cook, a local man who threw spatulas and yelled at the outlanders who complained about the food, always smiled at me, refused my money, and even put extra food on my plate. So one day I asked Xiao Yi. She seemed to secretly know about everything at this company and was never reluctant to teach me.

“He’s currying favor with you. Don’t you know how important your position is in this company? Without you or me, the Zhous can’t do any business. They can’t even write their own names decently in Chinese, let alone read English letters,” Xiao Yi said scornfully.

She looked around the office, made sure that the door was shut, and then whispered, “Do you know how much money I have made for the Zhous these past two years? Millions and millions. When I first came here, GrandKnit was just one of the thousands of knitting companies in China competing for the domestic warp fabric market. Then one day I accidentally discovered that Chinese knitting companies were dying for used Western machines. These machines, they are trash in Europe and America, but they are gold in China. So I searched around for foreign dealers, and I found so many for the Zhous, and then we worked out all the other details such as shipping, customs, method of payment, et cetera. And since then, they have been rolling in dough.

“But these men are so cheap.” Her tone turned sour. “I do all the work for them—negotiation, shipment arrangement, order of bills, everything—but they pay me only eighteen hundred yuan a month, not a penny more. They don’t give me any days off during the year except Christmas time, when the foreigners are not working. I can’t stand the food in the cafeteria, but they don’t even allow an electric stove in my room, just to save that tiny bit of electricity. People here have secretly asked me so many times, why haven’t I betrayed these two blackhearted Zhous? If I did, their business would collapse.” Xiao Yi’s cheeks flushed with anger and resentment.

“Have you thought of leaving?” I asked her sympathetically, feeling that we were two people crossing a river in the same boat.

“I’m planning on it.”

“Have you found a new job?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, if you find a job, could you please let me know? Let’s stay in touch.” By then I considered Xiao Yi a close friend. We spent practically every waking moment with each other.

She hesitated a little and then said reluctantly, “Yeah, sure, I will let you know, but promise me you won’t tell anyone. I will only give two days’ notice before I leave, and I don’t want the Zhous ever to be able to find me for the rest of my life.”

“Xiao Yi, when did you come to the South?” I was curious about her. She appeared weak and frail but seemed to know how to take care of herself.

“About three years ago. I’ve lived in three different towns for jobs, but I can’t find a good one. There’s no stability in the South.” She sighed.

One month after I started the job, Xiao Yi gave the Zhous notice three days before her actual leaving date. After making sure she had taught me everything and given me all the data, the Zhous happily let her go. Xiao Yi told everyone that she was going back to her home town in Jiangxi Province for a break before searching for a new job, but I knew she wasn’t telling the truth.

“Good luck with your future. Call me. You know where I am,” I said during the final long talk we had in the office the night before she left. I grinned. “I’ll just be here, making fortunes for the Zhous.”

She made a small laugh. Then after a short silence, she spoke. “You know, I’ve thought about importing machines myself before. It’s so tempting. This business can make you rich overnight.”

Her words caught my interest immediately, like a flame suddenly appearing in the dark and tearing apart the night before my eyes. To become rich. It was the universal dream of every outlander drifting through the South. If I became rich, I could give my parents lots of money so they would stop fighting, and I could finally have a happy family. I could buy a lot of cosmetics and clothes and become a city girl. More importantly, though, I could prove to everyone, my mother, my father, and all the villagers in the Shen Hamlet, that I could succeed, that I was different.

I held my breath and asked, “Do it yourself? How?”

“Well, I know all the suppliers’ information and the procedure. We’d only need someone to put up the money.”

“It’s not
that
easy, is it?”

“The most difficult part is getting the machines through customs. It’s very tough to import used machines into China, because the government protects domestic manufacturers, so there’s a quota on them every year. Do you ever wonder why the Zhous unload their machines at night? They’ve bribed somebody working at Customs and figured out a way to bring the machines into the country under the category of ‘parts’ instead of as whole machines.”

A strong desire to make money surged through me. If the Zhous could do it, why couldn’t I?

I grasped Xiao Yi’s arm. “Xiao Yi, let’s do it ourselves. We can make it work. You must have thought it through already.”

“We really need a millionaire. Every deal is at least half a million, and the turnover takes two months including the shipping, clearing, selling, et cetera.” Xiao Yi thought for a few seconds and then lowered her voice even more. “The best person would be Song, the Zhous’ biggest client.”

“You mean the fat guy who loves hookers and doesn’t close the bathroom door when he pees? The one Zhou’s wife calls a country bumpkin?”

“Yes, the guy with the huge stomach. But you would be wrong to think he’s just an illiterate peasant. He has a lot of money and buys at least half of the Zhous’ machines and then sells them himself. I think he would be thrilled to be able to bypass Zhou and import himself.”

“Why haven’t you talked to him, then?”

“Well, it’s not that easy.” She sighed. “What if Song can’t find a way through Customs? Would he really want to work with us? What if he tells the Zhous? They’d kill us. I’m not kidding. You and I are just two of the millions of migrant workers drifting here from Inner China, but the Zhous are powerful men in this town. Nobody would even know if we disappeared one day.”