Integrated Semiconductor. Plug. Diode. Plug. Resistance. Plug. Capacitor. Plug. A new board. Plug. Plug. Plug.
Over the course of six months my hands grew not only dexterous but automatic and steely. Shielded with calluses, my fingertips stopped aching from pinching the sharp edges of the tiny elements through the thin latex gloves. The unit director Mr Wang no longer scolded me for lagging behind the conveyor belt, or exceeding the standard failure rate, which meant that my mind had the leisure to roam. While I worked, I calculated roughly how many elements I plugged during a standard working day, which consisted of twelve hours including lunch and supper breaks. The clock was broad and round on the wall, visible from every corner of the workshop like a moon, and now and again I glimpsed at it. I varied the unit time from five minutes to ten minutes, to half an hour, and multiplied the number of elements plugged accordingly. I worked out that on a good day I could plug 11, 240 elements.
Later, I would share the mathematics with my roommates and they would laugh and call me ‘philosopher Lili’. I continued to calculate the numbers by week – we worked six days a week – then by month, year, and eventually for my whole working life. In the city, women retired at fifty-five years old, but it was rumored that the age was prone to extending. I tried to work out how many elements I would have plugged if I retired at sixty, and soon I was fatigued before a simple subtraction.
I was sixteen. It felt like an eternity. (Plugging.)
One day my underpants disappeared. They had been washed clean, dried under the sun, and folded in a neat pile in my tin cabinet. Four of us shared one room, and we each had a table with a chair, a tin cabinet, and above these objects there was a single bed reached by a ladder. It wasn’t the first time that my underpants had gone missing. Once, a pair had gone before I could fetch them back from the balcony, leaving a naked hanger dangling in the air. I asked whether anyone had seen my underpants. The first time no one answered. The second, Nana asked what I meant, then she chuckled and said, ‘What kind of girl has as many underpants as you do anyway?’
I didn’t respond immediately. But a few days later, during an on-bed talk after the lights were turned off, I diverted the conversation towards underpants with another roommate Jiaojiao. Jiaojiao was pretty and exquisite like an urban girl. She had skincare products lined up on her table, which she told us were gifts from the guy she was dating. The two of us agreed that urban girls had at least half a dozen pairs of underpants instead of just a couple, and that they changed and washed them every day instead of once a week. This was the normal, civilized and hygienic way. Nana kept silent in the dark.
The third time my underpants went missing I didn’t mention it. Instead, I looked around when my roommates were using the bathroom. Soon I found one pair under Nana’s rumpled quilt and another under her bed. Neither were the ones that had gone missing lately, but I did find the pair that had disappeared from the hanger on the balcony. They were dirty: the vaginal discharge had dried up and formed a solid layer. I soaked them in tap water and scraped them clean with my fingernail. Later, when they had dried, I moved all my underpants beneath my pillow.
When I was in the village with my granny, she used to teach me that if I went to work in the city one day, I should do as the locals do. ‘Don’t be such a rural girl – dazzled by city fancies, full of blind ambitions, and ignorant of the rules.’ It turned out not everyone had a granny.
Little Mei, who worked on my left side on the assembly line, was caught in a mire. She was too young, only fourteen years old, though her ID said sixteen, which is what enabled her to work. She was small and bound her thin, yellowing hair in a shapeless ponytail; her two freckled cheeks reddened unevenly by the biting winds of her village, like apple flesh after hours of exposure to the air. People are treated based on how their faces look. To some faces, everyone speaks with manners; whereas other faces invite a punch. Jiaojiao applied layer after layer to her face every day, wearing fine pores as her armor. As for Little Mei, even dogs would bark more fiercely when she passed by. Little Mei’s roommates were three women in their forties and fifties and they were known as the Aunt Gang. There were other middle-aged workers in the electronics plant, but unlike the Aunt Gang they all slept in their own homes rather than in the dorms. Sister Ya who worked on my right side, for instance, took the shuttles between the industrial park and downtown Chongqing every day. The Aunt Gang, however, remained in the dorm for various reasons. During lunchtime, in front of everyone, they asked loudly why Little Mei smelled so stinky, and why she whined at night, keeping them awake. When Little Mei tried to defend herself, the three tongues swung like swords, blocking Mei’s voice. When Mr Wang passed by, they barked especially eagerly, as if they were his loyal dogs guarding the perimeter of our unit. Little Mei fixed her rheumy eyes on her rice until the women had finished criticizing her and moved away.
‘Rotten pussies!’ Sister Ya cursed in a low voice across the lunch table. ‘What good can they get from this?’
‘I clean the dorm and handwash their clothes, but they’re still like this,’ Little Mei murmured.
‘Why do you wash their clothes?’ Ya frowned. ‘Girl, don’t you know how to say “no”?’
Little Mei shook her head in tears. ‘I don’t dare. The other day they lit a cigarette, got the dorm smoky, and reported me for smoking indoors. The dorm keeper found half a carton from my cabinet, which the aunts must have put there while I wasn’t looking. The dorm keeper warned me to listen to them, otherwise she will report it upwards and get me fired!’
‘Dorm keeper Wu? That bitch is their friend!’ I explained to Little Mei. ‘She’s no superior, she’s not even an administrator. Let them report it. They have their testimony and you have yours. We’ll see who’ll get fired eventually!’
Little Mei wrinkled her forlorn face in silence.
People say wise men mind their own businesses. But I saw a chance coming up for Little Mei when Jiaojiao resigned. Jiaojiao walked out of the dorm gloriously the day her fiancé drove a car to fetch her. He was a Chongqing local and owned an apartment; they were to get married. So, we had a vacant bed in our dorm. I immediately urged Little Mei to visit the administration office and apply for a move. At first, she shivered at the thought of troubling the administration. I told her, ‘If you’d rather live this way, then I have nothing to say.’ So, Little Mei braved the office. I asked Sister Ya to come and stand behind Little Mei with me. The office lady glanced at our faces and enabled the transfer with a few clicks on the computer.
I had my own motive. Nana and Ah Hong soldered printed circuit boards in the same unit; without Jiaojiao, I ran short of an ally in the dorm. Ah Hong was fine, but Nana could be mean. My granny said you should load the gun when the wolf sniffs around your hedges instead of waiting for it to snarl at your door. I wanted to be ready in case the covert rivalry over my underpants escalated into an open war in the dorm.
My underpants disappeared again, from right under my pillow. My anger was like a leaking balloon that rose halfway into the air before trembling reluctantly to the floor. I flopped on the bed and pondered whether to get a lock for the tin cabinet. No one locked their cabinets and if I did, it would seem as though I judged the others as potential thieves; this would be an open announcement of mistrust and Nana would definitely have something to say.
I thought of leaving. How could I make it at this low-end post with these low-end people? I chewed the word low-end bitterly, though it stabbed at my heart, too. Because I was one of them. The old saying goes, ‘People climb up and water flows down.’ If I was better than Nana, I should get up and walk out of the plant; I should push myself to a higher place where Nana could never imagine touching a corner of my clothes. But I was too tired. Granny held a different philosophy, though. She said the moon shines on high mountains and deep valleys alike. ‘You revel in your golden house, and I take care of my thatched hut.’ Instead of climbing up, she wanted me to eat well, stay warm and happy, and remember that the moon always shone on me, even when I felt like I was stuck in the gutter.
Thinking of Granny, I recovered some strength. I rummaged through Nana’s bed and found all the previously missing underpants, used and unwashed, except for one pair which I assumed she must be wearing. I washed them clean, dried them under the sun, and folded them. Then, I tidied them away under my cotton-padded mattress, in the middle of the bed, so that they were difficult to reach from every edge. On the mattress, there was a sheet, a cotton quilt, a blanket and sometimes, my clothes. I sat on top of these for a while; then I pulled a pair of underpants out and placed them beside Nana’s pillow.
Sometimes, while plugging, I thought about the office lady clicking the mouse before the bulky monitor. My counterfeit Nokia helped to find some ‘help wanted’ ads at local manufacturing plants, listing the requirements for similar jobs. The office lady was probably just a polytechnic school graduate – better than me, a middle school graduate – but far from a fairy. I browsed through the computer-related professions, and soon ads popped up promoting courses to learn Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and Programming, flexibly scheduled, with no need of full-time enrollment. ‘Be careful!’ I reminded myself. There were so many scams. But on second thought, I found no reason to worry, because I didn’t even have any money to be cheated of.
Six months earlier, my mother escorted me here by bus. The bus zigzagged along the mountain roads for three hours. The landscape was like a crumpled sheet, with ridges and gorges lying densely, and my poor home village rapidly slid to the middle of the wrinkles like a pea. When we arrived at the factory my mother shepherded me through the health checkups, signing the contract, settling me down in the dorm, and opening a bank account. After registering my bank card for the coming salaries in the accounting office, my mother gripped the card in her hand. As we stepped out of the office, I realized that she intended to keep the card and I reminded her, ‘I think the meals are not for free in the park. They are only subsidized.’
So we headed back to the office and confirmed it with the accountant. The accountant was a middle-aged woman with a dull bulbous face and wooly curly hair whose silver was eroding the dyed brown from the roots. She hollered, ‘Of course she needs to pay for the meals! She needs also to buy toilet paper, soap, and other necessities!’ My mother told me that she would leave her bank card with me instead. ‘I will deposit some expenses for you monthly.’
The accountant clamored, ‘We only bind the Staff ID with the employee’s bank card. What’s the use of your card in the park?’ She brandished a transparent plastic ruler at my mother’s fist, where my bank card was hidden beneath her fingers. ‘Give it to your daughter! Do you want her to run away with a man for a meal?’
My mother cursed the accountant throughout the walk to the bus transit, saying that her man must have died or that she must be a spinster. Normal women didn’t have such wicked tongues. I kept silent; I sensed that the accountant was helping me. My granny said, there are good people and bad people, good in a thousand ways and bad in a thousand ways. The first half told me to expect both; the second half told me not to make reckless judgments like my mom did.
Before my mother boarded the bus, she stressed several times that each month I should transfer two thirds of my salary back home. She called me on my salary days, only on the salary days.
Little Mei and I chatted on the balcony. She was brought up by her granny, too, when her parents were jobbing in the cities like mine. The cities didn’t offer enough space for their kids, though our brothers were always with our parents and attended urban schools. We only ever saw them during holidays.
‘Once, my brother beat me, but afterwards my parents scolded me instead, so I walked to my granny’s hut. I walked into her yard and realized that she had passed away years ago. My parents called me dumb for a reason,’ Little Mei sighed.
I wanted to say that she was lucky to have a hut to visit at all. Last year, when my granny was gone, the homestead was taken by my uncle. The rammed-earth house was torn down, as well as the bamboo hedges covered with pumpkin vines, handmade and planted by Granny and me together. Now, a large two-story brick house stood there, coated in ugly grey concrete, and full of racket from his kids. I never wanted to get too close.
I visited my granny’s grave on the mountain instead. Some villagers chopped down the woods in the area to grow fruits and herbs but failed to manage the land properly. In the damp summer, shrubs such as honeysuckle, privet and persimmon grew high and messy. I stumbled back and forth, but couldn’t find my granny’s grave, sweat dripping down my sleeves and pants. I needed to tell Granny that I couldn’t attend school anymore and I was leaving for Chongqing. But I couldn’t find her. I was pissed off, not sure whether at myself or everyone in this village. For hours I was trapped like a bee in a lampshade. The words that I had prepared collapsed beneath my skin and seeped out as bitter liquid, drenching me from the inside out. I wanted to smash my head against a wall and die. But there was no wall on the mountain, not even an arbor that could offer a solid trunk. There were only shrubs, which shrank back at my collision and tortured me with endless pricks and scratches.
Nana came onto the balcony to hang up her washed clothes. She glanced at us and said deviously, ‘You sisters really have a lot to talk about!’
Little Mei replied, ‘Join us, please, Sister Na! Cool breezes today.’
Nana was clearly overwhelmed and her words slid off her tongue reflexively. ‘No. I have another thing to do. Next time.’ She repeated ‘next time’ before disappearing into the door.
Little Mei and I looked at each other quietly for a few seconds until we giggled together.
The success at the office encouraged Little Mei and her demeanor shifted as she started to understand how the world worked. I also noticed that Little Mei called the others ‘Sister Na’, ‘Sister Hong’, and so forth, but instead of ‘Sister Li’, she just called me ‘Sister’.
On Sundays, we crowded into the shuttle to the metropolis of downtown Chongqing. The municipality of Chongqing, directly under the central government, was the size of a province. On paper, I was from Chongqing, too, but if I dared to say so, people would laugh till their teeth loosened. Back home, we squeezed our lives into the crevices of the mountains, while here mountains gave way to human will. Concrete structures climbed and covered the high slopes like creeping vines. Above one ground level, there was another, like the seven-layered wedding cake I once saw a picture of online. Shops, houses, cafes, cars, and people decorated the broad hardened roads layer by layer like cream flowers. The heart of the city was cut into three pieces by the Yangtze River and Jialing River. Vapor rose aggressively from the water, steamed the ferries, bridges, and cables tangled between the banks, and wafted away.
The swarms of people and the steel-reinforced buildings gave us a sense of security. We stopped worrying about landslides or crop failures; rice was always piled up in the market. But somehow, we were still on the run. Grasping each other’s wrists, we wound through the crowds in a chain. As we climbed the stairs, the heads in front turned back every minute or so to check on the heads behind, as if the wrists in our hands could be stolen and replaced with an imposter’s.
We slowed down in an old downtown neighborhood. It was poorly polished and less crowded. Moss and steps had worn down the stone stairs which were now fractured and slippery. Some residences were the old style five-floor buildings and some were even older bungalows. Walls were darkened and peeling, pipes rusted, and people were old. A white-haired granny carried a basket of vegetables up the stairs. With every step, her millstone-shaped butt skewed to the right. But she was still faster than us. My granny was a good climber, too, and walked on the treacherous mountain tracks as if they were hardened roads. She didn’t look sporty, because it was never a sport for her. Sparrows jump on the ground, elephants drink through their trunks, and grannies walk, unglamorous but effective, until their death bed. Meanwhile I plug; not a sport to me, either.
A man approached us. He was short and fleshy, in a black polo shirt, face shaven, and speaking in a strange, accented Mandarin. Ah Hong, first in our row, kept asking What? What?
‘I’m illiterate. I can’t read. Could you read that for me? Just read that for me? Will you? Will you? Will you?’ The man gesticulated in a direction. He was anxious and helpless but he was also confident and eloquent; he spoke like a man.
He could have given us a piece of paper to read but instead he led us to an apartment building. I don’t know why we followed him. I didn’t question it because nobody else showed any trace of doubt. It had been programmed into our instincts that when a man spoke to us like this we would listen and nod and follow him. He led us inside a staircase where crummy ads were collaged onto the walls. As we climbed the man pointed to them and we answered like students called upon in a classroom.
‘Pipe repair.’ That was Ah Hong, nervous about the precision of her pronunciation.
‘Locksmith.’ That was Nana, voicing authoritatively.
‘Photographing.’ That was me snatching an easier one.
‘Funeral supplies.’ Me again. Little Mei had clammed up and clung to me tightly since the man appeared.
The man shook his head and waved his arm, urging us to follow. We crowded up along the narrow steps, besieged inside the old stony construction. On the second floor, he didn’t bother to stop for us to read the collages. ‘It’s higher up,’ he grunted vaguely. ‘They always put it higher up.’ I asked what exactly he was looking for but even though he answered seriously we didn’t understand his reply. It didn’t make sense, and our inability to work out what he wanted felt like our fault.
‘We don’t read much,’ Nana said. ‘I’m afraid we can’t be that helpful.’
‘It’s okay. Don’t worry,’ said the man, forgiving our ignorance. ‘Come upstairs.’
Nana looked back at me as we reached the third floor and her eyes admitted that she was as suspicious as me. Of course she was. As the thief of my underpants, she was far from naïve. And, in turn, I piled my underpants under the mattress and played dorm politics against her. We were quite the pair. When our eyes met, the spell broke. Without a word, I grasped Little Mei’s hand and Nana grabbed Ah Hong, and we rushed downstairs. Little Mei and Ah Hong couldn’t be more willing to go and the four of us kept running, out of the apartment building, down the stone stairs, and all the way to the bank of the Jialing River.
‘That was horrifying,’ cried Little Mei, her mottled face drenched with sweat.
‘It was’, said Ah Hong, although she was still confused. ‘Who the hell was he?’
‘Shit! Can’t you see it? He was going to kidnap and traffic us!’ Nana claimed.
‘But what if he was really just illiterate and needed help?’ Ah Hong reasoned. ‘There are four of us and only one of him.’
‘He’s a man,’ Little Mei pointed out.
‘Is one man enough to doom us all?’
‘There were more men waiting upstairs! Come on! It’s obvious!’ Nana complained.
‘Maybe something was wrong with his head?’ Little Mei guessed.
‘Did any of you look back on the way out?’ I asked.
They hadn’t. So, I said, ‘I did. He was staring at us over the rails, and you know, his eyes were kind of angry and cold, like a snake seeing its prey running away.’
My words put an end to the fuss, though Nana indicated with her eyes that she wouldn’t believe a word from me. We huddled in the shade on the river bank for an hour or two, yawning and chatting idly. After all the running, smells rose from our bodies with the heat. Ah Hong smelled like a rose that had dried up for a hundred years, perhaps due to her fake-brand shampoo; Nana gave out a creamy smell which I believed was her virginal discharge; Little Mei smelled like wet soil after a summer rain, and I could never wash away the rubber odor from my hands. But these smells were all familiar and calmed us down. We lingered into the evening.
When the neon lights were turned on and dyed the river orange, we almost forgot the brief stairwell episode and recovered our glee. We joined the crowd on the sidewalk and moved from one storefront to another, enjoying the tender breeze and the street music. In front of a shopping mall, Nana spotted a boba tea shop inside, the perfect place for us to spend a few bucks.
When we came to the counter, we were surprised to see a familiar exquisite face. Jiaojiao wore a pink checkered apron with the teashop logo printed on the chest. She was attaching an order sticker onto a paper cup for a customer. Surprise and embarrassment flashed in her eyes for a moment, but soon she adjusted her mood and beamed.
‘We thought you got married,’ Nana said.
‘I’m engaged,’ Jiaojiao replied. ‘But even if I were married, I would still work.’
We agreed, of course, and Jiaojiao proposed that the drinks be on her. We declined firmly and she didn’t insist.
As we sat down around a table, Ah Hong taunted, ‘I didn’t imagine this when she left like a queen.’
‘I envy her.’ Little Mei was grateful for Jiaojiao’s leaving. ‘She works in the splendid center of the world. She can see the sun set every day.’
Nana, surprisingly, didn’t say a mean word about Jiaojiao. She looked up at the counter, where Jiaojiao was moving around among paper cups, Lee Lok Pillows, tanks of boba, and tea boxes; even the yellow lamplight around her seemed sweetened.
‘Do you think she can make as much?’ I asked.
Nana glanced at me and shook her head. ‘But it’s easier work.’
‘Sure, it is,’ Ah Hong said. ‘My arm was literally unmovable after the first day holding the soldering gun for ten hours.’
‘Her heels get sore, though,’ I said. ‘They won’t make a shift shorter than six hours.’
We puffed and sipped our tea quietly.
‘Sister,’ Little Mei whispered, holding the transparent plastic cup with both hands. ‘This is not like the colorful ones I used to drink in my town.’
‘The colorful ones use artificial chemicals and are not healthy,’ I whispered back. ‘This brown is the natural color of authentic milk tea.’
She sighed in satisfaction and sucked at the straw; then, she sighed again, ‘Sister, I wish my granny could taste it. I wish she could see this.’
I followed her eyes towards the giant glass window. Behind it, the city center shone like a grand firework. ‘Me too,’ I murmured. Then, I saw the reflection of Jiaojiao on the glass, spinning behind the counter.
‘Have you ever thought of lessening the money you send back home, Mei?’
‘Are we allowed to?’ She asked calmly.
‘We are on our own feet,’ I said. ‘Good or bad, we are on our own feet now.’
After the tea, Nana, Ah Hong, and I strolled into the shopping mall while Little Mei waited for us at the tea shop. In the skincare section, I thought of Jiaojiao and her rows of skincare products, and then I thought of Little Mei. I picked up a bottle of face cream from a mass-market brand. It would help Mei’s rotten-apple face. I imagined handing it to her; I imagined modelling my granny’s wisdom and telling her that, ‘In the city, no one needs to know where we have climbed up from.’
Carrying the face cream through rows of shelves, I spotted Nana standing before a stall with a poster promoting ‘discounted underpants’. She picked up a package and then dropped it; then she picked up two and examined them back and forth. Finally, I saw her hesitantly hold a package against her chest, before heading to the cashier. I breathed deeply. Thank goodness. Thank Granny. Mercy was on my underpants.
Image © Peijia Li
