Poet Zhao answered proudly, "These are acne pimples."
CHAPTER 61
IT WAS at this juncture that the itinerant charlatan Wandering Zhou arrived in Liu Town.
Wandering Zhou was a sight to behold: Like all con men these days, he had a movie stars good looks. He walked over from the bus depot with two twenty-nine-inch color television boxes and only five yuan in his pocket. Actually apart from Chief Sub Song Gang, every man in Liu had more money in his pockets than did Wandering Zhou, yet they all felt poor. Even with only five yuan, however, Wandering Zhou had the air of someone who was on China s Forbes 400 list.
It was dusk and the moon had not yet come out, yet the lights from the streetlamps and the neon signs were already shimmering past one another on the streets. It was so muggy that the crowds wished they could simply run around naked. Wandering Zhou, however, was dressed formally in a suit and leather shoes. He set the two boxes down by his feet and stood on the street outside the bus depot, looking as cool and comfortable as if he were in an air-conditioned hall. Flashing a China Forbes 400 smile, he asked everyone walking back and forth, "Is this Virgin Beauty Town?"
Wandering Zhou asked five people in a row, but each time the passersby only nodded or grunted in response, and not a single one of them stopped to look at him carefully, much less came over to speak with him. Since no one would take his bait, Wandering Zhou did not know where to start. In the past, if such an unusual character had appeared on the street, everyone in Liu would have immediately crowded around curiously as if he were an ape. But he happened to show up at a moment when twenty-eight hundred out of an expected three thousand virgin beauties had already descended upon the town — not to mention the two-hundred-plus reporters, a famous announcer whom people previously had only seen on television, and various political leaders and celebrity judges — and as a result, the townspeople were suddenly as worldly and jaded as big-city folk. Wandering Zhou had thought that if he shouted "Virgin Beauty Town" a few times, he would surely get everyone's attention. What he didn't realize was that outsiders had already been calling this place Virgin Beauty Town for more than a week now and that even the people of Liu had begun referring to their own town that way.
Wandering Zhou stood in front of the bus depot until nightfall, but still no one came to speak to him, and consequently he had no opportunity to deploy his snake-oil-salesman routine. Just a few pedicab drivers looking for business approached him and asked, "Hey, mister, which hotel are you going to?"
Since Wandering Zhou had only five yuan in his pocket, if he were to take a pedicab, he would end up with no money at all. He knew that one shouldn't mess with these pedicab drivers — if he was short even a single yuan, they were liable to beat him to a pulp. Therefore, when they approached to vie for his business, he paid them no attention and instead took a toy cell phone from his suit pocket. This phone looked real and even had a triple-A battery inside, so that when he discreetly pushed a button, it would ring. When the pedicab drivers asked him which hotel he wanted to go to, his cell phone rang, and he pulled it out and shouted angrily into the receiver, "Why hasn't my exclusive-use car arrived yet?"
After night fell, Wandering Zhou realized that there was no point in continuing to stand there, so he had no alternative but to pick up his two enormous cardboard boxes and set off. No matter how hard he tried now, he couldn't maintain his China Forbes 400 gait but, rather, trudged along with a coolie's shuffle. The streets of Liu were chock-full of people. Wandering Zhou kept accidentally bumping his boxes into the thighs of visiting beauties, as well as the thighs of the townspeople of Liu. Under the twinkling of the streetlamps and the neon lights, amid the soaring melodies of foreign and Chinese songs, in the roar of jazz and rock and the melodic strains of foreign classical and Chinese folk music, Wandering Zhou walked and paused and walked and paused. When he paused, he would look around and admire the new Liu Town that Baldy Li had helped create. Along the old street adorned with traditional red lanterns there was now an eclectic mix of European classical architecture and American modernist architecture. Wandering Zhou spotted soaring Greek Doric columns belonging to Baldy Li's fanciest restaurant, the Roman-style red-walled atrium housing his brand-name clothing store, the Chinese-style slate-roofed courtyard of his Chinese restaurant, and the Japanese-style garden of his Japanese restaurant, as well as gothic windows and baroque roofs. Wandering Zhou said to himself, This is a real mutt of a town.
No one knows where this itinerant charlatan went that night, carrying those two large cardboard boxes, wearing his suit and dress shoes in the heat, and suffering from hunger, thirst, and overall fatigue. But one thing was certain: He must have been in excellent health, since he was able to continue walking around until eleven o'clock that night without collapsing from heatstroke. It seemed that this charlatan must have succeeded in tricking even his own body. He did a giant loop about town and noticed that the streets were full of sleeping men. From their discussions, he gathered that all of the towns hotels and guesthouses were completely booked and that even the private residences were packed full of virgin beauties.
Wandering Zhou finally stopped in front of Poet Zhao's straw mat. Zhao had not yet fallen asleep but was lying on his mat swatting at mosquitoes. Wandering Zhou nodded, but Zhao ignored him, wondering what this young man was doing here. Wandering Zhou's eyes wandered over to Mama Sus snack shop across the street, and he suddenly felt as famished as if his chest were plastered to his back. He realized that if he didn't eat something soon, he wouldn't be a charlatan as much as a starving ghost. Still carrying his two boxes, he crossed the street and, though he was still sporting his suit and dress shoes, his gait was now more like that of a refugee. He shuffled into the snack shop, where the air-conditioning instantly refreshed him, and sat down at a table near the door.
Because it was so late, there were just a couple of customers left. Mama Su had gone home and her daughter, Missy Su, was minding the cashier's counter, chatting with two waitresses. Missy Su was in her thirties but no one had any idea who her boyfriend was or if she had one at all — just as they never found out anything about who her father had been.
Missy Su saw the dashing Wandering Zhou walk in and sit down. The only things less than elegant about him were his two large boxes. On his part, Zhou immediately discerned that this eminently average-looking, and perhaps even a bit homely, Missy Su must be the proprietress. Therefore, with a handsome smile on his handsome face, he started gazing at her as if he were admiring a painting. Never having had a man admire her the way the charlatan Wandering Zhou was admiring her now, Missy Su felt her pulse start to race. Wandering Zhou continued gazing at her until one of the waitresses handed him a menu, whereupon he finally tore his eyes away from her face and directed his attention to the menu. Seeing that a steamerful of mini-meat buns was five yuan, he ordered one. The waitress then brought over the drink menu and asked him what he wanted to drink. Wandering Zhou shook his head and said, "I have diabetes, so I'll just have a glass of water."