There was an enormous crowd of men behind the virgin beauties, and without exception, the bottoms of all three thousand virgin beauties ended up getting groped. Some of the men had taken off their shirts and were wearing only shorts, and they shouted out to the men behind them not to crowd too closely, while they shamelessly pressed their naked chests against the bikini-clad beauties. Some of the virgin beauties cried, some cursed, and others screamed in anger. With the air of innocent victims, the men in front would turn around and berate the crowds behind them, telling them not to push.
Baldy Li had repeated over and over again that the reason he was holding the beauty pageant in the street was in order to allow everyone to watch it for free. But after one of his trips to the restroom, he emerged with fresh inspiration on how to make money. He told PR Liu to immediately organize a team of people to publicize and sell "inspection" tickets. After a massive blitz of publicity, marketing, and sales, PR Liu sold more than five thousand inspection tickets. He rented all the trucks from Liu and neighboring cities and provinces for ticket holders to stand on — inspecting the virgin beauties as though they were inspecting military troops — but even then he couldn't accommodate all five thousand ticket holders. Finally, he also rented tractors from every farmer from one hundred li around. The line of virgin beauty troops extended more than a mile, while the line of cars and tractors carrying the inspectors stretched for two and a half miles.
Leading the way were twenty convertibles carrying Baldy Li and Tao Qing, the competition organizing committee, political leaders and judges, corporate sponsors and VIPs, with Popsicle Wang and Yanker Yu bringing up the rear in the final car. Yanker Yu had been on his way from Europe to Africa, but after Popsicle Wang called him up and told him about the Virgin Beauty Competition, he immediately changed plans and returned to Liu, deciding that, given the momentous occasion, it was high time for him to show his face. Yu stood in the open car wearing an exquisitely tailored suit with a perfectly matched shirt and tie. He looked so at home in his suit, it was as if he had never worn anything else in his entire life. He glanced over at Popsicle Wang standing next to him. Wang was also wearing a suit, but the sleeves were so long they covered the tips of his fingers, and the collar was so large that even buttoned up you could still see his collarbone. On top of that, he was wearing one of those cheap red ties that looked like an emergency pull tab. Disappointed by Popsicle Wangs attire, Yanker Yu shook his head and said, "You have no sense of style."
Behind the twenty sedan convertibles was a convoy of trucks. Leading the way was the truck for the VIPs, with tables, chairs, drinks, and fruits. Then came the truck for the A-list guests, which had everything the VIP truck had except for the tables. Next came the truck for the B-list guests, which lacked both tables and chairs and instead had the guests standing in two rows. The C-list truck had guests standing in four rows, and on the D-list truck the passengers were packed like sardines. Behind the trucks was an endless line of tractors for the regular ticket holders, on which people were packed like livestock on the way to market.
PR Liu was not riding in one of the sedans at the front but, rather, was standing at the entrance to the street with a starter gun in his hand, like an Olympic judge. The director of the organizing committee, who passed by in the first sedan, was a political leader Baldy Li had asked PR Liu to invite. He rambled into the microphone a lot of political pablum about how much Our Country had taken off thanks to the Reform and Opening Up Campaign, about how it had increased not only the national and provincial GDP but also that of the cities and towns. Just as he got around to speaking about Liu Town, he switched back to speaking about Our Country. After going on grandiosely for a while, he again turned back to Liu Town and specifically the Virgin Beauty Contest that was about to begin. He spoke about how the contest was evidence of the rise in both Our Peoples standard of living and Chinas international standing. The Virgin Beauty Competition not only would promote traditional Chinese culture but was also right on track with the tide of globalization. After going on in this fashion for more than half an hour, he finally cried out, "I hereby announce the beginning of the Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition!"
PR Liu fired his gun, and the sedans, trucks, and tractors full of inspectors coming to watch the virgin beauties ceremoniously filed in, as magnificent as a marathon. They rumbled along at a snails pace, gradually making their way down the streets into the sunset. The three thousand virgin beauties, who had been pushed to their limits from the continual sexual harassment by the spectators, all sprang to attention at the sound of the starting gun. Each and every one of them stuck out their chests, swiveled their hips, and posed with smiles on their faces— composing a veritable gallery of three thousand different flirtatious expressions.
They watched as the political leaders and judges drove by in their convertibles, followed by an endless convoy of trucks and tractors full of inspectors. Still being groped by the men behind them, the contestants by now just wanted the competition to end so that they could go home and scrub themselves clean. But what kind of person was Baldy Li? He was always one step ahead of everyone and had already anticipated that the beauties would want to turn around and walk away as soon as the judges’ sedans had passed, leaving the ticket holders in the trucks and tractors with nothing to see other than the setting sun, whereupon they would surely have rioted in front of the offices of the organizing committee. In order to avoid this problem, and also to increase peoples interest in buying inspection tickets, Baldy Li arranged for the results of the first round of competition to be determined not by those first ten judges but, rather, by the five thousand ticket holders following behind.
Just think, with one hundred thousand sweaty people crowded together on a summer evening, how the stench of their sweat permeated the atmosphere of Liu. One hundred thousand people were exhaling carbon dioxide, and among them were five thousand who also had bad breath; one hundred thousand people meant two hundred thousand armpits, including six thousand armpits that reeked of BO; one hundred thousand people meant one hundred thousand assholes, of which at least seven thousand were farting, some more than once. The slower the cars drove, the more exhaust they emitted, but at least the car exhaust was gray and made the street look like a steam-filled sauna. Much worse were the streams of billowing black smoke coming from the tractors, as if they were burning houses.
The polluted atmosphere of Liu Town contaminated the three thousand beautiful virgins. For three hours they had to stand with their chests out and their hips swiveled, smiles plastered on their faces and flirtatious looks in their eyes, all in an attempt to have the country bumpkins riding in the trucks and tractors select them. Each of those five thousand bumpkins thought of himself as a competition judge. This was particularly true of those riding on the tractors, who, though they were crowded together like cattle, were actually the world s most conscientious judges. As soon as they pushed aside the heads in front of them, their own heads would be pushed aside by the people behind them, but they all nevertheless kept their eyes wide open, wanting to examine the virgin beauties carefully, and — holding their papers and pens above their heads — they recorded the pretty ones. They recommended and critiqued the virgins as earnestly as if they were investing in stocks. The spectators standing in the back were particularly conscientious, even though often, as soon as they glimpsed a virgin beauty with a decent face and physique, the tractor would drive past before they had a chance to see the number on her chest. Therefore, they would call out anxiously to the people in front and ask what was the number of the virgin who looked a certain way, acting as if they were afraid they might miss out on a stock that was about to open big the next day.