When PR Liu saw Baldy Li the next day, he noted his look of satisfaction and assumed it was because the night before he had finally encountered an authentic product. Baldy Li, however, told him, "She was also a fake. The fucking thing even fell out." Baldy Li said that as soon as he stuck his thing in, he felt that something wasn't right. "It was like when you have a sock in your shoe, so when you stick your foot in, you feel something."
Horrified, PR Liu again blamed himself, saying that he had handled things poorly. Liu cursed himself repeatedly and said, with a sigh, "Everything else I can try out for you first, but if I try out a virgin first, even if she were real, she would thereby become fake."
Baldy Li waved him away, saying that even though the previous night he didn't encounter a virgin, #864 still placed him on cloud nine. In all the years he had been whoring around, he had never before encountered a woman as wild and crazy and as fond of attack as #864. As they say, it's enough in life to meet one true friend, though in this case that true friend was a wild and crazy sex partner. He said that the two of them had gone back and forth, with one blowing the spring winds and the other playing war drums. The East Wind did indeed blow away the West Wind, but then the West Wind blew it right back. He said that even calling her a whore was too fucking refined; instead she was the World Wide Whoring Federation Champion. He said that the previous night the two of them had fought endless rounds of an extraordinary carnal battle, and finally both ended up so wounded that they had to call it a draw.
Then Baldy Li instructed PR Liu to go find the ten judges and tell them not to select a champion or a third-place finalist, just a second-place finalist. He said that the champion would be #1358 and the third-place award would go to #864. Even though neither of them was a virgin, both of them had gone to bed with him. While in bed Baldy Li had made certain promises, and now he patted his chest as he announced, "I, Baldy Li, am someone whose word is as good as gold."
The curtain finally fell on the Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition. PR Liu completed the task Baldy Li had given him in instructing the ten judges to award first place to #1358 and third place to #864. Second place, meanwhile, went to #79. This #79 was Wandering Zhou's best customer. She wasn't like #864, buying a new artificial hymen each time she slept with a different judge. Instead, she bought ten Joan of Arc hymens all at once and then proceeded to systematically devour all ten judges.
The festivities wrapped up quickly, with the one hundred finalists departing on the same day. Baldy Li stood in front of his company all day bidding farewell to the virgin beauties, to the political leaders of the organizing committee, as well as to the judges. While shaking hands with #1358, Baldy Li quietly asked her, "How old is your child?"
At first she looked confounded, but then she laughed knowingly and whispered back, "She's two."
When he shook hands with #864, Baldy Li leaned up to her ear and said, "I bow to my superior."
The ten judges were helped onto the bus like so many elderly cripples, all of them completely depleted. Two were running a low-grade fever, three could no longer keep food down, and four complained that their eyesight had degraded dramatically; only one still looked normal. He climbed aboard the bus himself, and while bidding goodbye to Baldy Li, he still had strength to speak. Baldy Li asked quietly whether this time he had eaten his fill. The judge sighed and replied that he didn't even like women anymore.
After the competition concluded, a chorus of criticism emerged in the papers, radio, and television, complaining that this Virgin Beauty Competition represented a return of feudal values, that it trampled on women's self-confidence and self-esteem, and so forth. The focus of the criticisms was ultimately on the competition's creator, Baldy Li, though PR Liu was also implicated. The initial critiques were then followed by a flurry of rumors. Some of the beauties who weren't selected among the top three couldn't contain their fury and proceeded to anonymously leak the fact that the judges had accepted sexual bribes from some of the virgin contestants. Of course, the biggest scandal was the fact that the grand winner of the Virgin Beauty Competition was already a mother. This news immediately circulated throughout the country. But in dealing with the press, #1358 turned out to be a veritable female Baldy Li. She repeatedly stated her views and accepted all invitations for interviews. She admitted that, indeed, she had a two-year-old daughter, but she nevertheless insisted that she was still a virgin. She explained that, spiritually, she would always be a virgin, because she had maintained her spiritual purity. Contestant #1358 gave virginity a new definition, which in turn inspired wide-ranging social commentary. She had her detractors as well as her supporters, and they argued back and forth for more than half a year.
During that half year, Baldy Li was delighted. As long as discussions about him continued he would remain a choice bone. He fully supported #i358's new definition of virginity and told PR Liu that, ultimately, the most important thing was spiritual purity. Baldy Li sighed over how times had changed, complaining that today's women were all unreliable and that in a mere twenty years social mores had been turned upside down. Twenty years earlier, 90 percent of unmarried women were still virgins, but now at most one out of every ten was. Baldy Li immediately corrected himself, saying that out of every ten women today, there wasn't even half a virgin. Of the women strolling out on the streets, not a single one is a virgin. Nowadays, the only place one can still find virgins might be in preschool! Outside preschool, finding a virgin is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
"But," Baldy Li added, changing the subject, "spiritual virgins can still be found everywhere."
Then he extended Virgin Beauty #1358's spiritology to himself. He knew that those doglike reporters would forget him very quickly, but he no longer minded. He said philosophically, "At a spiritual level, I, Baldy Li, will always be a bone."
CHAPTER 65
WANDERING ZHOU sold his last artificial hymen before the Virgin Beauty Competition had even concluded. As the final round was about to begin the charlatan was prepared to bid farewell to Liu Town, to the straw-embedded buns in Missy Su s snack shop, and to the virgin beauties who bought his artificial hymens. He also bid farewell to Poet Zhao, noting that he owed Zhao one thousand yuan for working for him for ten days, plus two hundred yuan for letting Zhou use his house as a warehouse, and two thousand yuan as a bonus for good performance. Zhou licked his finger and counted out Zhao's thirty-two hundred yuan. Then he licked his finger again and counted out five hundred yuan more, saying that this was for Missy Su, to pay for the buns. He couldn't remember how much exactly he owed her but said that five hundred yuan should definitely be enough and asked Poet Zhao to pass it on to her.
Wandering Zhou didn't say goodbye to Song Gang, although he did give him one thousand yuan in wages and two thousand yuan as a bonus. Then he sat down on the couch in Song Gang's home. The enormous success of his artificial-hymen sales in Liu Town made Wandering Zhou very ambitious, and he expansively sketched out a glorious future. He told Song Gang he needed an assistant, and this assistant would be Song Gang. When it came to work ability, Poet Zhao was much stronger than Song Gang, but Zhao was unreliable and was capable at any point of selling him out. Wandering Zhou said that after working together for ten days, he felt that Song Gang was a friend he could trust implicitly.