The man laughed as he got up and climbed down. He opened the door and pulled the dog to one side, allowing Wandering Zhou and Song Gang to exit safely, then lay back down in the sauna and left the dog standing guard by the door. Zhou and Song Gang returned to the dressing room, feeling that they had just had a close brush with death. Zhou immediately drank eight cups of distilled water, and Song Gang drank seven. The two sat in the changing room for more than ten minutes, their heads hanging down, before finally recovering. Then they put on their robes and, looking halfway human again, strutted into the rest hall with the virility-enhancing pills in the black bag.
There were about twenty customers lounging about. Some of them were getting pedicures, and others were getting foot massages. A soccer game was playing on the projection TV. Wandering Zhou signaled Song Gang with a look, and the two proceeded to opposite sides of the hall. Song Gang lay down next to a middle-aged man who was watching the soccer game, patiently waited until halftime, then took out the instruction booklet and handed it to the man, asking politely, "Sir, do you have a moment to look at this?"
The man stared in surprise, then took the booklet and began to read it intently. When he finished reading the booklet for the domestic Fierce Zhang Fei pills, Song Gang handed him the one for the imported Apollo pills. After the man finished reading both, he looked around at the other men resting in the hall and whispered, "How much for a bottle?"
Wandering Zhou, meanwhile, was much more direct with his sales pitch. With imported and domestic vials in either hand, he smiled and asked the man next to him, "Do you want to be a real macho man?"
"What do you mean by ‘real macho man'?"
Zhou then launched into a long, complicated explanation, until finally the young man took the two vials to have a look and even opened his robe to glance down at his member. Wandering Zhou took the opportunity to take a peek as well and told him, "You are already a macho man, but unfortunately you are not yet a top-quality real macho man."
The young man asked Wandering Zhou skeptically, "These aren't counterfeit, are they?"
"You will know as soon as you try them," Wandering Zhou replied with a smile.
When the brawny man and his German shepherd arrived, panic swept through the hall. Several attendants politely intervened, and the man agreed not to bring the dog in. Therefore, the dog lay down in the doorway, as though he were guarding a pass to prevent a thousand enemies from getting through. As a result, none of the customers in the rest hall dared leave, having no choice but to wait for the dogs owner to leave first. Wandering Zhou and Song Gang were now in their element like fish in water and methodically spoke with each member of their captive audience, cajoling them into buying the pills. The dog s owner noticed that they were whispering to all the other customers but hadn't said a word to him. Curious, he pulled Wandering Zhou aside and asked him what they were doing. Zhou handed him the Apollo and Fierce Zhang Fei booklets, adding, "But you don't need these."
When the man finished reading the instruction booklets, he said loudly, "Who says I don't need this? The strong can always get even stronger."
"Well said!" Wandering Zhou exclaimed. He pointed to the other men in the hall and added quietly, "For them, these pills would be like an emergency shot to the arm, but for you they would be like a bonus."
The dog's owner laughed with satisfaction, then held up two fingers and said, "I'll take two vials."
"Two vials is one dose," Wandering Zhou explained patiently. "You need at least two or three doses to see results."
The dog's master said brightly, "In that case, I want eight vials."
"Okay." Wandering Zhou nodded, then asked him, "Do you want imported or domestic ones?"
The dog's master said, "Four of each."
Wandering Zhou hesitated, then, in a expert tone, said, "These imported ones are made with genetic engineering and nanotechnology, while the domestic ones are made from Ming-Qing dynastic medical files from the Palace Museum. If you mix them together, their effectiveness will be compromised."
"The imported ones are for me," the man explained, then pointed to his dog lying in the doorway. "The domestic ones are for him."
CHAPTER 67
WANDERING ZHOU and Song Gang continued strolling through Fujian, stopping at one bathhouse after another to sell their virility-enhancing pills. Whenever they spotted someone who appeared underendowed, they would recommend a remedy patiently pique their interest, and describe extravagant results. By the time they left Fujian for Canton, they had managed to sell the entire two boxes of pills. Wandering Zhou summed up what they had learned from their experiences when he noted that it had taken them nearly five months to sell the two boxes of pills, meaning that their revenue was much too low and they hadn't earned a trace of profit. In fact, after factoring in their living expenses, they had actually lost money. Wandering Zhou recalled wistfully his glorious experience selling artificial hymens in Liu Town and decided that he would stop selling men's health products, because women were much more willing to spend money on these sorts of things. Therefore, when they reached Canton, the two began to sell a bust-enhancing cream called Boobs.
By this point Song Gang had been away from home for half a year. While in Fujian he had called Lin Hong three times — each time he called her in the evening while standing in front of the convenience store, with dust blowing through the streets and passersby talking loudly in the local Minnan dialect. Song Gang would grab the receiver tightly with both hands, as if he were afraid someone would come and snatch it from him. His palms wet with sweat, he stammered softly, completely incoherent. At the other end of the line, Lin Hong's voice sounded half-crazed with anxiety as she entreated him to return immediately. Repeating "Come home" over and over, she asked Song Gang how he had been feeling, and Song Gang replied that his health had been good and his lung disease was cured. Then, in a voice as soft as a mosquito, he added, "I don't cough anymore."
Song Gang had to repeat himself several times before Lin Hong understood. Then she hollered, "Are you still taking your medicine?"
At this point Song Gang hung up the phone and, as he was putting it down, said softly, "I've stopped taking it."
Then he stood, confused, on the lamplit street, watching one stranger after another pass by and listening to their voices. Finally he shook his head and slowly began to make his way back to the cheap hotel where they were staying.
When he arrived, Wandering Zhou was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wiping his tears as he watched a Korean soap opera on television. While in Fujian, Wandering Zhou had watched three and a half Korean miniseries, and after arriving in Canton he searched through all the television channels but couldn't find the second half of the last miniseries. He proceeded to curse all of Canton and then, when he finally calmed down, went out to peddle his Boobs cream.
For the next several months, the Minnan dialect they heard in Fujian was replaced by Cantonese, and although they went to fifteen different locations, they managed to sell only ten or so vials of the cream. In a moment of despair, Wandering Zhou suddenly had an inspiration and decided to sell the cream to beauty salons at a discount, but he discovered that all the salons were already selling bust-enhancing creams of their own. Wandering Zhou then investigated the pharmacies and department stores and discovered that they too were selling their own bust-enhancing creams. They saw more than a hundred brands of breast creams, and all of them were cheaper than their own Boobs brand. Zhou found himself at an impasse as he and Song Gang wandered aimlessly like headless flies trying to sell their Boobs cream on unfamiliar streets. The two looked around depressed, asking each other what they should do next. Wandering Zhou had lost confidence in selling the Boobs cream, so whenever he saw a young woman walk by, he pushed Song Gang to go speak to her while he stood behind him like a sentry. Song Gang would walk over with a bowed head and respectfully ask the young women, "Do you need bust-enhancing cream?"