Siang had left out some crucial details, but the two other girls didn't seem to mind.
Hulan, who'd listened quietly to their prattling, trying to parse truth from fiction, now went back to a conversation that had started on the dusty street outside the village. "Mayli, when the scouts said you could go to Guangdong or come here, did they say what the difference was in the kinds of work you'd be doing?"
Mayli frowned. "Work is work. What does it matter?"
The other girls agreed. "At least it isn't the fields," Jingren said. "I saw my mother and father die in those fields. Now I'm alone. Maybe now I can earn enough money to go back to my home village and start a business."
Mayli smiled. "My dream is to open a little shop, maybe for clothes."
"I was thinking maybe I'd open a place for hair cutting," Jingren said. "What about you, Siang?"
"My future is beautiful, that I can tell you."
The bus stopped at the big gates to the Knight compound. The driver handed down a clipboard, which the guard checked before stepping back into his kiosk. The gate lifted and the bus drove inside. Now everyone on the bus was silent as they took in the new sights. For Hulan, however, nothing seemed different from when she'd visited before.
As soon as the bus stopped, everyone stood up and started to gather together their belongings until the driver called out, "Stay seated." He left the bus, disappeared into a building marked PROCESSING, and came back five minutes later with a woman dressed in a powder blue gabardine suit, white blouse, nude knee-highs, and black pumps. Her hair was cut in a bob, making her look as familiar as an auntie.
Taking a place at the front of the bus, she said, "Welcome to your new home. I am Party Secretary Leung. I am here to serve the needs of the workers. If you have problems, you come to me." The party secretary motioned to the building to her right. "Your first stop today is the Processing Center. You may now stand and follow me. Talking is not necessary."
The women on the bus did as they were told. Once inside, other uniformed women guided the new arrivals into two lines. From here Hulan and her companions went through a dizzying round of paperwork. Then they were gathered into another large room and ordered to strip down to their underwear. A nurse did a cursory inspection of all the women, inquiring about rashes, checking eyes and throats, asking about infectious diseases. But all this was perfunctory. There were no reproductive questions, and Hulan didn't volunteer any information about her pregnancy. Even naked she looked almost as thin as the others.
Next they were herded into an auditorium of sorts-a great hangar of a building where the air temperature hovered at about forty degrees centigrade. There were enough benches to seat perhaps a thousand people, but today the handful of new arrivals dotted only the first couple of rows. As soon as the last woman had taken a seat, the lights dimmed and a video about the facility began to play. Narrated by Party Secretary Leung, the video tour was far more complete than what Sandy Newheart had shown Hulan on her previous visit. The dormitories looked clean if utilitarian. This was followed by quick shots of the clinic (with the voice-over explaining that the one-child policy was strictly enforced at this facility), the cafeteria (where smiling women lined up to receive trays of steaming food), the company store (where workers could buy snacks, feminine hygiene products, and Sam amp; His Friends dolls for friends and family at deep discounts), and the assembly room (which looked no different from what Hulan had seen on her tour).
When the lights came back on, Madame Leung went to stand at a podium. Speaking rapidly, she described the routine-lights on at 6:00, breakfast at 6:30, at your station not one minute later than 7:00, fifteen-minute break at 10:00, a half-hour lunch at 1:00 P.M. At 7:00 the workers were dismissed from their stations. At 7:30 dinner was served. Lights-out occurred promptly at 10:00. "If all the workers meet their quotas," she said, "you can expect to be rewarded with the occasional xiuxi." Looking around her, Hulan saw the shock on the other women's faces. Xiuxi, late-afternoon naptime, was considered customary throughout the country. "Yes, I know it sounds harsh," Madame Leung acknowledged. "But this is an American company. These foreigners have different ideas about workdays and workers' rights. They expect you to be on time. They do not want to see you eating, spitting, or sleeping at your workplace. Again, I must emphasize, no sleeping on the factory floor, on the cafeteria benches, or anywhere on the grounds outside."
Hulan had spent her teenage and young adult years in the United States, and when she returned to China as an adult she'd been amazed at her countrymen's ability to sleep anywhere, at any time: at cosmetics counters in department stores, slumped on stools in the vegetable market, or even on the floor in the post office. Workers-usually managers-who'd been assigned individual offices were often given a cot as a perk. Even at the MPS many of Hulan's coworkers had cots in their offices.
"Most important," Madame Leung continued, "no men are allowed in the dormitory-ever. This means that all repairs and clean-up are done by us. The Party worked hard to achieve this so that the women who work here will be safe not only from the foreigners but from our own countrymen who would question our virtue."
Hulan felt the relief in the room. How many of these women had fled abusive fathers or unwanted marriages? And with the one-child policy, which had resulted in millions of abortions of female fetuses, women, for the first time in the history of the country, were a valued commodity. If what the party secretary said was true, then these women-some still teenagers-would no longer be at the mercy of bandits or other rogue groups who swept through remote villages kidnapping women to sell into marriages in distant provinces.
"Punishment for infractions is automatic and severe," Madame Leung went on. "For every missed minute of evening curfew, an extra hour of work will be added to your day. This means if you are not in your dormitory room precisely at ten, the next day you will work until eight. This means you will miss dinner."
Madame Leung held up a hand to silence the murmurs of dissatisfaction. "This is how things are done in America, so this is how things will be done at your new home," she said sternly. Her hands clasped the podium as she waited for full silence. "Let me continue. If you miss one day of work, you will lose three yuan from your salary'of two hundred yuan. If you miss three days of work in a row, you will be fired."
Again the women muttered among themselves. "I thought the salary was five hundred yuan a month," a voice called out.
Madame Leung's disapproving eyes scanned the room. "Who asks this question?" When no one answered, she said, "One day, after you complete your full training, you will be promoted. Until then all of you will be paid two hundred yuan a month." She surveyed the room, daring the women to complain. None did. "In a moment you will begin your education, but before you go I want to remind you that I am your government liaison. Please, if you have any problems, come to me. You will always find a receptive ear."
Twenty minutes later, Hulan found herself in yet another vast room, which had the capacity to seat a hundred or more at long tables. But since this was the middle of the week, the instructor explained, there would be only these few women for training. During the rest of the afternoon Hulan moved from one station to the next, getting timed on how quickly she could run fabric through a sewing machine, clip on button eyes, attach the extra gizmos to the cardboard packaging. She thought she was getting quite adept at installing the box that contained the software, until she saw that the others in her group were faster. She kept sneezing when filling the body with its polyester-fiber stuffing and saw the supervisor put a red mark next to her name for that activity. Her next chore was to punch hair into the heads of the dolls. This involved using a tool to run clumps of plastic hair through tiny pre-made holes, then tying off the strands along the interior of the skulls. At each stop the supervisor made a note of Hulan's progress on her clipboard.