Feeling sorry for Siang, Hulan reached across the table and patted her hand. "You don't have to do what he says."
Siang looked up not in embarrassment but in defiance. "Why wouldn't I go?" f "Isn't it obvious that he does this with other girls?"
"So what?"
"So you could get hurt. You could get a disease. You could-"
"You only say those things because you're old." Siang filled the last word with as much contempt as she could marshal. As Hulan recoiled at the insult, Siang went on. "Don't look so surprised. It's true you look young, almost like one of us. But you are a friend of Ling Suchee. Tsai Bing's mother says you are girlhood friends. Well, if you are friends for that many years, then you are as old as that old woman."
Peanut consumed all this with considerable interest, and Hulan had no doubts that their conversation would be common knowledge by lights out tonight.
"And what about Tsai Bing?" Hulan asked.
"He's the reason I'll do it." Siang pushed her tray away and stood. "We want to be together, but how can we without money?"
Hulan and Peanut watched Siang wend her way through the tables. "True-heart love, eh?" Peanut asked. Hulan nodded. "Parental objection too?" When Hulan nodded again, Peanut sighed at the hopelessness of it all.
During the long, hot afternoon, as Hulan continued to jab hair through tiny holes in the Sam dolls, Peanut peppered them both with questions: What villages were they from? How had they been hired? What were they saving money for? Fortunately, Hulan didn't have to worry too much about her answers due to Siang's repeated interruptions. Eventually Peanut directed her questions solely to Siang, who responded with an insolent brashness, as though she were taunting them with her family's superiority.
"A hundred years ago my family was important in this area," Siang said. "They were landowners, the worst of the worst, but even so, they didn't have so much. They weren't Mandarins or educated, but they'd been in this district for many centuries. They were slave owners. They bought girls to work in the house and eventually become the concubines of my great-great-uncles."
All of these words were spoken with perfunctory contrition, for there was no masking Siang's pride in her family's past. Still, to be on the safe side, she covered her haughtiness by adding, "I had a great-uncle-a younger brother naturally-who joined the People's Army. It's a good thing too. Otherwise my entire family would have been killed during Liberation or during Land Reform."
"What about the Cultural Revolution?" Peanut asked. "Your family must have paid then."
"I wasn't born yet, so I only know the stories," Siang said. "In those days there was a big commune not far from here where thousands of youths from the city came to learn the ways of the people. Can you imagine?"
"In my home village," Peanut said, "we also had a work camp for people from the black classes."
"Maybe that's where my father was sent. Who knows?" Siang said. "But always I have thought this was kind of funny, because it isn't so easy to live here even now. The whole time that my father was gone from Da Shui, the villagers held criticism meetings against our family. Eventually they sent away my aunties. They never returned. Then the team leaders of the commune assigned my grandparents the worst jobs-filling buckets of shit from the public latrine and carrying them to the fields. My grandparents, already weak, died very quickly. By the time my father returned, he no longer had a family. His home, tools, and land had long been confiscated and incorporated into the commune."
"This was life for people everywhere," Peanut observed. "Your family is not so unique."
"A little less talking and maybe the new girls would get more work done," a voice cut in. Hulan looked over her shoulder to see Madame Leung.
"Sorry, Party Secretary."
"Peanut, I gave these two to you because you are fast. But"-she pointed at Hulan-"look at the job this one here is doing." Then she turned her attention from the work to the person doing it and instantly recognized Hulan. "You're the one from last night."
Hulan bowed her head. It was an admission of guilt and an act of repentance.
"This work will never pass inspection," Madame Leung said. Then she grabbed Hulan's hands. "And look at this! You're bleeding through your bandages. No one wants your blood on our products. Here," she said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out some gloves. "These ought to help your hands, but if I don't see an improvement in the work, we'll have to move you to a less demanding job." Madame Leung surveyed the room for her next targets. Once she spotted them, she said, "Get back to work, and, Peanut, you're responsible for this one."
When she walked away, Peanut said, "You'll have to try harder, Hulan. This is a bottom-rung job. I'm still here, but I'm team leader of Appendage Assembly. If you don't succeed, you'll be given an even lower job, like hauling water to the bathrooms or cleaning the floors. They'll drop your salary even more and you'll work longer hours. I know you didn't come here for that. Now, watch exactly what I do…"
Peanut devoted the next hour to helping Hulan. The work itself wasn't all that difficult, but Hulan's left hand was bandaged and awkward. Peanut taught Hulan to modify her grip on the doll's head. Soon enough muscles she didn't know she had in her hand started to ache, but at least she wasn't worried about driving the punching tool into her wound. The minutes ticked past and Hulan became aware of Slang's growing impatience, as she bumped into Peanut and cleared her throat, inexpertly trying to get the team leader's attention. Finally Peanut said to Hulan, "Your hands are clumsy and your arms don't have much strength, but you are doing better. Try it on your own for a while. The next time Madame Leung comes around, you'll be ready for her."
As soon as Peanut picked up her own tool, Siang began to speak as though no time had passed since her earlier speech. "When the responsibility system came in 1984, everything changed for us," Siang said.
"Things changed for everyone." For the first time Peanut's voice was edged with irritation. Then she leaned over and asked Hulan, "What about you? You haven't told us where you're from."
"You've been talking to her for an hour!" Siang blurted. "Are you going to listen to me, or are you going to keep talking to her?"
Peanut sighed, picked up another Sam head, and expertly jabbed the hair into the small holes.
"The brigade leaders got together to redistribute the land, seed, animals, and tools," Siang continued. "They took into consideration past hard work, familial ties to the land, the qualities of livestock and soil. Although the black marks against my mother and father had been removed through self-criticism, many villagers still held a grudge. So, while several people were reassigned to their ancestral land, my father wasn't given any of his. The leaders gave him a poor tract on the other side of the village. All the time he is working hard. One year he's so successful that he has enough money to buy extra seed. He went to one of the neighbors-an old couple-and said if they would let him plant it, he would provide for them the following winter. The next year that couple died and my father got their land. Since then, every year he gets a little here, a little there. And every day my father thanks Deng Xiaoping for instilling in us the desire to get rich."
"Is he a millionaire?" Peanut inquired.
"My father? No! He's a peasant like everyone else in our county. That's why his family attitudes are so backward."