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“I am the friend of Ling Suchee.”
“Yes, I remember now, but you look different.”
Hulan ignored the remark, introduced her to Mayli and Jingren, then said, “I’m surprised to see you here.”
Tang Siang ran her fingers through her hair. “It will surprise everyone, I think.”
“Did you run away from home?” Mayli asked.
“Something like that, yes.” Looking at the expectant faces, Siang said, “My father is a strong man. I can even say he is a wealthy man in our village, but he is old-fashioned. He thinks he can tell me what to do, but I don’t have to do it.”
“What about Tsai Bing?” Hulan asked.
When Siang didn’t answer, Mayli, her voice filled with girlish excitement, asked a series of questions. “Do you have a boyfriend? Are you betrothed? Is it for love or is it arranged?”
Listening to the three young women, Hulan thought back to her own girlhood—first on the Red Soil Farm, then later as a foreign student at the boarding school in Connecticut. She remembered her own naïve dreams of how her life would be and realized that those dreams weren’t much different on either continent, nor had they been truly changed by time or culture.
“I am not engaged,” Siang said. “Not yet anyway.”
“Your father doesn’t approve,” Mayli said sympathetically.
“Men want a lot of things,” Siang said, trying to sound worldly. “But that doesn’t mean I have to give it to them.”
Hulan wondered if Siang was talking about her father or Tsai Bing.
“So, did you run away?” Mayli repeated.
Siang tossed her long black hair over her shoulder. “Last night I went to the café. I said I wanted a job. But those men are cowards. They said they couldn’t hire me. They said they would tell my father. You want to know what I said?”
Mayli and Jingren nodded.
“I said they would have far more trouble if they didn’t hire me. So they let me sign the paper. Then this morning when my father went out to walk his land, I packed my things and came running.”
“Won’t your father come after you?” Mayli asked.
“My father will not interfere with the foreigners’ business. That is one reason I know my plan will work.”
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.
