Yu Hua - Brothers

Wanderless Zhou's Snack Shop continued on as before, but Lin Hongs beauty salon was quietly changing. At first there were three male hair stylists and three female hair washers. Within a year, one girl after another began to arrive from all over. Regardless of whether they were tall or short, fat or thin, pretty or homely, they all nevertheless wore the same décolleté tops and superminiskirts. There were twenty-three of them in all, and after they arrived in Liu Town, they moved into the same six-story building. One after another, the families originally living in the building moved out, and Poet Zhao moved out with them. Then Lin Hong rented each of the one-bedroom apartments and, after renovating them, housed two girls in each apartment, whereupon the entire building rang out with accents and dialects from throughout China.

These girls would sleep peacefully during the day but then become active each night, when these twenty-three heavily made-up and gaudily attired girls would crowd into the beauty salon, brightly soliciting customers like twenty-three red lanterns at New Years. The men would stand outside and furtively peer in as the girls would glance seductively back out at them. Then the beauty salon began to resemble a black market, abuzz with the sounds of people bargaining. The men would speak carefully, as if they were buying drugs, while the girls would speak boldly, as though they were selling cosmetics. After finding a girl and agreeing on a price, the men and their chosen girls would walk up the stairs, bantering lewdly. After entering a room, they would produce all kinds of sounds imaginable, transforming the six-floor building into a virtual zoo, a veritable encyclopedia of men and women's lovemaking noises.

Everyone in Liu Town referred to the building as the town's red-light district, and since Wanderless Zhou's Snack Shop was directly across the street, his business also increased impressively. In the past, the snack shop would close its doors at eleven each night, but now it stayed open twenty-four hours a day. From one till four or five o'clock each morning, the constant stream of men and young women emerging from the building would pour across the street and into the snack shop, where they would sit and suck down their straw-embedded mini-buns.

Was there anyone in Liu Town who could have accurately predicted Lin Hongs life trajectory? Beginning as a pure and easily embarrassed young girl, she was transformed into a sweet young woman in love, a virtuous wife completely devoted to Song Gang, a crazy lover who made crazy love to Baldy Li for three months, a solitary widow, an expressionless single woman living in complete isolation, a beauty salon proprietess, and finally this business-minded madam who always had a smile for her clients. After those heavily made-up young women started appearing in Liu, Lin Hong became smoother and warmer in her social interactions. The young women didn't call her Lin Hong but, rather, Madam Lin, and gradually the people of Liu started calling her that as well. Lin Hong became a Janus-like figure: Whenever a prospective customer walked in the door, she would break out into a radiant smile and speak to him sweetly, yet when she ran into a man unrelated to her business, she would look at him with eyes as cold as ice.

Although, by that time, Madam Lin's eyes and forehead were full of wrinkles, she was nevertheless very fashionable and wore tight-fitting black clothes, showing off her curvy breasts and buttocks. She always carried a cell phone, grasping it tightly as though it were a strand of gold. Her cell rang throughout the day and night, and she would smile into it, addressing people as Bureau Director, Manager, and Brother, then saying, "A few older ones have left, and some new ones have arrived, each of whom is young and pretty."

If she then said, "I'll send one over for you to take a look," that meant that the person on the other end of the line was a VIP customer— either a powerful provincial official or a rich provincial businessman. If it was a working stiff who had called, however, she would still smile, but in a very different tone of voice would simply say "Our girls are all very pretty."

BLACKSMITH TONG was one of Madam Lin's VIP customers. He was now more than sixty years old, and his wife a year older than he. Tong had opened three stores of his supermarket chain. Everyone addressed him as Boss Tong, but he wouldn't let his workers call him this, insisting that they continue calling him Blacksmith Tong, since he thought that sounded more vigorous.

The sixty-something Blacksmith Tong was still as randy as a young man, and when he saw a young woman, his eyes would light up like a thief spotting money. When she was in her fifties, his formerly plump wife had two major operations, one that removed half her stomach and the other, her entire uterus. After his wife's body collapsed and she became reduced to skin and bones, her libido also completely collapsed. Blacksmith Tong, however, still full of vitality, needed to have sex at least twice a week and invariably would leave his wife so anguished that she no longer wanted to live. She said that each time they finished, she felt as though she had just had another hysterectomy, and it would take her at least half a month to recover, but within a few days Blacksmith Tong was raring to go again.

In order to survive, Blacksmith Tongs wife resolved not to let him have sex with her anymore, leading him to develop a temper like a boar in heat unable to find a sow. He smashed dishes while at home and cursed his employees at the supermarkets. Once he even came to blows with a customer. His wife felt that if he continued to throw these tantrums, sooner or later something would happen — either another woman would seduce him or else he would take a handful of mistresses, but either way the money he had painstakingly earned and couldn't bring himself to spend would all be taken away by some other woman. After considering every possibility, his wife finally decided to send him over to Madam Lin's and have one of her girls cure his explosive temper. The girls would want a tip, and Madam Lin would charge an administrative fee, all of which wouldn't come cheap, but though it distressed Tongs wife to have to part with all that money, she preferred to think of it as medical expenses for her husband. In this way she was able to put her mind at rest, telling herself that this was well-spent preventive care.

Every time Blacksmith Tong came to Madam Lin's place, he would enter boldly, his wife at his side. His wife was afraid that he would get cheated and therefore insisted on helping him pick the girls herself and negotiate a good price. She would leave only after having settled the bill and go home to wait for Blacksmith Tong to return with his report.

The first time he returned home after going whoring, his wife was very critical of the fact that he and the girl had carried on for more than an hour and demanded to know whether or not he had fallen in love with that slut. Blacksmith Tong retorted that, given that they had already spent the money, why shouldn't he reap the benefits? "This is called having the return be proportional to the investment."

Blacksmith Tongs wife felt that her husband had a point, and therefore each time she would always want to make sure that the girl had done it long enough. Despite his age, Tong was still indomitable, and each time he visited a prostitute, he would go on for more than an hour. His wife was very pleased, feeling they were getting a good return on their investment. Occasionally he would fail to give a good performance, and a few times he finished up after just half an hour, making his wife feel that they weren't getting a good enough return. Therefore, she adjusted her strategy and, rather than allowing him to go whoring twice a week, she switched to a once-a-week plan.