Ma Jian - Red Dust

‘How much?’ he says, flicking back his fringe.

‘Two mao, no wash.’

‘I can watch the video for that.’

‘One and a half, then,’ I say, pulling him over to the lamp and draping the cloth over his shoulders.

‘You don’t even have a stool.’ His breath stinks of tobacco, and his neck looks even dirtier against the whiteness of the cloth.

I make nine mao that night. It is much easier work than humping heavy bags around the bus station.

The next day I sneak out of my dormitory window with a borrowed stool and mirror, and set up business in a busy market street. I give crew-cuts to six peasants from Gansu and ten long-distance truck drivers. After lunch, I cut the hair of two boys from Jilin who have just graduated in Chinese literature and are off to Lhasa to start editorial jobs at Tibet Press. They say they want to experience ‘life on the frontiers’ and collect material for their novels. They tell me to look them up when I get to Lhasa.

By the afternoon of the third day, I can barely hold my scissors up, so I break off early, find myself a restaurant and order beef noodles, stir-fried pork and two shots of rice wine. After settling the bill, I light a cigarette and count the remains of my earnings. Six yuan. Enough for a new pair of plimsolls. A few more weeks of this and I will have sufficient funds for my journey to Tibet. I order a beer and feel the alcohol rush to my legs. The young man at the next table looks unhappy. I smile and say hello.

‘Have a cigarette. It’s no fun sitting on your own. Come and join me,’ I say, pouring some beer into an empty tea cup.

‘No, no, thank you. I’m fine, really.’ His eyes are bloodshot. He looks like he could do with a good night’s sleep, and a haircut too for that matter.

‘Where do you work?’ I ask, handing him a cigarette.

‘At the State Building Commission.’ He takes a puff and studies the table.

‘Which department?’ I presume he is based in Beijing.

‘Sichuan engineering department,’ he says, still looking at the table.

‘The engineering department? You must have been to university then.’ He probably lives in Chengdu.

‘I work in the construction section.’ He bows his head. All I see is his army cap.

‘You haven’t been there long, have you?’ Now I suspect he is a labourer.

‘I joined the team two years ago.’ He looks at the floor.

‘Which team?’

‘The bricklayer team of Luding Number Two Construction Brigade,’ he mumbles, turning a deep red. I can’t help smiling. ‘Don’t worry. We all have to bluff a bit when we’re away from home. You’ve come here looking for work, haven’t you? I’ll tell you what, come to the market tomorrow and I’ll give you a free haircut.’ I swig some beer and gaze at the waitress’s bottom as she passes through the room.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ he says, puffing his cigarette.

‘Who?’

‘My sister. She was abducted from our village six months ago, and brought here to be sold as a bride.’

I remember Director Zhang reading out a report entitled ‘The Resolute Fight Against the Abduction of Women and Children’. When he recited ‘Due to high levels of Spiritual Pollution, cases of female trafficking have risen dramatically in recent years’, he gave me a knowing look, as if it was all my fault. In fact, the rise in female trafficking has nothing to do with Spiritual Pollution. In remote backwaters that have yet to see the benefits of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, peasants are having increasing difficulty finding wives. It is often cheaper to buy one from a trader than to pay the marriage price that some families now demand before they agree to condemn their daughters to a life of rural poverty.

‘Got a letter from her last week. The local police say the village is too far away. They can’t afford a car. Told me to sort it out myself.’

‘You can’t rescue her on your own.’ I look at his pale face and long white teeth and imagine what his sister looks like.

‘She’s my only sister. She said the man chains her to the bedroom door when he goes to the fields to stop her running away. He treats her worse than a dog.’

I also remember a journalist for the Farmers’ Daily telling me of the time he accompanied a police team on a mission to rescue a student who had been kidnapped from a train station and sold to a farmer in the mountains. He said that when the police tried to wrest her from the husband, the entire village turned on them with wooden clubs and they were lucky to get out alive.

‘If I were you, I would bring a Sichuan officer here to talk to the Qinghai police. That’s the only way to get them on your side. You’ll have to grease a few palms though.’ I see his eyes welling up, so I raise my glass to him and we drain our cups in one.

The dusk deepens as I walk back to the farmers’ hostel. A magazine article I read recently said that of the ten thousand women abducted last year, only a hundred have been rescued. It seems there is not much hope for his sister. Most women have a child to lull their husbands into a false sense of security, then pack their bags and make their escape.

I turn a corner and find two young men standing in front of me blocking my way. They tell me to open my bag. There is no money inside, so they take my camera instead. I run after them, hoping to grab it back. Serves me right for staying in the outskirts. I was bound to get robbed sooner or later.

The tall one turns round and gives me a punch in the face. I fall down.

‘Leave us alone or we’ll cut your throat.’

He has a northern accent, so I get up and pursue them.

‘Hey, brothers,’ I say, ‘I’m a northerner too, just trying to get by. Nicked that camera this afternoon. Keep it if you like. More friends I have the better. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. We could be a team. What do you say? Divide the loot between us.’ I cup my wounded ear, my head is pounding. I must have said something right though, because they are both standing still.

‘How long have you been out?’ the short one asks. I can’t see his expression.

‘Two months. I was in a Xinjiang labour camp.’ I try to articulate each syllable, but my lips are numb with pain.

‘What do you do?’ His tone has softened. At least he won’t punch me again.

‘Break locks. We could make a good team. I respect a man who can fight.’

They take me to a small restaurant. As we sit down I remember I only have six yuan to spend.

‘Order whatever you like,’ I say. ‘It’s on me. We are brothers now. I’ll stick by you through thick and thin.’

I can see their faces clearly now. The tall one wears a denim jacket, and a red vest printed with five gold stars. He has a round Mongolian face and cold narrow eyes. He rests his large folded hands on the table. The short one has jet-black hair and is taller than me. His eyes only close when he sucks at his cigarette. Their faces are familiar. I must have seen them in the bus station, or walking down the street perhaps.

‘You look like a painter with that beard,’ the short one says, spitting his stub onto the floor.

‘I painted a bit when I was young.’ I pour them some beer.

‘How old are you?’ they ask.

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Place called Baodian in Hebei Province.’

‘Been in Golmud long?’

‘Just a week.’

‘Do the pigs know about you?’

‘No, haven’t done much yet — just the camera. Stole it from a guest in the committee hotel. He’s probably halfway to Tibet by now. .’

They tell me everything, from their life in the Yingkou Farm Machinery Plant to the leather bag they stole last week from a Guangzhou businessman. They found a postcard of a woman inside—’If you look at it sideways you can see her bare arse.’ We finish two bottles of rice wine. I secretly let the alcohol dribble down my beard, though. My vest is soaking wet. I ask the waiter to bring us more drink, and they tell me they’ve had enough. ‘No, my friends. I insist. If you hadn’t beaten me up tonight, who knows, we might never have met.’ I walk to the counter to fetch the beer. ‘Quick,’ I whisper to the waiter, ‘call the police. Those men are dangerous criminals.’