Sheng Keyi - Northern Girls - Life Goes On

‘Sijiang, Sijiang! What happened? What happened?’ Xiaohong moved as quickly as she could, following them to the hospital. It was like she was trying to keep up with the answer to that question. The blood from Sijiang’s body made her despair. Her clothes clung to her, clammy. They were wet, then dry, then wet again. She was cold. She wanted to burst out into mourning right there in the street. This gave her a strange expression. She was like a grief-stricken penguin. Her head and feet were small and her midsection inflated. She struggled to move her feet, paddling along with her legs. Where was she going? It wasn’t like she was trying to catch up with the half-dead figure of Li Sijiang at all. Rather, it was as if she were making her way to the vast sea to swim away.

Sijiang woke up again just as the poignant light of dusk was entering the ward. Her face was tinged with sorrow. The sheets, not quite white, were stamped with a red cross. Sijiang’s left wrist was bandaged and her fingers, pale and weak, rested on the red cross. On the wall, the shadows of tree branches swayed. Sijiang wanted to speak but her lips were stuck together.

‘Don’t talk. I’ll get you some water.’

Xiaohong tried to stand up. But it was as if her clothes were nailed to the chair. When she had raised herself just a few centimetres from the seat, she felt a weight pressing her back down. She turned awkwardly and slowly poured some water. Supporting Sijiang, Xiaohong wet her lips and let her have a sip. Her eyes opened wide and she looked in astonishment at the behemoths on Xiaohong’s chest.

‘Sijiang, why didn’t you call the police?’

‘I called 110. They said, “Your domestic problems are not our business.”’

‘But you can’t let Specs get away with this.’

‘Honghong, without him, I wouldn’t have got the sixty thousand in compensation anyway. It’s not losing the money that I mind. I just don’t like being played for a fool.’

‘ Aiyah. People in this world, they’ve either got designs on others or they’re the victims of other people’s designs. Either they scheme or they’re the victims of others’ schemes. You’ve always been too trusting.’

‘I wanted to kill him.’

‘You wanted to kill him, then why did you end up cutting your own veins? Idiot… Sijiang, I’m really sorry. I should never have asked you to come to Shenzhen.’

‘Honghong, what’re you talking about? Look at yourself. They’re… what is it they’ve grown into?’

‘I don’t know. Before long, I won’t be able to stand up. Bloody hell! Hey Sijiang, look… if you want to go back home, you should go. Although there’s nothing much there to go back for.’

V

Throughout the journey, tears streamed down Sijiang’s thin face. When they had walked to the pedestrian bridge, Sijiang put down the bag she had carried with her when she first came to Shenzhen and wiped her face a couple of times with the back of her hand. On her wrist, a white scar wormed its way across the flesh. The spots on her long face were less obvious.

‘I’ll write to you when I have time. Don’t cry!’ Xiaohong kept repeating this refrain. But Sijiang was taking all her first-time experiences and leaving them in Shenzhen. If she didn’t cry, what was there to say?

How had her fresh, apple-shaped face turned into this old pumpkin seed shape? No one could say for sure any more than they could say why Xiaohong’s breasts had suddenly become so huge.

A plane flew overhead, drawing a line of smoke across the blue sky. Their loneliness was like the plane, no bigger than a solitary bird, drifting across that vast empty space.

‘Don’t cry. Stop crying or I won’t be able to stop myself either.’ Xiaohong suppressed her grief, desperately biting her lip as her eyes started to redden.

‘Honghong, work out what you’re going to do. Take care of yourself. I’ll go on my own from here.’ Sijiang nearly collapsed under the weight of her luggage. Resolute, she collected herself and strode ahead as quickly as she could.

A minibus stopped. Opening its mouth, it swallowed Sijiang up and turned towards the train station.

Xiaohong rested her breasts on the railing, watching the rear end of the vehicle carrying Sijiang until it was out of sight. She laboured, using her hands to lift first her left, then her right breast. Suddenly, she lost her balance, tilting under the weight of her right breast. She fell to the ground under the weight of her own bust. She clasped the railing, trying to stand up, like a boxer pulling himself up on the ropes. One… two…

It was like her breasts were nailed to the ground. She could not move them. She was weighed down by them, kneeling with her face just inches from the ground.

She heard the sound of footsteps and the wheels of cars. They banged past, shocking the eardrums. A deafening sound came from the gutter like the lecherous laughter of waves crashing against the shore.

She sagged yet closer to the pavement. She found herself surrounded by a crowd of feet, some in shoes, some in sandals. Some were white, others black. Wide, narrow, large, small, expensive, cheap…

In her mind’s eye, she saw a pair of black boots. The very boots that had walked up and down in the detention centre. Zhu Dachang’s voice was ringing in her ear, saying, ‘You take care of yourself.’

Gritting her teeth, she bent her head and, hauling those two great sandbags up, she stood. She trudged out of the ring of feet surrounding her and pushed her way down from the pedestrian bridge.

Then she faded into the crowds on the street.

Northern Girls was my debut novel published in 2004 and I am so pleased that it is the first of my books to be published in English.

I have a soft spot for this novel. Written when I was an inexperienced writer, it is a work that virtually erupted into being. It is primal, natural and vibrant and, at the same time, is heavily imbued with my personal style. Like many of my readers, I am drawn to Qian Xiaohong, the protagonist, and her genuine, charming approach to life.

Qian Xiaohong is a familiar figure to me. She is typical of the people from my home village. When I started her story, I planned simply to write about the village, but once I began, I felt the place to be too restrictive for such a character. I wanted to toss her out into the wider world and see what she was destined to experience. Through the eyes of Qian Xiaohong and her companions — as well as the testimony of their bodies — we feel the cruel realities of the times and the difficulty of surviving.

These are the women on the lowest rung of the social ladder, the real working class. A vulnerable group of marginalised people, they are almost never brought to the public’s attention. This often neglected segment of society demonstrates an instinctive ability to survive, and this, I thought, was something worth treasuring. They make up a large proportion of the population and do much of the nation’s dirty work, quietly enduring insult and injury. The hardships they encounter are actually more shocking than anything I’ve recorded, reaching well beyond the scope of what is represented in my novel.

Qian Xiaohong has character. She is a principled girl, unwilling to sell herself. She’s frank and kind and has a sense of responsibility. Like many who make up the lowest strata of society, she possesses an impregnable vigour and vitality. In her honest way of living, she penetrates the duality of those around her and demonstrates a desire for self-respect. Her primary motive is to carry on surviving and this drives her ever forward, constantly moving along at an untiring pace. In the wider context of rural China, being on the move like this is very much a reality that many are forced to live through.