Country Driving [204]
The Tao stand was located on a small alley that connected to Suisong Road. Most alleyway entrepreneurs had come from Anhui Province, and there was a degree of camaraderie, despite the fact that they were all in competition. Over the months, some had expanded into real shops, and one couple had opened a storefront directly across from the Taos. The couple had a ten-month-old son whose features were strikingly different from most Chinese. The baby had light wispy hair that was almost blond, and his eyes were grayish. He had fair skin—locals called him “the Little Foreigner.” In the evenings I sometimes sat with Mr. Tao, and the neighbors joked, “Hey, he could be your baby!” It made me uncomfortable when they talked this way. Occasionally in China I saw a child who looked different; it wasn’t surprising in a country that had always been more ethnically diverse than people imagined. After centuries of movement and migrations, there were all sorts of genes floating around, and sometimes an unusual characteristic appeared in a child. These kids always received a lot of blunt attention—the baby in Lishui was still too small to understand, but I imagined that someday he would tire of these remarks.
His parents had never gotten along. The Taos told me they had bickered from the moment they arrived in the development zone, and one evening that November they erupted into a vicious public argument. As usual, the disagreement concerned money. In Chinese families, it’s more often the man who is profligate, spending money on cigarettes and baijiu and banquets, and this was the point of contention for the Anhui couple. For five minutes they faced off, shouting at each other in the middle of the alley, and then the husband stalked away. Long after he was gone, his wife remained apoplectic, screaming into the distance. She was heavyset, with dark peasant features; it was hard to guess where the baby’s fairness had come from. In all my trips to the Taos’ stand I never saw this woman smile.
Tonight she yelled for a quarter of an hour, and then she began to set fire to the store’s stock. She took a few cardboard packages of nylon socks, stacked them like kindling in the alleyway, and got a cigarette lighter. She left the baby on the shop’s cold cement floor, where he began howling. Soon thirty people gathered to watch, but they didn’t have the usual mood of a street crowd. For the most part, Chinese arguments and fights serve as public entertainment, but tonight nobody was smiling or laughing. They looked shocked, and finally a man in a factory uniform stepped forward.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “That’s bad. Just go back inside; he’s already gone.”
The shopkeeper flung off his arm and kept struggling with the lighter. She was so angry that it took her a while to get the flame to catch a corner of the cardboard. By now the baby was red-faced and wet with tears.
“Don’t let him cry like that,” somebody else said. “He’s too small!”
But the shopkeeper ignored them. She flicked the lighter again, igniting another package. Without a word Mr. Tao stepped into the alley. As always, he was completely decisive; he didn’t bother talking to the shopkeeper, who paid him no mind. Mr. Tao picked up her baby and carried him across the alley to his own stand.
Soon a heavy acrid smell filled the air. The socks were the cheap kind that sell for a few cents a pair, and they burned poorly, giving up thick black smoke. The woman stepped back into her shop, studying the shelves. The crowd began to murmur.
“Don’t let her burn something else.”
“She should just forget it!”
“Leave it alone!”
Mr. Tao held the baby so he couldn’t see his mother, and he gave him a plastic Spiderman toy from the dry goods stand; at last