Country Driving [209]
“I need to be here to take care of my son.”
“Well, then let the girls come.” This in fact was Boss Wang’s ideal solution: to keep the girls and drop Mr. Tao. But Mr. Tao responded quickly.
“They can’t go alone,” he said. “They’re too young. Anyway, we signed contracts for the whole year. If you move, then you’re breaking the contract.”
“I’m not breaking any contracts! I’m inviting you to come.”
“The contract doesn’t say anything about going to another city. How can I move my whole family?”
“That’s your business,” Boss Wang said. “I’m offering you the same job. That’s the contract.”
“If I went to the labor bureau, they wouldn’t see it that way.” It was an idle threat—if indeed Mr. Tao were foolish enough to visit the labor bureau, and if by some miracle the cadres actually listened to a citizen complaint, their response would be to stop the fifteen-year-old Yufeng from working illegally. But the remark served its purpose: Boss Wang stormed off in frustration, and Mr. Tao seemed pleased. There was less than a day left to negotiate, but for a man like him that was plenty of time.
HE DISAPPEARED AT LUNCHTIME, off on some mysterious errand. After Mr. Tao had left the factory, Master Luo invited Yufeng and Ren Jing to lunch in his dormitory room. Old Tian joined them, and after the meal the men began to needle the girls.
“You don’t have a bank account, do you?” Master Luo said to Yufeng.
“No.”
“You’re still giving all your money to your parents! At your age you should have your own account.”
“They need my help.”
“It helps more if you learn to be independent,” he said. “Lots of people are independent at your age. In my village, everybody who goes out to work gets a bank account right away.”
“Well, my village is different,” Yufeng said. Her arms were crossed and she stared stubbornly at the floor. Beside her, Ren Jing was silent; her mother had already told her she couldn’t go unless the girls were accompanied by Mr. Tao.
“You should open a bank account now,” Master Luo said.
“Fine, I’ll open one tomorrow!” Yufeng shouted. “Will you leave me alone?”
“I just think you should make decisions for yourself,” Master Luo said softly. “If you have a bank account, then you can start buying things for yourself. In my village, when young people come home for the Spring Festival, they wear name-brand clothes and they have name-brand cell phones.”
“People do that in my village too,” Yufeng shot back. “I remember when a girl came back with a motorcycle. Everybody said she was successful.”
“Well, that’s what you should do. Or at least you should make your own decision.”
“It’s not my decision!”
“No, it’s obviously not,” he said. “You’re letting your father decide for you. He doesn’t want you to be independent. What are you going to do if you stay here?”
“I’ll work in a shoe factory,” Yufeng said.
“How much will you make?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think a shoe factory is going to hire you now, at the end of the year?”
The girl fell silent—she knew Master Luo was right. November is a bad time to look for factory work; most people wait until after the holiday to jump jobs. But it’s also true that November is a bad time to find new employees, which was Master Luo and Old Tian’s stake in this conversation. Moving the machinery was going to be an enormous project, and the last thing they wanted to do was train new workers. And Master Luo knew that inevitably he would end up in the middle of any negotiations—a typical role for a high-level technician.
Before leaving on his errand, Mr. Tao had made his terms clear. He demanded one thousand yuan a month for everybody: himself, his two daughters, and Ren Jing. The salary represented a raise of roughly 30 percent, and he also asked for free room and board. Boss Wang hadn’t responded yet—he had his hands full with pre-move preparations. His wife had come to help, and she had brought along his three-year-old son. Whenever the boy stayed in the factory, he spent his days poking into machinery and causing trouble.