Country Driving [210]
Now after lunch the child entered Master Luo’s dormitory room. Master Luo grabbed a big cooking knife, rolled up his sleeves, and crouched low to the ground, muttering like a psychopath. The three-year-old froze, eyes wide.
“Uhhhh!” Master Luo grunted loudly, staggering toward the child. “Uhhh! Uhhhh!”
He swiped at the air with the knife; the child screamed and ran. His cries echoed as he clattered down the stairway. Soon he’d be down in the chemist’s lab, where Little Long would find some creative way to drive him off. After Master Luo and Old Tian stopped laughing, they resumed their abuse of Yufeng.
“Where’s all your money?” Old Tian said, teasingly. “You don’t get to keep any of the money you make, do you?”
“She needs to learn independence,” Master Luo said.
“I’d like to go,” Yufeng admitted. “But if my father says I have to stay, then maybe I can find a job in a shoe factory and learn some technical skills.”
“That’s a joke!” Old Tian said. “You’re not going to find a technical job at your age.”
“Come with us,” Master Luo said. “Learn to be on your own, and then next year you can go to Guangzhou or Shanghai, an exciting place like that.” He told the story of his own first migration, when he had saved money and eventually made his way to Shenzhen. The girls had heard it all before, but nevertheless they fell silent, eyes bright as they listened to tales of the south.
BY SEVEN O’CLOCK BOSS Wang had offered seven hundred yuan. Mr. Tao held firm at one thousand—the difference came to thirty-eight monthly dollars per person, a significant sum. He was waiting at home when his daughters returned from work.
“Master Luo and Old Tian are bullying me,” Yufeng complained. “They keep saying I should go out on my own.”
“It doesn’t matter what they tell you,” Mr. Tao said.
“But I want to go!”
“You have to wait and see what the bosses say. Be patient.”
“I want to go.” Her father ignored her, and the girl raised her voice: “I want to go!”
“Be good,” Yuran said. The older sister had a calmer personality, and often she kept Yufeng in line. “Don’t start fighting,” she said.
“But I want to go.” Yufeng’s voice was small now.
“Just wait,” her father said sternly. “Everything will be fine if you wait.”
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK MASTER Luo arrived. We had just finished dinner, and now all of us gathered close around the gas-powered burner: the two Tao girls, their father, his cousin, and me. The rented room was basically a shack with mud walls; cold November air blew in through the cracks. Master Luo distributed a round of West Lake cigarettes to the men, and the girls quietly left—they knew this matter was restricted to adults. During dinner Mr. Tao and his cousin had talked idly about history, the way people do in the countryside, and now they continued the conversation.
“The Ming started strong, but then they got weaker,” the cousin said.
“That’s always true,” Mr. Tao said. “It’s the same way with a person. You get old, you get weak, and then you die.”
“The Ming was when China got really weak,” Master Luo said, slipping easily into the topic. “They were defeated by the Manchus. The Manchus were a minority, and yet they ruled for four hundred years. So few people ruling so many!”
“And then China stayed weak until Mao Zedong,” Mr. Tao said.
From there we could have veered in any number of directions, but Master Luo brought us back on course. “Look, I want to give you what you want,” he said to Mr. Tao. “I don’t want to hire a lot of new people right now. You have to understand that I’m on your side.” He paused to take another puff from his cigarette. “Boss Wang and Boss Gao say that they’ll pay you each two thousand to work for the rest of the year. They’ll give you a bonus if business is good, and then at Spring Festival they’ll give each of you a red envelope. After Spring Festival they’ll guarantee eight hundred