Country Driving [217]
She intended to stay at the pleather factory for another year or so, and then she’d use the family savings to go into business, probably with her father. They wanted to start a real shop—a place with a roof and doors, not just a stand in the street. “You can’t stay very long at a pige factory,” she said. “There’s poison, and it’s not good for you. It’s better where we are in quality control, but it’s still not healthy. You stay for one or two years and then it’s time to leave. If it weren’t for the poison it would be a great place to work.”
Yufeng was about to turn seventeen. I had met her nearly two years earlier, when she applied for her first job with her sister’s ID. Back then she had pudgy, boyish features, and she clutched the bra rings like casino chips and sold the boss a line about experience. But over the last twenty months she had grown into her stories. Her baby fat was gone, and all at once she had become pretty—she had high cheekbones, a delicate chin, and well-styled hair. Her nails were manicured, a rarity among factory girls. The village was two years gone and a world away; she said nothing about her grandparents or her former classmates. All she wanted to talk about was tomorrow—new jobs, new plans, new lives, everything that seemed promised by the thrill of rushing time.
ONE AFTERNOON I DROVE to the former site of the bra ring factory. On Suisong Road, the three-story building was still empty, although eventually Geley would probably expand into the space. They were in full swing, cranking out copper wiring and Jane Eyre light switches; a security guard told me that business was good. I asked if I could stop in the old factory space, and he said it wasn’t a problem. I walked past the stone lions, the folding security gate, and the American flag. The owner’s gold calligraphy still gleamed bright on the wall:
THE TREMORS OF THE FUTURE
ARE HAPPENING RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES
Inside the factory, the first thing I noticed was all the rings. Nobody had bothered to clean the place since the move, and they were everywhere: black rings, red rings, bent rings, broken rings. In the room where Yufeng used to work, twisted underwire lay thick as straw. There were empty Double Deer beer bottles, crumpled packages of State Express 555 cigarettes, and used rolls of packing tape. A dead plant in a broken vase. A chess player’s pawn, an orphan chopstick. A tear-off calendar stuck on November 22. An empty diaper bag, a child’s shoe. On the first floor, where Old Tian once slept, a string of lottery numbers stained the plaster:
95 1.3.17.20.21.24 + 16
97 1.5.9.13.15.33 + 14
97 11.14.15.20.26.27 + 12
98 6.7.10.11.15.23 + 16
99 7.12.18.23.24.27 + 5
There was writing everywhere workers used to live. They had written in pen, in pencil, in paint; their self-help slogans crisscrossed dirty walls. I made my way through the former dormitory, past all the mottoes:
FIND SUCCESS IMMEDIATELY
PASS EVERY DAY HAPPILY!
A NEW DAY BEGINS FROM RIGHT NOW!
FACE THE FUTURE DIRECTLY
A PERSON CAN BECOME SUCCESSFUL ANYWHERE;
I SWEAR I WILL NOT RETURN HOME UNTIL I AM FAMOUS.
A cool wind blew against the windows. The busy fall season had arrived, and most factories in the development zone were working hard. From outside I heard the rhythms of machinery—the rattle of glassmaking, the rumble of plastic molds, the whirr of wrapping wire. But there wasn’t a single human sound, and for half an hour I stood alone, reading the walls of the empty factory.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A DECADE AGO, WHEN