At a small hotel near the wholesale market, Wang Xuezhong and Liu Yingying had barely stepped into their room before they were in each other’s arms. They hadn’t even managed to close the door properly.
Wang Xuezhong wrapped his arms around Liu Yingying’s waist from behind and slid a hand beneath her clothes.
“I’ve missed you so much!”
His voice trembled, his hot, damp breath brushing her ear.
Liu Yingying tipped her face up, resting the back of her head against Wang Xuezhong’s shoulder. She looked blissful, but grabbed his wandering hand.
“You’re lying! Jiang Yan’s the factory beauty. There are seven days in a week, and you’re home six of them. You must have slept with her plenty of times!”
“May heaven strike me down if I’m lying. I never touched her!”
Wang Xuezhong nibbled Liu Yingying’s ear and swore solemnly:
“What factory beauty? She’s like a dead fish. Nothing like a little slut like you!”
The words struck just the right note with Liu Yingying. She turned around at once, and she and Wang Xuezhong kissed passionately.
Their hurried panting quickly heated the room. The small, shabby bed in the hotel groaned and creaked beneath their weight.
Just as it seemed the bed was about to fall apart, someone suddenly burst through the door.
“Liu! Ying! Ying!”
A burly man appeared in the doorway. He glanced down at the clothes on the floor to make sure, then cried out in anguish:
“You adulterous bastards! I’ll kill you both!”
At the same time, Wang Xuezhong heard a sharp crack. His whole body went rigid.
Sweat broke out on his forehead, and the veins stood out on his neck. He couldn’t move.
He wasn’t afraid of the beating he was about to get. He was terrified of being turned into a eunuch.
No! This can’t be happening!
As for Liu Yingying, the culprit herself, she wrapped herself in the quilt and tried to run. In her panic, she stepped on him, making his already unbearable pain even worse. He nearly passed out from it.
Then her husband punched Liu Yingying, knocking her onto the bed. The back of her head struck the tip of Wang Xuezhong’s nose. Just as he was about to black out from the pain, it jolted him awake again.
“I’ll teach you to fool around! I’ll teach you to fool around…”
The room erupted in slaps and crashes, along with the man’s curses and the woman’s screams and sobs.
Outside, a crowd had gathered, delighted to watch the spectacle. Men and women alike wore excited smiles, and some of the men were even offering their commentary.
A reporter who had come to cover the bustling market was tipped off by someone eager for a bit of excitement and dragged over. He hurriedly snapped a series of sensational photos.
There was tomorrow’s morning paper, front-page news for the local section!
Away from all the commotion, Jiang Yan stood beneath a streetlamp, expressionless.
Only when she saw two police officers arrive on bicycles and huff their way upstairs did she turn and leave.
She looked around, feeling lost.
This was Jiangcheng’s wholesale market in 1988, bustling with activity.
Even though night had fallen, the place was still ablaze with lights. Merchants from all over the country converged here.
Some made more than ten thousand yuan a month; others were left with nothing but exhaustion and hard labor.
The long, two-carriage buses raced along the streets like giant snakes.
The journey home was long, but Jiang Yan had no inclination to take a bus. She simply walked, one step at a time.
She and Wang Xuezhong had both worked at the factory, but business had been poor for the past two years, and she had been forced into a buyout of her years of service.
After sixteen years of work, the factory had given her twelve thousand yuan.
She had planned to buy an apartment in the city, so the whole family wouldn’t have to cram into a room of barely a dozen square meters in a workers’ dormitory.
Their daughter was growing up, and their son was too. It couldn’t go on like that.
But Wang Xuezhong had told her to put the money in the bank. The annual interest would be enough to live on, so why waste money buying a house?
Jiang Yan had always been timid, and whatever her husband said went. But when they divorced, she learned that Wang Xuezhong had never put the money in the bank.
He had given it to Liu Yingying.
Liu Yingying had told him that if she didn’t help her husband raise the capital to start a business, he would beat her to death.
Wang Xuezhong couldn’t bear to see Liu Yingying suffer, so he gave her all the money Jiang Yan had been counting on for her old age.
If they had truly loved each other, Jiang Yan’s helping them be together might even have been a good deed.
But the truth was that after they married, Wang Xuezhong had cheated on her again. Liu Yingying had even tried to kill him with a knife before he finally behaved himself.
As Jiang Yan walked, her shadow stretched long beneath the streetlights, then shrank again, over and over.
“Whew! Whew!”
A man rode past her on a bicycle, then stopped a short distance away and whistled at her, his gaze leering.
The crackdown was over, and some men were letting their lower halves take charge of their upper halves again.
Before, Jiang Yan would have run away in fear. But now she looked around, picked up half a brick, and faced him.
She didn’t pull a threatening expression or make any threats. She just stared at him coldly.
The standoff lasted less than three seconds before the man pedaled away.
In that instant, Jiang Yan seemed to understand something.
She quickened her pace and caught the last bus. After getting off, she walked for more than twenty minutes before finally reaching the factory dormitory.
This was the dormitory for the factory where Wang Xuezhong worked. Jiang Yan had once been so meek that, though the factory allocated housing several times, she never got any.
Even when she bought out her years of service, she received the lowest rate.
Kind people really do get pushed around.
When Jiang Yan reached the door and was about to knock, it creaked open. Her daughter, Wang Xiaoya, threw herself into her arms.
“Mom, what took you so long? I was so worried!”
Jiang Yan’s heart warmed. She stroked the hair on her daughter’s head.
“My poor girl, you’ve had such a hard time with me. Come on, try on the new clothes I bought you.”
She led her daughter inside and turned on the light.
From the white plastic bag, she took out a floral blouse and a pair of bell-bottoms.
“Mom, are these really for me?”
Wang Xiaoya stared at the pretty bell-bottoms, hardly able to believe it.
Her class monitor had a pair just like them and had shown them off in class for ages.
She’d said that one pair of trousers cost as much as some people’s parents earned in a whole month!
Wang Xiaoya had never had new clothes. Suddenly owning such an expensive pair didn’t make her happy—it only frightened her. She burst into tears.
“Mom, I’m sorry! I won’t tell on my brother anymore. Please don’t abandon me!”
She clung to Jiang Yan’s waist, sobbing miserably.
“I won’t tell on him anymore. I don’t want new clothes. I’ll be good, I promise…”
Jiang Yan quickly bent down and wiped her daughter’s tears.
“You’re Mom’s good girl. How could I ever abandon you?”
“But…”
Wang Xiaoya sniffled and sobbed.
“My classmate said that back in their hometown, some people who couldn’t afford to raise their daughters gave them away. Dad said our family couldn’t afford to put two kids through high school, and told me to learn to cut hair on the street…”
As she spoke, the tears streamed down her face again.
“Mom, I want to go to school! I can earn the tuition myself, really! I’ll go pick up scrap tomorrow morning. I already know where I can find lots and lots of cans.”
Her daughter’s words broke Jiang Yan’s heart.
“You don’t need to earn your tuition, and you don’t need to pick up scrap. All I need is for you to study hard and become a scientist someday. I believe you can do it!”
Wang Xiaoya was only thirteen. She had skipped a grade to get into middle school, then earned a place in high school with excellent marks.
She was so bright, but in her previous life, working while studying had kept her grades from being good enough. She missed the cutoff for Tsinghua and Peking University by just half a point, and it affected the rest of her life.
Jiang Yan gently wiped the tears from her daughter’s face and smiled.
“From now on, Xiaoya, you need to eat well and try to grow a little taller. Focus on your studies and try to get even better grades. Those are the only two things you need to worry about!”
Suddenly, another thought came to her, and she said gently:
“My Xiaoya is sure to become someone remarkable one day. Remarkable people need a name that rings out. Why don’t we think of a strong-sounding name for you?”
Holding her daughter close, Jiang Yan gazed into the distance and made up her mind:
This time around, she and her daughter would both get a fresh start!
Wang Xiaoya was stunned. Her eyes, still brimming with tears, sparkled.
“Mom, you really won’t abandon me, and you’re going to give me a new name?”
A great hope stirred in her little heart.
If she changed her name, could she finally leave behind nasty nicknames like “servant girl” and “stinky feet”?