When the Hong Kong and Macao delegation came to visit, Tang Shen didn’t go out to welcome them. Instead, she was busy pounding a drum inside an abandoned old warehouse next to the school.
Summer in Guangzhou is truly long—long like the Pearl River, sweltering and humid. About twenty children were in the warehouse practicing horse stances, sweat droplets rolling down their chins. Tang Shen walked back and forth among them, pressing down on a shoulder here, kicking a heel straight there. “Sink! Sink lower! No sticking your buttocks out!”
The warehouse was dusty, with unwanted cardboard boxes piled in the corners. Standing behind her were two pieces of hard cardboard held up by bamboo poles, serving as tall, handmade advertising boards. Names like “Fugui Sports” and “Jianfa Trading” were completely made up, complete with hand-drawn logos that looked surprisingly legitimate.
Money? Not a single cent. But the presentation? That had to be put on fully.
On the school side, a new red welcome banner hung in the hallway, and the principal personally led the guests to tour the classrooms and playground, looking very respectable. On this side, Tang Shen pounded her drum fiercely.
Suddenly, the warehouse door was pushed open.
A male teacher walked in, moving urgently and speaking just as urgently, calling out repeatedly, “Hello, hello, hello! Teacher Tang, didn’t we agree? There’s a delegation today, can you please first—”
“It’s no trouble at all. They look at theirs, we practice ours.”
“The delegation, the leaders are all—”
“Good, even better.” She gripped her drumsticks and pointed them toward the two signs behind her. “Tell them, these kids are going to be competing in the future. As long as they’re willing to sponsor us, there are plenty of advertising spots.”
The drumbeats rang out again—dong, dong, dong—louder and denser than in the morning, as if purposely trying to lure all the financial backers from the other side right over here, turning the male teacher’s face pale with anxiety. He said a few more things behind her, but the drumming was too loud; Tang Shen didn’t hear a single word. Nor did she notice that outside the two old windows on one side of the warehouse, a young woman had been standing there for who knows how long.
The woman was Cheng Baoyi, a member of the delegation. She had gone out to use the restroom just moments before, and on her way back, hearing the drumbeats out of curiosity, she followed the sound over. Upon walking up, it felt as though she were seeing a brand-new world. Compared to the bright, spotless classrooms she had just left, the warehouse over here was grimy and covered in dust. Children were pressing their legs against the corners, holding static stances, and practicing footwork back and forth. The young teacher in the middle paced about, pressing on this one, kicking that one, with an expression so focused it was as if the sky outside were falling and it had nothing to do with her.
Ten minutes later, Cheng Baoyi learned the origins of these children from the host teacher. Most of them were children of migrant workers; their parents struggled just to keep food on the table, let alone spare the energy to care about their schooling. The adults had long since made it clear to them: getting into university is not something people like us should be thinking about.
That teacher surnamed Tang, however, simply refused to accept it. Though she taught Chinese, she stubbornly moonlighted teaching sports. She looked exceptionally earnest—just like the convincing fake advertising boards behind her. At that moment, footsteps sounded from behind. The accompanying teacher hurried over, rushed up to her ear, and called out, “Ms. Cheng, so you were out here.”
The drumming was too loud, and Cheng Baoyi didn’t catch anything else the host teacher said. She merely peered through the dirty glass once more, sizing up the Teacher Tang inside. After a long moment, she turned her face and asked with a smile, “That teacher inside—what’s her name? What’s her background?”
There was a sort of unpolished, raw sincerity to Tang Shen, something Cheng Baoyi had noticed the very first time she met her. She would stare at you straight in the eyes, genuinely listening, genuinely thinking.
Raised in a household where everyone wore masks when they spoke, Cheng Baoyi had long forgotten what sincerity looked like. The face before her was plastered with earnestness. Only later did Cheng Baoyi realize that she had been completely fooled by this face.
“I heard you’re from Yunnan,” Cheng Baoyi said.
“I grew up in Guangzhou.”
“Many outsiders who grow up locally don’t necessarily manage to speak Cantonese well.”
“They are them, I am me.”
The remark didn’t sound particularly polite. Yet as she spoke, her eyebrows curved slightly, and her lower lip pressed together lightly in thought, resembling a model student—albeit a model student who cared very little for social niceties.
“I’d like to invite you to help train my younger brother in sports,” Cheng Baoyi said. “It won’t be too busy; you can use your weekends and winter or summer breaks, so it won’t affect your school job.”
Tang Shen thought about it seriously, staring straight at Cheng Baoyi once more. What a terrible habit, Cheng Baoyi thought; someone needs to make her change it, otherwise Mommy won’t like it, and Kejia will pick up her bad habits too.
Tang Shen suddenly asked, “Could you please sponsor these children?” She was wholeheartedly trying to persuade Cheng Baoyi, explaining that the kids here didn’t need much, just that there were a lot of them. “The Education Bureau has already put in a lot of money and effort; we can’t keep leaning on them for special treatment all the time. We have to figure things out for ourselves.”
Cheng Baoyi smiled. “These kids don’t fit our brand positioning…”
“How do they not fit?” Tang Shen pulled a small bottle out of her carry bag and silently placed it on the table between them. It was Cheng Yongtang’s medicated oil. Who knows where she had managed to get it; it was even the newly packaged version released just this year.
“This bottle of stuff you make is extremely useful. Xiaoxue sprained her ankle, and it got better instantly after using it. I looked into it and realized you’ve always wanted to break into the mainland market, but your scale isn’t large enough to afford celebrity endorsements, and traditional advertising is too expensive. Promoting it on mainland social platforms gives mediocre results at best. Since that’s the case, why not invest in kids like us?”
These were all clichés; everyone understood the path of brand philanthropy. What shocked Cheng Baoyi, however, was not that. She asked, “How did you know who I was?” There wasn’t a single thing on her person that indicated Cheng Yongtang.
Tang Shen answered with complete composure, “I knew the delegation was coming, so I memorized all the names and corporate names in advance.”
“I never mentioned my name to you…”
“I looked up every single name online and memorized the photos, too.”
“How did you know someone would come over? Just from the drumbeats?” If she hadn’t come out to use the restroom and gotten drawn in by the drums, she never would have walked over here. If she had come any later, perhaps Tang Shen would have already been “persuaded” to leave by the school.
“I didn’t know,” Tang Shen shook her head with absolute frankness. “Even though the probability was extremely small, you still have to take a gamble.”
Cheng Baoyi had never encountered such a wild-card approach, and she was deeply shaken. Thinking Cheng Baoyi was silently considering the offer, Tang Shen chattered on, arguing that kids practicing martial arts frequently suffered strains and sprained ankles, making it the perfect match for bruise-relief oils. “With the kids doing interviews, shooting documentaries, and participating in offline competitions, your brand exposure won’t be lacking.”
Cheng Baoyi watched her quietly. This young woman was completely different from anyone she had ever met in the Cheng family.
“If you’re willing to sponsor the school long-term…” Tang Shen was still talking, “…I can waive my salary and be your brother’s tutor. Of course, you’ll have to cover my transportation, food, and lodging.”
Cheng Baoyi remembered her mother teaching her never to believe in fairy tales—only in interests. Her interests told her that Tang Shen possessed a force far beyond what the girl herself imagined. In some books, this kind of force was called vitality.
Cheng Baoyi’s mind raced for a long moment. “No problem, but we need to change our agreement.”
“How?”
“You resign from your job here and come to my house to be my brother’s full-time tutor.”
Tang Shen froze.
“I know mainlanders place great importance on official job placements [bianzhi], but in addition to sponsoring these kids, I will pay you a salary far higher than that of a primary school teacher. Besides, our family lives in the affluent district of Macao. If I may be frank, your opportunities there will be greater than here.”
The implication couldn’t be clearer. For a young, beautiful girl, what else could possibly be called an opportunity?
Yet Tang Shen acted as if she didn’t understand the hint at all, asking earnestly, “Why do you want me to be a tutor? Since you have money, you can definitely find someone better than me.”
“There are many people better than you, but we need someone suitable. None of them are suitable.”
“Why aren’t they suitable?”
“They’re too obedient…” Cheng Baoyi glanced at the children practicing horse stances in the warehouse corner, looking like a patch of wild weeds without even sunlight, yet possessing a robust, flourishing vitality. “…The kids they turn out are too obedient. My brother doesn’t need to be any more obedient; he needs someone to teach him how to win.”
Later, when Cheng Baoyi recalled their first meeting, she would inexplicably think of The Story of Gi-bo by Yi Shu: A poor girl meets a wealthy heiress, enters her world, and a series of events unfolds. When she mentioned this to Tang Shen, Tang Shen looked completely blank. That was when Cheng Baoyi realized she didn’t even really know who Yi Shu was.
What? Didn’t you read these novels when you were studying at university in Shanghai?
Tang Shen replied that back then, apart from studying, it was all part-time jobs.
That day, Cheng Baoyi heard about the first half of Tang Shen’s life from the host teacher. A foreign-born kid like this, growing up in a Guangzhou urban village, relying entirely on her own abilities to test into a prestigious university amid harsh conditions, and walking the path she chose of her own accord. Cheng Baoyi thought that someone like her younger brother Cheng Kejia—who had “grown up deep within the palace walls”—desperately needed to be led by someone who had been baked by the sun and drenched by torrential rain.
Tang Shen was precisely that person.
The day Tang Shen arrived in Macao, it was drizzling.
After passing through the Gongbei Port, the driver who picked her up was in his forties, surnamed Zhong. He said, “Ms. Cheng asked me to pick you up,” opened the car door for her, and put her luggage in the trunk.
Tang Shen sat in the back seat, looking out the window. She had been to Macao once before, spending a day here with old college classmates, wandering around the Ruins of St. Paul’s and the Venetian, eating pork chop buns, and feeling that the city was unimaginably small. Looking at it now, the feeling was entirely different.
The car drove from the Border Gate into the Macao peninsula, passing all the way through old streets and alleys. The streets were narrow and claustrophobic, the buildings mottled. Five- or six-story tenement buildings lined both sides, their exterior walls painted in faded pink, yellow, and green, with cha chaan tengs, herbal tea shops, and pharmacies scattered haphazardly across the ground floors. Motorcycles zipped through the narrow lanes. All those glittering, closely packed casino hotels were over on the Cotai side across the water and did not appear along the route.
So even such a tiny bullet of a city separates the rich areas from the poor areas, Tang Shen thought.
The car slowly climbed up the winding mountain road. The bustle of the market faded away like a tide, replaced by low walls in soft shades of pink, eggshell, and cream flashing past on both sides, behind which stood detached southern European-style villas. Through an occasionally half-open iron gate, one could glimpse planted greenery inside and the shimmering blue light of a half-exposed swimming pool. Uncle Zhong suddenly remarked that this was Bishop’s Hill (Penha Hill).
Tang Shen had zero concept of Macao place names, but she knew she needed to give some reaction, so she let out an “Oh.” Judging that Uncle Zhong wasn’t entirely satisfied with her reaction, he said nothing more.
The car reached the top of the hill and stopped in front of an iron gate. The gate was low and dark gray, with a bilingual Chinese-Portuguese house number embedded in the wall beside it, half-concealed by a cluster of leaves. A security camera was mounted on the gate. The iron gate opened from the inside. A black Toyota Alphard drove out, and the two vehicles squeezed past each other on the narrow slope.
The window of the Alphard rolled down. Uncle Zhong rolled down his window as well, leaned forward slightly, and called out, “Master Wei.”
Tang Shen looked over from the back seat.
The man in the driver’s seat looked to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with refined bone structure and slightly deep-set eye sockets. He wore a dark-colored polo shirt, his left hand resting on the steering wheel, his wrist very thin and bare of a watch. The entire person radiated a tightly wound, impatient air. He swept a glance toward the back seat of Uncle Zhong’s car, his gaze lingering on Tang Shen’s face for less than a second before shifting back to say something to Uncle Zhong.
Tang Shen didn’t catch it clearly.
Uncle Zhong replied, “Cheng Kejia’s tutor.”
The Alphard glided down the slope. Tang Shen noticed that someone else was sitting in the front passenger seat.
That person was looking at her, too.
With the window half-rolled down, she could only see the person’s brows and eyes. At a glance, they were striking. The members of the Cheng family all seemed to be good-looking; it was said that three generations back they had mixed Portuguese blood, and though it had faded by now, they still possessed standout Asian faces.
Before Tang Shen could get a clear look at the person, the Alphard had already driven away. Yet she kept feeling that the person looked strangely familiar.
“That’s Master Wei,” Uncle Zhong said casually as he drove the car through the iron gate. “The eldest young master, currently the executive director of Cheng Yongtang.” He was referring to the man in the driver’s seat.
“And the person next to him?”
Uncle Zhong paused, as if trying to figure out how to address them: “Wensheng. Wen Yizhuang.”
He didn’t explain who Wen Yizhuang was. Tang Shen didn’t press further, simply lost in thought, wondering where on earth she had seen him before.