Brothers (74 page)

With pen and paper in hand, PR Liu quickly recorded Baldy Li's fucking instructions. Only after Baldy Li sat down on the couch to catch his breath did PR Liu speak, singing the praises of Baldy Li's brilliant scheme and proposing two very minor suggestions. First, he volunteered that it seemed somewhat inappropriate to call it a Hymen Olympic Games and asked whether they could change the name to Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition.

Baldy Li nodded. "That is a good suggestion."

PR Liu then suggested that perhaps it was somewhat inappropriate for all the judges to be men. Shouldn't they also have some female judges? Baldy Li, however, disagreed, and said with a wave of his hand, "I don't want any women. It is ultimately us men who decide which women are pretty or not, so what point is there in including women?"

PR Liu considered for a moment and suggested that there might be unfortunate ramifications if all the judges were men, because this might lead to debates and criticism in the media, ultimately becoming a topic that people would discuss endlessly.

"All the better!" Baldy Li shouted and added, "I want there to be controversy, and I want them to discuss this endlessly. That way I will always be a bone."

PR Liu sprang into action like a bolt of lightning, and the very next day he sent out press releases announcing the virgin competition. He spent the whole day on the phone placing calls to every corner of the country, confirming people to serve as chairmen and deputy chairmen of the organizing committee and also confirming the list of ten judges.

Baldy Li also called up a storm, phoning all those chairmen of the board and trustees who had previously discussed business with him in order to nail down sponsors and advertisers. Finally he called up County Governor Tao Qing and, after telling him about his glorious plan, asked Tao to make the main street of Liu Town available for hosting the proposed Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition. Nearly drooling, Baldy Li sketched out his vision: "More than a thousand beauties will come to Liu from throughout China to participate in the competition, and every fucking one of them will be a virgin. The biggest gathering place in the county is the movie theater, but it only has eight hundred fucking seats and therefore won't even be enough to hold all the beautiful virgins, much less us and the other political leaders. Even the judges wouldn't have seats. You wouldn't want us to have to sit in the virgins’ laps, would you? And then there is the question of the fucking spectators who will want to come see the virgins. Naturally, the only option would be to hold it in the street."

Tao Qing was ecstatic about this proposal, immediately pronouncing it a major turning point in Liu Town's development and saying that if it was done well, it could increase the GDP of the entire county by 300 to 500 percent. He told Baldy Li, "Don't you worry. You are welcome to use two, three, or as many streets and alleys as you might need. Even if all of the beautiful virgins in the country end up here, we will still be able to accommodate them."

News of the Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition quickly spread throughout the country, and the reporters who had previously retreated like the tide now rushed back in. Baldy Li once again became the choice bone for the entire nation. His smiling face could once again be found in newspapers and on every television channel. PR Liu's boat also rose along with the tide, but he didn't forget to whom he owed his success. He knew if it hadn't been for Baldy Li's trust, he wouldn't be
where he was now. Therefore, during the press conference for the competition, PR Liu took care to pepper his answers with "Boss Li."

One reporter asked, "Why is it necessary to host this National Virgin Beauty Competition?"

PR Liu replied evenly, "The competition will help promote traditional Chinese culture, increase the self-respect and ultimately the self-confidence of todays women, and at the same time support higher standards of health and hygiene. It is for these reasons that Boss Li has decided to organize this Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition—"

The reporter interrupted him to ask, "What do you mean by ‘higher standards of health and hygiene'?"

PR Liu answered, "The hymen plays a crucial role in preventing the invasion of foreign microbes, protecting the internal reproductive system, and preserving the body's reproductive ability. This is what Boss Li means by ‘higher standards of health and hygiene.'"

Another reporter asked, "What will be the entry requirements for prospective contestants?"

PR Liu responded as if reciting a tongue twister: "They must be beautiful and elegant, healthy and graceful, sociable and mature, accomplished and modest, respectful of elders and loving of the young, pure and chaste, and with no prior sexual experience."

The reporter then asked, "Will those women who may have torn their hymens while doing sports be permitted to compete? And how about those whose hymens have been breached as a result of sexual violence? Will they be allowed to participate?"

PR Liu answered, "Our Boss Li has the greatest respect for the two categories of women you mention and has given a great deal of thought to the question you have raised, losing appetite and sleep over the matter. In the end, however, he has decided to sacrifice those women to help preserve the integrity and authority of the competition as a whole. He explicitly asked, however, that I use this news conference to pay tribute to those women and exhort all Chinese men to lavish them with love and attention."

A female reporter asked, "Isn't this so-called Virgin Beauty Competition you are hosting actually an expression of feudal misogyny, which is to say a form of sexual discrimination?"

PR Liu shook his head and replied, "We are all our mothers’ children,
and we all love and respect our mothers. Our mothers are women, and therefore we love and respect women."

A final reporter asked, "Will the winner of the competition become your Boss Li's wife?"

PR Liu replied with a laugh, "Boss Li is hosting a beauty pageant, not a bridal pageant. Of course, you can't rule out the possibility that he might fall in love with one of the virgin beauties, but that would depend on whether or not she loved him. Love is inherently unpredictable."

When the news conference was televised, everyone in Liu watched it. PR Liu appeared with slick hair and smooth face, wearing a suit and leather shoes, and answered questions flawlessly. Baldy Li also watched the broadcast on television and was very satisfied with PR Liu's performance, remarking, "That old bastard is without question a genius."

Following the news conference, the Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition had its grand launch. The competition was divided into a preliminary round, semifinals, and a championship. The virgin beauties participating in the preliminary and semifinal rounds had to pay for their own room and board, and only the hundred finalists would have their food and board provided by the competition organizing committee. Out of those hundred finalists, a first-, second-, and third-place winner would be chosen, and their prizes would be one million, five hundred thousand, and two hundred thousand yuan, respectively. The organizing committee would then help launch the winners’ Hollywood careers and groom them for international stardom.

A blizzard of application letters started arriving—the mail truck deposited a large sack of them at the front desk of Baldy Li's company headquarters every day. With virgins from all over the country applying, the homegrown virgins of Liu Town and the rest of the county didn't want to seem like slackers in comparison, so they all registered as well, declaring that local assets should be kept within the community. The top three prizes should definitely be kept in-house, they declared, and shouldn't be filched away by an outsider.

Of all those who registered, be they homegrown or from afar, most were actually no longer virgins. In fact, some were married, some had already been divorced, others were cohabiting with lovers, and there were even some who had lost count of how many men they had been with. Each of these women, however, had had their hymens reconstructed.

As usual, the townspeople of Liu were like frogs at the bottom of a well, with no perspective on the outside world. It was not until an itinerant charlatan by the name of Wandering Zhou arrived that they realized their competition, in placing such a high value on virgins, had spurred a rage for hymen-reconstruction surgery throughout China. Wandering Zhou told them that a Beijing economist had labeled this the age of the hymen economy. All across the country every medical facility from big-city hospitals to small rural clinics had started offering hymen recons. Wandering Zhou told the people of Liu that hymen-recon surgery had become Chinas most profitable industry and that, from an economists perspective, "the entire hymen economy had its origins in Liu Town." Wandering Zhou concluded, "And that is why I have come."

Eventually the people of Liu came to appreciate the significance of the hymen economy. The county hospital, together with the rural clinics below it, was, of course, the first to benefit from the trend. Its hymen-recon ads could be found on bridge columns, electrical poles, roadside walls, even bathroom stalls. Everywhere you looked, you'd see an ad. You'd wake up in the morning to find one stuck to your front door; while you were eating lunch, more would be slipped under your door. When you went to the market to buy a pair of shoes, the salesman would hand you an advertisement, and the ticket seller would give you one when you went to buy a movie ticket. When you entered a restaurant and perused the menu, you would find an ad stuck inside it, and after ordering braised pig's feet, you would find that in the blink of an eye the dish had become hymen-recon—another flyer having been slipped onto your table and covering up your food.

Now that everyone in Liu—men and women, old and young—knew what hymen-recon surgery was, they said, "It is as simple as having double eyelid surgery."

Children would recite, "The operation lasts thirty minutes and requires only local anesthesia. Afterward there is no need to rest, and it won't affect your work or daily activities or even your menstrual cycle."

Pedicab drivers wore sandwich boards with ads from the county hospitals with a hole in the middle through which the driver could stick his head, as if it were a raincoat. On their chests and backs these drivers wore the following message, written in big yellow letters on a red background:

RECLAIM YOUR INTACT HYMEN! SUCCESS RATE OF THE OPERATION:
100%.
SATISFACTION RATE: 99.8%. PROBABILITY THAT YOU WILL BLEED DURING YOUR NEXT DEFLOWERING: 99.8%
.

As the hymen economy sprang up it added fuel to Baldy Li's Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition. During that period, money from sponsorships and advertising companies flowed continuously into Baldy Li's accounts, and Baldy Li, his eyes completely bloodshot, continued furiously making phone calls, inviting new sponsors and advertisers to join. He spent the entire day hoarsely shouting into the receiver, "This is an opportunity that you simply can't pass up. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

PR Liu became busier than he had ever been before, complaining that he was not only Baldy Li's fucking media spokesman but had to take care of all of Baldy Li's other fucking affairs as well. Baldy Li was concerned only with screaming into the telephone receiver like an executioner, asking everyone for money like a beggar, and couldn't trouble himself with other matters. PR Liu, therefore, had to delegate. He had to hire more assistants every day, and since his office had long been too small to accommodate everyone, he borrowed someone else's and eventually simply rented himself a small house, where he hung up a formal sign saying
INAUGURAL NATIONAL VIRGIN BEAUTY COMPETITION ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
. In the interest of both confidentiality and security, PR Liu asked Baldy Li to call the county division of armed police, and from that point on there were always two armed policemen standing guard at the entrance of the organizing committee building. Each of the committee's workers had to wear a badge with a photo ID, and anyone without this badge shouldn't even consider trying to get in.

After Baldy Li initially became famous, people started calling Liu Town Baldy Li Town, and now that his Virgin Beauty Competition became similarly well-known, everyone took to calling it Virgin Beauty Town instead. Virgin Beauty Town launched a series of beautification projects. The county government arranged to have all the houses along the road repainted and used all the county's radio and television broadcasts, as well as directives to each of its work units, to request that each family wash their windows so thoroughly that they appear invisible. They further requested that each family refrain from throwing garbage out and, especially after the competition began, that they hide their garbage under their beds. They enforced this ban by decreeing that anyone who threw out twenty
jin
of garbage would have to pay a fine equivalent to the price of twenty
jin
of pork. The government called on
everyone to mobilize and asked that they help make Virgin Beauty Town as delicate and charming as the most exquisitely adorned woman, in order to put forward the most dazzling appearance while playing host for the Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition. Then the town decked itself out with lanterns and decorations, stringing banners along all the streets and from all the buildings. Giant billboard frames were erected along the street that was going to be used for the competition, and billboard advertisements that Baldy Li had secured with his screaming telephone calls started appearing in them one after another.

The week before the competition was set to begin, the town was already overflowing with visitors. The first to arrive were the reporters, with print journalists and broadcast journalists arriving in one clump after another. Next the television and radio trucks drove in, followed by the VIPs, who were Baldy Li's sponsors and advertisers, as well as political leaders and the judges for the event. The most luxurious hotel in Liu was one of Baldy Li's, and he crammed the reporters, friends, and VIPs into it, filling it to capacity.