Brothers (75 page)

Originally, more than twenty thousand beautiful virgins had registered for the event, but because they had to pay for their own room and board, in the end only three thousand showed up. They came from throughout China, and all the hotels and guesthouses in Liu were completely booked. What had originally been twin rooms were made into four-person rooms, and still they couldn't accommodate all the virgin beauties. In the interest of preserving Liu Town's upstanding image, the country government called on everyone to donate their beds for the virgin beauties to use. The reasoning was that it would not do to have the beauties camped out in the street, because what would happen if some of the local men couldn't control their urges and raped them in the middle of the night? Even if they didn't rape but just copped a feel or two, the entire town would still lose face. Fortunately, it was summertime, and everyone responded enthusiastically to the call, with the men of many households taking their bedrolls and sleeping outside in the streets and alleys, thereby allowing the visiting virgins to use their beds. Poet Zhao also slept in the streets and lent out his one-bedroom apartment to two virgin beauties, with each virgin paying him one hundred yuan a day in rent.

Song Gang and Lin Hong too lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and when Song Gang saw that Poet Zhao was earning two hundred
yuan a day, Song Gang proposed that he sleep outside while Lin Hong remained at home, thereby at least allowing them to earn one hundred yuan a day hosting one virgin beauty. Lin Hong, however, vetoed the idea, noting that Song Gang was ill and shouldn't be sleeping outside. When he insisted, Lin Hong got angry, saying that now that he was going to the hospital every day for shots and treatment, his health was finally improving, but if he were to sleep outside, it would surely deteriorate, and the money they would waste on medical treatment would surely exceed any they might have earned from rent. Song Gang didn't know that Baldy Li was supporting them, since Lin Hong had told him that her parents and their friends were paying for the medical expenses. Song Gang had already placed his bedroll next to Poet Zhao's when he saw Lin Hong standing in the doorway weeping tears of fury. Therefore, he had no option but to roll up his bedroll and return home. Those days Song Gang would open his front door every morning and the first person he would see would be Poet Zhao stretching at his spot under the electrical pole. When Zhao saw Song Gang, he would sit up and start chatting animatedly, claiming that sleeping in the street was more comfortable than sleeping in his own bed, and pointing out that it was much cooler out here, not to mention that he was also earning two hundred yuan a day. Song Gang was very envious, but noticing that Poet Zhao's face was covered with mosquito bites, he asked, "What's wrong with your face?"

Poet Zhao answered proudly, "These are acne pimples."

CHAPTER 61

I
T WAS
at this juncture that the itinerant charlatan Wandering Zhou arrived in Liu Town.

Wandering Zhou was a sight to behold: Like all con men these days, he had a movie stars good looks. He walked over from the bus depot with two twenty-nine-inch color television boxes and only five yuan in his pocket. Actually apart from Chief Sub Song Gang, every man in Liu had more money in his pockets than did Wandering Zhou, yet they all felt poor. Even with only five yuan, however, Wandering Zhou had the air of someone who was on China s Forbes 400 list.

It was dusk and the moon had not yet come out, yet the lights from the streetlamps and the neon signs were already shimmering past one another on the streets. It was so muggy that the crowds wished they could simply run around naked. Wandering Zhou, however, was dressed formally in a suit and leather shoes. He set the two boxes down by his feet and stood on the street outside the bus depot, looking as cool and comfortable as if he were in an air-conditioned hall. Flashing a China Forbes 400 smile, he asked everyone walking back and forth, "Is this Virgin Beauty Town?"

Wandering Zhou asked five people in a row, but each time the passersby only nodded or grunted in response, and not a single one of them stopped to look at him carefully, much less came over to speak with him. Since no one would take his bait, Wandering Zhou did not know where to start. In the past, if such an unusual character had appeared on the street, everyone in Liu would have immediately crowded around curiously as if he were an ape. But he happened to show up at a moment when twenty-eight hundred out of an expected three thousand virgin beauties had already descended upon the town—not to mention the two-hundred-plus reporters, a famous announcer whom people previously had only seen on television, and various political leaders and celebrity judges—and as a result, the townspeople were suddenly as worldly and jaded as big-city folk. Wandering Zhou had thought that if he shouted "Virgin Beauty Town" a few times, he would surely get everyone's attention. What he didn't
realize was that outsiders had already been calling this place Virgin Beauty Town for more than a week now and that even the people of Liu had begun referring to their own town that way.

Wandering Zhou stood in front of the bus depot until nightfall, but still no one came to speak to him, and consequently he had no opportunity to deploy his snake-oil-salesman routine. Just a few pedicab drivers looking for business approached him and asked, "Hey, mister, which hotel are you going to?"

Since Wandering Zhou had only five yuan in his pocket, if he were to take a pedicab, he would end up with no money at all. He knew that one shouldn't mess with these pedicab drivers—if he was short even a single yuan, they were liable to beat him to a pulp. Therefore, when they approached to vie for his business, he paid them no attention and instead took a toy cell phone from his suit pocket. This phone looked real and even had a triple-A battery inside, so that when he discreetly pushed a button, it would ring. When the pedicab drivers asked him which hotel he wanted to go to, his cell phone rang, and he pulled it out and shouted angrily into the receiver, "Why hasn't my exclusive-use car arrived yet?"

After night fell, Wandering Zhou realized that there was no point in continuing to stand there, so he had no alternative but to pick up his two enormous cardboard boxes and set off. No matter how hard he tried now, he couldn't maintain his China Forbes 400 gait but, rather, trudged along with a coolie's shuffle. The streets of Liu were chock-full of people. Wandering Zhou kept accidentally bumping his boxes into the thighs of visiting beauties, as well as the thighs of the townspeople of Liu. Under the twinkling of the streetlamps and the neon lights, amid the soaring melodies of foreign and Chinese songs, in the roar of jazz and rock and the melodic strains of foreign classical and Chinese folk music, Wandering Zhou walked and paused and walked and paused. When he paused, he would look around and admire the new Liu Town that Baldy Li had helped create. Along the old street adorned with traditional red lanterns there was now an eclectic mix of European classical architecture and American modernist architecture. Wandering Zhou spotted soaring Greek Doric columns belonging to Baldy Li's fanciest restaurant, the Roman-style red-walled atrium housing his brand-name clothing store, the Chinese-style slate-roofed courtyard of his Chinese restaurant, and the Japanese-style garden of his Japanese restaurant, as well as gothic
windows and baroque roofs. Wandering Zhou said to himself,
This is a real mutt of a town.

No one knows where this itinerant charlatan went that night, carrying those two large cardboard boxes, wearing his suit and dress shoes in the heat, and suffering from hunger, thirst, and overall fatigue. But one thing was certain: He must have been in excellent health, since he was able to continue walking around until eleven o'clock that night without collapsing from heatstroke. It seemed that this charlatan must have succeeded in tricking even his own body. He did a giant loop about town and noticed that the streets were full of sleeping men. From their discussions, he gathered that all of the towns hotels and guesthouses were completely booked and that even the private residences were packed full of virgin beauties.

Wandering Zhou finally stopped in front of Poet Zhao's straw mat. Zhao had not yet fallen asleep but was lying on his mat swatting at mosquitoes. Wandering Zhou nodded, but Zhao ignored him, wondering what this young man was doing here. Wandering Zhou's eyes wandered over to Mama Sus snack shop across the street, and he suddenly felt as famished as if his chest were plastered to his back. He realized that if he didn't eat something soon, he wouldn't be a charlatan as much as a starving ghost. Still carrying his two boxes, he crossed the street and, though he was still sporting his suit and dress shoes, his gait was now more like that of a refugee. He shuffled into the snack shop, where the air-conditioning instantly refreshed him, and sat down at a table near the door.

Because it was so late, there were just a couple of customers left. Mama Su had gone home and her daughter, Missy Su, was minding the cashier's counter, chatting with two waitresses. Missy Su was in her thirties but no one had any idea who her boyfriend was or if she had one at all—just as they never found out anything about who her father had been.

Missy Su saw the dashing Wandering Zhou walk in and sit down. The only things less than elegant about him were his two large boxes. On his part, Zhou immediately discerned that this eminently average-looking, and perhaps even a bit homely, Missy Su must be the proprietress. Therefore, with a handsome smile on his handsome face, he started gazing at her as if he were admiring a painting. Never having had a man admire her the way the charlatan Wandering Zhou was admiring her now, Missy Su felt her pulse start to race. Wandering
Zhou continued gazing at her until one of the waitresses handed him a menu, whereupon he finally tore his eyes away from her face and directed his attention to the menu. Seeing that a steamerful of mini-meat buns was five yuan, he ordered one. The waitress then brought over the drink menu and asked him what he wanted to drink. Wandering Zhou shook his head and said, "I have diabetes, so I'll just have a glass of water."

The waitress replied that they didn't have any tap water, only bottled mineral water. Wandering Zhou shook his head and repeated, "I don't drink mineral water. Mineral water is a swindle, since it doesn't actually contain any minerals. It is actually tap water which has the highest mineral content."

After saying this, Wandering Zhou continued admiring Missy Su, making her pulse race with excitement. He knew that she would surely bring him a glass of water. He then reached his hand into his pocket, and instantly his toy cell phone rang, whereupon he pulled it out and pretended to take a call. From his side of the conversation it appeared as if he was talking to his secretary. He complained that she had not reserved a room for him and now there were no rooms to be found. Unlike earlier with those pedicab drivers, this time in front of Missy Su he didn't make a show of losing his temper but, rather, complained very politely and concluded his call by uttering a few words of reassurance to the person on the other end of the line. When he finished and put his cell phone away, he turned back around and found Missy Su standing there with a glass of water. He knew that this was mineral water. By then he was as thirsty as if he had just come in from the desert, but he politely stood up to accept the water and politely thanked her for it. Then he sat back down and sipped it while nibbling on his steamed buns and began chatting with her.

He started talking about the buns, remarking how tasty they were, and then complimented Missy Su on how neat and clean her shop was. Missy Su, who had turned away, suddenly paused. Sensing an opening, Zhou then suggested that she should introduce the latest new thing in buns, whereupon she sat down across from him. Zhou continued, suggesting that she should introduce a kind of steamed meat bun that came with its own little straw. He described how in the top snack shops of Shanghai and Beijing all the mini-buns were served with tiny straws sticking out. Those buns had much lighter, thinner skins than regular mini-buns and therefore contained that much more meat juice. Customers
first delicately sipped the flavorful juices through the straw, and only then did they eat the bun itself. Zhou said that these were currently considered the best buns; and moreover, they had become veritable symbols of our countrymen's new sophisticated lifestyles. Eating buns was no longer merely about eating meat filling wrapped in dough; rather, it was about savoring the juice. He said, "In fact, there are some customers who just sip the juice and don't even bother with the rest."

Missy Sus eyes started to gleam as she listened to Wandering Zhou's descriptions, and she promised she would immediately start developing this new kind of bun the very next day. Wandering Zhou took this opportunity to suggest that perhaps he could come by to assess her work. He said that he would gladly share his valuable experiences of sipping mini-bun juice if it could be of any help to her. He promised to help her make these straw-embedded mini-buns a runaway hit, one that would not only attract customers from one hundred
li
around but people from as far away as Beijing would fly down just to enjoy her specialty buns. Missy Su laughed delightedly at this and asked shyly, "Are you really willing to help me?"

"Of course," replied Wandering Zhou with a gracious wave.

Now that this charlatan had spent his final five yuan, his offer to be the official sampler of the straw-embedded buns turned out to be the perfect way to nab himself several days’ worth of food. After he left the snack shop with his two cardboard boxes, his gait was much livelier than it had been when he had been so famished. Now he just needed to find a free place to sleep. He again walked up to Poet Zhao and came up with a plan to claim Zhao's straw mat.

Poet Zhao would have already been asleep by that point if it hadn't been for the mosquitoes. They had bitten him all over his body, driving him to distraction. When Wandering Zhou walked by, Zhao was slapping madly at the buzzing mosquitoes, his hands dotted with blood. As Wandering Zhou set down his piled-up boxes next to Poet Zhao's mat, Zhao peered down at his mosquito-blood dotted palms under the light of the streetlamps and showed Wandering Zhou, saying, "This is all
my
blood."