China Witness (58 page)

MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:
How much will the insole cost?

MRS XIE:
One yuan each.

MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:
So expensive! Other people charge one yuan the pair!

MRS XIE:
That's the price. Go and ask someone else if you don't believe me. I pay eighty fen per insole, so if I let you have one for fifty fen, I lose thirty fen on each insole, and I'm not doing that! Otherwise I can just reheel them for you, and you go to a cheaper place for an insole.

MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:
OK, just reheel them for me.

*

I watched as Mrs Xie rifled through heel tips of all sorts in an old shoebox and found a couple of metal ones which matched the old pair in size and colour. She rubbed them clean with a cloth, and put them on a wooden box beside her. Then she dexterously pulled off the heel tip with the hammer claw and carefully filed the bottom of the worn-down heel until it was quite flat. Finally she used her apron to give the surface a good rub and get rid of the flecks.

Then she applied a layer of viscous rubber solution and put the shoe down on the tip. She repeated this procedure with the other shoe, and when she had completed the repair work on both shoes, she reinforced the heels with a kind of square-headed shoe tack.

She was eager to tell me the story of the county middle school as she worked on the shoes.

*

MRS XIE:
Wasn't I going to tell you about the county middle school?

XINRAN:
Yes, if it doesn't interfere with your shoe repairs, please tell me.

MRS XIE:
Not at all. When I talk about it, it gives me more energy and more
qi
. Did you know that the more
qi
you have, the more energetic you are?

XINRAN:
OK, tell me then!

MRS XIE:
When I was at the county middle school, I was an excellent student. I came top in the county results. But when it came to university, they wouldn't let me apply. In those days, the middle school put your name forward, and they said I had a bad class background, that I was from a rich peasant family and so I couldn't go to university.

That was a muddle my mother had made in 1951 – it was nothing to do with me. Just after Liberation, when property was registered and people were put into class categories, the recorder didn't do the figures properly and they came out wrong. My mother had just got married. She was illiterate, and also didn't hear what was said. It was only when the class
categories were announced that she found out that the family had been put into the "rich peasant" category. How could that be? If we'd been rich peasants, why would my father have gone to make revolution? He'd have been making revolution against himself!

My father worked in the county government offices, and the cadres told him the mistake had been corrected, but they were bad guys and they deceived him. During the Cultural Revolution, someone made it known that my father had misrepresented his rich peasant background, and said they'd found the original testimony. The original cadres hadn't written an explanation of the mistake on his documents, they'd just put a line through his name and left it at that! So my father, after working for the revolution for twenty-something years, was turned into a "counterrevolutionary covertly working within the ranks of the revolutionaries". Just like that, it was over for my family, and I couldn't go to university. I was furious! Ever since I knew about it, I had been absolutely desperate to go to university. I liked literature, I liked history, I loved anything in books; I was the best in the county but they wouldn't let me go to university. When I sit here every day mending shoes, I think about that, and it still makes me angry!

You couldn't go to university somewhere else and get on in life, like you can nowadays. You couldn't do that then. Once my father had "become" a counter-revolutionary, the family had no means of earning a living, and very soon we were packed off back to the village to work on the land. All my studying had been a waste, hadn't it? I wouldn't ever be able to go to university, would I? I wasn't reconciled to this, I really wasn't! Every evening as I watched the sky grow dark, I would think to myself, I should just wait, the sky will get light again. Even if I can't go to university, my children will definitely be able to go, and to the best ones!

XINRAN:
And the sky did grow light. Your son went to the best university, your wish came true.

MRS XIE:
Well, it didn't all come true.
Xi'an Communications University isn't as good as Qinghua or Beijing University, and Qinghua and Beijing University aren't as good as Oxford and Cambridge. If it were me, I would definitely want to go to the best university, to show those people who wouldn't let me go. I've told my daughter, when she's finished her master's, she should go on studying. Mum'll support you, I said. We don't want the government's money. People say we're poor, but that poverty's given us
ambition, and out of poverty has come university learning. That'll show those people who look down on us! Neither of our children applied for a grant. I told them: "You're not allowed to borrow money or ask the government for money. If you've got talent, you'll fight your own battles! Don't compare how you eat and dress to other people. Don't worry that people will laugh at you if you look less smart or work harder than they do. The only thing you should compare is how educated you are!" I sit here repairing shoes and lots of people look down on me, but I think to myself: Have you sent your son to do his PhD? I'm not talented, but my children are talented. And I've earned every penny of their fees and their living expenses!

*

Once more I was left speechless, struck dumb by the indomitable spirit of the mothers of China, by their soaring aspirations. As a race, we really are like the wild grasses in the poem by
Bai Juyi: "Wild fires cannot consume them, they grow again in the spring breeze." In fact, I was not the only one to be quite overwhelmed by the shoe-mender woman's straight-talking. I could sense a silent surge of feeling from everyone around her, and I believe it was because of our mothers that we felt that way.

I realised that the middle-aged woman had been listening as she quietly chose two pairs of appropriate insoles from the pile on Mrs Xie's cart. She put down five yuan and was about to leave with her reheeled shoes when the shoe-mender stopped her: "I told you, the insoles are one yuan each, two yuan the pair, you've given me too much!" "Take it, buy your daughter a pen," said the customer. "No, no, I can't take it," said Mrs Xie. "You're helping them just by bringing me your shoes to mend. I can't charge anything else!"

Back and forth went the argument, just as I had so often seen women in Chinese restaurants fighting for the right to pay the bill. The shoemender woman won, and only accepted four yuan. The customer left, and I saw that she really was bandy-legged. I turned to the girl and said: "It's your turn." She was embarrassed and told me to go first, she wasn't in any hurry.

*

MRS XIE:
Let the girl sit here a bit longer, and I'll glue your shoes. She comes with a pair of shoes every weekend. She says it gives her something to do.

XINRAN:
Is this true?

GIRL:
Yup. My mum and dad are divorced and neither wanted me, so I'm with my grandparents. They only have two rooms, and they use my room to play mah-jong every day, so it gets very smoky. When I'm out at school it doesn't bother me, but at weekends there's nowhere to go, so I come here and watch people.

XINRAN:
Watch people?

GIRL:
That's right, watch people. This lane may be cramped and higgledy-piggledy, but you can see all sorts of people here, even big cadres. There's one big noise whose mum and dad live in that building, and sometimes he comes in with his arms full of packages to see them. He can't drive in, so he stops the car at the entrance, making all the passers-by swear.

XINRAN:
But how do you know he's an important cadre?

GIRL:
It may seem a mess here, but we have public security patrols every day. They say it's so that "the regulations are obeyed". If anyone else's car blocked the entrance, the PSB would put a stop to it. I've heard people say that the numbers on his car number plate are low ones, and the lower the number the higher the cadre's rank.

XINRAN:
And what other kinds of people do you see?

GIRL:
Just ask her. She can tell who's walking past her without even looking up. We often play "guessing people" games. She tells me what kind of a person someone might be and why. I point out to her anyone I see from far, far away, and how they walk and hold themselves. Some of them are my neighbours. She gets lots of them right. It's fun!

MRS XIE:
It's just a bit of nonsense, like a dog scrabbling away at a hole, as we say. It's just a game I play with the girl to keep her entertained!

XINRAN:
OK, tell me. Entertain me. Too bad that just now there's no one coming.

MRS XIE:
If you think about it, I've sat here for twenty-eight years mending shoes, and that's twenty-eight years' worth of lessons, learning to watch people. Shoe size depends on the person's height, everyone knows that. OK, that's a generalisation. There are some tall people with small feet, but not many short people with big feet. Big wide shoes usually belong to someone who's done a lifetime of manual labour which has splayed their toes. He may have come up in the world, but you can tell he has lots of poor relatives. If someone has wide shoes, you should look at their trouser legs too. If their trousers hang above their ankles, they're usually old – I reckon it's because their old bellies stick out. If the trouser
bottoms drag on the ground, they're either kids or nouveau riche who haven't learned how to wear their trousers properly. When it's a small foot with narrow shoes, the person's family have been city folk for generations, and their toes haven't been splayed through hard work. If they have a good life, then they have a slow gait. If they're poor, then they stride along. If they tread on someone's foot and can step back and give way, then they're educated, good people. Then there are people who don't know how to give way, people who wear designer shoes, fakes too. But human beings are not made by the clothes they wear. If they have no feelings and no talent, they're useless!

The man whose shoe I just mended only knows about what he wears, and doesn't know about people.

XINRAN:
Why?

MRS XIE:
His shoe was a designer fake, a particularly cheap one. If you've got learning, you can tell by looking that real and fake labels are not the same. He can't, so he falls right into the trap. Besides, does smiling at a woman make you lose face? He's been coming to have his shoes mended for a few years now, and he's never said more than a word or two to me. He wants you to understand that he's a city gent, higher up the social scale than you, and a man. But he hasn't managed to have a son. If a man wants a son, he needs to be strong-willed, he needs to be daring, and show his goodness in his face. A man who's only good at being a bully boy can only produce daughters.

XINRAN:
And what can you tell from these feet? What kind of learning does this woman have?

MRS XIE:
You want the truth?

XINRAN:
Of course I want the truth.

MRS XIE:
Then I'll tell you. As soon as I caught sight of your feet, I knew you were a poor person from a posh family.

XINRAN:
A poor person from a posh family? I don't understand.

MRS XIE:
You don't understand what that is? It means your forebears were posh, but you don't have any money. If you were posh now, you wouldn't have bought yourself those cheap shoes. The soles are very thin and the shape's not good. I guarantee you've got corns!

XINRAN:
You're amazing! I do have corns on my feet – they've been killing me the last couple of days!

MRS XIE:
I've got cream here specially for treating corns. Do you want to have a try? Don't put your feet in water for two days, and they should be better on the third day.

XINRAN:
But it's thirty-nine degrees, so hot, and I sweat buckets every day! I can't put my feet in water?

MRS XIE:
Well, you're not home yet . . . see how they hurt then . . .

XINRAN:
And what can you tell about other women?

MRS XIE:
The ones in high heels are most worth looking at. If they jab their heels into the ground as they walk, it's because they don't know how to wear them, or they've put them on for the first time. You don't need to look at them to know that they're sticking out their bums, which is really unattractive! You have to walk slowly in high heels – walking fast looks hideous. The higher the heels they're wearing, the less willing they are to give way to other people – these are shoes that can only go forwards not backwards. The high-heeled slippers that are fashionable nowadays are really funny. The foot often slips out of them, and then the slipper is just looped over the foot, which makes it completely useless. Everyone knows that women have small, delicate feet, but with these high heels now, the toes are very pointed, not for putting your foot in. It makes the whole shoe big, and a small woman striding along with a pair of big feet looks ridiculous! And something else: not a lot of women look after their feet. Sometimes you smell her perfume, what a lovely smell! But she walks past you and her feet are really ugly with yellow calluses at the back of the heels and the feet all wrinkly. If I look up, the face is bound to be plastered in thick make-up. Quite repulsive. I can't bear to see that. Then . . .

*

A man who was cycling past paused with one foot on the ground. "Hey, are you here this afternoon?" he asked. "I'm always here, in all weathers, apart from when I'm eating and sleeping. If my stall's here and I'm not, it's because I'm in the toilet." "I'll come back this afternoon then," said the man, and he cycled off.