Making Money in China is Glorious - TLC 6

Living once in an old Shanghai neighborhood Lucky was surrounded by millions of peasants surviving in a paranoid zoo. Heavy metal doors clanged closed on night hinges. An adult admonished a child. Authoritarian accusatory commands were consistent simple and direct.

“Get in. The night is here. It is late. You have to fold the clothes. You have your homework for school. You have to clean up after dinner. You must study harder. Harder. Harder. If you fail your exams we will lose face. Shame will haunt us forever. You will become an unemployed migrant exploring Invisible Cities with Italo Calvino seeking your future in a grain of rice.”

High-heeled staccato music accompanied a young woman escaping her family. Muted whispers drifted through narrow concrete canyons as her heels faded.

An elevator door opened on the 11th floor of a 5* international business hotel. Employed on the management team Lucky stopped talking to accountants Shiva and Vishnu.

A beautiful twenty-year old Chinese in a white dress clutching a small black purse stared at a scuffed marble floor. Small puddles of rainwater collected around her red shoes.

She raised her face from the ground. Deep dark brown rings circled old, tired, fearful eyes hiding her heart’s knowledge. Revealing her soul. There was no place to hide, no magical cosmetic to conceal the truth of everything she knew and feared. The woman and stranger instinctively sensed each other.

Passing through she realized a temporary ethereal truth. She pressed another number. Doors closed. She went up to the room of a Taiwanese businessman who would savage her until daybreak.  

Finished performing her duty she folded hard earned hard currency into her purse after a long hot shower. She took the elevator down. Gliding through revolving glass and brass doors she passed her shimmering reflection in dark Japanese restaurant mirrors and negotiated gray steps to Nanjing Xi Lu.

Her brown eyes collected one million serious adults in blue industrial worker uniforms practicing Tai Chi with controlled balanced concentration. Every methodical movement had meaning. Dawn’s collective breath forming mist surrounded her red shoes skipping through shadows. 

To dance is life.

Neon billboards shouted: Making Money in China is Glorious!

Women in a dreary cement walled neighborhood demanded something at high decibels. Feed Me. A motorcycle roared past. A bike bell rang a sharp corner warning. Two women negotiated vegetable prices, cool days and their children’s fate.

Their syllabus adjusted musical interludes and surreptitious encounters in dark corners where sexually repressed couples groped for meaning away from surveillance cameras.

The Language Company
 

 I am pregnant. My family threw me out. I shamed them. This is my self criticism.