He was trying to sell dolls to a gaggle of Japanese or Korean women. I thought about taking Little Lion’s hand and walking off to spare him the pain of what could only be an uncomfortable meeting for everyone. But she pulled her hand back and walked straight up to him.
No, I realised, she was going up to his stand of dolls. He was not overselling his dolls, which were indeed special. Those at other stalls were uniformly painted, boys and girls, all bright and all the same. Wang Gan’s dolls were more understated; each was unique with individual expressions that ran the gamut from lively to peaceful, mischievous to naive, angry to joyful. One look told me they must have been made by Northeast Gaomi Township’s master doll maker, Hao Dashou — Hao married my aunt in 1999 — who had for decades employed a unique sales approach for his dolls. What had led him to hand them over to Wang Gan? Wang pointed with puckered lips to the dolls and stalls to either side, then said in a soft voice to the women: Their wares are cheap, machine-produced, but mine are handmade by Northeast Gaomi Township’s master craftsman, Qin He, who fashions them with his eyes closed. Perfectly lifelike and exquisitely fragile. Wang Gan picked up a doll with a petulant pout. Alongside Master Qin He’s creations, Madame Tussaud’s wax figures are mere figurines, he said. All creatures are born of clay, understand? The goddess Nüwa created humans out of clay, you see? Clay is invested with intelligence. Our Master Qin He uses clay dug from two metres deep in the Jiao riverbed, silt that is more than three thousand years old, cultural silt, historical silt. The silt is put out to dry in the sun and aired in the moonlight, soaking up the essence of the sun and the moon. After being broken down by a roller it is reconstituted with river water taken at daybreak and well water drawn as the moon starts its climb, to become clay, which he kneads for a while and pounds for a spell to form a nice round, doughy ball; only then does the creative process begin. I must tell you ladies that after each doll is made, Master Qin He pokes a tiny hole in the top of its head with a pointed bamboo strip, then pricks his middle finger and releases a drop of his blood into the hole. He seals the hole and places the doll in a cool, shady place for forty-nine days before applying paint, beginning with the eyes. These dolls are themselves spirits — don’t let what I’m about to reveal frighten you, but at every full moon they dance to the music of flutes, twirling and clapping and laughing, the sound like speech emerging from a cell phone, soft yet clear. If you don’t believe me, buy a few and take them home. If they don’t come to life, bring them back and smash them here in front of my stall. But I doubt you will do that, for that releases its blood and you will hear it cry. After listening to Wang Gan’s sales patter, the women bought two dolls each, which he packed in special gift boxes. His customers walked off happily. And then Wang Gan turned to greet us.
I think he knew we were there all along. He might not have recognised me, but there was no way he missed Little Lion, whom he had pursued with single-minded devotion for more than a decade. But he reacted with surprise, as if he’d just spotted us.
Aiya! It’s you two.
How are you, my friend? I said. Haven’t seen you in years.
Little Lion smiled and said something too soft for me to hear.
We exchanged a hearty handshake and cigarettes; I smoked the Eight Joys he handed me, he smoked the General I handed him.
Little Lion was busy admiring the dolls.
I heard you were back, he said. You can travel the world, but there’s no place like home, it seems.
That’s right, I said. A fox dies in the den where it was born, a leaf falls to the ground right below. But we’re fortunate to be living in a new age. I hate to even think about how it was all those years ago.
We lived in cages back then, he said, either that or we were led around with leashes. Now we know what freedom is. You can do anything you want if you’ve got the money and it isn’t illegal.
You’re right. You’ve got quite a sales pitch, I said. I pointed to the dolls. Are they really as spirited as you say?
Do you think I’m just blowing smoke? He was dead serious. Every word is the sacred truth, with just a hint of acceptable exaggeration. Even the national media is allowed that.
I’m no match for you, I said. Did Qin He really make those?
Would I say he did if he didn’t? That bit about flutes and dancing on a full moon, that was an exaggeration, but it’s true that Qin He made them with his eyes shut. If you don’t believe me, name the day and I’ll take you to see for yourself.
So Qin He settled down here too, did he?
Who talks about settling these days? You live where it suits you. Wherever your aunt is, that’s where you’ll find Qin He. His kind of diehard loyalty is rare, no matter where you look.
Little Lion held up a lovely little doll with big eyes and a high nose, like a girl with mixed Chinese and European blood. I want this little girl, she said.
I began to sense something as I looked at the doll. Of course, I’d seen that face somewhere. But where? Who was it? Oh, my, it was Wang Dan’s daughter, Chen Mei, the girl Gugu and Little Lion took care of for nearly six months, but then had to turn over to her father, Chen Bi.
I still recall the evening Chen came to our house to retrieve his daughter — it was on the night we sent the Kitchen God off to report on the family, not long before New Year’s, with firecracker explosions and the smell of gunpowder in the air. Little Lion had filled out the paperwork to accompany me and had left her position with the commune health centre. I’d soon be taking her and Yanyan with me to Beijing. A two-room unit in a Beijing compound would be our new home. Father would not go with us, and was unwilling to move in to my older brother’s home in the county capital. He wanted to stay where he was. Fortunately, my second brother had a job in the township, close enough to take care of him.
After Wang Dan’s death, Chen Bi began to drown himself in liquor. He walked the streets, alternating between weeping and singing. People sympathised with him at first, but with the passage of time that turned to annoyance. Back when the pursuit of Wang Dan was on, Chen Bi’s savings had been used to pay the villagers’ wages. But after her death, most gave the money back to him. Additionally, the commune did not ask him to repay the money spent on him during his confinement. A conservative estimate put his savings at thirty thousand yuan, enough for him to spend on drink for several years. To all appearances, he had put out of his mind the child Gugu and Little Lion had taken to the health centre to fight for her life. In basic terms, his goal in subjecting Wang Dan to the dangers of a second pregnancy had been to produce a boy to carry on the family line, and when all the suffering and hardships in reaching that goal ended with the birth of another girl, he pounded himself in the head. The heavens have abandoned me! he wept bitterly.
Gugu named the child. Since she had a fresh, pretty face and a sister named Chen Er (Ear), she settled on Chen Mei (Eyebrow). Little Lion pronounced it to be a beautiful name.
Gugu and Little Lion thought seriously about raising the child on their own, but with the residence issue and the difficult procedures involved in adoption, when Chen Bi came and lifted her from Little Lion’s arms, she still had no resident status. In accordance with the laws of the People’s Republic of China, she did not exist, what is known as a ‘bootleg kid’. How many of those there were at the time no one could say, but the number had to be astonishingly high. The bootleg kid residence issue was finally resolved in 1990 during the Fourth Census. The income derived from fining the masses for illegal births reached astronomical heights, but how much of that money actually made it into the national coffers is too tangled an affair for anyone to sort out. And the number of bootleg kids the masses have produced over the past decade or so is certainly another astronomical figure. The fine for such births is now ten times greater than twenty years ago, and when the next census rolls around, we’ll see if the bootleg-kid parents can afford to pay the fines…