'Where do you come from?' Glancing around her, Meili notices that all the detainees are women. Some are crying, others are eating and chatting, but most are curled up like shrimp on their yellow rectangles.

'Me?' the girl says with a look of unease on her face. 'I'm a graduate. I came to Changsha to find work.'

'Ah, you must be very knowledgeable then. So can you tell me, is this a prison?'

'Look at point number 8 of the notice on the wall: "Voluntarily confess your crimes and expose the crimes of others." So it's obvious they consider us to be criminals.'

'I've only had one baby out of quota,' Meili says. 'Is that enough to get me locked up?'

'It's nothing to do with family planning. You're here because you're a peasant, and peasants aren't allowed in the cities unless they have a temporary urban residence permit. Surely you know that?'

A female correctional officer sticks her head round the door and shouts, 'Shut up and lie down, you sc.u.m. The light goes out in five minutes!'

'I beg you, government lady, let me go home,' a voice cries out. 'My son's alone in the flat. What if he walks onto the balcony and falls over the rails?'

'You can't just abduct people in broad daylight and lock them up for no reason,' another woman says. 'You're behaving like gangsters.'

'I'm not a peasant. I was just having a meal in a restaurant after work. Is that against the law now? Please let me go. Look, I have a train ticket to Guangzhou. It's leaving in two hours. My uncle will be waiting at the other end to collect me.' This girl has a fashionable bob and a smart dress and could easily pa.s.s for a city dweller were it not for her thick rural accent.

'It's strange that they should arrest you you don't look like a peasant at all,' Meili says to the graduate, then scans the room again while the light is still on, breathing the unfamiliar, pungent smells of perfume and unwashed bodies. The graduate looks away, her expression blank. 'So, when were you arrested?' Meili asks her.

'Three days ago,' she replies. 'There's no one in this city who can help me. I warn you, if your family or friends don't bail you out, you'll be sent to a labour camp for three months. You must phone someone and ask them to rescue you.'

'No, I'm a family planning fugitive. If any of my relatives turn up here, they'll have to confirm my ident.i.ty, and I'll be sent back to the village and be forced to pay a huge fine.'

'To think that we're illegal residents in our own country!' the graduate says, sitting up and smoothing her hair back. 'G.o.d, what a stench. This place is a cesspit.'

'It's much nicer than the hut I've been living in,' Meili says, scratching a loose flake of paint from her yellow rectangle. 'It doesn't smell nearly as bad as our duck enclosure, and there are fewer mosquitoes here, too. I wouldn't mind staying a few days. But I'm worried about my daughter. My husband just sits down and drinks beer all evening. What will they eat?'

'How old-fashioned you are. Don't worry about them! What about you?'

'Well, as Confucius said: "Men are the sky, women are the earth."'

'Patriarchal nonsense! Just wait until he leaves you for another woman.'

'Only men from the cities behave like that. We peasants are much more traditional. My husband would never leave me.'

'How do you know? There are no certainties in life. I never imagined my boyfriend would leave me and I'd end up having to sell my body.'

'You're a prost.i.tute?' Meili says in disbelief.

'Yes. They arrested me while I was talking to a client in a hotel lobby. Look at point number 10: "Individuals involved in prost.i.tution and whoring will undergo re-education and reform through labour for a period of six months to two years." That's what I'm heading for.'

'But you wear gla.s.ses. You're a graduate, for goodness' sake! How did you get into this mess?' The light is turned off. Meili smells a whiff of dirty nylon socks that reminds her of Kongzi. She still hates him for giving Waterborn away, but understands what drove him to it. If she were released now, she'd rush back to the hut and demand that he bring Waterborn home.

'I came to Changsha last year to look for my boyfriend and tell him I was pregnant with his child,' the graduate explains. 'But when I found him, I discovered he was engaged to someone else. I was so distraught I went straight to a backstreet clinic and had an abortion. Love only strikes once when it dies, you're a walking corpse. After the abortion, I was too ashamed to go home. I ran out of money and needed to find work. I didn't care what I did.'

'How dreadful,' Meili says, trying to find words to console her. Her eyes have become accustomed to the dark, and she can see the small flowers embroidered on the collar of the graduate's blouse.

'These custody centres are just moneymaking rackets,' the graduate says. 'If you can't find anyone to pay your bail, local crooks will pay it for you, at a discounted rate, then sell you for double the price to village police who run labour camps up in the mountains. You're forced to work on the fields for three months for no pay. They call it the "bail trade". The city authorities get the bail money, the crooks make enough to build themselves villas in the countryside, and the village police can retire early on the profits from the labour camps. So everyone's happy.'

'Why's the bail so high?' Meili says, then thinks about the thirty yuan that the police confiscated from her.

'They charge thirty yuan a night. It's more expensive than a hotel! Then there's the urban beautification fee, management fee, meals. If you can't pay the bail, you'll just have to come along with me to the labour camp.'

'How will my husband and daughter cope on their own for all that time?' Meili says, regretting her impetuous decision to storm off.

'If your husband comes to bail you out, he'll have to hand over at least a thousand yuan,' the graduate says, shifting to the side so that Meili can share some of her mat. Then she opens her handbag and takes out a mobile phone.

'Is there really no one in this city you can call?' Meili asks, her eyes drawn to the phone. Until now, she's only ever seen one on the television.

'There's no point calling anyone. This is the second time I've been caught for soliciting. I was allowed to pay my bail the first time, but this time they won't take my money. Prost.i.tutes are only given one chance.'

'My parents could never raise a thousand yuan. They wouldn't even be able to afford the train ticket here. And I don't want to ask my husband to bail me out. I stormed off in a fit of anger. It would be too humiliating to have to beg him to come to fetch me . . . Tell me, what's your name?'

'w.a.n.g Suya.'

'I'm Meili. I've never spoken to a university graduate before. Is that a mobile phone you have there?'

'Yes. It cost me four thousand yuan. But the battery only lasts two hours. Have a look if you like.'

Meili takes the phone, presses it to her ear, then rolls it around in her hands. 'Amazing,' she says, giving it back to her. Through the darkness, Meili can see that the woman on her right is doubled up in pain. 'What's the matter with her?' she asks Suya.

'She's had diarrhoea for three days. And the guards have the gall to say she's faking . . .'

Meili leans over and shakes the woman's arm. 'Sister, you should go to hospital and get some medicine.'

'Poor thing,' Suya says. 'The officers beat her up before she'd even had a chance to sign the registration form . . .'

The woman opens her eyes and whispers to Meili, 'You're a mother, aren't you? I can tell you, then. I'm six months pregnant. When I arrived, the officers asked me to give them telephone numbers. I told them my village doesn't have electricity, let alone a phone connection. So they punched me and kicked me in the belly. I think they killed my baby. I can't feel it moving any more.'

'They beat you up just because you couldn't give any numbers?' Meili says, wondering which ones she'd give if they asked. If she could remember Weiwei's number, she'd phone him right now and ask him to rescue her. She doesn't have any numbers for Guai Village, so she wouldn't be able to contact Kongzi, even if she wanted to. The only number she can remember is Kong Zhaobo's, but if she gave it to the police, they'd find out her history and send her back to Kong Village. She's relieved she didn't put her parents' address on the registration form. Closing her eyes, she realises that this is the time she would be giving Waterborn her last feed. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s feel tender, swollen, and as hard as rock. The sweet-smelling milk leaking from her nipples has drenched the front of her shirt. She rolls onto her side and squeezes the milk out onto the concrete floor to relieve the pain.

KEYWORDS: stone cold, follow the chicken, urban residence permit, white cotton scarf, green breeze, re-education through labour.

WHEN THE BUS leaves the Custody and Repatriation Centre's cement-walled compound, Meili has a sense of freedom. She's reminded of the day they took Weiwei down the Xi River, when the wind blew through her hair and sleeveless dress and the hot sun shone on her arms . . . Outside the window, busy crowds jostle along the pavements, past concrete-bordered flower beds crammed with pink and red chrysanthemums. A mother in a short denim skirt pushes a pram past a bridal portrait studio. A young couple in white stand hand in hand waiting for the pedestrian lights to turn green. Sunlight spills onto trees, asphalt roads and parasols shading ice-cream carts, and swirls between pa.s.sing cars and a department store's revolving gla.s.s doors. Everyone looks happy and bright as they shop for this evening's National Day celebrations.

A man at the back of the bus shouts, 'See that tall gla.s.s building over there? Our team of workers from Henan built that.'

'And that's the orange crane I operate. Look, my hat's still on the dashboard!'

'I work in that office next to the Starbucks,' says a woman on the seat behind. Then spotting a colleague crossing the street, she bangs on the window and shouts: 'Li Na! It's me! Tell the boss I've been detained!'

'Shut your mouths!' the burly man at the front shouts, jumping to his feet.

'This area's nothing special,' Suya says, noticing the look of wonder on Meili's face. 'See that TV tower? All the grand hotels and office blocks are there. A guest at one of those hotels offered me three thousand yuan to spend the night with him.'

'I don't want to hear about that,' Meili says, feeling uncomfortable. 'This city's so huge. I bet it would take two days just to walk from one end to the other.' She stares at the succession of shop windows, mesmerised by the televisions, leather sofas, denim jackets, high-heeled shoes, brogues, satin slippers . . . 'I'd love to walk down this street. Not to buy anything, just to gaze into the windows.'

'If you did what I do, in one year you'd have enough money to open a beauty salon, just like that one,' Suya says, pointing to a window with a poster of a woman with long blonde hair, lying in a bath filled with bubbles.

'I have a husband, and even if I didn't, I'd still never do what you do.'

'Why did you run away, then, if he's so important to you? Why waste your youth living with a man you don't love?'

Meili stays silent. Last night, she said to Suya, 'I'll never divorce Kongzi. As the saying goes: If you marry a chicken, you must follow the chicken.' Suya laughed and told her she was a fool.

When the bus leaves the city, a green breeze carrying the scent of bamboo and wild gra.s.s blows in through the open window. Meili hasn't washed for days, so she turns her face to it and inhales large draughts. The patches of leaked milk on her shirt begin to dry. When travelling by bus, the city and the countryside are only a few minutes apart, but for a peasant the distance always feels insurmountable. Meili is frustrated that although she's not pregnant, she's still considered to be a criminal for daring to enter a city. Her dream of living a modern urban life seems remote and unattainable.

At dusk, the bus reaches a village high in the hills and stops outside a compound of brick buildings. The two wooden signs outside the gate say YANG VILLAGE POLICE STATION and YANG VILLAGE LABOUR CAMP. In the setting sun they seem cast in bronze.

After supper, the village Party Secretary turns up. He spits out a toothpick, scoops some wax from his ear with his finger and says, 'Comrades, welcome to the labour camp. Today is National Day, so we served you a local speciality: hot and numbing chicken. Delicious, wasn't it?' He breaks into a wide grin, but the forty inmates seated around him remain po-faced. 'While you're here you must abide by the rules and work hard. If your families pay the thousand-yuan bail, you can leave at once. If not, you'll be with us for some time '

'I'm a welder at Compa.s.sion Villas construction site,' interrupts a middle-aged man dressed in a grubby suit. 'The foundations are going down this week. How will they manage without me?'

'You should've thought about that before you wandered off-site,' a village policeman says, jabbing his finger at him. 'Now you're here, you'll have to do as you're told.' There are only three genuine policemen in the barn. The four others are local peasants dressed in the cheap uniforms of urban control officers that were probably bought in a local market. If these impostors were to enter a town or city, they would also be detained.

'You will undergo re-education through labour and attend introductory cla.s.ses in politics and law,' the village Party Secretary continues. 'We hope that you will use your time here well and make a valuable contribution to the modernisation of the village.'

'I don't understand why we've been brought to this camp,' a woman at the back says. 'We were taken to a Custody and Repatriation Centre. So why haven't we been repatriated to our villages?'

'Why is it a crime to leave the countryside to look for work? Which city in China hasn't been built by migrants? Which factory in Guangdong, which Sino-foreign joint venture doesn't rely on migrant workers? Are the authorities going to arrest every one of us?'

'Yes, we migrants are the engines powering China's miraculous economic rise. It said so in the newspapers. Don't any of you know how to read?'

'Foreign capitalists are flooding to China to take advantage of our cheap labour, so why are we branded criminals?'

'I was told we were going to be sent back to our villages, so why have we been brought here to work like slaves?'

'As I said, if your bail's paid, you'll be free to go,' the Party Secretary repeats angrily, slipping back into his regional accent.

'You bought us from crooked middlemen for five hundred yuan each, and now you want our relatives to pay you a thousand to release us? We're being traded like cattle in a market. If it's illegal for us to live in our own country, what do you expect us to do? Smuggle ourselves into Hong Kong? . . .' All the inmates are on their feet now, gesticulating angrily and swearing.

'Enough!' the Party Secretary barks. 'That's it for tonight. Fill out the registration forms, take a handbook, and I'll see you at seven tomorrow morning for the name call . . .'

After five days of hard labour in the fields, Meili gains the respect of her fellow inmates. While most of the women plant sugar cane, she helps the men with the back-breaking job of digging and filling irrigation channels. At dusk, when Suya collapses with exhaustion, she heaves her onto her back and carries her to the barn. Suya desperately wants to escape, but the nearest public road is thirty kilometres away. Two Sichuanese inmates attempted to flee three weeks ago, but as soon as they reached the road they were arrested, and were beaten so violently on their return to the camp that they're still unable to walk.

'That lecherous Instructor Zheng has got his eyes on me,' Suya tells Meili. 'I'm afraid to go out at night here. It gets so dark outside, you can't see a thing.' She and Meili have returned to the barn and are sitting on a tattered quilt, their backs against the wall. The ground is littered with laminate flooring offcuts and the scarves, underwear and broken flip-flops left behind by previous inmates. 'b.l.o.o.d.y Communist Party,' Suya continues. 'How dare they lock us up in this dump! Once I've made enough money, I'll go and study abroad, and I'll never come back.' She grabs a sc.r.a.p of flooring and wedges it behind her aching back, then puts a blanket over her legs.

'I haven't slept in a brick building like this for years, so it doesn't feel like a dump to me,' says Meili. 'If you're afraid of the dark, you should try sleeping on a boat at night. It's not only pitch black, it rocks from side to side. You feel yourself floating in mid-air, with no idea where you might land . . .' Then she rubs the mud from her hands and says, 'So, has Inspector Zheng done anything to you?'

'He took me aside today and said if I spent the night with him, I could leave the camp next week. I'd rather die than let that sleazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d put his hands on me. Besides, he's a minor official he has no authority to release any inmates.'

'When you go to the latrines, I'll go with you, and if he dares come near, I'll sink my teeth into his shoulder!'

'You're so brave. Is there nothing you're afraid of?'

'Yes the land. As soon as my feet touch firm ground, my heart starts pounding, because suddenly I'm a peasant again, a n.o.body who the government can arrest at will. I always feel safer on the water.'

'Earth is man, water is woman, as the saying goes,' Suya says. 'Grains of soil are seeds of the masculine spirit; rivers are dark roads to the eternal female.'

Meili combs Suya's hair and braids it into plaits. Since her milk began to dry up, her maternal feelings have grown stronger. She yearns to hold Waterborn and Nannan in her arms, and can't bring herself to contemplate where Waterborn might be now.

'How pretty you are,' Meili says, stroking Suya's face. 'Such large eyes you could almost be mistaken for a foreigner.'

'To tell you the truth, I belong to the Wei Minority, so I suppose I am a bit foreign. Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she'll always remain under a man's thumb. I believe that every woman should strive to achieve something. Self-respect can only be gained through hard work.'

'Well, as it happens, I'm not pure Chinese either. My mother told me that my grandfather had light brown hair and a big nose. A rumour has pa.s.sed down that, after he was born and the umbilical cord was cut, his mother smashed a bowl onto the ground, grabbed a shard and slit her throat with it. Apparently, she'd been raped by a foreign missionary and was terrified her parents would beat her for bringing shame on the family. I've never dared tell anyone that before not even my husband.'

'You've no need to tell him. Now that I look closely, there is a foreign air about you. You have the wholesome look of a peasant girl, but in your eyes, there's a wildness. They slant upwards in the Chinese phoenix style, but the pupils are so black and shiny they almost look blue. If you educated yourself and read widely, you could become a formidable woman. And with just a little grooming and sprucing up, you'd have men falling at your feet.'

Feeling her cheeks colour, Meili lowers her head and says, 'How can you bear making love to strangers?'

'Don't be so childish, big sister! As far as I'm concerned, I'm simply renting out a part of my body that doesn't even belong to me. I don't make love to them, I just allow them to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e inside me. The only man I'll ever love is my boyfriend. When I've got my life in order, I'll visit him and make him sorry he left me. I'll be his lover until the day I die.'

'Lover? I've only heard that word used in soap operas.' Meili thinks of Kongzi, and feels a pang. He's a talented calligrapher and is good with words. All the villagers used to ask him to choose names for their children. If he didn't have such a reactionary, Confucian outlook on life, he'd be the perfect husband.

'In this cut-throat age, women are on the ascendency, and men are being left floundering at the side,' Suya says. 'But there are still only three roles we women can choose: girlfriend, wife or single woman. Which one will you go for?'

'All I want is to be a good wife and for my family to be happy and safe.' An image of Weiwei's face suddenly appears in Meili's mind. To dispel it, she glances around the barn. A woman is standing at the door, begging to be let out to use the latrines.

'A good wife, you say?' Suya says, smiling. 'Do good wives run away from home? Before I turn thirty, I will have been a lover, a single woman and will have made a lot of money. After that I will get married and be a good wife. So in one lifetime, I will have experienced it all.'

Meili is speechless. She never knew it was possible for a woman to lead such a varied existence. She is twenty-four years old now, but still feels shamefully naive. She wonders whether, if she'd had Weiwei's number on her in Changsha and had given him a call, they would now be lovers. Her stomach churns noisily as it has done repeatedly since she ate the turnip soup they were served at lunch.

A woman in a quilted jerkin walks over and says: 'Can you lend me a sanitary towel, sister? I've run out.'

'Go to the latrines, and if anyone walks in ask them for some toilet paper,' Meili replies.

'I know that woman over there has got her period,' Suya says. 'Ask her.'

'No, her period has finished now. She gave me her last towel this morning. She pulled it out from her knickers. Luckily, there wasn't too much blood on it.'

Suya tucks her blanket tightly around her body. She got so cold out in the fields in her thin cotton skirt and blouse that she bought a long-sleeved vest from an inmate before he was released two days ago, but she still gets cold at night. She opens her handbag and takes out her red journal again.

'What do you write in that journal?' Meili asks.

'Everything that happens to me. One day I'll give it to my boyfriend, and he'll be able to see how much I've suffered. If you don't write things down, the past becomes a blank page. Everything is forgotten. All great people keep records of their lives. Will you promise that if anything happens to me, you'll give the journal to him? I promise that if anything happens to you, I'll tell your husband. I don't know how I'll find that little bamboo hut of yours, but I'll do my best.'

'Don't say such inauspicious things! When we're released, I'll take you to the hut myself, and make you some duck stew.'

'No way! You're not dragging me off to that mosquito-infested swamp! When we're released, you'll come with me. I'll open a shop and you can work behind the counter. We'll learn English at night school together, and when I have a child you can be its nanny.'

'I'm not sure if I could look after someone else's child, but I can definitely work in a shop. I can sell vegetables, baby formula, anything . . .'

'That's settled then! Here, I want to give this English dictionary to you. Every day you must learn a new word. The more knowledge you acquire the more paths open before you.'

'After we're released, I'll take you in my boat to a stretch of the river where the water is crystal clear. When you swim in it, all your troubles will float away.' As she leans back, she catches a smell on Suya's skin which seems to offer her an intimation of her own future.